I caught a glimpse at the calendar today and my tired eyes did a double-take - you know how that goes – a glance, look away and then almost wrench your neck muscles as your head spins around to take a better look.
I missed an anniversary yesterday.
My husband and I would have been married sixty years yesterday. We decided on that very date because it marked a turn in our relationship. That day, three years before we got married, we sealed our friendship and bonded in a way that told of the trust between us. Trust and loyalty that we knew would never be broken. What a perfect date for a wedding.
I took my cup of tea into the living room, turned off the television and I set the cup down, sat down in my comfy chair and sat looking off into the distance. The back yard, the chickens, the sheds and the goat faded out of my sight and the far distance of yester-year slammed into perfect view.
Hindsight being 20/20 vision and all that, I remember those hazy early-summer days when the grass is growing, the days are warm, not blistering hot and the nights are balmy, window-open pleasant.
I had a friend back then. He wasn’t what you’d call a boyfriend. He was gawky and shy and we liked riding the ponies in his daddy’s pasture. He’d risk a whuppin from his daddy if he caught us but he would nod his head in his lazy manner when I asked if we could go and ride them.
I knew he liked me a lot but I liked someone else.
That other boy, Billy was mean to me. He’d tease me, pull my hair, kick me and he’d taken to spitting at me when I passed, especially when he had an audience.
I liked him so much it hurt. I ached for that boy. I honestly and truthfully did.
The day he cornered me behind my daddy’s barn was a quandary of mixed emotions. He pushed me hard against the side of the barn. After a few hours of full sun, the barn was almost too hot to lean against and I kept trying to push myself away from the hot wood. The boy laughed and pressed me back against it and he touched my budding breasts. I slapped his hand away like I was supposed to but I knew deep in my heart and my groin that I really didn’t want to push his hands away, I wanted to let him touch me.
“You wet down there?” he asked.
I blushed, shocked to all hell and back!
He pressed himself against me, full body-to-body and he kissed me.
I kissed him back and I swear I almost swooned! I closed my eyes and let him kiss me and I thought my heart would burst right outa my chest!
He leaned back and nodded his head towards my blouse. I knew what he wanted. He wanted to see my titties. I blushed again, my face was as hot as the barn wall and redder than the day it was first painted when I was a toddler.
“Go on, lemme see em,” he said and his voice dripped honey.
I started with the top button and with trembling fingers, I undid one and two buttons. I worked on the third, a voice in my head screaming at me not to, but another voice in my head told her to shut the hell up.
I held open my blouse so he could see the little buds of my titties and he nodded again. He touched his chin like he was thinking deeply.
“They’re kinda small, ain’t they?”
Then I heard a giggling from around the side of the barn.
I looked and almost fainted! Belinda, one of the school kids from my class stood there, laughing. I clasped my blouse to my chest. There was no point trying to do up the buttons, my fingers were shaking so bad they wouldn’t have fastened anything!
He grabbed hold of both my breasts and pinched them hard, bringing tears, pained tears, not embarrassment tears to my eyes and he ran off towards the road, laughing and turning to wave at me as they went.
I knew what Monday morning was going to be like and I didn’t think I could bear it.
The day was fixin to be hot and dusty and I went wandering.
My friend’s daddy’s truck came rumbling up the lane behind me as I walked, in a daze, with no clear thought in my head, just the mocking laughter ringing in my ears and the tenderness around my nipples where he’d squeezed hard.
“Now why have you been crying?” he said when he pulled up alongside me. “Today is too pretty a day for you to be walking alone, crying.”
“I’m going to sit on the bridge for a while,” I said.
“Not yet,” he said. “I have a favour to ask of you first.”
“A favour?” I said. “I don’t feel like it. Maybe later?”
“No, I need you to help me right now,” he said, he insisted.
After all the times he’d said yes right away, whenever I wanted to ride the ponies in his daddy’s pasture and how many whuppins he’d got for that, I had to say yes. Just this once.
We went around to the back of his truck.
He pulled down the truck-bed door, reached into the truck bed and pulled a lumpy canvas bundle toward us.
“I heard what happened to you,” he said.
I started crying again. “You heard, already?”
“Yeah. I saw them running from your place and I followed them for a little while. They went into her daddy’s barn and they were getting’ frisky. I heard ‘em talking about what he made you do and I got mad.”
He pulled the bundle close and it fell open a little. Bright blonde hair shone in the sun around a bloom of brightest red.
“She ain’t gonna tell no one about what happened. I made sure of that,” he said.
Then he took out his daddy’s shotgun from the cab of the truck and he hopped up into the truck bed. His daddy had built a box and fastened it to the bed of the truck. Everyone knew it was for when he went hunting deer when he didn’t have a license, but that box locked and he claimed he’d lost the key years and years ago. The sheriff believed him, or at least said he did.
He opened the box and waved the shotgun. That boy climbed out slowly. He looked terrified and sheepish and when he saw me, he went deathly pale under the dirt.
Me and that boy struggled with the bundle and finally got it to the edge of the bridge. Rolling it over the edge was easy. I hated Belinda at that moment and I was glad she was going. I looked at the boy’s face as Belinda slipped over the edge of the bridge and a sob caught in his throat. He looked back at the truck, the shotgun pointed at him still.
“You get off home now, me and Billy Joe have some talkin’ to do,” he said. “I’m gonna marry you some day.”
I wasn’t sure then whether he meant it or meant for me to hear it, but I did hear and he did marry me. Three years to the day.
I got off home and did my chores. I helped momma with the supper and I wondered about what was happening on the bridge.
It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day
I was out choppin' cotton, and my brother was balin' hay
And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat
And mama hollered out the back door, y'all, remember to wipe your feet
And then she said, I got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge
Today, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge
And papa said to mama, as he passed around the blackeyed peas
Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense; pass the biscuits, please
There's five more acres in the lower forty I've got to plow
And mama said it was shame about Billy Joe, anyhow
Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge
And now Billy Joe MacAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge
And brother said he recollected when he, and Tom, and Billie Joe
Put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show
And wasn't I talkin' to him after church last Sunday night?
I'll have another piece-a apple pie; you know, it don't seem right
I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge
And now ya tell me Billie Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge
And mama said to me, child, what's happened to your appetite?
I've been cookin' all morning, and you haven't touched a single bite
That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today
Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by the way
He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge
And she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge
A year has come and gone since we heard the news 'bout Billy Joe
And brother married Becky Thompson; they bought a store in Tupelo
There was a virus going 'round; papa caught it, and he died last spring
And now mama doesn't seem to want to do much of anything
And me, I spend a lot of time pickin' flowers up on Choctaw Ridge
And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge
Songwriters: Bobbie Gentry
Ode to Billie Joe lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Spirit Music Group
Pictures from Google
