I’m Marmaduke Jones. I’m a scientist. Now, I’ve never seen the inside of a university, much less conducted any widely recognized research.  I’m an amateur, a bricklayer by trade. But I’m a man of science at heart.

I’ve often wondered who I’d be if Fate had dealt me a different hand.  If I’d had a different life, one in which I had grown up accepted in spite of being an intellectual, maybe I’d be a microbiologist or something.  I’m still a young man, having just made thirty-three, so there is still time and I may yet take the necessary steps to becoming a professional scientist.  But I must speculate that if I’d been born into privilege, or at least to reasonable parents, I would have had a better chance at accomplishing my goals.  Instead, I was born the son of a dirt-poor, hard-as-nails, bible-thumping Mississippi bricklayer.  Now, of course, I’m aware that being the son of a Mississippi bricklayer does not outright disqualify me from being a scientist.  But you can rest assured, dear reader, that being the son of Jimmy Jack Jones did.

My Daddy was a man’s man – a true Son of the South.  He believed in hard work and firm handshakes.  He believed in bravery and masculine strength.  He especially believed in bricks.  He didn’t, however, believe in education.

Daddy didn’t trust books.  He always said that there was something awfully suspicious about something that couldn’t be said aloud.  In fact, whenever Daddy caught me reading something, whether it be a scientific journal or a novel, he always thought it fitting that the literature itself be implemented as the instrument of my punishment.  After being clobbered with several big hard-backed books, I quickly grew accustomed to reading paperbacks to soften the inevitable blows.

The only book Daddy had supposedly ever read was the Bible, and this was due only to his strict religious upbringing.  But not even God’s Word escaped Daddy’s distrust of written language; He thought all books, even the Good One, were bound to be pure “hogwash”.

But please don’t misunderstand my Daddy, as it can be easy to do.  He was a man of faith if there ever was one, and a proud one at that!  Every Sunday morning you could find him sitting in the first pew at Green Grove Southern Baptist Church, Bible in hand and quick with an “A-Men”.  You see, Daddy believed every word that escaped Preacher Brown’s lips, took as indisputable fact every syllable that exited the man’s mouth – especially when Preacher Brown quoted scripture.  But Daddy wouldn’t for a moment consider the biblical truths that Preacher Brown had yet to touch on, no matter how many times Daddy claimed to have read it in the Good Book with his own eyes.  To Daddy, the Holy Bible was merely a preview of possibilities that Preacher Brown might on any given Sunday set in stone.  From Sunday to Sunday, Daddy’s theological beliefs would swell in depth and complexity according to Preacher Brown’s continued revelation.

Daddy also prided himself on having never broken a single law, civil or religious.  The only thing stronger than Daddy’s disdain for “book learnin’” was his reverence for rules, and for that reason alone did he reluctantly admit me to the first grade.

Contrary to how it might sound, Daddy didn’t do too bad of a job raising me, especially on account of the Lord having taken Mamma in a frying lard kitchen fire when I was a baby. And he never once asked for help from anyone on account of him being so proud.  Daddy believed a real man “pulled himself up by his own bootstraps“.  A real man, he would say, never “begs, steals, or borrows”.  Daddy had never asked for help in his life, and, in fact, on many an occasion had rudely refused it.  Once he had driven himself all the way to the hospital after having accidentally sawed off his own left arm.  I had come along that day, and had looked on in horror as Daddy had steered with his left hand while spewing blood from the jagged stub that remained of his right arm.  The wound had been like a might fount, flooding the cab of the red Ford pick-up and splattering the windshield so that Daddy, delirious from loss of blood, tried in vain to use the wipers to clear his blood from the windshield in spite of the fact that they were inconveniently located on the outside of the vehicle.  I sat beside him weeping silently, soaked by his blood and begging that I at least be allowed to fashion a tourniquet from my belt, to which he responded by releasing his grip on the steering wheel just long enough to knock me over the head with his remaining fist for having ever questioned his judgment.

Throughout my childhood I was often struck in just that manner for a number of other offenses, such as possessing scientific paraphernalia.  As a young boy I soon learned that a microscope makes for an interesting yet painful substitute for a paddle.  Once, in an attempt to avoid punishment, I pretended that the two Petri dishes Daddy had found under my bed was an ultramodern brassiere.  I promptly demonstrated their purpose by modeling them accordingly and received the usual beating, fully aware that my punishment would have been much worse had he known what the dishes actually were.

So as you can see, growing up a closeted intellectual wasn’t easy.  But it was the little things that were the hardest to hide, like the fact that I knew the names of stars, constellations, and every bone in the human body, or that I was compelled to routinely test our water for an overabundance of mercury.  Sometimes I tried so hard to pretend I didn’t know anything uncommon, that I wasn’t plagued by a relentless and passionate curiosity and a preternatural thirst for knowledge, that I would forget which things were OK for me to know, like how to count to one-hundred or recite the alphabet.  As you might imagine, these occasional slips resulted in beatings themselves.

That’s about all I regard as noteworthy about my childhood. After I graduated from high school, I followed in my Daddy’s footsteps and began laying bricks, still living another man’s life, still hiding from the truth about myself.  For awhile, nothing much changed.  Years passed, and I watched myself grow up and my Daddy grow old.  And then shortly after Daddy’s seventieth birthday, Ole Doc, on one of his routine unsolicited house calls, informed Daddy that he was dying of consumption.  When told that he had only two weeks to live, Daddy immediately began preparing for his funeral.

I’ve heard it said that a good man dies the way he lived, and I’m inclined to say this applies to my father.  On the day of his burial, Daddy, a withered-little-one-armed-man, shuffled up the little hill in the cemetery carrying his mortar bucket and trowel.  When he reached the top of the knoll, he climbed into the somewhat shallow rectangular hole and took a moment to inspect the stacks of bricks on either side of him before he began his speech.

“I’ve pulled my own weight my whole life and I’ll be damned if I let some pallbearers ruin my record,” he said, and snorted as if for added emphasis before he continued.

“And there ain’t nobody here who can say they ever helped me do a damn thing, not even the Lord.  He offered – I reckon ’cause he looked down and saw me helpin’ myself so much – but I refused.  My whole life I stood up on my own two feet, and now I aim to die that way.”

And with that, Daddy went to work building a small brick tomb around the hole in which he stood.  He worked quickly for a one-armed-man, putting each and every brick perfectly into place until only one small brick-shaped hole remained unplugged.  All was quiet for a moment and then he peeked at us through the space before loudly clearing his throat to indicate he was about to speak.

“Farewell, brethren.  I’ve made my bed, and now I’m gonna sleep in it.”

Having said his final words, he ceremoniously plugged the remaining hole and Preacher Brown began leading the funeral party in “Amazing Grace”.

After everyone had paid their last respects, I approached my father’s tomb.  Before he’d charged up the hill to build his final resting place, one of Daddy’s last demands was that no one dare attempt to mark his brick mausoleum with any words, even his name.  Although he didn’t much care for numbers, either, he had finally conceded to let me chisel the years in which he had been born and had died.

“Daddy?” I called out softly, “Are you still in there?”

“Go away, boy, I’m dead!” boomed Daddy’s voice from inside his chimney.

“Daddy, I just wanted to say goodbye.  To say goodbye and that I love you.  I’m gonna chisel your birth and death dates now.  No words, I promise.”

“I can’t hear you.  I’m dead,” came Daddy again, sounding a little less hostile this time.

“OK, Daddy.  Rest . . . in Peace.”

I chiseled away for a good hour, stopping only to wipe away my tears.  When I was done, I took one last look at Daddy’s chimney and made my way back to the rusty old Ford I’d just inherited.

When I reached the truck I climbed in and started the engine.  I wondered if starvation or his untreated pneumonia would kill him first.  But that really didn’t matter.  I knew nothing in the world could make him move from where he was, bricks or not.  Then I wondered if it even mattered that, upon examination, the mucus I’d scraped from the sink after one of Daddy’s coughing fits had revealed that Ole Doc had misdiagnosed him, mistaking his pneumonia for Tuberculosis.  With the proper medical treatment he might have lived.  But I knew then as well as I do now that even if I had told him of my findings he would still be standing in his chimney being dead.  Daddy’s distrust of uncommon knowledge would have rendered him incapable of accepting the fact that I had utilized medical science to determine that Ole Doc had been wrong, and due to Daddy’s pride he would have never accepted my help.

I drove through the cemetery gates humming “Amazing Grace”.  Although my heart was very heavy for Daddy’s passing, it was a lot lighter, too.  For so long my heart had lived in the shadows, and now I sensed some strange new freedom that I couldn’t define.  I fumbled for the notebook on the cab seat.  I had the sudden, all-consuming urge to write everything down, to fearlessly proclaim to the world who and what I am.