Blood Is Thicker...

My Uncle Boof used to scare the shit out of me when I was little...

He'd regale me, and my Sisters and Cousin with the many awful tales from his two voluntary tours of Vietnam where he was a Scout; the person who foraged ahead of the rest of the soldiers in search of enemy snipers and booby traps and hidden mines. He thoroughly enjoyed telling us stories of how they shot people dead and then stabbed their bodies with bayonets to make sure they weren't bluffing; how they burned down the villages while their poor babies screamed.

It always seemed to me, even then, that he got this job as Scout because nobody in his Battalion would have cared if he had fallen into a pit full of sharpened bamboo spikes. By all accounts Nobody has ever liked him much; if at all. The nicest thing I ever heard about him was that he once won a Most Beautiful Baby competition in nineteen-forty-six; and that's a long time ago now. Vietnam wasn't what ruined him, though; he was rotten to the core from a very young age.

He used to lynch my Mother's pet kittens- Ned Kelly-style- on the clothes line, and stab her goldfish with forks. He even shot her in the leg with his BB gun. Nobody could control him as he got older, either; it was all my Grandfather could do to keep him out of jail, though that was where he often belonged- and he only managed to do that because Grandpa used to play football with all of the Coppers and kept guaranteeing them he would Sort It Out.

He didn't.

I've heard many stories about my Uncle over the years...

Like the time he shot that lady in the mouth with a handgun and the only thing that saved her was that she had a missing tooth and the bullet didn't ricochet up into her brain. Or when his own 'best mate' shot him in the head on the first leg of their Around Australia Hunting Trip. It was a real shame it didn't kill him, really. They only made it as far as Orange when his mate took some LSD and thought my Uncle was a wild boar charging at him. Or maybe it was an elephant. I don't know; it wasn't my hallucination. Apparently my Uncle nearly died and everyone was upset; even my Mother cried and was worried- and she doesn't even like him. He made a full recovery though- and continued being the same arsehole that he always was.

He's always drunk and smells like the Flagon of Port that's permanently within his reach. In the mornings after a big night on the grog, just having a glass of water is enough to make him drunk again; it releases the alcohol back into his bloodstream somehow. I never used to believe it were possible until it happened to me for the first time. He's almost always nasty, and gross. He takes out his false teeth and eats moths in front of us; showing us the furry remnants on his already grey tongue. And he delights in being cruel to things; once he snapped a rabbit's back in front of us by slapping it on the side of Grandpa's Ute; another time he told us how he'd dismembered a dead calf while it was still coming out of it's mother's birth canal. He thought it was funny upsetting us...

For a long time he lived up at my Grandfather's Farm, fishing the Lake with his ill-kept nets and sharing the cattle duties with the old Farmer who lived further down the road. He used to let my Uncle ride his horse, Peter, and was nasty to him also; he liked to use my Grandfather's stock whip a little too liberally on him. That's why when I put my little horse Star up at the Farm I was always worried that he would be cruel to her as well. I used to hope that he would get too drunk every day to bother riding out to check on the cows- or that the old guy up the road would have to do it on Peter instead.

Later on, when I was older, I told him not to ride Star anymore- after I watched him fall off her three times in five minutes. He was ridiculously drunk and had no concept of balance- even though he was still adamant that he could 'control the bitch'. That was the same Easter that my eldest Sister and I tried to poison our Uncle...

We told him what it was first- so no one could have accused us of murder if he had died- only an assisted suicide if he had wanted a way out. We figure he's got nothing much to want to live for anyway. We told him it was a cup of Tick Poison. He's been drinking all day- he's been at it since dawn; if he even went to sleep that is; and had been bragging that he could drink anything- so my Sister and I suggested this for a beverage.

I think I was aged about fourteen or fifteen at the time- so I'm pretty sure he didn't get away with any magical pouring out of the poison- there was no sleight of hand. I watched him drink a cup of it. Then he wiped his mouth clean and had a long swig of his Longneck of VB- and slurred something like 'Is that all you've got for me- you little pair of bitches' -and continued calmly drinking his beer and port for the rest of the afternoon- without so much as a hiccup...

We couldn't believe it either; and I was actually quite concerned for a while that he was going to have a delayed reaction- that he would die and that we would end up being charged with his murder after all. I can't explain how he had no ill-effects when it clearly said on the warning label that it was, indeed, a POISON- and that if I had placed a patch any larger than a twenty cent piece on the back of a cow it would have made it really sick and it could possibly die. But there you go; he must have had guts of steel or something.

He's in his early sixties these days- though I haven't seen him in almost twelve years. The last rumour that was circulating had him impregnating a drug-addicted hooker who he had met in the gutter out the front of the pub. I'm still anxiously waiting to meet my new Aunty- if she indeed exists. She may or may not; but I hope there is no baby. You'd be afraid for it every day of It's life.

There's only the one reason that I'd like to see him ever again; I believe he might still have my Grandfather's stock saddle- and my Sister and I would like it back. It means more to us than it ever did to him. And as there's not much chance he'd give it away even if he has it still- as far as seeing him again ever goes, my guess is that it won't be any time soon; and that's just fine with Me.

Apparently blood is thicker than water.

But not in this case...