Even if the hospital is a short distance away, city mothers expecting to give birth at any time may feel a little anxious. When Mama was pregnant with me, her first child, she was more than just a little anxious: The hospital was half a county away.
Dad’s farm, known as Bamboo, couldn’t have been any farther out in the Mississippi Delta boondocks. Bamboo’s crows could reach civilization after a fifteen-mile flight; its people had to travel twice that far, over winding, gravel roads.
Mama was Italian, and therefore superstitious, and to her dying day blamed herself for the fact that I was the most accident prone of her six head of kids. When the time came to bring me into the world, it was not only a Friday, but also the thirteenth day of the month!
Poor woman … tried to hold out until the fourteenth, but an hour before midnight, she was cuddling Jimmy Reed, Jr., a purplish, screaming baby with a face only a mother could love.
The flute fiasco gave credence to Mama’s superstition about Friday the thirteenth. For my sixth birthday, she gave me the little musical instrument. I loved it, and traipsed around the house for hours, tooting happily.
One day, she heard the flute’s tooting stop abruptly. Then her brat child ran into the kitchen with the flute lodged in his throat. He had tripped and fallen on it!
Mama dashed outside, forgetting English, screaming in Italian to one of Dad’s employees. “Newman, go find Mr. Jimmy — we’ve got to get Junior to the hospital quick!” The only part of her shouting that he understood was Dad’s name, but that was enough. Off he fled.
Mama put me in the back seat of the family’s old Packard, the kind with the seats so high that folks in front had to rise up to look in the back.
Dad clutched, shifted and accelerated, flinging gravel as he slued around curves. Mama looked over the seat constantly, checking on Junior. Then she noticed one of the back doors was ajar.
Knowing her husband wouldn’t stop, she asked the boy to close it. About that time, Dad negotiated a particularly sharp curve, and Mama latched on for dear life.
The curve behind them, she raised up to see if Junior had closed the door. Instantly, she shrieked and collapsed, out cold, beside her husband. Dad’s eyes were locked on the road, and he raced on, never realizing that his poor wife fainted because Junior had been ejected!
Dad skidded to a stop at the hospital, jumped out, opened the back door to get his son, and stared unbelievingly at an empty seat. Then Mama woke up.
The boy had to be somewhere past that bad curve. Mama drove slowly, sobbing and praying, training the headlights on the tall grass at the road’s edge. Crouched on the hood, Dad called, “Junior, Junior, where are you, boy?”
Then he saw him, crawling along … looking for his flute.
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)).
