Between the country store and a road passing through that remote corner of the Mississippi Delta stood a sycamore tree with limbs stretching in all directions, shading benches where customers sat while playing dominos and enjoying snacks bought at the store.
On summer nights my pal Lamar and me stationed ourselves on the tree’s large limbs, our pockets filled with hard, green sycamore balls, which we threw at passing cars. Once when my boyhood best friend and mentor Jaybird spotted us perched in the tree, he warned, “Y’all keep up that foolishness, and one of these nights the driver of a car hit by them balls will chop y’all up into trotline tidbits.”
“We ain’t skeered,” Lamar sneered. “When drivers stop they never think to look up in this tree. We hit four cars last night. The drivers got out, looked around, cussed a little, and sped away.”
As he ambled off, the old black man said, “Better not chunk at Thaddo. He’s out o’ the penitentiary after serving time for carving up three men in a juke joint, and works at Geesto’s farm, just down the road. Hit his car, and, like I said, y’all will be trotline tidbits, thanks to Thaddo.”
In the Delta, Thaddo Rathbone was known as a “tush hog” — a term applied only to the meanest of the mean — who wielded his switchblade with surgical efficiency so well that he could slice buttons off a man’s shirt without nicking the skin before fricasseeing him from navel to nose. A few years back he was sent to the state penitentiary for rendering a hot-blooded opponent into cold cuts at Hugo’s Hideaway, a country juke joint that was the last scene seen by numerous ne’er-do-wells.
Despite Jaybird’s advice, Lamar and I continued pelting passing cars. One Saturday night we were in the tree with an arsenal of sycamore balls just the right size for throwing three at a time — six projectiles per salvo. Spotting headlights in the distance, we got ready. Lamar whispered, “One, two, three — chunk!” Following the rat-tat-tat of direct hits, brakes screeched, a door flung open, and terror struck when a woman shouted, “Lawdy mercy, was that gunshots, Thaddo?”
Footsteps crunched on gravel beneath us. Like treed raccoons, Lamar and I were paralyzed in sheer terror. Then we heard cursing, a switchblade’s metallic click, and a deep voice commanding, “Climb down and git in the car.”
Jaybird was sitting on his porch swing when we pulled up. In the pitch black, only the whites of Thaddo’s eyes showed as he stared at us. After a long silence, a smiling, gold-toothed arc flashed below the eyes, and he spoke words we never hoped to hear: “Git out.”
“Whose car was that?” Jaybird asked. Trembling with fear, neither of us could utter a word. Putting his arms around us and pulling us up close, he said, “Uh, huh … Thaddo, wasn’t it? Y’all came mighty close to being what I said: trotline tidbits, thanks to Thaddo.”
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)).
