FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: This life story begins in 1973 (kind of) part 94

Driving home from Corrina’s that night, I wished I could have heard Mama’s speech; but I knew that it had to be between two godly women – one just entering womanhood and the other looking back for one of the last times in her life.

But Mama had to do more than look back. She had to look ahead for the young son she was leaving behind before he was grown. That was the hard part for Mama, I knew. She could see so much even through those tired, veiled eyes, but she must’ve had to strain hard to look ahead and see what would happen to the boy that she would never see grown.

I was still tossing all of these thoughts in my mind that Monday out on the brick job when I had to walk away from the crew, the sounds of “The Night They Drove Ol’ Dixie Down” filling the noon air as the boys sat underneath the tall pines eating lunch. I turned away from them with my “I forgot somethin’” before they saw my face, for which I was glad.

Alone on the north side of the house, I leaned against that brick wall we had labored over only a few weeks before, the first wall we had built, thinking how appropriate it was that we had come full circle – that, along with a conglomeration of other mixed-up thoughts bouncing around in my head.

The weekend must’ve worn me out more than I thought. The next thing I remembered was Doocy’s big hand shaking my shoulder, saying, “Yuh okay, Pups? Yuh ain’t sick, is yuh?”

I jumped up, realizing that I had slept through lunch. I was back at the mixer in no time, adding water to the mud in the mixer for our first after-lunch batch. I was also back to the best treatment I had ever received on a job, except maybe what Miss Billie gave me when she saw me looking sad on some days down at the shoe store, or the Southern-hospitality treatment Miss Mac supplied all the time.

Being treated like I was the governor of Georgia was how the whole week went. If one of the crew got a little snappy with me, they wouldn’t get the words half out of their mouths before Doocy would snap back at them like an old snapping turtle. When I had my back turned, I heard him a couple of times say in a whisper, “Don’t cha know t’Pup’s mama’s bad off, show some r’spect.”

Doocy didn’t get to see Mama except for a few occasions when Pee Wee carried me home from work, but he was partial to her.

The one time – I always smile when I think on it – we drove up as Mama was sitting out by the fig tree in the backyard getting some sunshine. When Pee Wee introduced Doocy to her, I thought she would never get done thanking him for what he was doing that summer. Ah, she lavished him with a big tall glass of cold sweet-tea type of praise and appreciation until he blushed right through all those mortar stains on his face.

Then, in as bashful a way as I had ever seen him, he said, “Mrs. Lou, t’Cool Breeze didn’t do nuttin’, he wuz jus’ puttin’ yore li’l pups unders his’n wide wings the way anybody with a lick of gumption would’ve, thet’s all.”

Of course, Mama’s lavished even more praise when she saw Doocy’s humility, which made me wonder where all that humble-pie had been all summer. But it didn’t last long. As soon as Pee Wee and Doocy got back in the truck, Doocy motioned to me with that mud-stained webbed hand of his. I walked over to him, and he made me lean my head in the window so he could whisper,

“Pups, don’t yuh gits on no high hoss, ‘cause t’morra t’ Cool Breeze gowyn t’brang yuh backs down t’this ol' earth.”

I knew he couldn’t do anything there where Mama could hear him, so I said, “Breeze, we’ll sees ‘bout thet t’morra,” and laughed, but his “Um um” he gave me in response – and the look where the whites of his eyes got as big as the moon –  told me I’d be paying for that sassiness big time t’morra.

Mama seemed to sense that Doocy deserved a royal spot that summer, right behind Corrina, even if it is hard to imagine mentioning a lovely rose and a twirling tornado standing together on the same pedestal. It is just another of the many pictures we have to add to our album of great ironies and incongruities of the summer of ’73.

The days crawled by the last days of July into early August. I’d get a heavy dose of bliss from Doocy from eight to four every day, and then, Providence would reward me with a few moments of a sweeter-smelling bliss with Corrina at some point each day. A day never passed that Corrina didn’t come up that long drive in that black Studebaker and raise my heart rate a notch or two. I had learned to breathe deeply and enjoy those moments, knowing that we were not guaranteed to relive them when the sun would shine down on our red clay the next day.

When Mama declined to the point she stayed most days in a coma, I would hurry home after work to see if there was some change in her, but there seldom was. She would stir some but then go back to sleep or fall back into the coma, it was hard to know which. I sat and talked to her most nights and would read some there next to her. I’d go on to bed after I was sure she would not awake again that night. Sometimes I’d lay my head on the edge of her bed and fall asleep there, tired both from carrying the heavy loads of brick and mortar all day long, then carrying other loads in the evenings, the latter always greater than the first.

On Friday, August 3, the rain clouds blew in on the job early. By noon, a storm like the one from the first day on the job came, another one of those storms with screeching rain slashing down like tiny missiles directed right at you. We managed to get everything tied down and cleaned up before it hit hard, which was easier to do when you’re just covering a chimney. The only thing you have to worry about is covering the veneer. Pee Wee taught me that you could pour buckets of water on top of the brick around the flu, and the couple of thousand brick inside would absorb it like pouring water on hot pavement. That was just another of what I saw as great miracles regarding the strength of a brick chimney.

That day we made a fast order of covering the veneer, stacking brick all around the last course to hold down the plastic; and even before Paul Harvey came on the radio at noon, we were headed down the muddy red-dirt road racing toward home.

Doocy and I had ridden with Pee Wee that day, so the three of us were squashed in the cab of his pickup like a can of Doocy’s smelly sardines. When we crossed the Chattahoochee, the river that separated one world from another, we saw that the riverbanks were swelling, and the waves were swashing violently up on the banks pulling limbs and leaves into the water. It was about as high as I’d ever seen as it bulged over its banks almost in anger.

A few days prior, Corrina and I drove through a storm much like that one. When we crossed the river, I thought of a sermon my Grandpa preached about the Jordan River. It was one of the most famous sermons he would carry with him all around the country. People would come from miles and miles around to hear him preach what he entitled “The Uncrossable River.”

“Corrina,” I said, “you would love to hear that one. He describes in vivid detail how the crooked Jordan River leaves the Sea of Galilee at about 600 feet below sea level, plunges downward 60 or 70 miles, dropping hundreds or more feet on its way. By the time it dumps its muddy water into the Dead Sea,” I said, “it’s runnin’ downhill like a runaway train, particularly durin’ the harvest season. They say it is the crookedest river in the world, but when the rains come, the water tumbles over the banks of the Jordan, and it straightens the river straighter than a fishing pole. I bet I’ve heard my grandpa tell about the Jordan River a hundred times. He especially loves it when he comes to the part where it’s time for the Israelites to cross over the river, only to find it is in the middle of the harvest, and you’re not crossin’ it then – it’s uncrossable, you might as well try to walk across the ocean itself.”

“Then, Corrina,” I went on, “when he gets to that point, he’ll holler out in his powerful raspy voice, ’Got any rivers you think are uncrossable? Got any mountains you can’t tunnel through. I’m goin’ to tell you tonight,’ he’ll say, ‘that God is big, and He’s big enough to do things that folks don’t thank can be done. That’s right, if you’ve got an uncrossable river, bring that deep river to the Lawd. He’ll cross it like it’s nothin’ but a little mud puddle in the middle of the road. You got a mountain you can’t tunnel through, I’ll tell you who can. God can. God can tunnel through any mountain, even if it’s Stone Mountain right here in Georgia, or the Rocky Mountains out in Colorado, jus’ bring it to the Lawd.’”

I think I had Corrina about ready to go down to the waters of the Chattahoochee right then herself and see if she could walk over those stormy waters.

But she didn’t; she just sat there quietly a minute, then said, “I think you’re going to do that, Pup.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean, you’re going to cross a lot of uncrossable rivers in your time. I can tell.”

I didn’t say anything, just let it soak in as we drove on through the storm.

She slipped her hand under my arm after a moment, and I glanced over at her and smiled.

The river was stormy and restless, but we two had peace that evening, a rare peace in the midst of a storm.

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.