River of Stone

A river of stone runs between the cities of Hattiesburg and Gulfport and carries cars and dreamers to and from the Mississippi Gulf Coast. On it’s banks are the town of Wiggins, a few gas stations, some live oaks and dozens of billboards advertising ancient rock bands playing at casinos.  The old man grinned as he drove his old Chevrolet pickup south. “I didn’t even know half these people were still alive.” A wiry terrier nodded in agreement — or at least appeared to. Named Katrina, she was named for the storm that took the old man’s last dog.

Intermittent heavy rain forced him to turn on his wipers — or wiper, as the case happened to be. He finally gave up trying to see and pulled off. The storm was like trying to drive through a car wash.

The old man cursed.  Little things annoyed him these days.  Not that being half-blind while driving in a pouring rainstorm was a little thing.  He pulled into the “Dizzy Dean” Rest Area to wipe his windshield and catch his breath.  The rain began to fall harder, creating a dull roar on the roof of his rusted truck.

He looked around. The trees in the surrounding countryside had started to heal from Katrina’s wrath.  Like the skin cancer scars on his back, outward signs of the hurricane were starting to fade away.  But he knew the scars on the inside remained. People who had lived through the “big one,” would forever be rattled when a big storm entered the Gulf. Not him, though. Oh no.  He didn’t care any more. If the good Lord wanted him, He could have him. Worrying about death was like worrying about the sunset: A complete waste of daylight.

Two catastrophic hurricanes in a lifetime had made him fatalistic. No, realistic.  He was like a buoy on nature’s rough sea. He just hung on and enjoyed the ride.

The traveler was just an old battered man with a scruffy mutt.  He had been a sailor, a professor, an officer but not a gentleman. He had worked on the oil rigs and in corporate offices.  Now he wore a threadbare Saints hat and a Pabst Blue Ribbon T-shirt.   Most would have looked at him and never guess the incredible fortune he possessed.  He had no use for the trappings of wealth. To him, wealth was what nature gave him. The song of the tides, the symphony of gulls and occasional rare find on the beach.

He walked the beach every morning at sunrise. A stranger would have watched him and sworn he was looking for something.  And maybe he was. The sea had taken so much from him. His shipmates. His father in World War 2. His home during Camille and Katrina. And his dog.  But it had also given him so much. A fortune. A family. And a proper perspective on life.

He loved Peanut M&M’s, cheap beer, fine wine, good cooking and the small of a woman’s back. He thought laugher was sexy and loved deep blue eyes.  His deceased wife had the most beautiful eyes. God, he missed her. He didn’t care much for politics, politicians, organized religion or TV preachers yet was patriotic and a man of faith. He didn’t own a TV and still preferred printed books. He didn’t know or care who Justin Bieber was. He mourned the loss of newspapers and craved bacon, even after his heart attack. He avoided the smoky casinos and their buffets. He had seen war up close and realized fear was the Devil walking the earth. When he needed to go to “church,” he went out on the Gulf to talk to God. And most days, God talked back.

Now he was rushing back from Hattiesburg.  A weekend trip to visit his sister and her Godawful husband had been thankfully cut short by a phone call.  He impatiently looked at his beat-up Timex watch. The rain had to end. And eventually it did.

A rainbow cut across the sky, born from the sunbeam that sliced through the clouds.  It was a promise of hope after a lifetime of tragedy. The old man thought of Noah when he looked at where it ended.  It ended in Gulfport.  Gulfport Memorial Hospital to be exact.

That’s where his granddaughter had just been born.  He looked forward to teaching her about the finer things in life and how to fish for Redfish. (But she’d have to wait a few years on the cheap beer and fine wine.)  He hoped she had deep blue eyes. And he hoped she would find a man who loved her as much as he loved her grandmother.

“Let’s go Katrina.” The dog jumped back into the cab of the truck and they headed South once again.

Nature had taken away so much from him in his lifetime. But today,she gave it all back.

The old man was just one more dreamer sailing down the river of stone.