For the first time, I didn’t believe him.
I managed to stay in touch with Browny. He eventually moved out of Louisiana and went to work in Tennessee, I think, or was it Arkansas?
I missed the Daily News, as once it was, and I also missed Browny Stephens on that motor scooter, Browny Stephens coming back from some sports event and putting world-class photography on my desk for the next day’s edition.
I missed the nights-that-turned-into mornings at his house, where we’d go after the paper was finished.
It was Browny who bought me my first legal beer, as a matter of fact. October 20, 1967, the day I turned twenty-one. We left the paper for dinner, walked over to a joint, and Browny ordered us a pitcher of cold Ballantine, which is a lot better than Schlitz, at least.
Browny asked, “Does it taste as good legal as it did the other way?”
“No,” I said.
As I sit here and think about it, Browny was around for a number of firsts in my life.
He took me to New York City for the first time: Paula and I went to visit him in Vineland, New Jersey, where he had wound up editing a poultry industry magazine. We drove from Atlanta, and it was also the first time I’d ever been in New Jersey. I expected hundreds of square miles of urban expanse and a lot of guys named Raoul with tattoos. Newark is what I was expecting.
But as I drove to Vineland, I passed through miles of rolling hills and farms and I said, “Aha! This is why they called it the Garden State.”
One day during our visit, I happened to mention neither my wife nor myself had ever been to New York, and we were already twenty-two. As I mentioned earlier, there were always some suspicions on the part of those who grew up in the hinterlands that there really was no New York City.
We didn’t know anybody who had actually been or anybody who knew somebody who had actually been there. What if it were nothing but a clever hoax? What if The Ed Sullivan Show came to us from a warehouse on the outskirts of Greenville, South Carolina? Who could be certain?
Browny took me and Paula to New York-by-God-City the very next day. We drove to Staten Island in his VW bus and rode the ferry to Manhattan.
There, we rode a subway. Browny knew I liked trains.
“How did you enjoy your first subway ride?” he asked me.
The suhbitch scared me half to death is how I enjoyed my first subway ride, I told him.
Are the lights supposed to go on and off like that? Is it supposed to go so fast and screech like a hyena from hell? And who were those other people on there? Recent escapees from a Turkish prison? There was a man on the subway talking to his hands. That was nothing. There was a woman talking to her shoes.
We went to see Grand Central Station. We caught a bus there. I scheduled my next subway ride at some point in the twenty-first century, at the earliest.
My wife brought a blouse at Saks Fifth Avenue. Browny took her picture handing over several of my twenty-dollar bills to a clerk who looked like a female version of Basil Rathbone.
The first time I ever went to the bathroom in New York City was at Saks Fifth Avenue. Basil told me where it was. I stole a couple of hand towels from the rest room. It was all I could afford.
We saw the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center, and my wife kept saying to Browny, “Take our picture here.”
I, of course, was embarrassed. You start lining up in front of street signs to get your picture taken in New York City, they know right away you parked your turnip truck on Staten Island and took the ferry across and you’re some kind of bumpkin or hick or geek or hillbilly, and a taunting crowd will gather and tell you to go back home. I actually posed for only one photograph—one of me looking down a sewer drain to see if there really was an alligator down there.
On the other end of the spectrum, Browny introduced me to camping, and actually made it fun for me for the first time since I was in the Boy Scouts when we would go to Flat Shoals and stay up all night and go hide behind a tree so the scoutmaster couldn’t see us smoking.
I gave up camping after the Boy Scouts because I always felt so tired the next day, and my mouth, from all the cigarettes, felt like an Apache war party had bivouacked there overnight.
My idea of camping out after that was being out of Half-and-Half for my coffee in the morning. (Notice how I didn’t write that it was “like sleeping in a Howard Johnson motel with no color TV.” I’ve already said how I despise clichés.)
I was married to my second wife, the lovely Kay, and we were living in Atlanta. Browny had fled from New Jersey and was involved with a small newspaper in Chatsworth, Georgia, near the Georgia-Tennessee line. One day, he called and asked me and Kay if we would like to go up to some river in Tennessee and float down it and camp out.
I had planned to rearrange my sock drawer that day, but Kay was all for the idea. We met Browny in Chatsworth, got back into the same VW bus that had taken me and another wife to New York City for the first time, and drove through a lot of woods and eventually came upon Webb’s store in Reliance, Tennessee. As a matter of fact, Mr. Webb’s store was Reliance, Tennessee, filled with old tires as one edifice.
Next to Mr. Webb’s store was the Hiwassee River. I liked Mr. Webb. He wore a Texaco outfit and on his Texaco hat, there was a large red star. I was taken back to Ed Thelinius and his “This broadcast is brought to you by Texaco. Trust your car to the man who wears the star.”
Mr. Webb, who had to be in his late sixties, looked exactly like Lester Maddox, who was elected governor of Georgia once. I liked Lester. He once said, “What the Georgia penal system needs is a better grade of prisoner.”
In fact, Mr. Webb had a photograph of Lester Maddox in his store, and he would stand next to it and take off his Texaco hat. The resemblance was amazing.
Here was the deal:
We left Browny’s bus at Webb’s store. Then Mr. Webb, ever the entrepreneur, drove us eight miles up the Hiwassee River and let us out for a small fee.
Browny had two craft we would use to travel the eight miles back to Webb’s store downriver on the Hiwassee. One was a small inflatable raft that would seat one uncomfortably. He also had a slightly larger inflatable raft that would seat two and do serious damage to your back.
He had an old bicycle pump that he used to inflate them. He got into the one-person one, and Kay and I got into the double. Browny used a double-bladed paddle, like kayakers. He gave Kay and me a regular canoe paddle.
I was thinking, Have I lost my mind?
I walked over to the river and put my hand in the water. Where were the polar bears? Cold? My God, yes.
So, what I was going to do was paddle this thing with my wife and me in it, eight miles down a nearly frozen river—and I had worn a pair of shorts. Not a bathing suit, meaning my underwear would get wet. I hated wet underwear.
We took off.
“Paddle left,” said Browny.
I put the paddle in the water, and the raft immediately turned over.
It was like falling into the Volga in January.
Browny retrieved our raft while we swam to the shore. We got inside it, again. I asked Browny, “I think I have made a critical error in judgment. Is there any way we can call Lester and get him to drive us back to the bus?”
There wasn’t. I realized if I was ever going to return to civilization again, I had to arrive there upon his blow-up love doll we were using as a boat.
I got better at paddling as we went along, except that since I was sitting behind my wife, each time I would move my paddle to the other side of my boat, I’d hit her in the back of the head with it.
We made it down the Hiwassee River. Once I got over my underwear being wet, I actually began to enjoy the trip.
The water was crystal clear, and there were even a few small rapids I negotiated with ease. Well, okay, so I went through a couple of them backward and once I ran atop a rock and was stuck there for fifteen minutes, but who’s keeping score?
We took the boats out of the river back at Webb’s store. Brow
ny deflated them and packed them in the bus. We stopped in a shady grove not far from Webb’s store to camp.
Browny unloaded all the gear and put up my tent, on account of I didn’t know how. When I went camping with the Boy Scouts, I would go out into a thicket somewhere and hide so somebody else would put up my tent. As I mentioned earlier, machinery totally baffles me. It had been a nice day. I was tired. Kay was having severe headaches. Browny put a bunch of stuff in a pot and cooked it over an open fire and it was delicious and we sat up late and stared at the fire. Staring into a fire is a pleasant, soothing experience, except that no matter where you put your lawn chair (Browny had brought several along), smoke from the fire eventually will blow into your eyes. It doesn’t matter how many times you move to the other side of the fire.
Browny, Kay, and I upgraded as we went along, camping together. From that first trip on the Hiwassee, we started running the Nantahala River in North Carolina, where the water was even colder and there were some rather serious rapids with which to contend.
Browny’s little boats eventually had so many rock punctures, we had to upgrade there, too. Browny and I bought two large inflatable kayaks that were much more durable and were a better match for the larger rapids to which we had graduated.
Browny, incidentally, still inflated our boats, deflated them, put them away in the back of his bus, and put up the tents. I set up the lawn chairs and was in charge of icing down the beer.
Browny and I turned over together once, and both of us lost our glasses. Clark, Browny’s son, was twelve or thirteen the time he went through the toughest rapid on the Nantahala while standing and straddling a canoe. He made it with no problem. When Clark was a baby, crawling around on the floor in his diapers back in Athens, if you didn’t watch him closely, he would pick up your beer and drink it.
Years later, Clark joined the navy and needed a security clearance. He put down my name as a reference. A man from the Defense Department actually came to see me in my office.
“How long have you known Seaman Stephens?” he asked me.
“Practically all his life,” I answered.
“And have you ever seen him exhibit any strange behavior?”
“Sure,” I said. “When he was still wearing diapers, he would steal your beer, and when he was twelve or thirteen, he went down the toughest rapid on the Nantahala River standing up and straddling a hard-bottom canoe. I think he’s natural for the navy.”
Clark got his security clearance.
It was the out-of-doors, Browny would tell me later, that led to his divorce from Nancy. She didn’t like paddling down ice-cold rivers and sleeping on the ground. Browny loved it.
It was an amicable divorce. Browny and Nancy remained close, even after she remarried.
Browny did so much for me. And I finally did something for him.
I took him west to Idaho and the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, where we rafted down this often-mighty torrent with an outfitter and other adventurers from all over the country.
Browny loved every minute of it. There was big water and wonderful scenery. Longhorn sheep often came down out of the mountains to drink from the Middle Fork as we paddled past them.
There had been a small tribe of Indians known as the Sheepeaters in this area. But the army didn’t have anything better to do a few years after the Civil War, so they went into the area and killed all the Sheepeaters. The called it the Sheepeaters’ War. I’m not certain what the Sheepeaters called it. The term “useless massacre” does come to mind, however.
Browny and I had never discussed religion. We’d discussed everything else, but never religion. Well, we had sung a few hymns after more than a few beers, but we’d never really got into heaven or hell or Jesus or Allah or Billy Graham.
But one morning out on the Middle Fork, the sun had turned the water so clear and green it was breathtaking. And there were the mountains around us and an unpolluted blue sky, and the air was cool, just the right degree of cool to make a person feel incredibly alive.
Browny and I were sharing a large rock on the riverbank while the outfitters cooked breakfast.
“I haven’t been to church in years,” Browny said. “I don’t even remember the last time I went to church. But out here, seeing this, says more to me about a loving God than anything I could learn in church. Whatever and whoever God is, He’s also an outdoorsman. How could you look around here and think anything else?”
Yeah, I knew Browny Stephens for twenty-five years. We once walked into a beer joint in Tellico Plains, Tennessee. It was morning, and we were looking for eggs and bacon and grits. We had been on instant oatmeal for several days.
It was barely past nine, but there were a number of patrons already sitting at tables with Formica tops, sipping on cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Browny asked the woman bartender, who obviously had had teeth at one point in her life, “Anyplace around here to get a good breakfast?”
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Maybe some eggs?”
“Sit down. I’ll be back in a minute,” she said.
The woman walked out of the beer joint and into a grocery store next door. She came back with a dozen eggs, a loaf of white bread, some bacon, and a couple of potatoes.
She fried us two perfect eggs. The bacon was good and crisp, and the hash-browned potatoes she made were magnificent. When we were back in the VW bus, Browny smiled and said, “We’ve got to remember this place. And that woman. I do believe she was an angel.”
Perhaps at that moment, Browny was as at peace with his world as anybody can ever be. On the road. Up in the mountains. Canoes in the back. No schedule to keep. No exact destination to reach.
As we drove out of Tellico Plains, he reared his head back and began:
“I’m proud to be an Okie from Muskogee....”
What he lacked in talent when he sang, he more than made up for with his enthusiasm. I sang along with him.
A precious memory, but damned how Lucky Stars can get crossed.
A People Paper epilogue:
First, there was Kathy, that little blond girl Browny saw in a photograph at the Haleyville diner for the first time.
She grew into a beautiful woman, married and moved to St. Louis.
Browny and Kathy’s husband became the best of friends. Browny was always going to get him out on a camping trip.
Her husband was out of town on business, and Kathy had driven to the grocery store. She had stopped at McDonald’s on the way home and picked up a Coke, a cheeseburger, and some French fries.
They found her in the car, parked in the garage. She was dead of carbon-monoxide poisoning. Her death was ruled a suicide. She was only twenty-two.
But there were all sorts of questions. There was no suicide note. She had exhibited no signs of depression to her husband or to friends. And why would somebody who was going to commit suicide first go out and buy a week’s groceries for she and her husband? Why would anybody planning suicide stop by a McDonald’s thirty minutes beforehand and pick up a Coke and a cheeseburger and fries?
There are still no explanations. Her mother, Nancy, was bitter at the authorities for years for not trying to answer the questions with a more thorough investigation.
And soon after that, Nancy’s third husband was diagnosed with cancer. He went fast.
And then Browny.
One night two years ago, I got a call from Nancy.
“There’s something wrong with Browny,” she said. “He’s been having a hard time using his right arm and hand. We’re trying to get him to go to a doctor.
The doctor found a large tumor in Browny’s neck. But Browny was going to beat it. There was an operation in Chattanooga, and the prognosis at the time was a good one. But a later checkup revealed other tumors. Browny’s doctor said they were inoperable. Browny even went to a clinic in Mexico for help. A friend of Nancy’s paid his way.
His medical bills were getting out of hand. His insurance coverage was slight. I got a call fro
m a friend of Browny’s from the egg business. The poultry industry was holding its annual convention in Atlanta. He wanted to invite Browny’s legion of friends to a reception. There would be a cash bar, and Browny would say a few words and then I would do my dog-and-pony act, and we would ask people for donations to help with the medical bills.
Browny had by then been admitted to a hospice in Atlanta for those with incurable diseases and limited funds. All those years and all those places, working long hours for so little pay, and it had come to this.
I went to visit Browny. We talked about the benefit. The plan was, a couple of days later, for an ambulance to pick Browny up and take him to the World Congress Center in Atlanta, where the poultry convention was taking place. He was going to be wheeled into the benefit, and then he said he thought he might be able to sit up and talk for five minutes. His neck was giving him severe pain whenever he tried to move from his bed.
Nancy would be there. So would Clark, grown and out of the navy by now. Miranda, also grown, had married and was expecting a baby. She’d be there, too. As would all of Browny’s friends from the poultry industry. My ex-wife, Kay, was even scheduled to come.
“There will be more people in that room who I love, and who love me,” Browny said to me on that visit, “than at any other time in my life. I just want to be able to tell them how much I care for them and how much I appreciate them helping me.”
The cocktail reception was scheduled at five. At four that afternoon, Browny’s nurse went into his room to get him ready for the ambulance ride.
“He said, ‘I’m tired,’ ” his nurse explained. “And then he was gone.”
An hour before the reception, and he was gone.
I was called shortly after he died. When I got to the benefit, few knew what had happened. The word spread throughout the room.
The man who had the idea for the benefit spoke first. Then he introduced me. I didn’t do a very good job.
Browny was cremated. The family took a while to determine where to place the ashes as a final resting place. Last winter, Nancy and Clark and Miranda decided to spread them over the Tellico River in the Tennessee mountains, not far from where an angel once cooked Browny and me breakfast.
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