The two old
ranchers were sitting on the bluff overlooking the Brazos River, performing
mouth-to-mouth on a six pack of beer positioned between them. Sadly, despite diligent effort, the patients
were dying, one right after another.
Mike turned
to his friend and said, “Why are you here today? I thought you were going to spend the day
with your wife.”
“I was and
I did,” replied Kent. “Least, as much as
she’d allow. After a couple of hours,
she told me to ‘Go get lost.’ Well, I
figured I’d get lost where I could drink your beer.”
“This ain’t
exactly lost. You’ve been here about as
often as I have.”
“Yeah,” said
Kent. “But my wife doesn’t know where I
am—and that’s lost enough.”
“I heard
from Bob over in Stephenville yesterday.
He’s doing poorly. Said he doesn’t
think he will live through the month.
Said he had a real bad spell last week—even the doctor didn’t think he’d
live through the night. Bob said the
only reason he was still hangin’ on was pure anger.”
“Hate to
see Bob go, he’s about the last of the old bunch around here, ‘cept for you and
me.”
“Yeah,” said
Mike. “Did ya’ ever think you’d get to
the point where about the only times you get together with friends was at
funerals?
"I
know what you mean. Forty years ago, the
wife and I were always going to weddings.
Then, about twenty years ago, it was baby showers and christenings. Now, it's nothing but funerals and
wakes."
Kent reached
over and took another beer, twisted off the bottle cap and handed it to his
friend. "Here," he said. "Keep this, it's valuable."
Mike
accepted this cap, but gave his friend a quizzical look.
"It's
a genuine Texas rain gauge," said Kent.
"I was at a funeral last month—Philip Odd died. His whole life, Phil got sick and tired of
people making fun of his name, so he left instructions in his will that he
wanted his tombstone left blank. Now,
everyone that walks by his grave stares at the stone and says: 'That's
Odd.'"
Mike looked
at his friend with annoyance. "You
know, I got a brother that talks just about that foolish."
Mike stared at the distant river for a while and said, "I was just thinking that life is kind of like standing on a sandbar in
the middle of a fast river.”
“What are
you talking about?” asked Kent.
“Well, at
the end of the sandbar, new sand is always washing up, and new people arrive to
stand there. But with time, the leading
edge of the sandbar keeps washing downstream, and as the edges erode, people
vanish into the river. Some fight and
shove for more space, and before long, the front of the sandbar is just a thin
thread of land, with a few old codgers like me and you desperately trying to
stay dry. We’ve lost a lot of family and
quite a few friends—sooner or later, we’re going fall off, too.”
“No more
beer for you,” Kent announced. “You’re
starting to get mopey. Besides, you
never finished telling me about Bob.
What happened?”
“Well,” said
Mike as he reached for the last bottle of beer, ignoring his friend. “Bob thought he was going to die. His family and friends thought he was going
to die. Even the doctor said one more
clean white shirt would do for him. So
there he was, alone in bed, waiting to meet his maker, when suddenly he smelled
the aroma of fried chicken. His wife was
making a fresh batch of fried chicken!”
“No doubt
about it, Sue makes the best fried chicken in Palo Pinto County,” Ken agreed.
“Now there
is nothing in the world that Bob likes better than Sue's fried chicken, so he
carefully got out of bed,” Mike said, ignoring the interruption. “The Doctor had warned him that if he exerted
himself, the strain would probably kill him, but Bob just had to get one last
piece of chicken. So Bob carefully
climbed out of bed and tottered into the kitchen, and sure enough, there was a
large platter of fresh fried chicken right next to the stove. Even better, Sue was just starting to fry up
another batch.”
“And?” urged
Kent.
"Well,
Bob put out a shaky hand, reaching for what was probably going to be his last
drumstick this side of the flowerbed….and Sue whacked the back of his hand with
a hot oily wooden spoon!”
“Leave
those alone!” scolded Sue. “Those are for the funeral!”
“Makes
sense,” said Kent. “Knowing that stubborn
bastard, he’s probably going to outlive her for spite.”
When he saw she was making up a second batch of chicken, I knew what the punchline was going to be. That said, I laughed anyway. When I was a kid I loved those old codger stories my Grandpa used to tell. Now I've taken up Grandpa's mantle and tell 'em to anybody I can pin into a corner and force to listen. I like these because the Brazos is my old stompin' ground. When life's little stresses had plagued me to the point that I felt like sticking needles into my eyeballs, I'd take a church youth group paddling dow the Brazos till the urge passed. Those trips were fun. Never lost a kid and rescued two dogs and a Hereford from drowning in the river, though now that I think of it, I think the Hereford fell into the Trinity after the river rose and trapped him on a ledge. Me and a 12 year old girl performed that one. She put the steer into a chin pull and I paddled us all to the nearest shore. Not sure if I got him into the right pasture, but given his mood, I didn't want to argue with him (or drag him back into the river and paddle him over to the other side. Some farmer probably wondered how he'd picked up the extra steer - rustlers usually take them. You don't often hear of one dropping one off.
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