All I Want For Christmas…
When I was 5 years old I sat on Santa’s knee, all I really wanted was a 12 gauge you see. A pump action browning with a maple stock, I could kill a lot more squirrels with that than with a sling shot and a rock. It really made me mad when Santa laughed with glee. My Christmas present request was perfectly logical to me. He gave me a candy cane and sent me on my way, a disappointed little boy, that was me that day. Now that I’m grown, I realize that Santa was pretty smart; I’ve also figured out that he shops at Wal-mart. I went to the mall and stuck a Hall-mark in his coat, on the inside of the card I enclosed this little note: thank you Santa for the Christmas present that I never got, if you’d have given me that 12 gauge somebody surely would have gotten shot and I’d still be sitting in cell block 23 cuz all I really wanted was a 12 gauge you’d see.
Kindergarden Bully
It was 1989 and I was having a rough time. Every day at recess I was chased down and beaten up by a bully named Duran Mclin and his gang of goons, and we had recess twice a day. I remember despondently complaining about my daily beatings to my parents over dinner and my dad looked at me and said “Son, next time he comes up to you, you tell him that your dad said to punch you in the nose.” And he held his fist up in front of his face and shook it. A wave of courage and delight swept over me. I couldn’t wait to go to school the next day. I had a brand new attitude. I had been given permission.
Sure enough, at first recess, I was surrounded by his goons. I didn’t run this time but stood my ground with fists clenched at my sides as Duran Mclin sauntered his way thru his gang and walked up to face me. I punched him in the nose as hard as I could. He limped away with blood running down his face, holding his nose, with a henchman on each side and the rest of the gang bringing up the rear as the procession made their way to the teachers to tattle-tale. I felt like a million bucks standing on the punish wall.
Grandma Smith
I was twelve and I hated penny loafers and I hated church. I don’t know what I hated more; church itself or the fact that my mom made me wear those stupid penny loafers when I went. I hated sitting there for hours on a wooden pew, listening to my dad behind the pulpit talk about things that didn’t make any sense to me. I hated the solemn hymns, the organ accompaniment, the constant business of standing up and sitting down and bowing my head, the long pious prayers, the superficial conversations before and after the service, the impossible expectations of perfection imposed upon me by my parents and the church people, (and God himself apparently), the stigma I lived with at school, and the fact that I was not allowed to go places and do things that other kids my age participated in, but I especially hated the penny-loafers.
She was ninety-two when I first met her. My dad was the new pastor at wood-haven church of god in Hammond, Louisiana and I was the new student in her Sunday school class. I’ll never forget opening the door and walking into her classroom for the first time, and seeing her sitting there, ancient and mystical, glowing from the inside out accentuated by the rays of morning sunshine through the golden, stained glass panes of the window behind her. It was as if I’d walked through an invisible doorway into another dimension. She sat regally behind the table like an angelic mother hen with a cluster of my peers around her with a warm, calm, peaceful smile permanently etched on her countenance. I left my bitterness and pride at the door and reverently took a seat at the table with the other kids. After the introductions and some small talk, a hush fell over the room as she removed a small cylindrical package from her oversized black purse, we all paused in meditation as she one, by one rolled a spearmint cert across the table to each of us with her wrinkled arthritis ridden hands, a weekly communion we observed religiously before she opened the class with a prayer.
She always said that all prayer was, is talking to God, and that’s exactly what she did. She didn’t quote scripture or speak in old English; she simply talked to Jesus as if he was right there. In fact… I think he was. I remember that first Sunday, I looked behind me as she was praying half expecting to see him walking thru the door and pulling up a chair at the table waiting anxiously for his cert. I sensed the presence of God like I had never felt before, like a welcome and honored guest that had come from afar.
Almost two years later I stood by her death-bed, listening to her pray, this time in a language that I did not understand. She lie there flat on her back, unblinking eyes fixated as if staring intently at a spot on the ceiling, mumbling unintelligibly pausing to inhale slowly. She seemed oblivious to my presence as I stood there silently thinking about certs rolling across the table, the smell of the old spice cologne she always wore, and her big tattered bible she always carried, loose pages stained with age, with passages underlined and notes scrawled in the margins. She paused momentarily and after a brief silence, without detouring her heavenward gaze, she whispered my name. “Yes, Grandma Smith?” I answered. “I’ll see you in heaven.” She finally spoke before returning to her prayer. “I’ll be there, Grandma Smith. I’ll be there.” I said. The next morning she went home to be with Jesus.
Grandma Smith
She wasn’t really my grandma but she might as well have been. She was closer to me than any of my kin. She always laughed and smiled wherever she would go, she radiated with joy from her head to her toes. She was a saint everyone knew, if you had a problem she would pray for you. When grandma smith got sick everyone cried, she had a cancerous tumor living inside. Even thru her pain her spirits stayed high. Everyone knew she would soon die. Grandma Smith knew there would soon be a day when angels would come and take her away. To be with her maker was her only desire, from praising her lord she would never retire. I’ll see you in heaven was the last thing I heard her say. Even though she is gone I’ll see her again someday.
Jimmy Weinmiller
He was the richest man in town (not to mention the most hated) in fact he owned over half of it. His dad was a big shot from Arkansas, one of Bill Clinton’s main moneymen, owned a big horse ranch, lots of land, and a huge mansion on a hill among other things. His business was drugs. Lots of drugs. Jimmy used to work for his old man’s cartel up until he did some time for getting caught with a semi-truck full of reefer coming across the border in El Paso. He spent five years in one of them fancy country club prisons till cousin Bill gave him a full pardon on his way out of the white house.
Everybody in the small town of Monterey L.A. knew his name. Jimmy Weinmiller. Nobody liked him much either. He rubbed people the wrong way. He rubbed people out of their land and caused all kinds of ruckus just because he could.
HE built his house, a massive two story mansion, right down the road on the bank of Black River Lake, a prized piece of land called Billy goat point with access to the hottest bass fishing spot around. It was called Billy goat point on account of a farmer who kept his goats there once upon a time, until they were eaten by alligators.
The son of a preacher, I lived in the parsonage beside the Eva Church of God, a little white country church surrounded by Pecan trees with a cemetery lined with ornamental pear trees. In all four directions of the two and a half acre lot was farmland. The acreage to the West was Wienmiller’s prized property. In the back forty was a slough that would flood in the winter months and become a winter bungalow for thousands of Mallards as well as wood ducks and about a dozen other species of duck. Oftentimes around dusk I would sneak back there with my twelve gauge and jump a few of them.
His mansion on Billy Goat point also served as a hunting lodge for novice duck hunters such as the likes of Bobby Hebert, Bill Clinton, and other athletes and celebrities. It was sometimes more of a party house than a hunting lodge; the noise would sometimes keep me awake at night. I would get up cursing under my breath as I shut the window otherwise left open to hear the chirping of the crickets, the mocking bird’s song, and the yapping of coyotes hunting along the southeastern tree line.
Unpopular though he was, I didn’t have anything against the man. Often times while I was out cutting the grass he would come tearing down the turning row in his four-wheel drive truck. I would lift my hand for the customary wave because that’s what you do in the country, you wave, at everybody. My wave would never be returned. The first few times I gave him the benefit of the doubt. “He didn’t see me.” I’d say to myself, or “He thought I was swatting a fly or reaching for the gearshift, stretching my fingers or something.” Then, after a few more times I was offended. Where I come from a non-wave is a sign of disrespect. Who does he think he is anyways?
He had a lot of farming equipment he would park wherever he pleased; whether it was on the church property or not. I would often have to go around it to mow and leave a big patch of tall grass and weeds. One time in particular he was picking up a tractor he had parked right where I was mowing, He came walking across the yard paying me no mind whatsoever, talking over the grind of the mower to the hand that had dropped him off. He stood along with the other guy, right in the path of where I was mowing. I held my ground as I came toward them, and blew grass cuttings all over them. I kept my gaze on Weinmiller as he looked down at his boots that I had just sprayed grass clipping all over. I watched him as he turned his shocked dumbfounded gaze from his boots to my unrelenting gaze as if noticing my existence for the first time, his surprise faded into an amused grin.
Time went by and his dog started coming around the house, getting into the trash, eating all of my dog’s (Sandy and Buck’s) food, and stirring up trouble with them. I run him off several times, threw rocks, shot at his paws with a twenty-two rifle, I even took him down to Paul’s Grocery once but momma made me go back and get it. So I caught the little bastard and loaded him up in the Nova and went a knocking on that big cypress door. When he came out I handed him the little terrier and said, “You gotta do something with this dog.” I explained the problems I was having with it and he offered to let me have it the second or third time I had to bring it up there. I turned it loose somewhere in Jonesville.
Harvest time came and he came by the house, I was out in the yard, he introduced me to his brother and offered me a job. It paid seven dollars an hour and provided lunch. I had spam and peanut butter sandwiches every day for the next three months. We worked from sun-up to sundown every day, and sometimes even after sundown we would work with floodlights. I had done some work for him before through his right hand man, Travis, loading hay and painting the backup lodge.
HE tried to jip me out of a lot of money. He was slow at paying anyway. Then one night on their way to take me home he said, “How does one-hundred dollars sound to you?” I wasn’t overly smart when it came to figuring but I wasn’t stupid either. I had gone near bout three weeks without pay and a hundred dollars sounded like a load of horseshit to me and I told him so. I told him by my figures he owed me about $700 dollars. He made up some lame excuse about taxes or what not but I knew he was paying under the table, so I held my ground and told him that I had agreed to work for seven dollars an hour and seven dollars an hour is what I was going to get. He counted out the money in hundreds and twenty’s cash in hand.
When I got back to the house I looked at my time card and got out my calculator and realized that I had over charged him by over two hundred dollars. So back I went to knocking on that big cypress door. Giving that money back blew him and his brother away. They had never seen anything like that. I walked home that night feeling awful good; I had refused the chance to cheat the cheater, though I could have with ease.
