Delta Fourth of July

You have freedom when you're easy in your harness. 

~Robert Frost

I get a message from Tommy before noon and in his Delta gourmet language tells me  he's put on a shitload of ribs, come over & have some.  Coming back from Kroger, I see him at his shop where he makes security doors & he tells me Carme’s gonna do the baked beans with black molasses, coleslaw, and something with cool whip for dessert.  Since the wife left, I might as well.

Aggie's too damn old & nervous to ride shotgun anymore, plus I hate having to lift him up in the back of the Trooper.   I can feel him whimpering with, well, pain, gratitude, what I guess would be embarrassment (if they can get embarrassed), not being able to do the things he used to.  Like jump in the truck.  Or fetch. Or have sex.  I know what he means.  I used to do all those things too.  But that was before she left.  So I rubbed him on his black head and scratched his behind his years like he likes it, he looked up and understood.  Left him and went west with a 6 pack of Busch fence posts and a quart of the homemade figs Wilson & I put together.  It's hot, blue sky, and the fat clouds sit still.

The buildings got smaller, the pavement changed from four lanes to two to gravel.  The rows of cotton and beans on both sides looked like running spiders trying to keep up with me.  Maybe running squid or whatever the plural of running octopus is.  Met up with Tommy out at Mound City where he lives on Dick Shelby’s land.   Greeted by a bunch of bastard dogs.  Barking and biting each other’s ears.  The sweet hickory smoke makes a grey haze in the still air.  Go to the source round back by the shed.  Tommy’s got his boots and an XXL shirt to cover his whiskey gut.  Hat with some chemical company’s label on it.  Gray hair sticking out over his ears.  White Styrofoam cup of Segram’s 7 and Coke, double cupped with crushed ice like the kind you get from the Sonic.  Tommy’s just eased back in his broke down Dodge, door open, listening to The Band and watching the ribs.  As if that’s going to make a difference.  One leg out on the ground.  Resting the cup on his belly. 
     

“Where you ‘won go?” 

“Hell man, I don’t care.  Head west I guess.”

“Hold on, lemme make sure my drink’s too strong.  Ah.”  And smacked his fat lips. 

 “Yep, let’s go.”

The levee is highest point in the Delta where you can still drive, and when you are ridin’ proper on a state or federal holiday, or just a weekend, that’s where you go.  Just winding around the oxbows, cows, and fishing shacks.  Watching the boats on the water when the woods broke.  Slops down about a hundred feet on your right with more cotton fields, rice, and beans.  An occasional sharecropper shack with a sodium light and broke down cars in the yard.  Rusty old farm equipment.  Tractor parts.  Yell at the cows.  Laugh when you see them shit.  Dust swirling behind us, coming around the side of the truck and making the sides of my mouth gritty.  Don’t have to say a thing.  Just ride.  Just ride.  Turn up a good song when it comes on.  Give a two finger wave and a smile to the people you pass.  Keep your speed low.  Keep your drink low.  Aviators on.  Watch your left arm turn red.  Hit a washboard and Tommy got beer crack.  Whiskey crack.  Cussin and spittin.  Not that he was wet.  Lost some of his drink.

Big Ford pickup full of black folk pass us fast hauling a boat.  About a hundred yards ahead, the trailer throws a wheel and one of them is running down the levee chasing it.  They forgot to grease the bearings, the axel is shot.  We stop.  Can't help.  They were just looking for a place to put in.  Wanted to boat on the lake with the rednecks.  They were laughing & drinking.

We ride on back to Tommy’s shack at Mound City.  Backroads all the way home.  Swing through Gunnison, Malvina, back out toward the Bogue Philia.  Sit out by his metal barn under the shade tree with the shop fan rattling keeping the bugs off.  Mosquito spray sweats down my eyes and burns.  Later the kids come in from the lake, sunburnt, barefoot and happy. We eat, tell lies.  Talk about women we used to know.  Watch the kids run around.  Drink some more.  Hours pass.  Clouds still not moving.  They pack me up a bunch of food when I'm ready to go, including a shitload of ribs. 

At 10 pm the scanner kicks on, EOC calling for members, a boat is stranded on the river.  Some country boy with a belly full of Bud I'm sure.  Bought beer.  Forgot gas.  They have to put in at Log Loader in Rosedale instead of Terrene Landing because the river is so low, go up the chute and out towards the White River inlet, just north of Terrene & across on the Arkansas side.  I had canoed the White further upriver where the Buffalo River comes into it years ago, when I was a younger man.  I mix the last one of the day, and sip it slowly with Aggie at my feet in the backyard.  Just us.  Sittin in the dark.

Scanner kicks in again:  A mobile home is on fire south of Rosedale on Hwy 1.