Johanne (F)

What I can tell you is I moved back in with my brother and sister-in-law to cut expenses while I finished my graduate degree at the city university. Each college was housed in separate buildings, and each building was built around an open square enclosing benches and live oaks and crape myrtles, and magnolias that towered to the upper reaches of the second story. 

That day I sat on one of the benches in the square of the liberal arts building, idly thumbing through the textbook for my Into to Romanticism course, hoping to find a poem easily translated into Spanish for Doctor Munoz, who insisted on such exercises to strengthen both of our word-brains as he called them.

Anissa, who as it turns out was there on a cultural exchange from Perpignan, sat down at the other end of the bench and stacked her books between us.  My first glance took in her red espadrilles. What her first glance assessed, I cannot say, but when we did make eye contact, her smile was slight and her eyes were green and her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail that stuck out more to the side than behind her head. I placed my thumb at Keats’ ”When I have fears that I may cease to be” and asked for her name.

The following week we met at the oyster bar just beyond the university’s main gate, and she insisted in mostly sure English that I should—I must—read Triestes Tropiques. Tuesdays at The Deck oysters on the half shell and beer in small plastic cups were a nickel apiece. I had two dollars.

If we were not in love, we at least yearned in a way that obliged us to hold hands when walking across the parade ground, or to sit with our knees touching when on barstools, or hug each other from behind when the other was seated and concentrated on the text open on the desk. And when the lights were turned off and the stars were out, we would allow ourselves to forget all of our words.

Together by plane at the end of the spring semester we travelled to Montreal so that Anissa could visit the library at College Jean-de-Brebeuf because a Professor Hansen maintained several rare monographs on the Piraha tribe. The pregnancy she announced to me with tears in her eyes.

We were sharing a large bowl of steamed mussels, but she kept pushing them back to my side of our little sidewalk table. Her green eyes filled with tears. “I don’t understand” is the phrase that I chose to repeat. “I must go home” was her answer each and every time.

Now I stand, shifting my weight, in the lobby of a hotel on Wentworth Street, waiting for my daughter who is in the city with the Ministere de l’Education Nationale to finish meeting with local officials. Ladson 2014

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Uncle Martin (F)

Running nearly due east off of Highway 701, the driveway to my uncle’s home stretches for more than a quarter of a mile on crushed oyster shells, and along the ride in, the vineyard spans out left and right as part of the nearly two hundred acres that my uncle planted more than 20 years ago. The Black Spanish vines, or what is left of them, are aggressively contested by a variety of weeds and brush, but most of the posts and the wire are still generally intact.

The house itself, which is in need of a coat of white paint, is a large single-story affair with four chimneys, very much set apart by its deep porch that runs along both sides and across the front. The brick steps—six steps up to the porch—could use some repair, and the handrail on the right side is no longer there. 

I got out of my truck and stretched, having driven up from Jacksonville that late September morning without stopping, and took in a deep breath. The wind was from the east, and I thought I could smell the ocean and figured that somewhere toward the sun, the Inlet ought to be butted up against the Atlantic. 

When I started toward the house, the screen door swung wide and out stepped my Aunt Karen.

“Well, Thomas! Thomas, Thomas, Thomas.”  She waited for me to come up onto the porch, and she leaned up to kiss me on my cheek and then hugged me around my waist.  “You were just a boy, just a boy the last time—when?”

“Maybe 6, maybe 7, at the beach, the last summer we all got together.”

She shook her head. “No, that can’t be. That’s—what—20 years?  More.”

“Yes, I know, but it’s true.” We both smiled. “Not since y’all moved…”

“I’m sorry about your father, Thomas.”

I heard footsteps on the drive, and as I began to turn my head, I saw Aunt Karen’s face lose its softness.  “Look, Martin. Look, he’s here, John’s boy, Thomas.”

My uncle held his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun. “Yes, I can see that.” 

I started down the steps. “Uncle Martin.” 

“Tom.”

As I got nearly to him, he turned and started walking back around the house. 

“Martin—“ Aunt Karen called, but he was already out of sight. He led me back to the area in front of the barn and to his tractor that was backed up toward his brush hog.

“Give a hand with this thing.”

“Okay.”

“You know how this mower works?”

“No.”

He turned his head up at me. “Well then just hold this up right here steady and let me get it hooked up.”

He went about his work, and when the mower was ready to go, he took a dusty Gamecock cap off the tractor seat and pulled it low to his ears and down a bit in front.

“I have work to do.” He stood still for a moment and just looked at me without a flicker of what might pass for any thought or emotion.

“I have pictures.”

“What?”

“Pictures. I have pictures.” I pulled the packet out of my back jeans pocket and took out the dozen photos. “Pictures of my family. Pictures of your family.”

He took them from my outstretched hand and flipped through them. “Yep.” He handed them back.

“Uncle Martin.”  I paused. “You know your brother is dead?  My father.”

“Yep, of course I do. I heard about that. Two days after. Annabeth called me.”

“You talked to Aunt Anna?” Aunt Anna was the baby of my father’s seven siblings, and he and Martin, who was the oldest of the brothers and sisters,  were the only boys.

“No, she talked to your Aunt Karen.” He shifted his weight as if to remind me that he something else to get to.

“Oh.” I paused. “He reminded me right before he died that y’all hadn’t talked for 20 years.”

“Guess that’s done with now. What are you doing here, Tom?”

“I—I just wanted to know. To know what happened.”

“I got to work the pines.”

“Do you still harvest the grapes?”

He looked at me and seemed to shake his head ever so slightly. “Nope.” 

I waited.

“Not anymore. I just cut between the rows sometimes. Some of the locals come and pick what they want. But they’re no good.”

“I’d like to see back in the pines.”

“Nobody goes back there with me.”

I looked around the yard. “I could take the golf cart.”

“Go home, Tom.”

“I’ve got some questions, questions about when you bought this farm.”

“That’s all done now.”

“Did you steal my father’s money?”

He lifted his cap and then resettled it low on his head. He held my stare. “I look like I got money?”

“Uncle—“

“Tell your Aunt Karen I will be in in an hour or two.” He mounted the tractor and looked down at me. “Just go home.”

He fired up the engine and was off toward the rows of tall trees that stretched out far beyond the barn. In less than a minute, driver and his machine were disappearing into the deep shadows of his piney woods. Ladson 2014

 

Doris Elizabeth Smythe (F)

When Doris Elizabeth Smythe moved into her second-floor condo that faces a western reach of the Stono River, no high voltage transmission lines spanned the river from enormous towers on either bank. Now when she stands out on her balcony in the early morning, a cup of coffee balanced on a small flower stand and her first cigarette between her lips, the sunlight often strikes the wires and sets them glowing. The first time Doris saw the reflected light she nearly called 911. But, these days, or at least half the year, she is amused when the wires “fire up” as she likes to say.

A look back inside at the grandfather clock shows the time to be almost eight, and that means Howard will be coming up with the morning paper and another pot of coffee that he will put on her burner. He won’t drink her coffee—too damn weak he tells her. He makes a pot of Community Coffee’s dark roast at double strength, just the way he learned to drink it when he went to LSU before heading off to Vietnam after graduation. Howard doesn’t say much about the war because he knows that Doris lost Toby, her second husband, in that war.

Her first husband, Walter Lucretius Masterson, was one of the last soldiers to be listed as an MIA in Korea. Doris married him when she was 17—he was 25 and her family thought she was nuts. They were married three months before Walter was declared missing. She doesn’t say much about him, and Howard doesn’t ask. Howard lost his wife of 38 years two years ago. She was a smoker and developed lung cancer. The cancer flared quickly and she was gone in less than half a year. "She just kind of slipped away from me" he told Doris the day he moved in downstairs. 

Sometimes Howard is so quiet coming through the front door and getting his coffee that Doris doesn’t know he’s there until the screen door to the patio is pulled open.

“Dammit, Howard, that gives me the creeps.”

“Sorry, Doris.”

“Say something next time, will ya?”

Howard sets the newspaper on the little table between them and puts his VFW cap back on. He drinks a bit of coffee, but doesn’t say much. Doris knows that often he glances over at her when she is taking a deep drag off her cigarette, even holding his gaze, but he never says anything to her about it.

Some mornings, Howard will drink his two big mugs of coffee and read the newspaper and all the while not saying a single word. Usually when he finishes, though, he will think of something to offer.

“Need anything inside, Doris.”

“Nope, not now. Thanks.”

“Headed to the Pig later. Need me to get something for you?”

“Nope, don’t think so.”

“Maybe some beer for the fridge?”

“Nope, I’m good, Howard.”

“Okay, then maybe I’ll see you later.”

“Okay, Howard. Thanks for coming by this morning.”

“No problem.”

She might turn and watch him go through the door and disappear into the dim apartment. Other times she just stares out at the river. He would be gone and she would never know he closed the front door. And the next morning, he would be back nearly to the minute.

Doris and her two sons lived out on Johns Island for nearly ten years, but when they went off to school and got married and had children, she decided the house just didn’t matter anymore, and so she bought the condo right after it was built. She is the only surviving original owner from back at the beginning.

Her son Clarence is a supervisor for the EMS up in Raleigh. Doris gets a call from him every Sunday night between eight and nine in the evening. He always says hello and then "Momma," he says, "You good?"  Chris, on the other hand, lives out in Beaumont, and he hasn’t called in four months, which is about average for him. He ferries crews by chopper out to rigs in the Gulf. Doris doesn’t mind the weekly calls from Clarence, and she doesn’t mind the lapses from Chris.

Doris tries to keep it simple for herself and let folks, even her kin, just be what they are. The first three or four years after Toby died were the hardest, and she stayed angry, angry at the boys, angry at her in-laws, angry at the army, angry at the country, angry at that goddamn war.

But she was never angry at Toby. He loved his sons, and he loved the men under his command. The war report said that he was directing cover fire from an exposed position so that a number of men wounded in a mortar attack could be rescued. A round apparently landed nearly at his feet. He was on an unscheduled visit to a forward firebase to boost morale.

Toby loved her, too.

Doris took one last deep pull, stubbed out her cigarette, and flicked it into the ebb tide.  Ladson 2013

Lana (F)

In the photograph—a real photograph, one that you can hold in your hand—Lana stands just ankle deep in the sea, her left hand hooked inside the waistband of her corduroy jeans that sit down on her hips, and she has cuffed the legs a few times. Because a gust of wind came at that very moment, her right hand has come up to capture the brown hair that is falling across her face, but she is expressionless in the pose, and because she wears sunglasses, no hint of surprise registers.

Or, she laughs out loud, a laugh that registers no inhibitions, both hands up to tame her hair and pull it behind her head. 

“Be still” I say. Lana giggles and fusses with her hair a moment, and then she again faces me. 

“You can’t smile?” 

Laughing, she places a hand over her mouth. “No. Not today.”

Truth is, I did not take the picture. Lana showed it to me. As I held it in my hand, I wanted to be there with her on the beach, looking out at the sea, feeling the heat of the sun on our faces, rather than her sister being there, being the one to take the photo.

We started talking when my lab schedule changed three months ago, and most days we were the only two in the lunch room. Lana has four sisters, and she is the oldest. She told me about their week-long vacation last August at Pawley’s Island while we sitting at a table together in the lunch room at work. I heard about the kids getting sunburned, her baby sister Kris disappearing for nearly 24 hours, and how she nearly always had to cook the meals. When I tell her about my adventures in cooking, she nearly always laughs out loud.

Or, she is biting her lip as she stares straight at the camera.

“What’s wrong, Lana?”

“Nothing. Just thinking about Kris. Worried about how she’s doing.”

“Did you talk to her last night?”

“No, but Ed told me she was starting to feel like herself again. She cooked dinner for the first time in two weeks, and she took Angela to soccer practice.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Yes it is. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. You ready to try this picture again?”

When we see each other in the lobby at the end of the working day, Lana usually nods and wishes me a good evening. Fridays are a little harder. She wishes me a good weekend.

To me it seems that she and I rarely exist for the most part in the world beyond the office walls—or the front lobby, or the lunch room, but one Saturday at the Piggly Wiggly I saw Lana in the checkout line. I was coming down the rice and pasta aisle, and when I saw her I felt that little catch that comes every time I see her, a small intake of air, a little flutter in the gut, and I took a quickened step or two forward. But, then I stopped and turned and headed away from her.   

Monday morning I confessed, “I saw you at the Pig Saturday.”

“You should have said hello. I was getting the stuff for a birthday cake for my niece and some dog food.”

“Well, you were headed out the door and I was more than halfway up the aisle.”

“I’ve got some extra cake. Want a piece?”

And twice we have run into each other at Barnes & Noble. The first time, she was heading to the checkout line with a copy of The Remains of the Day and a calendar that featured photographs of Paris. The next time, I was having coffee and looking at magazines featuring log homes. She saw me and waved, and after getting her coffee she came over to my table and sat down. Two hours went by before she blurted out that she needed to get home because her 9-year-old son Ben needed a ride to little league practice.

Lana is a few years younger than me and I am 38. When we stand next to the Coke machine, I am always reminded of—surprised even—by how short she is. While her eyes are pretty, her special feature is a smile that when she really smiles just makes me think that all is well with the world. I like to think of her smiling like that when Ben gets a hit or her dog Rowdy runs down the beach or across a field.

Now life is often a series of routines, routines that shift over time, routines that set their own rhythms. As I go about my business, some mornings I will see Lana and some mornings get to say hello and see that smile. Nearly every day we will share nearly an hour at lunch and she will tell me about her son and about her sisters. 

Not very often, but sometimes, she doesn’t laugh as much and may even seem a bit sad somehow. She keeps her head down, and one day she even said “I’m sorry” and left lunch fifteen minutes early. 

Some days she will offer me a brownie or a cookie or two from a batch she fixed at home. Then, at the end of the day, I may see her on her way out the door, her head down as if she is on to the next moment and leaving behind her day, and more often than not, I will receive the quick wave and that wish for a good evening. 

Or another wish for a good weekend.

What will not happen is that we will ever sit out at the shore and share a beer and go home together to shower off the beach sand. Never, never to wash away the salt from the sea.  Ladson 2013

Tuesday Twofer

Bird, Gone (for Maya Angelou)

the bone,
scaffolding,
the flesh,
a cage

uncaged thus,
then Bird soars,
below,
the world atwitter

taken to wing,
in silence, she says,
so she, ascending,
might hear the voice of God

     Ladson 2014

Haiku #25

A goldfinch atop

a young crape myrtle, afloat

in a spring green sea.

     

     Lyman 2020

Little Acorn (F)

That the acorn does not fall far from the tree does not in this particular case apply. This little acorn fell from the tree, bounced several times until it reached a well-worn path, tumbled with some assistance from a downslope wind, and travelled and travelled and then skipped over a late season dandelion and continued downhill for another 37 feet where it came to rest in a patch of topsoil exposed to full sun year-round.

The acorn spoken of metaphorically was born to Faye D--, who until that moment, at 41, had been childless. The father, who ran the general store and post office on the north side of the river, was 45. He, Wes, was a bit unsure that such an event could in fact take place. But, it did.

The boy, named for a distant relative who might have been a war hero or a spy for the other side, so early on began to speak of worldly matters that adults in the little hillside community whispered of foreign intrigue as the more interesting possibility. At the very least, as the local midwife suggested, Cal’s extended stay in his mother’s womb allowed for the transmission of something more. These are her exact words: That boy got something extra in the recipe.

Cal’s first full sentence—witnessed by both parents, a neighbor, and a store customer who came by the house after-hours to pick up a box of finishing nails—was uttered the same moment he first walked more than half-a-dozen steps. The little boy looked up, spread his arms, and proclaimed, “That, my people, is a sky for the ages”.

But let me skip ahead to an incident in the fourth grade. Cal, along with his 13 other classmates, was busying about with a multiplication worksheet when he set down his Eagle Sun #2 pencil, eased himself from his desk, excused himself and walked out the door. On the balls of his feet, he ghosted down to the principal’s office and without a word took a seat in the small waiting area.

The long-widowed Mrs. Sophie, secretary and nurse and bell-ringer and postal clerk on Saturday mornings, when so many folks retrieved their mail, peered over her reading glasses at the boy. “You sick, Cal?” The boy stuck his legs out and stared at his brown loafers. “Mrs. Janice send you down here?” 

He glanced up at the clock.

“You hearing me?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“You need to see Mr. Biggs?”

“No, Ma’am.”

“Well, Mr. Biggs is not here. Should I call your mama?”

Unresponsive—that is what Mrs. Sophie would tell his mother—who then relayed the message to his father: Something is wrong at the school. Cal is unresponsive.

By the time Wes could drive the 12.7 miles to the school, the lunch period had arrived, and so Mrs. Sophie, Mrs. Janice, and the itinerant music teacher, a 22-year-old-lad just graduated from the state teacher’s college, were gathered in front of Cal. The father squatted before his son, while the others stood behind him, the trio leaning in as if they too were going to have a turn at the boy.

“Cal, are you sick?”

 

“No, Sir.”

“Did something happen in the classroom?”

“No, Sir.”

“Did someone say something to you?”

“No, Sir.”

“Well, Cal, I would like to understand, but I can’t unless you say something.”

The adults seemed to breathe in unison, waiting.

“If life is suffering, I want to choose my suffering whenever possible, so I would rather suffer all the punishment in the world than ever come back to school ever in my entire life.”

Nearly in the same moment, Mrs. Sophie: “Lawd-a-mercy, this child!” Mrs. Janice: “He cannot!” The itinerant music teacher, very much under his breath: “What the hell?” Then, out loud,”Is that some kind of Buddhist thing?”

Wes rocked back on his heels and sat on the floor. After a pause, he said quietly, “Well, Cal, I don’t know about your suffering, but your mama is going to cry her eyes out.”

The 6-year-old, our Little Acorn, stood and set his hands on his father’s shoulders. “I am truly sorry about that. But, remember Dad, some things just can’t be helped.”  Ladson 2014

Constance (F)

If willing, when you leave the marina that is on the west side of the city, to turn south and walk for several hundred yards past the old brick warehouses and a rice mill long abandoned, you will come to a two-story building that fronts the river. Upstairs is an Asian restaurant that was founded by a young couple from Los Angeles nearly 40 years ago, and downstairs is a bar built by enclosing the building’s outer pilings. 

My youngest brother owns the bar, which he named The Anchorage. The bar has a double door for an entrance, and the room is so dark that patrons, even when sober, stumble into tables and chairs, and across from the front door is a barn door that slides open to a deck that floods even on an average high tide.

One late afternoon after I stowed sails and washed down the boat, I strolled down to the bar to check on my brother and drink a beer or two. To go into that dark cave from the still murderous late September sun required a narrowing of the eyes and small steps to find the path to the end of the bar where the cash register sat.

My brother stopped washing glass mugs and drew a half-pint of the local summer ale. When he put the beer in front of me, he nodded toward the other end of the bar and shrugged his shoulders.

“Have fun,” he said without smiling.

Perhaps as many as ten years had passed, I thought, since I last talked to Constance Reis. She was at the Conservatory when I was teaching three sections of an Intro to Western Civilization course while I finished my dissertation at the university. Constance was the smartest student in the classroom and often stayed behind to clarify some point from my lecture. Sitting at the corner of the bar, she watched me as I walked down and sat on a stool next to her.

“It has been a long time, Constance.”

“Twelve years.”

“A very long time.”

“Yes.”

“Are you meeting someone?”

“No. I was told you might come in here. And about your brother running the place.”

“Who told you?’

Constance took out a pack of Marlboro Lights from her purse. “Some people.”

“Some people?”

“Some people that know you. That I know.”

“Still smoking?”

“More now, more after I stopped dancing.”

“I remember you broke your foot—your right foot.”

“I broke it two more times.”

“Sorry.”

She waved off the concern with her hand holding the cigarette. “They told me to quit the school when I grew another three inches that summer.”

“Do you want another? A--?”

“Cointreau and orange juice.” 

I went back to my brother who poured the drink, and when he looked at me, again he shrugged his shoulders. I returned with her drink, and she put the unlighted cigarette down on the bar.

 “Are you living here now? Working?”

“I have been back here for two years. My father died and my mother asked me to come home.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know. Working?”

“Mostly at the Grande. Sometimes the Regis.”

“What are you doing for them?”

 “Just working.” She slowly finished her drink, and when she stood up I offered to get her a cab. She shook her head.

“It was good to see you, Constance. Is there something I can do for you?”

Wearing heels, she was at least two inches over six feet and when she stood in front of me I could look directly into her eyes, but there was nothing there for me to see.

“The thing about a tall woman is that when a man just puts out his arms from his hips they fit right on the woman’s hips, and then he doesn’t have to hurt his neck to kiss her. You told me that when I was in the eleventh grade. I am even taller now.”

“True enough. Will I see you again?”

She took a step back from me. “Maybe. Maybe when I don’t have anything else to do.” She turned and walked stiffly toward the door and out into the hot sun. Ladson 2013

Laughing Man (F)

What makes this encounter go, in my mind at least, is the visual track of the scene from his black Dodge truck to the end of the last wooden pier in the city. When Hector Corrales first pulled into a parking space across the street from the pier, he let the motor idle for a few moments. The sun was deep into the western sky and few people were in the lot or on the beach. With the windows down, even above the engine’s thrum, he could hear the ocean’s winter rollers tumbling into the shore.

He shut down the motor and folded his hands on top of the steering wheel.  The look on his face registered both surprise in a moment and then apprehension in the next. Surprise, that he would ever be sitting there.  Apprehension, that he would drive more than 400 miles to make it so on the word Yes in reply to his text message. He opened his door, but he did not step out. Several gulls paraded past him, perhaps looking for a handout of popcorn or bread. Still, he sat. Two years had passed. He was eager to see her, but he was in no hurry. If she were there.

From her vantage point, under the pavilion roof at the head of the pier, Maria Adams could not see the ocean-front street behind the dunes. She could scan the balconies and windows of the tall hotel across the street on one side and she could take in the Ferris wheel shut down for the winter on the other. She checked her phone. Five more minutes. Five more minutes after two years of weeks, of hours. Two years of minutes. She pulled up her leggings and smoothed her skirt. With one hand, she pushed back the hair from her face.

Hector let himself out of the truck. He looked down the street that had accumulated some sand blown in by the storm last week. The sun was perhaps a little more than half an hour from setting. He checked his phone.  Four minutes. He turned and surveyed the pier. He guessed two minutes or maybe three to get out to the end where Maria would be waiting. If she showed up. He could remember vaguely running the length of the pier ahead of his mother and father, scattering gulls and startling fishermen, when he was four or five years old.

He reached back into the truck and grabbed his straw cowboy hat. At first he set it back on his head. Four minutes. He pulled the brim forward, a little lower over his eyes than he normally would and then he walked around the rear of the truck. His stride was measured, with purpose, but easy in its pace. This time there would not be a sprint, no fun-for-the-hell-of-it dash.

Hector climbed the steps up to the foot of the pier. In the slant of the low January light, he could not see into the shadows of the pavilion at the far end. He breathed in the heavy salt air. He squinted. He checked again.  Three minutes.

Not another person was on the pier that he could see. Being the only one walking out made him feel lonely, lonely enough to snap shut two buttons of his jacket to ward off a chill that was not there. But, he was glad in some way, too, that if she were not there no one else in the world would know that he came. He walked past half a dozen gulls ruffling their feathers on the top railing. The area beneath the mostly enclosed space was still too dark to see into. 

Maria, of course, could see him. She saw his tall frame and the hat pulled down in front. Three minutes. Should she wait for him to come in under the roof? Should she call out to him? Should she go to him? Hotel room lights switched on and off above and behind his left shoulder. She saw that he was walking down the center of the pier as if an arrow shot straight at her heart. Two years. 

The heel of Hector’s right boot caught on an uneven plank and he stumbled. Sharp pain bolted up from both knees, and the fleshy part of his hands burned and he felt splinters break off under his skin. Maria brought a hand to her mouth, but she did not cry out. He rose slowly, rubbing the front of his knees, but he chose to ignore the splinters. He walked forward again, resuming his steady pace.

Then Hector stopped. He could see that someone waited in the shadows. He took off his hat. A few gulls screeched and circled overhead. He began walking, maybe a little more quickly than before. He was no more than fifty feet away when she dashed out into the last of the day’s light. Both of them stopped moving. Then, as if pushed forward by some unseen hand, they both started toward one another and when they were face to face, neither spoke right away.

Maria looked up at him, looked at his mouth, looked into his eyes. He matched her gaze with his own. She touched his right cheek with the back of her right hand. “I waited for you, Hector.” He took her up into his arms so that her feet were lifted off the deck. She let her tears come, and as he hugged her, he began to laugh. He squeezed her tighter and laughed even louder. “You waited for me!” Ladson 2013

Crying Man (F)

She did not think me a crying man, but she was wrong about that. Not that it matters. Nothing much does in the end. Most folks around here would have agreed. The clincher was when I had to put down a dachshund that had been run over by two college girls in a Volkswagen Beetle two years ago. I didn’t have a gun in the truck, and so once I saw the crushed back and heard the sickening cry from that little dog, I took a towel and as gentle as I could smothered the pitiful thing. Several kids were watching from across the street, and I hated that, but I had to end that poor animal’s suffering.

Martha Toffey came out of her house and screamed at me, telling me what a terrible man I had become. All I could do was look at her, tip my cap, and tell her to have a good afternoon. I was on my way home, and the two-mile drive went without a further incident. When I got home, I picked up the mail that had been delivered and was scattered on the foyer floor, walked into the kitchen and tossed the stack on the counter, and went on down to my bedroom.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and rested my head on my hands, elbows propped on my legs, and started crying. The first tears just sort of formed up in my eyes, and then they began rolling down my cheeks. Then I dropped my arms and the real crying began. My chest started heaving, and the tears and the snot ran down onto my jeans, and I just kept crying hard. Then I stopped. It was done.

Last time I cried like that over a dog, I wasn’t at home. I was delivering a bedload of gardenias to a man in Rayne, but just after I crossed the basin doing 80, a black lab jumped up from the ditch in the early morning light and I ran over him before I could touch the brakes. I looked back in the mirror and could see his body tumbling, over and over and over. Not a house around for miles. I kept driving, and I started crying by the time I got to the Breaux Bridge exit and I cried all the way to Lafayette. Man in Rayne asked me, when he got a look at my red eyes, whether I had been partying all night. I said, “Yes sir, partying hard.”

You might start to wonder if I only cry over animals, but not men.  Sometimes, it’s both. One night, four months after my divorce, I was headed up on the west side of the river near the first of the plantations south of Baton Rouge, when I saw a kid waving frantically from the side of the road. It was around 10:00 at night and too dark to make out much of anything, even though I had noticed a large dark shadow along the road about a quarter mile back. I stopped, and before I could get out of my truck the kid was talking, real fast like he couldn’t make whatever it was real until he said it.

“Mister, you gotta come. I think he’s dead. The man is dead. The car is real bad. He’s dead.”

“Who, son, who’s dead?”

“The man in the ditch. In the car.”

I grabbed a small flashlight, and he led me down a quick embankment toward the levee, and in the dimmest of light, I could see a Datsun mashed up against a fallen pine that looked to be about 40 inches or so in diameter. The car really was pulverized, all the glass out, the roof caved in, and the frame fractured.

“What happened?”

“I was right behind him and we were driving maybe 70 and he hit that horse back there and went off the road like a rocket.”

“He hit a damn horse?”

“Yes sir, he killed it too.”

I went around to the driver’s side but it was so badly twisted that I couldn’t make out anything, so I went around to the passenger side. Right then my flashlight went out. 

“Mister, I gotta get to work. I gotta go.”

“Son, you need to stay. You will have to explain to the sheriff or the highway patrol.”

“No sir, I can’t. I’m going. I’m sorry, but I gotta go.”  He scrambled up the slope and was gone even before I could start to ease myself through the open window. It was too dark to see much of anything other than maybe a vague shape, maybe the driver. 

I got my head and shoulders and arms into the car and started reaching out, and then I made contact. Everything I touched was wet and sticky and in the warm sluggish air, the smell had a meatiness to it. I found the driver’s head and located his neck and tried to keep my hand still enough to find a pulse.  Nothing I touched felt like anything I knew. 

I didn’t hear the parish sheriff, who was on his way home, pull up above me on the roadway. He came down with his big flashlight and grabbed me by my belt. 

“Get on out of there! What the hell is going on here?”

Once he got the light on me good, he dropped his voice. “Get up on the road and start stopping traffic coming up the river side.”

I climbed up to the roadbed, and soon a car was approaching. I waved at it, and when it got up close I could see it was another deputy. He gave me his flashlight and headed on down to the demolished car.

The next vehicle to come along was driven by a woman headed up to Baton Rouge. When I flagged her to a stop, she rolled down her window and called to me. “You all right?  You bad hurt?”

“No, m’am, I’m fine.”

“You sure? You look bad hurt.”

I looked down at myself and saw the blood down my t-shirt and down my arms, covering my hands and soaking the top of my jeans. 

“It’s on your face, too.”

“Okay. Thanks, M’am. I’m fine, really.”

After about fifteen minutes and stopping half a dozen cars and explaining each time that I was okay, the deputy came up and took a statement from me, and got my license number and phone number. He shook his head at me. “That was a bad one,” he said.

“Yep, seems so.”

“You need to go on home and get cleaned up.”

“Yep.”

Didn’t turn the radio on during the rest of the drive home. Just parked the truck and went inside and went straight back to the bathroom. I stripped off my clothes and shoes and threw them in the stall and turned on the water.  I stepped into the shower and watched the blood coming off my arms and hands and watched the blood mixing with the water and go washing down the drain. 

And then I started crying. I cried hard. I cried so hard that I had to lean down a bit and brace my hands on my thighs. Still blood came out of my hair and off my face, mixed with my tears. And I kept crying so that when there were no more tears, I just shuddered with wracking sobs that made my chest hurt. Then, it was over.

So, as a man, I can personally tell you, I cry. She was wrong about that, but she never knew. Ladson 2013