Monk Sighting

Folks up in the Pacific Northwest are always on the look out for a big hairy and deeply secretive ape called bigfoot. Down in the Southwestern part of the USA everyone makes a big to do over some nusance to livestock called a chupacabra...or something like that. On the east coast they have a skunk man...which reminds me of the time a few years back when Lance Russam and Billy Ray McNealy went hunting for possums off the north river road, but that's a story for another day. Well in the greater Commonwealth of Tallamingo County we have our own mystery beast. We just call him the Monk, for that's all anyone can figure to call him. Every story about him has him wearing some dirty black robe with a sort cape or hood or some such thing about the shoulders. Now monks are unusual enough creature as far as that goes and they are rare enough in all Tallamingo County where you can close your eyes spin around three times, throw a rock and six times out of ten hit a Baptist in the back of the head. Three times you would hit a Methodist and one time if you are lucky, maybe a Presbyterian. The only ones who ever claimed to have a monk is the little Orthodox chapel down the Indian way in Gaza. There might be thirty or forty of them on a good day. They worship in a little church house called St. Barsanuphis of Gaza...which is where their community got its name. Barsanuphius was just to much of a mouthful for anyone but them to say.

During the Civil War a few boys from the New Orleans Home Brigade go lost in the Honey Island Swamp and when they came out, it was from Big Leaky Swamp. That's our swamp...and its a peculiar one. About half century before them a band of Choctows entered the Neshoba County swamps and came out of the Big Leaky too...of course they meant to. What is now Tallamingo County was always a sort redoubt/refuge area for them from way back before even they remember. There are paths in Big Leaky that lead to places one would not expect them to lead to, and paths in other places that lead into the Big Leaky that are likewise not what one would expect. Well those Home Brigade Boys stumbled out the swamp half dead and just as smelly. The Choctaws took care of them and they decided to stay and marry in, which they did. However these boys weren't your normal Baptists or Methodists or even the Catholics one might expect from New Orleans...they was some other kind of far eastern Catholics who called themselves Orthodox, newly immigrated from God knows where. These boys and their families built themselves a little chapel, had lots of children between them and that's how Gaza got started. Well about 1875 a brace of brothers that got tired of their people having no priest to look after them decided to do something about it. One went off for a few years to get trained as an Orthodox priest...wherever they went back then to do that. His Choctaw relatives had taught him about coming and going through Big Leaky and the few other paths that lead into or out of what is now Tallamingo County. Now to make sure God looked after his brother real good the other brother for his part turned himself into a monk. I'm not sure how they do that, but he did, and lived off by himself somewhere in the edges of Big Leaky and only came to the Church on Sundays and special occassions. The older he got the less frequently he came until three or four years might go by before anyone saw him again. Somewhere around 1930 everybody just figured him for dead, God rest his soul. Now since then his brother's family has always had a boy grow up to follow in his daddy's footsteps and take over doing whatever Orthodox priests do to pastor their flock at St. Barsanuphius of Gaza. That was until 1954. It looked like the line was going to fail, their priest at the time having five beautiful daughters...well four beautiful and one about average daughters. The youngest, Helen was twelve and it looked like there would be no sons born into this family. Which was an unfortunate irony since the family name was Boychild.

That's where the story migrates from sad to strange. According to Hellen Mingo, nee Helen Boychild, who was the youngest daughter of her father, the priest. One night when she was twelves years old, she recalls being disturbed by a dream and going to her parents room to seek comfort. When she opened the door she saw the dark outline of a man at the foot of her parents bed in which they were fast asleep. For some reason she said she was not afraid...terribly courious, but not afraid. He made the sign of the cross of over the bed and then walked with her back to her room without word and tucked her in. Next morning she woke up and thought that this must have been all part of her dream and she put it out of her mind, and it never occured to her again until two months later when her mama announced that she was was with child, and that somehow beyond all reason she was very sure that it would be a boy. And so it was.

Ever since then at least every two or three years somewhere in the vicinity of Big Leaky people claim to see an old man in a black robe crossing the road and disappearing into the brush. And I mean disappearing...for no one that tried to follow him has ever found him. Even if the one who saw him jumped out of the car and ran right after. Some say its a ghost. Others say another one of them Chocodox done turned monk...Chocodox is sort of their local nick name. And still others say its the same old monk...but thats ridiculous to believe such a thing. He would have to be at least 130 years old, if not more. Of course then there's Mammy Bess...who will tell you if you believe her that she once took a switch to the monk when he was a little boy and got her sheets dirty by running down the wash line with muddy hands.

Now if this were all, it would make for an interesting story of local color and that's all. It seems though that seeing the monk is kind of a blessing and curse. It means something bad is going happen to you, but you will survive, maybe even prosper...but calamity will happen first. For example back in 1961 Brett Mason had gone fishing down to one of his favorite spots in Big Leaky and on his way back saw the old monk cross the road. He stopped to tell the sheriff about it and left his car running. Well it so happened the sheriff's office had been painted that very day and the painter, the current Sheriff Mingo's father had dropped a paint rag in the parking lot...and back then a lot of fine paints were still made with tung oil. This rag happen to be laying right up under Brett Mason's muffler. Lets just say, before the conversation with the sheriff was finished the volunteer fire department was putting out the blaze in his car. It is a strage smell the mingling of burning upholstery, petroleum products, and baking fish. Poor Brett tried to salvage something from the front seat, but only ended up catching his hands on fire. So he had to go to the hospital to be tended to. And that's where he met his wife the nurse changed his bandages for a month. It's true the back of Brett's hands were a little unsightly for a few years, but no one can argue that he doesn't have the best marriage a man could ask for. If they had died and gone to heaven two people could not have been better suited for each other.

If that had been the only time it might have been called a coincidence, but there have at least twenty or thirty sightings that I know about since then. And all those that I can verify share the same general profile of events. Loren Sutter saw him four years ago and a two days later a tornado ripped through her old barn and scattered it all across the county. In picking up the debris. Loren found an old coffee can from her great grandfather's time stuffed full of old coins and bills...collecter's stuff. She drove all the way to Memphis to locate someone who could help her sell it proper and she made over three-hundred thousand dollars. It let her put two of her grandchildren through college, got her a new car, and built a brand new barn, and she still has a little mad money left over. And back in 1970 Melvin Nash saw him one night...almost hit him in the middle of the road. It scared the pure pee out of that boy. He was headed to Dogwood to hang out at Lulu's Cafe with his friends from high school, but instead he was so shook up he went home. Just a hour or so after he got back his father had a heart attack while watching TV, and Melvin was sitting there with him. His mother had already gone to bed. If Melvin had not been there, his father would have likely died alone and without help. As it was Melvin put his father in the car and sped all the way to the hospial; caused three wrecks on the way running stop signs...but he saved his father's life. Ed Nash lived another ten years.

I could tell dozens of stories just like those, and one always wonders what the sighting will bring. But I guess we shall soon find out. Samuel Butler has just returned from Business School and has a position lined up run the business end of Colonal Coughman's latest enterprise...catfish farming. Samuel neglected to tell anyone while away that he gotten married to a pretty young miss who will sooner or later have to learn of Tallamingo County's little secret. They was out and about in his new Mercedes...which he did not buy locally, and he was giving his new bride the big tour. On their way back from visiting the quite beautiful, if rustic little chapel in Gaza they saw an old man in a black robe cross the road.

I hear Samuel is back home sitting in a new recliner rocker getting dead drunk, which is more tragic than it sounds since Samuel has never been much of one to drink.