“Walkin Shorts!” ..”I said I likes to wears Walkin Shorts .. Mr. John .”Robert Brock said ...I just thought you ought know that about me before you let me live here....and …. Mr. John I....I just don't know how I 'll ever be able to repay you ... I just don't ..kn.... . Mr. John cut him off and cast his eyes into a frustrated roll and heaved a puff of grey smoke into the cold January air and pronounced ”Robert you live here from now on ..rent free as the Farms Overseer and I don't give fuck if you go God Damned naked just keep folks run off from here ..thats all I want. And with that Mr. John climbed back into his Cadillac and scattering gravel headed back to Memphis for the second time that day.
Saturday mornings for Mr. John were usually spent attempting to clear his head from the dalliances of the night before in his never ending dance with liquor based libations. Scotch Whiskey .. Ole Bumply Skin Gin... Smirnoff Vodka .. yep Saturday for him was a time to relax and “enjoy” his hangover. There was no place to be on Saturday. Not like those fucking weekdays when he had to nurse his hangover on the fly. Nurse it while he flung phones and curse words at a trading desk full of just as hung over bond daddy's helping the Savings and Loan industry careen their vehicle into the ditch of self destruction..But early on this Saturday the phone had rung insistently until that bitch he was married to finally got up off her lazy syphilitic whore ass and answered it. “It's the Brother William up at the farm ..he says its important ..” she said as she handed him the receiver... God Damn Bitch he thought … She knows I don't want to talk to this motherfucker ...spiteful ...barren..Jesus I'm glad she's barren .. Thank god my genes will NEVER have to be mixed with her..and her fucking inbred family ..”.uh uh Hello?” Said Mr. John
“John.... this is Brother William..uh can you hear me?” “Yeah uh Yeah Brother I can hear you just fine ..(Hear him damn fine since Bother William was hard of hearing and yelled everything he said in the phone) ...Uh ..John ..there's a fella livin down here in the Old Pavillion ...names Robert Brock .. uh ..he's a hermit of sorts been living round these parts all his life .. I knew him as a boy ..He was an odd one .. anyhow he's been sqattin down there in the pavilion for a few weeks now ..when the highway got run through Jim Goodnights farm they tore town the shack he lived in ..didn't give him no notice no place to go ner nothin ..I reckon since he grew up on the back side of yore farm that this was the only place he knew to go .. so he's been stayin in one of them rooms down there ..He keeps to himself ..and all but John its January and mighty cold ..he ain't got no lectricity ner heat ..I'm afraid he's gonna starve or freeze to death” ..There was a silence on Mr. Johns end of the phone ..”JOHN ARE YOU THERE ?”..Brother William yelled even louder ..”Yes” .. Mr. John said flatly ..his liquor pickled mind trying to grasp the information that he had just been force fed...”Uh Brother William ..what exactly is it that you would have me do?”...”Well John .. the Christian thing to do is to help him .. but times being what they are Delores and I just don't have anything to spare .”..(Don't have anything to spare my ass Mr. John thought .. shit his congregation waits on his old ass hand and foot ..Preacher needs something?? Well break open the piggy bank and bleed the money into his greedy old hands ..don't want to loose him to one of them other churches in the big city ..loose him ?..who would shepherd their sinful souls through the shadows of Life to the rewards on those Golden Streets of Heaven that he promises at the top of his lungs every sunday ...)..”Well yes Brother William times are tough” John mumbled ..”Well John ...Delores and I was hoping you might ride up here and see whats goin on for yourself ..I mean he's gonna die down there if nobody does anything”..Brother William pleaded.
The blighted empty row crop fields careened by the widows of the Cadillac as Mr. John steered up Hwy 57 towards Rogers Springs. Speedometer reading 67 miles per hour..heat blaring ..Elvis singing of Kentucky Rain ...smoke from his Vantage 100 occasionally obscuring his view of the white lines that separated cars headed East versus West. Mr. John sipped peach brandy and thought how amazing it was to be hurdling down this patch of Hwy 57 when just a few decades prior when he was a boy this road was gravel and the trip from Memphis would take nearly all day ..Now in the absence of Gravel and Mule Drawn farm implements he could make the trip in just under two hours...amazing ..
In Grand Junction, Tn a short eight miles to the farm .. there was a small country store ...or what used to be a country store ..next to the tomb stone maker who had set up shop in the late 1800's on the “highway”...now it was a just a Convenience store where they sold beer and smokes and tins of potted meat ,pork rinds, pickled eggs and pig feet and out back Crack Cocaine.
Mr. John parked the Caddy out front where he could keep a good eye on her and money in hand entered the store to gather some basic provisions to take to the old hermit. Hell he didn't have any idea what to get, but beggars can't be choosers and the fucker squatting on his farm would have to make do with whatever he brought to him. This was insanity anyway ..out here in East Bumble Fuck in January buying Groceries for some asshole he didn't even know. But Mr. John despite his rough edges had always had a soft spot for those in need. His daddy didn't. Not even being a Doctor.... he was a ruthless mean son of a bitch ….hated cats .. couldn't even be kind to animals let alone people... Many the time Mr. John and his Daddy “Papa Doc” as he preferred to be called would load their shotguns and unload their bird dogs next to some farmer's (who was Papa Doc's patient) barn to hunt ,and they wouldn't be thirty feet from the Farmers barn when Papa Doc would let a shot ring from his twelve gauge and one less cat would inhabit the Earth. Mr. John would say “Damn !! You can't be killing the Farmers cat up here near his house like that!”..Papa Doc would look over his horn rim glasses and say “Fuck that cat and that Farmer .. cat eats the quail eggs … got no use for em ..Farmer don't like it he can find another doctor to look after his old ass...” Once Papa Doc found a kitten that then nine year old Mr. John was raising on the sly behind the garage of their home in Hot Springs ..while he was stomping the poor creature he was bellowing at Mr. John ..”Boy! If your brains was gasoline they wouldn't be enough to start a piss ant's motorcycle to ride around a God Damned bee bee ..No Papa Doc was devoid of soft spots and somewhere in the back of Mr. Johns mind as he gathered up cans of potted meat he could still hear the kitten screaming and the old man bellowing and he knew that long dead Papa Doc would certainly not approve of what he was about to do for a fellow human being …...........
(to be continued)
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