How precious each day is, how beautiful this world is, how priceless friendship is … and that we are always one eye blink, one heartbeat, from standing before our Maker.
When I regained consciousness, stitches, bandages, tubes, and casts imprisoned my body. The slightest movement caused excruciating pain.
“Your mother just left,” a nurse said. “She was by your side all night, praying. We finally persuaded her to go home and rest. An old black man named Jaybird is waiting outside.”
“Oh, please let him come in,” I said.
My lifelong friend and mentor Jaybird helped raise me from boyhood to manhood. When I returned from overseas military duty and became manager of Dad’s Mississippi Delta farm, he and I spent many long days together, tending cotton crops during growing season, and ginning them during harvest.
As if in a dream, I heard his deep, bullfrog voice long before his face came into focus.
“Here it is, Junior … what you always call yo’ lucky baby. The ambulance driver gave it to me when they was loadin’ you up. Just like always, it was in yo’ back pocket.”
Blinking away tears, he gently curled my fingers around the little adjustable wrench.
The accident happened on one of those late fall days when dawn’s perfection is so great a man is afraid to speak. Standing on the front platform of Dad’s cotton gin, I looked across fields, devoid now of crops and activity — my favorite time of year. Work was over; months of hunting lay ahead.
Having worked in the gin since it was built, Jaybird taught me all about it. On that day, when we were finishing up a few odd jobs before closing the gin until next harvest, I decided to examine a machine forty feet above the concrete floor.
The only tool I carried was the little wrench that poked out of my back pocket year-round. Jaybird teased me about, even telling folks I kept it in my pocket when I went to church.
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The memory of what happened is a blur. One moment, I was removing a large panel; the next moment, Jaybird was beside me, eyes wide in horror. Raising my shirt, he discovered a gaping hole. During the fall, a steel rod had gored my side like an angry bull.
That winter, instead of hunting I suffered through a long, slow recuperation, and a miraculous one, too, considering the severity of the injuries.
That near-fatal fall became a major turning point in my life. I began to realize how precious each day is, how beautiful this world is, how priceless friendship is … and that we are always one eye blink, one heartbeat, from standing before our Maker.
On the day I left the hospital and headed home, Jaybird was waiting. The first thing he did was check to see if the little wrench was in my back pocket.
“Boy, I ain’t gwine tease you about that wrench no mo’. God brought you back to this farm all in one piece, and maybe that little ole wrench had sumpin’ to do with it. Maybe it really is what you always call it: yo’ lucky baby.”
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)).
When I regained consciousness, stitches, bandages, tubes, and casts imprisoned my body. The slightest movement caused excruciating pain.
“Your mother just left,” a nurse said. “She was by your side all night, praying. We finally persuaded her to go home and rest. An old black man named Jaybird is waiting outside.”
