Some of my family went to a very difficult funeral last week. They’ll probably get why Mac, one of my best friends in high school, has been on my mind lately.
Mac was good looking. I don’t have any actual photos of him, not even yearbook pictures to prove it, but I do have a memory that may convince you. He’s sitting on his front porch steps when me and an old girl friend pull into his driveway. Athletic build, dark hair with peroxided bangs (used to be a thing if you were cool enough to pull it off), and movie star smile.
“That’s without a doubt one of the best looking boys at South Mecklenburg High School,” she says. That’s how good looking he was. Your girlfriend says stuff like that with you sitting right next to her.
We spent hours hanging out and listening to forty-fives on the record player in his room. If you want a sound track, cue The Box Tops singing about how they needed a ticket for an aeroplane cause they ain’t got time for a fast train. Over and over and over again.
I’m also remembering Mac’s fifty-three Chevy. No seat belts. No power steering. A rolling tank that we painted a pretty ugly brown with paint and brushes meant for houses.
One night, as Mac wrestled the beast into a left turn, the passenger side door flew open and out went Louie. He flipped and flopped in the dust for a bit, but was unhurt and didn’t spill a drop of his beer. We know that because when he got back to the car he bragged, “Didn’t spill a drop!” and when he took his thumb off the top of the bottle of Bud he had been protecting, we were drenched from the spew.
We fought a bit in our neighborhood. One afternoon Mac was goaded into a fight with a fellow about his size but with a little more experience in schoolyard brawls. Even so, having wrestled and boxed with Mac, I knew Mac would take him. I was wrong.
In order to win, Mac would have had to truly hurt the other fellow. Mac didn’t have the heart. He could have. I know it. But he quit, and everyone went home declaring Mac the loser. He was not a loser. I saw what I saw.
It was a no good afternoon when I heard about the accident. Mac and a two other fellows were trying to clean a basement floor with gas when it ignited. All of them were burned, Mac severely. I didn’t really know what it meant in those days, but I remember, “Third and fourth degree burns over most of his body. He may not survive.”
At school the next day I got word that some guy had jokingly wondered how “Crispy” was doing. When I spotted him in the cafeteria I was on him before he could blink. I shoved his lunch tray at him, smacked him a couple of times on the head and in the face, grabbed him by the hair, and said if Mac died, I’d be back. When Mac died, I lost interest in the lame comedian.
I did get to see Mac in the hospital. They let us in his room two at a time, and I rode up the elevator and walked down the hall with one of my good friends, a girl from the neighborhood. She went in first, stopped and grabbed my hand. Mac was unrecognizable. Even a seventeen year old struggling in Basic Biology knew that if he lived, well, “third and fourth degree burns over most of his body.”
“Jimbo!” Somehow he lit up when he saw it was me, but I failed him. I did what I learned as a pastor not to do. I let my face tell him how bad he looked. Then I proceeded to talk, without a smidge of belief, about how he was going to be alright, and we’d be hanging out again real soon. When I saw the light leaving his eyes I knew I was saying the wrong things, I just didn’t know what the right things were.
That “Jimbo!” haunts me and blesses me still. I think it may have been the next day, he gave up the fight.
Almost sixty years later, I carry all this and more. Occasionally I whisper to Spirit, “If you’d give Mac a message, I’d appreciate it. Tell him I remember him.” Perhaps Mac can hear me without need of a messenger.
Epilogue: I’m afraid this wouldn’t be a true story if I didn’t add this. I got a call a few years later from Mike, one of the guys in the basement with Mac. Mike has scars on his wrists and hands from where he tried beat out Mac’s fire. He said Mac’s mom had died, and they needed me to be a pall bearer. I told him I couldn’t. I lived in another state now. I was an Operations Manager for a national trucking firm. Successful for my age. A boss. Pretty close to the next rung. I’d have to take a vacation day. The VP would get mad. Mike said, “Okay, talk to you later,” but we never did.
I carry this as well. Mac would have come.
The Forest Dweller 