Gravy Chin

His name was Richard Mortis, but folks called him “Rigor” Mortis because, like a two-day-old corpse, he walked with robot stiffness, and when he stopped, nothing moved, except his Adam’s apple, which cycled constantly up and down his long, thin, bony neck. My boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird and I called him Gravy Chin because that part of his face protruded out and up, like a sockeye salmon’s lower jaw, and always glistened with the sheen of gravy grease. Mortis grew produce on land next to my father’s Mississippi Delta farm, and sold it in town. One day, Jaybird and I were preparing to chop weeds out of cotton in a field adjoining Gravy Chin’s truck patch.