FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: This life story begins in 1973 (kind of) part 103

I thought of that story with a wry smile as we lived out the final episode on that Alabama hill in August of ’73.  I had to bring my mind back to the present quickly as Doocy’s new story of happenings in the wrong part of town at the wrong time of night go under way.

In typical Doocy fashion, he went around the world two or three times, not unlike what Corrina would do when she got excited about telling a story. What we could decipher from it was that he hadn’t gotten a chance to spend the bigger-than-usual check Red gave him from having worked that past Saturday, so just the night before, he had gone to the joint and drank way too much.

The elephant in the room – that we ignored – was that he went there because he was upset because of seeing his Pup go through a hard day having to bury Mama.

Doocy said when he got ready to go home, he tried to call Pup “jus’ like the Breeze done ‘bout er month ago or wheresabout,” but couldn’t get the numbers right and ran out of dimes. So, he started walking home, which was spookier than when he saw that Grizzly movie. It was dark, the wind was talking to the trees, and the trees “wuz sassin’ right on back,” and he was almost white as a ghost when he finally made it to his front door. He knocked on the door, then realized she had gone to spend the night with his auntie, Aunt Zella.

That shocked me because I realized that his aunt was my Miss Zella, which made Doocy and me practically kin.

I blurted that out, and Pee Wee said, “Well, now I do see the family resemblance,” which made Doocy throw his head back laughing, showing all of his missing teeth for the umpteenth time. I hoped right then that if Doocy and I were kin for real that I wouldn’t inherit the tooth gene or lack thereof.

I glanced down at my right hand to make sure it was all right, too.

Doocy fumbled for the “lonliest time” to get the key in the door; and when he opened the door and stepped into the room, he “froze stiffer’n a body in t’morgue.” All the blood in Doocy’s veins evidently screeched to a dead halt “sho as the ol’ Cool Breeze sats right heah in front er all of yuh.”

Pee Wee and I glanced at one another and grinned. We realized we were in the presence of maybe the best storyteller on this side of Chattahoochee.

“Couldn’t nobody tell a story like Doocy,” I said once to the bricklayers as they worked up on the wall. Doocy heard me, and says, “Pups, whut t’Breeze tell be t’gospel truth, from Mat’hew to Reverlations.”

Our gospel-truth storyteller had gotten to the point of the story where the action picked up – in the words of our backwoods poet, like a freight train and rose faster’n the Chattahoochee after a rainy Georgia night.

Doocy described in vivid color how his heart all but jumped out of his chest and fell right out on the floor. To illustrate he swung his hand out in front of him as if he were swatting a fly.

“What got you so flustered, Doocy?” I asked.

Doocy sent me a look with daggers in it, which said to let him tell the story; but he must’ve remembered in that instant that this was my last day, and his eyes said “t’Breeze’s gowyn t’miss t’Pup,” turning his daggers turned quickly into sugar. He immediately showed me his missing teeth again, his way of apologizing. But he turned to Pee Wee and gave Pee Wee the dagger look so as not to waste it.

He didn’t take but one step in the room when he froze. His eyes shifted over by his bed on the other side of the room, and he saw something sitting there, like a statue. He squinted to make out what it was, tilted his head this way, then that way, then his eyes got “as big as d’moon on a starlit night.” A man was a-sitting big as day right by the bedpost, “jus’ settin’ there, not movin’ a whisker, waitin’ as patient as a treed coon. The Breeze jus’ stood thar on an i’land by hisself, not movin’ neither – him lookin’ at t’Breeze, t’Breeze lookin’ at ‘im.”

By this time the whole crew was glued to Doocy’s every word. I was soaking in all of his gestures, body language, and pronunciations in case I decided to write a book someday. I realized, too, that this was another of Doocy’s finest hours of the summer of ’73, and he knew it. He was going to give his Pups all his money’s worth, which actually was true because by this time we were back on Red’s time, not our own.

With the whole crew in his back pocket, he went on about how he couldn’t hold his heart in his chest a minute longer but then remembered he had a pocket knife in his right front pocket.

“I eaaaaaase my hand in my pocket, careful now not t’take an eye off of thet fella sittin’ ovah there. I gots thet knife in my hand, still movin’ as slow as m’lasses, I flipped thet knife open with my thumb,” he said, holding his thumb up to demonstrate.

I remembered the first time I saw that leprosy-white hand and how it scared me half to death.

The man sat there as still as the night, looking at Doocy without ever even blinking, but not expecting what was about to happen. Then, “quick as lightnin’, like a hungry cougar, the Breeze dived at ‘im with thet knife, hollerin’ as Doocy descended on ‘im.”

Doocy demonstrated his holler with a loud “Ahhhhhh,” and the whole crew jumped, like in the telling of a spooky story around the campfire late at night.

“Who was it, Doocy?” I shouted over the commotion, “I hope you didn’t kill ‘im.”

“Whut, Pups,” he snapped back, “you rather he kill t’Breeze, huh?”

But before I could answer, he said, “Pups, truth be told heah, it weren’t nobody at all, jus’ a daburn shirt the Breeze hung on d’bed post.”

“A what?”

“Cain’t you boys hear nuttin’? Breeze says it wuz a shirt, jus’ like this un right heah,” he said, pointing to his shirt.

The crew rolled laughing at Doocy, and he tried to defend himself over the laughter with, “but, it sho’nuff look like a man, sho’nuff.”

I don’t know how many times every man on every bucket lost control of themselves and some of them their bladders during the summer of ’73 over one of Doocy’s stories. But this may have been the best.

I knew why.

It was part because we had all suffered together over the events of the past weeks, and yesterday we all stood together in a place we had hoped we would never have to stand.

And it was partly because it was one of their final gifts to me, all wrapped up into one more hilarious story and one more comedy session together on those worn-out lunch buckets.

I’ve often thought if church folks could be more like my rough, rogue, slang-prone, mortar-stained, backwoods chain gang of a crew, the church would be a heap better than it sometimes is. Yes sir, Doocy, Willum, Hook, Pee Wee, Red, Charlie – and me, too, of course – those boys knew how to treat people, I don’t care if they never mastered the art of gentleness.

After we all regained our composure, I said, “Doocy, that shirt didn’t hurt cha, did it?” and that threw a little more gasoline on the fire.

“Oh, naw sar, thet shirt didn’t hurt t’Breeze none, but Doocy went ‘n cut his’n other arm ‘n had t’git sev’n stitches right up heah.”

He pulled up the long sleeve on his left arm, and sure enough – hidden where nobody could see – he had a white bandage wrapped around that huge bicep, a witness in one smooth stroke that he spoke the gospel truth, just like he said, “from Mat’hew to Reverlations.”

We had one of the best laughs of the summer that day, just like old times.

Coach Steven Ray Bowen served as a teacher and basketball coach at Red Oak High from 1998-2012 and recently spent two years teaching and coaching at Ferris. He and his wife Marilyn (the “amazin’ blonde”) served many years with the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl/Ovilla Roads, but now spend time evangelizing in several states in addition to Coach’s work as a writer and author, including the writing of the ongoing novel/memoir here in the Press. Call or text (972) 824-5197, or email coachbowen1984@gmail.com, or see frontporchgospel.com.