This story did not spring from a warped imagination. The events chronicled herein are true, confirming beyond exaggeration, elaboration, or embellishment what Mark Twain said about truth: “Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? After all, fiction has to stick to possibilities.”
One cold winter day while hunting, I came upon a motherless fawn. The emaciated creature was so weak it didn’t even struggle when I picked it up, and its big brown sad eyes seemed to say — help me, please!
Mama took one look at the little deer and her maternal instincts kicked in. She made a bed in a cardboard box and fed him with a bottle. In keeping with her habit of giving pets Biblical names (e.g., Goliath the rooster, Delilah the cat, Jethro the Rottweiler, Jubal the canary) she christened him Potiphar.
Following a successful crop year, my father, a Mississippi Delta cotton farmer, built his growing family a tennis court and swimming pool in the backyard with a changing room between them.
Unwilling to set Potiphar free when he outgrew the cardboard box, Mama put him in the tennis court, and my boyhood mentor Jaybird and I often brought him a bowl of kernel corn, his favorite food.
Jaybird smoked Picayune cigarettes, the strongest on the market back then. One day while feeding Potiphar corn, Jaybird offered him a Picayune. The little buck gobbled it down and nudged the old black man’s leg, begging for another.
“Nope,” Jaybird said, “These strong smokes will make you drunk.” How prophetic those words were!
About a week later, while Mama and several town ladies were cooling off in the swimming pool, I decided to see how many Picayunes Potiphar would eat.
After gobbling ten of them, his coat quivered, as if shedding flies. Then the overdosed deer stared at me with crossed eyes, flapped his white tail, foamed at the mouth, staggered drunkenly, and bolted across the court.
The ensuing pandemonium ensured that Potiphar was no longer Mama’s benign bambino Bambi. He ricocheted off the fence, tore down the net, leaped atop the changing room, and — performing a full gainer with a half twist — plunged into the pool, right amongst the bathing beauties!
Seeking a way out, Potiphar swam around the pool, herding the wailing women into the middle. Finally he caught a foothold and vaulted out of the water, only to slip on the wet surface and slide under a table, dumping hors d’oeuvres, Jubal’s cage, and a pitcher of iced tea on Jethro.
Regaining his feet, he sprinted around the pool, with the enraged Rottweiler at his heels. Then out of the gate they flew. We never saw Potiphar again.
“Some creatures are naturally wild, and folks oughtn’t try to domesticate them,” Mama admitted, watching her horrified, towel-clad friends fleeing to their cars.
“Yes, ma’am,” I nodded. I never told her the truth stranger than fiction: Several strong smokes made that deer delirious, deranged, and drunk. Potiphar got plastered on Picayunes.
Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled The Jaybird Tales.
Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).
