Red Wind

The Morning News

I met Bobby at a coffee shop up on North Mississippi Avenue the other day. His brother lives in Eugene. Bobby was in a talking mood about his family. His brother’s wife was gone ten years now. Bobby said his brother just goes to work, hangs around the house and looks after the kids. Bobby said his brother ought to go to church and find some people for himself, for his kids.

A while back Bobby’s brother tried to call their momma, Vanetta, who lives in Portland.
   “Somethin’ was not right. So he calls me. I say why you call me, why you put this one on me?
   Why don’t you come up an’ see about momma?”

So Bobby goes over to Vanetta’s house.
   (Bobby does a rich imitation of Vanetta’s quavering fussy voice.)
   “Who’s there? Go away! I’m gonna call the police!”
   “It’s me momma. I come to check up on you.
   If you hadn’t answered the door I was ‘bout to break it down. Open up.”

Bobby eases through the half-open front door and notices that Vanetta’s phone was off the hook.
   “What you take the phone of the hook for momma?”
   “Phone’s nuthin’ but trouble baby boy. I don’t need no trouble.”

Bobby takes a sip of his coffee and tells me,
   “That’s my momma alright.” I keep watch on her. I don’t know why my brother can’t come up once
   in a while. He hasn’t visited momma for years. Somethin’ is troublin’ him. Maybe it was somthin’
   between him an’ his wife that he never worked out with her. I don’t know.”

   “Sometimes I go bird huntin’ with my brother out of Eugene. He likes to hunt quail and grouse, yeah.
   I love fishin’. He won’t go fishin’ with me so I go out and hunt birds for a couple of weeks with him.
   When we was kids, my brother an’ I would go out frog giggin’. That was a long time back.
   I’m fifty-one now.”

   “My daddy always liked to take me out fishin’. We lived in East Texas an’ he an’ I would go out
   fishin’.   My daddy was a fine fisherman. He would sure catch fish an’ I would watch.
   When he caught his first fish of the day he would talk to it.”

   “Go git your friends and bring ‘em here,” he would say to that fish.

   “He’d throw that fish back in. An’ then he would really catch fish.
   My head would go back and forth watchin’ him pull those fish in.
   My daddy was everythin’ .”