Rebel Yell

My conversation with Tex Sample got me thinking about Mississippi. Some folks from the Rock are going on a mission trip to MS. I also have been back in contact with an old friend from the Coast. It’s summer, and I like heat, and I always used to say to Melissa, around April, “you know what?” And she would say in a drone: “Yeah. You wish you were back in Mississippi, because the flowers are already blooming, and it’s getting hot and you love to sit outside and sweat.” I do love to sweat. I am a mess. It’s a good thing, because I sweat like a dancing mule. I worked with this old guy, Monroe. At lunch, he would go sit in his truck, roll up the windows and drink coffee. Sweat would just roll off of him. Ask him why he did it, he’d say, “Sweatin’ out them demons.” It’s a redneck sauna, but darn if it doesn’t work. You feel a lot better. Anyway, my head’s in Mississippi, as ZZ Top says.

Some people keep saying I should write a book. It probably won’t happen for a variety of reasons. First, the literary side of me likes to think I’d have a theme, or something to unify it and make it worthwhile to read, and I don’t see anything quite like a theme in my ramblings. I was mentioning this the other night and Jason Dillard went all Fugitive Poet on me and said, “that’s propaganda…” referencing a conversation I had with Andrew Lytle about whether or not he had a point in his fiction. He said no, banged the table with his fist and said, “That’s propaganda! You write as the spirit moves you…”

Another reason: the farther you get away from knowing me, the more likely I am to make you mad. You’d never believe the emails I get from friends of friends. Man, people need to calm down.

Finally, until the Lord changes my mind that publishing is an act of violence, I probably won’t write a book. I guess, having such an opinion, I shouldn’t read books. Or write a blog. Oh well, I’m a hypocrite, which is more or less what friends of friends tell me.

If I were to write a book, it would be about my friend, we’ll call him Edward. We used to work together on a landscaping crew. He was a black guy about 15 years older than me. He had a bad reputation as one of the toughest dudes in town. Edward and I ended up doing some jobs just me and him, and I found out it was a kind of hazing ritual—make the new guy work with Edward, who no one really liked. We got along pretty well, and that freaked everyone out. The bossman was happy because he didn’t have to worry about who would go with Edward. Funny how God works. There are some crazy stories I could tell, but something about the honesty of our friendship makes that hard. The statute of limitations is not out on some of them. Others are so profane I can’t believe I was there, heard it, saw it, lived through it. Very little of it is edifying, except as an insight into a how a white college punk was let into the lives of lower-class blacks.

I believe that anyone you meet can tell you the funniest, saddest, and weirdest thing you have ever heard. And I think if they tell you those things, or if you experience those things with them, it’s hard to repeat. It’s like voyeurism, or something. I sometimes find myself wishing the people hadn’t told me. But I have a gift for getting into people’s worlds, I guess.

But I can tell one story because it has some serious spiritual application, showed me something about what we Methodists call “perfection.” It’s not anything you could preach, I suspect. But it is dear to me.

At one point, I was going to go to grad school on Long Island. I know, I know—there is no way anyone can see me on Long Island. The Lord intervened big time, and I didn’t go. Well, all the guys I worked with were a little interested and impressed that one of us was getting a Master’s Degree, whatever that meant to them. We were on a big job my last day with them, a Friday. There was lots of ribbing, lots of stories about the things I screwed up (namely a backhoe. Or the time I was putting pressure on a boring machine to keep the shaft from buckling. Like an idiot, I had on gloves, and they got wrapped around the twisting shaft. Somehow, it just ripped the gloves right off, without breaking my wrists or tearing off my hands. Thus one of my nicknames, “Magic Boy,”). Late in the afternoon of my last day, Edward motioned me to come around the corner of the building. He always used to sneak off to smoke pot, kept a pocket full of wild mint leaves he ate and rubbed on his hands, but he wasn’t fooling anybody. I was worried he wanted me to have some ceremonial smoke with him on my way out.

Instead, he speaks in hushed tones. “Dude, I don’t know why you want to go to New York. Whatever you do, don’t look nobody in the eye. Don’t let nobody help you unload your truck. Here,” and he handed me a .32 pistol. “Take this. Damn. I don’t want to have to come up there because somebody f-ed up my boy.” This was goodbye.

I knew at the time that this was about as much as Edward could show anybody, and my heart broke for him and his life. As I look back, I also see it as a sign of perfection. See, we Methodists look to the intention of the heart. Perfection is not flawlessness. Perfection is a pure heart. So even with a gun, and a threat to wreak vengeance, Edward loved me as much as he could. I have prayed every day since I became a Christian (about 4 months after this weird goodbye) that God would honor where Edward’s heart is and guide him further into the truth.

They don’t treat people from Mississippi so well on Long Island. We must seem like really backward rubes. So by Tuesday I was back on the job, gave Edward back his .32. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell he was glad to have me back. And I was glad to be called his boy.

I keep up with Edward. We don’t talk because the last time we did, it just confused him, and me—why do I bother? I’m gone. Not part of his hard life. I am, in some ways, a bad taste. He’s stuck where he is. I came in, played at hard work, and moved on to a good life. But I pray, and call the old boss to see how Edward’s doing.