Mrs. Barton

Etta Barton was my keeper. My mother was a nurse who worked 3 -11 PM at the Louisiana State School of Special Education. On the evenings when she was at work, Mrs. Barton would fix me supper and stay at our house until Mom got home. Sometimes she would spend the night. She was a kind woman, short of stature, round of body, with bright eyes and a weathered face that was carved with a thousand wrinkles, especially when she smiled. She always wore printed cotton dresses with hose which she rolled up to her knees and cotton shoes which she cut slits in to give relief to her corns. Her grandson, Bodie, was my best friend. There was no Mr. Barton that I ever knew. She sold Avon in order to provide herself with some income. There were those days when she would pack me and her Avon packages into her 1958 Chevrolet sedan and we would head out into the rural Louisiana country side delivering bags of encouragement to a feminine population who sometimes lived in discouraging circumstances. The ride in her green Chevy was down right electrifying. The floorboards of the car were rotted out and sticks and stones would fly through them as we drove gravel roads at a maddening pace. Mrs. Barton sat low in the car and could not see all that well over the enormous steering wheel.

One day we were making a delivery to McNary. It is a small (pop 200) community in central Louisiana located next to Glenmora (population 1,500). McNary had a creosote factory nearby where they produced such things as fence posts and rail-road ties. The smell of creosote was sometimes heavy in the humid air. Mrs. Barton pulled up to a ramshakled house that desperately needed paint. We walked up to the front porch and she banged on a torn screen door annoucing herself as the Avon Woman. I remember peering in and the house seemed so dark inside when compared to the bright sunlit porch. Out of the shadow a figure approached the screen door. It was a man. I remember him wearing a tank-top tee shirt. Mrs. Barton announced that she had a delivery for the lady of the house. The man invited us in and began to walk back into the recesses of the house. As he turned, Mrs. Barton and I both saw he was carrying a butcher knife. 40 years later the image in my mind is a knife 3 feet long and sharp enough to use as a razor. Regardless, I do clearly remember Mrs. Barton's response: "Run, Paul, Run"! (Pre-Gump) And run I did. Mrs. Barton could not run, but she did do a hurried shuffle. Back to the car, out on the highway, rocks flying through the floor-boards - we made our escape. She never said a word, but, if I remember it right - she did begin to laugh.

The world, I learned, could be a dangerous place. In my mind we had stumbled onto a nest of ill-doers who had ordered Avon from Etta Barton in order to lure us to the house and rob us or hold us for ransom. We had barely gotten away. The truth is, the man was probably in the kitchen cutting up a chicken or cleaning a squirrel. I'll never know.

The enemy of our souls appears as a roaring lion. He bristles, roars, shows his teeth, and threatens to undo us. It is not our imagination working over-time. He really is a threat. But, Aslan is Greater. Though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph thru us. The price of darkness grim, we tremble not for him, his rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure: one little word shall fell him.