Doty

[flophousepoodle]

I named him Doty; a country term he taught me for "Old, rotten wood".
He saved my life during adolescence by giving me a tyrannical reign over 40 acres of backwoods.
The move to the US was the worst time in my life.
Culture shock in a rural community - to date, the most painful time simply because I had no coping skills.

We built a cabin in the woods - it took us an entire Summer.
I announced to my mother that I had built a cabin with a 63 year old man near the river bottoms and intended to spend weekends there.
She's usually an over reactor but this time said: "Perhaps I should meet this man".

She liked him immediately and saw him for what he is; a peaceful hermit - like a backwoods Sadhu. Raised on the same farm - he had let it fall to disrepair. He had a herd of cattle that lived freely and died naturally. They all had names. He hadn't slaughtered a cow since he inherited the farm. He's silly, unrefined, and irreverent.

So throughout school I spent most of my time with him. We were usually covered in mud, patrolling by foot or four wheeler. Sitting around the fire, mushrooming, digging up sassafras roots - whatever the season offered. We were always busy doing absolutely nothing together.

I could write pages.

Several years ago he developed diabetes and had heart surgery. He's a restless wildman and I'll never forget his IV flying out of his arm, splattering thin cumadin (sp?) blood across the room from his vivacious gesticulations. The leg that they removed his vein from for bypass was never right after that - terrible circulation. Last year he injured his foot and his toe turned black. I visited him in the hospital and he stuck his gangrenous toe in my face.

Two summers ago he had a bull that kept getting out and destroying neighbors crops. He went round and round with this bull - but it kept getting out. He admitted to me that he was so frustrated with it that he almost shot it point blank in the neighbor's field. He couldn't bring himself to do that of course. He decided that approaching 80 years of age he could no longer keep up with a herd of pet cattle - so he sold them.

I've seen him less as I've aged. He's not too far away, but life takes over. I was busy last year caring for my father, then I was busy with being depressed, then busy with artwork.

He called me yesterday morning from the hospital. I had been trying to reach him since my Corgi Beebah died - because he loved her very much. I had no idea that he has been hospitalized for months because they brought him back to amputate the toe - then finally amputated his leg - which now has MRSA in the bone.

I left immediately.

I found the same adorable man who couldn't set still. His stump - just below the knee so it still bends - is almost prehensile. He'd plunk it on his tray..He wraps it around his other leg. He'd bend and straighten it. The nurses had just re bandaged the end - but he insisted that he had to pull it off to show me..And then - yes - he stuck his MRSA stump in my face.
He cried softly over Beebah and then told me his plans:

When they fit him with a prosthetic leg he wants to paint it purple. (guaranteed to happen). Then he might "Buy a pregnant cow at the sale barn.."

[Pypermarru1]

this explains why you are so frigg'n cool. You were influenced by cool people. Excellent writing FHP

[SydTheSkeptic]

Flop, are you gonna write that collection of shorts, or what..