The Forgetful Sojourner
The rain is comin’ and I can smell it. I flip up the worn leather sides of my satchel and start to eat the sawdust flapjack inside before the humidity can spoil it. Stopped in the clearin’ of the wooded foothills, I tear off a piece of the flapjack and shove it in my mouth with the abandon of a bearcat snatching a chicken from a homesteader. There’s soot on my hand, still, and mama, does it taste bad mixed in with the flapjack. I hawk it out, like it’s dip, and wipe the soot on the hip of my denim jeans, fading from use and overuse. I have to get another pair the next time I make a sale, I guess. I do need to make a sale. It’s been a while and I’m hungry. The trees rustle and a bird flies out, probably scared of all my hawkin’ and retchin’. I put the other half of the flapjack back into the side of the satchel and lean down to adjust the strip of cloth I fashioned to mend the hole in my boot sole. Those boots were damn expensive when I got ‘em. I finish messin’ with the boot and straighten up and start walkin’ again.
On impulse, I hold my satchel up to the heart side of my chest and check it to find what I know to be there: the half flapjack from the morning in the last town, a busted banjo I’ll mend by twilight the next few nights, and below that, the jars that still held pris-teen. I sell good product, I think. It’s hard work I do, travelin’ around sellin’ bona fide, genuine 100% pure snake oil. Few people can afford such a luxury. It can fix most anything, I reckon. It’s just that I can’t say for certain, because I certainly don’t have need for a more youthful face or grease for wagon axles or glue for barn doors or a cure for my wife’s hysteria. Don’t have a wife to have hysteria! Ha! I guess God smiles on me sometimes after all. Gals are too much trouble. They break your heart. Yes sir, when I finally make a sale and get to have creamed corn that night. He sure smiles then! Creamed corn ain’t never broke my heart.
I put the flapjack back down on my fine product and
duck a low hangin’ branch, and my old hips don’t like
it one bit. I keep walkin’. My forearms are dark with
soot and dust and itchy and I barely recognize them
as mine, but the bend in the river is coming up, and
I can wash up there if I make double time the rest
of the way into the mighty fine towwn of Dewees. I
walk out to another clearin’ and three big raindrops
hit the scraggly sun-burned hair on my head and drip
down my neck. Then there’s a pause, like the world
and the animals and plants and God and everyone
is taking a deep breath, and I throw my satchel off
to the side. The drops are big and come all at once
and fast. The heat of the afternoon swirls like
confused hogs catching wind of the slaughter and the
drops form up to be a veritable downpour. I close
my eyes and feel the drops run past my collar down
my back. I take off my shirt and let the rain take the
dust and soot with it. Salty mud washes in my eyes. I
throw my head back and put my arms out and feel so
good lettin’ the rain get me all clean. I throw off my
boots and peel the soaked heavy wet denim off my legs, and
start jumpin’ and runnin’ like a deer in a clearing. I feel free.
I start hootin’ and hollerin’ , no two ways about it. I spin and hop and dance. I sing real bad, a tune I made up and I’ll never know again, and I cry. I cry and cry like a mama’s boy because it feels so guldarn good to be washed clean.
I don’t care if no one can see me. They probably couldn’t, anyway, seein’ as how the rain is so heavy. I get tired of runnin’ and jumpin’ and I sit down in the clearing and grin and sniffle and I don’t feel itchy or tired or even hungry. Shoot, I hardly feel like myself at all. I feel clean and all peaceful.
The rain goes for maybe half an hour. When it all stops, it stops just how it started, all at once. I sit there, bone-soaked and nearly buck-naked, and my common sense starts tellin’ me that I look like a fool. I ain’t no fool, so I grab up my clothes and get decent. I’m hungry. I pull the wet jeans back up over my knees and thighs and squat a little to try to make ‘em sit better. I act careful as I can to keep me and my clothes clean. I grab my satchel up to my chest and check it. The outside is wet, but it was closed up shut, so the snake oil inside is still pris-teen. The rain didn’t get it. There’s a little tug in my gut. Hunger, I guess.
I gather my things, and I set off, soaking wet and walkin’ again. The ground is soft from the rain, and mud starts gettin’ caked on my boots and up the legs of my jeans. I stop and knock the boots with my hand and it gets most of the mud off, but it gets some on my hand, and I wipe it on the front of my shirt. I set pace again and start thinkin’ about the next town. I need a sale so bad. I could get boots or corn or banjo strings. I remember when it was easy to sell and I had creamed corn every night. My stomach makes a sound like a riverbank of bullfrogs in the summer. My boots are caked with mud again and I stop and use the other hand to knock it off. The ground will dry soon and then I won’t have to stop so often anymore. I keep trudging though. Just a few more hours to Dewees.