False Grit - A Father's Day Memory

The last time I saw Bubba McSmathers, he was teaching his son JB how to viably shoot crows out of the tops of the grit trees with a bolt-action .22 rifle on Father's Day in 1976. As it turned out, that wasn't going to be the half of it.

I was there because JB had stolen both my bright red truck and my honey-sweet girlfriend the night before.

"I'd rather have the 12-gauge," JB said, missing his 13th crow.

JB wasn't wearing a shirt and by the way Latrelle was watching him, I suspected he'd been wearing a lot less during the night. I'd already noticed lipstick on the talegate of the truck.

"Buck shot damages the grits," Bubba explained. "Even Jock knows that, don't you, Jock?"

"I do," I said, wondering who wouldn't know that picking shot out of a bowl of grits is pretty much of a fool's game.

"You want to lose our contract with Waffle House on Father's Day of all things? And put your shirt back on for hell's sake, you got claw marks all down your back."

Latrelle refused to make eye contact with me which was just as well because I was in what coach Peters down at the high school referred to as a "prickly mood."

"No sir, yes sir."

We were walking while we were talking because the crows had a way of fluttering one tree farther out of range every time JB took a shot.

"You can walk and load at the same time, can't you son?"

"Yes sir."

"I just don't see how you can miss with a peep sight on a day without a breath of wind," said Bubba, stepping over a copperhead sunning itself on a low slab of rock. "You're not using shorts or blanks, are you?"

"He wasn't last night," said Latrelle, with a smile wide enough for a whole drawer full of socks.

Bubba glanced back at her like she was one step lower on the food chain than a thieving Southern Grit Crow.

"Where's your Daddy?"

Latrelle's smile drained away faster than a pint of bourbon on prom night.

"He's still making license plates," I said.

The sound of Latrelle's hand slapping the hell out of my face served as an optimal exclamation mark.

JB laughed his @$$ off until Bubba kicked him in the backside hard enough to make him drop the rifle while tumbling head first into a palmetto. Unfortunately, the gun didn't go off and kill Latrelle.

"When's he getting out?" asked Bubba.

"August, if he doesn't fly off the handle in the warden's office again," Latrelle said.

"Good man with a gun," I said even though it hurt to say it.

JB smiled at that.

"Yes sir," JB said, more or less to the sky which was what he was looking at, "if Latrelle's old man were here, we'd already be walking back to the house with crow enough for everyone to eat."

Bubba helped his son up out of the palmetto thicket.

"The house, JB, you think we'd be walking over to the house?"

"Yes sir."

"House of the Lord is more like it so you could say 'I do' to your sweet bride."

"Damn," was about all JB could say.

"But Daddy's not here to give me away," Latrelle protested.

"I already did that," I said. "I don't mind doing it again. JB, you can keep the truck as a wedding present."

"You're a real man," Bubba said, "somebody for JB to take after."

"He took after my girl instead."

"That was plain sorry," said Bubba, "but what's done is done."

"It was done in less than a minute," said Latrelle.

"I still say you're taking this well, Jock." Bubba slapped me on the back where there were no fresh claw marks to feel the sting of it. "A lesser man would have had murder on his mind this morning."

I shrugged that off even though it was true. If I had to give the bride away, better for them to think I was a saint than a snake. When I managed a smile, I didn't feel it, proving to myself again that I wasn't a man with true grit.

"Let's get back to the house and tell Mama this is turning out to be my best Father's Day ever," said Bubba. "Quick, JB, see that crow sitting in the scrub oak. As close up and low as it is, you can't possibly miss it."

"Screw it," said Latrelle.

She picked up the rifle, hardly took aim at all, and shot the crow. JB looked worse than death warmed over but Bubba was grinning.

"Daddy taught me to do that," Latrelle told him.

"Ain't fathers grand?" I said.

"You've got that right," said Bubba. "JB, run over and fetch that bird down out of that tree. Latrelle, I hope you like the grit business. I hope you like it all from tending the trees, to slapping the grits off the limbs with cane fishing poles, to shoveling them into the wagon to take to the gin."

What Bubba didn't know about grits, nobody needed to know.

When she smiled and said "yes," I could tell her heart wasn't in it now and probably never would be. More false grit. But her pretense was more than enough to make Bubba happy.

"Best Father's Day ever," he told her.

"Why thank you."

"I just hope your Mama taught to how to cook; you're marrying a growing boy."

When Latrelle looked at the ground and didn't say anything, Bubba started laughing. He was still laughing when they got to the church. And he laughed all the more when JB and Latrelle drove out of town on their honeymoon trip in a red truck with a rope full of empty beer cans clattering on the pavement behind them like all hell was about to break loose.