Speaker 1: When he was two years old. The boy was dropped
Speaker 1: off at the donation door at the Salvation Army second
Speaker 1: hand store in Tunica, wearing nothing but a sagging diaper.
Speaker 1: A Planet of the Apes backpack stuffed with more diapers
Speaker 1: and some shirts and mismatched socks. Little green Army men
Speaker 1: was dropped on the ground next to him. Then a
Speaker 1: hungover woman banged a scabbed fist on the metal door,
Speaker 1: and a hungover man blew the car horn, and she
Speaker 1: ran abroun and got in as the child watched with
Speaker 1: a docile expression out of the car window. The man
Speaker 1: called out some sort of farewell to the child that
Speaker 1: was lost in the offbeat jug of the engine, and
Speaker 1: then the foul running Cadillac rattled out of the gravel
Speaker 1: parking lot, leaving the in the dust cloud of abandonment.
Speaker 1: The door opened and two women in matching red Salvation
Speaker 1: Army T shirts stared down at the boy. Then they
Speaker 1: looked into the parking lot at the still lingering cloud
Speaker 1: out into the gray morning the sky, and they glassd
Speaker 1: at each other, and then one said, I guess we're
Speaker 1: going to have to hang a sign next to the
Speaker 1: one that says no mattresses, that says, no young'uns. The
Speaker 1: other woman lifted the boy and held him up beneath
Speaker 1: his arms, as if to make certain that he was
Speaker 1: made of actual flesh and bone, and when she was satisfied,
Speaker 1: she hugged the child close and rubbed her hand across
Speaker 1: the back of his head. She said, I pity those
Speaker 1: who have to live behind me in this weary and
Speaker 1: heartless world. The police were called, and while they waited,
Speaker 1: the women washed the boy in the bathroom sink with
Speaker 1: paper towels and hands so filthy feet and filthy hands,
Speaker 1: and the diaper was two changes past due. After they
Speaker 1: had wiped him clean and filled the trash can with
Speaker 1: dirty paper towels, the boy stood naked and fresh on
Speaker 1: the smooth concrete floor of the bathroom, and they admired
Speaker 1: his innocence and beauty. He was then dressed in a
Speaker 1: new diaper and a spider man's shirt taken from the
Speaker 1: rack and the kid's section. The boy did not cry
Speaker 1: and did not talk, but instead satisfied between the women
Speaker 1: on a tweed sofa marked fifteen dollars, as if he
Speaker 1: had already decided that this was his new home and
Speaker 1: that he was better off. He was better off, but
Speaker 1: this was the beginning of a childhood spent in the
Speaker 1: company of strangers. The next ten years saw him move
Speaker 1: from one Delta town to the next, four foster homes
Speaker 1: and two group homes, five different schools, a handful of caseworkers,
Speaker 1: teachers whose names he could not remember, and then stopped
Speaker 1: trying to remember because he knew he would not be
Speaker 1: in their classrooms for long. The steady and certain build
Speaker 1: of restlessness and anxiety in this child who was certain
Speaker 1: neither where he had come from nor where he was going.
Speaker 1: When he was twelve years old, the assistant director of
Speaker 1: the group home told him to gather his things again.
Speaker 1: He sat on the bench seat of a white van
Speaker 1: with a home loco on the side, and he watched
Speaker 1: the fields of soybeans and corn stalks with sullen eyes
Speaker 1: as he was driven from the sleepy brick street town
Speaker 1: of Greenwood to his fifth foster home, moving northwest and
Speaker 1: closer to the Great River, to the fringes of Clarksdale,
Speaker 1: the once bustling Delta hub of trade and commerce that
Speaker 1: now wore the family faded expressions of days gone by.
Speaker 1: His eyes changed when the van pulled into a dirt
Speaker 1: driveway that led to a two story home, a white
Speaker 1: antebellum with a port stretching across the front on the
Speaker 1: bottom and top floors, flaking paint on the sun's side,
Speaker 1: and vines hanging in baskets along the porch with their
Speaker 1: twisted and green tails swaying in the wind. A woman
Speaker 1: sat in a rocker, and she rose to meet them.
Speaker 1: She wore work gloves, and she pulled them off and
Speaker 1: tossed them on the ground as she approached the van,
Speaker 1: as if readying herself for whatever may climb out. She
Speaker 1: took him to his upstairs room and opened the dresser
Speaker 1: drawers to show him where he could put his things,
Speaker 1: and he told her there was no use. I won't
Speaker 1: be here long enough to mess up the covers on
Speaker 1: the bed. Sure you will, she answered, Now I won't,
Speaker 1: he said, a twelve year old certain of the workings
Speaker 1: of the world. Are you going to run away? I
Speaker 1: don't know, are you? Because unless you run away, this
Speaker 1: is where you live. Now. Yeah, so you think so,
Speaker 1: I know, she said. You don't know nothing, he said,
Speaker 1: and he walked out of the bedroom and down the
Speaker 1: stairs out into the backyard. She stood at the window
Speaker 1: and watched him between the slits and the curtains. He
Speaker 1: did not stop in the backyard, but crossed it and
Speaker 1: walked out onto the dirt road that ran on and
Speaker 1: on between the rows of cotton. The sun high and
Speaker 1: a short shadow followed him, and she did not chase.
Speaker 1: She stood in the window and watched until he was
Speaker 1: nearly out of sight. She was one step toward the
Speaker 1: door to run after him when he stopped, a tiny
Speaker 1: figure in the distance. He stopped and stayed in the
Speaker 1: same spot for several more minutes, and she could not
Speaker 1: know that he was talking to himself, telling himself, I
Speaker 1: don't want to do this no more. I don't know
Speaker 1: why I can't have somebody. But the space between them,
Speaker 1: she could not have noticed that he looked back at
Speaker 1: the big house and said that that place right there
Speaker 1: don't want me neither, and that woman can't catch me.
Speaker 1: I'm going to take off running and she won't never
Speaker 1: catch me, won't nobody. I don't want to do this
Speaker 1: shit no more. She could not have heard him or
Speaker 1: seen him with any detail, but she waited, only could
Speaker 1: see that he had stopped. She whispered a prayer without
Speaker 1: moving her lips, as if even the slightest flutter would
Speaker 1: spook the boy and send him fleeing on furious and
Speaker 1: reckless feet. And he stood still, talking to himself. She
Speaker 1: stood still, whispering a quiet and motionless prayer. And then
Speaker 1: from the distant sky, a hawk flew toward the boy.
Speaker 1: It flew low, and its wings were spread wide, and
Speaker 1: when it reached the vicinity of the boy, it swooped,
Speaker 1: seemed to hold there out in front of him, begging
Speaker 1: the boy to admire its eloquence, begging the boy to
Speaker 1: notice something other than himself in his troubles, begging the
Speaker 1: boy to think of something other than running from that woman.
Speaker 1: The hawk rose and fell again, and the boy saw it,
Speaker 1: and his eyes followed the hawk as it turned earned
Speaker 1: long and graceful curves and the blue, white sky, and
Speaker 1: from the window Marianne's by the hawk, and she shifted
Speaker 1: her eyes from the sky to the land, waiting to
Speaker 1: see what the boy would do. The breast she had
Speaker 1: been holding was let go when the hawk turned toward
Speaker 1: the house, and the boy followed. All right, I didn't
Speaker 1: want to ruin that by giving you a preface to
Speaker 1: what this was. What I just read was the prologue
Speaker 1: from a book called The Fighter, written by Michael Ferris Smith.
Speaker 1: I read this with permission from the author. I thought
Speaker 1: about reading the first two or three chapters of the book,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. I'm going to share my heart
Speaker 1: with you here. I envy this man's way with words
Speaker 1: and prose, and the way he writes and the way
Speaker 1: he describes scenes and emotions. It is so to the
Speaker 1: point in a way, so beautiful that I'm just drawing
Speaker 1: to this type of writing. You can go back and
Speaker 1: listen to it and think about it in those terms.
Speaker 1: Listen to the way that he writes this. It is
Speaker 1: really fantastic. But anyway, I was started out doing these
Speaker 1: fiction Fridays, and I got busy at work and the
Speaker 1: fridays didn't work out. I'm in here early this morning
Speaker 1: just sometimes I come in and just pull up chapters
Speaker 1: and books that I love, and I reread the chapter.
Speaker 1: I remember them. Might be chapter forty five of a
Speaker 1: novel I read ten years ago. I just remember them.
Speaker 1: I have them all on Kindle, and I'll just pull
Speaker 1: them up on my computer screen and just read them
Speaker 1: because I just love the written word. It's just it's
Speaker 1: hard to describe. But and when it's on my phone
Speaker 1: going on, when it's good, it is just so good.
Speaker 1: It's so good to read. You can just picture everything
Speaker 1: in your mind. You can almost feel what the characters
Speaker 1: are feeling. So I thought i'd share that with y'all
Speaker 1: this morning. This is Monday morning, it's about six am.
Speaker 1: I need to get to work, but you know, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of addicted to reading this stuff and sharing it
Speaker 1: on my podcast, so I hope you all enjoyed that.
Speaker 1: The name of the book again is The Fighter. The
Speaker 1: author is Michael Ferris Smith. I'll put his name in
Speaker 1: the name of the book in the description. If you
Speaker 1: like good literature, if you like good fiction, you will
Speaker 1: love this book and anything this author has written. I'm
Speaker 1: going to be doing more short stories and chapters from
Speaker 1: books from really best selling authors. I have found that
Speaker 1: if I just send them an email and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I have a podcast I like to read audio style
Speaker 1: books from authors now and then they always say yes.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. I just figured if I did that they
Speaker 1: would say no. But every one of them that I've
Speaker 1: sent an email to has said yes. So I've got
Speaker 1: this author, I've got another one. I' to read a
Speaker 1: short story from sometime in the next couple of weeks
Speaker 1: when I get a minute, and I've got some guys
Speaker 1: who some men who have publishing deals. They're actually writing
Speaker 1: collections of short stories or novels at the moment, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm working on Steve Lilly novels. I hope to have
Speaker 1: those out by the summer, at least a couple of them.
Speaker 1: I wish I could talk to these guys and say,
Speaker 1: how do you know, just talk writing. I love to
Speaker 1: write stories. I like good stories. Anyway, I'm just blabbering.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm talking about. But anyway, this
Speaker 1: particular book was made into a film. Michael Ferris Smith.
Speaker 1: I believe he has two novels that have been turned
Speaker 1: into films. One is Desperation Road. The other is this one,
Speaker 1: The Fighter. But the title of the film is not
Speaker 1: The Fighter. It's called Rumble through the Dark. You can
Speaker 1: find it on a streaming service service. The cinematography and
Speaker 1: Rumble through the Dark is fantastic. It is shot in
Speaker 1: the Mississippi Delta, and you really get a good sense
Speaker 1: of what this area looks like. It is flat, it
Speaker 1: is basically featureless land, you could juxtapose it between the
Speaker 1: Delta and the Mississippi south of Memphis to some huge
Speaker 1: mountain range in Alberta, Canada, and you'd go, well, God,
Speaker 1: that's ugly. But to people who live here, it's beautiful
Speaker 1: and we love it and we love this area. And
Speaker 1: so you get a good idea with the cinematography what
Speaker 1: the landscape looks like. And I think the actors did
Speaker 1: a pretty good job in it of displaying and depicting
Speaker 1: a little bit how you know, the underlife here is
Speaker 1: in north and central and South Mississippi and the Delta.
Speaker 1: But Okay, I've been talking five minutes about this and
Speaker 1: I haven't really said a thing. But check out the book,
Speaker 1: check out the movie. I'm gonna try to keep crying
Speaker 1: these podcasts out, even if they're short for the next
Speaker 1: foreseeable future. I hope you guys are enjoying it. But
Speaker 1: until the next one, I appreciate you, and we'll see
Speaker 1: you see you then. Thanks