Roy Exum: My Brother Jonathan

  • Sunday, August 9, 2015
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

This lady called the newspaper one day, wondering what kind of snake she and her husband had just captured and I asked, “Does it have a triangle shaped head or a blunt head?” She told me blunt – a good thing – and said it was brown with yellowish stripes. “Sounds like a corn snake or chicken snake to me. They are good snakes to keep on a farm. Then again, my brother is something of a herpetologist – he keeps snakes and he could tell you.”

The woman wanted to know if he’d like this snake and I told her Jonathan would love it.

“If he can’t keep it we’ll turn it loose in one of our barns on the farm.” Actually, Jonathan only had an 18-inch boa that was in vogue at the time.

But it tickled the woman to death and she said she’d bring it by the paper in a folded cardboard box so it wouldn’t scare anyone. Sure enough, they called from the switchboard and inside the box was a big mayonnaise jar with this very angry five-foot (at least) serpent battling to get out. I immediately took it to Jonathan.

“Look here. This woman raised this snake from an infant and it’s partial to humans. Fed it milk with an eye dropper, she did, and it gets a white mouse maybe once a week. Poor woman is moving into a rest home that doesn’t cater to snakes. She wants to know would you like it. She calls it Pepe.”

Ol’ Jonathan was beaming as he spun the top off that jar and when he reached in to pet “Pepe” that reptile came out of the jar in a rage. That snake bit him at least six times and was all over him. Jonathan was on the floor, wrestling with the snake, and I was hysterical until he finally chased me three blocks down 11th Street, calling me names brothers should never use.

* * *

Back in the day I had Corvettes, and when Jonathan was about 17, he got his first one, a silver four-speed. He was four years younger than me. I’d just traded for one with the new LT-1 engine and, as fate would have it, we were side-by-side at the stop light near WDEF late on South Broad one afternoon. I yelled “ten dollars” and – boom – the game was on when the light turned green.

Jonathan, in the right lane, would go up Lookout Mountain on the Ruby Falls side while I went the Rock City route, hitting the Ochs extension. Between the two of us we have terrified more people from Florida and Louisiana than the Union Army. We knew what curves you could pass on the inside and when an athletic car might drift, downshifting and full throttle produces a sensation that’s just heavenly.

That day Jonathan beat me by less than 20 feet – he flagrantly ran the stop sign on Scenic Highway -- so I handed him a $10 and we went in to jostle our little sisters until dinner. We ate dinner every night at 6:30. I’d moved out by then, but because it was somebody’s birthday or someone had made straight A’s I dropped by to enjoy one of Annie Lee Lewis' five-star meals.

A bit before 7 there was a knock on the door and there stood the sheriff, Bookie Turner. We invited him in, got him a plate from the sideboard and he sat down, eyeing me the whole while. He took tea instead of milk and, after a long sip, he said, “You boys have to quit racing up this mountain. You’re gonna’ kill somebody and I hope it’s not you.”

Mother, aghast her children would ever do such a thing, urged Bookie to arrest me and Jonathan. “Keep them in jail until they promise to obey the speed limit and the law!” she urged the sheriff.

Bookie had a full mouth of fried chicken and turnip greens about then and Jonathan piped, “If you're going to take us to jail I’m going to take your plate up.” I thought Bookie was going to choke to death he was laughing so hard.

* * *

We went through a union strike in the 70s that taught me all I ever need to know about unions. Proof readers who gave me English lessons and tips how to write walked out and became totally different. We replaced over 125 sets of tires for employees from the roofing nails the union members threw and the lead balls they’d shoot into the parking lot with slingshots ruined at least 50 windshields.

What they did they wouldn’t do for Jesus, their country, their neighbors or their families, but they did it for the union. My grandfather offered each one a job for life, and about five years later the union was a dinosaur. Some slick-talking union official, not seen in these parts since, led our employees straight to the gallows.

The biggest key to our success was a pressman named Skinny Owens. He didn’t agree with them at all and walked across the picket line to vulgar language and threats every day. At the same time, not a one of us knew how to run the press and Jonathan was one of the first volunteers to help. Soon the union threats, the pictures of his house they would hand him, started getting to him and he told my grandfather one afternoon he didn’t know how much more he could take.

That’s when my brother Jonathan went to Skinny and told him he was going to drive him home and back to work every day. Jon-Boy said he’d sleep in a sleeping bag on Skinny’s couch and told him, “If they come for you it will have to be through me.”

Jonathan, of course, had an arsenal under the front seat and about two weeks later, a carload of union thugs pulled up next to Jonathan and Skinny on Brainerd Road. Jonathan waved to them with a stainless 45-caliber Colt in his hand. He even showed the business end of a sawed-off shotgun. They never followed Skinny and Jonathan any more.

* * *

One morning Jonathan was eating breakfast at Wally’s when Gene Turner, Bookie’s brother who ran the funeral home, walked in. The day before I had a tough surgery at Erlanger and was feeling awful when Jonathan and Gene came into the hospital room. Neither said a word but Gene whipped out this measuring tape to determine how wide I was and how long I was. I didn’t think being suddenly measured for a coffin was nearly as funny as they did.

* * *

All of this is to say about 4 o’clock this past Friday morning my brother Jonathan crossed the River Jordan to the other side. I knew he was struggling but had no idea what he was actually going through until I sat with him late Wednesday afternoon. He was as private as I am.

But Jonathan was the funniest of all us Exum boys and, when I got him to roll his eyes and twist his face into a laugh, this while gulping down oxygen and a lot of medicine, it was enough for me. He was evermore a character and the only time he wasn’t into something was when he was asleep, so help me.

He was tremendously lucky to be married to Karen and, up until the last minute, she was his greatest cheerleader. “Don’t worry, we’ll get through this. You’re going to rally and you’ll be fine,” I could hear as I walked into their house. I pray to God I can hear such a voice when my time comes to fly away. Golly, they loved each other.

On Wednesday I could tell by looking it would be the last time he would fully understand what I needed to say. So as I stood by his bed to leave I remembered the last thing that my older brother Kinch said to me before he died. I believe it is the perfect goodbye between brothers who have been together from the start. “Thank you.”

My brother Franklin was the first to go in 2001, lasting 10 years with lung cancer after the doctors told him he only had three months. He was only 45. Then Kinch, a year older than me, died in 2004 at the age of 56 after doctors found cancer everywhere in his body.

Kinch had been sprayed with Agent Orange repeatedly during two tours with his beloved Marines in Viet Nam. We have always figured that’s what caused his cancer to be so horribly widespread. He died less than 24 hours after he was first diagnosed, but not before a big crowd of his fishing buddies staged a full-bore fish fry in the Florida hospital’s parking lot on his last night.

Now there it is Jonathan, crossing the Great Divide at the age of 62 to be reunited with so many thousands of those we love, and, as the last of the Exum boys standing, I reckon I am left with the most memories. That may be my greatest blessing … I am thankful to my brothers for that.

royexum@aol.com


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