Walkin' the Floor

Mama died not long ago.  She was the light of my life and my absolute best friend.  I loved her so much I thought I'd die too, so you might expect I'd dream about her often.  I don't think I'll ever live long enough not to miss her, but I haven't had one dream about Mama since they put her in the ground at Garland Brook Cemetery in Columbus, Indiana.  Not one. 

But Daddy's a different story.  He still torments me in bizarre and horrifying nightmares...even after all these years since bleeding ulcers and pneumonia caught up with him one last time in Bay Pines Veteran's Hospital in Tampa.

God, how I dread the most frightening of the recurring dreams.  The one where I'm eight years old and stuffed into the loaded back seat of our car on the way to Florida from Indiana.  My brother and sister, Jimmy and Kitty, are crowded in with me and little Annie sleeps on Mama's lap in the front seat.  Daddy is dead in the dream, but he sits ramrod straight and races the rattletrap black Model A Ford  down the narrow highway through the moonless night. He flies down hills, through tunnels and skids around sharp curves.  Kitty, Jimmy, Mama and I  scream for him to stop.  But Daddy is dead, so he can't hear us.  It seems we've been riding at breakneck speed forever and that the car will never stop.  It stops only when the terror of the dream wrenches me awake...as it does this morning just before the alarm clock buzzes at 5:30 A.M...

...She didn’t answer me.  I found out though, because Jimmy stood up with his head bent over and pulled his empty pants pockets inside out and flapped them.  Daddy saw him in the rear view mirror and laughed, but Mama didn’t.  Since I’d also been thinking

about the name that old sorehead in the Tin Lizzie at the gas station called us, I figured I had nothing to lose by asking Daddy about it while he was in a laughing mood.

“Daddy, what’s a damned Okie ?”

“Bettyjean!" Mama said.  "Just because your dad uses that kind of language doesn’t mean you can too.” 

“Don’t worry about it, Kiddo.  That son-of-a...”

“Jake!”

“No joke, Daddy, what does it mean?" I persisted.  "Are we Okies?”

That loosened Mama’s tongue.  “No, Bettyjean, we are not Okies.  Okies are

 poor people who moved away from Oklahoma...before  the war...because their farms blew away in the dust storms or they got tractored out.”  She sniffed and looked out the window.  “And we are poor people moving away from Indiana during  wartime for no good reason, and that makes us a bunch of dumb Hoosiers.”

“Oh.  Then why did that man at the station...?”

“And that’s all there is to it, Bettyjean.  Try to take a little nap now and leave your dad alone so he can drive in peace and quiet.”

Daddy didn’t act like somebody who wanted any peace and quiet.  He sang  There’s a little red barn on a farm down in India-a- a- a-na  loud enough to wake the dead.  I know he was hoping Mama would join in.  She usually likes that song, but she sure wasn’t in any mood to sing that morning.  Daddy didn’t care.