Adieu, Mr. Lu

The Mississippi Delta is renowned not only for its fecund soil, but also for its unique characters, ranging from those with benign idiosyncrasies to raving lunatics roaming unrestrained among sane folks. One of the most unforgettable of them was Lloyd Lemuel Llewellynn, known by all as “Mr. Lu.” His varicose-veined face framed a bulbous nose, crooked smile, and intelligent blue eyes, fixed always in a faraway stare. Even in the Delta’s perpetual, soup-thick humidity, where gills would serve better than lungs for respiration, he wore heavy, Victorian Era clothes, so old and shabby that actual Victorians might have worn them. He spoke with what he claimed was his native Welsh accent, but to us Southerners sounded more like a Yankee’s Welsh affectation.

Mr. Lu loved beer, and upon entering the local watering hole, tapped his derby with a cane, unknotted a large bandanna, and counted out coins sufficient to purchase several quarts of warm Falstaff beer, which he lauded as fine English lager. In a tiny Winnebago that listed to starboard on the edge of a remote, swampy slough, he lived with a dozen cats and several dogs. He earned his living painting signs. Once when I hired him to paint a sign on Dad’s cotton gin, he opened the door to his hovel and wheezed, “Top o’ the mornin’, Guvnuh. By Jove, our appointment slipped me mind. I’ll pop on out in a jiffy.” When shown where the sign should be, he chose to paint it in calligraphic letters, large enough to be read by truckers arriving for loads of cotton bales. But in palsied tremors, his hands shook, and he quavered, “Your Honor, I need to quaff a dram or two to settle me nerves. Please advance me enough for a couple of quarts.” After swilling the first quart, his eyes focused, his hands became as steady as a surgeon’s, and when finished stenciling the lettering, set to painting. The finished artwork was a masterpiece. As we drove away, he gulped down the second quart. Artists never look back; he didn’t. He knew his handiwork was perfect. Mr. Lu was a gifted artist, but a hopeless alcoholic, who seemed to have materialized out of thin air one day, and dematerialized the same way. He disappeared during the dead of winter, abandoning the ramshackle hut, caterwauling cats, and barking dogs. Of talented people whose lives alcohol destroys, Abraham Lincoln once said, “If we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant to fall to the same fate — the demon of intemperance.” That demon claimed Mr. Lu. Not long after he was last seen, duck hunters found his body floating in the slough, with several quarts of Falstaff in the deep pockets of his coat. He died alone, but not forgotten by those of us who knew him. He was a character: Adieu, Mr. Lu.