Y’all’ll Be Runnin’ ’Fo’ De Day’s Done

"...never ignore Jaybird’s warnings again.”

Y’all’ll Be Runnin’ ’Fo’ De Day’s Done

When I asked Jaybird, my boyhood best friend and mentor, to go fishing the next day with my pal Dean and me, he said, “Shoot naw, hit’s a mean-lookin’ cold front’ full o’ bad storms comin’ ’cross.”

“Bad weather doesn’t scare real fishermen like us,” I sneered, “especially when striped bass are running in upper Lake Ferguson.”

“Y’all’ll be runnin’ ’fo’ de day’s done,” the old black man warned.

Knowing that stripes are ravenous at daybreak, we parked before sunup on the slope of the levee that separated the lake from the Mississippi River. Suddenly lightning turned night to day, and we jumped back in the truck.

“Jaybird was wrong,” I said. “It’s just a shower — be over in a minute.”

The words were barely out of my mouth when a lightning bolt zapped so close to the old Ford pickup that its hood ornament glowed fluorescent blue and the engine sputtered. Then, when another bolt exploded close by, the engine sputtered to life, and the truck lurched down the levee.

“Turn the wheel! Stomp the brakes! We’re going in!” I shrieked.

Dean howled heavenward, “Oh, Lord, if You will just let us live, we promise to go home right now and never ignore Jaybird’s warnings again.”

We lived, but neither of us could speak until daylight broke and the storm abated.

As sinners are wont to do once the threat of imminent annihilation has passed, we forgot our promise to Providence and launched forth in pursuit of stripes.

Disaster followed disaster. Dean limbered up his new graphite rod, a genuine Shakespeare. On his first cast, the lure snagged a stump. As he jerked the rod, trying to free the lure, I reeled in a large stripe.

Hearing an ominous thwack, I turned to see if he was loose. Gaping like a harpooned hippopotamus, he was staring at Shakespeare’s remains — two feet of graphite stump! Reluctantly, I shared my rod with him and soon we had a nice string of stripes.

At noon, the scorching sun was emulsifying us, and since hardly anyone ever came to the upper lake, we paddled to a sandbar, stripped, and went skinny-dipping.

While soaking in the cool water two hundred yards from our clothes, we heard the faint drone of an outboard motor. In an instant, Mr. Tharp’s houseboat, packed with kids like animals on Noah’s ark, appeared around a point of willow trees.

“I’ll swunnee, lookee yonder … them boys is nekkid,” Mr. Tharp’s trumpet voice wafted across the water, as girls focused binoculars.

Sprinting down the sandbar toward our clothes, I recalled Jaybird’s prediction: “Y’all’ll be runnin’ ’fo’ de day’s done.”

Finally, our motor’s roar drowned out the howls of laughter behind us.

“At least we caught a good mess of fish,” Dean sighed, pulling up the stringer. We gawked in bug-eyed disbelief — while we were swimming, gars had stripped our stripes!

Staring at the bodiless fish heads, we both were thinking of Jaybird’s warning: Y’all’ll be runnin’ ’fo’ de day’s done.


Jimmy Reed

Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber- 

http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/
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