Percy Paterson’s watermelons were ripe for the picking when the first dove season started that year. Five of us teenagers, shotguns a-shoulder, decked out in boots, bandoleers, and camouflage hats, were pillaging the countryside, ignoring bag limits, hunting posted ground and generally being cocky young bucks full of devilment. Stumbling upon the watermelon patch, we felt like lusty pirates of yore, about to reap the spoils of war.
“Mr. Percy has got plenty of watermelons,” I said. “He’ll never miss a couple. Besides, he’s nowhere around anyway.”
Snatching up two hefty melons, we plopped down under a shade tree, unsheathed our bowie knives and shared out the booty. Watermelon is good anytime – even better when stolen.
In stature and character, Mr. Percy was a giant of a man, and one of the most esteemed farmers in the area. He started his working life as a boy, and with no education, a sharecropper’s grubstake, one mule and a few acres of hardscrabble land, built a highly productive farming operation that will support generations of Patersons.
He stood head and shoulders above average mortals. His chest was as large as a bale of cotton; he had shoulders like boulders, ham-sized fists and banana fingers. No shirt collar could close around his neck, and his deep basso voice shook the ground like a trumpeting elephant. His face was wide, whiskered and stern, and while he was the quintessential Southern gentleman, you knew by looking at his face that he was not a man to be trifled with. Yet, he had a marvelous sense of humor that perpetually expressed itself in his laughing, twinkling eyes.
But Mr. Percy was the last thing on our minds. We were gorging ourselves on forbidden fruit. Suddenly the entire circumambience shook. “How many shells you boys got?”
Mr. Percy materialized out of nowhere, towering over us like Goliath, the mocking humor in his two eyes a sharp contrast to the terror in the ten bulging eyes peering up at him. We were frozen stiff, chunks of juicy watermelon dripping from our knives.
“Count them out — every single one of them,” he thundered. His command galvanized our paralysis into mad counting. In a flash, we divested ourselves of about twenty shells each, piling them at his feet.
He gathered up the shells, stuffed them in his coveralls, and turning to leave, said, “I hope you boys have good hunt, and whenever y’all want to buy another watermelon, just let me know.” With that, he faded back into the trees, disappearing as silently as he had appeared.
We thieves were silent too … silent, humbled, and ashamed. And we’d totally lost our taste for the watermelons, even though they had cost us all of our ammunition.
Mr. Percy has been dead a good many years now, but he taught us reckless teenagers an invaluable lesson: Even if it’s just stealing watermelons, crime does not pay, a lesson we learned the hard way … the day we traded shells for melons.
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)).
