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Doocy Dew, the ‘Cool Breeze’
June 4, 1973
Red’s old work truck came to an abrupt stop, and the first thing I saw was the gentleman in the middle emerging rapidly from the passenger door. He jumped out as cheerful as if he had won the lottery, was wearing an Atlanta Braves hat backwards, and was singing enthusiastically with a tune playing on the truck radio. The song had been revved up enough that I could make out what it was as soon as the truck topped the last hill of the driveway. By the time the old red truck skidded to a halt and the gentleman in the Braves hat emerged, his spirited rendition of an old 60s song threatened to revoke the lease on all the air in his lungs,
“Corinna, Corinna – Corinna, Corinna – Corinna, Corinna, I looooove you, sooooo …”
“Cheyenne,” I said, coming back to our dark, early-morning drive down the highway, “you ‘bettah’ hang onto the passenger door, because we’re about to go for a ride better than anything Universal has to show.”
Cheyenne grabbed the door, playfully, and waited for the showdown. He was about to take a front-row seat to a debacle for the ages, even giving the Thrilla in Manilla a run for its money – not just the one match about to unfold but for the hundred others on the docket.
About the time the last note faded, one of the fellas who had jumped out of the back of the truck started howling like a dog and laughing in a hoarse laugh,
“Doocy,” he said, “what-in-the-world did ya do with all thet money your mama give you for sangin’ lessons?”
The one called Doocy snapped back with a voice that sounded like an angel humming in the wind.
“Awright, Willum, I thank I done the same thang you done with the money yore mama give you to get that ugly mug-face of yore’s fixed, that’s whut I done with it.”
I said he sounded like an angel humming, I just didn't specify what kind of angel's voice it was. If you'd been there, you would not doubt its origin. He laid into Willum emphatically, and I waited for a laugh to follow, but it never came, so I didn't know what might ensue at any moment. He didn't go at Willum or anything, for which I'm thankful, but he just kind of snarled as he grabbed a wheelbarrow out of the back of the truck and slung it to the ground.
Pee Wee walked over to me while all this small talk was going on, greeting me with a laugh and a nod toward Doocy. I’d seen Pee Wee use those exact gestures a hundred times. He would grin, throw his head back slightly, and then turn the grin into a million-dollar smile. His smile was always one of approval that made you feel good inside. Despite Pee Wee’s six-foot-two frame and a demeanor that could be tougher than a mad horned toad, he was as gentle as a cool breeze most all the time, not to be confused with the 'real' Cool Breeze whose acquaintance we were about to make.
“Cheyenne,” I said, again turning to my one-man audience: “I think the only two people who brought any kind of good vibes that whole summer were Pee Wee and …" – I paused as I turned my eyes back to the road – "… and you-know-who.”
“Oh, that’s funny, Popman,” Cheyenne snapped back in Doocy-fashion, “you bring You-know-who up as if I already know who you-know-who is, but you know I don’t.”
“Oh, don’t you worry,” I said, “you’re gonna meet her for sho, and it ain’t gonna be long now,” and we both laughed at the little Southern slang.
I didn’t bite on his subtle hint to introduce the mysterious young lady at this point but stayed on topic with the matter at hand, continuing with Pee Wee.
Pee Wee was a man’s man, that’s the best way I know to describe him. Any time he gave you his approval, he’d make you feel as though you were the most important person in the world. Even after the passing of half a century, I’d say he is one of the best balcony people I ever met. He would effortlessly put you high on a pedestal, whether you deserve it or not.
He balanced out Doocy for me that summer, but the problem was that it wasn’t just Doocy he had on the other side of the scale. We had Doocy, Red, ‘Willum,’ and Hook, the group I affectionately began referring to as the “chain gang” as far back as June 5, 1973, which, you’ll note, was the second day on the job. Often as this tumultuous summer unfolded, I’d get to telling folks about this rough, tough, mean chain gang. I wasn’t the least bit afraid to speak my mind, even though I made sure I was thirty or forty rugged country miles out of earshot of any of them.
That morning of June 4, as Doocy and Willum continued to exchange verbal blows, Pee Wee and I had a good laugh, especially when Willum threw a counter punch about how Doocy’s face looked like a mud fence after a ten-inch rain.
Sensing Willum’s good nature, and feeling more relaxed generally because of Pee Wee’s welcoming, I unfroze and laughed out loud right alongside Pee Wee. I can say with certainty that this laugh was the first mistake I made that summer. It got me off on the wrong foot, something I wouldn’t advise for anyone for the first twelve seconds of being on a job such as this.
“It reminded me of Scout, Cheyenne,” I said, “You remember how she gets into a fight with Walter Cunningham because she said he made her get off on the wrong foot with Miss Caroline in the beginning of To Kill A Mockingbird. That's what happened here.”
Cheyenne laughed, and added, “But Scout had that Cunningham boy to lay the blame on. You didn’t seem to have anybody to blame?”
“That’s for sure,” I said, impressed with Cheyenne’s sense of awareness. I knew all along that Cheyenne was the right man for the job regarding passing this pivotal summer’s story down to him. About the time he turned sixteen, he and I started reading classics together – the first of which was Harper Lee’s – and we discussed them at length, often making the connection to our own lives during some of the long hikes we took. The deeper I went into the story, the more I could tell he was constructing a novel of his own in his head, building mental chapters as we rode down the highway talking. If he were writing that novel in his mind, he was about to jump headfirst into the rising action right out of the chute.
Pee Wee and I were in the middle of our good laugh, less than two minutes into the Summer of ’73. That’s when Doocy swung around toward me and threw a scowl in my direction that would’ve killed a lesser man. I say “lesser man,” even though, normally, I would’ve been president of that organization. In this case, for some reason unbeknownst to me, I wasn’t because the scowl didn’t knock me down dead right in my tracks.. I knew I had at least to be in critical condition, so, to take no chances with my life, I wiped the smile off of my face as fast as I could. It would've been really hard for Pee Wee to have to explain to Mama that I fell over dead five minutes into the job.
I wiped the smile off of my face, but it was too late. Doocy was two seconds away from introducing himself to me.
“Wipe that smile off of yore face sonny before I wipe it off for ya”
He said it with that same angelic voice he had used with Willum, one that came without any commas or periods or pauses or exclamation points. He just said it as if he made all the rules of grammar himself and dared anybody to object. I wasn’t about to. I don’t even think Ms. Long from my junior year of English would’ve objected, although she might’ve, because she was tough, too.
I didn’t know what to do when he told me to wipe that smile off, because I had wiped it off the instant I saw the whites of his eyes. I looked over at Pee Wee, begging for help, but Pee Wee was about as much help as that old stump sitting there on the north side of the house. He just raised his eyebrows and chuckled. That’s one time I kind-of resented Pee Wee’s good-naturedness.
Doocy wasn’t finished with me as I stood on this abandoned island in the stream, all alone.
“Look at me sonny when a man be talkin’ at cha. Don’t look at Pee Wee yonder. He can’t hep you none. Look over heah at Doocy Dew, look heah in these eyes, and jus’ tell the Cool Breeze what your baby-blues is seein’ right ‘bout now?”
That got a big laugh from Pee Wee. I heard it, but I wasn’t about to turn and look. I was told to look at Doocy Dew, or the Cool Breeze, or whatever name he preferred, and that was what I was going to do until he told me otherwise. I think I would’ve stood there and stared at his rugged self until the sun went down if I had to’ve.
I fastened my eyes straight on him. My brain clearly was in a high state of turmoil at the moment, but somehow it was still clicking well enough to figure out that Doocy was the roughest-looking fella I had ever seen. That was a scary thought, because – while I was obeying the command to look at him square in the eye like a man – I straight-out disobeyed his second command right there in front of the world. He had asked me to tell him what I saw out of my “baby blues.” As much as I wanted to do that and to obey the creature standing in front of me, I could not. You have to be breathing to talk, and I had stopped breathing ten seconds ago.
I knew right then that I was a goner. If his glaring at me through the whites of those mean blood-shot eyes didn’t kill me, then the utter disdain in his wrong-kind-of-an-angel voice would. He had sucked every drop of air out of my body in just two sentences. My lips swelled up, my jaw bones tightened like a pair of vice grips, and the O2 that had been residing in my lungs packed its bags and hit the door headed for the Greyhound station.
If there was going to be an answer that day, it would have to come through my eyes, because my lungs didn’t have a drop of air left in them. Eyes don’t need air to breathe, so, as I saw it, that was about my only hope for survival. All I had in me otherwise was just enough oxygen to pray, “Help me, Lawd, help me, please!” before the end came.
With that final prayer released from my cold blue lips, I just waited for the angel band to come and lead me to the bright light at the end of that dark, lonely tunnel.
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