HOME FROM THE SEA

By Jimmie von Tungeln

             The huge ship lumbered nearer the bridges, shuddering from the turning of the screw but running true and straight. With a length of two football fields and the height of a ten-story building, it dominated Charleston Harbor, rolling alongside the smaller craft with the disdain of a weary queen. A boat had delivered the pilot nearly a mile back and the ship was still moving unfettered through the treacherous waters, with Castle Pinckney off the starboard bow. Soon the tugs would pull alongside her and begin to ease her gently up the Cooper River like boy scouts escorting a venerable old lady through traffic. Ahead, two massive and ancient bridges spanned the river, inviting the traveler home.

            Tim Hinson, Boatswain’s Mate Third Class of the United States Navy, leaned against a bulkhead watching the shoreline drift by as if it were a movie set. A short while earlier, he had stood on the fantail as the ship sailed between forts Sumter and Moultrie, the scene oozing history into the morning’s light. It would be his last view of the harbor, the end of an era that had begun four long years ago, in 1966—an eternity earlier.

            “Your last?” a voice said, breaking through the sounds of the wind and the ships deep rumble. Hinson looked to see a young Seaman Apprentice at his side and recognized him as one of the new arrivals to the after deck section, the group that cared for the ship’s rigging and operated the small craft assigned to the vessel. He was a curious young man, completing his first time at sea. His face pleaded for a friendly word.

            Hinson said, “Don’t you have something to do?” He walked to the rail and rested his arm. The two were amidships, away from most of the activity and out of most direct lines of sight.

            “I’m supposed to be fetching some ‘water line’ but I’ve fallen for that one before,” the youth said. “Can’t you cut me a little slack, Boats?”

            “Have they told you to bring them the vertical windlass yet?”

            “Oh yes. I even stood the ‘Mail Buoy Watch.’ I went five places looking for ‘bulkhead remover’ and tried all afternoon one day to find Charlie Noble.”

            “Screw it,” Hinson said, smiling. “Just don’t tell anyone I said you could lollygag.”

            “Someone comes, I’ll ask them where the waterline locker is and skedaddle.” He eyed Hinson with suspicion.  “You gonna sail your hat off?”

            “Now what business could that possible be of yours?” Hinson said. “Did Chief Zelmer send you to spy on me?”

            “There’s a bunch of guys on the …,” he stopped, opened one palm, then the other, chose the left, and said. “uh, port side that are going to sail theirs, if they don’t get caught.”

            “Good for them,” Hinson said. “Maybe if I don’t throw you overboard you will live to sail yours off someday.”

            “Weren’t you in ‘Nam’ before you came here?”

            Hinson turned to look at him. “You got something against that?”

            “Oh no, not me,” the young man said. “But there are some NCOs, officers too, that really resent you.”

            “What makes you think that?”

            “I hear talk,” he said. “They say they give the guys who come here from Vietnam the shittiest jobs on the ship to show them their place. Do you think that is true?”

            “Well, they did make me work with fender-heads like you.”

            “Oh, come on Boats, I’m just trying to pass the time.”

            “Sure,” Hinson said. He unzipped his bluejacket and reached inside. The white sailor’s hat rested against his body rolled neatly into a saucer shape, ready for sailing.

            The youth noticed and said, “Is it really an old Navy tradition?”

            “What, to throw a nosey seaman overboard?”

            “No,” the lad said, “to sail a hat off the ship and into the sea when you come in from your last cruise.”

            “That’s what they tell me.”

            “And,” the youth continued, “you write the names of all your home ports on it?”

            “Yep, of course some have more than others.”

            “How many are on yours?”

            Hinson regarded the other. “Just three,” he said. “Waiting for Vietnam, Vietnam, and two years on this old bucket serving with over-inquisitive seamen.”

            “Aren’t you the Coxswain for the Admiral’s Barge?”

            “I was. Next week I’ll be a civilian and they don’t let civilians drive the Admiral around.”

            “Did you ever think of re-upping?”

            “Do you really have shit for brains or is that a look you have practiced?”

            “Actually I have two years of college.”

            “Well good for you,” Hinson said. “The Navy needs educated men. You know what Chief Zelmer says about Bosun’s Mates, don’t you?”

            “No, what?”

            “He says that once there was one on board who was so dumb the other Bosun’s Mates started noticing it.”

            The youth laughed. “He’s funny, ain’t he?”

            “Sometimes,” Hinson said.

            “You know what he yelled at us when we were trying to get underway?”

            “I can’t imagine.”

            “He said we looked like a bunch of monkeys trying fuck a football.”

            Hinson smiled. He leaned over the rail and watched as the spans of the two giant bridges, the Silas N. Pearman and the Grace Memorial, seemed to move closer.

            “A civilian,” the youth said. “That must be nice.”

            Hinson turned and said, “Lad, would you like some advice?”

            “Sure,” the youth said.

            “Don’t be thinking about civilian life. You’ve a long time to go and that sort of thinking will drive you crazy. Try to enjoy this man’s Navy.”

            “Did you?”

            “At times,” Hinson said, “after I quit fighting it 24 hours a day. Want to know something else?”

            “I suppose.”

            “Don’t look for gratitude because it won’t be there.”

            The youth looked stricken. “You mean they don’t appreciate us out in the real world?”

            “Only in the abstract,” Hinson said. He stopped and seemed to relish a memory. “There was one time recently that was different, but just one since I came aboard this ship.”

            “When was that?”

            Hinson said, “Have you heard the crew talk about when the ship docked at Fort Lauderdale?”

            “Oh man,” the youth said. “That sounded like some real fun.”

            “When we were coming up the canal to our berth,” Hinson said, “there were huge condominiums lining the banks.”

            “And?”

            “It was as if people were telegraphing ahead as the ship moved along. Flags started appearing on the balconies and people started waving at us. Of course they were all old farts. One old guy on our side even saluted us.” He stopped and looked away. “That was nice.”

            “So they did appreciate you … us?”

            “Lad,” Hinson said, “that was the first time in three years that I had received kindness at the hand of strangers, and it would be the last of my military career.”

            The youth stared into the water. “The only time?”

            “No,” Hinson said. “There was one other. Long before, when I hadn’t been in much longer than you have.” The ship veered a point or so to port as it started its passage beneath the bridges. “Now,” said Hinson, “if you will excuse me, I have something to do.”

            With that, he reached into his jacket and drew out the rolled hat. With one swing, he sailed it into the harbor as the shadow of the first bridge moved athwartships toward them. It spun itself into a high arc and settled with grace and solemnity on the surface.  Simultaneously, dozens of other hats sailed forth until Charleston Harbor was dotted with white circles dancing on the waves like the stars of a flag waving in the wind.

            Hinson turned to the youth. “One other thing,” he said.

            “What’s that?”

            “Be careful in this city. They hate service men, especially sailors. The cops will beat the hell out of you for looking at them funny.”

            “Don’t the people here appreciate us?”

            “Not particularly.”

            “They’re not patriotic?”

            “Doesn’t matter,” Hinson said. “As my mother used to say, familiarity breeds contempt. And, as I have learned, contempt overrides patriotism any day of the week.”

            The youth looked stunned.

            “Don’t worry,” Hinson said. “It will be just fine. Someday they may even build a monument to us. Just stay away from the officers, go on liberty every chance you get, don’t catch the clap, and don’t volunteer for anything, ever. You will do just fine.”

            The youth’s face broke into a smile. “Thanks Boats,” he said. “Thanks for talking to me. You’re the first one who has … I mean … man to man.”

            “My pleasure,” Hinson said, “Now get your ass back to the fantail and let’s moor this ship. America needs us, whether she knows it or not.” As he spoke, the stern of the great ship passed beneath the second bridge and the grand old lady was home from the sea once more.

            And so it begins …

The Road to Glory

 

Memories

By Jimmie von Tungeln

Mama used to say us girls picked on Eula Faye or else egged her on, but I can tell you that she gave about as good as she got. Like the time we stole her Bible verse. We all had a good laugh out of it at the time but we didn’t get ahead of her. No sir. Not at all.

Now there are those who wouldn’t think this little episode was important. They have never lived out at the end of the world in south Arkansas where everybody you knew was either direct-kin or step-kin, or sometimes both. It didn’t take much to create a story that would last forever. Particularly if you were as poor as we were.

After Daddy died, Mama raised us as best she could. While she didn’t hold out much for preaching, or churches in general—I think it had something to do with the hardness of her life—she did send us off to church when we got to aggravating her.

Ever third Sunday Brother Elmer Tisdale would ride out from Caldron with his old mare pulling his wagon and hold services in Pleasant Grove Church. I guess this must have been about 1930. I couldn’t have been over twelve or thirteen, I reckon since I was married and gone by the time I was sixteen.

The church was nothing but a little frame building set off from a cemetery that went way back almost to the civil war. My granddaddy had been a charter member but he had died young so Mama could barely remember him. The church building rested under the shade of three enormous oak trees. We kids called them “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” but not around any grown-ups for they had no sense of humor whatsoever about religion.

We would gather up around nine-thirty in the morning and have an hour of Sunday School before the services began. So Mama made us leave early enough to serve the complete sentence. Naturally she didn’t trust us as far as she could spit and I can still see her on the porch as we took off, threatening to cut a switch and wear us out if we didn’t get there in time.

The older ones were gone by then and it was just Sister and Jim and me had to go. Mama made us because she said it wouldn’t do us any harm and might do us some good. She was welcome to her opinion. We had our own, but we went just like she told us to.

We dawdled around as much as we could. Jim would usually cut us off some grapevines to smoke on the way and we would make up all sorts of imaginary trips that we were really going on. None of them included a church house. Hog Eye Bend Creek would be the River Nile and a clump of oak trees would be a pyramid. We used clouds for the Alps and the road we were on was the main street through Paris. For a bunch of country kids, we weren’t bad at making things up.

Anyway, Hattie Ruth Turner taught school up at Armistead so they had her teach Sunday School to the girls on preaching day. There were about seven or eight of us. Eula Faye was distant kin and her daddy had a pension from World War One. They also owned a grocery store out on the state highway, so they was about the richest family in the community. She was a round-faced thing with freckles ever place they had a spot to be in. Her mamma kept her hair done up in curls to tight I bet you could have played music on them. She kind of had this little bounce when she walked and we would giggle that someday she might just bounce off like a rubber ball. She would hear us and say that rich women in the city walked like that. We liked her okay, I reckon. We didn’t mistreat her. It was just that she would sometimes create the opportunity for a laugh or just make one up on her own.

All the girls had to have a Bible verse memorized to recite first thing in Sunday School. This was supposed to help us into Heaven in some way, but it wasn’t real clear to us how and we didn’t care much for it. It might have been due to the lack of scriptural resources available to a bunch of little country kids. Some of those girls were from families that couldn’t even afford a Bible. We had one but our step-daddy wouldn’t hardly let us touch it. So we were in a constant of agitation about it. It sure wasn’t our favorite part of this whole salvation thing.

Miss Hattie, since she was a regular school teacher too, had to remember what side her bread was buttered on so she would always let Eula Faye go first. We would start to snicker even before she stood up. We met in the back of the church house and the boys in front. Eula Faye would make sure the boys were watching her and then when the room got real quiet, she would brush a hand across her hair and say it just like some movie actress.

“Jesus wept, John 11:35”

She got away with it ever Sunday.

Then we would have to stand up and quote some regular verse. And you weren’t allowed to repeat someone else’s choice. It got to where it played on our nerves.

Well this one Sunday, we fixed it up so Sister held Eula Faye up outside the door on some pretense and she hadn’t come in when we started. So Eloise Covington jumped up and asked if she could go first. What could Miss Hattie say?

Eloise was in on it, see? She stumbled around until she saw Eula Faye come in then Eloise shouted out loud enough for the whole church to hear: “Jesus wept, John 11:35”

You could just about see the color drain out of Eula Faye’s face when she took her seat. We swallowed our giggles until our stomachs started to swell, expecting to see Eula Faye have a nervous breakdown. But she didn’t miss a beat when Miss Hattie called on her. She stood up and took a deep breath. The boys knew something was up and had all stopped talking and were watching like a bunch of hounds at hog dressing time. She nodded to them as if they were her audience and then gave us her best “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet” look. Then she announced to the world, as if she might be telling the Red Sea to part.

“Moses crept, John 3:15.”

She said it real loud and then just set back and smiled the same as if she had just recited some long-winded psalm. We all broke up laughing until Miss Hattie stared it out of us. The boys didn’t know a Bible verse from a horse-collar so they mostly just stared with their mouths all open. Then it was all over and we re-commenced our recitation period. Miss Hattie never let on like anything unusual happened at all.

That was the day we knew it wasn’t going to be easy to get something by Eula Faye. But Sister and I laughed all the way home over it anyway. Jim just smoked a grapevine and looked puzzled over the whole thing. We talked some about the next meeting cause it was set to be Baptizing Day. We liked to watch that. Sometimes Mama would even come with us and it made for some good memories.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Assignment

By Jimmie von Tungeln

           

Truth be known, I didn’t want to do the piece in the first place. Hell, I wasn’t even a journalist. I was a consultant, a pretty good one, and should have stuck to it. But I had been doing these modest little columns for a Little Rock quarterly that promoted historic preservation. I was acquainted with the editor, I lived in a so-called historic district, and I knew most of the people who lived there. So, I agreed to help.

 It was a good fit. People associated living in historic neighborhoods with eccentricity back in those days. Things that supported that viewpoint were always welcome. So, folks liked my little “human interest” pieces. As for me, I was happy to stick to them. There was no chance of running out of characters, and I didn’t have to travel.

            Then the editor called me one day and asked me to stop by. When I got there, she up and gave me an assignment. Just like that, like I was some cub reporter or something. This posed a noticeable departure from the usual process whereby I just picked out some local oddball and wrote about how they had adjusted to living in an old house.

This time she picked the subject. Why? Beats me. Maybe I was getting stale or she was trying to sell more copies or something. Rather than speculate, I went along with her for the moment.

            Well guess what? You never know what dish life is going to serve up and what decisions are going to throw themselves in front of you, threatening your hemostasis like a group of western bandits with their pistols drawn and ready.

Here’s how it started.

            A local banker, known to us all as a neighbor and a nice guy, had bought one of the most historic homes in the city. It boasted such long-term ownerships that the house and grounds came with a caretaker who had worked there since the Depression. Mr. Pitts cared for the grounds and lived in a small apartment attached to the carriage house, a.k.a. the garage. He was a quiet little man of advanced age who lived alone and remained out of sight when not working. All the neighbors knew him to nod at, but none of us had ever talked to him.

            The editor explained the human-interest angle. Supposedly, a friendship had grown up between Mr. Pitts and the banker’s young son Alfie—Alfred Chidester LaRue was his full name—a little blond-haired kid from the high-rent side of life. Get it? Old black gardener and white heir apparent, the image of an odd couple as corny as it was appealing to our liberal audience. All I had to do was interview the old man, mine a few historic nuggets and take a picture of him and the kid together. It would produce enough “ain’t that cutes?” to make a tough man buy a round of drinks. There was no Pulitzer looming, but it would get me through until another deadline appeared, like a hungry tiger emerging from the mist. No problem.

Anyway, I didn’t have to. These columns represented a public service for me. In other words, I didn’t get paid. Seeing my words in print provided my only emolument. So, I had a degree of leverage unavailable to a poor inky wretch actually writing for a living.

I could have refused the assignment and interviewed, instead, a friend who was restoring a cottage near ours and who looked more like Charles Manson than Manson did himself. He played cello in the city’s symphony orchestra and would have been great material for a photo essay, the research being carried out over a couple of beers. Why should I spend a dry afternoon interviewing the town’s oldest gardener? It didn’t make a bit of sense. “To hell with the editor and her aspirations,” I kept telling myself. Was I my own man or what?

            Naturally, I took the assignment. I had to go through the banker himself and he pretty much outlined what he wanted the piece to say. Alfie was an only-child and, having few young friends in the neighborhood, he had taken up with Mr. Pitts. Followed him everywhere. Shared secrets with him. Even helped with the yardwork. Well, maybe a little. The important thing was the friendship that had developed between man and boy. That was the angle.

            Sure. One of the greatest and most persistent dreams of American Caucasians is that, someday, an African-American will love them. But I could pretend with the best, so I pressed on to complete the assignment.

            I set up an appointment for the next Saturday afternoon. It was a nice autumn day that welcomed a person outdoors like an old friend wanting to show you his garden. I grabbed an ancient Rolliflex camera that I used for such work, made sure I had pen and paper, and walked the two blocks to the house.

The house sat on a half-block facing one of the two main streets leading directly to downtown. When it was built, wealth had followed the topography. The larger houses were on the highest ground and homes fell off in size and value as the topography dropped. It was never more than a short walk from the mansions to the homes from which domestic help could be hired, for practically nothing, in the good old days. In other words, urban form followed economic function. Households weren’t separated by income as they are now. That’s how, thanks to the historic preservation craze, I could afford to live near a bunch of mansions.

            Anyway, I arrived. Mr. Pitts had dressed up a bit. He always wore neat clothes with a narrow-brimmed dress hat. Today he had added a tie. He stood at attention with his hands to his side and presented a smile like a boot-camper at inspection. Alfie was bouncing a ball against a tree and the parents stood by with pride. All was set for this to be a painless adventure. Wham, bam, thank you m’aam and I meet my deadline.

            I called little Alfie over and made him sit for a picture with Mr. Pitts. As I lined it up, I pulled a few grunts out of the kid to the effect that he liked Mr. Pitts and enjoyed helping him with the yard work. Mr. Pitts sat smiling through thick eyeglass lenses that distorted his face to where it looked like one of those cartoon characters that has just seen something either real juicy or real dangerous.

            So far, so good.

            Figuring I had about all out of Alfie I was going to get, I excused him with “Now Alfie, why don’t you let Mr. Pitts and me visit while you get back to your yard work?” In other words, “Scram, kid!”

            Alfie was more than happy to be rid of adults so he walked to beyond the garage. There, someone had dug a shallow pit from which smoke was rising. Within the pit, I assumed from the smell, were dead leaves, trash, and some sort of organic waste. Alfie amused himself by kicking more leaves into the fire.

His mother saw the opportunity and appeared from nowhere with a tray of cookies and iced tea. She sat them on the bench between us and asked, sweetly, and devoid of sincerity, the way a southern woman can ask, if we were comfortable. After receiving affirmatives, she then swished away amid a crackling of petticoats and an almost audible smile. I pushed the tray toward Mr. Pitts. He smiled and pushed it back toward me.

            “No, please, go ahead,” I stammered, fumbling for my writing pen.

            “Thank you, suh,” he said. He exaggerated the “suh” so I—so we both—would know he didn’t attach any meaning to it. Then he took a cookie in one hand and a glass of tea in another. He neither drank nor ate right away, though. He rested the arm with the cookie on his leg and wrapped a hand around the glass of tea as if to keep it from flying away. He smiled at me. His eyes looked even larger than before.

            A breeze filled the yard and blew smoke from Alfie’s fire toward us. As it did, Mr. Pits finally raised the cookie in a soft arc to his mouth and took a small bite. He lowered it and raised his glass with the same grand gesture and sipped his tea.

            Hoping to get started, I asked him how long he had lived around there.

            “Oh, I was born around here,” he said. “I been here for as long as I can remember. We lived on Tenth Street but it went for the freeway. House ain’t there no more.”

            He chewed his cookie with what I thought was a grim expression. As he did, the smoke circled us and I caught the pleasant smell of burning leaves punctuated by the sharp odor of the other trash smoldering in the pit. Mr. Pitts stiffened slightly and his eyes retreated behind his thick glasses.

            “I been here since when things were different than they are now,” he said. “Way different.”

Then, that far into the interview, he stopped talking. His voice didn’t exactly trail away as much as it fluttered beyond us like a feather caught in a whirlwind.

            I was losing him. I hurried back to work.

            “Different in what way?” I asked.

            He just looked at me. He seemed to struggle to respond and when he did, it wasn’t really to me but, it seemed, to the trees and the garden and maybe to the city itself with all its history and smoky secrets.

            “Way yonder different. Folks weren’t as good to you then.” He took another bite of cookie and drank from his glass. That energized him.

“My folks had it hard back then.”

            I tasted panic. Alfie had disappeared behind the garage and I felt as if I were on an asteroid hurtling through space with an alien. This affair wasn’t going according to plan. I nodded as if I understood and scratched on my pad without looking up. He continued.

            “The worse was what they done to Mr. Carter.”

            “Mr. Carter?” That was all I could manage.

            “Ain’t nobody should have had that done to them. Nobody. I don’t care if he was colored.”

            I gave up and stared at my pad. What was he saying, and where was he taking me? I stared right through my pad and into the ground. From therein oozed a memory. I met it halfway and solved the mystery.

Back in the 1920s, there had been a lynching in Little Rock, less than a half-mile from where we sat. It happened right in the middle of what was then the center of the “colored” commercial area, along Ninth Street.

“Oh my god,” I thought. “This is where he is going.” I tried to raise my head but it took three attempts to overcome the gravity created by that realization. When I did manage to look up, Mr. Pitts was somewhere far away, and scared. I mean really scared. His hand was shaking so much the tea was spilling.

            “I remember that day like it was yesterday,” he continued. They made us all go inside, for they knew there was to be trouble. I was just a child, but the oldest. My Momma put the youngest under the bed and made me watch after them. She said the white folks had done killed Mr. Carter and was draggin’ him down Ninth Street behind a car. She was scared and she made us all cry.

“We could hear people yellin’. They was honkin’ their horns and yellin’ so loud we could hear them in the bedroom. Wasn’t no colored folks on the street, except Mr. Carter and he was dead. They hung him and beat him and drug him up and down Ninth Street. We was all hidin’ and cryin.’ My Momma was tellin’ us to be quiet.” He stopped, looked away and back, directly at me.

“They shouldn’t have done that.”

            Here I was. It was a nice brisk autumn day and I should have been somewhere else, but I was sitting in someone else’s yard listening to an old man reciting his version of our city’s most awful moment and I couldn’t escape.

            “They drug him and drug him. All back and forth on Ninth Street. We could hear the cars and them horns honkin’, the honkin,’ oh my lord, the honkin’. Ain’t nobody ought to have that done to them. We was still cryin’ when they built a fire at Ninth and Broadway and burned him up. We could smell the smoke and that made us cry harder. My momma had some cookies in her apron pocket and she gave one to the younger kids to hush them up. She broke one in half and gave me a piece. She took the other half and then she started cryin’ too.”

            He looked at the cookie in his hand, then returned to that awful day.

            “Somebody said they broke one of his arms off and waved it at the cars going down Broadway,” he said. “I don’t know. Nobody looked out the window the whole time, for we was too scared.”

            I pretended to write something.

            “Too bad,” he said so low I barely heard him. “Them was bad days. Bad for us all.”

            The smoke circled us and I sat as still as I could. Mr. Pitts stopped talking and sat with his hand with the cookie resting on his leg. As the fog of remembrance cleared, he began to smile. He didn’t say anything. He was done talking to white strangers for the day.

            He sat there proud and triumphant, a black-skinned Cicero having had his say, needing neither accolades nor approval. I thanked him, not sure at all whether he even heard me, and then eased away and headed home. I was all confusion, trying to sort out what had just happened. I still had an assignment but what the hell was I going to write? The truth about what happened? That would be the honest thing. It might even be a good piece. Shake the readers up a bit. Let them know that history wasn’t all about cute Victorian houses. Hell yes!

            Back home, I sat in the kitchen and stared through the window. When I tried, I could hear the shouts on the street, feel the throb of the car engines running, and smell the acrid smoke of man and wood burning.

Damn that old man!

Outside the afternoon was dissolving into evening. The shadows got longer and darker the way our thoughts will as we doze. Beyond the kitchen window, the air was still crisp and clear. Inside, it was dark and gloomy. The evening sky changed purposefully that time of year like a lover moving from caresses to kisses, and then to the dark undertones of passion. My thoughts moved that way, too, as I reflected on the day and what it was trying to tell me. Maybe it was trying to tell me to be brave, or truthful …, or honest. Maybe it was suggesting that I approach what I was doing with something a little deeper than just seeing my name in print. Maybe it was just trying to tell me to say something else entirely, before darkness came. Maybe. Maybe.

After a time, I stood up and retrieved a beat-up Remington typewriter and package of paper from a closet and carried them, with as much gentleness as I could muster, into the kitchen. I placed the typewriter on the kitchen table so I could see beyond it into the deepening gloom. Then I slid a page of paper into it and turned the cylinder so the paper was position precisely across the top, aligned there neat and worthy of higher-level thought. I drew and released a long breath of sad air—air that had once moved through the city and down the streets and around the large oak trees past the moving cars and quaint old houses and had once even flowed around the twitching, smoking body of John Carter.

I didn’t want to, but I smelled that smoke.

Click, click, I advanced the paper.

I was ready. My mind was as clear as the way of a traveler making the last turn on the last curve before home. I rubbed my hands. I thought how funny it would be to make the Sign of the Cross.

Instead, I started to type: “Mr. Otis Pitts, age 70 and a lifelong resident of Little Rock, has a new best friend who is only five years old.”

 July 2009

Revised 2017

Misbehaving

 My Casper the Friendly Ghost Summer

By Jimmie von Tungeln

             What a summer. One hesitates to speak of it with any degree of levity whatsoever as it began with a family tragedy of deep proportions. A cousin, one of those people who traveled through life beloved by all who know him─a smiling sort who never raised a voice or started an argument─died in a freak automobile accident. He was hitchhiking from Pine Bluff, Arkansas to his home near Rison and caught a ride in a delivery truck, one those with open doors on either side. The truck veered of the pavement, hit a bridge embankment, and threw the lad into the air. He landed badly and died instantly. He was still in his teens, and his name was Jimmy Dale von Tungeln.

            After the mourning, the funeral, the remembrances, and other traumas that death introduces into the mind and imagination of a 12-year old, the affair would have drifted into family folklore for me except for one fact, a fact that followed me like a lost puppy.

            My name is Jimmie Gayle von Tungeln.

            Now I didn’t connect these facts when the brief account of the tragedy appeared in The Pine Bluff Commercial. A sense of it came to me a week later at my father’s grocery store south of city. It was before daylight and the whole family had turned out to accommodate the first truckload of cotton choppers for the summer. There was a thick fog that morning that wrapped the store in an eerie glow and gave it a gloomy aura as if it had been set down gently in place by the fairy people. At least that was what I was thinking as I returned from carrying out a load of trash.

Just as I reached the building, the truck pulled up. It was what we call in the south a “bob truck” that had been fitted with benches and a canvas top. It would scour the countryside of a morning and collect anyone wishing to chop cotton for a day and then deliver them home in the evening. It would stop at our store early so the hands could purchase something to eat for dinner (some of ya’ll call it lunch) and again on the way home so they could purchase something for supper that night and breakfast the next morning. It served those who led a hard life with few breaks.

But back to my story. It would happen that, as I reached the store, the first one to disembark from that vessel of despair was a man who lived a mile or so down the road and was known locally as “Happy Bill.” He was considered “incompetent,” as my father would say but maintained a fair reputation as a cotton chopper and a better one as a picker. His name derived from his demeanor and, as far as I know, neither an evil nor covetous thought ever issued from his joyous soul. This morning he hopped from the truck with his customary good nature and stood peering through the fog looking for the front door of the store.

Instead, he saw me.

I won’t attempt to describe in full the events of the next few minutes. I will only mention that Bill sprang fully erect back into the truck without even bending his knees. He uttered a cry that I am quite sure had never been heard on his continent, followed by a stream of gibberish totally unintelligible to me but, apparently understood by his fellow travelers as eyes, white with fear, began to appear from within the truck’s enclosure.

It took my father and the driver of the truck nearly 30 minutes to straighten out the misunderstanding, to the displeasure of several waiting cotton growers.

Happy Bill never came to our store again after that.

The second related experience occurred the next Saturday. I was enjoying the weekly matinee at the old Saenger Theater and had made my way to the concession stand. As I approached, I recognized a girl from school, paying the cashier for a box of popcorn and a soda. She was an extremely cute one, and I was arranging my best smile as a weapon of disarmament when she turned around and saw me. I saw her soft blue eyes, but what I heard was the sound of a cup of “Cocola” hitting the floor followed by the plop of the popcorn box. I looked and saw liquid spreading from the cup and popcorn kernels bouncing against my shoes. When I looked up, her blue eyes had turned a color more like that of a wet army blanket.

“You!” She said.

As a result of this mortifying experience, I finally understood the opportunities afforded by this confusion. In short, I began, and I am ashamed to admit this these many years thereafter, to have a little fun with it. I would purposefully sneak in behind classmates spied at baseball games or at parks and be waiting plaintively until they turned. A little talcum powder was found to heighten the impact, as were a couple of smears of my sister’s eye-shadow.

I particularly enjoyed the time I caught, Benny “Belcher” Bohanon waiting outside the Boys Club late on afternoon. I approached him from an alley and when he turned, I asked in a vapory voice, “Do you remember the time you greased my eyeglasses with your filthy fingers during math class?”

It went well until the day we had to register for school. I don’t remember whether I planned it that way or not, but Miss Womble was alone in the room studying a list as I walked up to place my name among those thirsty for another year of knowledge. Not wishing to afford a student the dignity of immediate attention, she continued for read for another full minute. Then she looked up.

The color drained from her face like gasoline falling from the bulb of one of those old overhead dispensers. I’ll swear the temperature in the room dropped a degree or two. She opened her mouth to speak, but her dentures failed to respond to the crisis and merely stayed in place, obviously not wishing to participate in this horror.

I gave her my most winsome smile.

“I thought you were …,” she said. “I thought you had been ….”  Finally, “I thought you were dead.”

I knew better, but something came over me—one of those wild, youthful impulses that tramples one’s better judgment like a raging bull on the streets of Pamplona. “I am, I said,” then I paused for effect. “I only came back to haunt you.”

Up until that point, it was my worst mistake of my life. After the parent calling, the threats, the exhortation, the promise of a front row seat in Hell, and the writing 100 times of “I will not dishonor the dead, I will respect my teachers, and I will not try to be cute,” I was exonerated. At least I graduated from my seat among the penitentiary-bound, to a more elevated one among those with simply no apparent redeeming qualities.

I feel quite sure the experience prevented me from ever going to medical school.

At any rate, I have assiduously attempted to honor the deceased to my utmost ability since that sad episode. I have also treated my teachers as gods and goddesses. Sad to say, thought, I do fall prey to trying to act cute from time to time.

Even at my age.

End Of The Ride

 In the last installments, we met Furlow Thompson and his band of followers. Finding a bull calf with its owner gone, Furlow decides the group should herd the calf into a chute and set him up for a ride. The first try didn't go well, so he orders a second ride and a second length of rope. We join them. 

We were stunned.

Not a one of us wanted to move. Not a one of us wanted Furlow Thompson to be angry enough to get back at us later. Not a one us wanted to be kicked from the club. Not a one of us wanted to torture that poor calf any longer. Not a one of us didn’t dread seeing Furlow in charge of our destiny. All we had to do was not move. We could be free from his spell. Let him proceed on his own.

 “I’ll get the rope,” Bobby Joe Hankins said. With that, we went into action.

Within minutes, we had the calf in the chute, the gate ready, Furlow astride the young beast, and the new piece of rope tying his feet beneath its belly. The other length was looped around Furlow’s hand perpendicular to the calf’s frame. We all stood back. With his free hand, he motioned for T-Boy to come to the gate. He shook his head. The second time the commandment came with a long oath involving a racial term. T-Boy obeyed, despite the danger to himself. We saw his hand tremble as the grabbed the latch that held the gate closed with one and held a length of fence with the other.

Furlow nodded. The gate flew open, the calf roared into the pen. Furlow ducked his head under a cross-member and came along for the ride.

The calf ran over T-boy and left him lying in the dirt. The rest of us scattered. Milton Henderson didn’t move fast enough, and the calf hit him next. He flew into Ralph Wilson and knocked him into the fence of the pen, knocking out a length. With that, the calf spun to his left and Furlow fell to the right, perpendicular to the calf’s body. With that, he became a whirling sledge, threatening anything in the way. “Get me off this thing,” he yelled.

Nobody moved. In fact, most of us backed away from this dangerous apparition. Everyone moved, that is, except Raymond Hester. He was standing fast, from fear more than a willingness to help, and found himself slammed by Furlow’s body. Raymond flew backwards into a water trough, thrashing with his head barely visible.

Furlow’s head was nearly reaching the ground. His feet had rotated to the calf’s side and his shoulders bounced each time they hit the ground. Around and around they went, with Furlow yelling curses at us for not helping him. He had passed us four times before, without discussing it, we herded the calf into a corner of the pen while Boogy Shannon ran up with a knife and severed the rope holding Furlow onto the calf. There was a “thump.” Furlow fell to the ground and looked up at us.

 He smiled. “That was some ride,” he said. “I showed him, didn’t I though?”