Following a tour of William Faulkner’s home, I asked students in my creative writing class how the great novelist felt about mankind’s capacity for endurance.
A student replied, “He summed it up in one line from his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech: ‘I believe man will not merely endure; he will prevail.’”
Another great thinker, Jaybird, my boyhood best friend and mentor, defined man’s capacity for endurance by living it, day by day.
When I was ten years old, Dad turned me over to Jaybird and told him to teach me to work. I didn’t even know what endurance meant, and certainly didn’t have enough of it to withstand long workdays. I learned; Jaybird saw to that.
Few tasks test one’s endurance more than chopping weeds out of crops. Enduring sweat, dust, monotony, and the pitiless gaze of an unrelenting sun, the old black man and I spent many days working our way down long cotton rows on my father’s Mississippi Delta farm.
Capacity for endurance by living it, day by day
With patience but not pity, Jaybird helped me catch up when I lagged behind. “Might as well git used to hard work, boy. It’ll be the biggest part of yo’ life … and if you face it like a man, the best part.”
Then, he’d return to his own row, quietly singing a favorite ditty: “We have come a long way togeth-o, but we got a long way to go, though.”
One day when we were chopping side by side, Jaybird was limping. “Got a hitch in your git-along?” I asked.
“Naw, just a rock in my shoe.” When I asked why he didn’t remove it, he said he would when we got to the end of the row.
“If I had something in my shoe, I’d dump it right now,” I quipped.
Chuckling, he said, “Then you wouldn’t have sumpin’ to look forward to.”
Years passed before I understood what he meant. Because he was a man of unfaltering Christian faith, Jaybird viewed all of life as a process leading to something to look forward to. From that premise, he developed the ability to make the most onerous tasks endurable, even the drudgery of chopping.
When we reached the end of the rows, he dipped a cool drink from the water keg and drank his fill. Then he sat down, removed the rock, and tossed it to me.
“Lawdy, dat sho’ feels better,” he sighed. “Let’s git to work. We got a long ways to go ’fore sundown.”
So many of Jaybird’s teachings are imprinted in my mind, especially his lessons about enduring and prevailing.
Recently, while rummaging through a desk drawer, I found the old cigarette case I took from his shirt pocket on the day he collapsed and died of a heart attack that ended his long, well-spent life.
Inside, I found the rock he’d removed from his shoe and tossed to me. It symbolized the goal of his earthly existence: eternal existence with his Maker. Always, that was his “sumpin’ to look forward to.”
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.
Other books by Jimmy Reed include 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)).
