Century Plus

My  mother was born one hundred and one years ago today, in the shadow of a small mountain. Tough, taciturn, and tortured woman that she was, she never did anything the world would call notable, but she did something that impressed me. She endured.

My sister and I were discussing Mother this morning. We agreed that we’re glad she’s no longer in this world, that she’s not here to see what has become of the country she loved. It would have grieved her beyond measure to see the horror show called American life today.

I comfort myself with the hope that I’ll see her again someday, on the other side of this dismal crust of terrain. Maybe then we might begin to understand each other; she was always a puzzle to me, and I seemed to be forever a mystery to her. We both knew pain, though, and perhaps that will be the catalyst for the conversation we owe each other.

Rest easy, sharecropper’s daughter. I love you big.

***

Jinx and I were out for our evening walk. We were just about to turn for home when I heard a car coming down around the bend in the road. As he was standing next to me, I reached down and clicked the leash onto Jinx’s collar. We stood together and watched as the vehicle approached, trailing a long plume of gravel dust. Jinx stiffened, watching as it grew nearer. I had a feeling.

It was a red Bronco, battered and mushy on the struts. The driver waved, then pulled over to the side of the road where the spotted menace and I waited.

It was Jinx’s original owner, he of the slurred words and slit belly.

He was clearly as deep in a pill-haze as he’d been the last time I saw him. A half-full bottle of an energy drink sat in the cup holder next to him. I couldn’t smell any alcohol, but that was because the cloud of tobacco smoke was an effective screen if he had been drinking. He opened his mouth and started slobber-speaking, his words like syrup, sliding down his chin. We exchanged the usual How ya doin’ banter, and then he turned his bleary-eyed attention to my dog.

“Thar ‘e is. How you doin’, buddy?

JInx, always friendly and composed, lifted his lips from his teeth and bared them at the man in silence.

“Ah don’ thank he ‘members me.”

I looked down at Jinx, who was still showing his teeth. “Oh, on the contrary. I think he remembers you very well,” I said.

The man chuckled as unseeing dolts tend to do, and then lit into telling me about a recent doctor’s appointment, a carry-over from his ex-girlfriend’s attempts to eviscerate him. He spoke and clawed raisins from a bag in his lap and dropped them into his working mouth. I figured one in fifty made it into his teeth, the rest spilling down his bagged belly and onto the seat. While he talked, I squatted down to rest my legs and back. Jinx went around behind me and leaned against me, his full weight pressed against my back. He never moved during the time the man was running his mouth.

He went on to tell me about how Jinx’s sister had birthed a litter of pups back in June, and how he’d given the last one away just yesterday. His soliloquy went something like this:

Ahwellthisun’ssisterpoppedoutuhlitteruhpupsbackinJunen’ahgivethelastunuhwayjisyesttidy.Ahmightatakenhimasmuhownbuthewuzdiggin’holesinnayardnahcain’twalkstraightnowaysnIsteppedinwunnathemholesnliketahbrokemahfootsoahknoweditwastimeferhimtago. Innyway,thatn’ssister’spurdyerthinhim…

Finally, the fellow ran out of energy and allowed as to how he needed to get home and cool off. I stood and told him to take care. He extended his hand out the window towards Jinx, who stood stiff-legged, watching the man with the dead expression of a shark. The man chuckled again, lifted his hand, and drove off.

Jinx walked close beside me on the way home, watching the road in the direction the man had driven.

“Glad you’re with me and not that one,” I said to Jinx.

Me n’ you both, said Jinx, and we walked faster when we saw the glow of home.

~ S.K. Orr