been here once
could be twice
time for me to go
they’s kids somewhere
call me dad
names i hardly know
seen them once
or maybe twice
still i’ve got to go
down south the sun god
shines like gold
here it’s about to snow
i been there once
or was it twice
oh Lord i loved it so
when heaven turns the
caged birds free
i watch them from below
just one more time
or maybe twice
sweet Jesus let me go
“Amen,” Grandpa said.
Grandpa said that hobo had been given a gift and that we are all given one and some are given many.
“What’s my gift? I asked. “You think maybe I could make a rhyme?”
“I wouldn’t rightly know,” Grandpa said, “but you won’t know either until you try it. And that’s something I do rightly know.”
“What’s your gift then?” I asked.
“Some folks seem to find their gift early on,” Grandpa said. “I haven’t thought much on it, but I reckon mine came to me late. After working the mines all them years, I got saved and sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost and commenced preaching and starting up little churches here and there where folks didn’t have any. I like to think I did some good.”
“Amen,” Grandma said from the porch.
7
The Spirit Is Willing
We hadn’t had any more hobo visits, but my Uncle Ed, who’d arrived at our house earlier in the day, had stirred things up in his own way. Grandma found him balled up on the bedroom floor, spit dribbling from the corner of his mouth, arms hugging his knees. It looked like he was trying to keep his legs from shaking loose and flying off across the room. His teeth would have chattered if he’d had them in his mouth, but he’d put them in one of his shoes, for safekeeping, I guess. The other shoe was still on his foot.
Grandpa went to fetch the doctor while Grandma tried to wrest the truth out of her brother. It didn’t take long. He’d decided, he said, to have himself a little toot of the rubbing alcohol we kept in the bathroom medicine cabinet.
Grandma’s face turned pasty as biscuit dough.
“Good Lord have mercy, Ed, you must have lost your mind. Why, that stuff will kill you deader than a doornail. I declare, sometimes you act like you don’t have the sense God gave a goose.”
Uncle Ed commenced to nod his head to show he agreed with her about him and the goose. Grandma told him he better be praying that Grandpa came back with the doctor.
Uncle Ed had an even better idea.
“You say a prayer for me, Rindy. Tell Him I ain’t such a bad feller. He’s way better acquainted with you. He don’t hardly know me.”
“Edward Moore Adkins, I’ve prayed for you every single day of your life, and I’m not likely to up and quit anytime soon,” she said.
Uncle Ed was Grandma’s baby brother and the only one who visited us regularly because he only lived a few hours away. But he hadn’t come for a visit this time. Their brother Teel had taken sick, and Aunt Annie had written for Grandma to come to Flat Mountain to help her. Since Grandpa was staying behind to tend to the animals, Uncle Ed would drive us there. He often smelled of alcohol, which gave Grandma cause for extra praying, but we needed the ride. Grandpa said the best way to deal with Uncle Ed was to keep hopes high and expectations low. But when Uncle Ed arrived just before dinner, even Grandma’s highly trained senses didn’t see or smell any signs of liquor.
That hadn’t lasted long.
Between groans and grimaces, Uncle Ed tried to explain how he’d thought just a taste of the rubbing alcohol wouldn’t hurt him any.
“That’s all I had, Rindy, and that’s the plain truth of it. I swear to God it is.”
I watched for lightning to strike him dead, but God must have decided to let it go this time.
Grandma decided not to.
“Ed, mark my words, I will not tolerate you taking the Lord’s name in vain in this house. And I will not tolerate you acting a fool and drinking the rubbing alcohol either.” Her words were sharp, but ever so gently she smoothed his thinning hair back and folded a wet washrag over his forehead.
“You know, I was just recollecting how you bossed me around when we were young’uns, Rindy, and here you are still doing it all these years later.” He somehow managed a feeble smile.
If Uncle Ed’s car was off its feed, which meant he’d used up his gas ration, he’d ride the bus to our house. When Grandma spotted him making his way down our red dog road from the bus stop on Worley Road, she could pretty well judge how much he’d had to drink. If he was tipsy, he walked gingerly, as if he was trying to stay within the lines. But if he was soused, he reeled and tilted, flailing his arms like an out of control tightrope walker. On those occasions, Grandma would feed him and put him straight to bed to sleep it off.
Next day I’d sit with him on the grass while he told stories about some French girl he’d had a fling with in Paris during our first big war overseas. Grandma, who didn’t know what he might say next, told him she’d heard quite enough, but he just threw his head back and laughed. She walked off, saying he wasn’t getting another minute of her attention until he behaved.
He’d read the newspaper out loud, politics and sports and obituaries, finishing with the funny papers. Dick Tracy was our favorite. He’d hoot and holler and slap his leg at the antics of B.O. Plenty and Gravel Girty and their blonde-headed daughter, Sparkle Plenty. Uncle Ed said that Sparkle girl didn’t have a
