Furry Loved The Water David B. Dawson
	Furry loved the water. Loved taking a dip.  Back in 1970, though, he was already an ancient man, older than Egypt, skin like one of them mummies.  He'd be at the afternoon parties out east of Memphis, out back of some rich white boy's house.  Rich white boys gave him beer, copied Furry's licks, took him around town to play: the Bitter Lemon, Clearpool, the Shell.  Ancient skin, mummy skin, black skin hanging from his old bones, muscles all gone.  Yellow and gold eyes, pure white hair.  When it got hot the rich white boys would walk out into the pond, leave him standing waist deep in the cool water. Leave him out there, go back to sit under willow trees on the bank, smoke cigarettes, pass them tiny pipes, their arms around rich little white girls sitting in the grass with them.  Furry in the pond, alone, yelling. "Get me out this water, damnit, I ain't no sponge.  You hear me?"  Furry waving a quart bottle of Budweiser like a maestro.  Forgotten old man in the water, forgotten songs, forgotten world he grew up in: Mr Handy. Mr Crump. Mr Shade. Blues music on Beale Street.  Jug music at the Old Daisy, the Midnight Rambles.  Before dawn: throwing bones, drinking jake, playing slide.  Then World War II, no more jobs.  All those years working for the city, pushing a broom in the gutters, putting hot dog wrappers in his big trash can on wheels.  And now, quick as a flash, he's old Furry.  Ancient hands, white hair, yellow eyes.  Stuck out here in a pond, balancing in the mud on his one leg, standing there like a stork with the carp kissing at his shin. Finally old Furry would fling the bottle toward the shore, toward the rich white boys with their hair hanging longer than those girls.  Then they'd hear him. Rich white boys would wade out with one of those web lawn chairs, aluminum tubing, put old Furry in it and carry him out of the cool water -- "Don't be picking me up so fast, damnit, I ain't no alligator" -- set him down under the willows where the white girls sat in the green grass, noticing that Furry's only got one leg left, and on the foot that he's still got, he's wearing the wrong shoe.

David Dawson is a Memphis writer who spent his professional life as a journalist and editor before recently retiring to concentrate on other endeavors.   Dawson has lived in Texas and Missouri, but has lived for decades in Memphis, the city where he was born.   He makes his home these days with his wife and two teenaged children, who tolerate forays into music (especially whistles and guitars), photography, dog wrangling, and numerous social causes that he hopes will leave the world a decent place to live.