The Mockingbird's Ballad

"Animals? Birds?" Lou entered this process. "Sky, moon, stars, sun? No, that does not feel right, we're of the ground, land folk." Lou had stalled now. Solon was inspired again.

"Trees, Lou, that's it!" Solon's excitement startled Jim and he began to stir. His father paused from the conversation and gently rocked him. "It's OK, boy. It's OK," he said quietly and gently to his firstborn. The baby quickly calmed and resumed his napping. Lou watched and chuckled to herself.

"Well," she said after a moment. "There's chestnut, oak, cedar, but Mama is Lonesome Cedar . . . There's sycamore, pecan, elm, hickory, poplar, pine," she paused thinking about more, "maple, dogwood, beech, birch, ash, hackberry . . . Which ones you like? Which two strike you as being right?" Lou was pleased with all the names she'd been able to offer.

"Which ones you favor?" Solon passed the process back to her.

"Well, I'm partial to the useful ones, pretty is OK, but, well . . ." She returned to reflection and then said, "Hickory."

"What about 'Old Hickory'? He pretty well betrayed your people, didn't he?" Solon said. "You'd think it'd be right to give one of our boys the name they gave Andy Jackson?"

"Hickory sure came long before General Andrew Jackson," Lou responded sarcastically. "Besides the Principal People ended up calling him 'Chicken Snake!'"

"What grows with Hickory?" Solon said, both as an inquiry and as a prod to his thinking.

"Oak," Lou answered. She smiled at him with a sense of accomplishment. He returned her acknowledgement with, "Yes, Hickory and Oak."

Lou said, "Tall Hickory and White Oak. Good wood and acorns and hickory nuts are good to eat."

Solon stood. With Jim in his arms he softly sat on the bed's edge. Securing the bundle in his left arm he put his right behind Lou's head on her top pillow and held her right shoulder. "James Taylor Stevenson - Tall Hickory - and Joseph Wheeler Stevenson - White Oak, say hello to your mama and daddy." Both laughed just hard enough that both babies fussed and Jim cried.