Lord Have Mercy

When Mama was pregnant with me, her first child, the fact that Dad’s Mississippi Delta farm was way out in the boondocks and a long way from the nearest hospital caused her no small amount of anxiety. Her time came on a Friday, which was also the thirteenth day of the month, and Mama, superstitious by nature, worried that my birth on such an ominous day might work mischief in her son’s life. The flute fiasco gave credence to her worries. For my seventh birthday, she gave me the little musical instrument. I loved it, and traipsed around the house, tooting happily. One day, the flute’s tooting stopped abruptly when I tripped and fell on it, jamming it firmly in my throat.

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Mama dashed outside, yelling for help, and Jaybird, the man who would become my boyhood best friend and mentor, was within earshot. “Jaybird, get Junior’s father quick — we’ve got to get the boy to the hospital right away!” “Lord, Miss Lena, the boss went to a meetin’ in town … said he wouldn’t be back ’til after dark.” “Get the car — you’ll have to drive us to the hospital.” Mama put me in the back seat of Dad’s old Packard, the kind with the seats so high that folks in front had to rise up to look in the back. While Jaybird clutched, shifted and accelerated, speeding down the curvy gravel road to the highway, Mama looked over the seat constantly, checking on me. Then she noticed one of the back doors was ajar, and asked me to pull it shut, just at the moment when Jaybird rounded a sharp curve leading onto the highway.

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Now safely on pavement, she turned to see if I had closed the door. Horrified, the poor woman shrieked and passed out cold. Jaybird’s eyes were locked on the road, and he raced on, not realizing that I had reached for the door just as the car slued around the curve and had been thrown out. When Jaybird skidded to a stop at the hospital and jumped out to carry me inside, he stared in shock at an empty seat. Then Mama awoke. Racing back to the curve, Jaybird jumped on the hood while Mama drove slowly. Both called out my name, but got no response. Suddenly Jaybird shouted, “There he is!” Mama grabbed me, now flute-less, and we raced back to the hospital. “Miraculously, the flute did no permanent damage to the boy’s esophagus, Lena,” the doctor said. “The wound will heal in time, but you’ll have to feed him soft foods until it does.” On the way home, Jaybird, even more superstitious than Mama, mentioned that he had never known a more accident-prone child. “So true. I have no doubt that it was because he was born on Friday the thirteenth,” Mama replied. The old black man gawked at her in disbelief, rolled his eyes and shook his head in disbelief. All he could think to say was, “Lord have mercy.”

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