Before I moved to Beattyville, Raleigh’s mother told him his IQ had been tested as the second highest in Lee County. His mother must have been sad to see me enter the picture, in as much as number three does not sound nearly so good. Raleigh and I both declare the other to be more intelligent, but he almost always outfoxes me and wins that argument. I could go on and on this way, but I would be here all week.
So let’s get this party started up in here.
I have a quiz for you. (Great way to start a piece you want somebody to read, right?)
First, when’s the last time you had a conversation with Raleigh Kincaid?
1. Did he seem distracted?
2. Did his words come out haltingly?
3. Did his voice sound frail and adolescent?
4. Were his sentences vapid?
5. Were his ideas inane?
6. Did he ask you to repeat yourself often?
7. Did you walk away thinking, “What a shallow man?”
8. Did he seem to have a narrow view of the world?
9. Did he have absolutely no sense of humor?
If you answered in the affirmative to any of the questions, there are several possibilities: you may be a Republican (I’m just saying), you have probably also seen Halley’s comet three times, right? ; you found him to be short and scrawny too, I bet. Otherwise, I’m going all Joe Wilson on you.
Everything Raleigh is, he owes to me. (Ask him.) He wanted to be lazy, but I got him off his duff. He wanted to be dumb, but I filled him with wisdom. He wanted to be a shiftless parent, but I sat him down and gave him a good talking to. He wanted to be a derelict husband (I tried Kim, I honestly did.) He wanted to sing without resonance, but I modeled the opposite. He wanted to stop learning the guitar, but I reminded him the ladies love it. Back in the day, he started taking pills that make you short, but I found them and flushed them. He hated his mother until I pointed out a few of her nicer points. He tried to say he would never learn to stroke a golf ball, but I would not let him quit practicing. He hated fly fishing (still does) but I told him to stop whining and learn to tolerate it. He had no insight into people’s problems, so I gave him a few pointers on how to read others. He hates people in general, but I swore him to secrecy. He wanted to be a narrow-minded hick, but I introduced him to the world of sophistication. So that he would seem more genuine toward his friends, I gave him acting lessons. (Other clients of mine have been Mandy, or maybe it’s Meryl, yeah Meryl Streep, I told her “emote damn it”; that Hanks man that got stranded on the Island, I told him, get into the character; and Patino, Pacino, whatever his name is….I said buddy why don’t’ you say “I’ll take a flame thrower to this place” with a little more conviction.)
I know, you are probably asking, Mike McCullough, you inspiring man, what motivates you? You see, I love helping pitiful people try to fashion some semblance of a life. My one big request is for you to please be patient with Raleigh. He is a work in progress. I am not finished with him yet.
(He is 6 feet 6 inches now, I am shooting for 7 feet.)
Warning: some serious stuff
Raleigh Kincaid and I were inseparable between Nov 27, 1967 and August 6, 1977. That’s it, ten of our first twenty-one years. We were practically born on the same day, I three days before, but in different states, he in Kentucky, me in South Carolina. But when my family moved to Beattyville on Thanksgiving of ’67, we met in the sixth grade of Beattyville Grade School.
I wore my hair slicked back with Vaseline hair tonic, was yet to grow into my eyes and featured heel-taps on my pointed cowboy boots. Raleigh was already 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighed something on the order of twice my weight, with me being around five feet tall and weighing 90 pounds or so. Raleigh looked like he could use the size eyes I had, when he took off his glasses.
By that time I had led six souls to Jesus, all my age or younger, and no doubt had designs on Raleigh’s larger-than-life eternal spirit. But that proved unnecessary, as his mother and New Springs Methodist Church in Primrose, Kentucky had already won him over.
On the way to Primrose, you drove through St. Helens and around Horse Shoe Bend, the curve where his brother Davy was thrown out the back window of his car in a wreck. A few miles before Primrose, to get to his house, you could take a dive back to the right, on a one-car width lightly paved “road” across the North Fork of the Kentucky River on a wooden swinging bridge. His family owned acreage on the other side of the river in an idyllic green bowl with a large pond and four brick houses, in one of which Raleigh lived with his mother, brother and father.
Raleigh’s father Ernest would lay on the glassed-in porch at the back of the house inside from where his mother Betty tended flowers dotted with hummingbird feeders, so when the little flitting birds showed up, Ernest could enjoy them from his bed. By the time I paid my first visit to his house, Raleigh’s father’s multiple sclerosis had rendered him an invalid. He had been diagnosed shortly after Raleigh was born, so it had debilitated him for a decade and would do so for another fifteen years or so until it took him.
My most lasting memories of those visits are Ernest constantly mumbling, “Betty Jo”, Betty reading paperbacks, taking care of whichever Boston Terrier she had at the time, and refereeing between Raleigh and Davy; and Raleigh and me staying up late talking about how the world is, how it got that way and how it might be changed.
Betty Kincaid waited on Ernest hand and foot for twenty-five years as the disease rendered him increasingly helpless. The first time I saw Ernest was when Betty rolled his wheel chair behind home plate at the baseball field where we played little league. Raleigh tended first base and when I wasn’t pitching, I played shortstop. I batted third and he batted fourth. I was a punch and judy hitter, he hit the ball farther than anyone else, owing to his size. Betty and Ernest never missed a game. For all those years, Betty Kincaid sat like Rosa Parks on a “stand-by-your man” bus.
Raleigh and I became like brothers. He was best man at my wedding in 1977 and I at his in 1986. A few years after I had married, he visited my mother in the hospital and when she saw him walk into the room, she said, “Well, Raleigh Martin Kincay (she takes liberties with his real name, Raleigh Mark Kincaid), get in here boy, I’ve not seen you since you and Michael got a divorce.”
Anyways, I will not bore you with more serious stuff, but I will tell you this. Those who know us both have surely picked up on the total irony of me claiming I made Raleigh. We might be said to have made one another, sort of the way low pressure and high water-surface temperatures make a hurricane (not the best metaphor, huh?) We were as close as two flaming heterosexual males could be for nearly ten years. In the time it took Odysseus to get back home, Raleigh and I worked out how to make a friendship eternal.
Happy Birthday Raleigh Mark Kincaid
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