The Revolt of the Oyster

by Don Marquis

She has got eighteen or twenty children, Widder Watson has, runnin' around them woods. Them woods is jist plumb full of her children. You wouldn't dare for to try to shoot a rabbit anywhere near them woods for fear of hittin' one.

And all them children has got the most beautiful and peculiar names, that Widder Watson got out of these here drug-store almanacs. She's been a great reader all her life, Widder Watson has, but all her readin' has been done in these here almanacs. You know how many different kinds of almanacs there always are layin' around drug-stores, I guess. Well, every two or three months Widder Watson goes to town and gets a new bale of them almanacs and then she sets and reads 'em. She goes to drug-stores in towns as far as twelve or fifteen miles away to keep herself supplied.

She never cared much for readin' novels and story papers, she tells me. What she wants is somethin' that has got some true information in it, about the way the sun rises, and the tides in the oceans she has never saw, and when the eclipses is going to be, and different kinds of diseases new and old, and receipts for preserves and true stories about how this or that wonderful remedy come to be discovered. Mebby it was discovered by the Injuns in this country, or mebby it was discovered by them there Egyptians in the old country away back in King Pharaoh's time, and mebby she's got some of the same sort of yarbs and plants right there in her own woods. Well, Widder Watson, she likes that kind o' readin', and she knows all about the Seven Wonders of the World, and all the organs and ornaments inside the human carcass, and the kind o' pains they are likely to have and all about what will happen to you if the stars says this or that and how long the Mississippi River is and a lot of them old-time prophecies of signs and marvels what is to come to pass yet. You know about what the readin' is in them almanacs, mebby.

Widder Watson, she has got a natural likin' for fine words, jist the same as some has got a gift for hand-paintin' or playin' music or recitin' pieces of poetry or anything like that. And so it was quite natural, when her kids come along, she names 'em after the names in her favourite readin' matter. And she gets so she thinks more of the names of them kids than of nearly anything else. I ain't sayin' she thinks more of the names than she does of the kids, but she likes the names right next to the kids. Every time she had a baby she used to sit and think for weeks and weeks, so she tells me, for to get a good name for that baby, and select and select and select out of them almanacs.

Her oldest girl, that everybody calls Zody, is named Zodiac by rights. And then there's Carty, whose real name is Cartilege, and Anthy, whose full name is Anthrax, and so on. There's Peruna and Epidermis and Epidemic and Pisces.

I dunno as I can remember all them swell names. There's Perry, whose real name is Perihelion, and there's Whitsuntide and Tonsillitis and Opodeldoc and a lot more—I never could remember all them kids.

And there ain't goin' to be no more on 'em, for the fact of the matter seems to be that Widder Watson ain't likely to ever get another husband. It's been about four years since Jim Watson, her last one, died, and was buried in there amongst the hickory second-growth and hazel bushes, and since that day there ain't nobody come along that road a-courtin' Widder Watson. And that's what makes her sad. She can't understand it, never havin' been without a husband for so long before, and she sets and grieves and grieves and smokes her corn-cob pipe and speculates and grieves some more.

Now, don't you get no wrong idea about Widder Watson. She ain't so all-fired crazy about men. It ain't that. That ain't what makes her grieve. She is sad because she wants another baby to pin a name to.

For she has got the most lovely name out of a new almanac for that there kid that will likely never be born, and she sets there day after day, and far into the night, lookin' at them graves in the brush, and talkin' to the clouds and stars, and sayin' that name over and over to herself, and sighin' and weepin' because that lovely name will be lost and unknown and wasted forevermore, with no kid to tack it on to.

And she hopes and yearns and grieves for another man to marry her and wonders why none of 'em never does. Well, I can see why they don't. The truth is, Widder Watson don't fix herself up much any more. She goes barefooted most of the time in warm weather, and since she got so sad-like she don't comb her hair much. And them corn-cob pipes of hern ain't none too savory. But I 'spose she thinks of herself as bein' jist the same way she was the last time she took the trouble to look into the lookin' glass and she can't understand it.