FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: This life story begins in 1973 (kind of) part 87

As I’ve said, Doocy was an enigma. I don’t know any other way to say it.

You could argue with him, and it didn’t matter if everybody in Randolph County knew he was wrong – he’d hold out to the bitter end and get the last word even if it was his inaudible mumbling as he stomped away.

“Well,” Doocy drawled one day, aiming his disdain toward Pee Wee regarding his proposed miscue with the red and blue gas cans, “you ‘n the Pups can goes ya own way believin’ whut yuh wants, Doocy knows yuh keeps the gas ‘n oil in thet red can.”

“Red can?” Pee Wee said?

“Oh, naw sir, the blue can, meant t’say the blue ‘un …”

Pee Wee had him dead to right on that one, but he weaseled out of it with the skill of President Nixon. They called the president Tricky Dick, but Doocy was trickier than Nixon and the entire House of Representatives put together. Mr. Nixon was an open book compared to the fella with the webbed hand and serious attitude problem. I bring the former president because that’s where Pee Wee went next.

“Yes sir, Doocy,” Pee Wee replied, “instead of ‘Watergate,’ I guess this is ‘Gas-Can Gate.’”

That led to a lengthy discussion of Watergate, and Doocy, who knew very little about it, carried on as though he was an immense authority on the subject. Pretty soon, he had everybody half-convinced. Before the conversation and lunchtime were over, he had won the vote of half the crew and all but had them handing him blank checks for a campaign contribution.

Doocy did have his moments, that much you have to give the man. And he had one of his Doocy moments that was worthy of the history books that next Tuesday morning after my and Corrina’s little storm over the weekend and the day after Doocy got his leg caught on fire.

He mentioned over and over that Monday that the two of us seemed more “subdued” than usual. That was Doocy’s word for it. Neither of us ran to each other with “glassy eyes,” he said, and that was mighty suspicious to hear him tell it.

He was right, of course, but I had enough of Doocy in me that I wasn’t about to admit it. I would just protest, too, with a “Naw sir, um um, don’t know what cha talkin’ ‘bout, naw sir …”

I learned from the best.

I rode into work with the crew that morning in Red’s truck, which I only did if I wasn’t staying over to visit with Corrina. That was all of a clue that Doocy needed. Pee Wee and Hook were in the front seat, and Willum, Doocy, and I were in the back. Red and Charlie had to go by the brickyard in Charlie’s truck before coming out but would not be far behind. I noticed that Doocy kept eyeing me funny as we rode up the Roanoke Road, but he never said anything until we pulled onto the red-dirt drive to the McClain place.

That was the exact spot he chose.

Or maybe it was just when the Spirit came upon him, I don’t know. He jumped up right out of the blue, tapped on the back window of the truck, and hollered out,

“Pee Wee, stop t’truck, stop ‘er right heah!”

Pee Wee didn’t know what was happening, so he stopped the truck, leaned his head out the window and said, “What’s wrong with you, Doocy? Ya’ll all right?”

“No we ain’t awright, Pee Wee, no we ain’t. Jus’ hold t’truck right there a sec, jus’ hold it there.”

Doocy stood straight up, tall as he could, looked out over the front pasture of the McLain place surrounded by what looked like a mile of white picket fence. He looked at me and started the most iconic speech of the summer. He was ol’ Daniel Webster himself, except he wasn’t arguing with the devil.

“Pup, yuh see all thet?” he said, pointing at the pastureland with his three regular fingers on his right hand. “Yuh sees it, Pup?”

Then he reached over with his other hand and grabbed me by the shirt. “Stands up Puppy so you’s can sees it.”

There we were, standing in the back of the truck like two crazy people, surveying the McClain property as if we owned it, which was actually on Doocy’s mind.

He let go of my shirt so that he could use both hands in his oration.

Doocy said, “Yessir, look out heah, Puppy – all ‘em pine trees reachin’ up almost to heav’n herself. Thet land jus’ goes on ‘n on, doesn’t she, Pups? Must go all t’way t’New O’lenes …”

He was Shakespeare and Jimmy Stewart rolled into one. He described how green the grass was, “green like t’green, green grass of home, as Mr. Poritier sangs ‘bout,” he said, confusing Porter Wagner with Sidney Poitier, a mistake any body could make, of course. It was like every thirty minutes his whole life he confused the blue can and the red can but never owned up to it once.

My, my, how Doocy could pontificate! He pointed with that webbed hand beginning at the main road and scanning it northward before pausing it at the foggy, steamy pond that sat still that morning right in the middle of the front green pasture. I just shook my head and thought he was about to turn pontification into an Olympic event by the time he finished. Ah, so beautifully he described how sweet that water must taste, “sweetest water in t’whole South, ever’thang east of the “Miss’a-sippi River” herself,” he said, “sweeter’n a fount’n flowin’ right outta heav’n herself.”

I noticed everything was her and herself that morning.

When he swung his massive arm toward the house and described it, you would’ve thought he was Robert Frost stopping by the woods on a snowy evening to soak in all the power of nature. To this day, I cannot help but think of Frost when my mind wanders to that early Rock-Mills moment, that old red truck stopping in the middle of the road right out of the blue and the riders admiring nature until the horse gave his harness bells a shake to tell us it’s getting cold. That would come soon enough in the person of Red. Red never forgot for a second that he had miles to go – or, more accurately – brick to lay before he slept. Red was not an enigma, not at all.

“If the mixing of those metaphors confuse you,” I said, turning to Cheyenne, “jus’ imagine bein’ there in person listenin’ to the speech of the century.” He nodded in agreement.

But, truth is, Doocy did happen onto some unmistakable facts. Even I had to admit that. And he painted that house like it was “a mansion jus’ o’er the hilltop,” as we sing at church.

I knew Doocy was a churchgoer because he told me how his mama was strict with him and would have him slicked up every Sunday morning when he was a boy, but I never knew he was a preacher until one summer morning when the sun got hot way too early, and he proclaimed in a softer voice than usual, “I sho cain’t wait for thet land thet be fair’r than day.”

That’s the tone with which Doocy painted that picture that morning, the back of Red’s old work truck his pulpit. That early in the morning – the sun just beginning to peek out from the eastern sky behind us – that landscape was a beautiful place, one of the most beautiful I think I’d ever seen. The pond sat so still, with just enough ripples to make it look alive, and the morning fog was coming off of it like the smoke from the mountains of Tennessee. The dew on the grass sparkled, making the rich green grass look like it had millions and millions of little diamonds scattered across the ten acres. The morning fog slipped through the thick woods filled with tall pines north of the property. The evergreen branches stood out against the morning sun, but the fog filled in between the trees, making it look like there was a backdrop of cotton or snow. I thought how good of a drawing that would make. The branches sparkled from an early morning shower or from moisture in the air, and they reflected off the sun, making the woods in the distance look like hundreds of Christmas trees twinkling with white lights. That image curved around the property, from the north back to the west to the thick cluster of trees behind the house, then back to the south where the truck sat parked in the middle of the red clay drive.

The house in the distance looked like a mansion tucked away in the middle of all the trees and fog. The red brick shone through the mist like it was on fire, and the black roof looked like smoke coming out of the fire. I thought how pretty it would be if the McClains already had moved in and were burning a fire in the fireplace and the smoke was burning through the fog as it poured out from the chimney. The chimney at that time was still in progress, so, being in back of the house, you couldn’t quite see it above the rooftop, but that didn’t keep my imagination from running away.

Looking out over the top of the truck, my eyes naturally followed the path of the red-dirt road stretching out as far as a football field, then curling up between the pines on the north and south of it. In the early morning, with its dimness and the fog, the red road looked like a narrow river churning its way between all the dark pines pressing against it. I suppose that red road came to stand for a great many things to me that summer. Life changed when I first made my way up the road early one day a month and a half before the morning of Doocy’s oration. If the dirt road was a fire, it was a crucible of fire, and time alone would be the determiner of how a sixteen-going-on-seventeen-year-old young man would hold up to the test. Learning is one thing; surviving what you learn is another. Amid the trial, I would have considered John Proctor’s crucible nothing more than a pop quiz in comparison.  

There we stood, in the cool air of the morning, more of the summer behind us than was before us, yet, I knew, more trials lay ahead of us than behind.

As Doocy described the scene in his normal detailed fashion, my mind wandered until his voice sometimes became more of an echo, but he brought me back to reality quickly.

“Oh, Pups,” he said, his scratchy voice as joyful as Christmas morning, “the Breeze jus’ wants yuh to looks at all’a this, jus’ looks at her.”  

What followed was our poet’s – part Robert Frost, part Porter Wagner–delivering the line of the summer. In his rustic backwoods way, it was a fitting summation of it all.

“Pups,” he said with a sigh.

He paused and took a deep breath.

“Pups, jus’ to thank,” he finally continued, “one er these days, all of this heav’n out heah, perched uppers on this Rock Mills hill, stretchin’ its wings from azure blue sky t’azure blue sky, is go’n to be yours, sho as ol’ Doocy is standin’ heah right now.”

Had some unknowing stranger passed by and asked and asked who the orator standing in the back of the truck was, we would’ve had to admit that our Doocy was as rough and rugged of a man as you’d ever want to meet, and bathing was generally a luxury not a necessity, and the same work clothes from one day seemed plenty good for every day of the whole week; and, yes, he had more teeth missing than present, and he sported a webbed hand looking more like a paw than a hand. All true and incontrovertible, and Doocy nor Daniel Webster either one could argue with it.

But I would’ve said then and I will still say – even now, after 50 years – I’ve never met a backwoods poet or even a city-slicker one who could compare.

Not even close.

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.