“Yeah, well...
This here’s a story I heard back before.
You know, back before them Ay-Rabs stopped pumping oil
n started pumping sand.

“Me? I believe in stories.
But mostly, how you got to go back to the beginning,
To the first time a story got told before you can trust it.

This un been tolt in my fambly...”

(Hoplong lapsed into a hill county twang ever time he tolt this.
Now he’s got me twanging, too.)

“Maybe you heard the one about **ama, the first dirt walker?”

–Yeah that’s spelled with them couplea asterisks in front of the ‘ama’ part.
They’s actually said, smack lips like a kiss two times then ‘ama’,
but now I write the story out,
you gotta remember the whole thing makes up her name
instead of just a paleolithic footnote.

–Hopalong told it more r less the same way he always tolt it.

“**ama claimed to be the first dirt walker.

“Both sides of my fambly knew that story but only the oldest one on each side still walking and talking would tell the story.
None of ‘em said it the same.

“when my dad’s granma told it, I mind it goes like this:”

–Hopalong hates the high scratchy voice the story takes but it makes the story what it is:

“**ama, our Greatly-greatest Grandma,
told her kids and her grandkids and their grandkids

“--and now, I’m telling you, so remember it.
Yer gonna hear this story a hunnert times and,
the god willing, it’ll be you telling it someday.
So mind the important parts.

“-- that she, **ama, was the first one
come down outta the tree n walked around.

“First off, she went and helped herself to a big paunch of a leopard’s kill
while that cat was sleeping up its own tree.

Then she run back up her tribe’s tree n
chewed bits n pieces off to share out to all her kin.

“**ama always said leopard’s leftovers tasted so much better than bugs n worms n twigs n sawdust.”

–Hopalong gave it a rest from that high scratchy voice,
“Cept, my dad’s granma always said shit instead of twigs.

And my mom’s ma always clapped her hands at her n said,
‘Save that for when they’s growed up.’
Then said ‘twigs n sawdust’ to us kids so’s we’d be sure n
remember what got said first.
(It worked, huh?)”

–Hopalong started back up in that high scratchy voice,
“Great greatly Grandmama **ama always cried about her brother, the second dirt walker she called him.

“She whispered he weren’t fast enough running back up the tree in front a that leopard.
And she never said her brother’s name, him being dead n all.”

–We all knew the story was done when Hopalong dropped back into his everyday voice,
“But the way I heard the story, near a hunnert times, from both sides of my family, it’s come down forever, more or less the same.”