Old Josh, in: Corncob-pipe and Matches

((or, Cold Twilight)(1881))

Josh was looking for his corncob-pipe, he was tiptoeing around his shanty, and it resided in back of the barn on the Hightower Plantation, in Ozark, Alabama. Silas, his oldest son was sleeping, they both slept in the same one room shack, Josh on a cot by the side window, Silas, on the opposite side, more over towards the back, where the small pantry was, which was added onto the shanty back who knows when. He found his pipe alright; it was under his cot, with a small pouch of tobacco. He sat on the cot, put the tobacco in—tightly, and felt for the matches, there were none, so he got on his hands and knees to look closer, the moon gave some light into the shanty, not much but enough to see that there wasn’t any. So he started tiptoeing around the shanty looking for some—checking in every corner, his trouser pockets, on shelves, on the table, none to be found, he stared at Silas, he was sleeping soundly, snoring like a whale blowing air out a mile high from its spout.
“Well, where is it,” he asked himself, in a wild kind of frustration.
“Where are you,” he said in a personification tone of voice, addressing the matches as if they were capable of answering him back.
Josh often in the night, would walk out to the porch and have a smoke, sometimes with a cold cup of three day old coffee, he got from Granny Mae, in the Hightower kitchen, he poured himself a cup, made a little noise doing it, looked at Silas, he was still sawing logs with his snoring, sleeping like a dead man.
He now fumbled his fingers through Silas’ cloths looking for matches, but that didn’t help any, he didn’t find what he was looking for; thus, Silas, like his father, liked a good smoke now and then.
Then he just couldn’t stand it any longer, and he walked over to Silas, nudged him a speck, whispered,
“Im sorry son but I gots to interrupt your dreams cuz I cant find them darn matches!”
Silas moved about, and scratched his back, “Silas!” said Josh, waking him up more, they now exchanged a tense look (Silas still half asleep, but wanting to return to his in-depth, whatever…); and he knew, the longer his father bothered him, the more awake he’d become, so he hid his head under the pillow.
“I apologize son” Josh said, with an encore and demanding voice “but I need some matches for a smoke—now!”
When Silas was in this mode of sleep, the slightest thing, action that is, irritated him, but his father he knew could be unrelenting,
“When youall gits time to listen…” said Josh crossly, not finishing his sentence…


Silas now sat up, quiet as a mouse…, then after a moment’s thoughts, said,
“Pa, you jes’ wants attention day and night, ef-in I don’t answer you, this here is goin’ to go on fer-ever…you gits bored all the time, and gits alarmed over small things, with those big black eyes of yours, I got no chance now of gitten’ back to sleep.”
Josh still annoyed because he had no matches, got even more annoyed at his son for taking the situation lightly, hesitated to answer, then after thinking of what he was going to do, he smiled at Silas, said,
“Since you anit goin’ to look for matches—an’ help your old pa out, I is going to bed, Im all right son, but you is goin’ to be bored to death sitting up all alone all night, cuz Im goin’ to be sleepin’.”
And old Josh fell back in his bed like a log hitting another long going down a river, and fell sound to sleep, smiling.

For Enrique H.


Written on 11-24-2008, at the café, “La Mia Mamma” during lunch.