Biggie and the Devil Diet - By Nancy Bell Page 0,9

It was good!"

"Fine then. I'm plumb wore out. I'll see you in the morning." With that, she turned and walked around the side of the house to her little cottage out back. After we heard the screen door slam shut, Rosebud continued.

"'I'll just take mebbe two, three steps,' Uncle Eroy thought. So slowly, slowly, holding on to the privy door, he put one foot out, then another and another, grunting with every step on account of it was such a effort, moving them old heavy legs of his. He got to concentratin' so hard on moving one foot in front of the other that he forgot to look and see how far he'd gone. When he did stop and hold on to a sweet gum tree to catch his breath, he was surprised to see that he'd come a good twenty yards from the outhouse. He was near about to the edge of the woods."

"So then did he start back?"

"No. It was a funny thing. Uncle Eroy felt a sense of power come over him. 'I done gone this far,' he thought, 'lemme see can I go just a little bit farther.' Well, to make a long story short, he kept on walking 'til he found himself deep in the woods and tired. That man was plumb wore out. He was scared to sit down on the ground on account of he might not be able to get back up."

"He probably couldn't," I said.

"You right," Rosebud said. "Well, before long, he found a dead tree laying across the path, so he just taken a seat on that to rest. Away off, he could hear Grandmomma and them calling for him. Uncle Eroy said he never did understand why he didn't answer them. Something just told him to keep on walking, so after he rested awhile, he got up and commenced putting one foot after the other again."

"How far did he go, Rosebud?"

"Oh, he went quite a good little ways. Uncle Eroy walked from St. Martinville to New Iberia and then on down to Jeanerette."

"Golly!"

"Oh, that ain't all. He crossed the bayou at Morgan City and kept on walking."

"How did he eat? Where did he sleep?"

"Ate whatever he could find along the way: berries, crawfish, caught him a fish now and then."

"I'll bet he lost some of that weight. Right, Rosebud?"

"You betcha. By the time he got to New Orleans, Uncle Eroy was plumb rawboney. He was tall, too. Did I tell you that?"

I shook my head.

"Oh, yeah, cher, Uncle Eroy would have gone six feet or more."

"So what did he do next? Go back home?"

"Nope. He went and got him a job working the docks. He found him a little room to rent and stayed there near 'bout half a year. Made hisself some good money, too. Still and all, Uncle Eroy wasn't too crazy about city life what with the noise and lights, and he said he was gettin' right tired of them smelly old docks, so he took a notion to move on. First, he bought himself a good pair of walkin' boots though."

"Back home?"

"Well, not at first. Uncle Eroy figured he had missed a lot spending his days settin' on that couch. He wanted to see a little more of the world. What he done was, he left New Orleans goin' east. What he didn't know was, he was about to get a surprise."

"What surprise?"

"It happened just after he'd passed through Slidell." Rosebud took a fresh cigar out of his pocket. "Run get me a cup of coffee, will you?"

I hurried inside to the kitchen and took Rosebud's favorite coffee mug with a picture of the Dixie Queen on it and poured thick black coffee out of the pot on the stove. It smelled awful. When I got back with the coffee, Rosebud was puffing on his cigar. "What surprise?"

"He seen a sign, that's what."

"You mean an omen, like Willie Mae sees?"

"Naw. It was a sign. It said WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI."

"Oh."

"Well, you see, Uncle Eroy didn't want to go to Mississippi. He figured he ain't seen all of his own home state yet. So he turned around and headed back home, only this time he turned north so he could pass through Baton Rouge, thinking he might like to take a look at the state capital. Then, after he'd seen enough, he cut through the swamp to Beaux Bridge and from there it wasn't but a little way home. By the time the first frost came, he'd