A True Story

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Part I My Journey..................................1Prologue...........................................31 The Secret.......................................72 Serpents in the Bayou............................143 Stranger in Need.................................214 Change...........................................285 Blood in the Pacific.............................376 The Passage of Time..............................48Part II Acts of Mercy..............................557 The Sick and the Frail...........................578 In Prison and Life...............................709 Mysteries and Small Miracles.....................7310 Sharing the Bounty..............................81Part III Blessed Dreams............................8911 The Beginning...................................9112 Appearances.....................................9713 Heaven..........................................10414 Wisdom..........................................111Epilogue: The Voice................................117Testimonial: Speech to Inspire.....................121

Chapter One

An old house has a spirit all its own. Made of trees long since dead and shaped into a new form with saws and hammers, a house contains the essence of the people who have lived in it, given birth in it, laughed and cried in it, gone hungry or feasted in it, and finally died in it. The laughter and the tears of decades find their way into every nook and cranny. During those quiet days when the Mississippi sun beats down on the live oaks and makes the Spanish moss in the bayous seem to sweat, you could almost hear the laughing and the crying of everyone who lived in that house before we did.

At least that's how I felt whenever I gave my childhood home in Selma, Mississippi, more than a second of thought long after I'd left it. As a kid, I didn't go in much for meaningful thinking. In that way, I was like every other kid, I guess. To me, that old house was spooky more than anything else, tucked away as it was in the woods just outside of town. My daddy and momma showed up at that house in a creaky mule-drawn wagon in 1929, when I was just six years old and when the entire nation was revved up to make pots of money on Wall Street and have a grand old time of it any way it could. It seems, though, that the good times forgot Selma and my daddy. The good times from a materialistic standpoint forgot all of us, as it were, except for my two older sisters, Marie and Wilma Lee (or "Dink," as my momma nicknamed her). Both had the good sense, or good fortune, to marry young and not follow my daddy on his excursion south, instead staying put in Summerville, Tennessee. The haunting old homestead sported an outhouse, no indoor plumbing of any kind, a cistern, a wood- burning stove for cooking, and five or six fireplaces for heating. There was no such thing as air-conditioning in those days, so in summertime you sweltered all night long, praying the mosquitoes would stay on the outside of the thin window screens. Yes, I remember long nights listening to whippoorwills and the hum of crickets singing me to sleep. Not a care in the world. We were content to have a roof over our head, food in the garden, and the overalls on our backs.

Moving to that old house in Selma was a big change for us, and not necessarily a change for the better. To this day I will never understand why my daddy decided to leave the comforts of Jackson, Tennessee, where we lived before coming to Mississippi.

We were well off by standards of the day. My daddy had a dog kennel. He trained bird dogs to hunt quail. My daddy was certainly not a veterinarian by trade, but there was no dog ailment he could not remedy with one of his compresses of Lord-knows-what. My momma was from a long line of prominent Hortons in Nashville. She had marble-top furniture, fine linens, and porcelain passed down from her side of the family, and my daddy was apparently able to keep up her lifestyle. Why in the world he picked up my mother, sister, brother, and me and hauled us to the backwoods of Selma, I'll never know.

My daddy was one of thirteen brothers. Old man Fly, my paternal grandfather, would buy land and then those thirteen boys would clear the land by removing the trees and stumps and then turn around and sell it for farm land. That's how my daddy learned how to tackle that overgrown bayou bottom in Selma, which we cleaned up and farmed.

Even though times were hard, we really couldn't complain. Like I said, we had enough to eat and a roof over our heads. As I grew up in that old house, which was up for near a century before we moved in, I had many a fine time playing with my older brother, Robert, who was born in 1921, which made him two years my senior. My sister, Bessie Mae, or "Snook" as my momma nicknamed her, was just ten when we arrived at the house.

Life went on. Daddy took to the fields growing all kinds of plants, including cabbage, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and especially his prized Kentucky Wonder Beans, with Robert at his side. Snook worked the washtub, helped in the garden, and prepared our meals with my mother. Poor girl. She went from city life in Jackson with electricity and some modern conveniences to oil lamps and outhouses. No wonder she married the first traveling salesman who came through, about four years later. I don't blame her one bit ...

Times were difficult but simple in the 1920s, but things got harder after the Great Depression settled over the United States during the 1930s. Selma was hit and hit hard, and lots of people were starving and had no place to live at all. About 1933, when I was ten years old, my daddy got real sick. I don't know if it was cancer, but it sure was bad.

I remember that time like I just lived it yesterday. Momma told me to get on our ole mule, Shorty, and ride to Mr. Lowtower's house and call the doctor. He was the only person who had a telephone for miles and was the man we leased our house and land from. So I jumped on the ole mule barefoot and made my way down to the main road and from there rode two miles on a dirt road to a small community called Stanton. I got myself to Mr. Lowtower's house and explained my daddy's dire condition. Mr. Lowtower agreed to call the health department and see if there was a doctor available. He told me to get back on my mule and to wait at the main road for the doctor, who would be along directly and would need help getting to our house. I did just as I was told and got myself back by mule express and sat on that hot, dusty road and waited and waited and waited.

I'd never seen a car before, not in all my born days, and so when the big, red car with brass headlights pulled up and stopped in front of me it was really something to see. I just stood there gawking at the thing. It had a black top, wheels with red spokes, tires with wide white rings, and curtains with little balls hanging from them. I was so taken up with that car I forgot all about how sick my daddy was.

"Boy, you coming, or ain't ya?" the good doctor bellowed out.

Well, we made the long trip up the dirt road to the house, which took two seconds flat compared to riding Shorty. Man, I didn't want to get out of that car. The doctor told me to wait outside, which I had every intention of doing anyway, as I hadn't touched every inch of that motorized contraption yet and I fully intended to do so while he wasn't looking.

The doctor was met by my mother and brother sitting patiently on the front porch. The doctor took a look at my dust-covered, barefoot sibling and then glanced at me and shook his head. I wasn't sure what to make of that. The doctor broke the silence and turned to Robert.

"Boy, go wash those feet and bring yourself back to the porch. I need to take a look at the festering on your left foot when I'm done with your daddy."

I don't know, maybe a couple hours later that doctor came out and sat me down on the front porch.

"Son," he said in a matter-of-fact tone, "your daddy is gonna die tonight, and, well, your brother Robert has got the dew poison in his left foot and that foot's gonna have to come off."

I thought to myself, I shore am glad I stayed outside before he sentenced me to some grisly demise.

"When your daddy passes, you ride the mule back to Stanton and have me called, and I'll come back for your daddy and we'll take your brother at the same time to the hospital to get his foot worked on."

The bad news that the doctor delivered to me at the time did not really set in, you see, as my mind was still racing with the fact that I was going to get to ride in that fancy, red car all the way back to the main road again and fetch Shorty. But the excitement was short lived. I can still remember to this day how casual he sounded when he said that, and, being just a little kid, I didn't really understand the true meaning behind the words.

It took two seconds that afternoon to get to the house in that fancy red car and it took half that to get back to that blasted mule. I got on Shorty and started the ride back down the dusty road to the house. Why was this happening, why?

Gradually, though, the meaning sunk in. My daddy was going to die and my brother was going to be a cripple. I remember wondering how Robert was going to manage frog gigging with one foot.

Momma greeted me at the front porch with a tender smile and a generous hug. To my heart's delight, Momma offered up some cornbread and milk for supper as she wiped the dirt-laden tears from my cheeks. The three of us sat down to eat without my daddy. Not a word was shared between us nor a crumb left between us.

Late spring afternoon turned into early evening and the serenade of katydids was in full swing. There was a cool breeze shuffling the curtains, and the oil lamp provided a soft glow. Robert had headed back to the creek for some late evening fishing. Momma sat down to read her Bible and I sat playing marbles on the floor at her feet, quietly taking comfort in her calm presence, while I wondered what was going to happen to my daddy and brother. All of the sudden, there was a noise on the front porch that neither human nor wild animal mimicked. Momma rushed to the front screen door and opened it cautiously, peering in the direction for the source of such an offense to our quiet evening.

"Buddy," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Oh my God, Son, come here!"

I ran to the front door and clung tightly to her legs. There on the bench by the water bucket stood a white bird. It was as large as a modern-day refrigerator. Streams of sparkles flowed from its eyes like fiery rivers. My momma and I just stared at that bird without knowing what to do. The scene emblazoned itself in my mind and time changed to a crawl. After what felt like an eternity in slow motion but was a few seconds in reality, the bird then took flight. When it did, there was this huge waft of warm air as the bird left the porch, such that it blew Momma's white apron straight up off her dress. In a flash, the quiet calm returned to our front porch, and the katydids resumed their racket. I continued to cling to Momma's legs, making sure she could not step forward or backward without tripping over me. I could feel her trembling.

Momma looked down at me and said, "Son, don't you ever tell a soul what we just saw. Do you understand me?"

I just nodded. About that time, my daddy called out for my momma from the bedroom. We both jumped, we were so surprised.

"Ida, I'm hungry," he said. "Make me some biscuits and sausage."

My daddy had not eaten in days, and it had been even longer since I had heard him call out.

A strange look crossed Momma's face, one that suddenly turned to smiling. She said, "Quick, son. Go in the kitchen and make the stove hot."

I went into the kitchen and built a fire in the old woodstove, and I made it good and hot. I would have made any enterprising Boy Scout look bad with the kind of fire I built.

While Momma prepared the meal, I sat down on the floor and watched. She intently poured out the flour she needed, stirring in just enough lard and sweet milk to make the dough up just right. Then she took an old, empty baking powder can with one end missing and cut those biscuits out picture-perfect and put them in the oven. And at about the time she pulled those golden-brown biscuits from the old stove, my daddy appeared in the kitchen doorway. While he wasn't his usual spry six-foot-four self, he was up and clean shaven, and he apparently had one heck of an appetite.

My daddy walked away from death's door that night and was sitting in the kitchen with my momma and me staring at him in disbelief while he devoured a pan of biscuits and at least half a pound of sausage swimming in my momma's gravy. He had no more sopped up the last signs of gravy from his plate when Robert came running into the kitchen. When Robert finally stopped long enough to catch his breath, he demanded that we all inspect his left foot. He kept shouting, "My feets is well! My feets is well!"

And Robert's "feets" really were healed, much to my momma's surprise.

My daddy lived for another thirty years. Robert's left foot was fine. Nobody died or lost a limb. I knew from that time on that there was something big out there. I knew there was a God. I couldn't quite connect the dots between that big white bird on my front porch and what had happened, but I knew about miracles just the same. That surely was what I had witnessed, and it was the hand of God at work in the world around me.

I kept my word to Momma and didn't tell a soul about the big white bird until I was sixty-five years old. I have never told Robert that story. I'm not sure he'd believe me if I did.

Chapter Two

One of my favorite pastimes as a kid was frog gigging. For those of you who have never "gigged" a frog, it's pretty dang simple. All you do is get a real sharp stick, and then you impale the frog with the stick. After that, you pull off the frog's legs, dip them in some salted flour, and fry them up for a delicious supper. Although frog gigging was generally done at night using a lantern, we did our fair share during the day. One late afternoon, we made our way through snake-filled bayous to get to the creek bed. Robert and I sharpened an old parasol spine until the end of it was razor sharp, and then we practiced our frog gigging skills by spearing catfish first, which were bigger, of course. We'd think nothing of wading out in those snake-infested waters in our bare feet. You see, you're immortal when you're a kid, but the truth be known, we didn't know any better.

One day we were frog gigging just off the bank and directly adjacent to an old hollowed-out root. I leaned over that root, hoping to gig an old bullfrog, when not three inches from my head I saw two water moccasins. In case you don't know, water moccasins are aggressive territorial snakes, and the fact that I was looking eye-to-eye with two of them only inches from my face and that neither one bit me was absolutely nothing short of a miracle. I slowly backed up, and those two snakes never moved. It was like they were in a trance or something. I couldn't believe what had just happened. Years later I would find out it was a miracle. But I'm getting ahead of the story.

My momma always did try to do the right thing by us, even when we didn't want her to. She decided that stringing Kentucky Wonders and frog gigging could not be a lifelong career for me; this was one of those things she did that was right, but it didn't sit right. The career- altering decision meant I had to go to school in nearby Washington Community.

Now, I wasn't the only barefoot, filthy-faced farm kid with his lunch in a syrup bucket, but that didn't make it any easier when the taunting came around at school. My lunch always consisted of a biscuit, some molasses syrup, and usually a potato. Sometimes on a real good day Momma gave me a boiled egg to eat. Well, the rich city boys' lunch pails were always filled with the ultimate—freshly baked white bread. I remember watching those boys eating that bread and feeling like I was missing out on something big in the world. What I wouldn't have given for a piece of that white bread.

Well, one day, one of those big ole city slicker boys decided to mosey on down to the creek bed where the less respectable were devouring our biscuits and molasses and proceeded to let us know what low-life scum we were and demanded to know what the "white trash" was eating out of syrup buckets. Well, I don't know what got into me, but the next thing I knew, my syrup bucket was planted in the side of that brat's skull and blood was gushing everywhere. I knocked that boy cold as a cucumber. Old Man Dilly, the principal, was creek-side in five minutes flat with a towel and some lard, trying to bind up that boy's brains.

I stood watching the scene with a little rush of panic rising up inside me. I'd clobbered a rich kid. Maybe I'd hurt him bad. Frankly, I was scared about what Old Man Dilly was going to do to me, but I knew better than to say anything. I just kept my mouth shut, like my momma and my daddy told me to do whenever I got in trouble at home.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from A True Storyby Debbie Bewley Copyright © 2011 by Debbie Bewley. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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