That summer my second wife and I <br />lived on the state road in rural <br />North Carolina in the 6-room farmhouse <br />I got for $100 a month, amid <br />the tobacco fields, which by the way <br />have lovely, pink flowers in the spring, <br /> <br />and oh, yes, that spring, too, <br />the beauty of the white <br />birds on the juice-green <br />meadow outside my study <br />all but made me faint. <br /> <br />Summer was different. Heat rose <br />from the road's black asphalt <br />in visible, radiating waves. <br /> <br />Every day around noon, <br />looking down that road <br />that parted fields and woods <br />as far as you could see, we'd spy <br />a tiny figure, who would slowly grow, <br />trudging past our house <br />half an hour later, then slowly <br />shrink till he disappeared <br />in the opposite direction. <br /> <br />One day I decided to ask him <br />where he was walking every day. <br />'My name is Bobby, ' he replied. <br />'My daddy's sick. I walk <br />ten miles there and ten back <br />every day to give him his medicine.' <br /> <br />After that, we'd wave when Bobby passed. <br />A couple weeks later one day <br />breathing very hard when he got <br />to our place, he collapsed. <br />Thinking he might die, I drove him <br />to the Tabor City hospital, <br />half-carrying him in <br /> <br />to the Emergency Room, then to the room <br />they admitted him to, remaining there, <br />holding this man I hardly knew. <br />'Jesus loves you and I love you! ' <br />I told him over and over again. <br /> <br />Bobby didn't die, it wasn't <br />his heart after all, they said. <br />Some kind of indigestion. <br /> <br />Calling back those days <br />is like remembering <br />heroes at the dawn of time. <br />The world was different then. <br />Or I was young.<br /><br />Max Reif<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bobby/
