Running Into Burning Barns

As a child, I was weaned off my mother’s teat in the company of governors, generals, senators, captains of industry, giants of United Methodism, scholars, bankers, and nuns who built massive hospital complexes. Some men I called “uncle,” though they were just friends, and some I called “uncle,” though they were just cousins.

In Mississippi, the title “Uncle Tom” means many things. To Boyd, it meant the editor and manager of Mississippi’s two largest newspapers. When my namesake died, he wrote two full-page, but quite different obituaries for the first Boyd Campbell, and they didn’t even get along.

Both members of the infamous Capitol Street Gang, they spoke several times a week, but differed on what should be done about whiskey, about voting, and about the negras. I wouldn’t say Boyd was a liberal, but he was a moderate progressive, and when the Democratic Party started leaving behind the Dixiecrat agenda, he started leaving it behind too—and then he died.

Little Bird and Madora Ann made my birthday dinner, then Little Bird vanished into the night, leaving two very old friends alone to talk about things we might not discuss with her child present. That child is wicked smart.

Coming back to life, I’ve made a new vow to my oldest friend, “no more secrets of any kind.”

I told her how, when we were twenty, I started my life from the top down. One of my friends said, “Boyd, I’d kill for your Rolodex.” Back before IPhones, we all kept our contact list on a rotary device that held business-size cards, in alphabetical order. Mine wasn’t spherical; it was linear. It sat on my desk. In it was the name of every girl in Mississippi who looked like Little Bird’s mom without the burden of being my closest friends since we were seven. Also, senators, governors, presidents of banks, mayors past and present, and a few drinking buddies and bartenders.

Starting from the top down in life, I was having trouble connecting with my peers. I could have lunch with any member of the Capitol Street gang, and did, but my friends thought I was kind of an asshole. When Daddy died, I didn’t call the captains of industry to have lunch; they called me.

You’re dying, aren’t you, buddy?

I explained to my oldest friend that I never had a massive break like normal people because I’m not a normal person. I had a million, million little breaks, like individual strands of dried pasta, snapping, snapping, snapping, so quiet no one could see. Eventually, there was just a few strands left, and no boiling water.

Anyone who could see what was happening, well, I got away from them as fast as I could. I abandoned my oldest friend because I didn’t want her to see what I was becoming, and I didn’t give her the courtesy or respect to say why —just ghost.

They got me strong enough to get out of bed again, but I was making all the same mistakes I made before. I was headed right back to where I left. An old horse will run into a burning barn because it’s all they know.

On Facebook, I saw Little Bird’s photo. “You look like somebody…” I said to myself. Damn right she looked like somebody. She acts, moves, and thinks like her, too. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. They do write very differently, though. I’m to the point now where I can tell the difference between the writing of her whole family. Whatever you’ve heard, each of them is far better than I am.

Little Bird has taught me not to just spew out love like a fire hydrant, as I always have. She taught me to take love back, though it’s difficult. She also made me think of the one thing that might make my life different this time.

Most of the giants I knew are dead, as giants sometimes do. This time, I’m not starting with the most powerful; I’m starting with the least powerful. The outcast, the friendless, the struggling, the different, the lonely, the broken. They are my people now.

That’s how I was as a child and a teenager. Life changed me. Death became my constant shadow. I don’t think I deserved that. I wrote a poem about what I deserve. The universe doesn’t make deals. Boyd was given what was coming his way. Had it not hit me, it would have hit whoever was behind me. Love, happiness, comfort, fulfillment, that is not a part of the deal.

“In high school, I used to drive to South Jackson and Pearl so I could get in fights and get hit in the face.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to know if I could feel.”

There’s a line in “Blazing Saddles.”

“Oh no, don’t use your guns on Mongo, you’ll just make him mad.”

You’d be surprised how often I heard that.

When I sit next to Little Bird, I scrunch down in the chair and draw my shoulders in so that my contour is about the same size as hers. I love the picture of us at Louis’s Piano bar. We both look so happy.

Little Bird is like me. She starts with the weak and the wounded. She struggles with mental health, just like I do. She’s alot more honest about it than I was. Through her, I’ve become much more honest about depression, my struggles with suicide, both my own feelings of self-destruction and the impact that surviving the suicide of others has had on me. UMMC is starting a program on Teenage Suicide. I am there for it.

Little Bird is also starting a Zoom symposium on writing about suicide. Though the other members are her age or younger, I’m very excited about doing it. Meeting Little Bird, I’ve developed the courage to write about my own experience with suicide, starting when I was fourteen.

Two weeks after my fourteenth birthday, my momma said, “Your little friend has died.” Katie hung herself from the swing set her father built for her sisters, which he was refitting for a porch swing, but never did it before Katie died there.

I never talked with Katie’s family about why she did it. Talking to her on the phone every night, I was aware that she had begun having her period. An awkward conversation for a 13-year-old boy. I also noticed that she was becoming very manic, and struggling to maintain he thoughts, just before she ghosted me. Then, a few weeks later, “your little friend has died.”

For me, that was it for girls. It was also it for birthdays. We had dinner and things on my birthday, but it wasn’t my birthday. Having spaghetti with Little Bird and her Little Momma, I finally turned fifteen.

Hi

It’s me

I’m the problem

It’s me.

If I’m to survive this time, I have to take a different path. Like the fae people in our culture, the Little Bird shone a fairy light on my better path.

You’re dying, aren’t you, Buddy?

It’s ok, Daddy. Help is coming. Just not right away.

Help has arrived. She has tiny hands and bright eyes.