“It’s Good Enough for ME!”

I take stoplights personally.

Not so much signs for stopping, that seems more like taking turns.

And I’m all for that.

Stoplights, however, are a different matter.  They see me from afar, patently determined to get from point A to point B or C or even D, and they patently time their colorful little selves to flip to red just as I approach.

A cautious driver, and nearly always lawful….nearly….I’ll admit I’m not above splashing through a yellow, just to make a point.

I know that’s wrong, and I vow to explain it to the officer who questions my motives.  But truly, that outsized giant red eye atop the triad of color searches the horizon for me, heckbent on causing me to pause in my quest for destination.

Is it a technology issue?  Is it programmed to do a personal retinal scan on upcoming drivers until it sees the one, the ME approaching?

It happens far too regularly to be happenstance….stop and wait.  Stop and wait.  No one coming in any direction left, right, up or down.  And so I sit.  And I fume.  And I glare at that scarlet orb.  But I sit.

I’ve come to a conclusion, using all that time I’ve been given.  

That programmer?  That all-seeing, all-powerful perceptor, lying in wait for me at near every four-way or five-way intersection including those with left turn lane signals, merge lanes and entitled bikers in bike lanes?

Oh yeah….that would be my mother-in-law….or my second-grade teacher.

And I know I’ve been beaten.

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“It’s Good Enough for ME!”

Ponder this.

I ask you, ponder this and offer help, if you see your way.

 

Consider the fence.  

Made of pickets or slats or concrete or foam rubber or “barbed waar.”

Is it erected to keep something in?  Or perhaps to keep those on the outside….out?

Does it serve to mark boundaries or beginnings?

Is it meant to stop progress or mark progress?

And let’s not even CONSIDER the “sitters on fences” or the “straddlers of fences….” for that conundrum is beyond my capacity.

I say , myself, the fence?  It is meant for one thing….to be overcome. Climbed slowly and with care, or via a catapult or trampoline or with a running leap and outstretched limbs, hurdled and conquered and made a part of history.

Fences to you, pray tell, what are they?  Do you build them?  Do you ignore them?  Do you admire them up close or from afar?  For truly, your answer is as valid as mine!

One thing I do know, I do like seeing fences in my rear view mirror….!

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“It’s Good Enough for ME!”

Now, this muddle of quizzing and questioning and wondering has long been the centerpiece of my table.

My poor Mama.

“What ‘too big for my britches’ mean, Mama?” I’d asked after my big brother took off to school.  I’d go next year.

“Why, actin’ proud and better’n your neighbor,” she’d answered.

“Well then,” I’d asked after a bit, “what’s ‘proud as punch?’  Grandma Boyd says that all the time an’ she smiles and gives me a squeeze when she does.”

“Honey baby, Grandma Boyd means she’s plumb joyful when she sees your face!  You know how she loves you, hon!”

“But Mama!” I recall shouting, then cloudin’ over with tears, “But Mama, Brother Baldwin down to the church, he says ‘pride goeth before a fall!’ I heard him! Mama!  Mama!  Is Grandma Boyd going to fall down a deep dark hole, break both her legs, for all the pride I put in her heart?”

The clouds burst and I fairly wailed.

Mama bundled me right quick into her soft squishy lap, wiped my tears with little staccatto dots of her fingers then rocked me like a big ol’ baby.

“Oh, hon, no. No.  Bless your heart, no.  Grandma Boyd’s real careful her pride don’t spill out and hurt nobody else.  She keeps it in real tight and prays to Jesus ever’ night for forgiveness, and dogged if he don’t take it all away.”

I remember lookin’ her straight in the eye.  Sounded a little suspicious to me.

Then she said, “See, that a’way, her bucket o’ pride never washes over the brim an’ if she’s real careful, she can make it ’til her nightly prayers to dump it out and start over the next day.”

Well now, that there, that made sense.  If her bucket don’t spill, she can keep on bein’ proud of me ever single day, then dump her bucket an’ do it all over the next.

‘Cause she’s old, you know.  I like makin’ her happy.  An’ eatin’ her chocolate chip cookies.  She makes giant ones!

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“It’s Good Enough for ME!”

Pondering yet again today.

Like all my days, actually.

I read a quotation this morning from the learned and wise Albert Einstein.  Whom, I’ve since learned, could cut quite the rug at Princeton faculty soirees.

Said he, ” It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

Ever so humble.  I even felt a bit of flush of self-congratulations, for yes, I do indeed run near every fox to ground.  Much to the consternation of those in nearest proximity.

I digress, for in humility lies the problem.  If Einstein’s humility breeds pride in me, was the genesis of the process truly humility?  Or generosity?  Or subtly just the opposite?

And if one advertises ones humility, can it be truly defined as such?

And truly, just what is “humble pie,” anyway?

The mind reels.

The mind reels.

You Humble Servant,

Belles and Whistles

 

“It’s Good Enough for ME!”

Ponderables.

Ponderables.

Consider this.

The Marshmallow.

Quite, I say sincerely and with only the slightest bit of jest,  a mouthful…Say it once out loud for the whole world to hear….feel how it moves around your mouth and how your jaw and tongue contort to get it said?  There is simply no way to slide that word surreptitiously into conversation.  It must be done with purpose and forethought, lest one stumble.

Then further, there’s the eating.  A gelatinous blob of white hardened foam rubber floating atop my glorious hot choco, or melted into a waxy white amoeba spread over my fine fettled sweet potatoes sends me into waves of near imbecility.

For it is this, simply this. One simple question.

The Marshmallow.

Why?

“It’s Good Enough for Me!”

Hey, Ho!

Fixin’ to get ready, and for me, that’s a durned big deal!  

Got but one thought for today…

Looked in my kitty cat’s eyes this day and there lay an evil so dense and fogged and hateful I had no choice but to look away.

So I looked away. Then back over my shoulder.

So I ask you this, I do.

What wrath has the long line of feline creatures stored up over the story of time and space to spit such vitriol our di-rection, and why do we turn right around and snuggle and kiss their little noses just to get a gutteral warning from the depths of their being?

We should be living in fear, I tell you what!  Live in fear!

 

 

“Dang Me! Ought t’Take a Rope n’Hang Me!

If it smell like a pig, and it look like a pig, and why, it even act ‘n snort like a pig, that make it a pig, don’t it?

You’d think so, now, wudn’t you?

This here’s Punk Bole a’gin, and I got me a whole lot o’thinkin’ to do on my own behalf.

Daddy, he kidnap me, took me from the home what was my comfort and refuge, he snitch me up in the middle o’ the night and haul me off some’eres out to the woods, some ol’ dark, dank heap o’ tumbledown sticks, even worse’n what Mama and the kids live in down to town.

Daddy, he tell me he ain’t so much as kidnapped me, but say what?  He save me!  He save me?

He save me from what, ez-a’tly?

 

Daddy, he hog tie me, bound me wrist to ankle, stuffed my mouth so I couldn’t not make a soun’.

Daddy, he say he keepin’ me quiet so’s not disturb nobody, get ’em all het up and such.

He silence me for what?

 

Daddy, he throw me, alone and hungry, out to this ol’ broken down henhouse, leave me near a day, day and a half, no food, no water, till he jest show up with a bag o’fried chitlins, cold ham,  a half eat loaf o’bread, and sadness writ all over his face.

Daddy, he claim he got him a plan, he need me, we goin’ to Texas, drill fer o’ll, get us some cash, live us high on the hog.

He need me why?

 

Know how I tol’ y’all I has my way numbers and parsin’?  How they float ‘roun’ in my head and line up jest so, I can purt’near figure most an’thin’ you throw my way?

Well let me tell you, this jest don’ add up, it do not.

 

When 2 plus 2 don’t add up to 4, why, som’thin’, som’thin is wrong!

 

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“Dang Me! Ought t’Take a Rope n’Hang Me!”

(Ain’t no paper, ain’t no pen, jest me, Punk Bole ‘memberin’ this in my head for later, when later does come….)

Dang, i’s dark out here.  Pitch.  No stars, no moon, no beacon nowheres ‘t’all.

Trussed up like a stuck hog, wrists to ankles, tossed back o’ some ol’ pickup truck smell’s o’ manure, bounced over ever’ pothole n’ mud pit n’ burrow n’ trench n’ cavity ‘n crater till I got no feelin’s whatsoever lef’ in my backside, much less my fingers ‘r toes.

For Daddy, he come foun’ me.  Took my eye off the ball, ‘t’s what Liam’d circumcise.  I’d plumb settled in, got me engaged and settled with the Goodwells,  n’ was actu’lly not payin’ no ‘ttention what was over my shoulder.

Gettin’ up ever’ mornin’, like reg’lar folk.

Doin’ my part with the chores needin’ doin’ ‘roun’ the place, then settin’ right there with the Goodwells for breakfast near’ ever’ mornin’.

Kneelin’ down to pray, holdin’ hands and squeezin’ our eyes tight, like the Goodwells are wont to do ever’ mornin’ ‘fore dispersin’.  Liam’s Grandpap has hisself a way with talkin’ to God, let me tell you.  Reckon even God hisself pays attention to what Liam’s Grandpap has to say.

Didn’t nobody send me to the schoolhouse, figured I’d be safe from harm stayin’ put on the farm, but things was quiet, I’d settle in to them books and papers Liam’d stick in a burlap sack and tote on back fer me.  Readin’ got right better, writin’ some, too.  Never did get me a challenge when it come to numbers, but I made up problems my ownself, like figurin’ the kernels o’corn out to the field, then sortin’ the ‘mount of fertilizin’ it’d take to grow them ears to a proper size, and what percent o’growth to ax-pec’.

Parsin’ like that.  Liam’s Daddy was particular impressed.

Once the family was all in once piece a’gin, come evein’, we’ll all haul ourselves back out and set to more chores, or jest shoot the breeze, which ain’t all bad.

Dinner’d come and go.  Didn’t once did we ever have us beans from a can, like I been used t’.  Nor Vienna sausages from a can.  Nor corn, nor beets, nor okra from no can.  Goodwell dinin’ was a plumb joy, a plumb joy.

Fam’ly’d then set t’ settin’ ‘roun’ the special livin’ room and share stores, old ones and new, Goodwell chil’ren tossed all over the place.  Why, they’d once or twice asked me to share a thing ‘r two, and once or twice, I did.

Then Liam’s Grandpap, he’d stretch real long and loud, endin’ with “Mercy!”  Then he’d hoist hisself from his creakin’ bentwood rockin’ chair.  ‘Twas the same signal ever’ night.  Time t’ retire, which was my fav’rite, near.  Them sof’ blankets and quilts Liam’s mama give me that first night, what, two or three or four weeks ago now?  They become like ol’ frien’s, smellin’ like me, and wadded up jest the way I like ’em.  I’d lay down careful, take me inventory o’ all my parts.  First, my legs and feet, they’d set to twitchin’, then they’d get heavy and tired.  Then my middle and my shoulders, they’d push hard down into the covers, ‘long with my arms, then my head.  Feelin’ like I was heavier than a couple bushel o’ dry grits, but at the same time, light as them puffs o’air comin’ from Liam’s brother Lincoln sleep breathin’.

I never in my life felt more at ease.

I never in my life was such a fool.

How he done it, I don’t know and I ain’t aimin’ to ask, but he stole hisself into the leanto we boys slept in, quiet as a church mouse.  Hand pushed hard over my mouth and nose, I couldn’t breathe no how, not one suck in nor suck out.  LIke a sack o’ taters, Daddy, he wisked me out the back door, silent, not a footfall, not a breath, run me all the way down the lane,  stuff some ol’ rag plumb down my throat, then tie me up and toss me back o’ this truck.

I tried hard to look in his eyes durin’ all this turmoil, determine my likelihood of livin’ ‘r dyin’.  He never once, not once, look me full on in the face.  I be countin’ my blessin’s, ‘spite my pains and jostlin’ back here, I ain’t bein’ bullied nor beat.  He ain’t belted me one, not yet.

But we been drivin’ fer what seem like ages and hours, and I’m feelin’ my chances o’ comin’ out unscathed slidin’ some’eres ‘tween slim ‘n none.

I be leanin’ toward none.

The truck, we be comin’ to a stop.

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Best play possum till I sorts this thing out.

“Dang Me! Ought Take a Rope ‘n Hang Me!”

To: Who It May Concern

From: Punkett Boyle, fourteen years

 

Been avoiding Liam fer some days now, nigh on a week ‘r more.  He been leavin’ notes reg’lar on the front screen, but I been abscondin’ wid ’em ‘fore Mama see ’em.

And ‘fore Daddy.

I been savin’ ’em, though, tucked in my hidey-hole ‘hind my sleepin’ blankets, out to the back porch.  Hard tell when I may need rememberin’ I got me a frien’.

These here couple weeks, been ’bout that long Daddy, my own daddy, he been back.  He been sleepin’ on the ol’ saggin’ di-van in Mama’s front room.  He cleaned up and sweeped all them glass shards o’ Mama’s keepsakes.  He cry some, he plead some, he ain’t had him a drop, so he claim.  And I ain’t smelt nothin’.

So Mama let him stay.

Say Christian woman she is, she obligated to forgive.

I’d o’run him off, he don’t mean nothin’ to me.   Mama forget he hurt me real bad.  Scabbin’ jest now peelin’ off, blue and green on my face and neck and arms and middle ’bout faded, but my nose still swole and cain’t breathe me any air through it ‘thout it poppin’ and cracklin’.

‘Course, that there may be why I ain’t smelt no drink on Daddy’s person.  Cain’t smell nothin’ no more to begin with.

And he ain’t mess wid me since that first day.

Time, it does pass, and I be hopin’ so, too, will Daddy.  Jest ’cause I got his blood don’t mean I got his stock.  Lookin’ deep in his creased and saggin’ face when he’s snorin’ on that di-van most afternoons, I shore don’t see no resemblence none.

An’ if I was a believer like Mama, I’d be shoutin’ Hallelujah.

But I ain’t, so I’m not.

But I stop short o’cursin’ him, jest in case.

I been layin’ low, be it known.  I shore ain’t aimin’ to cause no trouble, so I jest go ’bout my business elsewhere, fa’ as I kin git from our little two room shack.  Ol’ Lucky, cowboy down to the garage south o’town, big ol’ hat, big ol’ belt buckle, and big ol’ chaw side his cheek, he let me clean the grease pits, long as I stay out o’sight.  Give me somethin’ to do.  Give me some spendin’ money fer plunkin’ in my hidey-hole.  Give me time t’sort my thinkin’.  Give me time to count.  Reached me 457 nails ‘long the back wall ‘fore Lucky me send me on my way.

But my thinkin’, that there’s why I’m puttin’ this down to paper.  Sortin’ alone in my head don’t always make it clear.

See here, my idee, from long ‘s I kin recollect, I felt me some sadness when I see’d little chil’ren, or dogs, get beat. Not jest fer the beatin’.  The hurt is bad enough.  But that they ain’t got no idee’ why ‘r what for they been gettin’ beat, that’s the thing.

It was them not knowin’ nor understandin’ what distressed my heart.

But now, now I got me a diff’rnt idee.  Them youngin’s, and them dogs, they ain’t got no idee and that there’s what in-solates them from the inside hurt.   Just like they wet when it rain and be dry when it don’t, with a beatin’ they hurt on the outside and when they don’t get beat, they don’t.  Either way, they got no idee of the why, nor don’t even give them a care, so they don’t hurt none on they insides with the thinkin’ and ponderin’ and wonderin’.

Jest a’rollin’ wid the punches, they do, (an’ I shore don’t mean that to make no amusements) n’then they goes on.

But me, Punkett Boyle, well, I ain’t one o’ them chil’ren, nor one o’them dogs.  And me,  I hurt plenty bad on the outside, let me tell you.  Felt me pain like I ain’t felt never in my life, deep down as fer as my bones and them some.

But what grieves me the most is the powe’ful pain I got me on the inside where they ain’t no bone nor marro’, wonderin’ jest what I done, or what I will do, or when I’m like to have me another go’roun’.  This my Daddy we talkin’ ’bout here.

Them little chil’ren, them dogs?  They got it easy.  It rain, they get wet.  They get beat, they hurt some, then forget.

Me, I ‘llow I will not be forgettin’ any time soon.

Got me no forgiveness in my heart, not fer Daddy,’n not too much fer Mama.

She hurt my heart the worse of all.

 

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t

 

“Dang Me! Ought t’Take a Rope ‘n Hang Me!

From: Punkett Boyle

To: An’b’dy list’nin’

 

Mama.

She still sick.  Coughin’ up a storm.  Cain’t ketch a breath.  Whistles when she sucks in.

Daddy.

He come back.

Me.

Beat black and blue and ever’whar over and under, and then some.

 

Had me some pages still, from the notebook Liam give me ‘while back.  Ain’t got nobody ‘roun’ here who can look at me full on ‘thout turnin’ away.  Mouth’s too swole and throat’s too poked to speak none, an’way.  Fingers ain’t much better, but they’s near the only part of me workin’ ‘tall.  So talkin’ to you ‘ppears to be what God give me t’day.

 

Don’t recall never settin’ eyes on my Daddy.  Mama say, when she ever did talk ’bout him, he lit out ‘fore I could set up.  Better off gone, she say.  Mean bugger.  Got me some older sisters what been married off and live up Chicago way.  Reckoned I could find them some way ‘t’other, as’ them some questions.  Don’ t got us no way get ‘hold o’them,  says Mama.  Got her a birthday card couple years ago, no address fer returnin’ the greetin’.  Mama’s got it taped it up to the wall, and while it’s faded near to nothin’, the “I love you, Mama” can still be read if you looks real close.  Means the world to her, and ain’t nob’dy ‘llowed to touch it.  Tape keeps yellerin’ and rottin’, and she keep tapin’ it right back up.

Mama love all her chil’ren.  But what it mean is this: what I don’t know, I may never not.  Don’t nob’dy here in Halesburg know nothin’ ’bout my Daddy they willin’ to share.

I give up my querryin’.

 

But last night, come ‘roun dinner time, me’n Sib, Mama’s son jest after me, we was heatin’ soups on the burner in the kitchen, we heard us a shout and a slam from the front porch.

“You in there Beulah?!  I know you is!  Get on out here, greet yo’ man!”

Me’n Sib, we looks at each other, Sib’s eyes big like cat’s saucers.  Cain’t move, neither o’us, and we stood stone still fer a minute too long.

Furniture tippin’, glass shatterin’, I kin only ‘magine Mama’s purties jest smashed to smithereens but move?  I ain’t ’cause I cain’t.

Like a funnel-wind twistin’ and heavin’, the curtains dividin’ the livin’ part o’ our ol’ shack from the backporch kitchen was buckled and wrinkled and wrung, wrenched and pulled down in a heap, big ol’ ugly face, all grimace and anger poke itself right into our’n.

“Who you, boy?  Who you? ”  Big thick paws, fingers strong and thick grab my neck like a clamp, pushin’ my jaw near clean to my nose.  My tippy toes barely touch the floor.  Where Sib hightail it to, I don’t know, but I cain’t holler, cain’t answer, cain’t near breathe ‘tall.

Big ol’ ugly face get so close to mine I can fair smell what he’d drunk fer dinner last night and this mornin’ and the last month, and sour and vomit and whiskey and beans. He twist my head till lights sprung up front my eyes.  Bells rung middle o’ my ears.

“Who you, boy?  You got peas fer brains?  Where Beulah?  Where my woman?  You tell me!  You TELL me!”

Now my Mama, long time ‘fore, was a full on beauty, all shiny black hair and long eyelashes and skin to this day like caramel ‘top ice cream sundae.  ‘Fore my recollections but I seen pictures hid in her dresser.  She’d had her a husband, and then some.  None us kids had us the same daddies.  Never did we fret none.  We all had us the same Mama and that there was the glue keep us fam’ly.

Mama love all her chil’ren.

And we all love her to eternity and back and forevermore.

So, if I had been able to speak to this monster of a beast heaved up from the gates of Hell come lookin’ fer her, I’d took what wuz comin’ and kep’ my mouth shut!

As it was, wudn’t no time to say nothin’ anyhow.  Man loosed his grip and slammed me upside the head hard, felt crackin’ and poppin’, landin’ me up against the pipin’ snakin’ down from the flue.  ‘Member seein’ quick snap o’ Mama’s nice wallpaper, saved from the fire down to the hardwar’ store last May.

Hurt some, but not as much as what come after.  I’m wont to countin’ most near ever’thin’.  I counts my steps to ‘n’from wherever I be.   I adds and subtracts the cats screechin’ come darkest night, I multiply and parse and divide the tweets of the birds and the hollerin’ and bickerin’ from the bar down the street.

But I lost me track of the pelts and the punches and kicks what rained on me last night.  Best I jest take it, and keep my mouth shut.

Went on fer plumb ever, seemed.  Lost my daylight ‘long the way, and come mornin’ I come to,  curled and mangled and unable to move tucked behind the potbellied stove.  Mama bent over me, sick as she was, but doin’ her best to wipe away the bleedin’, cryin’ and drippin’ and mumblin’ curse words.  Seen Sib over her shoulder, holdin’ a bowl fer her to worsh out her bloodied rag.

I hurt so.  Lord A’mighty, I hurt so.

 

Welcome home, Daddy.

 

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