Brushes with Immortality and Yesterdays

IT’S NOT QUITE THE ‘OLD FOLKS AT HOME’ OR SIMILARLY THEMED MEMORIES OF TIMES GONE BY. The season, thoughts of a coming new year, the natural passing of an entire year, encumbered with many events added, perhaps then incompletely shed, during such times over the decades of life, bids scenes come to me for who knows how many times? It was late afternoon, then early nightfall in the fields of home, back on the old James place in Carroll County, Miss., and my siblings and I had joined the uncle who lived on the north half of the farm belonging then to my grandmother, Susie Anna McDonald James, in clearing fence lines and such maintenance chores as that. We were burning brush. The project was winding down, and we were gathered near the brush pile as it burned, relaxing, while yet minding the flames didn’t get out of control. My eldest brother for whatever reason that might have motivated him, had lobbed a sizable fungi at me, striking me and knocking the breath from me. Fungi, you know, growing out of a dying tree or ancient fence post, hard and picturesque. My assailant was two years older than I, and my uncle’s son, P. W. James, was among the work crew, too. P. W., a decade older than I, a veteran of the Air Force and known for his civilian main job as a parts man for an automotive house, was behaving as a counselor in the aftermath of this violence, sibling upon sibling. For me, this tender attention was precious. P. W. instructed my attacker — with my second eldest brother at the elbow for this bit of solicitude — that as a sister, I was to be treated with care and that brothers were to look out for their sister’s well being and safety. NOT AS AN OBJECT OF ASSAULT! The fires were dying, and embers were fairly stable; the winds of the night were low, if existent at all by then. Did I actually lose consciousness after mon frère’s missile from the natural world of Beat 2 struck me, with some force? I know the calling was quite close, at least, and the struggle to breathe that I’d experienced, I equate with that of one Saturday on Interstate 55 years afterward, after regaining consciousness during an wreck. An 18 wheeler struck my Maverick from the rear … and among other things, my chest was propelled Into the steering wheel.