Doc in Danger

 THE RIDE: Part One

We never could remember how he ended up tied to a bucking bull calf.

Or, some wonder, did he really? There is argument to this day. Some say yes. Some say no. Everybody agrees, though, that it sounded a lot like him.

His name was Furlough Thompson. He was born in November of 1943, so folks that were around back then understand how he got the name. Mama said old lady Thompson had five kids already, so she was running out of ideas by then and she never had been the imaginative sort in the first place.

When her husband left to go overseas, she told everybody that her prayers would keep him safe from the Nazis. When he didn’t come home after VE day, she took it in stride. “Them French women is she-devils,” was about all she would ever say about it. She didn’t like to talk much in the first place. In more sophisticated places, they would have called her “Taciturn Thompson."

After a period of real suffering, she married a man who worked at the Arsenal in Pine Bluff and she and the kids had it better from then on, although his—her new husband’s—skin turned yellow from the chemicals he worked with and he quit going to church on account of it. At least that’s what he said. It seemed that the prayers of Furlough’s mama never got completely answered. They weren't denied, just modified on their way back from Heaven. "His ways is different from ours," was the typical response to such things back then.

But I’m “branching.” Mama always said I did that. She was kin to the Tuckers who were famous story tellers, the bunch from down around Pansy. Pansy isn’t far from the Hogeye Bend community where Pappa was from. They met, he and Mama, at a play-party get together at General Lee Bohanon’s house before the first world war. That’s the one Mr. General Lee’s boy got killed in. His name was Stonewall Bohanon but we never knew him. We all just figured his name helped contribute to the heroism that got him killed.

            Anyway, Furlough being the youngest and spoiled, without a come-home daddy, he grew up wild, unmanaged, and untamed. By the early Fifties, he was a solid member of our little group that terrorized the good folks around the Snake Island community. We first just called him “M.D.,” some for “mighty dumb,” some for “most daring,” and a few, though never to his face, for “missing daddy.” Later, someone hit on the idea of just calling him “Doc,” and that’s what he went by the rest of his life. He was fearless to a fault, ignorant of pain, and totally unable to predict the consequences of his actions. He never volunteered for, but never declined the offer of, an adventure. He was, we all felt, the very picture of bold action.

That’s where the bull calf came in. Bravery, imagination, fearlessness, leading by example, you could have assigned a bunch of motivators.

I always just laid it off on pure boredom.

Continued next Fiction Friday