LEAVING CORRECTLY
BB King grew up sharecropper poor in the Mississippi delta. His daddy left the family when he was young, then his mother died young, so he ends up with his grandmother, but she died from diabetes complications. At age 14, BB King was solo in this world.
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In 2013 we didn’t know that Dad was growing cancer. What we’re concerned with is his early dementia. My sister and I maneuvered Dad to swing by my store – something familiar – where I could gently offer to drive him where he wants to go, which is some brokerage house that has relocated.
I sit in the waiting room, reading an old magazine, while Dad is at the window with the receptionist, trying to see who is handling his account. From the overheard voices I can tell that it is not going well – it seems that Dad closed the account years ago…and I feel embarrassed for him, and sad, that his mind is failing him.
…but the next day he’s back at the store, and I offer again, and this time, for the first time in our history as father and son, I’m loaning him money. I give him $1000.
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BB King got the guitar bug early on, but he’s poor, and can only guitar on the weekends; to make a little living he works on a plantation, for a man he respects.
One day, he turned off his tractor, dismounted, and the turning off didn’t take. The old engine bucked back to duty – a diesel – if you ever drove one you’d know – the tractor just headed on off, towards the trees.
Some people stay, some people run. The next morning BB King was on the shoulder of the black top highway with his thumb out, running away to Memphis, to music, to a fresh start.
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The very next day, Dad was back, to discuss repayment.
I tried to shush him on it. “Dad,” I said, “how much money do I owe you for all it cost to raise me?!” It would be such an honor, I told him, to give a little back. He’d quiet up, and then bring it up again, next time I saw him.
I’d just keep pushing it away, “How ‘bout we square up in heaven?” I’d joke, but all that would appease him was to push it on to some calendar thing, “after Christmas”, “sometime next year…”
…and then came cancer…
Every morning I’d pick him up and we’d go to a local facility to walk laps. Every week, without fail, he’d bring up the thousand dollars. “Look, I haven’t forgot,” he’d say. “If you get in a jam…” said my father, he with a tennis ball of killing growing inside him… Sometimes I’d have to turn my head towards the traffic to keep him from seeing me tear up. O for crying out loud, about this thousand dollars! Let me give it, and give more!
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In Memphis BB King met real musicians. Here he could learn his craft, find his own musical identity, make a new life that led to his destiny.
He arrived raw, got better, got noticed – and just about the time that his music career was getting traction, he took the hard road, went back to the plantation, his idea alone, to work off his debt on the tractor.
He paid it down, by his day wages, can-to-can’t in that Mississippi summer sun, but he didn’t leave until the debt was paid.
In his old age BB said, “The next time I left for Memphis, to start my career, I started it ‘correctly’”… No look-back-over-your-shoulder, no hole in the bucket of his conscience.
His first big gig paid all of $12.
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Dad used to come by Eighty-one at least once a week in the good ole days before September, when the doctor gave him three months to live. After the cancer diagnosis he’d miss a week, or two, and then there he’d be, in his little gray car, and I’d soak it all up, our little small talk, whatever it amounted to, then walk him to his car and watch him pull away, thinking maybe-this-is-the-last-visit…
…but there kept being another visit…which alarmed us as October became November, because he was under heavy medication, and his mind and memory were as fatigued as his shrinking body. I’d make up little white lies, “I was just about to go back your way to pick up something,” and offer to bring him home, and work out a return ride.
It would not do, for Dad to have done a lifetime of right, and then here at the end, cut a corner.
We had a one-last Thanksgiving, and then here came the rush of Christmas shopping. On the 23rd, the store jammed with shoppers, he rode up to the shop one last time. He was grinning.
He pulled me off aside, and handed me an envelope with ten hundred dollar bills. I tried to push it back to him, but he wanted to pay me back so badly. He shut me up when he said, “This is what people do.”
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Who am I to understand that generation? Most grew up with no money; the account that seemed to matter was their honor, and their name. To be respected by others mattered, but I saw it time and again, that when tested, they were driven to protect their self respect.
It would not do, for Dad to have done a lifetime of right, and then here at the end, cut a corner. Like BB King, my father was leaving correctly.
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This edition of Uncle P’s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one, where we know character when we see it…and we value it higher than currency…
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