{"id":295,"date":"2020-07-11T22:27:46","date_gmt":"2020-07-11T22:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/?p=295"},"modified":"2020-07-17T14:55:13","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T14:55:13","slug":"out-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/2020\/07\/11\/out-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Out Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


Bubba<\/em><\/strong> 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\u2019t 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?  \u2018Course, there was stumbling and
            tripping to consider ~ and he was only five.
He\u2019d find a rock and carry it with him to the edge of the yard
            stacked and stored like he\u2019d a mind to build a fort.
            Once in a while he\u2019d pocket an arrowhead, but he\u2019d
            secret it away and I only \u2018heard tell\u2019 of \u2018em.  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\u2019s 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\u2019s Lace, began and they
            were swarmin\u2019 with butterflies!  He\u2019d point.  I\u2019d 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\u2019s end I\u2019d developed leg muscles, which insured I
            could outrun any kid within a five block radius and
            he\u2019d amassed (pinned to white cotton lined, black, glass
            covered specimen boxes we\u2019d 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\u2019d become a
            Great Explorer!  First, came the scoping when I\u2019d scout new,
            distant lands, never before seen by the human eye and I\u2019d 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\u2019d read a new thing and tell me about it when
            I returned from school.
One day I decided I\u2019d 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\u2019ve 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\u2019t 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\u2019t happy
            but the glint in my brother\u2019s eyes, thanking me, lessened the
            pain of my blistered butt.
We\u2019d 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\u2019d close his eyes and I knew he was
            walkin\u2019 that field, feelin\u2019 every inch, gingerly, like walkin\u2019 through
            fire.  My heart would start feeling like he\u2019d 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\u2019d 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\u2019.   I confessed. 
I\u2019m not afraid to die, he told me.  And don\u2019t you be scared, for me. 
I figure if you live your life being good, you\u2019ve no need to be afraid.
            Me?
            I wasn\u2019t so certain\u2026..
When I was fifteen I got stuck on the last line of an Easter poem and couldn\u2019t
            get unstuck, so I took it to my Best Friend, Bubba.  He found it:
            \u201cMore like thee, less like me.\u201d
My brother didn\u2019t 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
 
           
 
           
 
 
 
 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Little did he know, as he walked that field. it would be the last time he ventured into it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-love","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":300,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions\/300"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughesgallery.net\/barbarahelveyhughes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}