Even Jaybird, my boyhood best friend and mentor, didn’t know how Moon and Doll got their names. Moon, I could halfway understand. Like that nocturnal orb, his face was round and shiny. But Doll was anything but a doll. He was so huge that his wife had to hand-sew coveralls to clothe his oxen obesity.
Whatever work we were doing on Dad’s Mississippi Delta farm, the two men never stopped competing with each other — a good thing, I thought.
“Wrong,” Jaybird said. “I’m tellin’ you, Junior, if Moon and Doll work together, sooner or later, sumpin’ bad gwine happen.”
Having graduated from a university rather than the school of hard knocks, Jaybird’s alma mater, I thought I knew everything, and ignored his prophecy.
Good soil, rain, and ample sunshine, along with a timely fertilizer application, insure that cotton seedlings mature rapidly, so Dad told Jaybird and me to keep his two fertilizer rigs rolling can-to-can’t. With Moon driving one tractor and Doll the other, I envisioned an opportunity to exploit their competitiveness.
One day, a tour bus loaded with New Yorkers pulled off the highway bordering Dad’s farm. Knowing they had never seen cotton before, I explained what we were doing and invited them to walk out in the field to take pictures.
“Wait until those approaching tractors turn and head the other way,” I said.
“Geeez, those guys sure know what they’re doing,” one man commented.
“Yep,” I boasted. “I train my employees to be true professionals.”
To insure that the wide fertilizer rigs passed each other without risk of colliding, I cautioned Moon and Doll to keep a set of rows between themselves, but eager to show off in front of the tourists, Moon forgot the caution.
Reaching the field’s edge first, he plied pedals and levers majestically as he choreographed raising the applicator, turning on a dime, turning again, dropping his applicator, and fire-walling the throttle — on the rows next to those Doll was completing!
The applicators collided in a clanging thunderclap. Instantly, tractors and applicators circled each other, knifing fertilizer in parallel arcs, as countless cameras clicked away.
Support Canada Free Press
As the bus eased onto the highway, the sound of Yankees guffawing replaced the roaring of tractors, now stopped and shut down. With a told-you-so expression on his face, Jaybird looked at me and wagged his head.
To make matters worse, Dad pulled up, looked at me, and wagged his head also. I expected to be fired, but he knew more about getting the most out of people than I ever would.
“Son, we’ll repair those applicators later on, but for now we’ll rent two of them to finish this job. One more thing — don’t ever let those two clowns work together again!” With that, he got in his pickup and drove away.
Jaybird and I breathed a sigh of relief. Then the wise old black man repeated his prophecy: “Remember what I told you — if Moon and Doll work together, sooner or later, sumpin’ bad gwine happen.”
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)).
