Out Home
Bubba by Barbara Helvey Hughes
He walked every inch of the farm. Every foot of the
field. He did it over a span of weeks. He told me.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t believe it.
Started at the road and strode north up and south down the
rows littered with corn parts ~ a gnawed ear here a
husk there, splintering stalks spiked upward.
Sometimes he tripped, but on he strode.
Was he searching for something? Why else would he spend
those days traipsing across field debris and, generally,
looking down? ‘Course, there was stumbling and
tripping to consider ~ and he was only five.
He’d find a rock and carry it with him to the edge of the yard
stacked and stored like he’d a mind to build a fort.
Once in a while he’d pocket an arrowhead, but he’d
secret it away and I only ‘heard tell’ of ‘em. I was a
fool for Injuns.
But, that was all before polio struck him down and kept him
there. And he could use those legs no more. Mom was
immersed in grieved disbelief, but she stood as our pillar.
Love is a verb.
We moved to town and bought a house bordered by someone
else’s fields and farms and orchard, where I spent restless
days rambling farther and farther afield, toward the river,
where hobos made camp, in the ghost of the stone quarry.
When I finally got old enough, I decided to share my legs. Bubba
was loaded into a hefty oak wheelchair, way too unwieldy
for his young arms ~ hard to use, so I set myself to
moving it, for him: TROUBLE.
He held his butterfly net across his legs as I pushed and panted
along the sidewalk, to where the sidewalk ends and the
fields, dotted with Queen Anne’s Lace, began and they
were swarmin’ with butterflies! He’d point. I’d run,
swooping the net before me.
Swallowtails and Monarchs, Buckeyes and Viceroys, Azures
and Sulfurs, Question Marks and Fritillaries fell before
me, scooped and deposited into the glass jelly jar:
The Death Jar.
By summer’s end I’d developed leg muscles, which insured I
could outrun any kid within a five block radius and
he’d amassed (pinned to white cotton lined, black, glass
covered specimen boxes we’d got at Bickels Toy Store)
an impressive collection of beauty. Today, it saddens me.
I pushed his wheelchair miles that summer, so he could see my
discoveries and celebrate with me the fact that I’d become a
Great Explorer! First, came the scoping when I’d scout new,
distant lands, never before seen by the human eye and I’d race
home to tell him and plot our escape. But really, the only
thing I wanted was to release him from the jail of his bed and
take him with me so he could see what I saw, just like he did
with me when he’d read a new thing and tell me about it when
I returned from school.
One day I decided I’d take him with me, the long trek to the quarry
down and down the pitted dirt road to where hobos jumped
train and set their camps. We conspired and commenced. The
sidewalk was slick with recent rain and when we entered the field
heading toward the dirt road, I should’ve known we were in for
TROUBLE.
Rain and dirt make mud and there was a lot of it. Between the mud,
Bubba and the weight of his oak wheelchair, try as I might,
my might couldn’t move that chair once it got stuck in a
very deep rut and my worst nightmare morphed to reality:
I had to abandon Bubba and run for help. Dad wasn’t happy
but the glint in my brother’s eyes, thanking me, lessened the
pain of my blistered butt.
We’d drive back to our farm almost every Sunday and my heart froze
every time I helplessly watched him, staring at the field, from
the prison of his chair. He’d close his eyes and I knew he was
walkin’ that field, feelin’ every inch, gingerly, like walkin’ through
fire. My heart would start feeling like he’d heaped all those
stones right there upon it and the weight bore down.
One Sunday, I turned to see him flick away a painful tear as I was screaming
and running through the trees, so, I ran to him and, struggling, pushed
him over to the yard behind the barn, where flowers grew wild.
Sometimes, at night, I’d sneak into his room to make sure he was still alive.
Once, he caught me there at his bedside, crying, and he asked me
what the heck I was doin’. I confessed.
I’m not afraid to die, he told me. And don’t you be scared, for me.
I figure if you live your life being good, you’ve no need to be afraid.
Me?
I wasn’t so certain…..
When I was fifteen I got stuck on the last line of an Easter poem and couldn’t
get unstuck, so I took it to my Best Friend, Bubba. He found it:
“More like thee, less like me.”
My brother didn’t believe in God, although we attended Catholic school.
I found no fault with his thinking ~ considering.
And, I still marvel all these long years later, because that one line
in that one poem pretty much describes my Bubba.
Amen. 4-15-2020