196 - 198

196
lonely plum tree 
fruit covered with dust,
hand reaches

197
squirrel peaks from hole,
sun rises, woods come alive,
boy shivers, loads gun.

198
squirrel eats acorn,
shells fall from limb above,
boy looks up

1/22 - 1/28

This is the first one of these posts this year.  I was beginning to wonder it there would be any such writing in 2018. On the exercise front, about all I can do now is walk and dream. I dream backwards and review all the adventures I used to have. I miss them and my belly is now so large I no longer weight each morning.

Last week, I walked three times. Monday I strolled 2.03 miles. Friday I hit the pavement for 1.24. Saturday I took the dogs out for 1.42 miles. Pee Wee hunted hard but did not tree. We should be treeing more than we are. It's not a lack of effort or desire that is producing our dearth of squirrels. I think it's a lack of focus. He is not just running over and following deer trails, I think that's what he is going after. 

For the week, I did a whopping 4.69 miles. Maybe more this cycle. Pray for me, please. I am in a real rut.

The Chicot Hero

As many of you may know, for the past six years a big chunk of my life has revolved around the Chicot Challenge, a charity swim I stumbled into in June of 2012. Strangely enough, in several ways this swim owes its existence to my arch rival and loathed enemy Randy Beets. He snookered me into making the initial aqua-athletic journey from the Lake Chicot State Park to downtown Lake Village and back. In retrospect, I'm surprised he didn't murder me while I had my head pointed towards the bottom of the lake for hours on end.

For the next five years, I upped the distance each time until I peaked last June at 23.5 miles. Alas, a few weeks later, I injured myself so devastatingly that there is now no way I can do the swim the 2018 Challenge. But guess what? A hero has emerged, a man to stand in the gap to keep the swim and its fundraising efforts going. Please, take time to cheer, pray, and thank God Almighty.

Enter Wilson Carroll, a Madison-based attorney and a Greenwood native, who is of that rarest of breeds: an open water swimmers in the State of Mississippi. Recently he made me cry when he told me at a party he hosted that "This is too important to let die." He offered to swim at least eight miles and then on the spot he drafted his son, Spence, to swim some also. Boom, between the two of them they can do a Park to town and back or a one way (Ditch Bayou to the Park-- or vice versa). I love Wilson Carroll, and I love the fact that he and his son will make the swim. Although I have grieved over my inability to do the event this year, I am, on the other hand, excited about the change.

Wilson after finishing Big Shoulders in Chicago.

One excitement revolves around the idea that a shorter-- but still long swim-- will enable the crew to get a bit more sleep the night before. Not only that, but it will also make it possible for everyone to get home earlier Saturday night. In addition, a relay will make for much simpler job for the crew. Feeding can be done on board, simplifying the duties of the kayakers. Real food can be consumed by the athletes and as much as they want. When you are continually in the water, your choices for food shrink considerably (although my in-the-water food--ice cream-- is what I would choose if I got to feed on a boat). Getting to come onto the boat while your partner swims not only enables an easier and more flexible feed, but it offers rest as well. With the rest, the swimmers get to enjoy some of the scenery Lake Chicot has to offer. That's one of the few negatives about our strange sport: you are face down in the water, and consequently, fail to find much of the beauty you are swimming in, or only get to experience too brief snapshots of a gorgeous landscape, an amazing sky, tree to please, an occasional house worth a long look.

Furthermore, this may be an excellent change because Wilson, probably, will draw more attention to the swim and its cause than I ever could. He knows a lot of people and a lot his circle only partially overlaps mine. It has taken me six years to get the event to where it is now. Promotion has never been one of my gifts, but I have done the best I could. Almost anyone else, I am sure, would have taken the fundraiser to much greater heights.

Another reason the change excites me is it gives me a chance to work the other side of a swim. I have never been a crew member and this will be my chance to give back to the sport, to help another swimmer the way I have been helped. Also, I have long wondered what it would be like to throw rocks at a swimmer in the water. How will Wilson react? Will he think a fish is flipping around him? Will he become aggravated, raise his head up and look? Furthermore, I want to pull the boat close and blow an air horn, or better yet have the kayaker blast him at the same time. What will that look like? My camera will be on when that happens. Between now and then I am sure to think of some more things I/we can do. I'll make a list and bring it on board and try to fulfill them all.

Although I was very sad for a long time and had to weep and grieve my way to acceptance, I am now looking forward to seeing the event continue, broaden, have yet another iteration of itself. For years, I have yearned to standardize the event: route, time, distance, etc, but it keeps changing every year. Maybe that is inevitable. Maybe that is a good thing. Maybe that is how God wants it. Change can be a difficult thing. It took time, it took prayer it took sorrow, but by the grace of God and a hero named Wilson Carroll, I have embraced this one.

Young Spence tearing up the pool.

Ray 6

It's hard to convey how much he impacted my life. Besides trapping, he taught me how to make fire without matches, make a temporary shelter to sleep in the woods, how to find and cook Polk Salad, how to catch and smoke fish, how to make knives, deer stands, how to track all sorts of animals. For years, he was my best friend even closer than my good friend Poot, and I looked for any opportunity to get to Steen Hill and hang out with Ray. If we weren't hunting or trapping, we were chewing tobacco on his front porch sometimes talking sometimes just listening to the birds sing and the squirrels bark.

After I got married, I took my new bride by to meet him. We would go by every few weeks. When I went back to school in my thirties, my hunting fell off to nothing, and I went three years without seeing him. So one day during spring break of 1990, I drove out to visit my old friend, and I was stunned to find that his cabin had burned. From the looks of things, it had happened within a few days of my arrival. There was just a big pile of ashes and some foundation stones where his cabin had stood for more years than I know. 

I was in shock not knowing if he were dead or alive. I yelled out for him and walked around looking for tracks or any sign of him and found nothing. That night, I asked Dad what happened to him. He didn't know. I asked Ellis Roberts what happened. He didn't know. I asked Herbert Rusco what happened to Ray Azel, and he said he didn't know. After not finding out anything, a week later I called the Carroll County Sheriff, C.D. Whitfield. He didn't know anything and didn't seem much interested. If anybody knew anything, they weren't saying.

I started driving out at least once a week. Sometimes I would park in front of where his cabin was and sit for hours. I'd take books with me so I could read and not lose study time which I always needed. And I'd pray, yearn, even tack notes to trees. In my mind, he was a missing person, and not just any missing person, but someone I loved. I knew he could survive in the woods, so I took long walks off Steen Hill looking for anything, an old campfire, a shelter like he taught me to make. Tracks in the gully. I never saw or found a trace of him. 

For me, it was like a missing person and a death all rolled up into one. Someone I loved was gone, and I grieved. It took about a year before I finally figured he had moved on and although I wanted to see my old friend, I came to accept the fact that he wasn't around anymore. But I never stopped thinking about him or keeping my eyes open whenever I was in Carroll County.

"So, your saying that is Ray," Andrea, my lovely daughter, said with a smirk on her face.

"It's him. I swear. It's him."

"Dad, you ought to write books."

"You don't believe me!?!"

When she grinned outright, I almost exploded.

"Penny, tell her about Ray. You met him."

"I don't remember Ray," she said to my shock, embarrassment, and anger. 

"Ellis. You know Ray. Tell her I'm not making this up."

"I don't remember any Ray," Ellis said in a monotone voice that made me want to scream.

I looked back at Andrea who still had that smile on her face. That set me off.

"Whose phone is this?" I yelled waving her iphone in the air. "Who took this picture?" I almost screamed tossing her phone on a table. "It wasn't me."

"Zane," Penny snapped at me. "Calm down."

"Calm down. Calm down. I'm not a liar! That is Ray Azel in that picture in the cave."

"Whatever, Dad."

At that, I flew out the door and started pacing back and forth in the driveway. I was confused. On the one hand, I was elated that Ray was alive and still around. But why was he hiding himself from me? That was perplexing. And I was angry that Andrea didn't believe me and Penny and Ellis acted like they didn't even remember him. It was too much, and I was overdosing on conflicting emotions.

The sun was sinking low as I walked to the little family cemetery where Penny's mom resides and where my and my wife's tombstone sits. I sat against a tree and tried to make sense of it all. Then I heard a car coming up the drive. Since it was so late, someone was leaving, going home. My daughter, I presumed, taking her family home to Cleveland. 

The vehicle stopped, and I heard a door open and close. Andrea, I figured. But I didn't look that way. Somebody walked up.

"Poppy," I heard my grandson say. "Bye Poppy."

I turned and hugged him. He's a sweet boy and his extra effort to say goodbye blessed me immensely. 

"Poppy."

"What, son?"

"I believe you."

That started me crying. Zane Turner's innocence and belief in his granddad was at least part of the salve my soul needed.

"Next time we come out here, I'll help you look for Ray."

I began to cry harder.

Then he walked back to the car while I started weeping. They pulled away and the sun finished setting. Soon darkness would find me sitting in the cemetery all alone. 

Mrs. N

I wanted to use the real name, but the last time I wrote about a person (besides Ray), family members somehow took umbrage, contacted me, and asked me to remove a link to the post off of Facebook. I complied with their request because I'm that kind of guy. That piece, however, was a simple account of two men sitting on a porch in the little town of Cascilla chatting about the past. How anyone could find that offensive is beyond me, but I learned a long time ago that when people's emotions are involved, leave, just leave. Apparently, they didn't actually read the writing but assumed it must have been negative. I think that says more about their attitude towards their "loved one" than it does about what I wrote. So in this non-fictional portrait of a relationship I had with an old woman in a small delta town, I will refrain from using proper nouns for her or the town she resided in. I am sure she has since passed from this earth, but you never know who reads a blog post and surely she has kin around somewhere. I had rather not offend anyone else.

For twenty-nine years, I worked as a termite man which meant I crawled under houses. Yes, that grew old in a hurry. I did this job while I went to school, pastored a church, and raised a family. It may be strange, but there were a couple of things I really liked about that job. One was I got to travel. By travel, I mean that I went everywhere within about a fifty-mile radius of Greenwood. I learned roads, town and country, that I never would have known had I not worked for All-Delta Pest Control. That is something I always enjoyed. I went through all the little towns, drove all the back roads, and saw all the scenery our State has to offer within that area. These were, for the most part, sights that no one travels from far away to see, although I think they should because they are interesting and sometimes beautiful. A fifty-mile radius, I might add, is a lot more territory than it sounds like. The second thing I liked and I miss from that job was getting to meet people. Although I am not really a people person, I enjoyed that aspect of the job and occasionally developed a bond with a customer here and there and looked forward to my return trip to that house each year.

One such person I met and slowly developed a relationship with was Mrs. N who lived in a delta town on the outskirts of our territory. I drove to that village exactly once per year. My first trip there, I sold Mr. and Mrs. N a termite job and then treated their large aristocratic-looking house for the wood destroying insects. That first year, I dealt primarily with the husband who was a pleasant man whom I supposed to be in his mid-seventies. I asked him if there was a cafe in town. He told me there was and where to find a good lunch. I asked what kind of people they, the owners, were. His smile at my question stands out in my memory. "They're not too tuff," he said, apparently taking some amusement at my quaint question.

On the second year, my interaction with Mrs. N was brief. She simply said, "Pray for Ralph. He's not long for this world." When I came back a year later, Ralph had passed and Mrs. N was very eager for me to come inside and have coffee. At that time, I was in our denomination's Ministerial Internship Program and they were constantly lecturing us about staying away from women, they are dangerous, they will get you into trouble. But when I drove away that day, I knew in my heart that I had done the wrong thing, and I purposed in my soul that if she wanted to have coffee the next year, I would accept her invitation.

Year four she wanted to have coffee. I went inside, and we sat in her kitchen, and I drank coffee I didn't really want and listened to her talk. I didn't mind the listening part. Thus began a ritual. Every year when I went back for the annual termite inspection, she would make coffee and place food on a plate in front of me. I sipped coffee, ate, and listened. Sometimes the treats were homemade cake or pie, sometimes real food. At other times it was Little Debbie stuff, but there was always plenty of it, and I ate it all thankfully. And listened. It didn't take a socket rientist to realize she was lonely and simply wanted someone to take a little time and sit and listen to her. I'm not a talker, but I can do the listening part.

I don't remember much of what she said over all those years, but I do recall a couple of things. The first time I went in, she told me about Ralph and how she thought he would have lived longer if he had not gone through the chemo. Then another time, I looked out the window and noticed her car. Since I owned the same make and model, a Chevrolet Celebrity, I remarked, "I like your car." That set her off telling me where she found it, how she made the deal, and why she liked it. "And it's not Japanese," she added.

Surprised, I asked, "You don't like Japanese cars?" I thought everybody liked Japanese cars.

"Those sons of b****es stole four years of my life," she shot back.

And that was my first encounter with someone who held a grudge with the Japanese over World War II. I can understand. She and Mr N were newlyweds, in love, just starting their life together, and then Ralph was snatched away for four years. I understand, I just had just never encountered that sentiment.

My dad had two brothers who fought in WWII. One, Bo, survived the Bataan Death March, and a Japanese prisoner of war camp, only to be bombed to the bottom of the ocean by his own forces when his captors violated the Geneva Convention and did not properly mark the ship that was transporting him and a thousand other unfortunate men to the Japanese mainland to serve as slave labor. If Dad held a grudge, he never mentioned it to me. Maybe he did, but he never talked about it or to anyone else in my presence. Mom, however, not long before she died, told me that was the reason Dad never watched war movies. Mom, by the way, loved war films, be they movies or documentaries, and was watching one the day she told me that. I always found her fascination with that genre of film a bit odd. If a war movie was on TV, she was watching. On those days in early December when the History Channel shows war films for twenty four hours straight, Mom watched from early to late until she fell asleep.

Dad, on the other hand, never watched any movie that I know of, much less a war one. There was something about his intellect, his attention span, his interest maybe that could not or would not deal with a movie. He watched a few TV shows and sports, mostly football. Before he died, he would call me and simply announce that a game was coming on at a certain time. He never asked me to come over, not overtly. He announced the game and hung up. Go figure.

I miss Mrs. N and I think of her often. I hope her end was a good one. I miss Dad. His end was sudden. I miss Mom. Her end was long and not so good, but she always made the best of whatever came her way.

People. They are all interesting. They are all different. They all have a story. Try to listen to one. You will rarely regret it.  

Ray 5

The only thing old about him was his hands. They had wrinkles and scars, lots of scars. Scars on his knuckles. Scars on the back of his hands. Scars on the palms. I noticed them when he was skinning the raccoon, and later skinning other animals. Old cuts and who knows what all. I wanted to ask, "How did you get that one?" but I never did. Several times, however, I did ask him his age.

"Old," was all he ever answered. But sometimes he told me stuff about how Steen Road and Carroll County and the delta were "back then." How the woods was solid for miles and miles and miles. How you could kill a dozen squirrels and go back the next day and never notice the difference. How you could trap and fish and live off the land. "Not as many deer though," he told me once. "But plenty of everything else. And wildness and freedom." It didn't take long to learn that freedom was the one thing he valued most.

I really wanted him to be old, to look old, to act old. Maybe it's because I never knew my granddads. One was dead before I was born, and one died while I was a mere few months old. Always I felt the absence, always. I don't know how I did since I never had a granddad, but from my earliest memories I yearned for an old man to spend time with me, to teach me things, to be my grandfather, my Pops. It never seemed right that he wasn't there. Once, when I was a little bitty thing, I told a great uncle that he could be my granddad since I didn't have one. He died soon afterwards.

So when I started hanging out with Ray, in some ways he filled a deep-seated void I carried within me. He spent time with me, and he taught me stuff. He taught me things nobody else would or did. Besides skinning a raccoon the right way, he taught me how to trap. That set me on fire.

When December came around, Ray said it was time to start trapping. We left his cabin on Saturday morning and headed downhill, down to the cry creek off Steen Road. In the creek, traveled downstream until we found a water hole. You could-- and still can-- find them every now and then, always in a bend where the current digs a hole after a big rain and runoff. He showed me the tracks and how the coons were fishing in there at night. He showed me how to set the trap inside the edge of the water where the coon couldn't smell it and where he was wont to put his hand. He also showed me how to put wood chunks in front of the trap. "A coon will go around and always step into the water instead of circling in the sand. 

We kept working downstream and made a coon set at every water hole we came to. Eventually, we came to the upper edges of a large lake where it was swampy. We made some mink sets there. Then we retreated upstream-- we didn't want to be seen since we were trapping on other folks land-- and we sat on a old log and ate some lunch: crackers, sardines, and a moon pie. Why does food taste so good when eaten outdoors. Ray saved some sardine juice for a 'possum set. This one was on dry ground and we dug a hole and placed the top of the trap at ground level and covers it with leaves, dripping the juice on the jaws of the steel. "A 'possum will jump in this thing," he told me. "They are easy to catch. Too easy. But the hides aren't worth much. And your hands stink for days after you skin one."

During Christmas break, we trapped everyday. I always acted like I was going deer hunting because I was forbidden from having anything to do with Ray. That kept me out of trouble with Dad. I parked 100 yards from his cabin and walked off the road in the woods to his house so Dad couldn't see my tracks. After watching him set traps a few times, he started letting me set some. Then he let me scout out new areas and decide myself where to place a set. The first time I caught a coon on one of my sets, I felt like I had graduated to a new level of woodsmanship. Heck, I could hardly sleep at night thinking about trapping and hunting. I wanted a log cabin in the woods like Ray, and I wanted to live off the land.

Ray let me have the hides of the animals we caught when I made the set. He kept them so I wouldn't get in trouble with Dad, then he gave them back to me when the fur buyer came around. The first time I made a sell to the buyer, it really set me on fire. I sold five raccoon skins for $5 each. That might not sound like much, but $30 dollars in 1971 was a bunch of money to a kid. I felt rich and I constantly daydreamed and schemed on how I would make a living as a trapper. I could live in the family cabin, trap, and train bird dogs. To heck with school. Who needed it?

193 -195

193
cool breeze bends brown grass,
pack watches flock from high hill,
waiting their time

194
the pack fears the dogs
who guard the defenseless flock,
shepherd sleeps

195
bare limbs wave at sky,
pack peers through trees and wait,
the sheep rest in peace

Big ASS Awards Banquet

Big ASS Awards Banquet

by Jay Unver

(Lehrton, Mississippi) The stars showed up for the biggest event Lehrton, Mississippi has seen since Jim Bob Duggan won the 'Possum Eatin' contest at City Park in 1975. The new event was the 2017 Big ASS Awards Banquet Saturday night at the association's training center in the downtown of this delightful delta hamlet. Valet parking, a real red strip of indoor/outdoor carpet, two photographers, and a dozen screaming fans made for an excitement that could be felt. 

While the red-carpeters arrived, Jim Bob shot a shotgun every time one of the athletes slipped out the door of his auto and handed the wheel to Jason Nason who parked the cars and pickup trucks in the Big ASS parking lot. The rest of the Barber Shop served as the Color Guard and marched in with pride and pomp ahead of the athletes and posted the Confederate Battle Flag at the podium while the Lehrton City Band played the national anthem in several tunes and keys.

Dr. Nomann welcomed the crowd, said a prayer, and the food was served: gormet hot dogs, fantastic fries, and fried apple pies were washed down with RC Colas and sweet tea. The banqueters must have thought they had died and gone to heaven. Although I was there as a journalist, I nabbed a passing hot dog and wolfed it down before I needed to jot some additional notes. It was a fine wiener with slaw and a yellow mustard sauce. I wanted another, but shortly the ceremony started and that left my stomach growling and my eyes prowling.

The long wooden tables, as usual, were covered with newspapers, old editions of the Lehrton Gazette, only this time they only used the sports sections. How did they save that many copies? To be expected, most of the sports news in this town is Big ASS Endurance, its events, its athletes, its plans. Of course, there was the unfortunate trial and punishment of Zane Hodge early in 2017, so his picture adorned the top of almost every table. 

Hodge was there with his lovely wife, Penny, and seated in the visitors section was Team Centerville: Gerald and Debbie Johnson, Sheila Mitchell, Trevor and Kasey McLean, and Gerry Johnson. Randy Beets and his girlfriend Robin were in attendance via Skype, a fact that seemed to irritate Hodge who kept finding reasons to rise from his seat and walk past the laptop screen while picking his nose.

Award winner MJ Staples witnessing the start of Chicot VI.

Award winning boat captain, Gerald Johnson.

When the award ceremony proper began, Hodge sat on the edge of his seat, eager, no doubt, to experience the ratification of his world record swim which occurred one day after his suspension expired. When that time came, Hodge was called to the podium to receive his trophy. The new record upped Hodge's previous best one day, nonstop swim from 22.3 to 23.5 miles. The crowd gave thunderous applause while some members of Team Centerville wept. 

MJ Staples won the best Official Observer award for her rookie work documenting Hodge's Chicot Challenge. Dr. Nomann remarked that her notes on Hodge's swim were "a model of how it's done."

Justin Nunnery and Gerald Johnson, captains for the Challenge, each won co-boat captain of the year.

Shay Darby received both Rookie of the Year as well as being named Triathlon Team World Champion for his performance at the Heart O' Dixie Triathlon.

World Team Tri Champion, Shay Darby at the HOD.

Randy Beets was awarded nothing, recognized for nothing, mentioned for nothing. Hodge kept glancing toward the laptop and easing his trophy closer and closer toward Beets' line of sight.

Sheila Mitchell and Gerry Johnson were recognized for their outstanding first time kayak work at the world record Chicot swim, and for the first time ever, Nomann took time to recognize a couple of the Association's newest signees. Wilson Carroll, 58, and his son Spence, 12, were asked to stand. Spence was, Nomann told the crowd, the youngest athlete the Association had ever inked. Although he did not say so, some were speculating that the Carroll duo were destined to take Hodge's place in the Chicot Challenge. After the event when I asked Carroll if he and his son intended to swim the Chicot, he simple said, "No comment."

Spence Carroll, the youngest Big ASS signee in history.

Up the Road

Up the Road

By Zane Hodge

        I never met one who could run worth a durn. In fact, they don’t run at all except when they’re little. But when they get big, they just don’t do it. He was the only one I ever knew who even tried.

        He came trotting up the road like a big toad frog that had been bit too many times. It was pitiful, but at least he was trying. I came out in the road and at first he acted like he was afraid of me. I never understood them that way. How can they be afraid of me?

        His fear went away, but I could tell he didn’t want me along. I went anyway. I’m glad I did because not far up the road where all the trees start, I started having the best time. And the big hill, you should have seen him trying to run up that thing. I didn’t think he would make it. At the top, he was making a lot of mouth noise, and I thought he might fall down.

        When we got to the other road, I started feeling strange, out of place and far from home. I don’t know why, but I thought about Momma and how she might be worried about me. He even told me to go home, so I did. I turned around and ran all the way back to Momma’s box.

        It was a long time before I saw him again. Meanwhile, I had grown up, but he was about the same-- he still couldn’t run. This time when I came out in the road, he smiled a little. But he was afraid, only I could tell it was not me he feared; he feared something up the road. I could feel it. He feared going up the road in the dark.

        They are like that. My mom and dad fear the dark and never get out of their box at night unless it is to get in their running box. I think it’s because they can’t see. They are almost blind when the sun goes down, and they never go around without some kind of shine. He had a little shine coming out of his head, but it wasn’t much, not like a running box shine.

          I could feel his fear go down when I stayed with him a little while. Then we got to the tress where all the smells are, and we went up the hill. He was still pitiful on that hill. I was afraid he might fall down and roll to the bottom. Why did he do it? I guess he just didn’t have a running box.

        I also noticed how if I stayed out ahead of him very long, he would make that sound with his mouth. For some reason, when he made that sound, I would always come back, and I could feel his fear going down as I drew near. He even spoke words to me. “Stay close,” he said. I liked that, and I stayed close. He needed me. He was afraid when I was far and happy when I was close. That made me happy. We were a team.

        We went up the road together a long way until he turned in at another box. I stopped in the road and watched him. He stopped trying to run and walked up the little road to the box and he went inside. He looked back at me a long time before going inside. He was thankful, I could tell. He didn’t need me now that he was at the other box, so I went home.

        He came back a few days later still trying to run, but he had not gotten any better. He looked like he was trying to stomp flies, but even a sick fly could get out of his way. I was so happy to see him that I ran out fast and crashed into him and almost knocked him over. He didn’t even get mad at me, but he smiled real big and said, “Hey boy.” That made me feel good.

        We went up the road together.

        He was not afraid, maybe because the sun had not gone down. Since he was not afraid, I felt free to run off the road some when we got to all the trees where the smells are. I sniffed a lot. There are so many smells in the trees that it drives me crazy.

        He stomped up the hill.

        I sniffed and emptied and peed on stuff.

        On the other road, some running boxes came by. Now I knew to get out of the way and go into the trees. He liked that. We went further up the road, and I heard somebody like me warning us to stay away from their box. I felt uneasy, but he told me to stay close. I liked that. I protect him in the dark; he protects me in the light. We are a team.

        We went all the way to the other box. He went inside. I went home.

        He came by again and we went up the road. We went by the trees and I sniffed and peed on stuff. We went up the hill. I ran by him like he was a rock. I didn’t care if he couldn’t run. I hoped he knew I didn’t care that he couldn’t do nothing. I just liked being with him. We had fun.

        Then he quit coming by. It’s been a long time. Now, I mostly just lie around in the yard and wonder when he’s coming back. Why is he waiting? Is he ok? Does he think he has to run like me? Doesn’t he want to be a team anymore? I just want to see him and hear that clicking sound coming from his mouth. I spend my days being sad and looking down the road and wondering when he’s coming back. When he does, I’ll be here and we’ll be a team and we’ll go up the road together.

Ray 4

I was ten-years old when Dad went to see the Carroll County sheriff at the courthouse in Carrollton. His name was Nunley, but I don't remember the first name, not having written it down. In my notebook, I refer to him as Sheriff Nunley. I do remember that his name started with an "L" I think. Something like Lagoon but I know that's not it. Nobody would be named Lagoon although some people are named Colin. Lagrone, it was Lagrone. Wow, it just came to me. Lagrone Nunley.

He had a picture in his office, hanging on the wall, of himself and his son receiving an award for their Sunday School attendance so I know he was a church goer, and I would think he would tell the truth being a sheriff and a church man to boot. He told Dad almost the same thing Roy Sims did, that he remembered Ray from way back and so did the sheriff's dad. In fact, he told us that his grandfather said the same thing, that Ray was around looking just like he looked then when Lagrone Nunley's granddad was a boy. 

I also remember the sheriff saying that his daddy never told a lie in his life, but he wasn't so sure about his granddad, not because he was an untruthful person but because he was getting pretty old and was often confused and may have "disrembered." Disremembered. I wrote that one down and later tried to find it in Websters. I was a smart aleck like that. I loved to catch grown ups in mistakes, although I never said anything to them directly. I was too shy and too respectful for that. But I loved to brag to Mom and Dad on how Mr. So and So got it wrong, used an incorrect word.

He, the sheriff, also told us that they used to arrest Ray every time he came to town. They did it, he said, partly to keep him out of trouble, because he fought a lot, and partly so they could feed him and give him a warm place to sleep at night. As far as the adverse possession went, he could do nothing. "I can bluff him," he said, "but legally, I can't do nothin'." That was the last time Dad tried to do anything about Ray, as far as I know. If he tried other ways to get rid of Ray, I never said anything about it in front of me.

So Ray was just around, and we would sometimes see his boot tracks in the gully when we bird hunted. That always pissed Dad but we almost never saw him. Now and then, we would drive by him while he walked along Humphrey Highway or the gravel road. Just the sight of him made me afraid, and I asked Dad if he could whip him if they ever got into a fight. Dad said he could, and a boy wants to believe his dad can whip the whole world. But I wondered. He wore leather boots, jeans, and some kind of light denim jacket. He always seemed to be wearing the same thing winter or summer, and he always looked the same.

Slowly, the mysteriousness and frightfulness of Ray grew until he was a virtual monster in my mind. David Pentecost, who lived two doors down from us on West Harding Street, had a grandfather that used to visit them and he always stayed for a few weeks. I think he traveled from child to child and stayed with each one a while like my grandmother did the last years of her life. Mr. Shute and I would sit under an oak tree in the Pentecosts' front yard and chew tobacco and talk about hunting, squirrel hunting mostly. One day when I was fourteen, Ray came up. Mr. Shute, who had to be eighty years old if a day, said he, like everybody else, remembered Ray from way back and that he looked the same now as back then. The old man had farmed and raised his family in the Coila area which he told me had a lot more people in it then than now. That surprised me because I assumed that towns and areas always got bigger and never smaller. I never thought of a town dying or an area having less people although it should not have surprised me because I watched all the cowboy flicks and they often had ghost towns in them.

Anyway, Mr. Shute told me all sorts of stuff. He told me about the tornado that destroyed his house, injured his whole family, and killed one of his kids. He himself woke up in a field with a broken leg. He told me how lively downtown Coila was back then. He told me about a man who got his head chopped off. The de-headed man was wearing a white button down shirt under his clean overalls and there was only a drop or two of blood on the shirt. Mr. Shute saw it himself. I asked him why, and he didn't know. I asked him if the murderer was ever caught and he said no. I asked him if he had suspicions on anybody and he said everybody did. Then he dropped the bombshell. He said they were all sure who did it but there was no proof. "It was Ray," he said. "That devil man Ray Azel."

Gun Shoots Make Happy

Gun Shoots Make Happy

By Jay Unver

(Lehrton, Mississippi) The little town of Lehrton, Mississippi was abuzz with visible and palpable activity and excitement Wednesday morning ahead of Saturday night's Big ASS Awards Banquet. The annual event honors the achievements of the Association's top athletes, and is enthusiastically embraced by the entire town since moving here from Brazil, Mississippi three years ago. This year, however, will the the first time the banquet will be held in the Training Center. The 2016 banquet was held at the old Lehrton Cotton Warehouse building and the year before it was hosted by the Lehrton Opera House.

I drove past the headquarters to see if I could detect any preparations. In front of the Big ASS Training Center, I spied an old man was raking leaves, despite the bitter cold, and a young girl was taping balloons around the building's doorway. Next, I drove to City Hall where I caught up with Mayor Khabib to get his comments on the upcoming festivities. 

"We berry berry sited," he spoke in his thick Arabic accent. "We clean up town. We no have budget for fireworks, so citizens bring shotguns. Just like New Year. Many shotguns, much shooting. Only this time we ask not to shoot street lights."

"So you had street lights shot out at New Year's?" I asked.

"Street lights, stop signs, police cars. Citizens gets sited and shoots eberyting."

"But you are still allowing guns shooting in town Saturday night?"

"Yes. We want bisitors beel sabe and be happy. Gun shoots make happy."

"Gun shoots make happy. There's my headline."

"You like. We like people like," the mayor replied with a big smile on his face.

Shish Khabib went on the tell me that the town's only motel is at full capacity with all ten rooms sold out for the weekend, up from the usual one to two rooms rented and that the Lehrton Cafe is hiring extra staff to handle the expected uptick in business. Additionally, Mayor Khabib asked me to mention Jim Bob's Barber Shop. "He cut hairs berry good. Berry good. Come to Lehrton bor banquet, bor gun shoots, bor eats, bor hairs cut."

Come indeed. Tickets can be purchased at City Hall, the Lehrton Barbor Shop, or at the Big ASS Training Center for a nominal $10. And if you can't come, not to fear. You can zoom in on Facebook Live, and within a day or two I will have a comprehensive article in the Lehrton Gazette. This one promises to a doozy, and Dr. Nomann has relentlessly promoted the event on Facebook, in the Gazette, and in the monthly Lehrton County Squirrel Dog magazine. Since Hodge is expected to receive numerous awards, the town is sure to turn out. Despite his age and his loss of dominance, Hodge remains an extremely popular athlete in this small delta town. 

190 - 192

190
delta fields lie bare,
dead animals dot roadside,
green sprouts along ditch.

191
bright sun warms brown ground,
cotton stalks wave in silence,
birds rejoice

192
scattered flock,
border collie works,
order restored

Ray 3

In 1966, when I was eight-years old, Dad bought 160 acres in the hills outside of Greenwood, Mississippi. It was only later he learned that on Steen Hill Road, which ran through his land, sat a little log cabin that straddled his north-east property line. That is where his and my obsession with Ray Azel began. 

Dad talked to everyone who would listen about his problem. He talked to his Carroll County neighbors, he talked to a lawyer, and he even once had a long sit down with the sheriff of Carroll County. I remember him talking on the phone to a lawyer and that is when I began to fear Ray because the term "adverse possession" was used over and over. I was only eight and didn't know the law then and now, fifty-three years later, I still don't know the law. But at the time, I thought they were talking about demons or something involving a Ouija board. So I would go to bed most nights and imagine Ray out there on Steen Hill sacrificing goats, drinking blood, and worshiping the devil. That's how I come to be so afraid of him, that and all the stuff I heard over the years. After that, the mere mention of his name made my heart race with fear and trembling.

One day on our way to go bird hunting, Dad stopped the truck to talk to Ellis Roberts whose daughter I later married. Ellis owned (and still does) Hillbilly Heaven, 300 acres about one mile from Hodge Ski Lodge. Yes, they discussed Ray. Ellis said he knew an old man who swore he knew Ray when he (the old man) was a little boy. And he was not the only one who said stuff such as that. Word was that Ray has been living on Steen Road as long as anyone and his daddy could remember. 

We went to see the old man, Roy Sims, who lived not far from where the gravel road that Hodge Ski Lodge and Hillbilly Heaven are on joins Humphrey Highway. We went to his house and heard his story with our own ears. Roy Sims, who claimed to be eighty-eight years old at the time, said he started deer hunting Steen Hill Road with his dad when he was a mere boy of ten. Ray Azel was there then and according the Mr. Sims, "He looked exactly like he looks now. I seen him over the years and he ain't never changed not none."

Yes, that is a direct quotation, and I know what you are thinking. But when you hear something that outlandish, whether you believe it or not, you don't forget. Not only that, but Mom had given me a little 5 X 8 notebook for Christmas the year before. I think I was supposed to write my school assignments in it, but of course I never used it for that. Instead, that little book slowly came to contain a fifty page collection of hand drawn Cooties, hunting records (I killed five squirrels with a .410 shotgun in 1966), and information about Ray. Yeah, I wrote stuff down from the tender age of eight, and I still remember that old man standing at the open window of Dad's pick up truck, smoking an unfiltered camel cigarette, and telling us this as if it were the gospel truth. Even then, I had my doubts, but I wrote down nonetheless and I wrote a whole lot of everything I heard. I still go back and read some of those old, yellowing, journal entries from my early boyhood. I have those words in quotation marks, and I read then again just yesterday. 

To answer your next question, no, I did not make good grades in English or any other subjects for that matter. I never liked school much until I grew up. Although I did not score well on my English tests, my teachers always liked my writing even when I made Fs in their classes. Once, in high school, one of my English teachers (I think we had two that year) walked up to me and said, "We think you have talent in writing." And then she walked away as if that mere announcement would make the difference, would turn me into the student I could have been, should have been. It didn't work. I was too stupid for that to work. I needed guidance, not an announcement, but an announcement was all I received.

But I wrote from an early age, and Mom, seeing me utilize the notebook, bought me others and gave me re-filler paper and pencils, and I even had a fountain pen which I used to stick to the back of my schoolmates shirts and make big ink blobs that never washed out. She gave me these things even when it wasn't Christmas or my birthday. Slowly that one notebook became two, then three, then twelve. 

While I was still new at the writing stuff, I became suspicious that Mom was reading my writing while I was at school. To find out if she was, I started a new notebook and on the first page I wrote:

    doo doo
    pee pee

Boy did I get in trouble for that. But at least I knew. The odd thing about all of that was Mom wanted to know how I knew how to spell "doo doo" and "pee pee." "Gee, Mom," I said, "I go to school."

I'll tell you some more stuff later. Write now (yeah, just checking if you are still paying attention) I need a refill of coffee, and I feel the urge to finish a novel I started last week. Don't worry, I ain't gunna forget anything because I have my notebooks. The question I struggle with is how much to tell.

Next time I think I'll tell you what the sheriff had to say when we went to see him.