As their family lived just up the road from our own, my father and his siblings had become particularly familiar with the Sneed brothers; they often hid on the side of the road, snickering and playing card games amongst the weeds, waiting for passing kids to torment. The Sneeds’ favorite trick was to push their victims into muddy ditch along side the road, telling them they now looked as filthy as the lives they lived. After this exclamation, the two brothers would bump bellies, then chase their victims off into the opposite field, filled with cat’s claw and sticker burrs. Despite the extent of their grievances, because of their father’s position as the town’s Church of Christ minister and our family’s unofficial landlord, even when his fat sons tore my aunt’s dress and made my father roll in the mud, forcing him to squeal and call himself ‘a hog’s hoof,’ my grandmother said nothing, leaving the Sneeds’ infallible, saved by God and their father’s position.
Colter Wayne Hobbes
