Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Iris (04/17/25)
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TITLE: Flower Child and River Girl | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
04/20/25 -
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She was the child of an ophthalmologist with a strange sense of humor. “Iris P, I’ve got my eye on you,” her pappy would say. “Don’t you be winding yourself up like the river and forget to come home when your schooling is done.”
I never did understand what her pappy was trying to prove but he must have thought himself hilarious. He’d dig his chin into his chest, jiggle his belly like a bowl of Jello, and chuckle himself out the door. And when my brows got furrowed trying to figure it out, Iris P would set herself to teaching me.
“it’s about the Mississippi, Georgia Bea,” she’d say. “The Mississippi is the longest river in the world. My pappy knows that what a crow could cover in under seven hundred miles, old man river takes three times the territory to travel. It’s like a dawdling three-year-old exploring his world.”
“Don’t make sense that a river should be compared to a three-year-old,” I said.
“Don’t be getting your knickers in a knot,” Iris P said. “Pappy’s just being pappy. Did you know that the Mississippi sucks its water from 28 states; from Delaware to Idaho. 54 rivers are emptying their treasure into the big river, and you can steamboat them all.”
I would stand a stone’s throw from the flow of brown sludge and say, “Suppose God knew what he was doing, draining it all into the Gulf. I read once that almost five hundred million tons of mud gets sent south. Don’t suppose the farmers up north mind sharing.”
I remember the Sunday afternoon Iris P and I went for a stroll along the river. The sweat was pouring down our backs, and the river almost looked inviting.
“Got myself baptized in that ribbon of sludge,” Iris P told me. “Figured that if my sins got washed away while I was in there, then nobody would be able to notice. It seems that a parcel of other sinners got upstream ahead of me. Maybe if I get myself cleaned up that way then Henry Jay, the preacher’s kid, might just set his eye on me.”
She wasn’t a prophet, or the daughter of a prophet, but sure enough. Henry Jay went sweet on her after her water burial, and he was like a catfish hooked on a skipjack herring. “How’d you know that preacher’s kid would come your way?” I asked.
She winked. “You got to know what bait to use,” she said. “Catfish don’t cater to bream or perch or goldfish. They want skipjack herring. I just had to learn what it was like to be a skipjack.”
“What did you figure out?” I asked.
Iris P fingered her dangling catfish earring and smiled. “Nelly-Mae at the general store told me Henry Jay’s grandpappy had Chickasaw blood in him. My grandpappy came from a cotton picker. His mammy’s stock comes from some Spanish explorer, and mine comes from some French explorer.” She set her hands on her hips and pulled her shoulders back. “I told him that we had the world in our blood and it might be good if we started exploring how we could bring our world’s together.”
“That’s mighty bold,” I said. “What did he say?”
“Didn’t say nuthin,” she replied. “He kissed me and invited me to spend the afternoon boating and catfishing.”
I shook my head. That’s the way it was with Iris P. She was like Jesus. She brought people and their worlds together. I reckon I can do the same.
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