Taken from the book: ‘The Buck and the Widow Jones’ by L. Dablemont
It was two days before Christmas in 1939. There was a knock on the door and a boy stood outside, waiting for the old man to answer. When the door opened, he doffed his hat politely and said, “Mister, I reckon you don’t recall me, but I’m Joe Roggins’ youngest boy Jimmy… and I come to ask if I could shoot me a couple of mallards off’n yore pond.” Before the old man could answer, the boy went on… “My Pa’s been feelin’ poorly and he allowed as how he’d like a big ol’ mallard duck or two for dinner tomorrer. They’s a bunch of ‘em on yore pond an’ he’d love to eat one of ‘em.”
Charley and his wife were in their early sixties. Neither knew the young seventeen-year-old kid who stood there before them in ragged overalls and an old patched suit coat probably made ten years before the boy was born. His overalls were two or three inches too short. Charley couldn’t help but smile at the sight of him.
“Oh, heck boy, them mallards ain’t mine,” he said, “They belong to the good Lord, an’ I ‘spect He made ‘em to feed folks, so if’n you shoot a couple, I don’t care. Bring me one, too. I never have favored turkey nor ham over a baked mallard.”
“That was nice of you Charley,” his wife said as they watched the young man walk down the gravel road with an old hammer double-barrel twelve gauge.
“Well, I felt sorry for the kid,” he grumbled. “His daddy is just an ol’ drunk, I ain’t seen him in a long time…figgered he was dead. Never knowed he had a boy that young.” Finally, they heard two distant shotgun blasts, but the young man who had promised to come back with a mallard was not seen again.
On Christmas Day, his daughter brought a baked ham with her kids and her husband, and Charley bemoaned the fact that he didn’t have a baked wild mallard to go with it. “Never even thanked me, that boy, reckon that’s the new generation for you.” Then he added, “But what could you expect from the son of ol’ drunk Joe?
On Christmas Eve a year later, the Ozarks was cloaked in an inch of snow, and it was cold. Migrating ducks were on every pond. Charley had his chores done and was shaving when his wife Eva said there was someone knocking at the door. Charley hadn’t even had breakfast yet! No wonder he was a little cranky! But he cheered up when he opened the door. Before him was Jimmy Roggins in that flimsy old coat and the ragged overalls.
“Good Lord in heaven, kid,” Charlie said, “Get in here out of the cold before you let all the heat out… whatcha got in that bag?”
“Well, I owed ya some mallards Mr. Claymon, so I brung you some for Christmas. I got ‘em plucked and gutted with the head and legs cut off. Ready for b’ilin.”
For Charley’s family it was a day to remember. His wife wasn’t about to let the boy go without coffee and biscuits and gravy. It was at the table that Jimmy teared up just a little and told why he hadn’t returned a year before.
“Pa et ever bit of them mallards,” he said as his eyes moistened, “But two days later he came down sickly while we was splittin’ some firewood. He just up and died on the front porch. The doctor from Licking said was a heart failin’. We buried him at the graveyard behind the church at Plato.
“Well I got that old shotgun of Pa’s out on the porch, and I would like to give it to you for a Christmas present of sorts,” the boy said. “Maybe you could get somethin’ fer it somewhere and buy yourself a new cookin’ pot or something like that.” Soon he was gone, up to the country store at Bucyrus to catch a ride to the train station in Cabool. He had joined the Navy and was headed to the West Coast.
Then Christmas drew near in 1941. With it, there came awful, horrible news from Hawaii and a Naval installation at a place called Pearl Harbor. All across the Ozarks, every radio that worked was in use. There was word that the Japanese bombers had attacked and sunk several American battleships and that there were thousands of Navy servicemen dead.
In a somber mood, Charley went to his barn to work that night while his wife cried. He said nothing to her about Jimmy. He knew that the boy was likely among the dead. The Battle of Midway came months later, and the United States Navy decimated Japanese destroyers and aircraft carriers, nearly wiping out the enemy Navy. The years passed and on a golden September day in 1945, Japan surrendered. What a wonderful fall that was, as Ozark boys who had become part of the greatest fighting force the world had ever known, began to come home. What a Christmas that was in the hill country of Missouri and Arkansas too, when December came.
But there was so also much sadness, because many Ozark families never saw again the young men they watched go off to war. Old Charley was slowing down, beset with arthritis. He needed help around his small farm, but he had never had a son. He thought of old drunk Joe Roggins who had had three or four, and on December 7th, he particularly thought of Jimmy, who he would have been so proud to have raised. He knew that Jimmy’s body might be in the sunken hull of one of those warships in Pearl Harbor.
That Christmas morning as Charley’s daughter and grandkids gathered around the Christmas tree there was again, a knock on the door. He opened the door and a tall young man was standing there, a young man who looked so much like young Jimmy Roggins had looked standing there years ago. But his voice was deep as he said with a big smile on his face, “I’ve come for my shotgun…I’m wantin’ some mallards for Christmas dinner!”
If there was room here, I could tell you about that wonderful Christmas day in that little house back in the woods along the main gravel road a few miles west of the Big Piney River. But I don’t need to do that… you can envision it yourself. I WILL tell you that Jimmy Roggins went to work on his old home-place, built a nice little cabin with a fireplace on six acres of hard-scrabble timbered ridgetop with a four-acre clearing below along the creek. Oh yes, he acquired a half dozen chickens and a pair of calves and two or three young choates. And during the spring of before 1946, Jimmy met a local girl at the skating rink in Houston. They were married before Thanksgiving. And for years after that, old Charley, as December came around, boasted that the coming Christmas Day was gonna be the best ever. He often said that he and his daughter and her kids were coming and his boy Jimmy was gonna get some mallards for Christmas dinner. He said he never had favored turkey or ham.
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