He drove an old pick-up that looked like a farmers history book.
One head light dimmer than the other and a long barbed-wire scratch down to the tail of the truck. It carried memories of William and how they became men together. He would most likely never get it fixed.
He sat low in the bench seat with his red wings pressin' the petal to the floor. Movin' on to somewhere that he didn't know.
Patched, earth ridden wranglers sat unwillingly on his boney hips as his bill fold shown from his back pocket.
A pearl snap hung on his shoulders like a draped flag does on a flagpole. He'd lost some weight since that past winter.
He had just finished a seven week job on a threshing crew stretchin' from Amarillo to Bartlesville. His hands shown freshly with the signs of labor. He loved his scars and scratches and wore them as if medals from a distant war. He found honor in knowing that his work fed America.
He loved that his lunch breaks were spent looking out over the fields of gold.
Simplicity was his lover.
He was still a younger man, not yet in his late thirties.
His love left him back in '57 when he had gone for a job in northern Oklahoma. He got back to Texas and found a note on his icebox. Said something about needing more from life and then she apologized for having to take his truck. He never did get mad about it, he just went and bought an old Ford and started the process of forgetting.
We never did hear him talk about her again. It was like she was a ghost and a spring breeze had blown her away somewhere to the east.
Then one day he drank himself into a stooper and fell asleep on the old freight tracks and the Lord took him home.
No one ever said anything about that.
But if you ask anyone they will tell ya that he was a good man. A man who gave his life to the earth and to the men who he shared it with.
A man who was inspired by the reflections of God off the grain.
A man who knew that his time was not his own.
A man who knew he was only a man.
His name was Jeremiah.
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