Read My Lips - the blog

Episode No. 5

Is anyone reading any of these entries? I know OLDCATMAN has perused them at least once. These are my dead dad's writings that I recovered using Internet Archive Wayback Machine. I was hopeful, even though they were a bit old, that some of ya'll might want to see some of my dad's efforts before he died. This one was done in December of 1998, and as such, has a Christmas theme:

Formatted as originally published in centered form:

THE REUNION

A Christmas Story by Rusty Rucker

A chilling north wind swept across the plains with a vergence,
Snatching Autumn leaves from the trees,
And leaving an earth covering blanker of white n its wake.
It attacked the Ozarks in a rage,
Battering its way through the pines,
And gaining momentum with every mile.
At the mountain's crest it paused momentarily,
Gathered its fury and swooped does the clearing
toward a little two room log cabin.
With Icy fingers,
It resumed the battle of forty years,
to wrest a weathered screen door from its sagging hinges.

The door, proudly bought and installed by a caring son
who had grown tired of hearing his mother complain
about flies in the kitchen,
was now of little worth.
Its hook-latch long since had been ripped away,
leaving only a ragged hole in the wood
and a bent eyelet screwed into the jam as proof it ever existed.
The wire mesh,
rusty and full of holes,
clung desperately to the rotting frame.
Yet, the door hung onto the time worn hinges with stubborn resolve,
determined to once again defend its position against
this new onslaught from the North.

As the mounting wind pulled the screen open and banged it shut,
Time and time again,
the old man's eyes fluttered open and he sat upright
in his cane bottomed rocker.
His hair, white with age,
flowed down over his stooped and bony shoulders.
His beard, equally white, was every bit as long.

"That you, Sarry," He called,
his voice only slightly louder than a whisper.
"Seems a mite chilly in here.
Reckon I'd better stir up a fire?"

He remained seated, awaiting her reply,
until the fog of senility lifted partially from his head,
and realization began to creep back in.
Sarah was no longer with him.
She is buried out there on the side of the hill,
beneath the towering pines she'd loved so well.

For several minutes, he relaxed in his chair,
staring across at the identical one
that had belonged to his beloved wife,
and tried to recall where she had gone.
But his mind, like the rest of his 93 year old body,
had withered with time,
and refused to remember the unpleasant details of her departure.

How he awoke one morning last spring,
to find her still and cold beside him.
How he sat at the bedside,
holding her hand and weeping for 2 days,
taking neither food nor drink the whole time.

Except for Slim McCoy and his wife,
He would have gone with her then and there.
But Slim happened by, as he often did,
and took charge of the situation.

He lifted the old man and carried him to his chair.
Then made a pot of coffee and poured a cupful down him,
a sip at a time, while a slab of ham,
cut from the one he had just brought
fried in a blackened iron skillet.

When the old man had been nourished,
Slim ran the two miles to his own cabin,
to fetch his wife, Molly.
While she prepared the old woman's body
Slim dug a shallow grave.
There were not any boards to make a coffin
so they wrapped her lifeless form in a square of canvas tarpaulin
and laid her to rest,
Saying a few kind words over her grave.

Rising from his chair,
the old man stepped on the tail of his old yellow hound,
sleeping at his feet,
but the dog,
now more than twelve himself,
didn't bother to yelp,
the weight of his withered master being so slight.
Not raising his head,
the dog followed the old man with his eyes,
As he waddled to the door,
Opened it,
and stood listening for several minutes,
paying little heed to the biting chill of frigid wind.

"Can't hear that dad burned jeep a-tall, Sheb,"
he said to the hound dog.
The dog wagged his tail slightly,
to acknowledge his name,
but didn't show any concern
for what his aged master was saying.
"Reckon Jim's toooken up with one of them town gals again.
He's apt to be gone three, four days."

It taxed the old mans strength to shut the door against the wind,
but he finally managed.
Once closed and bolted,
he ambled across the dirt floor to the fireplace,
And stood looking at it as if wondering
what purpose had brought him there.
Starring at the cold ashes with uncertainty,
he hesitated,
forcing enough memory through the cobwebs in his brain
to bring forth the action necessary for starting a fire.

Occasionally he would waken with full rationalization
of his surroundings,
and remain lucid for several days,
Then slip back into the dream world of years gone by,
but those times were becoming less and less frequent
with every passing day.

Only the loving attention of his hill-billy neighbor,
Slim McCoy, had gotten him through the summer.
The ever present ham,
side of bacon,
or occasionally venison,
hanging in the smokehouse.
The potato bin that never became empty.
The woodpile that remained constant,
no mater how much was burned.
Now and then, a pot of stew on the table.
All could be credited to Slim and his wife,
going out of their way to look after an old friend.

After laying a fire with the practiced skill of many years,
he stood before it, warming his behind
while searching the room with misty blue eyes.
Spotting a rolled up newspaper he hobbled over,
picked it up and headed for the door.

The hound, watching his every move,
knew what the paper meant,
and got up to follow his master outside.

With slow deliberation,
The old man walked the fifty feet of time worn path,
to a rundown outhouse and stepped inside.
The door with its crescent moon opening,
so carefully carved in his youth,
Had long ago been pulled from it's hinges,
and tumbled by the wind into oblivion.

Removing from his shoulders,
the galluses of patched and faded overalls
he perched upon the polished hole and sat,
looking out across the hillside.
A lone snowflake sailed around the corned and settled,
gently on the back of his leathery hand.

"Hit's gonna snow, sure as you're a pup," he told Sheb,
who was sitting patiently outside the doorway,
waiting for the old man to do his business
so they could return to the warmth of the cabin.
"Hit'll be knee-deep by morning.
Lord knows when Jim will be able to get home
with them supplies."

When the old man arose,
The dog, Half trotting,
Hurried back down the path,
waiting until he was nearly to the door
before heisting his leg against a tree.
Only then did he notice the old man was not following,
but had turned aside and begun climbing
in the direction of Sarah's final resting place.

It was laborious toil to negotiate the steep hillside,
but he persisted,
stopping several times to rest,
before reaching the grave.
As he approached, the snowfall increased.
The wind driven flakes kept biting into his face,
making it harder to locate the limestone marker
Slim McCoy had painted and set atop the mound of earth.

The aged hound, loyal to the end,
was slowly trailing the old man's tracks
through the ever increasing storm.
Just as he reached his master's side,
the old man knelt before the stone and wiped the snow away
so he could read the epitaph painstaking painted by Slim McCoy.

"HERE LIES SARAH ADKINS.
Her wealth was boundless because she had contentment."

Tears flowed freely from his clear blue eyes as he stayed there,
headless of time or the rapidly dropping temperature.
The dog sitting along side,
looked toward the shack occasionally and whined,
begging his master to return to the warm shelter,
but not offering to leave without him.

Finally, he stood, using the hound's head to steady himself,
and started back in the direction of the hut.
The dog followed closely at his heals.
At the door, he waited, holding it ajar for the aged hound,
after listening again for the jeep,
he closed and fastened it.
Sheb, wasting no time looking for someone he didn't expect to see,
had already stretched out before the fire,
as the old man dragged his chair close beside him.
There they dosed together,
the old man looking toward the table,
as if hoping that somehow a meal would appear upon it,
but not once did he consider putting forth the effort
to get up and prepare something.

"Don't you bother with fixin' t'night Sarry," he said,
never taking his eyes from the flickering flames.
"Likely Jim will make it through before the storm gets bad
and fetch us a big pot of hot stew."
He rocked to and fro with a smile of satisfaction,
listening to the rungs of his chair creak in their sockets.
The hound got up,
circled around and laid back down, turning his opposite side to the fire.
"No Sarry, don't be frettin' about Jim.
He done worked hard for two summers in that there saw mill,
and saved his money to buy his old jeep.
He's old enough to look out for his own self now."

He dosed again,
waking with a start when a gust of snarling wind caught the screen door
and banged it harder.
"That you Jim boy? Did you bring me and Ma a pot of hot stew?"

And so it continued through the night.
The fire burned down and the cabin grew cold.
The old dog rested peacefully at his master's side,
while the old man drifted in and out of awareness,
talking to a wife who had been dead six months,
and watching and waiting for the son who went to town forth years ago
and never returned.

After saying the only prayer he knew over the old man's grave,
Slim McCoy joined his wife in song,
Though only a little past noon,
"Silent Night" echoed through the hills.
Tying a rope lead around the dog's neck Slim said,
"C'mon, Sheb," You will live with us now.
Him and Sarah will enjoy Christmas together,
and who knows,
Maybe Jim is there with ‘em."

Thanks for the ride. Y'all come back now ... Ya hear!!!

If you like this one, Rusty Rucker No. 1 is here, Rusty Rucker No. 2 is here, Rusty Rucker No. 3 is here, Rusty Rucker No. 4 is here, and the assorted poems I recovered are here.

Posted by Tiger at July 20, 2003 12:10 PM