Weathered & Wounded
Jean Baptiste & the Three-Legged Lady
Jean Baptiste sat down on the narrow sidewalk outside his front door, putting his shoes on. Miss K. watched him from the top of the hallway staircase, wondering if this would be a solo escapade or if they would go together. As the Baptist reached back through the door to grab his small backpack, he stopped and looked at the dog waiting on the stairs.
‘Come on’, he said, ‘We ain’t got all day’.
Truth was, they had more than a lifetime, and Miss K. never missed a beat doing everything at her own pace.
Geroni was the one who first told him about the Three-Legged Lady, and yesterday he’d gone further by drawing a map in the sand to mark out her cabin. ‘It’s not as far off as everybody wants you to believe’, he’d said, ‘Not if you find the shortcut leading up to the Two Twins’.
He told the Baptist to prepare for the Lady’s joyful way of watching us struggle on our way up. She knows you won’t come down the other side without her and takes pride in letting her lost heroes doubt.
‘Finding the cabin is the easy part’, he said, ‘You need to dare to wait’.
The waiting. Where most men fail. You can count the ones who have passed the cathartic hours of trusting the Lady to show up with one hand.
