Ballad for Jimmy Ray

By Mary Elizabeth Burgess

In this fictionalized account of the authors only sibling, born crippled and with soft bones, many fractures and illnesses cause Rebekah to become her brothers nurse, as Mama has to work because Papa died when the children were young.

Jimmy Ray disdained going to doctors and hospitals after failed surgeries to correct his deformities and never told Mama how ill he was one summer with a high fever and sore throat. Rheumatic fever left him with a heart murmur discovered years later.

When he marries sickly Betty Lou and has a son, he assumes the burdens of housework and baby care. He has worked in the refrigeration room of a dairy for 25 years before it closes, causing his heart to enlarge. Freezing temperatures plus rheumatic fever contributes to severe mitral valve prolapse. Realizing his chances are slim, he consents to surgery even though his white blood count is extremely low.

The siblings reminisce about their childhood, but when Jimmy goes into cardiac arrest, Becks knows she cant tell him Mama had a stroke and died, nor what really happened in the schoolyard forty years ago. After Jimmy dies, while she is visiting his tombstone following a church service, she realizes he would have forgiven her years ago. Now she must forgive herself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491841785

Mary Elizabeth Burgess

A retired reading and learning specialist, Mary Elizabeth Burgess has authored a study skills manual, a children’s book, Victoria, and Once Upon a Time...Two, Poems and Tales of her two sons, Scott and Tom. Also numerous articles have been published in The Lutheran and educational journals. She won poetry prizes in 2009 and 2011 for “Grocer’s Picnic, 1959" and “Grand Canyon Sunrise.” Her short story, “The Flowerbed,” won the WITF contest in January, 2013.

Book preview

BALLAD

for Jimmy Ray

MARY ELIZABETH BURGESS

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AuthorHouse™ LLC

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2014 Mary Elizabeth Burgess. All rights reserved.

Cover credit: East Chestnut Street by Arlene Fisher

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   12/28/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-4177-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-4176-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-4178-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013922374

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Although some incidents and characters come from the author's experience, this is a work of fiction. Some details have been changed to protect the living.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

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In memory of Jim.

His courage

and

big heart still inspire.

1

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars that you have established . . .

I am a full-grown woman with a husband and baby, when he, recognizing my need for a break from family responsibilities, finally agrees to share the stars with me in the middle of the wide but treacherous Susquehanna. I especially wanted to go ever since he told me on our drives to Philadelphia how being alone on the water under the stars made him feel insignificant yet mighty. I wanted a piece of that awe, too.

The dankness of summer is pleasant and I relax into paddling.

One peaceful minute we are marveling at the stars smearing the Milky Way, the next the world turns upside down. All is black, my chest seared from the inside out as gulps of water fill it. The top of my head bounces against the inverted keel, and—panic stealing strength—I can’t kick out from under.

I’m sure I hear Becky! or maybe a faint Becks, kays and esses not traveling so well underwater. Maybe it is just my wanting to hear a rescuer, just as I hope the rest of my life will scroll before me before I go under for the last time. When your plane is in free fall to earth, you may have time to review the life you’ve been privileged to live. But I can tell you that’s not the case when you’re drowning. Only the smell of fear grips your heart.

Now the one thing flashing before me as I struggle to get my brain and body in harmony is the parting from my little family: the kiss I’d brushed on sweet Adam’s forehead, and, cognizant of my husband’s propensity to overdo everything, my final warning, Don’t make it too hot; test it on your wrist first.

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We talked once about how we’d like to die if we hurt intractably or grew too old and felt the need. I opted drowning would be best. To walk ever more deeply into the water and be one with the waves, to just let yourself be returned to the element from whence we came, I argued.

You’re getting poetic again, Jimmy Ray accused. It wouldn’t be like that at all. He’d choose, he said, a quick shotgun blast, one from another hunter or while cleaning his own gun. That was before he gave up hunting and concentrated solely on fishing.

I thought my water comment would agree with him, as we both were on pretty good terms with H2O, he with creeks and rivers and ocean and me with pools.

Becks, he’d said, you’d gasp and nothing but water would fill your insides.

How d’you know? You ever drown?

Came close a few times, I think is what he mumbled, and offered no more on the subject.

Recalling our words while under water, I realize drowning is not as lovely a proposition as I’d imagined.

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Jimmy Ray and I had rolled with the canoe, over the gunwale portside, as we tried to grab Sheba. Between us, midcraft, she had suddenly jumped up, put her forepaws on the side, crouched to heave her stiff and crooked hind legs—all in one motion. In an instant we knew she’d not survive a swim with those dysplastic hips, and we both dived to retrieve her.

Water, warmer than I imagined the minute I rolled over the side, is the only element in my universe this particular moment. I’d taken a gasp of air the moment I felt us capsize and just before my head went under, but already water had infused it.

From somewhere comes the strength to give a mighty kick. I duck free of the ribbed prison in which I’d been captive for half a lifetime, bumping my head on the canoe’s side as I dive beneath it. I gasp for air, spitting and sputtering, arms and legs flailing. Though my chest is still exploding, I calm a bit as dry air reaches my lungs. Treading water, I grab something—rope, maybe—and haul myself to the canoe’s side. In the darkness I hear only the water lapping against the wood.

Then I see light glinting off Jimmy Ray’s already balding head bobbing a few yards downstream where he’d swum to find Sheba. He isn’t the swimmer I am, and, on this hot night full of humidity, neither of us had donned jackets. Yet his head is above the surface, which is more than mine was just a moment before.

Grab— he yells.

But he needn’t. I’m already draping myself crosswise over the hull and grabbing the one paddle nearby.

We had launched Uncle Roy’s canoe rather than the aluminum boat as Jimmy Ray wasn’t sure the hole had been adequately patched. Knowing we were going to star-gaze and not fish, I preferred the canoe with only gentle paddling to disturb the night. I shouldn’t have been surprised Sheba sat in the passenger seat of his truck when Jimmy picked me up. They still went everywhere together in spite of—or because of—her infirmities.

While clinging to the keel, my brother splashing toward me, a thought strikes: I’ve been saved and I didn’t even pray. Then another on its heels: I’ve still not confessed to Jimmy Ray.

Is that why the Lord saved me, so I’d get around to telling my brother what really happened at the schoolyard twelve years ago?

2

Hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts.

Woes and throes, my how he had ’em!

Parents’ eyes did meet when they saw his feet.

What a sad, sad morn the day he was born.

Today they say brittle; then they said soft. Besides his bones breaking at the slightest thing, his legs went every which way and his feet turned in. Today they’d know the trouble lay in the hips, not the ankles.

It brought Mama much guilt. Daddy too before he died. But at the last, he said they were forgiven when he saw Jesus with his Mama and Daddy. The boy, their first child, had been born a month too soon, months after Mother’s appendectomy demanded ether half-way through the creating that began before they married.

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We upright the canoe and, one at a time, climb back in, Jimmy Ray minus his shoes and glasses.

We both strip off our tees and wring them. I kick off my light sandals as he peels off sodden socks, and I see, once more, the long scars on his ankles above his giant feet.

You lost your glasses, I say.

Umm, Jimmy Ray says. Then, eyeing the paddle, he adds, Good thinking.

The night is warm and still, almost eerie as I begin jay-stroking us back to shore. As both a First Aid and