FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: This life story begins in 1973 (kind of) part 89

As you know by now, Doocy was Shakespeare and Twain combined when it came to exaggerating, overstating, and embellishing repetitive hyperbole.

In the twinkling of an eye, this theatre of a brick job became nothing less than a full-fledged musical. Broadway it was.

I told Cheyenne that if this story ever becomes a movie it’ll have to be a musical because of all the singing that took place, from the love songs playing as we rolled down the winding Alabama highway to the Helen Reddy’s and Karen Carpenter’s serving as the symphonic backdrop for a job on top of a blessed Rock Mills hill.

With the thought of Doocy’s Mr. Pups owning that store in town, the Spirit himself must’ve fallen unabated on Doocy’s makeshift choir. The backwoods choir boys got to singing about Pups and Mr. McClain and “pritty li’l Miss C’rinna” in a song that was more spirited than those four boys from Virginia I heard on Mr. McClain’s tape on the way home from Corrina’s one night. Their’s was a song about John, Job, and Enoch carrying on up in heaven, and I’d swear even that trio couldn’t have out-sung this choir assembled on the dirt drive heading up to the house where it all took place.

Doocy was letting it fly in living color right there in the bed of Red’s truck, “Yessiree, Pups ‘n McClain Hardware – gonna be in big, bold, black let’ers flashin’ right o’er the sto, right o’er the sto.”

And the choir sang, “Yessir, go tell ‘er on the mountain …”

I’ve seen pitiful sights out on that job site, but I have to say I’ve never seen anything more pitiful than what I stood in the back of that truck witnessing. The part about Pups and McClain – I have to shake my head still. That took the whole cake.

But Doocy wasn’t ready for his grand finale just yet. He held out his webbed hand to calm the singers. Then he commenced with the soliloquy that would’ve made Hamlet proud.

It was a heart-felt speech about how his own Pups had encountered some unexpected trouble in Paradise; and he said that the Breeze needed all the crew to be extra good to him, “t’take his Pups under yuh own wings ‘n show all the love thet a man can gives … ”

Then he turned to me and brought his soliloquy to a powerful conclusion.

“Pups,” he said, “I knows trouble gots to be a-brewin ovah in Love Par’dise. So, standin’ rights heah with the bestest friends yuh evah gonna have, I’m gowyn t’say this.

Doocy’s fiftieth dramatic pause.

I looked over at him, a real tear in his eye as he came to what may be the greatest line in all of literature, and if not, close, and that’s saying something considering that he just spoke about my owning all that land, the pond, the house, and the ‘whole kit ‘n kaboodle.

With his leprosy-looking webbed hand over his heart, and his regular hand on my shoulder, the Cool Breeze looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Pups, t’Cool Breeze wants his Pups to knows thet whate’er happens from this bright early moanin’ on, don’t cha evah forgets thet your sweet dark-haired Miss Co’rina alwaz gots a place in the co’ner of yuh heart.”

Another pause.

“And Doocy means it, Pups, thet li’l miss Co’rina has done moved in, if yuh didn’t knows thet already, ‘n she’s put her stake down deep, way down to the far reaches of ya heart, as far down as t’eye can sees, thet’s where she is.”

Doocy patted his heart, and the choir went “ahhhh,” the way ladies do anytime there’s a sentimental moment such as the one we just witnessed.

Then it got as quiet as Sunday morning prayer. Nobody said a word.

Spellbound.

Doocy finally took his eyes off of me and looked back behind us, so I turned to see.

There it was, my worst nightmare.

Standing with one foot in and one foot out of his Studebaker that had unbeknownst to us parked right behind us was Mr. McClain, standing tall as Robert E. Lee, listening to who knows how much of that Shakespearean romance and tragedy.

But he wasn’t alone.

The whole family – I mean, as Doocy himself would say, the ‘whole kit ‘n kaboodle – had come out on the job early that morning, never expecting to run into a Broadway show before they ever got to the house.

You could’ve bought a hundred smiles for a dime that morning. And despite my humiliation to what all the McClains, including Miss Corrina, heard and saw, they seemed to enjoy the show like no other.

Before I could even rebel against Doocy’s theatrics, Corrina’s eyes met mine for the first time since we “broke up,” and her eyes sparkled just as brightly as ever before, shining just like the sun that was reflecting off of the pond and sending its light into a million rays up and dispelling the fog over the top of the trees. 

That’s what those eyes did to my heart that morning. They cut right to the center of it and dispelled any sadness or confusion that might have hidden somewhere down inside.

Truth is, her eyes jabbed me right down in the place Doocy had just described with the skill of Frost himself.

She jabbed me in the farthest corner of my heart, way down as far down into a young man’s heart as the eye could see.

And it looked as if she would always occupy a special spot in the deepest corner, just as the great backwoods poet had said, his mortar-stained webbed hand covering his big heart.

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.