(Episode #15)
(Josh, Jordan, and Silas are in Acorn Bluff, fishing along Goose Creek, with a small fire going; it’s about 7:00 pm)
Josh: Hey Jordan? (to Silas)
Silas: I don’t know who Sho is, I think he went to the stream to get firewood.
Josh: Who did it?
Silas: He’s twenty-nine years old, he’s not with anyone, he’s alone.
Josh: You shouldn’t wonder about this forest alone, the alligator catches you, or the moccasin, or the rattlesnake…or the bobcat! I think he must have had some problem, or else he came back(?)
(Suddenly Jordan appears and it’s all muddy)
Josh: You look like the bum, like you’re fighting the fish, the alligator, or the bear.
Jordan: Crocodile! Pa… (Silas and Josh start laughing); he as big as your ego pa!
Josh: Hey! You stink up my nose! You can’t fool no black
Silas: Look, Dad, we’ve got to wash up that vomit from Jordan!
Jordan: The big snake knocks me down pa, as long as it was the alligator, and I crawl around it like the
Buzzard pa, you know how big they are!
Josh: back in the time of slavery, back when Toby was alive (old Josh stops to think)–‘efer Toby, back in Af”ica, there was a black boy like me, he falls into a trap of snakes, falls to the bottom, about twenty feet deep, lair with people, catch me and you, grandma…does one see the boy?
(Josh suddenly forgets what he means, a tear comes to his eye and he wipes it away…)
…yeah, I forgot his name, I wonder if he’s still alive… I made a poem for him (he memorized it and tells Silas and Josh as they all sit quietly around the fire):
Joseph’s poem
And ‘by the depths of the earth
Of lonely boy lay
I hear of singing
Of his lonely spirit…
What a boy, what a boy!
He wanders the field now
For about fifty years
Looking for old Josh
But old Josh changes his appearance;
But he roams Africa
Looking for old Josh, still,
For fifty years…!
#1672 4-2-2007