The Fountain of Youth Featuring Buford Sneed Arkansas Detective

By John Beresky

Who said DeSoto found the Fountain of Youth in Arkansas in the 1540's.

Feet of clay? Who has feet of clay?

The Banty Rooster employee surprise.

Junius Sneed and the Summer of Love.

What is a morion?

Who decapitated the criminals?

What happened to Detective Sneed?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098088316

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Buford and Parkie, Jacob and Esau, Baptism and Water

When I first blurted it out, Uncle Buford said I was seeing things. Yur eyes are deceivin’ yew, boy. Who do yew think yew are anyways, Fodderwing? Uncle Buford turned to Daddy, Parkie, yew been feedin’ this boy pokeweed that ain’t been cured out yet with a smidgen of uncooked squirrel brains for good measure?

Brother Buford, who is this Fodderwing?

Character in a book. Tried to fly out the hay loft of a barn onecet. Crazy as a coon with the rabies. Claimed, like Junius here, that he saw them walking on the trails, but not here, down in Floridee somewheres. Claimed he saw them regular-like.

I protested, But Unk, one of them was wearing a helmet.

And that was the day it all started, least wise that’s how I remember it. Summer, well I think it was summer, it was so many years ago; summer of my 15th year, nineteen and fifty-three.

Like I said, one thing led to another and another like they say. And now that I’m an old man, I’m not sure yet which path might be the right path to follow. Of course, Daddy and Uncle Buford debated that point on and off for quite a spell after that happened, and I been pondering on the back burner of my brain, ever since—well, ever since I left the Haight-Ashbury in ’67 and went and got me a college edjucation and went straight; too straight maybe cause that edjucation made me think too much instead of following what Daddy preached: That brain will get you in trouble every time. Facts, facts, facts, that’s what your brain lives on, and that brain is the enemy of faith.

Now I’m an old man and still ain’t sure about which way is best. Oh! Uncle Buford swore Daddy to tell nobody about his choice. And Uncle Buford swore me not to tell neither.

Daddy had his druthers all right. Of course that was because he preached, bound himself to the Good Book, favored the New Testament. On the other hand, Uncle Buford believed his heritage lay in the Old Testament. And believe me, they could get all fired up about the Bible, hotter than satan’s hooves like only a couple of brothers could be when they were birthed within 3 minutes of each other. They weren’t identical twins, but they were twins, and that’s for sure. They was what is known as fraternal twins. They didn’t get the same swimmin’ critter nor the same egg yolk—and it twasn’t no yolk to their papa and mama when one followed the other out and thought what the Lord must have meant when He said about the woman, Come, I’ll make you a fissure for men.

The twins resembled each other about as much as Jacob and Esau, but thank God they didn’t fight to the death like Cain and Abel. Uncle Buford wasn’t short, but he wasn’t tall neither. Daddy outsized him by half a head, but Uncle Buford possessed a certain aura about him that made him seem taller than his physical size might indicate at first glance. His slicked back black hair, combed straight back to the nape of his neck and greased up with some kind of apple pomade or Vaseline, made him look like an Eyetalian who had just stepped off a wopsided boat, or a New York Jew, or maybe a rabbi. Thick and black eyebrows scoured his forehead like 2 miniature Brillo pads that perched above brown eyes that looked at you like cougar eyes around his straight nose that hooked slightly at its end giving the underlying nostrils a slight flare. His teeth lay evenly in rows like piano keys ivoried as the tusks of elephants after a zookeeper scrubbed them white with lye. His square chin that might be an attractive target for a right cross from a welterweight gave him a distinctly petulant demeanor, like he might joust with devil or angel should the occasion arise. And, being a detective, an Arkansas detective, his chosen vocation after attending college in New York City, he doubled up, shot skeet, and fenced and deflected the haymakers of many an Arkansas polecat, like a banty rooster worrying a bulldog.

Because Uncle Buford followed Grandpa Hiram Sneed around like a colt looking for a sugar hand, by the same token, Grandpa Sneed, a Hot Springs Jew, a businessman first, who hung onto good money managing the haberdashery store and other businesses for that fella who wound up owning most all of downtown Hot Springs, favored Uncle Buford.

Daddy would say, Brother, even though you are a believer, you are more Jew than Moses.

And more Jew than Baruch, Ben-Gurion, or Buber. But yew brother, even though yew are pure Bapticostal, yew are the Arkansas edition of Billy Graham. If it weren’t for that shock of red hair yew might fool people into thinkin’ yew was handsome.

You see, Daddy followed Grandma Alaverta Sneed, who was a hard shell Baptist with a tinge of Pentecostal on her quiet tongue talkin’ side during her prayer time at home, but never at church.

Daddy chose the pulpit, or in his church, the lectern. He told his people, It ain’t no pulpit cause a pulpit is high up like the bridge on a ship where Cap’in Ahab gives orders. I don’t liken myself no higher than a deck hand cause the hand that swabs the deck ain’t no higher than the hand that holds 4 aces, an’ we all know who the dealer is that deals out the cards now, don’t we? He’s the same Man who steers my ship an’ who deals out my cards, but it’s up to me to play ’em.

Daddy lanked out at 6'1", and his head grew out a crop of red hair so full and thick that he had to wear a hat 2 sizes bigger than his head size. If he had chosen to grow a beard he would have been the spitting image of our distant cousin general that hung around with ole Robert E. Lee, General Longstreeet. Daddy sure did look funny with them red eyelashes, the freckles that freckled out even when he was all growed up, and with them eyes that sparkled behind them eyelashes like tiny emeralds. That red hair on his head followed him down on every square inch of his body including past his knees and clear down to his ankles. Why his socks never did wear off one bit of that thready red from the lower part of his shin bones.

From time to time Uncle Buford would bow his head down, especially when he felt a mite chipper, and, teasin’ Daddy, he would groan, My brother Esau is an hairy man, but me Jacob is a smooooth man, drawin’ out the oooo soundin’ like a hungry cow bellerin’ for some hay.

Daddy would smile and rejoinder with, Hair today, gone tomorrow, brother. Remember, Samson had the hair and the muscle, and I ain’t got no woman to do me in. Don’t the Bible command, ‘Never let woman cut hair?’ But if you would please put me in your will Buford, then I will be your hair apparent.

They enjoyed a bit of repartee, but the truth is that Uncle Buford always sided with his father, my grandfather, the Jew, and fawned on him as long as he was alive. And Grandma Alaverta’s favorite was her first born, Daddy. Her being a Gentile proved out that Uncle Buford could never be a true Jew because everybody who knows anything about the Good Book knows that the bloodlines pass down through the woman.

Grandma Alaverta took her 2 boys to church every Sunday regular like and set them down right next to her in the third pew on the left being as when the pastor was facing her from his pulpit or lectern she’d be sittin’ on his right hand side, an’ everybody who knows anything about God knows that His favorites get to sit at His right hand; and also that the sheep go to the right of God and the goats go to the left in the big sortin’ out that will happen at the last trumpet call round up. I heard tell once that Grandma Alaverta had some row with the Bapticostal preacher one time and went over to sit with the Methodists. But she said that God punished her for that because in the Methodist Church of God’s frozen chosen, she didn’t feel right about raising her hands up to praise the Lord and wound up with a frozen shoulder. After that happened she went back to the Bapticostal Church and said that if the Lord would heal her shoulder she’d praise the Lord with all her might and raise her arms up as high as she could, reach to Heaven and do her best to send one of her boys to Bible college. She received her healing at church the next Sunday when she tripped on the rug while stepping toward her pew. Reaching out to brace herself, she slammed that shoulder against a Bible that was laying on the pew bench and busted loose all manner of tarnation in that shoulder. Everybody in the fourth pew heard the cracklin’. She rose up from the floor praising the Lord and didn’t stop till they put her in the ground. And that’s how Daddy wound up at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, while Uncle Buford took off straight for New York City to matriculate, as he called it, at N. Y. Jew.

When the brothers came back to Arkansas after 4 years of college, after receiving their sheepskins, Uncle Buford settled in Malvern at Third and Olive Streets near the courthouse; and Daddy started the first and only Gideon Orthodox Sinless People Evangelical Life Church a few miles outside of Malvern in Magnet Cove. If you take the first letter of each word—Gideon Orthodox Sinless People Evangelical Life Church they spell GOSPEL, and that’s exactly what Daddy was, a full Gospel preacher. Baptist by training, Bapticostal by belief, but preaching the Nazarene doctrine of Holiness, Daddy always said that the difference between the Baptists and the Pentecostals is that the Pentacostals are believing but not practicing, and the Baptists practiced but did not believe. He preached the hard nosed theology that you must be a believing and a practicing church member. That’s why he always had a small in numbers congregation. He would temper down his preaching for no man and always preached the holiness doctrine, and everybody knows that the truth is hard medicine to swallow. If it wasn’t, Jesus Christ would never have been hung on that cross.

Yes, Daddy come home from college with a bride, my mama. But my mama died birthin’ me to life, complications of pregnancy, Ole Doc Calomel called it. But it was probably that mama had been weakened in childhood by the pellagra.

When I stood no higher than a pint of moonshine, I remember sitting in Daddy’s church in the third pew on the left facing the altar along side Uncle Buford. Daddy was preaching a sermon on the corruptibility of the flesh. Daddy yelled, We are but dust! We are but dust!

I turned to Uncle Buford and asked, Uncle Buford, what is butt dust?

The church people squirmed in their seats like they had chiggers in their britches. Then they commenced to laughin’. That was the Sunday I learned to whisper in church.

Daddy never did teach me how to talk Southern. He taught me how to talk Baptist, yet some Southern crept in as well as some Yiddish. The Yiddish come from Uncle Buford who told me that he hung out at Union Square in New York City when he was going to N. Y. Jew. Some folks rumoured that Uncle Buford didn’t believe that all the law was thrown out with the sacrifice of the Master, only the law of the sacrifice of animals. So unlike other Southern Bible Believers, Uncle Buford would not eat squirrel, catfish, or razorback hog. He said that according to Leviticus, them critters was unclean and always will be unclean. He believed they spread sickness in the body and shortened life far below the 120 years given to man in Genesis Six. Unk called Moses a hygienist, the greatest hygienist that ever lived. I didn’t know whether or not to believe him at first. But I found out later that if you touched an armadillo you could contract the leprosy. And them that ate squirrel brains acted like they had squirrels in their attics after a decade or two. After I thought about it for a spell, I figured out that I wasn’t goin’ to wolf down no alligator, terrapin, or horsemeat for no man. So here I am, old and getting older, with hair sprouting out of my ears, and with silver threads among the brown on my head.

When Uncle Buford returned to Arkansas, he took up the detective business a few blocks from his house in Malvern, opening a small office next to Miller’s Drug Store on Main Street. He purchased a Hudson, donated it to Daddy’s church, and had Daddy drive him to his cases whenever they were out of town. He knew Daddy preached only on Sunday, and, therefore, which was nearly always, had plenty of time to prepare his sermon during the week. Uncle Buford persuaded the church to sell a Hudson every 3 years. Then he would fork out the money to buy a new one, a step down as he called it, because the frame was on the outside of the Hudson’s chassis, and you stepped down into the Hydromatic built by Cadillac. The color dulled out a Sea Foam Green. Everyone of those Hudsons dulled out at Sea Foam Green.

In my 13th year, a few days after Uncle Buford informed me that I had reached my Bar Mitzvah age, he said I could consult with him at his office and help him brain-storm a case. Uncle Buford wanted to teach me how to think like a detective, analytical and intuitive, as he phrased it. But the real reason was that he didn’t want me to stay at home alone learnin’ something a teenager oughtn’t be learning in the privacy of my bedroom.

Unk said, I don’t want you to turn out to be a batlan, Junius.

What’s a botl’n, Unk?

It’s a Yiddish word. Means a man who does nothing. When I lived up in New York City as a Yankee among the Jews, I picked up some Yiddish. A batlan is similar to a behayma, and I don’t want my nephew to turn out to be a ne’er-do-well.

Daddy laughed, I guess you could say a botl’n’s like an Arkansas go getter, Junius.

An Arkansas go getter, Daddy?

An Arkansas go getter is a guy who drives his wife to work in the morning, goes home, cooks up some squirrel brains for lunch, drinks moonshine in the afternoon with his friend. At 5 o’clock he looks at his watch and says to his friend, Yew best be runnin’ along now cause it’s time for me to go getter."

That afternoon Uncle Buford told Daddy to go shopping for a spell and buy some vittles while he consulted with his young protégé—me.

But Uncle Buford, I protested, I cain’t solve no crime. I’m not even in high school. Some days, at my desk, I jes’ sit there in class an’ thinks. But most days I jes’ sits there.

Uncle Buford drummed it in me from the beginning. Listen up, boy. Learn to listen. If yew don’t listen yew will turn out bufflebrained. Keep your ears peeled. People say things all the time. They love to brag on themselves. They show their inside thoughts by what they say or what they don’t say. Yew kin hear a lot if yew listen. If yew are goin’ huntin’ out in the woods, the first thing yew do is listen. A deef hunter ain’t agonna shoot no deer except some dumb buck. Now fess up an’ tell me all yew know about this robbery that took place at the bank, and I’ll fill yew in with the rest of the modus operandi.

Modus operandi, Unk? What’s that some kinda foreign car driven by some rich Yankee? It’s French, ain’t it?

Latin, sonny boy. It means the manner in which the worker of iniquity carries out a crime. Usually a criminal has the same modus operandi in every crime he commits.

I’m tryin’ to understand your own modus coperandi…er…

…Operandi—how the crook operates.

Operandi, Unk! Okay, from what I know, here it is. This guy walks into the Land Bank on Main Street in Malvern in a coat that goes down to his ankles. He has a double headed ax hidden under his coat. He goes to the teller’s window lookin’ like Stonewall Jackson. Then he pulls out that ax from under his rebel coat and waves it at the teller. He tells the teller—why that’s a funny, Unk. What could he tell the teller if the teller is a teller and needs to tell him, cause a teller tells and don’t get told nothin’.

Go on, boy.

He tells the teller to hand over all the money. The way I read it in the newspaper, that man run away with over 2250 dollars. Daddy could take up 2 years of collections and still not receive that much money.

Yew have the essentials correct, Junius. Twenty-two hundred and fifty dollars in cold cash is more than 3 years wages for the billies that live up in the hills. Now how’re yew goin’ to track down that robber? How yew goin’ to proceed with your investigation?

Well Unk, I already heard that the poleleese said that robber had what they call the friendly mutton chops that grow down to his chin on the sides of his cheeks, and then climb up again into a moustache that bushes out over his upper lip.

Junius, do yew think that description is goin’ to help find that bank robber?

I don’t reckon so, Unk, since anybody that knows enough to pound sand into a rat hole knows that he will shave the hair offin his face quicker than lickity spit. Besides, they might just be fake mutton chops.

Good thinkin’, Junior. That fella isn’t a schlemiel. We won’t bother with that part of the investigation. Is there something else that we should concentrate on in our thought processes?

The ax, how about the ax? Did that teller tell anything about the ax, other than it was a double headed ax like the one Daddy has out in the woodshed?

I axed the teller that question, and all the teller could tell me was that the ax had been sharpened many times because the paint was worn off the head, and each head was a lot smaller than a new ax. It had been filed down many a time. ‘Well worn’ was the way the teller phrased it. He said the handle was newish though. But a thousand guys out there could have bought that handle at any one of a dozen hardware, feed stores, or saw sharpening shops in the county that cater to loggers or fellers. So then Junius, what’s left?

Unk, didn’t the teller say something about what that robber was wearing? He said he recognized a couple of the buttons on the coat sleeves, if I remember correctly, all shiny and gold like they belonged to some general or somebody important.

And what about that coat, boy? Yew are getting warm. What was so unusual about it? Yew tell me.

Well, that teller said she didn’t never see nobody wearin’ a coat like that that had them buttons that give the date 1865 on them except in a newspaper once. The picture was taken at a parade down in Arkadelphia when all them fellas was marchin’ in that picture. I think that’s about what he said, if I remember it right. Said something about the picture being taken on the 4th of July in 1923. Gee Unk, that’s sure a long time ago.

Now yew are on to something, Junius. Yew are getting’ hotter than a two dollar pistol. I believe that coat was made in the 1880’s for the soldiers who fought in and survived the recent unpleasantness. There’s very few of them long coats left because all the soldiers who survived the war are now dead, and them that died, most all of them were buried in their long coats. Them coats became kinda like burial blankets, shrouds they’re called. I believe I could count all of them rebel coats that are left in Arkansas on my right hand and still have 3 or 4 fingers left over. Now let me ax yew, excuse me, ask yew another question, Junius. Did that teller ever say anything else about that coat that yew might remember?

Yes sir, he mentioned that it looked all shined up—cleaned and pressed or something like that. Oh, now I remember what he said. He said, ‘It looked cleaner than a school marm’s leg and prettier too.’ What was he talkin’ about, Unk?

Good listening boy. See what yew kin remember if’n yew don’t forget… What do yew think the line of pursuit should take now? And the key word here is pur suit?

I don’t get what nail yew are drivin’ into my brain, Unk.

Suit Junior, cleaned and pressed, Junius, suit cleaned and pressed. Yew don’t clean and press a suit outfit like that with a scourin’ pad and bag balm at home, boy. Where do yew take it?

To the cleaners, Unk?

Bulls eye, Junior. An’ that’s what eye already done. Eye took myself to the cleaners, mostly though eye took that insurance company to the cleaners. Eye learned that that suit was polished up shiny-er than an Arkansas Beauty yew put on yore teacher’s desk. That robber who axed for money at the bank is…aw well…yew all don’t need to know his name.

Why is that, Uncle Buford, because yew found out that some Eyetalian gangster that lives over in Hot Springs done the robbery who’s got more gumption than a hungry razor back hog?

It weren’t no Eyetalian mobster, boy. But now that yew mention it, did yew realize that an Eyetalian sees his priest only 3 times during his life? First time when he gets christened. Second time when he gets married. Third time when he gets electrocuted… So now Junius, don’t repeat this to nobody, not even to your ole pappy cause he might throw his Bible at me for protecting a thief that broke the eighth commandment.

Thou shalt not steal.

"Very good… That thief an’ me both broke that commandment. All I kin tell yew is that that thief lives up in a holler and has 5 kids. He’s on the north side of a hill with two inches of topsoil, rocks below the top, and yeller clay below the rocks. He cain’t grow nuthin’ but acorns. It’s just like what ole Abe Lincoln said about hisself when he read the law up in Illinois. ‘I ain’t nuthin’ but a jackleg mast fed lawyer.’ Well that ax man traps coons and cuts cord wood to sell or trade, and, if he’s lucky, somebody will hire him out to make him into a monkey, have him climb up one of them tall trees and cut the top out of the tree so the rich man can have a little more sunshine. It’s plumb dangerous workin’ with a bull line like that up in a sweet gum or loblolly pine tree.

Now here’s the worst of it. Right now one of his little ones is over in Little Rock at the big hospital. She come down with the paralysis. The ax man needs a heap of money to give to those blood hound doctors or they will take his little girl off the iron lung. Sometimes that guy has so little money he has to steal acorns from a blind pig. When I think about it, kickin’ that little one out of the hospital won’t be as bad as all that cause then the ax man can take her over to Hot Springs. Then she can soak in the hot spring water, loosen up her diaphragm and get some hot water exercise like that Australian nurse Sister Kenny said to do that works good for the polio. But the doctors won’t follow Sister Kenny’s findings cause Miss Kenny ain’t no doc an’ everybody knows a doctor won’t take orders from nobody, not even from the Almighty Hisself. That Hot Spring water won’t cost, an’ it will do that little 3 year old a world of good cause there is God’s power in spring water. Just ask Moses about that. And the spring water is most generally free, an’ God done made it.

What kind of power is in spring water, Unk?

I’ll tell yew all about spring water when we finish workin’ on this case, Junius. All yew need to know for now is that this case has been solved by yours truly. As far as the Land Bank, and the Land Bank’s insurance policy is concerned, I ain’t found the fella who done robbed that Land Bank. Whenever I take a case I am always paid in add-vance, this time by Chicago Mutual, the bank’s insurance company. I ain’t solved the robbery yet, even though I already solved it, if’n yew all catch what I’m asayin’. Furthermore, I’m sendin’ my fee up to the holler tomorrow, and yew are the critter what’s gonna run it up and deliver it to that billie. So kin I trust yew to keep the trap slammed shut on your’n’s tongue prit near to your dying day?

Yes Uncle Buford.

Good. So now yew’ll see how hard it is for some poor boy without no edjewcation, with poor land, and with a sick child to make it in this world. And remember what eye keep atellin’ yew: keep yourself clean before marriage. Don’t ruin y’all’s life with your pecker.

Don’t worry about me, Unk. I’ll wait until I’m married to ruin my life.

Yeah, yew will probably go out into the woods and pick out a crooked stick.

Unk, I know I ain’t smart enough to pick out a straight stick, but I thought up a moral to your case that comes right out of the Bible.

What’s that?

Simple, Unk. ‘Ax an’ ye shall receive.’

Not bad, boy. Not bad t’all. But what about, ‘Anything ye ax in my name shall be given to y’all.

The next day Uncle Buford directed Daddy to park the Hudson near the dirt road that leads up to Arky Holler Road. Unk let me out of the Hudson. I ran up that hill as fast as a coon dog chasin’ a fox. When I dog-trotted back to the car, I climbed in the back seat and wanted to ask Uncle Buford to explain about what he had said yesterday about the spring water having power. But Daddy and Uncle Buford had their horns locked together like 2 bucks fighting over a doe in rutting season.

Brother Buford, I know yew are up to no good when yew send my boy on an errand for y’all’s dirty work. Yew are sendin’ a boy to do a man’s job. An’ what about yesterday when yew dismissed me an’ tole me to go fetch. What are yew hidin’ from me, your older brother?

"Now Parkie, it’s the same as always. I didn’t want to catch no Bible from yew on account of I solved the ax crime; but I didn’t solve it seein’ as I kept the money for my investigation from the insurance company. An’ to heck with the bank cause they too are insured and will recover their greasy money in toto. Brother, I done cheated the insurance company to help a poor, down-with-no-money billie. I