Novel

Wednesday, March 16

Potter died.

Suzette came home and found him dead. He had had a heart attack.

The paramedics had to lower his body from the second-story deck, because they couldn't get him down the spiral staircase.

Suzette remarked, "There goes $100,000 worth of fine dining."

Owen and Jean and Balder drove down to Santa Rosa Beach together, Brew and Brenda drove down together. Potter's death affected all of them.

But not just them. Potter was much loved by friends, shipmates, musicians, music lovers, fishermen, storytellers, dog fanciers.

There was a wake, at Suzette's house, a memorial service, in Uncle Ed's yard, where the Friendship was docked, under the live oak trees, and, a week later, his immediate family and close friends scattered his ashes in Parker Bayou from the Friendship. A dolphin followed the boat back to the dock, surfing in the bow wave.

Brew delivered a eulogy. No one else could trust himself to do it. And Brew knew Potter would have done as much for him.

Later, Brew wrote two pamphlets of poems. Potter's Ashes and Taint. By analogy with Angela's Ashes and 'Tis.

Potter worked as a deckhand on the New Florida Girl with Slim. And Owen, in the summers.

I know Slim misses Potter too.

Owen will call Slim late at night, from the band bus, because he knows Slim will be awake.

Slim suffers from insomnia.

When Potter wasn't fishing, or playing music, he was a househusband.

Brew used to drive by Potter and Suzette's house, in Santa Rosa Beach, when both of them were househusbands, and have a cup of coffee with Potter.

If it was the morning, Potter was working up to a good old country shit.

If it was the afternoon, his day's work was done, and he had switched to the "frosty green bottles," as Duke said in "Potter's Moon," a song that always, still, made Brew cry when Duke sang it.

I think it's going to be on Dread Clampitt's next CD.

Most of Brew's Potter Brown stories are in Potter's Ashes and Taint. As poems.

He thinks of Potter all the time.

He can see Potter in Owen and Balder.

He's glad Owen and Balder got to be brought up by Potter and Suzette, in the summers, and to pick and sing with Potter, throughout the year, especially at Thanksgiving and Christmas, on the deck of the house on Martin Lake, with a bag of oysters.

Potter named the tin outbuilding, or shed, Brew wrote in, at the house on Martin Lake, the Slave Quarters.

That was funny but true.

Once he called a big turd a Senator. It was nine wrist-rings long.

Potter gave Michelle the nickname Pretty Michelle. When her son was five he used to ask if he could go over to Potter's and play, and described Potter as his best friend.

They lived next door.

One Christmas, a potluck supper was held at Michelle's house. Turkey, ham, and side dishes were brought. Duck, a leg of lamb. Vegetables, breads. Desserts.

Woodie Long brought a pot of beet greens.

It was then that Brew realized he was a beet poet, not a beat poet. All he wanted to do was live where he could grow a garden with beets, Swiss chard, and kohlrabi, eat fresh mullet, caught in a cast net, and go hear Dread Clampitt play at The Red Bar.

And now he had that.

He was a beet poet.

How many people could say that?

That was the Christmas Woodie and Dot gave Brew and Brenda the painting of white and black cotton-pickers and angels.