If’n a man’s lucky, he’ll live the better part of a century. The bitch of the thing is, though, that he’ll spend the latter half wishin’ he was in the first half. Them later decades have eyes for the early ones. Just how folks are built, I s’pose.
Calls to mind my great granpappy. Not sure why. I suppose his life of ramblin’, wheelin’ and dealin’, and the general unknowin’ of things seems appealing. The hell of livin’ now is that you can find out any fact, but it don’t make you know anything. We got the bits ‘n pieces, but it’s too scattered somehow.
My great granpappy was named Flood Mud Johnson. Can’t find his Christian name, s’far as I’ve looked. Flood Mud. Ain’t that some shit. Reckon he was probably called Matthew or Luke or some Christian name. Not Flood Mud. But I guess he took that name and it suited him. Born in 1887, died in 1923. Flood Mud was a drifter. Kept ramblin’ from town to town, looking for work or women or whatever the night could provide. He’d guess your birthday for a biscuit. Won a lot of biscuits that way. Never could figure how he knew a birthday just from lookin’ at a man…
Flood Mud kept a length of twine for a belt and a clay jug slung over his shoulder. “Just fill the jug with whiskey,” he said, “And I’ll be the hardest damn worker you’ve ever had.” That’s a family trait. I’d take my pay in whiskey if’n I had the chance. Instead, I’ve got a time card and a percentage taken from my check for miscellaneous otherdoings.
Sleepin’ in hollowed out trees, taking a bath in a lake. Flood Mud could whistle like an angel. He’d dance on bartops and woo the women with his sapphire eyes. He stunk to high heaven, but everybody did in those days. A drifter with mischevious mirth in his soul.
Flood Mud died when he got bit by a copperhead hitchin’ in New Mexico. He crawled to a cactus and bit into it and suckled it’s tough green teats like they were his newborn instincts. The venom clotted his blood and closed the book on a hard-workin’ hobo.
Sometimes the morning has a charge. Flood Mud wakes to a favorable sunrise, and those sapphires spark at the edges. He’s alive. Today’s going to be a good day.
Leave a Reply