BLOOD & GRITS

HEART ATTACK SPECIAL

2012-01-30T11:49:00.000-08:00

SET ME RIGHT

2012-01-27T09:25:00.000-08:00

Use your phone a minnut?

Why aint you at work?

What work?

Aw hell you lose your job again?

Aint lost nothin. Aint at Delta no more. Thought I told you that.

Did not.

I can see.

You get another job before you lost the Delta one?

Aint lost nothin. I quit. Told em to suck it.

Jesus Christ you smell like liquor. Aint one o'clock even.

You know that Mexican restaurant over there by the Dwarf House?

Next to the pawn shop?

Jackpot. Goddamn they make them some margaritas there. Go to the liquor store first and get me a few airplane bottles of Cuervo so I can kick em up a few.

Seems like you need to cut it back a few.

You know a beer sure could set me right.

Drank my last one last night.

A shot set me righter.

Aint got no liquor in the house.

Lemme in. I got to use your phone girl.

What wrong with yours?

Nothin. But it's one of them ones that takes quarters and I aint got a quarter. Just two dollar bills.

Just two dollars. Where you workin now?

Shoooo wee goddamn it to hell girl. This place is high cotton. Look at all this goddamn furniture. Like Aaron Rents up in here.

You don't have a couch?

Naw.

What you sit on?

The floor girl. All I got is a bedroll. But I plan on gettin more.

Phone's over here. Now what business you got in my kitchen?

Just lookin for---

Vanilla extract?

Mmmhmm.

Oh sweet hell you did not.

Sometimes you got to do what you got to do.

Here's my phone over here.

I aint got to use your goddamn phone.

BE A SIN

2012-01-25T09:46:00.000-08:00

Watched the deputy's mouth move as the train went by. He pointed at the train and smiled and stopped talking and when it had passed he shook his head. So her husband says he shouldered the gun but didn't pull the trigger. Next thing he knows she's on the ground and he's trying to figure out what the hell happened. Said the deer run off before the gun even fired. Said he looked down and there she was just laying there and he didn't think anything was wrong until he opened her coat up and saw all the blood. Spree's restaurant door clattered with cowbells as people walked in slowly, looking over at us across the railroad track and staring until the deputy finally tipped his hat and they looked away and went inside. Deputy pointed at Spree's. Ever eat there? They got the best fried chicken I ever had. God toe mighty. If it were any better be a sin.

Blue lights swung quickly around the tracks and across the street and flashed in Spree's windows. People sat there and stared and ate. The woman's husband sat on the ambulance's bumper. He wore full camo and a blaze orange vest. I looked at him. You say he and his wife were hunting? Deputy nodded. Back in those woods? Nodded again. No Hunting signs posted every fifty feet? Nodded again. I didn't say they were geniuses, the deputy said. I said they were hunting. A coon skittered out the woodline and loped across the tracks, looking back at us with anxious eyes. Shoo, the deputy said. There's trouble on four little feet. Rabid as a preacher in a pussy farm. I laughed, but I didn't get it.

The woman's husband was big. Maybe three hundred pounds. He was crying. Sobbing. He heaved when he sobbed and the ambulance heaved along with him. Crows cawed. Smelled Spree's chicken in the wind. Salty, fatty, fried. Deputy went over to his car and turned the lights off. Came back and smiled. Looked over at the husband. Makin a hell of a racket aint he? I shrugged. Well his wife is dead and he's responsible it seems like. Wouldn't you be cryin too? Deputy shook his head. No that aint it, he said. She's gone make it. He aint start blubberin till he found that out.

DEE'S FIRST

2012-01-18T15:04:00.000-08:00

Made the mistake of telling Ronald I was looking to do an article on a father and son. Hunting, I told him. You know, the kid's first kill. He looked at me sideways. Could hear Mary Lee scrubbing pots and pans in the back. Tony's Restaurant had been closed for an hour but Ronald and I sat there around beers, our third, Ronald sucking his teeth like he did when he thought, me now regretting I'd brought it up. Tommy Potts pressed his face up to the glass door, overlooked the closed sign hanging there on his nose, banging hard with flat hands. Ronald sat with his back to the door and shook his head. That Tommy Potts? I nodded. Fat sumbitch. Wonder he's so damn fat. Eatin this late ever night. Ronald leaned in. When's last time you reckon he seen his pecker when he pissed? Ronald laughed, raised his arm and waved Tommy Potts off without so much as turning to look him down. He hunkered down towards the table, whistled between his teeth. Hmmm, he said.

Jesus, Ronald. Don't want to put you out or anything.

No, he said, It aint that. It aint nothin really. He looked around the empty restaurant. You known Jonah Mase live over there near Cork ways?

Heard the name.

I finished my beer. Ronald was already up getting two more Budweisers. He held one in each hand and popped em open.

Lissen, Jonah's son, Dee, gone out day gun season opens. Jonah in here Monday week tellin ever one who'd lissen he fixed him up a .30-.30 for Dee and shortened the stock on it. Saturday's the day.

You say his name's Dee?

Thas right, the son, Jonah's son --- Dee.

Dee as in D double E?

Thas the one.

That's a girl's name.

Ronald smiled. I spose so. Boy named Sue and that bidness.

He drank his beer down in three long pulls and looked weird at me. You aint a Jew is you?

What?

Well all I known is that last name you got.

It's German, Ronald. And I don't practice Judaism.

You aint got church on Saturday is you?

I laughed. Ronald, I'm not Jewish. No. And they call it temple, not church.

Ronald got up and walked to the cooler.

They do, huh? he said, popping two more beers.

Come to find out Jonah Mase's a man of few words. Not really the ideal for a newspaper article. And Dee said nothing. I mean, nothing. He held a whole hell of a lot of expressions, and used them well, but he's quiet as a woman farting in church. We all stuffed into a ladder stand the size of a closet. Wood wet and smelled moldy and I was fully prepared to fall through the floor. A wooden cross nailed to one of the walls. It was warm. Like 65 degrees at five a.m. and bugs were swarming, crawling. Jonah sat wrapped around Dee and Dee shouldered the shortened .30-.30 from the instant he sat in the window. Jonah whispered to him. Dee nodded. Jonah whispered more. Bugs screamed in my ears. By first light, I'd fallen asleep. I woke to Jonah's whispers and then fell back into sleep, birds chirping, squirrel's whining. A dog barks hoarsely far away, howls and stops.

Then the rifle boomed. I nearly pissed on myself. Jonah whispered to Dee some more and they both looked back at the cross together. Now thank Jesus, Dee. Dee looked at me and then at Jonah. Thank you, Jesus, he said. We sat there together looking at eachother for a while. No one said anything. Dee started blankly at the floor. It smelled of gunpowder in the stand. Bugs still screaming in my ears. Now we go find him, Jonah finally said, still at a whisper.

Dee had shot the spike buck through the shoulder. A good shot. Jonah said the buck leapt, turned, and darted. He ran and then came to a walk and here he fell, Jonah said. Bled out and died.

We stood over the buck. Blood about the leaves bright red. Sun coming through the pines, the oaks, trees still green here now in October. Leaning over the buck and there his eye, big and black and wet and see the sun there in the eye, set there like a light echoed within a pond, stagnant over time, glowing. Wind picked up. Shoo, Jonah said, Glad we aint had that this mornin. Jonah stood over the buck, rubbing a circle with his knife into the whetting stone. You see this, he said. My daddy's knife. This knife killed Krauts at the Battle of the Bulge. This knife's one of the reasons we aint speakin German today. Jonah smiled. He handed the knife to Dee. Start cuttin, Dee, Jonah said. From pooter to rooter.

You gone put that in your story, Mr Newspaper Man?

The pooter thing?

Naw, hell no, son. The thing about the knife. Battle of the Bulge.

Oh I guess so.

You guess so. I aint seen you writin.

I'm not doing the story now.

Jonah looked at him funny. I guess you aint.

Dee had knocked the buck's guts out on the ground and was up inside the carcass, holding it open with his elbow and cutting out the straps. He cut and tugged and cut and then held the long purple red meat in his hands like a snake.

Lookit the heat waft off that meat, son. Shoo. That look good. Give us here that meat, Dee.

Dee handed the strap to Jonah and Jonah slid the knifeblade throgh the end, razoring off a sliver. He tasted it. Closed his eyes and chewed. Shoo. Aint nothin better. He razored off another sliver and held it out to me and then pulled it back.

Aw I misremembered, son. Ronny tell me you jewish and I heard tell y'all sposed to have a preacher bless on your meat fore you can eat it.

I laughed.

I'm not Jewish, Jonah.

Well what the hell isit with that name you got on you?

TOO SHINY FOR YOU

2012-01-13T07:16:00.000-08:00

Everyone hates the DU Banquet because it means the season's long over and you'll leave the site about three hundred light--if you leave at all. Somehow John's worked it out to where the local police overlook his lack of permit. I ask him how while he rolls in five kegs of Budweiser. He smiles and says nothing. Some guy I've never seen is opening large cardboard boxes and pulling out handles of Jack Daniel's and setting them on the bar. David Allen Coe plays over the PA, the discoball painting the florescent walls starshower twinkle. It's a fucking skating rink. John hands me a solo cup of Budweiser foam. I drink it. Some guy I've never seen hands me a smaller solo cup of Jack Daniel's. I drink it and tell him to hit me again. He smiles. His teeth are stained Skoal brown and his gums look like a dog's. David Allen Coe turns into the Allman Bros. Folks start showing up. Chip gives me shit for not shooting my limit every hunt. He wants to arm wrestle, leg wrestle, play slaps. He pulls a flask out, hands it to me. I sip. Takes my breath away. Chip laughs. Latest batch. Too shiny for you, lighweight?

Cori works the grills. Six large Weber's loaded with porterhouses, bacon-wrapped duck breast, strips of deer heart soaked in jugwine for a night. John whips him with a bar towel. Asks him why he spells his name like a stripper. You put a smiley face over the i? Just sayin. Sounds like a goddamn stripper name. Bocephus turns into Atlanta Rhythm Section's "Champagne Jam." Police Chief's face is redder than a paddled ass. He's got two small solo cups of Jack Daniel's. John asks him how DU locals were able to work "this" out without a permit. Chief acts like he's gonna belt him and then laughs like hell. One of those smoker's laughs that stumbles off into deadly wheeze. Molly Hatchet blares over the PA. It's $5 all you can drink. Beer. Whiskey. Chip's omnipresent flask. Look around. Ruddy faces. Unstructured sport coats. Linen and seersucker suits. Weejuns, no socks. Some asshole in Max-4 crocs. Lots of frayed collars and sleeves and bowties. John tells me the story about his bowtie for the sixth time. His dad's dad's bowtie. The piss boy. From H. Stockton. I know, heard it before. But look, Stew, he's mid fuckin stream.

DU girls in Max-4 midriffs and hotpantz. I've never worn Max-4. Alan keeps telling me he's gonna fuck the redhead. You want any tickets? she asks. Y'all good? See, Alan says, you got to buy tickets to bid on the guns and shit. Yeah, I know, Alan. This is like my tenth banquet. Aw man I'm a little shitty already. Darlin we don't need no tickets right now, but I sure would like a little kiss. Redhead holds Alan's hand up and shows him his wedding band. REM's "Driver 8" plays. There's a guy in patchwork madras pants doing a kegstand. Chip throws his croc at me. Spill my eighth beer. Nathan wins all the guns. He always wins the guns. Wins them every fucking year. Must have a safe the size of a shopping mall in his house. When the dinnerbell rings, everyone lines up, loads up, sits down. Cuts, forks, chews, sighs. More beers, a shot here and there. Baked potatoes drowned in butter and sour cream, crumbled jowl bacon. Steaks sitting in blood. Duck. Deer heart. Whole jalapenos grilled and blistered. Alan eats them like they're pickled okra. You gone shit fire in the mornin, Alan, Chief says, his face like the sun's core, throbbing, roiling red.

Johnny Cash turns into more Johnny Cash. "Ring of Fire" comes up and everyone cheers. Gunfire. Oh shit, Alan says. Outside Nathan and Harold shoulder Benellis, unload on doves sitting telephone wire. Chief is not happy. We're in the city limits. Get the fuck back inside and give me those guns, Nathan. You can have em when you leave. Johnny Cash turns into Waylon. Go outside to smoke a cigar with John, Alan's puking in the parking lot and you can smell it from the front door, sourmash and beer, sweet as candy.

NO EXIT

2012-01-09T13:57:00.001-08:00

Joney sat at her desk, head on the calendar, crying. Martha Satterwhite congratulated her on the pregnancy that wasn't. Her denim dress was just too small. Her growing gut didn't help her much. Martha wasn't tactful and didn't care to be and looked up at me when Joney burst into tears. I shrugged. Martha threw her hands in the air. I turned around at my desk and stared back at the fire exit sign, its letters red lit and glowing in the dark of the archival room. LouMay, our ad salesperson, watched the entire thing unfold and she leapt from her seat to work damage control. I heard her and picked up the phone and called the McKibben Police Department, not expecting to talk with anyone, only expecting to appear busy. Operator answered and I sat there silent. You know I got caller ID, operator said.

But then Mac Plumley came lumbering in the door. Plumley's booming voice roared over Martha and LouMay's saccharine drawl. And can you believe this weather, Martha said. In December. Christmas is a week away honey. Where he at, Plumley said. What the hell's wrong with her? Plumley pointed at Joney. LouMay waved him off and shushed him and I caught Joney out the corner of my eye, stomping towards the fire exit sign, and then saw the door open and the sun come white through the door, a rectangle of white there in the dark, the sound of trucks running up and gearing down the highway behind us. He aint busy, Plumley said. He just tryin to look as such. He laughed. I sat there listening to a dial tone, looking at the letters red lit. EXIT.

Hey Newspaper Man. Get yo camera. Mac Junior finally shot him a buck. I turned around. Bullshit, Plumley. He smiled. I aint shittin you. Oh I beg your pardon ladies. Martha and LouMay looked at Plumley as if he was standing there with his prick hanging out his pants. Went through the swinging door and out in the lobby and through the double doors and around the corner, Plumley spitting chaw here and there and not missing my Weejun. Aw shit son did I get yo shoe? You did, I said. Come on round the side here to the truck I won get yo to get this picha and put in yo paper right on the front page. We won't run it on the front, Plumley. Well why the hell not then? We run news on the front. Aint this news bygod? Damn Mac Junior so green we got to keep the cows way from him. He aint even able to hold a rifle steady. Plumley pulled the tailgate down and stood there smiling, the bucks head seemingly torn off his shoulders, blood smeared the bed. Crushed beer cans littered the back.

OK gimmie minnut, I gone get ready and then you tell me one two three and we get us a pitcha. Plumley stood there smiling holding the rack. I stood there holding my camera. Well aint yo gone take the pitcha? Where the hell's Mac Junior? Oh he been down at the house ever since he saw me gut this buck. He been upchucking all mornin. OK an now type in big letters, PRIZE BUCK FELLED BY MAC JUNIOR. Say it back to me now.

HEART OF GLASS

2012-01-03T05:53:00.000-08:00

Short and thin. She stands and sways now bathed in lights colored like drinks that need parasols. Eyes roll under lids and open lazily, softly, unfocused. She cradles the mic like a cock. Words writhe from pouty mouth almost against time, as if dubbed after the fact. She shakes slowly on hips. Pelvis an aching cage of bone. Uncle says she's bombed. Mom can't believe she's able to stand. Bottle of Blue Nun empty. Hollow cabbage bowl scraped of Green Goddess. The other kids dancing awkwardly. Firecrackers popping. She looks like a robot, dad says. Her movements lush and slow and stunted. This tiny blond. Reminds me of Marilyn, mom says. But she's too compact and feral to be all hips and ass and mouth Monroe. Aunt comes back from the kitchen after trying to scrub the Riunite outta her fur.

Times Square. I wouldn't be there for a million dollars, uncle says. Couldn't pay me. No amount of money. Pass the can of Charles Chips. Dick Clark bundled like Nanook. His voice is clear and young and he says look at all these beautiful people and then the ball drops. New decade. An hour later we're all crammed into a tiny Shoney's booth eating breakfast and sharing strawberry pie. There's a man and woman smoking across from us and he dribbles a brown bagged pint into his coffee cup. Muzak version of "Heart of Glass" plays. All the waitresses here in Buster Brown mules. Mustachioed. Their breath like ginger snaps. Smoke hangs gray three feet below the ceiling. A man stands in the parking lot holding a Roman candle as it fires. What a goddamn genius, manager says, head sweating below combover. I hated the 70s, mom says.

YOOOOOOOOOOOL

2011-12-25T11:14:00.000-08:00

BADBLOOD_02

2011-12-20T06:47:00.001-08:00

Itsey's small tight face was swollen and red. She and Chuckles and Apple Baby sat about the long scarred pine table and ate in silence. Dishes passed clattered. Flatware dinged sharply against tin plates. Squirrels scuttled over the snow covered roof. Chuckles chewed and listened to Apple Baby smacking. Her lips bright and wet with fat. The cooked coon set there in earthenware, sunken shape swaddled in porkrind, meat torn from its brittle bones. Chuckles looked at the coon's head and its teeth yellow sneer drawn. He chewed. Apple Baby chewed. Crows cawed. Who even sain Owalis run his mouth, Itsey said to herself, tearing up again. Tol you mama, Chuckles said, Kersey sain Lo done seen an heard him at the store. Itsey looked up at Chuckles, snot running from her nose. Lo seen him, Itsey said. Thas what I hear, Chuckles said. Lo seen him. An Kersey tell Dothan. An Dothan sain he gone kill Owalis. Everone talkin bout it. Itsey started to cry. Aint know how Lo seen an heard this, she said. Aint known at all. Chuckles looked at Apple Baby. Apple Baby shrugged. Seen Cain when I was in town last month and he tell me Lo passed on count of pneumonia. Chuckles stopped chewing. What the hell that mean then? Chuckles said. It mean Lo aint heard Owalis say nothin is what it mean, Apple Baby said. It mean Kersey a damnfool liar is what it mean. Itsey got up from the table and walked to the potbelly stove and added kindling and watched it flare up and take fire.

Dothan stood at the hole. Snow swirled about it and the hickory embers still smarted red with heat. He held his hands over the embers and felt them tingle. Ice dripped from his beard. He stood there over the firehole until he felt his legs again and felt his hands and felt the blood now running slowly about his waist and knees and feet. He exhaled and watched his breath come fast and white and then gone. Must've gone off an left the fire, he thought. Must've lit it up and set here and then gone off and left it. He watched a hare leap and stop and look. He walked out past the treeline and over the precipice and looked out at the mountains thereupon the horizon long and slumped and blue and then lighting up in patches with the sun peeking out past the clouds. He watched black birds scatter far past him beyond the mountains and the birds were not black but white in the light of the sun and he watched them fall to the treeline like pine needles spat from a fire white with heat and then come to nothing. He screamed and threw the gun and watched it fall and did not hear it where it fell.

Itsey set there in front of the fire and took a revolver and a small box from the chest in front of her and opened it. There set the chimes in motheaten black velvet. Itsey set the revolver in her lap and assembled the angel chimes, the set's brass now greened and dull, tiny seraphim moss colored, long trumpets like still greened pond waters. Itsey pushed the bells down on their base and stubbed the greengray platter with candlenubs and lit them with a shaking hand. She took up the revolver. Wicks spat and hissed then lit wavering and settled and grew true and thin, the flame suddenly moving the angels round and then faster and the bells sounding faintly and dimly about the cabin soft as the snow that fell still slowly from the sky.

BADBLOOD

2011-12-15T08:58:00.000-08:00

Dothan Meeks' feet fell through heavy sharp snow as he walked the woods. Dawn sun lit the drifts white and shadows cast blue about the ground. Black birds fluttered in mass through sky washed white and settled and startled again. Snow came still from the sky. Snow crusted to Dothan's hands and beard and he felt cold in his knees and shoulders. Dothan long since lost feeling in his feet and hands. Dothan knew this wasn't good. He kept going. Feet crunched heavy through ice capped snow, silence about him heavy and overbearing in his ears. Trees bare and black like wrought iron amongst snow bluewhite and rolling. Snow fell wetly and heavy about his coat, now salted and icing and stiffening. Dothan wiped his face with his arm and snow fell cold and stinging into his eyes. He thought of the turkey hanging there outside Owalis' cabin, its brown purple feet bound with twine and suspended there above the snow, blood dotting snow below in black pinpricks like coalchips. He touched the bird, there frozen through, its head hard and as horn, face and beak fused one and lifeless. A thing, he thought.

Owalis had already cleaned him a whitetail. When Dothan kicked the door to, he saw him standing shocked hands stained purple as if soaked weeklong in wine. His face drawn and heavy and white, blue eyes screaming in cabin's dark. He'd taken a fir inside and tied tiny white candles to its boughs. They were lit. Flames quivered in the draft. Owalis screamed. If you're gone do it, do it you sonofabitch. Spit shot from his mouth as he screamed and his drool rolled and shook down his chin as he shivered there knowing death had come.

Your own brother, Owalis said. And Dothan echoed him and spat and hooked his finger about both trigger and the twin barrels boomed and there Owalis blown back as if by great gust to the wall set there smiling his chest now open, weeping blood. An on Chrimus even, Owalis said, blood bright red and then so red as if to be black there gurgling about his mouth and then pouring from his mouth. You aint gone make it back, Owalis creaked. Not in this storm you sonofabitch. He groaned. Dothan broke the gun and tossed the hulls and loaded it again and snapped it shut. Even if I do make it I reckon I weren't but wishin to be dead soon enough, Dothan said. Owalis spat blood and smiled and then Dothan fired again. The cabin walls shook and the fir fell to, lit candles catching croakersack and lighting up yellow and then red and rolling about the walls and up into the ceiling's beams and then consuming the cabin wholly.

He listened to the cabin burn behind him a ways. Wood creaking and shattering in fire and crows there calling in fury. He felt the flames at his back and turned only once to see it there burnt down to quarter of its size, now just a slack heap of flame with shape constantly fluxed thereabout, falling into nothing. A hare leapt here and there and was gone. He held Owalis' face in his head and thought about him. He killed him. He killed his brother. You aint gone make it back, he thought. He thought he might not. Never felt cold such as this. Crows called still.

Dothan made it. He saw Chuckles and Apple Baby standing out front of the cabin looking his way, waving their arms as if to stop. They were screaming. Dothan smiled through the ice mask of his face and felt the cold within him hardening as if he'd freeze through fused in ice, lifeless, a thing, he thought.

CHUCK BROWN, SPORTSMAN

2011-12-07T06:05:00.000-08:00

So I'm watching Charlie Brown Christmas with the kid last night and I notice for the first time that Chuck's wearing a red mackinaw and what could be either a Filson waterfowler hat or a Stormy Kromer. Did Chuck shoot ducks? Did he hunt whitetails? I've been a big Peanuts fan since I could wet myself, but I can't recall him hunting in the funnypages. Would have been a cool angle for Schulz to follow. Could have opened Peanuts up to an entirely new fanbase. Cabelas and Bass Pro would have field days with it. Literally.

PINESAPT PINK

2011-12-01T07:05:00.000-08:00

Jif and Owlsey think on Pink days when cold bite their ears and fingertips and work beyond their skins and into very bones their flesh hangs on. Think of him more today than they'd ever have, even when he was livin. Been gone five years now. Missin four months that winter five years gone. By time folks of Pinesapt found him, he'd turned an angel, face whiter than salt, eyes blue and clearer and colder than ice that cloaked them. Fuqua's pond nothin so much as remembrance even come springtime garlanded with wild flowers, bank studded with glowing candlenubs, flames shaking in insect riddled dusk. Jif and Owlsey said he shoulda been buried with his .410. So stubborn they spat bout it. Most folks agreed. Instead Pink's daddy handed the gun over to Jif. Told him to use it son and not put it on up like some antique that need shinin now and again.

Jif scraped his plate with a biscuit. He chewed and tasted the squirrel bits and gravy and the hot sauce he'd shaken to where it looked like he'd rekilled yon tree rat, shot him still and stiller again. Owlsey held his plate out and Maddie forked another squirrel out the pan and shook it off fork's tines onto his plate. Owlsey held it again and Maddie slopped gravy all over it, a gray mess of lard and flour thickened with squirrel blood and studded with hearts and livers and lungs. Yall aint gone out gen, Maddie said, turning purply squirrel bodies in boiling lard. Figure I gone ahead an tell yall. An I aint want to hear no lip bout it. Yall member Pinkie and what befell that boy an that all yall need to member. Jif and Owlsey hung their heads, still chewing, and looked up through their nests of hair and one another. The squirrels popped and cracked in the hot lard.

That old oak stood nearly full mile from the trailer. Boughs slowly shakin in freezin wind, pocked here an there with nests. Messes of leaves and pine needles and dirt. Pinesapt Inn Pink call it. Midwinter the tree held no fewer than thirty nests. Boys stood at its massive trunk, gun barrels aimed skyward. Shot pumped high and leaves fell from gray sky in autumnal reprise. Squirrels they scattered before triggers squeezed. Pink'd knock four hard in their heads before Jif could even get a goddamn bead. Owlsey mostly sat and cheered, screaming cusswords he'd heard Maddie say when she got down deep in last summer's muscadine wine.

What was he doin out there on that ice? What was he thinkin? He known it aint even froze on through. Never got that cold. At least not so far as I can member.

Clean them on an old stump by the trailer. Stumpface dented with cleavers from squirrel seasons ancient and without memory. Wood gone blush from blood, scattered thereabout with lines wild from Pink's K-Bar blade. He didn't clean so much as undress them. Dead thump chop here there on little gray legs. Dead slack hack above poop chute he called it, through yon tail and above flesh. Tail underfoot and then that soft quick tug. Pink said got them clothes off quicker than Boone's Farm did for Pinesapt High's ladyfolk. Carried them into Maddie and set them on paper towels on the formica table. She still in curlers and dirty pink robe, hand drifting smoke from menthol 100. Pink'd get all pissed when Maddie made that gut gravy. Said we should use em for those bigass cats in Fuqua's pond.

We never did. Still won't. Toll of Toll's Tradin Post was there when they sawed straight through the ice and pulled Pink out. Stiff as frozen hound. Said his fingers all eat up and toes chewed off right through his bootcaps. Said fish eat on him somethin jus awful. Owlsey start cryin and had to scream Toll down from his story, ol shit smilin still through it, mouth fulla pecans. Standin here now with cold sun slipt down hearin Maddie call hoarse for us, now hours more. Wind kick up through bare tree branch, water just there begin gone to ice, what not there ripplin slow in breeze. Aint so bad, even with Toll's godawful voice hard in our ears. Story don't mean so much no more. Here, with Pink, hands hard and tight on his .410, all us brothers. Quiet. Wind again. Here a cardinal there red and then gone. SSeen Pink's face in my mind, an angel even if I'd never seen asmuch with my eyes. Wind come up again. Trees bare and wind papery through slop of leaves about the ground. Water not yet frozen, small in pools, rippling there softly in freezing wind.

COVET THY BROTHER'S KILL

2011-11-24T14:46:00.001-08:00

RIVER OF PAINTED ROCK

2011-11-23T05:58:00.000-08:00

BUT NOW AM FOUND

2011-11-22T06:28:00.000-08:00

Stourley Hews bought the only turn of the century farmhouse left in Alma. All others burnt down long ago or stood field like great cracker fossils, nothing to hide without windows and doors. Long boards burned black by sun. Rusted roofs shattered by weather and time. Soutrley’s was the old Bold place on past the cement plant put in five years ago. Out past great stretch of flooded timber and marsh. It set up deep in pecan grove he aint tend to. Still could see it off road through weave of trees. Its red paint now mostly chipped down to wood and the roof tin brown as dipspit. Those pecan trees overrun with squirrels and crows. Stourley loved it. He eat inside with all the damn windows open and listen to the nuts fallin. Sound like hail poundin the ground most times.

First to tell him about Buice Bold legend. He aint believe me of course. Member him set there with his big you-fulla-shit face on. But it’s all damn true. Buice come from damn blueblood of moon cookers. He did time for it. Not like he was careful. But he never stopped cookin and he never stopped sellin. By time he married Shelia Waits, he aint but far wrong in the head. He and Shelia have seven youngins.

Buice get to where he aint talk at all. He only sung Amazing Grace front to back over and over again. Shelia tell him if he aint shut it finally she gone kill him.

One night, worst lightnin storm we ever have in Alma, she shot him through the hand with a deer rifle. Buice reckon it a warning shot till she shot him through the gut. We gone out there, lightnin tearin jagged ass cross the sky, trees struck and fallin, and there Buice running through the grove covered in blood, like someone dipped him head to toe, only his thin yellow eyes set out its slick. Shelia standin right there in the house with the rifle. Water pourin out the roof splashin into washtubs and Mason jars put down all over the floors. Like they aint even have a roof. She look at me and say, Pray that sumbitch fixin to be fit for his pinebox. If he aint, he wish he goddam were.

He aint and wouldn't press charges so Sheila eventually kill him with a goddamn butcher knife. Shoulda seen the defensive wounds on the crazy bastard. She took off most his fingers before she finally buried the blade square in the middle of his face.

All his youngins died off in queer ways. Drownins. Lightnin strikes. Heart stroke. One afternoon Sheila walk up to highway 16 and step in front of an 18 wheeler. Tore her in half and trampled her thin as newsprint. Damn near had to scrape her off the blacktop. It was that damn bad.

Nearly everything was broke in that house when Stourley move in. Lights worked partly. Squirrels chew up what wiring there was. He got to where he worked by candlelight or use oil lamps. No name manual typewriter set on a cardtable out on the porch. Kept it greased with car oil and blew it out now and again with air house at Travers Tire. Roof leaked too. Leaked something awful. Stourley set buckets and Mason Jars all round the house. Sometimes when it get rainin real heavy it sound like the roof was gone fall in. You’d get just as wet inside as you would out. It was that bad.

One time last spring he have me over for a nip and we set there in the den looking at them big winders killin off a bottle of Old Crow and here come the rain something awful an I'll be damned if I aint heard Amazin Grace sung like it miles off, like it come from a church choir loud and true, the kind of singin that rattle winders, and then I known it was just one voice and not many and that it were Buice singin in that bored ass way like he recitin somethin he care nothin about. I known Stourley hear it, but he get up and start talkin all loud so as to drown it out and here came the rain from the ceiling like we aint got a roof over our heads at all.

MEAT WAGON

2011-11-22T06:13:00.001-08:00

HOG KILLIN TIME

2011-11-21T09:38:00.000-08:00

John Tinseth AKA "The Trad" is publishing a short story I wrote a while back about a hog killing in rural Tennessee. Part one, and a bit of an interview I did with Tinseth is here: http://thetrad.blogspot.com/2011/11/nothing-to-be-gained-here-act-i.html

Used to be that the first freeze meant hog killing time around here. Not so much anymore. Ones I witnessed were in middle GA and two of three folks that conducted them are either no longer living or have gotten too old to keep hogs.

In a time when people, at least the well-to-do, are so oddly obsessed with knowing where their food comes from, a story about the very root of the idea and its yield, gets some space on a site people actually do visit. Enjoy.

TO ALL CREATURES KIN

2011-11-17T10:53:00.000-08:00

—What was it like?

—What was what like?

—First time you kilt a deer.

—Aint never forget it Dub. Seem like it a hunnert years gone by. Elijay. Me an diddy an Uncle Jake drove up to Gilmer County. Half the day crept by. Aint nothin to see. Woods. Mountains. Hills. Folks sames here in Huber. Aint nothin different. Jake said he hunt that land since a young buck and he and his diddy and Rowan Peets and Sut Cook built the cabin over a weekend there and it been deer camp ever since. Rowan shot a messa deer up there. County record one year. Fourteen points. Drop tines size of Bowie knives. Rack about yay wide.

—Aw you shittin.

—I aint.

—Never heard such.

—Aint know how. Rowan run his mouth bout it for years.

—Caint see Rowan buildin no cabin neither. He aint done nothin for nobody but hisself.

Cordele lit a cigarette and took a drag and then lit another off its tip and handed it to Will.

—Cabin was smack dab in middle of an apple orchard. Bugs somethin fierce. Aint lyin. Hot or cold them bugs were out. Sound like the cabin abuzz with flies and bees and the crows took after the apples come fall so much that trees limbs look like they draped in black silk. Feathers so black they blue and shinin in the sun. Tried to bust em but they hear you poppin rounds in a rifle they in the wind. Got to where I load in the truck on the way in and reckon they heard the bolt cause they gone when we come round the bend.

Will lay back and smoked and stared overhead and the stars set upon the sky as nail heads heated white hot and glowing in the ashen night sky.

—I aint asleep. Listenin to ever word you say.

—Aint seem like it.

—Member yall comin back that Sunday for church, Will said. You swallered up in grandiddy Fluker’s mackinaw. Truck bed fulla damn deer.

—Godamighty I love that coat. Damn near drag the ground then. Member feelin in them pockets and findin grandiddy’s flint and pipe an penknife he used to clean his nails with. Member the smell the wool held after that first night in the cabin. We stopped and bought steaks and bacon and eggs in town. First night we just eat some eggs and bacon and turn in. Diddy and Jake stay up all hours drinkin whiskey an talkin bout what they were gonna do come mornin and I member fallin asleep and them two flippin a half dollar to see who set up in the stand overlookin Coosa Creek.

Jake called it and damn if it werent but light for an hour before he shot him a buck. Big buck. Ten pointer. Jake an diddy strung him up on a limb and knocked his guts out and dress em out and that night we stand round the fire and Jake cut up that buck’s heart and wrap it in bacon and fried it in the grease and we ate that deer heart an it was the richest damn thing I ever et. Taste like blood and metal and meat, like what you think meat should taste like. It taste alive. Taste like somethin that’d been nosin round for food and runnin and leapin and stompin round the wood. Not somethin you measure out an wrap up and take home to stew and whatnot. Aint tasted nothin like it since. Jake fried them steaks in the grease and he wrap potatoes and apples in foil and bury em in the coals and they bake up near perfect and we sat around the fire and had us a feast an aint no one said word one. All you hear was us smackin our gums. Moon so full it almost like a lantern on us.

From where we was we see a deer camp yonder hill an they had themselves a fire goin too and it shone a faded light and then bright and flashing and white an it look no more than just a ways away and diddy said he reckon that camp some forty miles off and it seem like it was right there. Right up that hill. Come light next mornin I got me a buck too.

—You aint gone stop there Cord.

Cordele lit a cigarette and smoked.

—You know Cheeley Wood? Cordele said.

—Pecker Wood, Will laughed. Tight end on state team?

—Yeah Pecker Wood, Cordele said. He had himself a bullroarer. Ever seen one of them?

—Uh uh.

—Piece of wood about yay long. Kinda shape as a boomerang an it got a rope on it. You sling the sum buck arounder head like a lasso. It make a buzzin noise like nothin you done ever heard. Like a hunnert hive of bees teed off. I feel this sound comin up on me. It sound like nothin. Like somethin. But nothin. An I aint tell if it on me or in me—it that heavy and full soundin. An then there this spike buck. Outta no place. No where. Come with the wind. Silent as you magine. Hear a twig snap or some leaves and thas all you got to go on and then there he is jus standin there an it seem he look right at me an I stay still as I ever stayed. Aint even think my heart beat once. An I look down from that tree at this buck and his eyes just gobs of oil an I aint see nothin in them eyes. I look on em again an I aint seen jus this spike. Just this buck. I seen em all. I seen what that buck done givem self to be. What he is and what he aint. Not somethin I seen. Somethin he give me. He show me. An I know him to be. He aint somethin I figger in my mind. Somethin here in my head. He jus is. An his head move and he tell somethin there but he aint sure and here I am, I got him open sights and I caint do nothin. Caint see. Caint hear. Sound like that damn bullroarer in my ears. An then I know it. It my own damn blood roarin through me. My own blood. Rifle shakin. Arms shakin. Aint nothin calmin me down. Feel the sweat creep right off my shouldersn down my back an we all blowin smoke out—aint moren twenty degrees. An then I pull that trigger an that buck leap and drop and he kick and then bled out dead. Swear I never explain it but I aint ever felt closer to no animal than after I kilt that buck. Felt kin to all creatures. Everythin. Big an small. Insects. Birds. Cattle. Weren’t nothin I aint known. We’d shown ourselves to each other. It aint felt real. Aint felt like this world. Felt like a world within the world where he aint no different than me and I him.

SHINE ON

2011-11-15T07:59:00.000-08:00

I can't walk a city block without hearing some Armani Joe yucking it up about moonshine. Well maybe I'm exaggerating. But it's not that far off the mark. Garden & Gun, a magazine so miserably drowned in its own blueblood it can't bring itself to write about the Real South, has actually published not one, but two stories on the illegal tipple in as many years, which means shine is as ubiquitous as Carolina barbecue, or overweight, ruddy-faced Georgia lawyers shooting farm-raised quail on Thomaston estates.

How do I feel about it? Ambivalent at best. Like one interviewee says in a G&G piece, shine is like the Confederate battle flag for him and the like; but the flag's garnered so many unfortunate connotations, folks don't fly it as much. Making, moving, and drinking shine has taken its place as sign and signifier both. It's a thing, a feeling, a connection. You can make it, drink it, give it away as a gift. You can talk about it with folks at the barber or hardware store. Argue about who cooks up the best tasting batch. Discuss and compare recipes--if you're open to that sort of thing. Or wax poetic about when rural stills outnumbered deer stands. It's a liquid stuff that's pure South.

First shine I tasted was game two of the 1991 World Series. Watched it from a tiny B&W television in an Emory at Oxford dormitory room nearly as tiny. Was handed a half full Mason and told I was already blind drunk; a sip or two of this wouldn't hurt. I sipped more than twice. The Atlanta Braves lost that night and I didn't wake up until lunchtime the following day. A shineover isn't like a hangover. You feel like a deflated basketball drowned in an uncovered non-winterized suburban swimming pool. Soggy, mud- and dirt-encrusted, writhing with larvae. I was not repelled, however. Fall break that same year I had my second taste, at a North Georgia retreat near Rabun Gap, passing the pickle jar and then taking turns sprinting through the campfire. I survived. Somehow.

Things are different now. Shine has elbowed its way onto liquor store shelves. It's not the same of course, but the gist of what's being sold is unmistakable. Georgia Moon Corn Liquor. Troy & Sons White Whiskey. Junior Johnson's Midnight Moon. Even goddamn Brooklyn has its own: King's County Moonshine. Is it the same? No. Of course not. But I'm certainly not going to say these commercial varieties are more refined. They aren't. Cooked up corn liquor isn't what it used to be. It comes in flavors (check the cherry looking Robotussin type tipple in photo above). It can taste like apple pie and cherries and muscadines and crabapples. It can be clear as Noontootla Creek and strong and true as Jehovah God's wrath. And this stuff aint made in Brooklyn, or given fancy paper labels or peddled from craft liquor store shelves. Sure it's annoying. But all this attention hasn't hurt shine or its cookers, yet. It's made it mean more than it possibly could. And unlike the Confederate battle flag, stripped those bad connotations from its thread, made it something OK, acceptable. Normal, even. How bout a sip?

CULLA MANSE'S LUCK

2011-11-09T05:22:00.000-08:00

Drove down the dirt and gravel drive around dawn every Wednesday morning, trailing the rural mail carrier in his old F150. Only three houses on the straight shot three mile drive. One a retired chicken farmer, two others apparently in contest to see who could accumulate the most dead cars and car parts in their yards. The retired chicken farmer had the most land, a wide rambling swatch of overgrown green offset by broken backed chicken shacks, tin roofs rusted, wood siding nail-scarred and riddled with the climbing tower of dirt dauber nests. In the warmer months the fields covered up in sunflowers, huge green stalks set with staved yellow stars. Meant to knock on that farmer's door every year. Meant to bring him some deer meat or duck or wild turkey or hog, hat in hand, asking sheepishly for permission to spend a long afternoon sitting butt on a bucket, waiting for small gray birds fluting amongst the flowers to flush and wing about the field so I could aim and shoot and miss as many as I knocked out the sky.

Took me seven years to knock on the farmer's door. But I did, finally, and he said yes, and asked if he could hunt with me. Culla Manse, a widower of 20 years, and blissfully retired chicken farmer, said he planted sunflowers every year with the intention of baiting dove, said he had dove hunted since he could hold a shotgun, said he been meaning to get back at it as he'd given it up years ago, didn't like killing things no more, and suddenly, now, had the thirst for it. Culla wore a Pointer chore coat and high-backed overalls even in the 90 degree heat. He smoked an old briar pipe whose bowl wound and wiggled into chaotic non-shape, a strange knob of wood alit and smoking and smelling of cherry and spice. He didn't say much. He didn't need to.

Agreed to meet him opening day before dawn. Pulled up in front of the farmhouse. The front door hung open bright with light. Walked in and smelled biscuits and sausage and eggs and coffee. There at the long heavy oak table sat Culla in his chore coat and overalls cleaning his fingernails with a pocketknife. He motioned for me to come in and told me to help myself to breakfast. Told me about the last time he'd gone dove hunting. How he and his daddy and his daddy's daddy shot so many birds they failed to retrieve them all. Covered up the tailgate with them. Mound of limp gray blood-pocked and stiffening. He sipped coffee and picked at a biscuit. Daddy called it beginner's luck, he said, smiling. He always called it that, he said. Culla's .20 GA rest against the wall. Smelled smartly of gun oil. Culla stabbed his mouth with the pipe stem, lit a match, puffed, smoke took and rolled.

Dove weren't moving at shooting light. It was loud as any other morning, squirrels whining and barking, birds chattering, the sounds of shotguns booming in the distance--dove hunters who'd lucked up and were covered up in as many as they could shoot. Culla sat a good 100 yards from me, but I could still smell his pipe. Saw him in my mind cleaning his nails, flicking the half moons of dirt off the knife's blade, scraping again at the thumbnail, the sweat heavy on his face and beginning to roll thickly about his neck and back, the chore coat soaked through and dark with sweat. I felt myself falling asleep. Then I heard Culla's gun. I stood in the field and saw him wheeling below winging dove, swinging the old .20 and firing, breaking the gun, reloading, firing again. He missed the lot of them, but when they came back around he took them all, a whirl of aiming, firing, reloading, hulls flying, shots ringing out over the field. He turned and saw me and while I couldn't see his face, I knew he was smiling and I knew he would not sit back down on the pail, that he was going to stand until he got another shot, gunpowder now overtaking the pipe's smoke, his ears still ringing, shoulder aching and recalling that old shock of wood on bone, his eyes somehow tighter, heavier, younger. He looked at me and pointed skyward and yelled. Beginner's luck, he said and laughed. I knew then I would not put a single bird in the bucket.

MARKING TIME

2011-11-07T05:27:00.001-08:00

Ale Shoat smoothes the county paper's thin inksmeared pages out crosswise. His large scarred hands trace obituaries, index finger slowly drags over pioneer family names he knows, his father, and his father's father knew. Clatter of dishes about him in Mary's Country Kitchen. Regulars to the door loudly, already giving waitresses lip, rubbing redhands together, bundled up still and redfaced from single digit November cold.

Shoat sees men in large black bold letters he hunted bobwhite with when there were still bobwhite. Geese and mallards off Lake Chatuge when wardens were too busy with folks shining deer from rusteaten pickups. He sees Johnson Applewhite and Lee Kersey and Coke Riley and Nathan Barnes. All big hunters and fishers and each one a bigger liar than the other. Applewhite still holds the county record for deer, a thirteen pointer dressed out at 235, droptines like carving knives. Kersey gave up ducks because they gave up the challenge, his shots always deadeyed, too easy, so many feathers filling cold air. Riley and Barnes were trappers and shine cookers. Riley trained squirrel dogs and his wife, Prudence, made the best fried squirrel and gravy Shoat ever tasted.

Like strippin the knickers off a debutante, Dence would say, and Shoat saw her in his mind ripping skin from a gray squirrel in that one slick motion, leaving red purply flesh there bright with blood. She'd usher Riley and Shoat in and send them to the table while she dredged quartered tree rats in flour and fried them in three inches of boiling lard. Nothing but the sounds of smacking and sighing while eating, the seven foot shaker clock marking time somberly from the living room.

Shoat smelled those tree rats through a haze of hash and eggs and biscuits and coffee in Mary's Country Kitchen. He saw Riley's ghost walk amongst the twentysomethings in their camo coveralls, lying to each other over breakfast about their shots the had but somehow failed to make. Three Enotah Baptist deacons praying over their food, hand in hand. Farmers dirtcovered in their shredded Carhartts. Jerri fills Shoat's mug, takes his plate. You see Coke Riley went over the weekend, Shoat says without looking. Cancer, he says. You know how many tree rats me and Coke chalked up? Jerri put his bill down at the elbow, smiled. A mess I'll bet, she says. A mess you aint shittin, Shoat says and sips his coffee. Black, hot. Steam slipping up from cup and vanishing. Bobby Lee Arnold, Jerri says, he hunt squirrels pretty regular. Bobby Lee couldn't hit a gray squirrel if it ran into his rifle barrel, Shoat said.

There's Luke Settle, come up to Towns from south Georgia with his wife and five children. Took the principal's job at the high school. Conspicuous as corn in cowshit. Hear about Coke? Luke says. Shoat nods, points at the obituaries. That where you heard? Luke says. Shoat nods. Jerri puts coffee down in front of Luke. Thank you darlin, he says. I don't even read them things. Shoat looks at Luke and sips his coffee and puts it down. He taps the paper with his finger. You will, he says. You will.

DOUBLE DWN

2011-10-27T06:41:00.000-07:00

First kill of deer season times two. And the usual magical implements weren't even utilized. No stop at the Flying J for a honeybun and hot brown water sold as "coffee." No talk of the wind speed or moon phase or what should or should not happen that morning in the span of two hours. No hopeful incantation: They will be moving; we're gonna get into some deer; if the camera shots hold true.... We went through the gates and rumbled over hills of freshly mowed clover and geared up, pulled hats down over ears, hoods over heads, sprayed scent-off on clothes and boot bottoms and watched our breath ghost about ink black air, the moon a glowing bow of bone.

Hike to "Zero Stand" is a wake up. It's down and up hills, through creeks and wetland, and up a ridge that sticks a thumb in Newton's eye. Pluses are many. It looks down upon creeks and wetland. It lords over buckbrush and trails worn into mossy runs from frolicking deer. It gives a shooter a near 180 degree shot and makes a morning easy, even if you're sweating your fat ass off by the time you've climbed the rungs and set in its seat. 30.06 loaded. Safety on. Sit and wait and watch the black turn to amorphous shapes and then focus sharply into trees and brush and the heavy blackblue backlit into white and pink and red and then first light. Squirrels hopping through leaves. Geese honking far off. We hear the sounds of firstlight rifle crack. But it sounds like cannonfire from our cold hard distance.

They are moving. We will get into some deer. The camera shots held true. Three does come to my left. Safety off. Find them in the scope. Watch them smelling, stomping out caution call. Still. Stoic. Then moving again. Lose first two in brush, but the third stops, showing broadside, eating acorns. Crosshairs on her shoulder and trigger squeeze. She's up in air, flipped, a slingshot of gray and white into the wood, blood about unreal and red and purple, like stageblood poorly fixed and unstable. She staggers and drops 30 yards off. I'm pelted in the dome with acorns for the kill. Squirrels savage the boughs above me. Handwarmers have died and it's cold as it can be, sitting static, breathing, looking.

Buddy to my right in a climber stand and I talk for a minute. Think about getting down and call it a day. There's a doe, he says, pointing, laughing. She's coming right at you. She didn't hear us talking? I ask. Guess not, he says. Take her if you want to. Pick her up in the scope. She moves broadside into the rifle fire. No leaping or flipping or running off to bleed out. She falls there in the thicket, gone. Half hour later I'm holding her long purple backstrap in my sticky bloodstained palm, warm as my son's forehead when he's running a temperature.

OFFLINE

2011-09-21T18:55:00.000-07:00

Hey folks: I've been w/out a computer for a few weeks and it could be a few weeks more. Thanks for swinging by and checking out the site. Nothing new here, but there are a shitload of words in the archives. Pictures, too. Don't cost a thing even. See y'all soon.

PARKING_02

2011-08-30T07:39:00.001-07:00

Feel the weather turnin caint you, Caleb says. Aint soaked thru by noon an pissed off. Got to wheres I aint wearin underwears cause it just get soaked thru and strung up my ass like a damn thong. Jess laughs. Smoke comes from her mouth and nostrils, one cuffed with a tiny gold bangle set with miniature beads color of rainbow. "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" on the radio, the dash heat-ruptured and cracks shown cargut like plain foam buttered bread yellow. Jess reaches downside the chicken bucket and pulls a leg out and takes a bite and turns and there's Caleb looking at her weird, smoking, quiet. Crows caw. Pines shake in wind, their needles sizzle like frying bacon. Jess smudges the grease from her lips. Wipes the chicken grease on her cream coffee thigh. Caleb leans in and kisses her. Tastes like chicken. Like smoke. Her lips slick with grease. He finds her tongue. She bites his. He pulls away. She laughs.

Zippos cigarette. Romeo and Juliet / Are together in eternity. Think we gone beat Mary Persons, Caleb says. I mean, they bound to sneak up on us sooner than later. Aint even come close in five years. Jess sighs. What coach think, she says. He aint said it if he thunk it, Caleb says. All he kept on with is focus. That all he said for weeks now. Focus. Caleb White, focus. Focus on the ball. Focus on one game at one time. Aint gone go undefeated in single Friday night. Aint gone make that touchdown pass to beat the next ten teams. Aint gone win region without it. Focus. Jess laughs. You want this, she said, handing the chicken leg out to Caleb. It's too damn greasy. They done changed they recipe up on somethin. Don't taste right.

Caleb cracks a beer. He sips it. Come on baby / Don't fear the reaper / Baby take my hand / Don't fear the reaper / We'll be able to fly / Don't fear the reaper / Baby I'm your man. What you spose that tallet doin on that car, Jess says, exhaling. Smoke spun about the dash and became waves and mountains and then lakes and hills and then nothing. Fucked up aint it, Caleb says. Where it come from in the first place. Some joker musta brought it here. Jess turns to Caleb. You aint think folk doin they bisness innit? Caleb laughs and sips his beer. Won't put it past em, baby. Caleb throws the chicken leg out the window. I'm bout to go sit on that damn tallet, Caleb says. Chrise, I got to shit. No you aint, Jess says. You think I made it up, Caleb says. I got to go. Then you gone off in them woods, Jess says. An what the hell you gone wipe yourself off with. Jess slaps Caleb hard on the arm. He laughs. He crushes the beer can. I'm gone hit that chicken leg, Caleb says, tossing the can. Can sails off to the left and lands without a sound on pine needles browning. You throw like that Friday night and yall will get beat, Jess says. Come on baby / Don't fear the reaper. Crows caw.

Never unnerstan what the fuck this song was about, Caleb says. Sound like it about killin yourself and then it sound like it about people savin themself and then they just singing there like so la la la la la like they aint said nothin afore bout killin oneself. Aint he sang somethin about Romero and Julet, Jess says. About that story we read in Miss Rawlin's class. Boyfriend and girlfriend an they folks aint want em to be together. Caleb laughs. What you daddy think bout Jessica Chesser gettin a fuckin nosering. Jess pouts. He like to pull it clean out my nose when he seen it, she says. Bet he did, baby. Bet he did. He a mean sumbitch to be as old as he is. I aint fuck with him I known that. Caleb cracks another beer. He drinks. You get me one of them, Jess says. Caleb reaches behind the seat and pops the cooler top and grabs a beer and cracks the top and hands it to Jess. She puts her hand in his lap. Caleb drinks. Your dick hard enough, she says, laughing. Get any harder liable to crumble, Caleb says. Crows caw.

LONG AS YURN OARBLADE

2011-08-29T10:36:00.000-07:00

Fish rose indiscriminately about the fallen pines spread like a pull-bone and sucked the spiders and hoppers off the topwater, some hitting harder amongst the gnarled roots of swamp cypress, often taking mice bravely skittering through the stained water brown as a spittoon well, tails colored jade and mica upsetting water and it splashing and setting over with froth and then settling stagnant and alive with flies.

Fish danced in Lummus' cotton shotbag. He peeked in on them and watched them shiver in the bag, their mouths pursed beating wild, bodies shaking in a wet slap as they sought out the bag. Lummus waded further through a slop of lilies. Heron glide silently above him and on past and through the swamp, mossbeards fluttering from tree boughs as they pass. He watched the hopper set the water and then drew his cane pole up again and dapped the water and there his hopper riding the water and then sinking slowly and then gone. Again he drew the line out and listened as it raced aside his ear the hopper slingshot forward and back and forward again and the line let out and lay upon the water and was gone in a rage of foam.

Done hooked him in the holler, Lummus said to himself, holding the pole overhead, letting line go taut and he saw the fish struggling ahead and then relaxing and struggling again, the hook cinched in his lardwhite gut. Same fuckin one as afore... aw aint you gone joog up this water, Lummus said to himself, the fish stretching the line far as it was able, its fins steady, tail beating ruminative. You gowered up on head aint you? Seen yourself in here shotbag and known what await and now here you got again same as afore all framin round this stinkpit. The fish leapt and thrashed and water splattered brownwhite and the fish led Lummus like some awkward and wounded dog through the bog. When Hamp White come up poling about on his skiff Lummus was lunging back and forth on his unsteady feet, pole in air, trying to judge the depth of yonder pool.

Like to run me down, Lummus said, looking over his shoulder and stepping deeper into the swamp, the pole horseshoed, straining.

Afyeard you gone get outen one of them holes and that be yurn end, Hamp said through a big toothy grin.

Aint seen no fish nowheres go to possumin, Lummus spat. But I'll be goddamned if he aint run through the lot of fuckin charade here with me and I known he aint neither dead nor tired but done right by both conditions and now I got him progue about them holes where he liable to get et up by yon hardshell.

Hamp laughed and spat and let the skiff drift in semicircle and then cut the skiff around to the left of Lummus and held the pole there to the water and steadied the skiff. Aint no turtle big nuff these parts take yon fish, Hamp said. You hearin me, Lummus? Hey, aint shim shackin now.

Bout what you aint?

Bout Josiah and Zeke.

They finally done one another in has they? Good jower bring them to barrel did it?

Hamp laughed and spat.

Naw they done trapped up a twenny footer back down ways about deadtree. Shot him thrice to head with theys rifle gun and he aint gone his way to yon God. Sent me out to find ol Set Weaver an see if he aint bring his eight gauge aways to put a little pepper on his beak.

Twenny footer you say?

Yesm.

Hell you say.

Sworn on sweet Jesus upon cavalry, Hamp said, crossing hisself.

Goddamn aint that a hogleg then. Big as Chesser's lizard he caught on Floyd's Island. Reckon he aint but fifteen foot. Whew thas a hogleg, son.

Hogleg of a dogleg. Seen him myself. Brought me to believe in fuckin dinosaurs it did. Head long as yurn oarblade, Hamp said, pointing at Lummus. Might could been about four feet ten inch on that beak lone.

Lummus looked down at his hands and about himself quizzical. The pole's line snapped and Lummus fell backwards into the swamp, the fish scattering frantic from his shotbag. Fuck a duck in its bittyass, he said. I done loss me this biggun and now all them fishes gone too. Mama gone shit the bed.

Lummus stood soaked through in his overalls and shook his white hair wild. Got room on your skiff do you?

Hamp nodded and held his mudstained hand out to Lummus who took it and struggled to the skiff, water rolling off him. Lummus nodded at Hamp's flintlock rifle.

Reckon I done some huntin but aint deer on this earth that find it in they heart not to wind you, you stinklovin sumbitch.

Lummus laughed.

Smell like you been ten foot up a cowass.

Aint nothin I aint heard afore, Lummus said. Less go get Set's cannon. Reckon if I aint gone eat directly I least seen me yon dinosawr.

BLUETICK

2011-08-29T10:35:00.001-07:00

THE STAND

2011-08-22T05:45:00.001-07:00

FIRST MEAL THE LAST

2011-08-17T06:25:00.000-07:00

There's a writerly predisposition to one's first meal of the day. Agee and Kerouac spilt much ink on eggs fried and smothered in catsup amongst heaps of homefries, stacks of griddlecakes drowned in molasses, coffee bottomless and tarblack. McCarthy's inner Hemingway found solitude and sustenance in tortillas, eggs, beans. Hemingway a little hair of the dog that bit him. More often than not, the folk that cook up or eat up said foodstuffs are featured in major, though silent roles. Agee's and Kerouac's begreased nighthawks like the first four Tom Waits records animated, rumpled suits, cigarette breath, a pint of rotgut on the lips. There is McCarthy's senorita slattern and cockeyed bowling menudo for saddle sore lot. Red broth studded with fleshen cowgut and piquant chiles, spoonfuls of pico de gallo setting over the oilslicked soup, its top sheened with fatty spectra like agate broke apart and revealed. Menecken had stout for breakfast. And a cigar. Paul Bear Bryant two onion sandwiches on whitebread, coffee, an aspirin. Kinky Friedman raresteak and eggs, two roomwarm Lone Star, and cowboy coffee silty with gritty grounds.

Oftentimes breakfast aint one's first meal. It's the last. The one to dam the drink. Settle the stomach. Over the pond the French suck up onion soup. Italians and their carbonara. The Brits and beans and meats and eggs and veg panwilted to submission, a glass of stout, cuppa tea. Recall a Grizzard column about some diner down south Georgia way, dining room bisected by galley kitchen, flypaper stripped the walls faux wood paneling, taxidermy decoration. Watched as two flies landed on his six sugared coffee and took a death dive. Watched them spin a circle nautilic under the wake of his stirring spoon. Listened to the cook hammer out his steak and the eggs schlupping pop in the pan of grease. The waitress, overdone in facepaint, smacking gum, smoking, refilling his flyfilled coffee, smiling, setting a styrofoam cup to his hand, two jiggers of the dog for a man still drunk and not yet hungover the long morning to come.

FAREWELL RAMBLER

2011-08-16T11:08:00.000-07:00

Dusk's fireflies lit in streets and about oaks and pines and around the clapboard and tarpaper houses alive with the sounds of supper. Chick and Betsy ran barefoot through the dirt road and snatched the flies out of the air and fingered them through the mouth of a mason jar. Betsy laughed and Chick called for her to come on and she felt her lungs growing tired and her throat burning hot as she ran up the road. The dirt still hot from the sun and dry and dust blooming underfoot, brown squalls rising and settling and graining in the halflight.

Cavalry white clapboard and tinned roof sat sideways to the road’s end. Voices and tambourines rang raucous from within. Betsy ran faster and broke even with her sister and pulled her to stop. They both laughed and Chick stopped and caught her breath.

Get right church and let’s gone home, screamed the preacher and the congregation answered him, stomping and clapping, their voices ululate and rolling as thunder. This fine world aint my home, good Lord, I’m gone home on ah morning train. Farwell, rambler. Fare thee well. I’m gone home…

—That’s Pliny preachin in there gurl. He gone take us home. He aint done no preachin in the longest time.

Chick ran on to the grounds and stopped and listened as the wind took up in the magnolias and the darkgreen leaves rustled and the blooms glowing white smelled sweetly of early summer. Chick bounded through the twin doors marked cruciform and painted rife with the coils of serpents. She ran past the pews and the folks huddled up front and dancing in their own spheres, shuffling their feet and kicking in rhythm as tambourines sizzled as snake rattles. Men and women and children waved their arms high and shouted Hallelujah! Let’s get right and let’s go home! And Chick pushed her way under the podium and looked up at Pliny.

The preacher stood enormous, sweating through light gray wool suit gone flatblack. His hair loose and and slicked with pomade glistening. Sweat beaded and rolled from his face and paused on the bridge of his nose aquiline. Pliny spoke hard and loud and he spat forth when he spoke. His words wailed. Hammered haggardly into place. He pounded his fist upon his Holy Bible. The book thick and bound in worn black leather, gilded gold across the front boards and spine.

—This Book, he said, —this Book gone take us home, ah, yay-yuh; this Book, ah, yay-hey-yuh…

His hands fanned even and cut and weaved through the air as he spoke.

—This Book, this Book, he screamed. —This Book, ah, yay-yuh! This Book gone take us home! Yay-hey-yuh!

And his words crumbled under power of his message and they took to unintelligibility and meaning washed away in the mighty presence of the Lord God. His tongue split divergent. Worked against itself. Spoke from yore and yonder, what has been and what shall be. The message paused and then came forth, gurgling heavy as a stream down a mountainside and the congregation swept along with him. Chick danced and twirled and screamed. Her hips thrashed and her breasts jumped in the sack of her shirt.

She ran her hands over her hair and she felt the sweat opening up from her scalp and her armpits and from between her legs and the noise reached a level where it was neither loud nor quiet. The congregation caught in a swaying current electric and it danced them as rag dolls, their minds wild and scattered in the moment.

Betsy stood at the doors, still open wide and she looked at the men and their snakeboxes and the women supping from jars of clear poison. Hands swayed in the hot fetid air. Palms held tight around rattlers and copperheads and snakes so bright and colorful she’d never seen nor imagined.

She looked at Chick and she felt afraid and shaken as she watched her eyes spin freely in their sockets and give up their color. Her mouth full and wet and agape as her body there convulsed with the spirit of the Lord God. They surrounded her, the men and their serpents. And they laid their hands upon her. The snakes stood and roiled in air as their tongues shot quick from their heads, spitting black and forked.

An enginehorn bawled in the distance and then the sound of its cars ran along the tracks and their doors rattled shook crumpled upon the track, wheels held and scratched in the track as if long blade whet upon spinning stone, cars upon cars and then the caboose thudding in repeat and faint in the distance and then gone. Night fallen here in Terminus, sky high and black and holding neither stars nor moon.
Betsy looked at the jar and the flies with their strange abdomens pulsing yellow and green and white. They scuttled over the glass and then buzzed into her palm over the top and fell back and again tried to take flight.

Katydids they took up their talk and chattered steady and without agitation from the trees.

Pliny shook and jerked and his head cocked back and forth as his words came a confused and potent mess poured from vat known nothing of dimension.

Chick screamed as tears ran long and thin from her eyes and she fell hard to the floor, her legs open and her head hanging its hair about the floor. Her buttocks went numb and she felt open there and vast as yon void. Her nipples stood tight and hard from underneath her sackdress like the heavy teats of animals. She cried soundlessly while the music remained swollen rising continually in crescendo that refused to culminate.

Betsy stood in the threshold. She could not enter. She had never seen Cavalry like this. Nor had she ever imagined it could carry on as such. There was nothing of the sanctuary she knew. She looked at Chick and thought of Maddox and how she only felt close to the Jesus when she was with him and he was inside of her, a temple filled with its spirit and alive and humming in its union.

This made her happy. She startled at the tears that sped hot down her face. Her crying broke open. Her throat shook. She sobbed as the singing and shouting therein climbed higher into the very idea of the Holy. The hands and feet and minds all present fell and unfolded at the feet of the all elusive and unknowable as bright as morning sun cuts white across riffles of the river Chattahoochee.

Betsy moved her hot palm from the mouth of the jar and shook the flies from its well and they sputtered slowly and confused into the night. And they lit alive and bright.

PICKLED

2011-08-15T11:02:00.000-07:00

YOUR DELTA TAU CHI NAME IS_02

2011-08-15T10:30:00.001-07:00

MIND THAT SNAPPER

2011-08-10T06:15:00.000-07:00

PERFECT CIRCLE

2011-08-08T07:15:00.000-07:00

Classified ad cost me less than meat and three. WANTED all caps bold RECORDS all caps bold 78s 33 LPs 45s old country music folk music blues will pay good money call 404-688-631*. Week later I'd gotten over fifty phone calls. Most these folks had a garagefull they wanted picking through. Christmas LPs, soundtracks: South Pacific and Oklahoma, clown-covered children's records. Hee-Haw LP there cat-scratched to death, ashes dusted over top like it rescued from house afire, only precious artifact left live. Got to where I wouldn't even go look at their records. Knew just from the sound of the caller what they had wasn't worth the gas. And then six full weeks after the classified ad run Clima Mundy call me a little after seven p.m. Was on the way home. Quick past pecan orchards. Cows and mules there afield. Tractors upon horizon toiling still, helixes bloodred dust turned up underwheel. Sun setting slowly lamped yellow through wickerwork oak and pecan. She coughed so terribly didn't think she'd get her name out to begin with. Clima Mundy, she says. Cleared her throat and spat. You record hunter, she said. Yesm. When you want to come look at what I got. Dunno. On the way out now. Maybe in the mornin. That set alright with you. Rather get it over with an have you on the way bouts now if that work alrite. You still there record hunter?

She gives me directions. Been in this flatlined county seven years now, working sixty to seventy hour weeks and I'd never heard of these streets. Theys aint no signs now you known, she said. Call me when you pasted ol tarpaper school broke down to field on ways round river there and I get you home. Goats out. Street here of unbounded dust. Not seen rain in six weeks or more. Whole place set live as sifted sand red and brown. Every time you open your mouth that grainy taste and the dust in your eyes and nostrils and mouth. Like great anthills blown hard and settled soft to wind. Run your finger up the driver's side window and gather an inch or so of it. Dust everywhere. Sun still setting stuck at horizon, red now like blood dilute in water, drifting primrose color soft red and yellow. You seen me? I seen you in my winder, Clima said. Comeon now comeon strait thru here you seen my house? I saw her.

Clapboard and mason block and pipe and tarpaper. Wood rot clear off the nail and trash laid about the lot as if wind carry it only here and often. Dogs stray and nosing through garbage. Heap of trash lit afire and burning smell like an August morning dumpster wet and sweet with mold and rot, flies setting and lighting and holding frenzied in heavy air. Old Mercedes there dead by the septic tank. Tires rotted down to wire. Squirrels roiling about the interior having a bigtime amongst upholstery varmint savaged and sprung, its innards torn ghastly and spread over the dash. Seafoam green seahorse tacked to side of the house. Clima stands there holding onto the pipe railing running up the concrete stairs and smiles waving. It's all of ninety degrees and Clima dressed for winter's worst, sweater and skihat, black wool slacks belled at ankles and salt white velcro jogging shoes there in the dirt.

Had a time getting here. I've never been out this way. Clima takes my hand and dwarfs it, her fingers ears of corn long, riddled with bumps and lumps like welts threatening rupture. Her teeth are brown and yellow and seem ridden with fungus, broke open in stabwound smile beneath crabapple cheeks and eyes purply black as deerscat. You may not care to but you gone get the tour, she says. Leads me up the steps, her slacks slung out in back smelling heavy of shit and piss. House walls are full. Tacked up pictures of cherubim soft and swollen and smiling, diadem glowing as gasoline smears on rainwet road. Must be thousand of them. She points with those hands livery and pocked green like a mold settled there soft and jadecolored.

Clima Mundy crept along stiltedly as some marionette drawn out of shadow, her form wraithlike in the halflight and all but otherworldly, fireflies winking there in the house, thoraxes aflame and shown the boundary of trash and waste and here and there the smell heavy of shit. Had she confessed she's gotten me here to kill me I'd shown no shock. Maybe telling to keep me caged and fed even fatter than I am and then to dress me out live upon a pineblock seen generation of butchered out kinfolk, its grain running rivers blood dried brown. Swat at the fireflies now thick and pulsing light. There are only small shuttling pathways amongst the hoarded goods standing ten feet tall to loose plaster ceiling, papers and aluminum cans crushed and car batteries and books and sheer tonnage of toys and clothes. There a coon dead who knows how long, dessicated and stiffened mere semblance of what it was in life, teeth bared frozen yellow grin. Flickers there intermittent yellow through the trash now dark with dusk through windows mostly chipped and shattered some wholly rotted way. Flies buzz about and bite my hands and scalp.

There amongst squalor's clearing small formica table set candelabra, four long red Christmas candles lit, Santa Claus faces and beards longwhite taken by flame and dripping longer and softer and spilling the table in small perfect circles of white and red wax. Two plates. Two cups. Two linen napkins. Two plastic sporks. Packets of duck sauce and soy sauce and hot chinese mustard. There's two plastic wrapped flats of Faygo sodapop and Clima guts one with a brown fingernail. You want one? Ima have one with my dinner. She cracks a can. Shouldn't cause all the sugar but Ima have one noways. She motions to sit and I do. I don't even ask about the records. I know there aren't any records. I'm here for dinner and it's potted meat scraped from cans with soda crackers and Hubba Bubba watermelon bubblegum for dessert. Clima grabs a jackinthebox and turns the crank and it plays You Are My Sunshine in broken clipped tones. She smiles. You know what record hunter? What, I say. Folks intown call me shitpants. Now aint that somethin awful?

PARKING

2011-08-03T06:24:00.000-07:00

Jess parks. Caleb hands her styrofoam takeout box. Zippos cigarette drags exhales. They sit silent. Watch smoke roll into windshield spin and settle. Thisn burnin my leg, Jess says. Hot as hell. She puts the box on the dash. Rubs her brown thigh. Pulls at frayed denim on her cutoffs. Grabs the box. Opens the box. Underside of top beaded with water. Hate gettin takeout. They soggy now. Aint crunchy no more. Fries soggy too. She grabs her purse. Puts on lipgloss. Looks in rearview. Purses lips. Caleb smokes. Jess chews a gizzard. Spits it out. Aint even warm. Turns and looks at Caleb. How this box hottern hell and them chicken gizzards aint even warm. Turns radio on. Uriah Heep, "Wizard."

Turns volume up. Caleb turns it down. Stubbs his cigarette out in the ashtray. He rolls the window down. Hot in here, Caleb says. Indian Summer. Got to be nearn 85. Almost frickin hall ween, Caleb says. Hear cars passing beyond the pines, Highway 16. Found this record at home an it has daddy's name writ on outside of it, Jess says. Sayn Thomas Pembsy on it an I open it up an there all this dry grass in the middle of the record an all these little seeds. Caleb snorts. Sound like Mr Pembsy rolt laughin bone on that rec, Jess. She laughs looks herself in the mirror. My perm comin out. She turn and look at Caleb. You think my perm comin out? Naw. It look good, Caleb says. Oh shit you seen that deer run cross there? The Allman Brothers, "Ramblin Man." Jess sticks her tongue out at Caleb. Jess sings. My father was a gambla dow en jor geh. Got a pretty voice Jess, Caleb said. Zippos cigarette. Turns around. Reaches in back. Hear ice and water sloshing. Grabs two beers. Pops one. Want this? Jess grabs it. Drinks. Turns radio up. Goddamn there goen anothern, Caleb says. Looklike a six pointer.

Caleb reaches over into Jess' takeout box. Grabs handful of fried gizzards. Sticks them in his mouth. He chews. They aint good is they? Jess says. Caleb says something while chewing, shrugs. Ew I aint believe you eatin them like that. Caleb swallows. They put any packets of hotsauce in that bag? I aint seen em if they did, Jess says. Motley Crue, "Home Sweet Home." Jess turns radio up. Looks at herself in rearview. Purses lips. Runs hands through hair. Highlit blonde and white on chestnut brown. Dreamcatcher earrings. Halter. Cuttoffs. No shoes. Toenails hotpink. Barefeet blackern owlshit. Chrise there a doe an she done lookin for them boys come through here, Caleb says. He looks around. Finishes his beer. Crushes can. Throws it in back. Pulls pint Southern Comfort out bubbles it hands it to Jess. Jess puts it between her legs. She puts Caleb's hand on the pint. He looks at her. Takes the pint and sips. Jess leans over breathes hard into Caleb's ear. Gives Caleb the gooseflesh. Tongues his earlobe. Caleb shivers. Goddamn theren a ten pointer now, he says. What the hell is this a goddamn whitetail party? Jess pushes off. You gone stick your dick inem or what, she says.

YOUR DELTA TAU CHI NAME IS

2011-08-01T05:22:00.001-07:00

SWEET TITS

2011-07-28T10:54:00.000-07:00

Elsie and Owen brought the large tin pot to table. Eugene passed veined and chipped china and he passed silver. Cat shot between legs and mewed and was shushed and shooed and held out for hope.

Man took the cornbread from the stove hob and slathered the warm lard over the top with the back of a cracked wooden spoon and it sizzled as the lard sunk into the hot bread.

Owen brought the hog’s head up from its cooking liquor, the carving fork imbedded in a cheek, the liquor drizzling from its jowls. Ramps and dandelion and broad beans filled the pot.

Elsie passed a pot of rice cooked with the fresh cracklin and blood and garlic. The family filled their plates with the rice and spooned some of the cooking liquor onto their plates while Owen carefully pulled the flesh from the head.

He breathed heavily as he scraped the cheeks from the bone with a knife and removed the snout and reached from underneath and pulled the thick gray tongue from the hole of the hog’s throat. And he peeled the tongue and cut it into chunks.

Imogene brought jugs of wine from the cupboard and the family passed them around and filled their cups with the viscous purple swill. Robert passed napkins and Maddox took one and waited for the rice and then waited for someone to speak or make a noise other than the clinking and scraping of service spoons in tin pots.

Man laughed quietly. His head cocked and eyes glazed and still upon Owen as his father sat, head bowed in reverence.

—The eyes of all… They wait upon you, aw God, said Owen and the family responded, their voices dull and lolling:

–And you give them their food in due season.

—And You open wide yur hand, aw God, said Owen.

—You fill all things with plentousness, said the family and their one tongue laved the phrase into a loose and bungled chime that Owen did not dignify with recognition.

Cur-Cur shook with laughter and he held the cat tightly as it sniffed the steam that rose from the plates of snout and cheek and tongue.

—Bless us, aw God, we who bless thine holy name and by this food, feed us for yur holy service. Ahmen.

—Ahmen.

Places were set for Big Curtis and Kathy and the family gestured towards their absence and looked at one another knowingly but remained silent. A place was set for Issac. But he neither came to the table nor did any one ask his whereabouts.
Man licked the lard from the bread and groaned and smacked his lips. Imogene’s cheeks filled with rice and meat and the wine ran down her chin and dribbled into her plate as her mouth worked slow and methodical as bovine. Owen forked the flesh into his mouth in rich, wet heaps and he mixed the rice with the hot liquor and swirled dandelion around the tines of his fork and sucked the bitter weed from the metal and sighed and broke wind.

Elsie laughed and began to snot into her plate and Imogene broke wind and Cur-Cur’s food came from his nostrils and hung in ropes of undigested mess and his laugh turned to choke.

—Boy, you aint gone blaspheme my table like this, screamed Owen, shaking his head.
Maddox stared into this plate. He scooped some of the blood cake and tongue into his mouth and he chewed and washed it down with gulps of the wine. And he paused and sat startled at the earthiness of the cooked blood and the richness of the tongue.
—I’ll be damned if Sweet Tits don’t taste mighty good, said Maddox.

The table erupted in laughter and Elsie’s nose ran with snot and she ran her livery forearm across her face.

Man broke wind and howled; his lips pursed into obscene fissure. His fists pounded the table and rattled the china as liquor sloshed over the pot’s lip and on to the table.

Imogene broke wind and Owen looked across to her as if he would take her head next, wiling away the hours shooting vultures from the sky while her skull stewed and softened in the pot, her ropy red hair draped over the pot’s sides.

—Ah caint hep it, Papa. Muh guts ur uppen rot, Imogene said and her lips tightened into a smile and she broke into laughter.

Cur-Cur pounded the table with his fists and screamed with abandon and laughed and began to dance around the table, marionette animated with the baseness of his line.

—Don’t you pay yo brotha no mine, Eugene said, and the beans and meat fell from his mouth as he settled into a hunk of snout, his knife struggling with the silly gelatinous wobble.

Maddox drank and Robert drank and Elsie sent two fingers of peach snuff up her nose and sneezed and snot sprayed over Maddox’s plate and he smiled and drank even more.

Man held his hand to his nostril and freed the other one and shot snot onto his plate and dabbed his fingers in it and rubbed it upon his crooked head.

The cat meowed and Owen mumbled something about skinning it and eating it for supper. Cur-Cur continued to strut around the table, his arms and hands fluid as flags, his voice automatic and droning: —Sweet Tits, Sweet Tits, Sweet Tits…

Imogene broke wind and spat a hunk of fat into her plate and laughed and tossed it hard at the cat and Cur-Cur pulled his pecker from his britches and screamed as an arc of bright yellow urine pushed the cat into the corner and he yelped and shook off and leapt in a blur up the hallway.

Elsie spit up upon her plate and her food hung in spidery legs of saliva. Her mouth contorted into a sick smile and then she threw up upon her plate, laughing through her hacking retch.

Owen screamed and pounded his fists and grabbed his gun and fired a shell straight up into the ceiling and plaster crackled and rained down upon them and Maddox began to laugh and clap and Elsie shat herself, announcement made vociferous and fragrant.

Robert and Eugene tumbled into one another and spit and bit at one another as Owen chambered another shell.

Maddox stuffed the bowl of his pipe and poured his glass full of wine. He turned it back and howled and gut laughed, his face burning red. And Cur-Cur grabbed Maddox’s hands and they both began to chant Sweet Tits’ name. A sanguine and honest wake for the family hog turned to feast.

And so went the Thaxton family supper.

SMOKED

2011-07-25T09:03:00.001-07:00

RIDING

2011-07-24T13:47:00.000-07:00

Known it as cruising. Beers straight from cardboard container warm. Loaded as canned snakes spraying driver, shotgun, passengers. Late night. On the tapedeck Black Flag and Waylon and Prince and Slayer. Where to the DQ or Mickey Dees or Burger King. Maybe the Tastee Freeze or Chic-fil-a. Been to Del Taco where Kris works. Heading to old Zesto in East Point. What to do but sit in the lot and drink and smoke and listen to Waylon and trade tonguekisses for beers. Chubby Decker a mess of meat and cheese gone soft and mayonnaise. Lettuce and tomatoe wilted in foil wrapper. Search out more beers. That Kroger in Newnan where Wickett's older brother knows the stocker Denny Alsup. He worked out something for us. Get us another twelve. Keystone. Stroh's. Bottle of Boone's Farm for the ladies.

Out all night. Seen no police. Pull up on the stables and Amanda's zigzag down the hill drunk on boxed wine. She puked herself and passed out and revived with a five hour old chilicheese dog and wiped her white leather fringed jacket down with a double deuce bottle of Ice Man Jake Tamsey stolen from Ingles in Union City. Horses going shithouse crazy. Just sit up on the hill on top the car and finish the beers and Jake talking about how Amanda gives him the horn and how Denny Alsup's going to meet up with everyone later how he's got some smoke. Lay back on the car hood and look up in the night and call out constellations like old friends, names that sound like fatal diseases you'd catch from jungle insects. Smell the horseshit and the hay. Smell the candywine on Amanda's breath as she tell us just how fuckin bad she's got to get in there to see Wiggy, her eyes fixed shocked wide and like old glass blown and warbled. Makeup's run about her eyelids when she teared up while puking. Still fucker sideways, Jake says. An then some.

Duskstill and dove flauting from telephone poletops and there gone Coach Bell still in his old Chevy that truck never gone die. Goddamn you think we gone be two best than five hunnert this season, W.T. says. Whole town might goddamn keel over. W.T. shuffles in his boots and wipes his trousers of invisible debris and runs his hands through his still full head of white hair. He sips his beer. Finely says the kids just don't know how to tackle anymore and then W.T. goes into his ridin story about how he and Kenny Spakes drank up forty-three High Life beers and he smoked a mary juana cigarette on the county courthouse steps watchin the sun go down red in west. Best times of my life, W.T. says. Crow comes cawing out of nowhere and slows and stops in air and settles in the street, hobbling ink smear on asphalt.

He'd thrown out a one-armed negro before the meeting started. Motioned to plastic tray full of food. Other Authority members huddled over packets. Mr Bob Thom cleaning nails with a pocketknife. Gladys bragging about her grandchild getting into Abraham Baldwin. Here's watermelon and some hoop cheese here and some co-colas. Scuse me son why you hear tonight you aint on the genda that I recall. One-arm's got a notebook and a pencil he's whittled a point on. Says he's wanted to keep up with what's going on says Water Authority's first meeting he knew of this month and he speak with general manager Rosalyn Bates Monday week and she said they were open to public so long's they aint gone into executive session for personnel matter. You seen that motherfucker blush when I toss him out on his ear? Goddamn. Aint never seen a nigger blush like that. No one laughs, which is why W.T. laughs harder and harder.

Rosalyn cleans up after the meeting. But we are all the last to leave. There's O Rine, W.T. says. First constellation I learnt. He's got the little red cooler he keeps on his Dodge Ram passenger seat out and he's passed around a few High Life. One time damn I tell you, I got into about ten beers and then ten came twenty directly and we out drivin these old country roads back when this county aint shit and the po lease just let us go own by aint like it used to be goddamn, W.T. says and finishes his beer and crushes the can and tosses it in the truck bed. Ithttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif clinks against the otherns.

Ridin, W.T. says. Aint like it use to be. Got to wheres we ridden all these damn roads. Osley Road and Joe Lane Wisten Road and Hamm Road and goddamn Peskt Travers Road with its dogleg turn and them pissant deer always grown out the middle like statues, green eyes glown at you. W.T. grabs the last High Life out the cooler and cracks it and offers it to me and I wave him off and he says, no really, if you want it son and I tell him that's fine. Finely says he membered it as cruisin. Jus some way to get in some pussy, is what he says. Not boozin an never was none but a little wine we done stole from diddy. Muskydine. Oooo sheeet W.T. says. Taste like cough med cine. Aint never taken to that possumpiss Fin. W.T. points up. Thas Chaldocean therebouts. Seen his nose and fingers crooked like a snake there. Childe what, Fin says. Chal do see un, W.T. says. There aint no star named such, Fin says. What if there is one, W.T. says.

GOT US A BLIZZAR

2011-07-14T11:36:00.000-07:00

Alma not seen snow in seventy years. Least that what Chess Orthcutt tell me when I walk out the trailer to warm up the truck. He come up walkin Piner Street as he do ever day, bentback, hands clasp behind his tailbone, cigar stabbed in corner his mouth. Turn of cen tree, he says. Last time we get snowed in. Member it like yesterdee. Dumb sumbitch Clarence Waslin aint kept nough gross rees on hand an had to lock is doors high noon. Selled out ever thin. Chess never stopped. He just kept walkin and kept talkin as he did and by time he clear out of view I still hear his voice. Big heavy hard voice for man his age. Frailest thing on him his shoes. He live for nother eighty years if he live a day. Honk the horn as I round Dixie Ave, Orthcutt still there shufflin along, still talkin, cigar there still stabbed brown unsmoking. Snow slick and slushy and still coming down slowly and driftin into the truck's windsheid. Flakes flip into the glass and print the glass diamondian, jus as the white paper flakes do when cut well and open on up, all they angles fanned out, all the lines and triangles buried in the whitle, here and there triangle stranded in the white and opening and closing. Flakes hung in air and some were whisked away and some hit the shield and stood their shapes and melted instantly.

Whole damn town emptied out their homes into streets. Winter coats and hats and snowshoes attic'd and forgotten remembered and found. Children in fathers and grandfathers hunting clothes. Children wearing wool socks on their hands. Attemptin snowmen like ten and twelve of em scoopin up snow and it meltin away in they hands.

Stop at Jakes and buy case of Miller and a bottle schnapps. Bought it for the snowman on the label and the candy cane walkin stick. This crap taste like mouthwash you know, bud, Jake says. I drive round a while and drink the schnapps. Jake was right. It do taste like mouthwash. But the more I drank it the less it mattered. I werent really watching the road. I watchin snowflakes. Ran clear off Peters Street and set there drinkin schnapps and then cracked a beer. Drank it down halfway quick there, window down and the snow comin in the truck and melting there on the side of the door and the radio on and Elvis sing Tutti Fruitti. That was skinny Elvis not fat Elvis, Tad Merle says on the radio after the song end. Went to school with Tad at Huber High. Merle must've ben the worst goddamn placekicker in South Georgia. He missed all but two extra points whole time he played. Coach Jonah Bell tell me he had to play Merle on count of Tad Merle Sr gave so much money to the school. I tell Tad that once when I was sideways. We at Flo's gettin lit. I member that shit clear as wellwater. He start cryin like a little kid. Face get all red and he sobbin. I aint regret it at first but now every time I heard him on the radio it make me sick a little bit to my stomach.

Set there long while drinking beer watchin it snow. Sun aint come out and it gull gray all day. Drive down Oglethorpe Street near Tramlintowne where them palms line the ways and looked up at the palms and all the snow coming down around them. Snow slick their sawteeth leaves and hang crusted in queer runs of ice on their long brown trunks. No cars out. Stop plain in middle of Oglethorpe Street and get out with the schnapps bottle and lay down and did me a snowangel, arms and legs just a flapping. Thin Elvis playing Hound Dog. Drop the bottle and got hold of it fore it all spilled out. Seen Gordon Ransom comin and seen his lights piss yellow in the twilight and they all dull with the snow comin down as it is and Ransom drive by in the work truck all slow and looking crazy and he yellin at me, you best get your drunk ass out the road fore you get kilt. He honk the horn over and over again. Stood there laughing at him and watch as pelicans come in formation, six of em, big gray bodies and those stiff long beaks stuck out, flown over the palms snow still shakin out the sky. They fly clear over Oglethorpe Street and past Tramlintowne and on out Broxton way. Pelicans.

Kimber Massey drink the rest of the schnapps. Always had to get sideways before we foolt round. She aint say nothin but just goddamn giggled til she piss her pants. I aint beleived her til she thrust her crotch up at me and I felt the denim and it warm as blood and smelt like chicken fryin. She keep my hand there once I touch it. She turn up the radio and there Tad Merle playin Thin Elvis gan, that song bout the train, one sound like old Ray Price or some shit. I says let's go see Shithead an she aint say nothin. Kimber got her bluejeans undid and got her hand over mine and breathin heavy and got her fingers over mine and I got my finger there, right there, and she says, Aw you found it sugar, and then she start laughin and I kept my finger outside there jus set there and she buck slow up into it like she on a horse. Then I hook my finger in there good and she moan like she slipped down slow into hot bath and then the truck turn up on two wheel and rattle goddamn awful and we find ourselves up in the woodline. Damn if I aint hit a tree square.

What in the hell, she says pullin her bluejeans up. She scoopin all the empty beercans out the floor and tossin them on the ground and she keep sayin What in the hell. I set there lisnen to them cans clinkin. I set there lookin at the front of the truck an it aint look too too bad. She walk slow over the road and there in middle road set a calf dead. It covered up in snow and snow ice over a bit and seem a glass shell on the calf. Seem been dead a while. It got two heads, Kimber says. It got two damn heads. I come over and lookit the calf and it do have two heads. We set there and drink a beer and look at it for a short while. Eyes on the left head aint right. They like marbles like red marbles. Ones that look like planets with those bands of color wipe through them. They aint right. An the hooves aint right neither. I crouch down and set my beer down in the snow and hold my hands out near the head an Kimber says, Goddamn you aint gone touch it now is you. An I jus set my hand down on the head that aint right, this slick ice head with red marble eyes, an it the coldest thing I ever touched in my life. I can hear Merle on the radio sayin, Can you bee leave this Alma County? We got us a blizzar. And then I pick the goddamn thing up all by myself and Kimber screamin at me when I put it in the truckbed.

She says, What in the hell we gone do with a two head calf this time night? An I tell her we gone carry it to Shithead and she says, Shithead working at Dairy Queen now, and I says I known that sugar. We gone to Dairy Queen.

CITY GROCER

2011-07-14T05:33:00.000-07:00

City Grocer aint in the city. They aint got much in way of groceries. Sound live in there. Aint jus from folk talkin. Mostly from the hum. Two broke down co cola coolers rust out top-to-bottom full crickets. Chirp so loud you almost got to shout to be heard. Like they built City Grocer round them coolers. They that old. Red wigglers and hoppers in they too but they aint make noise. Use to sell minners out of old Igloo cooler and they fish em out and put em in you minner bucket. Aint done that in bout ten years.

Younger Tucker run City Grocer since Elder Tucker et up with cancer of the ass and die. When Younger Tucker die he says lil man Tucker, Tucker Three, gone run City Grocer. Younger Tucker use to cook breakfast and lunch at City Grocer ways back but he got in accident, got back over by school bus and it torn up his legs and feet to wheres he aint get around well at all no more. Made him have to give up farmin. Figure he give up City Grocer too but he still here. He tell Darla and Jewelene how he fix up eggs and grits and biscuits and they learn how and cook it all up and sausage gravy ever mornin.

It run bout the way it used to. Look same inside and out anyways. Still long pine table there in the back. All cut up with folks initials and who love who an who don’t love who no more. Ever one set there with they coffee and smoke and et and talk bout nothin. Ice chests stack full of Red Rock and RC and Co Cola. Dime and nickel candy. Moon Pies. Big old jars of pickled eggs and hog feet on the counter along with fifty cent cigars, lil tins of snuff, and pouch of Beech Nut and Red Man.

Same but it got to wheres it a bit rough. Folks that come in mostly. Younger Tucker stop sellin beer out the ice chest and that screwcap wine. Folk come in after work and get damn sideways and all they got in they head is hurt. All them niggers work the grist mill aint but meaner than crippled snakes. They comes in and get they wine and stick round front and back of City Grocer. Drink up they pay for day and aint got nothin else do but stab each other or fistfight. Eddie Price sell his deerrifle for drinkin money and he get to where he want hurt Tall Anderson for what ever damn reason and he done spray lighter fluid in his face and light him up on fire. In the damn store. They set right still at that table and Eddie spray him and set his face on fire. Tall Anderson there jumpin in his chair like stranded fish, screamin somethin awful. Jewelene come out from back and smother his face afire with her damn apron. Never forget seein his face set there smokin afterwards, jus blacker than owlshit.

Got to wheres Sheriff send Major Applewhite in City Grocer to calm it on down. Got to where he comes in there ever mornin and et and it got then to wheres all you hears was crickets an no one open their mouths. You hear the register ring and bacon and sausage fryin and them crickets but that it. Folks shakes like cat shittin peach pits round Major Applewhite. First time silence broken when Jewelene come in late one mornin and she smelt like she slept deep in that whiskey bottle and she blabbin bout Applewhite been put in poke for coppin dope from undercover. Some mess like that.

Younger Tucker do his best to come out from behind register and ask her what in hell she mean comin in spreadin lies about Applewhite knowin he come in here ever damn day. Mister Dave help him out and they both set there and listen. Jewelene so nervous she caint get her cigarette lit. I aint made it up, she says. I seen it at Red’s in the damn parkin lot last night. I seen Danny put him in his car an he wearin handcuffs an he look like he so pissed off he could spat wrought arn.

Younger Tucker light her smoke for her and he say, Who he buyin dope from nohow? And Jewelene say, I aint known that but when I gone into Red’s to get cigarettes Red say he seen Rhonda out in the parkin lot talkin to them. Younger Tucker look at her and say, Rhonda Gooden. An Jewelene say, I known it plain as day it were Goody. Drunker than Cooter Brown but I known I seen her.

Jewlene start cryin. She cryin and smokin. All she got on is a long t-shirt and it comin apart. Bare filthy feet fidgetin. Mister Dave just stand there starin down at her titties an they set right there, nipples pokin out airbrush Jesus head make him look like he got horns, little ones, come right out sides of his head. Look here Jewelene you jus need to get on out and go home, Younger Tucker says. Get hold your self. Settle back down an we’ll see you in the mornin. She nod and wipe her eyes and all her mascara runnin and she leave. Younger Tucker look at Mister Dave and shake his head. She fine as frog hair, he says, but twice as damn jumpy.

CHUTE TO KILL

2011-07-12T11:42:00.000-07:00

BUCK FEVER

2011-07-11T07:26:00.000-07:00

Sets in after the Fourth. See them huddled round rusting pickups. Quiet and earnest in hardware store aisles. Calling bullshit at tall tales relayed amongst Fresh Air Bar-B-Que's communal tables, sawdust piled underfoot, woodpeckers hammering old pines across way deep on into Indian Springs and further on Flovilla. See it in the eyes. In the way they carry themselves. Hear it in every simple sentence spit from lips. Hands wrung. Shoulders slouched. Beaten by long summer days slowly giving way. Come Septemeber starts conversation. It's the rack and break and quick survey of the worn table. Deer hunting is a yearly preoccupation. Season never ends. And if you're capable of hitting a pie plate with an Easton from thirty yards out you can squeeze in treasured urban area and add some weeks to your kill time. Here come the trail cam photos. Amongst gaggle of coon and fox and possum and squirrel. Amongst trees heavy with leaf. From the margins of wood and front and center and so close its just a big black nose and two headlight eyes glown green as Mountain Dew slurpee. He's in velvet. Lookit that rack. Wait til fall. He's big now. But when he packs on fat... Drop tines like split yardsticks. So long as he stays to the wood and don't get hit. Jiminy Christmas I'd hate to scrape him off the street.

Fill feeders. Secure stands. Grease guns. Take up archery this year. Start with hay bale. Few yards away til confidence grows. Cicadas pulse. Sky cloudless and sun unforgiving and high. Hear the truck traffic roar by on 16 and 36 and 42. Heard about that horse trailer t-boned last night. Doe and two yearlings frozen footed, eyes glowing, legs set still unmoving. Killed the driver. Took him apart like a kid does a doll. Left his head in a ditch. Horses broken legged, dispatched by cop's service weapon. Heard the taps one two. Run a crown midst that pie plate. Imagine it a buck broadside set still for that one shot perfect and true. Hear the maples and oaks restless in autumn, leaves singed brown and dried and brittle as family Bible pages.

Sometimes they bring em to you. The trophies of old. Deer hair standing out from their skull caps like broken wire. Racks old and yellow as dogteeth. They'll tell you the stories. Never have to ask. I got a beer if you're needin. Small Igloo cooler behind the seat. Truck rumbles over Watkins Park & Pool Road. Busch Tallboy cold as December creek. Stops the truck. Seen him yonder. Split those two transformers there. Like a statue. Still. Not movin. Pulled the deed to find out Tilden Weskley own that land and I shown up on his doorstep with two Ball Jars of pickled eggs and 12 pack beer and we drink an eat our way into gentleman's agreement. Up a tree three weeks later and took him down open sights. Thought first shot aint on mark an I jack the round out and fire gan. Waitin never easy. Jiminy Christmas seem a year or more. Find that blood trail and walk it. Seen him on his side like he asleep, life run out him in blood. Blood redder than a dog's pecker. Aint seen blood that red.

He holds the horn from the cap and does not smile when I snap the picture. His eyes are set deep and blue and shot with blood. Blue as the August sky. He's a close talker and I smell the handslaps of Brut and the beer he had for breakfast and the dip he's let sting his lower lip for the last half hour. He's a discreet spitter. Sucks it up into a teardrop and sends it out like a watermelon seed. Never known anyone that deft with dipspit. Never will. He gives me a Ball Jar of eggs. Cowhorn peppers green and orange and red at the base. Dozen quail eggs shucked out their shells and set in malt vinegar. Aint nothin like a cold beer and one of them eggs, he says. He turns to the door. Looks out the window. Looks down at the two sets of horn in his hands. Trucks pass slow and awkward through the light. Won't be long now, he says. Aint nothin worse than buck fever.

STABBED OUT

2011-07-08T06:55:00.000-07:00

Evielon Childers walked into the paper office after I'd left for a Development Authority meeting. Office manager told her I'd be gone til noon but she was welcome to leave a note. Childers declined and had a seat on the couch up front near the bound copies and taxidermied marlin I'd found at the side of Cenie Road while scouting land to deerhunt.

The Authority discussed parcel of land they wanted the county to annex for their betterment and they shifted in their seats and stuttered and asked if I'd put my notebook away. Did one better and left. First one in Tony's Restaurant. Dating Game on. Ordered blueplate and sipped sugar water. When I walked throught the office door around one Childers asked me if I'd been eating at Tony's. She pointed to my shirt. Brown gravy skids wide as carpenter pencils.

She told me she read my columns and she like the ones about hunting most. She said she'd never hunted in her life nor ever known anyone who did. He daddy died in a farming accident when she was too little to know a big change had come in her life. But she heard from family he'd been an accomplished bird hunter. Mostly quail, she said. Aint none here no more since kye yote eat em all.

Childers was dwarfin short, liver-spotted, older than her years. Smelled like rosewater and cigarettes. Wore a black eyepatch and leisure suits better suited for rest home grannies. She invited me to hunt her land. Said she had lots of ducks on it. I told her I'd be there in the morning. I want to go with you, she said. Suit yourself, I said. Going to be early.

Knocked on Childer's door at quarter five. Kitchen light was on. She invited me in. Had a chipped china cup of Russian Tea and a honeybun served on a faux gold rimmed saucer. She wore green galoshes and a flower-print leisure suit and an old Army issue parka with a fur-lined hood. She smoked without ceasing. She asked me how I liked my job. She asked me how I liked Alma. I like it, I said. You like it? It OK, she said. It alright. She exhaled smoke heavy from her nostrils and looked around the kitchen at nothing so much. Geegaws. Knicknacks. An old washboard rusted red nailed to the wall. Let's go huntin, she said.

She led the way without light. Cows lowed. Dogs barked muffled miles away. Errant crow. Walked through fields and woods and through creekbeds and stepped stones in awkward hopscotch. Rain misted. We took a hill steeper than I wanted to and she stayed a good ten yards ahead, drifting upon the incline as apparition in cast-aside clothes, cigarette smoke unfurling from her face as a scarf.

At the top of the hill set a pond brown in the dark held with smoke and stabbed with limbs fallen and grown green with moss. Hope you brung your cooler, she said. You gone have a mess of birds come light. Her parka was slick with rain. She looked at me and her one good eye squnited. Aint you gone load that thing, she said pointing at the shotgun. It's loaded, Evie. What we done now, she said. Hurry up n wait? Yeah something like that, I said.

Light never came but the ducks did. Two drakes and a hen. Easy and slow from the sky to the water still held in the smoke. Chattered content and fed. Wings shook water and then up to the air and riddled with shot. Childers looked at me with her eye and squinted and asked why I aint get them all. Don't shoot hens, I said. Naw you aint, she said. You shoot ol gurl, she said. Aint bird watchin. This bird huntin. Hen set in the mist hidden. Hit my call. Feeding. Content. Aint workin, she said and screamed shoo and the hen got up in the smoke and beat away from the pond and then around calling for the fallen drakes set in the water heads limp and hanging and I led her and fired as she came straight away and the feathers brown and cream went flying adrift slowly and Childers said hot damn, her tiny hands outstretched groping for falling feathers.

After more tea and questions I asked her what happened to her bad eye. She smiled and shook her hands. She got up and brung a plate of Lorna Doones to the table and pushed it in front of me. I declined. No, I mean, I don't want to pry, I said. She waved me off and shrugged and said it werent no big thing. And I said, Well what happened and she looked at me and squinted and said, Aw it got stabbed out.

ITCHY

2011-07-07T13:18:00.000-07:00

Plunkett came from behind the register and watched Itchy as she walked the Thriftown aisles. He kept his hands on his hips and stared at her. You aint known what the hell you doin is you? She waved him off. You walkin round like you lit up like Jew lie four. Don't steal nothin now Itchy. Tommy been nice about it but he aint here til Monday week and I'm in charge. You goin to jail you put one piece of merchandise in your pocket. One things all it takes.

I got money goddamnit, she screamed. I got me plenty of money. She had a loaf of bread in her hand and some bananas and a small jar of mayonnaise. This shit done gone up aint it, she said, holding the mayonnaise up.

Everything done gone up, Plunkett said. It Osama's fault up there in the Blackhouse. If you done you come on over here an I'll ring you up. Don't want you to get sidetracked and start handlin more merchandise.

Itchy walked over to the big Pepsi cooler and dragged her fingers across the bottles standing tall in the icy water. There were Orange and Grape Nehi, Crush and Coca-Cola and Pepsi, RC Cola and Red Rock Cola. Itchy pulled a Grape Nehi out from the slush and stuck it up in the Coca-Cola opener screwed to the side of the cooler and pulled it up and popped the top off. She drank a quarter off the top and ah'd.

Plunkett rang the items up and Itchy handed him the money and he made change and handed her the grocery bag. First honest transaction you made in here, Plunkett said. How you get this money nohow?

Earned it, Itchy said.

Ricky sat on the curb outside waiting for her. He stubbed out his cigarette when she walked up and grabbed the Nehi out her hand and drank it down. Don't suck that shit all ways down now, Itchy said. They walked around the back of Thriftown. There were men huddled at the wall drinking wine. They wore heavy coats and flies spun around them. Don't look at them, Ricky said. Aint good look a man who down that far. Aint good for you or im. Aint good for no one. They walked to the far right and sat down facing the railroad tracks.

Tarpaper houses and A-frames brought together from scrap lined Dobbs Avenue. A southern cross flew from a grassless front yard nothing but hickory roots. Barefooted children hulahooped. Barefooted parents watched children hulahoop. They drank from brown bags and smoked. Two boys tossed firecrackers at a bullfrog. Barefooted parents laughed. You seen them boys yonder, Itchy said. Ricky nodded. You seen what they doin?

Aint nothin I aint done when I youngas them, he said.

Ricky opened his pocketknife and spread the mayonnaise on the bread and sliced the banana across and lay it like split yellow tusk on the bread and cut the sandwich in fourths and handed Itchy some. She put the entire fourth in her mouth and Ricky's eyes went large and she laughed and started choking and then laughed again. She smoothed her dirty red hair over with her bonethin hands and looked at Ricky. Her eyes color of stormclouds. Boys across the way ran out of firecrackers and now stood over the bullfrog screaming and spitting at him.

Found a whole entire cat skeleton over yonder, Ricky said, pointing beyond the train track near the honeysuckle. Musta got hit by the train and it throwed it over thatways. It aint messed up or nothin. Just like it laid there on the ground. Like it born there. Just all them bones hitched together white. He ate another fourth. Itchy drank the Nehi down to the bottom and left Ricky a swig.

A barefoot parent walked into the house and back out with a .22 rifle and shot the frog. It leapt in air and sit there where it land dead and wide mouthed. The children screamed.

What the hell he done that for? Itchy said.

He aint got nothin better to do, Ricky said. He took his ballcap off and looked at the money signs and George Washingtons screened over the back and brim. There were pyramids and singular eyes atop them and slogans in a language he reckoned Oriental.

Itchy shoved the last sandwich piece in her mouth.

I got to work tonight, she said.

Ricky frowned. You said you done had four dates this mornin already, he said. Aint that twenty dollars?

It is if they wantin to screw but aint no one want to screw no more.

Well what the hell they wantin to do if they aint wantin to screw? Ricky said.

You know, baby, other stuff, Itchy said.

They heard the train whistle longways off and they sat there not saying anything and Itchy leaned forward and looked down the traintrack ways and saw the light fluttering in the heat and heard the train moving up the track.

Don't be mad, Itchy said.

I aint mad, Ricky said.

The train rushed over the tracks and they watched the cars yellow and red and cars carrying swine and bovine and coal cars and box cars their doors pried open and rattling and footbearded hitchers gnomic in their darkness. The train here was now gone.

Smell that? Ricky said.

Hell what is that?

Honeysuckle. That train always wake it up. Smell nice don't it?

CEE CEE

2011-07-06T17:36:00.000-07:00

Blue Nun. Nun on the kitchen counter. Nun on the floor empty. Nun in the fridge under the heavy plastic bags of head-on shrimp. Nun flash cooling in the freezer set above leftover Baskin Robbins turtle pie. Blue Nun--that and Heineken: the beer that tastes like wet dog and wine sold on sister's promise. From God's hand to your lips: Blue Nun. Didn't ease the sting of having their asses handed to them in spades. Lionel switched gears. Suggested hearts. He lit another cigar. Condo's ground floor swam in smoke. Everytime an ad for The Shining came on I turned the TV off. Watched the picture dissolve and the light set in a white orb and then fade slowly away. Image of Jack Nicholson swinging axe into a big white door and then burying his unshaven face in it and spitting HERE'S JOHNNY. I kept the TV off. Lionel kept getting up. He kept checking the radio. He kept bitching about the Leonard fight.

How in the goddamn hell is this fight not on goddamn tee vee, he said. He gesticulated so much he looked like a bobble head doll. Stew are they sayin anything about the goddamn fight on the tee vee. He steeped down into the den. You got the tee vee off. OK. Well great. Ladies how about a game of hearts? I can't beleive this fuh-king fight isn't on.

Later that night they called it on the radio. Leonard got beat. It was close. But he got beat. Something like three rounds to two and then points put him down. Don't know how they heard it over the yelling and the laughter and the Blue Nun and Heineken. Lionel gasped. Audibly gasped. No fuh-king way, he said.

I'd never heard someone say fuck as much as him. Or quite like him. It sounded the way it should sound. Powerful. Dirty. Punctuation to action unbeleived. Born in D.C. Schooled in Alabama and fitted with a drawl like a queen hairdresser two feet in a bottle of Turkey on a Tuesday morning. No fuh-king way, he said. He called the radio station. No fuh-king way, he said. He poured a double J&B and then had another. How in the goddamn hell could that nigger have lost to Roberto fuh-king Durr-and? No fuh-king way.

He woke me at dawn. Cracked the door. Peered in. Here's Johnnnnneeee, he said. He and dad and I drove to Fort Walton to some dive breakfast place he knew. For $1.99 you got two hotcakes, two eggs any way, two pieces of sausage or bacon, toast, coffee or juice. We got three specials. All the paper boxes were empty. Everyone in the place reading the sports section. When the table next to us finished, Lionel asked to see the sports sec. He shook it open. No fuh-king way, he said. Dad laughed. Lionel shook while he drank his coffee. Waitress came by. Is everything alright? she said. Honey, do you know who Roberto Durr-and is? Lionel said. Who? she said. See, Lionel said. Who? Who the fuck is Roberto Durr-and? She laughed. I don't know, sugar, you asked me.

Guy next to our table leaned in and asked Lionel if he could keep it clean. He pointed at his kids, no older than me. Sure buddy, sorry about that, he said. You believe this shit, he said, slapping the paper, this fuh-kin beanhead beat our nigger down in Canada last night. The guy got up looked at his kids and said let's go. He put money on the table and looked back at us like we were orangutans eating each other's shit. Waitress came back by. Honey, will you get me a glass of water. She knodded. So here's the goddamn deal, he said. Durr-and got three rounds to Leonard's two. And the other ten are goddamn even. Waitress set the water down. He thanked her and pulled Alka Seltzer from his pocket. Just like the commercial.

He read. He laughed. Listen to this motherfucker, he said. He says when asked if Leonard's the best he's ever fought, cee cee. He does have a heart. That's why he's living. Lionel guffawed. He slapped the table. The plates hopped, rattled. Coffee spilled. He does have a heart. What the fuck does that mean? Goddamn. He folded the sports section in two and slapped his hand with it. No fuh-king way. Ro-ber-do Durr-and, he said. Motherfucker. He looked around. We listened to the people talking. Dishes clattering. Smell the bacon and sausage, the coffee, the butter, the Coppertone, the booze reeking from thirty-somethings all wearing collar upturned Lacoste, mirrored Ray Bans, Weejuns.

THROUGH A CAN DARKLY

2011-07-06T17:08:00.000-07:00

AINT ABEL

2011-07-06T06:27:00.000-07:00

Wylene Hendrix called the police when she saw Caleb Lides dragging a dead deer into the orchard of gnarled peach trees. County forwaded Hendrix' call to DNR and Hendrix told a polite but indifferent woman she'd seen Caleb Lides drag a dead deer into her peach orchard. The lady asked Hendrix if she'd seen Lides kill the deer and Hendrix said no, but she saw Lides with the carcass and he was covered in blood. The lady asked Hendrix to define covered. Hendrix said Lides looked like he'd bathed in the blood. The lady asked if Lides had a weapon and Hendrix said she had seen none, but that didn't mean Lides didn't have one ready-to-hand. The lady said the warden would be over in a half hour. Hendrix said Lides would have the deer butchered out in half the time. The lady said she doubted that. Hendrix said she figured.

An hour later the warden drove up Hendrix' drive and came to the door and knocked and Hendrix came to the door with a beer in her hand. Glad you got here so soon, she said. Warden smiled and asked her to point out where she had seen the deer. Let me get a roadie and I'll be with you in a jif, she said, closing the door in the warden's face.

Hendrix finished the beer and belched and tossed the can in the weeds. She cracked the roadie and drank off half of it in a long pull. Over this ways towards the trees, she said, pointing. I seen Lides over yonder just slick with blood. They walked the orchard and Hendrix pointed out the blood on the ground and the warden knelt and touched it and smelled his fingers. He got to his feet and they walked the orchard and the warden hopscotched a muck of fallen peaches overripen and bursting, the fruit scenting the warm air now a struggle of flies at middday. Look like he left a trail, Hendrix said, tossing her roadie. Shoulda brung me nothern.

The warden stopped and drew his gun and kept Hendrix behind him with his left arm. There under a peach tree sat Lides, blood covered, the doe across his lap, a scattergun on the ground. The doe rest crumpled, gutted deftly from anus to throat, the knifeline a gore soaked scowl made more horrific by the mess of organs drawing flies at Lides' bootheels. Tore the fucker's tongue out, Lides said, holding it up.

Deer aint in season Caleb, the warden said.

Lides smiled slowly. His yellow teeth shone nestled in his clay red face, the deerblood rendering him queer Jim Crow in morbid minstrel show. Flies fixed on his face and crept about his hair. He tossed the tongue and kicked the deer off him and stood. His lap rotten with brown blood. I done ate the heart noways, he said. Best part of the whole damn thing. Everone knowed that. He looked towards his land. Abel down yonder, he said and pointed towards the Lides land and turned slowly and smiled again.

What in samhill you done with your brother, Hendrix said.

Aint nothin at my hand, Wyline, an aint nothin he werent askin for, Lides said.

Son, where's your brother, the warden said.

Told yall, Lides said. He down yonder.

The warden held his gun steady on Lides and got his phone and called the county police and told the dispatcher to send two deputies. The warden walked over to the scattergun and picked it up and broke it and took the shells out and pocketed them.

I with him when he trapped that doe, Lides said. She only a yearling then. He aint have it inem to shoot her and he keep her in the barn. He feed her better than his own self. Say he gone let her go come season and then last night we gone in there to feed her and she get up on her hind leg and beat him to fuckin death with her front feet. Could see brain come all out the front his head. Stomped like a fuckin melon.

Don't that beat all, Hendrix said.

Well this a new one for me, the warden said.

MAYS WELL BE DEAD

2011-07-05T08:41:00.001-07:00

Five pounds of onions in a ten pound grocer's sack. Tried not to look at his hands as he placed them in the bag. Set them carefully. Loss four fingers in a combine, he said without looking our way. Onion roots wound from knots as frazzled wire. Best onuns inna world, he said. Won messa wards. Sweet as grandbaby's tear. Salt stained his USA ballcap, mountain range of salt jagged over the screeching eagle and across Old Glory. He leapt out the truck bed and stood there with the sack. Beyond the truck the train tracks and upon them a lone boxcar, CSX, rusted clay red. Loblolly pines thereafter. A hawk above. Dove nestled on telephone wire.

Pile of onions loose in the truck bed. Tall jars set tight in Coca-Cola crates. Red paint worn pink and logo soft serpentine. Woman set in the cab smoking. Face like shoeleather, fingers fitted with fake nails Dahlonega gold. Saw her scowl in the truck mirror and sip soda from Church's Chicken cup. Man folded the grocer's bag mouth over close and handed it over. His dog yawned.

Vidalia Indians t-shirt had the sleeves cut-off and his arms red as hotlinks. Mockingbird swept over his dog. Scarred pit tethered to a spike driven in the dust. The pit blinked as the bird feathered over him. Used to shoot them with uh pellet gun, the man said. Kilt mess of them. Now they driven Duff here docile. He bend like a willer tree nowdays. The man pet the dog and waved his arms at the mockingbird and shooed him. Tractor trailers roared by.

See yall got five pound at three dollar pound, the man said. He closed his eyes and opened them wide. Eyes faded Ford pickup blue. That fifteen dollars. He folded the bills and put them in a cigar box on the truck bed. The box was tacked shut. Yall need nothin else? Muscadine wine? Watermelon rind pickle? We shook our heads.

He looked at the back of the car. Yall from Atlanta. Use to watch them Falcons. Loss five hunnert on them when they lose to Dallas that year. Danny White was a killer weren't he? Loss my house and car to that game an end up livin inna church buildin downere Coffee County. Wasp nest hanged from rafters size of a hay bale. Set there hummin dayn ight. Dreamt bout bustin it two and how the whole county'd be torn part by them wasps. The mockingbird drove between us and hissed. Get him Duff, the man screamed. Goddamn. Get up and do somethin. Mays well be dead.

1976

2011-07-02T10:28:00.000-07:00

You want what? Told him I wanted snails. He laughed. Asked if I wanted frog legs and shrimps too because I'd eaten mess of both night before. Throw turtle soup in there, he said. Might is Goddamn well. Waiter asked if we wanted juice and coffee and he said no thanks. Double Bloody Mary for grandad and V-8 for me. He looked at me while he ordered. Two escargot, few orders frog legs, two shrimp cocktails, big bowl of turtle soup. Extra horseradish and lemons for the shrimp. No word from the waiter. Just a nod. Grandad fired up a Dutch Masters after he finished the Bloody Mary. He dug his thick fingers into the red stained glass and picked the pepperoncini out and bit into it and it exploded. He puffed on his cigar and exhaled. I ate frogs and shrimp and snails in a cloud of cigar smoke. Eveyone ate quietly and chatted softly and smoked in the dining room.

Midday after nine holes he wheeled the golf cart into the club lot. Uncle Gordon'd thrown his nine iron. Twice. Saw gators sunning on green. Egret in ponds. Lot of commotion at the clubhouse lagoon. Olympic hopeful svelte in black speedo and Mark Spitz mustache diving for balls. He dove soudlessly. No splash. No movement. Surfaced at bank with hands full of Titleists. Kept it up for half hour until ten foot gator got him. Tore his leg off at the knee. In shock he walked right out the pond and added blaze orange balls to the pile blood rushing from the mangled thigh. Club security found his gator later that night. Shined and shot him in the head with a deer rifle. Jacksonville paper ran a page two spread on it. Saw paper laying on the clubhouse table while a black man buffed spikes.

At the pool women read Benchley. Men read Woodward and Berstein. Crosstalk. Someone killed a thresher shark that morning. Caught at dawn on a surfcaster and landed it. Left thrashing on the sand to die. Not going to let a shark scare us out the water, grandad said. We floated in the ocean. Water green translucent. Hills and valleys and mountain range of water. We bobbed in waves. Grandad wore his club polo into the ocean. Opened and closed like a parasol, phospherescent there in the lime green water. He smoked his Dutch Masters. We listened to waves break on the shore. Listened to gulls. Listened to pelicans dive and splash and splash out the water and into the air, silvery fish in the Vs of their beaks. Big supper tonight, Sturt, he said. Big supper. Wave gained and rose and took us under. Didn't see it coming. Felt his hands in the foam. White and green. Felt them coming and he got my ankle and then my arm and I coughed and seawater came out my mouth and nostrils. He still had his cigar in him mouth. Looked like a big dead brown bug.

Bluegrass played. There was a watermelon eating contest. Seed spitting contest. Dad and Lawrence drank High Life out of pony bottles and bitched about Gerald Ford. Dad said Carter was too smart and too idealistic to be president. Said he'd run the country into the goddamn ground. Lawrence was trying to quit smoking. He dipped Copenhagen instead. Dad ribbed him. A rich jew lawyer from Goddamn Baltimore dipping snuff, he said. Lawrence let me have some of his beer. Tastes like apple juice doesn't it kiddo? Shit no it didn't.

There was crab and lobster and oysters and clams. There were great platters of fried and broiled fish and cauldrons of drawn butter and grated horseradish and tartar sauce. We sat at the bar and a black man shucked oysters for us and tossed them on trays loaded with ice and set horseradish and ketchup and lemons and Rooster hot sauce in front of us. Grandad held one to his lips. Same way I drank out your mother's shoe on her wedding night, he said. Drank a glass of Dom out her shoe just like this. He made no sound as he let the oyster slide from the shell over his lips and into his mouth. He looked at me. He chewed. He sighed. Sun set slowly over the ocean. Looked like an expensive cocktail. Waves rolled in. Tide ran out. Bluegrass played. Lawrence's wife Renee said Benchley's The Island wasn't as good as Jaws. No one listened to Renee. She'd had her body weight in Rose.

Grandad went walking the beach by himself after supper. He came up on us hollering. C'mon Sturt. Come with me. He took my hand and picked me up and put me on his shoulders and we went up the beach and the sun had fully set. Could still hear the Bluegrass. See that, he said. Massive seaturtle had dug her nest and was laying her eggs. She was big as a VW Bug. We stood and watched. Fireworks went up over the ocean. Sky bloomed blue and red and white. Fireworks boomed once and twice and three times and white tendrils shook crackling from the sky and vanished as shooting stars.

We watched the seaturtle scuttle slowly back into the ocean and reamained watching her until she was gone. Grandad lit a cigar and we headed back to the rooms. My clothes stuck to me. We heard frogs croaking. Katydids in the palms. Room felt like a meat locker compared to outside. I turned the TV on. Watched Julia Child cook le grand aioli. Grandad told dad and Lawrence about the turtle. Grandad told dad about how many raw oysters I put down at dinner.

Renee explained The Island's plot to mom. I heard her say "pirates." Pirates, I said. I stopped watching Julia Child. Her voice drives me fucking crazy, grandad said. Daddy, mom said. She shook her finger at him. Mom said it wasn't pirates like I liked. She looked at Renee and rolled her eyes. He loves pirates, honey. I want to be one, I said. No you don't, sugar, she said. They are dispicable people. They're killers and theives. They do terrible things. Awful things. I want to be one, I said. Grandad laughed and shook his head and lit a cigar.

SHOE

2011-06-29T07:21:00.000-07:00

Dorey Wilkens died a few weeks ago. I went to her funeral. She lived at the end of Gaskill near Carroll Street. Everybody on Gaskill knew her. They called her Do-ray. They called her The Old Lady That Lived in The Shoe. And then for short they called her Shoe. She had seven children and seventeen grandchildren. Six of the seven children were in the state pen when she died. One on death row in Jackson.

Her two daughters commited murder. Dolene kill her husband Petey Sty with a butcher knife. She cut his fingers off first to let him know what was coming and then she hit him square in the head. There were so many cops on Gaskill that night you couldn't even step foot on that street. Dolene's younger sister Mabelene killed her boyfriend D'Andruw. She shot him three times with a Remington 870 pump shotgun. It was July Four and noone even noticed the gunfire. Thought it fireworks. D'Andruw bled out all over the kitchen lino before the cops got there. Said Mabelene set there at the kitchen table drinking a beer filin her nails, bare feet danglin in his blood.

Four sons, Prentice Wilkens Sr., Prentice Wilkens Jr., Horace and Rufus Wilkens, committed armed robbery, possession/distribution illegal substance (methamphetamine), double homicide respectively. Prentice Elder and Younger rob the Save Rite on Atlanta Street over by the zoo. Manager cowboy it and wouldn't give them the money and Prentice Elder opened his raincoat and pulled out a goddamn antique burp gun and sprayed the place. Didn't kill noone, but fucked up the merch pretty good. Cowboy manager got concussed. When Elder open fire he fell into the register and knock himself out. Horace, he known as Bad Boy round town. Bad Boy dealt crank for years and then once dealt crank to undercover. He busted the dude's face open with brass knucks before they cuff him. So add assualting an officer to that too. Rufus "Red" AKA "Lil Boy" Wilkens killed two women with hedge trimmers and put them in the trunk of his Ford Tempo and lit it on fire. Only their teeth could ID them. Lil Boy on death row in Jackson.

Pastor Toby gave good sermon. Everyone cried. Even the ones in orange jumpsuits and leg shackles. When it was over Pastor Toby invited everyone to stay on the grounds for lunch and he grilled up hotdogs and Kroger Old Fashioned Loaf and served them on plain white bread with mustard and ketchup. He had big bags of Save Rite cheese doodles and a cooler full of strawberry Kool-Aid. Runt and I stood out in front of the church eating and talking and looking at Shoe's kids. Runt told me he'd painted the doors kelly green and put duct tape on them in the shape of cruciform to get the outline. Said he did that 20 years ago. He remember Toby wanted to give him ten dollars but he said that was part of his "good works." He laughed about it.

Shit I need somethin get me into the big house up ways, he said.

We looked at the kids and ate.

You see them, he said. Girls look sight meaner than the boys. Lookit Dolene. She look like a pit bull with a wasp nest stuck up its ass. Whoo wee.

We laughed. But they were scary looking. They looked a lot older than they were. Lots of lines on their faces. Lots of gray hair. Lots of tattoos. They had those teardrop tattoos under their eyes. The boys had the cobwebs on their elbows. That means something, Runt said, but I done forgot it.

There Mabelene. Shit give me chills. I memeber that night. She shot poor boy with slugs and put holes in him. Like snake holes. I member peekin in the house an seein him lay there with them black holes in him. All the blood done bled out. Shit give me chills.

I can't tell the boys apart, I said.

Po lease cant neither. Ever time they get a tip about it bein so and so Wilkens son they rest the wrong one. Figger it out when they print em. Aint that some ass backwards bullshit.

Everybody was smoking. There was cigarette smoke everywhere. Pastor Toby came up to Runt and asked if he could get a light.

Aint got no lighter, Runt said. Gave it up years ago.

Lighting cigarettes? Pastor Toby said.

Yessir, if that the way you want to say it, Runt said.

Pastor Toby smiled at me and elbowed me in the ribs and laughed this wheezing laugh that made him sound terrible. He went all red in the face and started coughing.

I look round at all the children and I know Do-Ray at peace, he said.

She in a better place, Runt said.

Do-Ray was good people, Toby said. But these children and their children?

Toby shook his head.

They aint good, Runt said.

They good at bein bad I known that, Toby said. They worry Do-Ray so much she come to me and ask if God take people no more. If God just pick them up and take them up to him. She said she ask Dolene such and she said Dolene tell her Mama I can send you to Him. I can send you to him with a bullet. Toby sighed and held his thumb and pinkie to his head. They on the phone thing at the jail when she tell her that.

Toby fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a matchbook and lit his cigarette and dragged on it and looked at the front of the church.

Still look good, Runt, he said. But them crosses crooked ways you think? Shoulda never given you no money for that. Toby laughed and wheezed and elbowed me in the ribs, his teeth big and yellow and like a dog's.

IT'S TIME

2011-06-27T14:13:00.000-07:00

THE PIGS ARE READY TO EAT

2011-06-27T14:04:00.000-07:00

HOT ENUFF FOR YA

2011-06-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

I'm only gone be a minnit, guy says. Can smell urinal cake and bleach from outside the heavy steel door. There are near 20 others standing behind me. They're all wearing crocs and Worldwide Sportsman fishing shirts with vented backs. I've got an app for my trail cam, look at it. Shows it to me. Wipes his finger cross the phone's face. Still shots of coons under corn feeders. Still shot of spike buck. Still shot of possum. He's shaking with laughter. Aint it cool. Gone get that spike come September. Guy opens the door. Tol you I only gone be a minnut. He smells like an armadillo dead 12 hours and baked in North Georgia sun.

Never ever want to enter a public restroom at a state park again. Worse than walking into a snuff film in progress. There could be miles of Charmin availible and shit--- slick light brown and yellow shit---the sick kind of shit, would rag every surface. Floor. Wall. Stall. Toilet. Handicap bar. Ceiling. Shit sit the drain. Shit on the mirror. The hot air "clean handz" dispenser. The state park PSAs. Shit negating graffiti. Shit used to make graffiti. Shit flung and flipped and jettisoned. Shit on your hands and shoes. Shit in your nostrils. Shit smell in your clothes. Only gone be a minnut that lasts a lifetime over.

Hike up to the falls is humid as Hanoi but somehow cool and extraordinarily beautiful. Greener than any place I've seen this summer. Maybe since it doesn't rain anymore and the sky is white come noon and Atlanta Journal op-eds constantly revert to McCarthy "Roadism" when sky-is-fallin scenario is dispatched replete with the one question lede I never want to be asked again, even rhetorically, Hot enuff for ya?

At the mid-point there's an artificial shelf turned into a fishing pond and folks sit around with push-button casters and toss scent soaked lures to fish. Stand there for 20 minutes and see no one land a fish. There are hundreds of bullfrog tadpoles on the topwater. They aren't what one pictures when one is asked to picture a tadpole. They aren't small reptillian spermatazoa. They are cock-headed Viagra slime fitted with Nessie tail. What the hell are those, I say. Girl comes walking towards me and is smiling and says, Tadpoles man. You believe that shit? Bullfrog tadpoles. You seen a bullfrog round here? Big as your freakin head. Seen this man las time I here and he had him a bullfrog big as his head in a cage an he walkin towards his truck with it. He gone eat it I guess.

BIG BOY

2011-06-23T07:03:00.000-07:00

BURNT UP ALL TO HELL

2011-06-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

Smoke hung the city square's horseshoe. Smoke draped confederate statue hard right of county courthouse. Could only see his cutlass tip, raised as a dorsal out the smoke. Smoke set heavy about the store windows and street and stood solid and unmoving. Smoke smelt of pine and oak and pecan. Smoke stung eyes and set in throats and clung to clothes as claws. Smoke come up from north Florida, Dee Aubry said. It all them wildfires. Acres pun acres of Okeefenokee burnt all up to hell. She was trying to get me to come look at some war artifact she'd found in the attic. Said it could be a big story for me. Folks say that to me about everything I told her. And she said fine suit yourself. Go on outen the smoke and choke on it for all I care, Chrise. Laughed uneasily and told her I'd be there around eleven. You come for lunch, she said. Told her I didn't plan on it. She said I aint neither but if you're here at eleven you're here at lunchtime. So be it. Hung up the phone and walked out the office door and stood and watched the 18-wheelers bumper to bumper up 16 through town and watched them til I couldn't see them no more and listened to the gears turn over and whine and the engines idling thud and the stench of diesel sour in the air, the smoke not burning off in hot white sun. Not even nine o'clock and pushing 90 degrees.

Dee Aubry's house's near Monroe County line up close to High Falls. It's a small stone house with chimney stacked from Ocmulgee river rock. Big and brown and black and slick. Like turtle shells. Dee's husband Mackey met me at the door and he stood in faded and patched overalls with no shirt underneath and he was slicked with sweat and unshaven several days. Ow ooo ooin, he said. Mackey smiled toothless and took my hand and I could feel the bones in my fingers stressed under his grip. Mackey loss his tongue to Beech Nut, Dee said. If you can't make sense out of nothin he say I'll translate for you. She stood at the stove rolling a knob of butter around cast iron pan. She cut thick slices of meat off a chub of baloney and pressed them sizzling in the pan. She cut six slices of bread off the loaf and set it back in the breadbox. Get the mayonnaise out the fridge sugar, she said. Mackey grabbed jar of Duke's and set it on the counter and sat down at the formica table and lit a Winston and poured himself a glass of tea from a large bottom heavy pitcher. Mint vines torn up and set in the tea and halved lemons floated in it.

Eest ea ooo une eeer ink, Mackey said. Dee flipped the baloney and it sizzled. Hope you drink your tea sweet, she said. We drink it so sweet you can stan a spoon up in it. Mackey got up and got another glass and got a spoon out the drawer and handed it to me. I poured me a glass and stirred with the spoon and Mackey motioned for me to try and stand the spoon up in it and I could tell he was tired of tryin to talk and be understood. Must've been a helluva way to go through your day not bein understood by no one but your wife. I held the spoon in the middle of the tea and sure enough it stood without my help and Mackey laughed like hell. I took a sip and damn if it wasn't sweet. Like liquid sugar and thick as sorghum. It'll make your pulse run like a goddamn greyhound, Dee said. She set plates of fried baloney sandwiches down on the table and went to the cupboard and got a jar of homemade pickles and opened them. Help yourself. These bread n butter pickles. Can't stand dill pickles. Hope you like them. They were sweet as the tea and had a little heat to them from a finger pepper twisted about the jar. Baloney was crunchy and greasy and good between the sweet doughy white bread and heavy slather of mayonnaise.

Dee went into the den and came back out with what looked like a tablecloth and a leather book like a Bible. She unfolded the tablecloth. This' confederate battle flag, she said. A real one. Found it when we took down beaded board in the attic to put up new insulation. When Shermun come through on his march to the sea he burnt up everythin. Only houses he spare was Masonic residence. Daddy was a Mason. His daddy and his daddy's daddy was Mason. Story goes that Shermun sent killin crew over High Falls way and daddy met them out front with a torch. Said he aint gone let them burn his house an if they demand as much said most they could do was let him light it up his own damn self. An he meant it. Officer saw his Masonic ring and he give him some damn handshake and daddy return it and they ride off from where they came. But they run up on the Creeks and they open the whoopass can on em and the river run red with yankee blood. That's how come they call it Towaliga River. Towaliga's Creek for roasted scalp. Story goes that county folk fleein see them Creeks and they weighed down with yankee scalps hangin from they belts like squirrel pelts, blood runnin off em.

So them boys never return to Shermun and he go to see bout it his own self. When he come up on the home, daddy inside feedin johnny reb. He kilt off the last of his chickens and they had a big spread for the boys and then Death Himself ride up. Daddy get them up in the attic an try to hide em from Shermun and they watch out the tiny winder yonder at daddy and Death Himself parlay and see them shake on it and see Shermun's men come in and they dragged them out the attic like coons from they hollow log and beat them to death with the butts of their rifles and left them in the house to bleed out all over the floor. Said they aint waste no lead on them rebs. Story goes that daddy swore up an down Shermun had has blues decorated with the bleached out brain boxes of children and wore bracelets of teeth and vertebrae and cut his beard in angles and points as Satan Himself and left his hair to its own, wild and askew as his nature. Daddy said he smelt sour of blood and feces and his eyes jump round in his noggin like marbles.

Dee held up her daddy's journal. Thick leather bound book scarred by time. She held the flag up. Guess them boys aint want them to get the flag. You get the flag you get the confederacy I reckon. Aint that like that ol game of capture the flag. Eeeee ehhhhhh iiiiii, Mackey said and he smiled big and wide till his gums black like a dog's pushed out over his thin dry lips. Mackey'd put his Winston out in his last bite of sandwich and it'd burned a hole through the bread. Dee sucked her teeth. You like them pickles. Don't look like you even touched one. She shook a Winston from the pack and lit it and dragged on it and blew smoke all over the table. Aint gone even ask if yall mind if I smoke. It my house.

KT

2011-06-16T06:56:00.000-07:00

Five of nine. Only folks in Potts Liquors were drunks either still drunk or slowly sobering or riding line between the two with panache languid and vaguely vampiric. Stourley Waits was still drunk. He pulled one fifth and then another and looked at the labels and then checked his wallet and then replaced a fifth and then another. He looked down. There a row of bottles, their shoulders heavy with gray dust. He picked one up. Old Crow. He blew on its shoulder. Dust didn't move. Dragged a finger through it. Picked up in a single slab of ash. He looked around. Black man ran an old vacuum over short-haired emerald green carpet. Black man whistled so loudly Stourley heard him over the vacuum. Stourley stood looking at the black man until he finished. When he looked up from the carpet he smiled and slapped his large hands together and acted like he was going to run over to Stourley. What you need partner, he said. You need some help. Anything I can do, let me know.

You keep KT in the house, Stourley said.

The man scratched his hairless chin and looked up at the lights and whistled.

Kay tee, the man said.

Uh huh, Stourley said.

Can't say I done heard of it now, the man said. Can't say I have. What is it? It vodka?

Nosir, Stourley said.

The man stood and looked back into the light and Stourley looked at his right eye and realized he was blind in that eye as it looked all scattered and queer. A wanderin and hanged ghost like an egg poached and fixin to set. He tried to look away and not stare at it and before he could stop himself he was speaking his mind.

What the hell happen to your eye mister, Stourley said.

Oh, that a long time ago, the man said.

Well what happen? Aint mean to be impolite, Stourley said.

Long time ago, the man said chuckling a little. He put his hands out like he holdin a pole and jerk it back hard.

Fishin Lake West Point, the man said. Get a strike somethin hard and set the hook on that fish and crankbait came flyin out the water and damn if it aint stick in my eye hard.

Godamighty, Stourley said. Must've hurt like a sumbitch.

Not a memory I like to dwell on, the man said.

Sorry, Stourley said. I jus though I ask. Sorry now. I jus come in to get some KT.

Is all right now, the man said. I try to help but I aint known what it is. Is it gin? the man asked.

Nosir, Storley said.

It liquer? the man asked.

Do what now, Storley said.

Liquer, the man said. It like syrupy somethin with bite on the back. The ladies love the liquer. Jus love it.

Nothin like that, Stourley said. Magine it jus whiskey.

Damn that a new one on me, the man said. Kay tee. Mus be some small-batch whiskey nowdays. Fancy label onnit. Can't say I heard of it. Not at all.

Naw, is old, Stourley said. Been round a long time.

I been round a long time too, the man said. An can't say I heard of it. What it taste like?

Like Jimmy Beam comin back up, Stourley said.

Goddam, the man said. That aint somethin I ever seek out. Here I is thinkin it somethin new and with that name kay tee it sound like somethin good for you to sip on. Sound green you hear me. An now you say it taste like upchuck.

Bein straight with you, Stourley said.

The black man walked over to the whiskey aisle and walked from left to right and dragged his index finger across the waists of all the bottles at the top and then at the middle and he got down on a knee and went slowly through the bottles and then grabbed one and held it up.

Fightin Cock, he said. You ever drank this?

Nosir, Stourley said.

It'll bend yo ass sideways, he said. Bad ol shit.

He put it back on the shelf and picked up a bottle of Kentucky Tavern.

Good for you money here, he said. If you can keep it down.

Thas KT, Stourley said.

Aw hell, the man said. You shittin me.

Won't shit you, Stourley said. But I want a handle. Not a fifth.

We aint got handles of kay tee, the man said, laughin.

Why aint you? Got handles of Old Crow and Fightin Cock and Ol Grand Dad, Stourley said.

Don't think they make em, the man said.

Why not? Stourley said.

Ever think maybe a fifth's all you gone need, the man said.

It aint, Stourley said. I need a handle. I came in here to buy a handle.

Why aint you buy two fifths then, the man said.

Cause then I could buy me a handle of Ol Grand Dad for that money, Stourley said.

I feel you, the man said.

Aint make no sense, Stourley said.

Both men looked around the store. It was quiet and a muzak version of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" played. An old woman pushed a cart loaded with handles of Fleischmann's Gin. It said "charcoal filtered" on the label. She stopped at the men and looked up at them. Her hair was pulled back into a greasy gray knot and snot hung from her nostrils in thin yellow fangs.

Yall got pickles, she said.

We have olives, the man said.

I aint ask bout olives, she said. I asked bout pickles.

No mam, the man said. But we do have olives.

I aint ask bout no olives, she said. I asked bout pickles.

The woman looked at the black man. She stared at his eye.

What in the hell happen to your eye? she asked.

Stourley laughed. Stourley looked at her and then looked at the cart and all the handles of gin.

How much a handle of that gin cost? Stourley asked.

Six eighty-nine, she said.

Thas for one handle, Stourley said.

Naw it for twenty, she said laughing. You a bit dense aint you?

The black man laughed.

What you gone do with pickles anyhow? Stourley asked.

Garnish, the woman said.

For what? Stourley asked.

For a Porterhouse steak, the woman said laughing. For a drink, dimwit. What the hell else you think?

Never heard of no one usin a pickle, Stourley said.

Never heard of no one gettin fucked in the ear neither but it don't mean folks aint done it, she said.

ICKY

2011-06-14T06:56:00.000-07:00

Chip unlatched his USN duffel and shook the contents out. Cans of corn, Vienna sausage, three loaves of Wonder Bread, a jar of extra crunchy JIF, two flashlights, spools of braided line, fifth of Heaven Hill, three cans of Cheerwine; a bag of shake, stems, and seeds, and a corncob pipe large as the one McArthur smoked. He lowered his flashlight beam to the bank and shone the light to the water and whispered to himself. He turned and looked around and looked ahead and looked at me. This got to be it, he said. Look a little differnt in the dark but this got to be it. He turned around and looked at the ranch house no more than twenty yards from where we stood. You know them, I said, pointing at the ranch house. Can't say I do, Chip said. You think it's alright for us to be fishing on their property then? Reckon so longs they don't know bout it, Chip said. Toads croaked hoarse from the reeds. We saw the black splatter of bats zip through the air lit by a moon full and bone white. Chip took a knee and began opening corn cans and tearing Wonder Bread to bits. Time to chum, he said.

I held the flashlight to the water. Chip shook the corn to the water in great arcs and it dribbled into the water and slipped quickly through the water column and we saw nothing. He threw the bits of bread into the water and they floated and bobbed and then slowly sank through the water column lit by the flashlight's yellow beam. Toads croaked. Doesn't look like there's shit here in this cove, I said. Chip looked at me and smiled. You'll take that back when you got a bowed rod with a carp longer than yur leg on the line. You gonna throw them sausages in the water too, I said. Hell no, Chip said. That's my goddamn supper.

Chip smacked the sausages and chased them with glugs of Heaven Hill and followed the whiskey with Cheerwine. He wiped his mouth with his arm and opened his bag of weed and packed the corncob with weed and held it to his mouth and puffed and the bowl cracked and popped like kindling taking fire and he coughed and hacked and I held the beam on his face and he was purple round the gills like he'd tried to hold his breath for ten minutes and keeled over. This' workman's guage, Chip said. Get an ounce of this shit for forty bills. Last me two whole weeks. It burn somethin fierce but it stone you to the bone. He held the pipe out to me. I'm good, I said. You're havin enough fun for the both of us. I held the beam to the water and we both stared out at the lake and didn't say anything for a long time. Toads croaked. We heard dogs barking far off in the distance. Every hour or so we'd hear a gunshot. Some drunk buck firin off a rifle.

When the light began to creep up the horizon blue and then pink, Chip kicked me in the ribs and handed me huge Eagle Claw rod used for saltwater. He looked at me and held his finger to his lips. I sat up and looked around and noticed the flood lights on the ranch house behind us were lit. Chip took a knee and tore Wonder Bread and pulled two fingers of JIF from the jar and worked the bread and JIF together into a ball and fixed it to a huge treble hook. He heaved the bread and JIF ball into the water where he had chummed hours before and let it sink and we both watched as his large flourescent red bobber straightened in the water and he ticked a little line up the reel and stood quiet. Nothing happened. Nothing happened for a long time. Chip handed me the rod and went and got the Heaven Hill and Cheerwine and pulled on the Heaven Hill and chased with the soda. Toads croaked.

Felt a savage tug on the line and the bobber was gone. Chip started laughing. Rod frowns over, line just jumping off the reel. Chip's about as purple under the gills as he was smokin that shitweed. Hold him in the cove, Chip said. Don't let that motherfucker get no more real state. That it. Just like that. Now tug on him. There you go. Reel. Tug again. Yeah he aint enjoyin that treble hook. The carp splashed and his tail was thick and brown and green. Must have been a twenty pounder. I reeled and tugged. I motioned to Chip to hand the rod over. Oh hell no, son, he said. This is your goddamn fish. We heard a shotgun chambered and turned around.

Yall tresspassin, a man in a robe and lizard skin cowboy boots said. He held the shotgun on one and then the other and looked like he'd been up all night on trucker speed. His silvery hair was cut in a wide mohawk and he had a huge chaw in his cheek from which he sprayed thin streams of brown spit in our direction. Chip's mouth went slack and he breathed audibly through his mouth. What you got on that pole, boy, he said. I think it's a carp, I said. You think, he said. I think it's a goddamn friend of mine. I think it's Icky. Who, Chip said. The man pointed the shotgun at Chip. He looked down at Chip's hand and at the bottle of Heaven Hill. He motioned with the shotgun. Bring that bottle over here, he said. Chip crept over to the man and held the bottle out. Put it on the fuckin ground, he said.

The reel creaked and the carp ran out with line. The man held the gun on Chip with one hand and picked the bottle up and bubbled it three times and then set it on the ground. Toads croaked. You with the pole, he said. Cut your line, he said. Jesus Chrise mister, Chip said. Done taken us all mornin to hook up with a fish. It aint a fish, son, it's a friend of mine. I feed im a flat of fuckin corndogs every goddamn day. The man walked over to me and pulled a pair of nail clippers out his robe pocket and snipped the line. Y'all two get the hell out of here before I call the po lease and tell em I got two fuckwits tresspassed on my property who try and kill a friend of mine, the man said. He picked up the bottle of Heaven Hill and walked over to the duffel and pawed through the mess of cans and picked up the bag of shitweed and Chip's pipe and put it in his pocket. He shucked the shells from the shotgun and picked them up and put them in his pocket. He turned and looked at us, smiling. Y'all ever gotten high with a fish, he said.

PORCHED

2011-06-13T09:33:00.001-07:00

MAYBE GETS YOU THE BIRD

2011-06-08T06:29:00.000-07:00

Never saw the bird, much less the shot. But I pissed myself a little when his gun boomed and then smelled cordite and heard Major Marvin Applewhite's wheezy laughter. Bitch sent off with instruction to Get her girl. Don't even know if one would call this shootin light. Still dark to me. Sky's hazy. Orange. Mostly red. Like blood dribbled in water, legged, dilute. Ride over the marsh with the sun run across the horizon in thin red smear and Bitch chewing herself while Marvin sit quiet behind the wheel, spitting dip into an empty Bojangles cup. Said he hunted snipe since he was 10 years old. Said Alachua County run over with snipe. About like squirrels in Georgia, he says. When he talks his face crawls about itself and undulates damn near reptilian. He's clean shaven. His head shiny and gleaming. Like Yule Brenner in the movie about Moses. His arms move stiffly when he talks. Swear you can see blood running through them. He must sleep with his weights. He's knotted up like a sailboat, run over with line and curve.

We come up on the dock and Bitch leaps out and he grabs the guns and flashlight and we step out on the dock and he stands there and looks at the sunrise and spits dip in his cup. Bitch whines. Marvin shushes her and gives her water from his squeeze bottle. Hold this, he says. I shine the light on him. He breaks the .20 and loads. He checks his boots. He sprays deet all over hisself. You best wet down or you gone get drained all your fucken blood, he says. I spray myself. Enjoy this walk up the dock cause it's last solid ground we gone touch.

At dock's end the ground gives away and we're knee deep in marsh. Bitch sloshes ahead. Marvin whistles to her. She slows. Marvin stops. He listens. He waves me to stop. He whistles. Bitch sloshes ahead. Bugs are in our ears and nostrils and fight to get in our mouths. My feet are wet. I struggle to stand. Bitch whines. Marvin waves me to stop. He rubs a finger of dip into his lip and sucks at it and spits. Sun's still not up. Sky's like blood. Whipporwills sing. Their song warbles and comingles and it sounds as one song and then the song sounds a pulse, the song taut and repeating and the song then drawing up all around it, and then the song thrown out amongst the marsh.

Bitch lunges out the mud and sprints through a run of wiregrass and scampers far ahead. Marvin lets her loose and waves at me to stop. He turns to me and whispers. Now you got to give yourself a reason to shoot. Might not think there's a bird there, flushed out the grass. Might not be. But maybe they is. Maybe. It's maybe you got to lean hard on. Maybe gets you the bird. If you think and feel maybe you best shoot. Maybe got me a heap of birds. Maybe been good to me. Marvin spits lazily and dip runs slow down his chin.

I'm scared of Marvin. Always have been. Calder Watts tell me he killed a man in Gulf County. Said he was tradin beers and shots at some honky tonk one night and this sumbitch down the bar goin off about how he laid pipe to Sue Bob, Marvin's ex-wife, and Marvin never tried to piss out that belly fire. He let it burn on. Calder said he'd never known a man to care what happened to his ex. Most men he known want their ex graveyard dead. But Marvin's approach differ. Calder said he beat the sumbitch in the head with a tire iron, gut him with a K-Bar, and left him for the hogs. Don't doubt it. Marvin never given me a reason to do so.

Here we is, Marvin whispers. He runs, but soft like. He picks up his legs high as if he's high steppin into paint cans and it's not loud like it should be; it just sound wet and slosh a little bit. Bitch so stiff she look like she in full rigor. Tail fed fishbowl of Viagra. Marvin turn to me. I'm out of breath. Hunched over at the knees. He puts his hand on my back. You can eat the whole fucken thing, he says, slowly. Snipe shit before they fly. You roast em head on. That long ass beak run out they face. Splay them snipe guts out on piece of Wonderbread. Suck em up like sketti. Crack they heads open and scoop they brains out. Don't need nothin else but a little catsup. See Bitch. She turn stone. Feel and think maybe. You feel it. Feel like electric shock. Like how you feel when you go and make choice that might could fuck some shit up. Either way you know what I mean.

Ever since Calder told me that story about Marvin feedin that sumbitch to the hogs I can't think of him none other way. Like I see him only set in some assend trailer in Wewahitchka, packin rounds, dip running down his chin, that poor sumbitch out in the swamp eaten down to bone, covered up with turkey vulture. When Marvin's .20 booms I see vultures scatter in black blurs and see that poor sumbitch's ribcage bleached white by the sun and smell the salt and sulfur in the air and that dead smell like a paper mill lit afire. When Marvin turns and looks at me and wheezes loose with laughter I see only his eyes, and even though Bitch is barking and whining like she's caught up in barbwire, I hear only Marvin, and watch his mouth move slow and his dip stained chin roll and his arms pump blood, his eyes sharp and white as he wipes his chin and whispers, Maybe gets you the bird.

IN GOD'S COUNTRY

2011-06-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

Moreen and mom work up the grocery list over cigarettes and Taster's Choice in the breakfast room. Small black and white set with Good Morning America, small transistor in kitchen plays Luther Vandross and Chaka Khan and Diana Ross, plays softly, trickles amongst talk, the television, the morning. Smoke it swirls up around the brass chandelier and blows out over and around Moreen's thick high afro with black pick stuck in it, handle affixed with large tightly wound black fist. When mom leaves the room Moreen softshoes to cabinet and fills her coffee mug with Chivas. She sees me. She puts two fingers to her lips. Shhh. The Chivas neck clinks on the coffee cup lip. Love me some Dionne Warwick, she says.

She always wants a whole chicken. Lard is white and stiff and Moreen scoops it from its hard plastic bucket marked LARD in red and it goes soft and colorless in the big green enamel fryer. Smells like pork. It pops and cracks as it heats. Moreen quarters the chicken quickly and saves the neck and gizzard and heart and liver on a blue willow saucer. This good, chile, cigarettle dangles from lips. She sips her coffee. Chicken from Claxton Joja she says. You known where dat is? I shake my head no. Never heard none of it myself, she says. Had me that grocee bag, chile. I hand her the brown grocery bag. She crushes it in her big black hands and then smooths it back out.

Moreen shakes flour and corn starch into the bag. She shakes Old Bay and oregano and cayenne pepper into the bag. She tightens the bag end. She shakes it hard. She opens it and shakes salt into the bag. Hand me them drumstick, she says. She drops them in the bag and shakes them, her cigarette granny ash. She opens the bag and takes the drumsticks out and holds them to the fat and slips them in and the grease screams and sizzles and heat rolls up out the fryer and it smells like fried chicken just that instant there, the entire kitchen, even with all the other smells, cigarettes and coffee and the house itself with sweat and flowers and soap and people, it still smells rich and thick of chicken frying.

She softshoes to the cabinet and fills her mug full of Chivas. I can smell it on her when she leans down into my face and says, Chile now you gone do wings n thighs, her eyes big and like micah. I shake the wings and thighs in the bag and put them in the fat and we watch them turn brown and she pulls them from the pot and sets them on the wire rack and dusts them with Old Bay. She looks at me and sees me looking at the chicken and she hands me a drumstick and says, that all you gone get. Its skin cracks when I bite into it and it's spicy and fatty and it makes my lips tingle. She grabs a drumstick too and starts eating and then says, Get me dat presha cooka out the bottom draw, and she put the neck and gizzard and heart and liver in it and pour can Campbells beef broth over it and tighten the lid and set it on. We gone go watch deh pichas, she says. We gone go watch dem while theys cook.

We watch General Hospital and she drinks Chivas and smokes and when it's over she goes into the kitchen and hits the valve and the pressure cooker blows off steam and she waits til it cools and she pulls the guts from the pot and puts them on a plate. Get over heh chile, she says. Moreen shakes hot sauce on them and gives me a piece of gizzard and heart and watches me while I chew them. Dat what dey et in God's country, she says. Streeta gold, sky of blue. She chews meat off the neck and swallows and drags on her cigarette and sips Chivas from the mug.

ANOTHER ONE FOR DESSERT

2011-06-04T09:01:00.001-07:00

HELP WANTED

2011-06-03T08:41:00.000-07:00

Carson Dobe been a sod farmer all his life. His daddy and his daddy’s daddy were sod farmers. Part of pioneer families here in Huber. Come late November he run a small classified ad in weekly newspaper under HELP WANTED. Call on bird hunters specifically. But says any hunter with good eye’ll do. Dobe’s got a goose problem. Had one since he start farming sod. He used to keep it in check with an old Remington pump but his sight’s gone far south. Cataracts and whatnot. So now he stir pot searchin for “local talent.” No money involved. Just love of the sport. Good morning’s shootin. About all.

Chip Stanse come into the paper office Wednesday morning after paper printed and sent out and he slam the classified section down on the counter and there’s Dobe’s ad circled in red marker and Stanse put a dirty finger on it and says, Me and you got shootin to do.

Stanse he never struck me as a sportsman. Not that he don’t hunt and fish as day is long. His methods? Rather unsavory. Been brought too many blurry Polaroids of him and the new “county record” buck out of goddamn season too many times. Seen too many stringers full of giant largemouth look dynamited rather than brought to hand honestly. And that don’t even include fox, coon, coyote pelts he got coverin ever single living surface he come into contact with. But I shook on it and walked down the way to H&H Hardware and bought two boxes three inch steel and cleaned my gun that night and met him in the Beulah Baptist parking lot at dawn. I endured the ride and the pages torn from Oui and Juggs and scotch-taped to the El Camino dash and glove and the floorboard covered up with crushed Natural Lite cans and wads of chaw spat out and stuck to and dried up into black brown knots.

Dobe met us at the gate. Never seen him in flesh before. Tow headed and pink faced and his cheeks thick and high and so fleshy his eyes gone to slit and rove red as sow’s. His voice come breathlessly and his lungs cut his speakin short and he come huddled under coughin and then trail off wheezing something terrible and wavin us on. Stanse tell him, Get in the bed. Dobe stood the tailgate and it whined and screeched and he lumber into the back and the El Camino sink down inches from its tire tread and Stanse gas her and she crawl on up ahead, Dobe wheezing and smiling from the back. Dobe struck the cab with his fist and Stanse stopped and Dobe point at a beatup jonboat and me and Stanse get out and wipe the spiderwebs out the boat and put the guns in her and set her on the pond lip. No sun in sight.

Come right out ways north here, Dobe says, breathing heavy, pointing his fat pink hand to treeline. Get up close to treeline and you’ll tear them sumbitches apart. Stanse broke the double barrel and loaded it. He popped the plug out his .870 and ran five shells up its gut. I loaded the Browning, checked my calls. Stanse set the jonboat to water and sit in the bow and set his guns around him and I got in and pushed off with the gun stock and we drift out into the pond, Dobe standing there on the bank smiling and wheezing. Stanse grab his .870 and row with the stock. Row us crossways the pond slow and then flush up flat with the treeline.

This no limit shootin, Stanse says. Dobe done declare them nuisance. We kill as many as we hit. Stanse shove a wad of chaw in his mouth and chew over it slow like a cow.

We set in the boat and watch our breath roll out and Stanse look at me and says, You gone blow that fucken call. So I blow into it and got it rollin well and it sound like four or five Cans grabbassin around the water and by His grace response come hoarse and chopped and awkward from away, that warbling honking as a billon bike horns bein squeezed on. Stanse point his twin barrels up treeline and we see them comin fanned and scattered in jagged V and wide and thick in formation and Stanse fires through the bald trees and it’s louder than it seems the doublegun should sound and there a mist, faint red mist like quick dead dew spittin from clouds. Dogs all about Huber bark. Crows startle from treetops and squawk and drift out from above and settle beyond the pond. Explosion of feathers. Black and white and grey and they fill the air and fall. Drift to water and rest and float. Little Brim strike them like they bugs. Two geese thud into the boat. Another drops at stern, its head blown to the wind, body poundin roundabout, feet twitching.

What are you shootin, I yell at Stanse.

He smiles at me. Buckshot. Double aught. Bring the mist don’t it.

I point at the dead Cans in the boat. You gonna eat these.

Stanse frowns. Spits. Oh fucken hell no. They eat up worse than hog liver. Spose we give em to the niggers.

MEMORIALIZED_02

2011-06-03T06:10:00.000-07:00

LIKE HE NEVER DONE DID

2011-06-01T07:00:00.001-07:00

Shawn wipes his buck knife on his jeans and looks at me and says Daddy used to hang deer out open like this cause it sweeten up the meat. Seem wrong. Dead thing tied up and run a tree. Guts knocked clean out and lay open for flies to fester in. But Mabel, she love it. She love anything Shawn say or do and she got right up close on that dead deer while he run his knife from pooter to rooter. She pointin out parts and parts of parts and Shawn tellin her what they is all while sippin hard on near gone pint Kentucky Tavern.

Jake’s .30-.30 lay on the sedan trunk. All Shawn got left of his brother since Wichita twister tore him from his truck and set him down mile from state highway to farm pond grave. Jake was on the way back from his high school graduation. He was still in his gown when the farmer found him. Shawn moved east quick as crow flies. Aint spoken to his folks since then. Ever time we see tornado on the teevee he get up and go to the kitchen and start to pacin and soakin in drink.

When they pull in that afternoon, trunk open, deer wrap up in painters tarp, I never known Mabel smile so big. She says I shot supper. Shawn shrugs and says he let her pull the trigger. He stand there scrapin leaves off his boots. She got Boonie Bear in her hand and blood streaked on her pink parka. Blood stainin her hands and settled into her nails and cuticles and blood on her cheeks and wisps of red in her blond hair and there Shawn scrapin leaves off his boots. There's blood heavy and rollin in the tarp and there's blood in the trunk, thick and standin. I press down on the felt liner of the trunk and it come half inch up my finger brownish red and smellin of death. And there's that deer's face and its tongue twist out side of its snout and its eyes black and dead and empty. How we gone get all this blood out my trunk I say. Shawn shrugs and coughs and sips his pint. I shot supper, Mabel yells, smilin, arms and hands in a slow pantomime of rifle fire.

Least our problems. Shawn been collectin severance since he lost his job from city police. Failed piss test three times. Chief took him off patrol and set him at a desk and that just make him drink more. He come in stinkin like a bottle. Sometime too drunk to drive to work so he walk. Finally had enough of that shit. His pay bout dried up. When it rains it pours I reckon. Cause here I lose my job drivin Morgantown school bus four weeks ago to the day. Thank the Jesus we got good people round us and they take care. They known hard times. No strangers to it. And they share some deer meat and dry beans and rice with us. But it aint last. Not with Mabel it don't.

So here Shawn take to huntin. He aint never been much a hunter. Cant say I member last thing he kilt. He borrow money from big Lester Robbins two door down to buy hisself some shells and some of them handwarmers and he start huntin Plemmons land bout hour north of here. Tommy Plemmons he good people. I even went steady with Lake Plemmons in high school. Lake’s Tommy’s little brother. He out in Afghanistan fightin war on terror now. He a green beret. Tommy must be proud of im.

Lester start comin over ever mornin sayin When Shawn gone pay me back my twenty bills. An I says You gone have to take that up with him. I act like I aint known of it. An he says a few weeks later, You tell im I gone take it out his ass if he aint pay me within the day. Next mornin Shawn go out the front door and there a big ass pile of human bein shit on the doorstep. Freshly goddam laid. You aint smelt nothin worse til you smelt human bein shit outside tollet water. I never known how bad it could smell. I tell Shawn he gone have to sell somethin to pay Lester back for them .30-.30 shells cause we caint have no human bein shit on our doorstep.

Shawn pawned his daddy's .38 and paid Lester back and bought a manual meat grinder and a bag of dry corn and some more shells at Walmart. Mabel help him cube up the shoulder and run it through the grinder and season it with McCormick Season All and seal it in big thick gallon sized Ziploc freezer bags. She write SHOULDER on the bag in black magic marker and write 11-12-06 below it. Mabel says This gone be for sketti. And she point at another bag of backstrap and she says This gone be for steak. Shawn smilin and puttin up the heart and the liver and the tongue. He says if you cut all them pieces up and mix em with oats and fry em they taste real good. It smell about like what Lester Robbins shit does, so I leave em to him.

Counter full of Ziploc bags and they labels and dates and the deep red meat and organs inside them. Mabel done turned all the raw meat into breakfasts and lunches and suppers and when she set down with grama's old chipped Service Merchandise tea service and have herself a tea party with Boonie Bear that afternoon she tell Boonie Bear he gone eat like he never done did. All on count of Uncle Jake’s gun. Daddy’s brother who up above shinin down on all four us from ways up there on in Heaven.

[Photo by the extraordinary Foster Huntington; used with permission.]

More Mr Huntington: http://restlesstransplant.blogspot.com/
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ANNIES

2011-05-28T09:05:00.000-07:00

Outside makes the place look like a soup kitchen. Five or six employees without aprons leaning on pickups, talking, smoking, staring. Crows hopping phone pole to phone pole. Few cars driving by. Guess it's the odd hour. After lunch. Before dinner. Guess it could of just been Luverne Alabama. May as well be after lunch before damn dinner for the whole of the town. Not much of not much happening. Figure not much of not much status quo. Those around chiseled stoic and damn zen kind of quiet and very much content with contentlessness. Men mumble. Cigarettes are lit one off the other. Crows fly down an peck at spent butts thinking they're food and then startle off. 18-wheeler roars by.

Inside place is dimly lit. Smells like grease and pine sol. Tables a mix of industrial grade and what looks like pews pulled out of defunct churches. Place settings set. Bruce's Hot Pepper Sauce. Louisana Hot Sauce. Napkin holders fixed with Bible verses. Carved into table: YE MUST BE BORN AGAIN. Lady wearing hairnet, mu-mu and nurse's shoes meets us at the door with two menus and two pieces of paper. Paper handwritten menu. Meat n three. There's hamburger steak, country-fried steak, fried chicken, meatloaf. Look at vegetable list. Ask her if they put sugar in their collards. This bama aint it? she says. I take that as a yes.

Printed menu shows appetizers. Fried okra, fried pickled okra. Fried cauliflower and mushrooms and onions and cheese. Fried potatoes. Fried corn. Fried rib tips served with Ranch dressing.

She brings us our tea. It's quiet in there. Yellow oil skin drapes. Sun shines hard through them. Floor laid out in long searching shadows. Hear oil roll. Hear pans clatter. In ten minutes time three boys come in looking for "Heather Mae." They all wear BAMA hats with fishing hook clips. They all dip. They all look shy and pained to ask for "Heather Mae." Heather Mae must be one hot piece of ass. Or a meth pusher.

County-fried steak---white gravy what you wanted right, she says. I nod. Taste the collards. They're sweetened like tea for chrissakes. Steak crunches when cut. It sighs. Steam rolls out. Pew squeaks while I chew. Boy Number Four comes through the door. Same getup. Asks for "Heather Mae." I'll wait, he says. He sits in a pew. Flips an Annie's Country Kitchen menu over and starts doodling on it. Hear men talking outside. Mumbling. Laughing. Crows caw. An 18-wheeler roars by.

Ask lady if she's Annie. Aint er, she says. Is Annie here, I say. Nosuh, she says. Is she going to be here, I say. Nosuh, she says. Figure Annie's dead. Look at the photos of the woman on the wall. Point to em. Is this Annie, I say. Aint er, she says. Get up to pay. Walk by Boy Number Four. He's doodled baroque goddam dragsters and massive largemouth bass and myriad dip cans in three dimensions on the menu. He's written ROLL DAMN TIDE across the top in goofy bubble letters. Pat him on the shoulder. You ever met Annie, I say. Ann who, he says. You got somethin on your face, I say. He wipes his face. Did I get to it, he says. No, it's still there. Oh, this, he says. Aw hell, this heres a tattoo mister.

SET IN STAND

2011-05-27T07:59:00.000-07:00

Had a buddy who'd count from one til he cant count no more soon as he in stand. Sun come up an he stuck on if he aint counted one thousand one hunnert fifty two or fifty three an he come back on it and said all hell with it an just take it from the top. No shit. Some buddies go through they billfolds or figger how much pussy they got in their life. Aint got much so that game end right quick like. How interestin is your goddam license anyhow? Not very I reckon. Me I always try and set myself fixed on my surroundins. What around me an under me and out in front of me. There this one ladder stan we got on the proptee an come rut all them trees across pond way are lit fire an they mirror in the pond an run it all sort of color across the water an if wind pick up it roll out orange an red an brown an it hard to do much else but sit an watch that water roll. May as well, cause bucks aint move in that wind no how.

But when it cold, real cold, come November or December, an you set in stand and not movin an worried bout even your breath keepin you out the hunt an you stare a path round you so hard it wonder the ground not lit fire itself, you begin to think on thing you aint never thought on. Like what relatives look like in they caskets. Aint lyin. Sick morbid shit. Folk been dead ten damn years. Like wonder if that suit still held up or if them pearls lay still round that neck or if they all but bone now or worse, like gone, just nothin but nothin. Aint even dust. An then turn the corner an you find your mind settle on hamburgers. Or steak. Or hamburger steak. Or like what kind gravy works best on chicken fried steak --- white or brown? Or what kind gravy works best on lard biscuits --- sausage or red eye? When you aint done nothin but set in stand since comin dawn an not moved so much as to free a fart you find your mind aint but the craziest bitch on wheels you ever borne witness to.

You set there an the slightest fucken sound, could be jus a grey squirrel, an it sound like the sky done fell. No time worry bout that see as you thinkin about what Polly Sue Honeypot said as she brought to brink first six times you stick your finger in the levee. Or maybe it done moved far past the flesh, even so far as the most profound and re leavin shit session you ever enjoyed. Maybe it about planets or stars or moons. Constellations. Brightest stars you ever seen. Blackest night you ever set under. Brighest fullest moon shot out the sky. Maybe it questions of conscience. Would you kill a man if you had to? Could you kill a man if you had to? If you killed a man and it was an accident, what would you do? Things like such. An then maybe you hear somethin an you lookin for them horns or listenin for them grunts and you aint heard neither and your heart poundin a hammer under them Sears Roebuck coveralls and then you get Polly Sue Honeypot's 'oh gee beh gee zus' or 'jim in eee criskets' tween them two froze ears or you smell two day old Maxwell House in the pan with that hambone and you know then what the best goddam gravy for lard biscuits is. No mind for that buck and his bidness. He show himself when he gooden ready anyhow.

WEST TX WHATABURGER

2011-05-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

ANYTHING THAT'LL BITE

2011-05-24T07:19:00.000-07:00

He'd found the Packard at an old Fayette County junkyard. Floorboards rusted through. Rats living in the doors. Windshield spider-webbed in smash. Took him better part of three years to fix it up. Freshly painted primer gray and rigged with a trailer to scoot his jonboat. Sounded like a Clydesdale dragging a piano up a gravel road. But it got us where we needed to go.

Off Roosevelt HWY. There in Red Oak. Small bait n tackle shop. Red neon flickers on and off: LIVE BAIT. Cowbells rattle on the door. Inside sounds like crickets. Smells like dirt. Proprietor huge black man in faded Liberty overalls. Must've weighed all of 450. What yall need? he said. What yall fishin fo? Anything that'll bite, Papa says. We need some minners n crickets. Proprietor pulls sack of Beech Nut out his bib and fills his cheek. Fishes minnows from a tank behind him. Shakes crickets into a wire net tube.

Papa picks up spool of eight pound test and spool of 10. You got livers, he says. Sho do, proprietor says. How many yall want? We got one or five pound. Grandad points to the five pound. Six of Nehi Grape, two moon pies, two Planters Peanut Bars, Chic-o-Stick, Lance crackers, few Dutch Masters cigars. Proprietor rings it up on battered hand calculator. Change made from a Tampa Nugget box. Yall tear em up, proprietor says.

Sun rises. Sky still and blue. Sky pink at its edges. Gonna be hot today, Papa says, puffing a cigar. Its end glows orange. Smoke fills the Packard. It smells good. He turns the radio on. Nothing but static. We're both soaked through by the time we get to the pond. He's already taken his shirt off, rubbed hisself down with Coppertone and Deet. Takes his old metal tacklebox from the backseat and the cooler and sets them in the jonboat and lowers the boat from the trailer with the crank. Throws an oar and two orange lifevests into the boat. Hands me the stringer and basket and the line tied to the bow. Hold on to this now, he says. Gonna pull the car up a little bit.

He rows us out to the far bank. Lined with mimosa. He rigs up a few rods. Hands me a Zebco push-button caster. Throws the cricket tube to me. Shake a cricket out and slide him onto the hook's barb. He wiggles and cricket juice oozes from his thorax. His legs shake and then relax. Quick cast to the bank. Sky's without ceiling and blue as can be. No sound but of crows high above. Watch my bobber. One of those small fire-engine red and white ones. Wind kicks up and eddies water. Loud splash and my bobber's gone. I'd just stopped watching it. Watch water roll towards the boat. Feel the rod come to life and shake and bow. Reel him in, shit, Papa says.

Reel and line goes tight and rod points down over the side of the boat. Papa's got the net and saying pull up on the rod, pull up on the sonofabitch. Bass leaps from the pond and splashes us, his big pink mouth large enough to fit a fist into. Reel, Papa says. Reel the sonofabitch in. He gets under him with the net and the fish thrashes in the net, silver and green, his eyes thick blobs of oil. Papa grabs him by the lip and pulls the hook from his lip. He dumps him in the basket and throws it in the water. He's a good one, Sturt. Looks about five pounds. A real good one.

Open a moon pie. Crack open a Nehi. Chocolate dipped cake tastes not so much like chocolate. Never has. But I keep eating it. Soda bubbles in my mouth. Papa belches and slaps his gut. Not a goddamn bite, he says. He shoots a line out towards the bank. Bobber bumbs the water. Drangonfly lights upon it. See splashing near the bank. Come get it, goddammit, he says. Bobber disappears. His line runs. That high-pitched reeeeeeeeeee. He laughs. Lets out line. Adjusts his drag. Reels. Reels. Cigar stuck point in mouth's corner pulsing with smoke. Goddamn, he says. Reels. Reels. Let me know when you want me to get the net, I say. This might could take a minute or two, he says, sweat heavy and slick on his forehead.

DEWEYS

2011-05-20T08:35:00.000-07:00

CAINT BEAT OUR MEAT

2011-05-18T10:10:00.000-07:00

He in handcuffs, girl working register asks. Larsen turns and looks at Cready and grabs his hands and holds them up and looks at the girl and says, Them are handcuffs, yes m'am. What he done, she asks. Larsen shakes his head. You aint want to know, he says and smiles at the girl. But I do, she says, smacking her gum and smiling back. He kilt three girls round your age in Coosa National Forest. Theys hiking them trails round it. Girl at the register asks how he kilt them. Larsen looks at the floor. He beat them unconcious with an extension cord and then he removed their extremities with a saw, he says. The girl behind the register's whiter than rice. He aint rite, she says. Bout as wrong as they made, Larsen says. An y'all come to eat hamburgers, she says. We're hungry, Larsen says. I'm drivin Mister Cready here to Walton County and since we come through Flobama we decide to get us a Whataburger.

Cready look up at the girl with his faded blue eyes and says, Do y'all beat your own meat here. Or y'all buy them pre-hammered patties. I aint sayin nothin to you mister, she says. You aint got to talk, Cready says. Aint like it much no how. Larsen holds Cready behind him and orders two Whataburgers and fries and coffees. Put a lot of jalapeno peppers on one of em, he says. Cready, you like jalapeno peppers, Larsen says. Aint care much for hot food, Cready says. You eat on it and it realase endorfins. I manange my endorfin release through other means.

Larsen takes the food to a table and helps Cready set in his chair. He squirts ketchup on his fries. Pulls a cigarette from the pack and lights it and drags hard on it. You gone eat or smoke, Cready asks. Sometimes it all I can do not to do both, Larsen says. I know I caint do both. But I try. All I can do.

The girl from the register taps Larsen on the shoulder and says, Mister you caint smoke none in here. Larsen picks up a gold foil ashtray. Why y'all got these on the tables then, he says. I don't know, she says. But I know you caint smoke. It aint allowed. Larsen stubbs his cigarette out in the ashtray. That look like y'all beat your meat here, Cready says, nodding at the hamburger. The girl stands there and looks at Cready. Do y'all beat it hard and slow or soft and fast, Cready says.

FROM THE HARD SCRABBLE

2011-05-12T06:36:00.000-07:00

Nestled in crook between Tower Liquor and decrepit and abandoned City Hall East, Murder Kroger serves scrappins from the hard scrabble, transvestites and whores and hustlers, down trodden, meth heads, rogues, and those looking for the cheapest Fosters Oil Can in town. Got its name from an AJC reporter who drove round back, smelled unholy miasma coming from dumpster direction and alerted night manager. Allegedly only out to satisfy a moon pie fix, humble scribe helped locate missing person X, John Doe shorn of face and feet and hands and stinking to high heaven. People've been killed in the parking lot. People have contracted host of venereal disease in the parking lot. People've tripped over sex toys in said lot; shot of lost butt plug serves ample proof. So why go there?

Best meat selection in town. More feet and tongue and tail than anywhere within an hour's drive. Cheapest, oldest (not a typo) beer here. At one time it was six Oil Cans for $10. I practically affected an Outback accent, mate. Bizzare promotionals: Peeps at Christmas, Boxes of Moon Pies for a fraction of their original cost, Grape Jelly with oddly rusted metal tops buy one get four free. And then there are the employees.

Butcher's name is Truck or Fuck or something like that. Makes GG Allin look like Dr Phil. He's got a tatt of him banging his boyfriend on his forearm. Openly dips during worktime. Smells like Lysol. Cashiers aren't more different than the folks they ring up. Some of them look more dusted honestly. Pink fuzzy houseshoes wearin, nicotine gum smackin zomboids. Got me price check on tooooo, she says, nails like shoe horns.

Sure it's foul. Smells bad. Old food's not bettern new. People that work and shop there serve crude reminders we all shit and piss and sometimes smell like one or both at unfortunate times in our lives. It's like a Sharon Olds poem on bumwine, slicked with its own human awfulness, born out of disregard and fuckall into a city too stupidly plastic to think it anything other than "novel." Let's go Krogerin.

POKER

2011-05-12T06:12:00.000-07:00

RATTLIN WINDERS

2011-05-11T06:46:00.000-07:00

Most times folks call the office and say, Hey I got a real good story for you, it's crap. Sometimes those folks that call with the crap story don't take no for an answer and they come into the office and give me the same pitch and won't take no for an answer. Anson Hardy was one of those folks.

Anson Hardy said he knew a woman named Portia Hews and she sing in South River Pentecostal Church Choir near Newton County Line short ways from Frix's Barbecue. Anson Hardy said she had voice that rattled winders and charmed snakes and shook sin from rogues hardened to stations of the cross. He said, Mr. Newspaper man, you get fed too if you come. I said you're on.

August morning. Sunday morning. Already pushing 90 degrees. Bugs buzz in my ears. Sweat heavy through my shirt. Seat of my pants soppin wet with sweat. Walk through church door and Anson's there to meet me. He's in faded overalls and white undershirt. He shakes knot on his invisible tie and points at me and says, We come as we are here. Aint no need to wear no tie. Take that thing off. You makin me uncomfortable.

There's no central air in South River Pentecostal Church. No fans either. Folks fan themselves with whatever they have on them. Envelopes. Hats. Their hands. Preacher's name is Abraham Toll. He's about four hundred pounds and clad in overalls and a denim workshirt. Skin blacker than burnt oil. Voice deeper than any ever heard. Unnatural soundin. Not like talkin. But croakin. Tough to get used to. When he tells the story about Cain killing Abel on account of being jealous about his closeness to the Almighty I only get bits here and there but it sounds realer than I could ever recall. Abraham Toll says, And Cain he kilt Able. With a stone he crushed Abel's head. He kilt him. His brother. His brother. His brother Abel. And as he says this he pounds the podium with his big black hands and it echoes in the tiny church.

Didn't remember that bit about the stone. Maybe Cain did crush Abel with a stone. I'm no Bible scholar. When Abraham Toll said it, it sounded like storm grumbling in distance. One of those heat lightning storms that crop up early evening in late summer. Portia Hews has a solo after Abraham Toll's sermon. She sings "Nearer, My God, to Thee." Winders do rattle. Feel it in pine pews. They vibrate. Swear the floorboards creak and groan too. Anson Hardy keeps watching me while Portia sings. He keeps lookin at my hands to make sure I'm takin notes. I didn't know what sort of notes to take. So I didn't take any notes.

Service lasts only an hour. Expect it to run much longer. Tell Anson this and he says, What, you think we gone run bout with snakes and drink strik-nine and such. You crazy. He took me outside and we walked out back and the congregation is sittin at tables and on blankets eatin off paper plates. There is all sorts of stuff set up on one of those long school tables. Old Georgia flag, one with the stars & bars, was laid down as a tablecloth. South River set behind the church and it not movin, lookin mostly set and near solid. Wind blows up a little and no one going to complain about that 'cept the big oak branches swaying upsets the blacksnakes set in them and they dangle carelessly from the trees. Folks pick up and move from the shade. Grasshoppers everywhere. Landing on folks' plates, in ladies' hair, upon mens' laps.

Get yoself somethin to eat, Anson says. He hands me a plate and motions to fill it up. I got potato salad and coleslaw and fried chicken with that corn flake breading and fried yellow corn and pickled onions and pole beans and some sweet potato stuffing. I got a piece of vinegar pie for dessert. Never had none of that before. Anson tries to put some baked coon on my plate but I tell him I'm not quite ready for it. This's nother story for the paper done right here, Mr Newspaper Man, he says, pulling some of the brown meat from the coon's carcass. It was stuffed up with bread and yams and jowl bacon. It looked pretty good to be honest.

We sit on the ground with Portia Hews and she tells me she's been singing since she can remember. That's my earliest memory, she says. Aint member anything earlier than that. I member singin. Get up an sung "How Great Thou Art" at Cotton Pickin Festival in Gay when I were only three. Folks clap so hard it sound like storm come down. Felt the call from soon as I could stand my own two feet. God asks me to celebrate him in song. Sos I do.

While she talks butterflies, big yellow ones, float around her. They land on her dress. On top of her hair. On her plate. She pays them no mind. She stops every so often to make sure I'm writing it all down. Anson gets up and goes off to the buffet. He come back with a paper plate with some baked coon on it and put it in front of me. You try just a bite of this now, he says. Portia tells me her mama baked the coon. Her daddy trapped it and they kept it in an oil drum they found in the river long time ago. They fed it chicken scratch and cornbread for a month and fattened it up and then her daddy went out and shot him in the head with a .22 They bled him and cleaned him and cooked him up.

Meat's sweet as sugar aint it, she says. Tastes like them ducks daddy shoots on Ocmulgee. Aint dry like roast can get. I love it to def. You love it too aint you?

It's not bad, I say. Way better than I thought.

See, Anson says. You got yoself two stories now, Mr. Newspaper Man.

UP A TREE

2011-05-11T06:09:00.000-07:00

GONE DARK

2011-05-10T13:16:00.000-07:00

Skelton watches Larsen walk around him and take a seat at the bar on his right. Doesn't recognize him. Working dark for 18 months does something deep to the man. Hair and mustache grown out. Looks like he drives stagecoach as one of those Cival War reenactors. Eyes sunken dead. Only shoulder holstered .45 gives him away. Every cop carries nines but Larsen. Dicks in CID hate his ass. Known he smokes and snorts with the Techwood crowd. Known he's passed on half dozen collars in his 18 months. Dark age made him narrow. Made him reevaluate the book. Not spoken with Captain Hal Foote in six months plus. Figured him dead til Skelton reconnected on Roja case. Tailed tamale for three weeks and day. She turn to vapor and here come Larsen. He's got FYI on Roja before brass thought to even ask. Didn't want to ask. Didn't want to extend the hand. Didn't want its hand shit soiled with Larsen's.

Larsen's into his third cigarette. Rain's driving. Pounding the roof. Slapping big glass windows. HOT DONUTS sign flickers. Inside lights flicker. Big black waitress pours two coffees. Lipstick is bright pink and makes her lips look three times bigger than they are. She's got a cigarette going behind the bar. Looks like the bar's on fire. Smoke's rising out behind it. That botherin y'all, she asks. She don't wait on their response. She just smiles big and pink and pushes their coffees in front of them. Her thumbnail is size of a butterknife and speckled with glitter and says AINT NO MOUNTAIN HIGH NOUGH in lazy cursive. Coffee spills over mugs' lips and she apologizes and purses her lips bigger and pinker.

Well aint you look like fucken Yanni, Skelton says.

Roja's deadern hell, Larsen says.

How you know that, Skelton says.

Found her nailed to a tree in Piedmont Park, Larsen says. Screwdriver through her left eye.

Chrise, Skelton says. What it look like?

Bout eight inches long, Larsen says. Acrylic handle. Philips head.

Not the screwdriver, asshole, Skelton says. The fucken scene.

Clean fars I can tell, Larsen says.

Guy's a fucken maniac, Skelton says.

Or a carpenter, Larsen says.

Skelton laughs and takes one of Larsen's cigarettes.

Need to reach out to Foote, Skelton says.

Fuck im, Larsen says.

Says same of you, Skelton says.

Waitress puts paper box down in front of Larsen and he opens it and eats one of the donuts.

Makes my teeth hurt, he says. Nothin like these. Like eatin clouds of bacon but it's sweet and melts while your teeth mash it up. Can see why all these Ponce whores hit it. Like havin damn bump on the cheap. Eat half dozen of these an you walkin into walls and babblin bout the Jesus.

I'd been lyin if I said I aint seen it, Skelton says.

You seen yonder hombre in white two door out there, Larsen says.

Skelton looks out the window.

That truck, he says.

Only white two door out there, Larsen says.

Sure is, Skelton says.

Roja's pimp Apolinar, Larsen says. Been followin me for most the day. Switched cars twice on him and he's still a shadow. He's good.

What you make him for, Skelton says.

A killer, Larsen says.

How so, Skelton says.

Big shithouse Mexican boss enough to make it in Mechanicsville without gettin got by all them made niggers has got to be worth dead weight in tragedy, Larsen says. He's one of them doers. He's not one to get done. Bad shit surrounds that motherfucker. Got to beleive Concepcion Marquez was more than supplementary income. He got no reason to follow me so long.

Lights flicker.

Concepcy what, Skelton says.

Concepcion, Larsen says. Roja's given.

Larsen looks at the box. Skelton's not touched a donut.

Lights flicker.

You mind if I eat yours, Larsen says.

I don't see any hombre in that two door, Skelton says.

Y'all want more coffee, big black waitress asks.

They nod. Rain picks up. Lights flicker. Lightning breaks jagged on the sky. Transformer blows across Ponce and both Larsen and Skelton are off their stools when the lights go black. What in God's name, the waitress says. Sparks fly across the street. Cars stop. People look. Apolinar comes calmly through the doorway, black duster soaked with rain, TEC-9s in both hands popping wide open.

LOOKING TO NETHER

2011-05-09T05:30:00.001-07:00

Only thing more frustratin than late season toms is early season toms, Dunn says and he starts laughin and spittin creamed corn all over his self. There's only three other people in Jimmy's Steak Out having late lunch. One's a trucker and other two are city police. They hear Dunn and nod and laugh like hell. Figure whole town's gone batshit crazy. You find out for your self, Dunn says, shoveling country fried steak into his mouth. You see, he says. You see right well after first mornin. Aint nothin worse.

That was a decade ago. I know what he means now. I've seen it. I've felt it. You get with folk who've hunted turkey for more than half their life and they talk about it as zealots talk about the Almighty. Glazed gaze. Hushed tones. Looking to nether. It's all there. Same package, different referents. Seem crazy to most. Not even the good kind of crazy.

Remembering that lunch I see Dunn's hand pointing at me. I see his face all smashed up and angry. It was more than a hunt for him. It was more than a hunt for anyone who ever got serious about taking toms. Worse than bettin horses or dogs or drinking or drugging. You never get over it. Even 'tween seasons, that time's spent thinking. Pondering. Visualizing. And for some, it's spent worrying. Worrying that those thoughts and ponderins and visualizations won't ever be brought to be. That a trigger squeeze won't reach out and touch tom and send him thrashing ass over head in quick dance of death.

Wade and I talked about it on ways up to Banks County. He's got it bad for deer and sometimes trophy hunters can't process why someone would waste so much time on an ugly ass bird most people won't even eat. Horned owl nearly flew through the windshield on the curve towards the property. He took that as a sign. It woke me up but didn't mean much. All he could talk about was his trail cam shots.

Doors shut soundlessly. Guns out of cases. Three inch shotshells loaded, chambered. Safties on. Check my calls. My boots. My jacket. It's cold. Mid-40s. Hit the crow call to locate gobblers. Hear nothing. No birds. Nothing. Start walking. Grass is slicked with heavy dew. Clearing breaks up ahead. We wade through weeds. Dad said he saw two toms here in this field Friday... Nothin here now of goddamn course, Wade says. We slide down the hill and set up in brush. Don't even have to move any branches. It's perfect. Hurry up and wait. Wade stroked quiet kee kee on worn slate pot. Is it too quiet? Old timers say one of the worst mistakes is loud callin. Wade scrapes out another kee kee. Nothing. No birds.

You hear that, Wade says. Sounds like a hen to my left. Northwest. You hear her. Listen.

He scrapes the pot. We sit still and listen. We hear nothing. Old timers say another mistake is over calling. They say if you've called more than once in ten minute time frame you've called too much. Wade scrapes. We hear something sorta like a kee kee. But it cuts out after two yelps. It's a goddamn blue jay, he says. He hits his crow call. No gobbles. Nothing. We decide to move. The walk is cold and wet and uphill. Keep thinking snake's gonna get out and latch onto my leg. Never happens. Never even see one. Don't see anything actually. Not even crows. No one's hunted this land this season. No one but Wade's dad's even stepped foot on it since Christmas eve.

We hit another field. Mist sets over and persimmon trees rise from it. We hear nothing. Drop down a hill to the creek. Check the bed for tracks. Nothing. Creek trickles over stones. Find a bleached out turtle shell. See some deer teeth white and stuck in rusty red mud. Climb the hillside and it's wet and loose and climbing doesn't go so well. Finally make it topside and land lays out a shelf and ferns cover the ground and elms and pines crowd one another. It's quiet. Looks birdy. Looks like tom's been here, stays here, likes it here. They roost up here, Wade says. Come off the roost and walk down the hill and take water and go out into that field. Light lay through the trees in beams like in Bible pictures. It's yellow and defined as if whole. We watch bugs boil in the light.

Sit. Wait. Call. Sit. Wait. Listen. Whippoorwills. Jays. Nothing else. Fall asleep. Wake slowly, confused. Browning loaded and heavy in my lap. See the decoy and startle. It's a shitty decoy. No wonder we've seen no birds. We shuck our shells out and begin the walk back to the truck. Say nothing. Walk through brambles and buck brush. Trees rotten and overturned. Piles of Budweiser cans. Haven't seen that era logo since Sharkey's Machine late night on Superstation. Old 7UP bottles. We kick through the cans. Looks like a little party, huh, Wade says. Some seven and seven maybe. Lookit them dam Bud talls. How old are those? Shit. Looks like early 80s.

Wade looks around. These trees probably weren't even here then. Crazy to think about, Wade says. Let's go fishin.

Sun's up and we lose our jackets and get into a few beers. Soft plastics and chicken livers and crankbait. Get the rods rigged up and hit the pond. Livers on trebles. Soft plastics swimmin in attractant practically cribbed from Charlies Tradin Post. Couldn't be more different for two guys used to dead drifting flies size of peckerhole lint. Bass hit it quick. Not big but they fight tooth and nail. Strike spinnerbait and they're out of water, leaping air, splashing down. It's like a goddamn TV fishing show. Green heron set over the pond, identified, seen, and gone. We get into the fish. No cats come for the livers. Someone must fished this damn pond out, Wade says. Can't beleive no cats. Can't beleive no turkey. Not even a gobble. What's the friend of your's. What's his name.

Dunn, I say.

Dunn, Wade says. He still hunt turkey?

Imagine so.

Goddamn. Poor sonofabitch must can't stand himself. Wonder anyone want to be around him. What he call that feelin.

Lookin to nether, I say.

Lookin to nether, Wade says. Goddamn.

Wade looks down at the basket in the water.

Let's split these up and do fish fry.

SLAW CHILI CHEESE PLEASE

2011-05-06T13:30:00.001-07:00

HIGH IRONIC CONTENT

2011-05-06T09:27:00.000-07:00

(Found and lost and found again;sorry LA Weekly readers.) Dad drank Pabst in the Navy. Said he had to use a "church key" to open it. Everyone else on the carrier drank Pabst. Officers drank Pabst. Enlisted men drank Pabst. Folks at bars sailors crashed on leave drank Pabst. Only time he didn't drink Pabst was when he was in Boston. Said he couldn't get it there. Said he drank Narragansett, or "Gansey" to locals, when he was in Boston. Said sailors cracked a raw egg into Gansey to make it taste better. Said he saw locals cracking raw eggs into Gansey to make it taste better. Gansey must have tasted like a urinal cake.

When he got out of the Navy he continued to drink Pabst. I remember the cans in the fridge. But he didn't stay true. He drank Schlitz and Miller High Life and later drank Coors Banquet exclusively. His dad, who drank Meister Brau exclusively, called Pabst "headache beer." His dad gave him a case of Heineken every Christmas. I drank more of that Heineken than he did.

But I liked shitty watery American beers as a kid. I liked Pabst. I liked Milwaukee's Best AKA "Beast." I liked Busch. Pabst was $10 a case. Perfect for us. We played quarters. We played submarine. We played King Turtle. We shotgunned beers. We funnelled beers. We sprayed them on each other. We were kids drinking adult beverages. What do you expect?

Bought Pabst off and on throughout college. Bought it off an on in the years after college. And it was around that time began to see kids drinking Pabst in bars and clubs. Like, exclusively. Everyone was drinking it. Everyone looked the same. Skinny. Tight pants. Plastic neon glasses. Thrift store t-shirts. Mustaches. Logger beards. And Pabst. Everyone had Pabst in their hand or in their glass. That was the beer to drink.

For a while it was OK. Pabst was cheap because everyone was drinking it. I could buy a double deuce of Pabst at a bar for $2--about what I'd pay for it at a gas station. But prices started creeping up over the years, and "everyone" got even larger. Pabst ads were in music magazines. Pabst billboards were up around the city. Pabst tatts were on "everyone." Indie-dramas showed people drinking Pabst. Every party you went to had a keg of Pabst. Music festivals were sponsored by Pabst. There was free Pabst everywhere. It was the cool cheap not-so-bad beer for everyone and it was everywhere and cool and cheap and not-so-bad.

Then the price went up. A six of Pabst is almost the same price as a six of Budweiser, the premium American beer. A six of Pabst tall boys is the same price as a six of Coors Banquet talls, and is almost a dollar more than Nautral Lite, Miller Light, Schlitz, or Old Milwaukee. It's expensive. So why is every kid with a fixed gear bike still drinking it?

Pabst defies every rule of artificial cool. Its ubiquity makes it normal, therefore uncool. Its price makes it unaffordable and therefore uncool to the trust fund kids who want to appear blue collar by drinking it. The blue collar crowd who originally held Pabst as their brand is gone. They've moved on to Budweiser or stepped down to Natural Lite.

Not one to necessarily believe in the sorta "brand conspiracy" ala Naomi Klein's NO LOGO propagated, but the ascendency and permanence of Pabst has been one weird airborne toxic event. I don't know if I'll ever drink it again. I can't shake the new potent associations, And, honestly, it's too goddamned expensive for me.

HOW BOUT IT

2011-05-05T11:10:00.000-07:00

Sun comes hot through trees red and orange. Shot nothing. No one's even fired on a duck. They've come on quicker than hell. Darting through flooded timber. Squealing and gone before shot's lined up and squeezed off. Bugs worse than they were an hour ago. Just cause its opening day don't mean it's cold. Gloves came off before they were on. Sweatin heavy through our shirts. Caps dark at temples. Faces slicked with repellent and sweat. Guns still up still ready. Hear spitting and cussing and dog whining. Hear water trickling through beaver dam's weave of sticks.

There she goes. Woodie hen out of nowhere. Maybe from behind us. Beat a circle through the clearing. Screams off. No shot. Dog barks. I can feel the sweat slipping down my back pooling in the tailend of my waders. I've only been this hot a few times in my life and those times have been in August. Crows caw. We hear guns boom ways away. Motherfuckers must got into somethin, Carter says. He spits in the water. Dog whines. Shhh, he says. We gone get anythin today? Goddamn, Carter says.

Twelve o'clock comes warbling choke of geese. Sounds like a giant blowin through trombone twisted up a pretzel. They gone come right bove us, Carter says. Guns are up. We can see them coming. In a V. Just like in paintins. Just like em. Guns boom. When a goose falls it sounds like an armored car breaking the water. We got somethin, Carter says. Dog goes after em. Comes back. Goes back out. Comes back. How could I miss a bird bigger than a go-kart? Can't fathom it. I look down. Spent shells stand in left to right swing. Half circle of three misses. Red hulls twisted open standin on brass caps.

Woodies. Whole heap. Drop right in. I'm not even loaded. Still bitchin about missin. Load. Chamber. Shot off. One drops. Carter calls his and misses a bird a few feet from his face. Jesus Chrise, how bout it, he says. They keep comin despite the guns. Hen's beatin circle around the clearing. Only the drakes, Carter yells. They're gone as quick as they came. Dog hits the water. Retrieves. Load. Load. Load. Put my call in my mouth. Slow blow. Volume swells. DEW-WEEEP. DEW-WEEEP. DEW-WEEEP. It's sad, lonely, painful call. Hit on it again, Carter says. Slow blow. Volume swells. Three woodies down the chute. They put on the breaks as they see the guns, their landing gear out and slowing. Lined up. Two down. Burst of feathers. Carter's is on the water without a head. Feathers fall slow and white and they're on my shoulders and in my mouth and stuck to my face. Goddamn, son. I think we got our limit, Carter says. Dog squats and shits on the dam and the flies are on it in seconds thick and buzzing. You ready drank a margarita with me or what, Carter says.

HOT IN, HOTTER OUT

2011-05-05T06:39:00.000-07:00

PUT A LID ON IT

2011-05-04T05:59:00.000-07:00

Folks always said soon as Big Luke Mackey quit workin he'd break down and die. Day he and Polly decided to close The Mason Jar he stroked out in the kitchen while frying bacon. Polly found him convulsing by the stove, bacon burning in the pan. Johnny Brewster, one of three men not law enforcement in Alma County who wore pistols in plain sight, helped Polly get him into the bed of their old Chevy and they drove all the way to Macon with Luke in the back, empty Natural Lite cans and spent .20 GA shotshells rolling around him while he gazed fixed and queerly above at the sky, bluer than blue and sharper than any July morning he'd remembered. As Johnny and Polly gathered Luke up to get to the truck, Polly assured what customers remained that he'd be fine and they should stay at their tables and eat up what was left of their breakfasts. It's in the good Lord's hands now, she said, and Johnny hit her heels with trail of Amens descending in tone and potency.

Japeth Barrow shook his head where he sat. He aint gone make it, he said. He done et up with everythin. Di-beet-us. Cancer. Everthin else. Reckon he woulda died right here just now and Lord take him into His arms and ask him why in the hell he live so bad. The table of men laughed at Barrow as he lit a cigarette. You want rest of my ham, Tommy? I aint gone finish it. Tommy waved him off. You member that Thanksgivin we all had at Mackey's house on the lake when he grill up them chitlins and fire went down low and he spray fluid on it and it burn up in a cloud of flame and smoke and char them chitlins and he end up scrapin all the char off em and serve em on a platter like nothin ever happen. The table of men laughed.

That's where he got the name for this place, Tommy said. He get up at dawn and start drinkin corn liquor from a jar and by time he set to cook up supper he drunker than Cooter Brown. Michael Toombs says to him, Big Luke you oughta open up a etin place an call it The Mason Jar. Luke aint say squat. He just drunker than hell and all stiff and quiet and et up with drink. Aint seen nothin so sicknen as that plate of hog guts he bring to the Thanksgivin table. Be damned if half the family aint et it up. Fraid he gone shoot em all if theys don't. Big Luke set there at table's head sippin from his jar, .22 Colt pistol set in front of em. Same one he used to shoot squirrels dead with when he was Huber Mayor. He aint did much mayorin then, Barrow said. He aint did much of nothin but drink and shoot up shit. Miracle the Jar last as long as it done. Only place I known where your plate of food's different price evertime you come through. Aint matter how much or how little I get. Less ever time. Have a plate bucklin under sausage and streak-o-lean and biscuits and eggs and grits and Luke ring the register for no more'n three bits. He aint even look down at what I got. The table of men laughed.

Three hours later they are all still sitting at the table. Still sipping coffee. Still eating. Still talking. Eyes wandered while others spoke. Quilt stapled to the far wall: MASON JAR EST. 1989 - LUKE & POLLY 4 EVER. Spike buck here. Ten pointer there. Alma County record. Dressed out at 210. Feral hog, whiskers grayed and tusks yellow as smokers dentures. Table near front door loaded up with jars of pickled peppers, eggs, wild onions. Gallon jars of pickled hog feet, ears, snouts, tails. Basket on top. Index card says, PRICE ON JAR BOTTOM. PUT MONEY IN BASKET. HONOR SYSTEM. WE AINT WATCHIN BUT GOD IS. Joe Lane Ford walked through the door. Where everbody at, he said. Right here's everbody, Barrow said. Where Big Luke, Ford said. Hospital, Barrow said. What in hell for, Ford said. He dyin, Barrow said. About ten years too late, Ford said. Aint like he young. Sumbitch got to take half a Viagra to keep from pissin on his feet ever mornin. The table of men laughed. Who the hell gone cook me up a hamburger then, Ford said. You cook it your own damn self, Barrow said. Shitfire, Ford said, and walked on back to the kitchen.

When the doctor walked into the waiting room to tell Polly that Big Luke had passed Johnny Brewster was outside smoking a Tampa Nugget cigar. Polly went to the window and looked at Johnny and she pounded on the glass and he looked up and saw her crying and he unholstered his pistols and started firing. A huge black security guard wrestled Johhny to the ground. What the hell you think you doin? he said. Firin my guns, Johnny said. You aint able to discharge no firearm on this property, guard said. I aint dischargin, Johnny said. I givin Big Luke Mackey his 21 gun salute minus nineteen.

WHILE YOU'RE AWAY

2011-05-03T11:56:00.000-07:00

Few quick things: I've changed this blog's name. The blog's changed direction, mostly, and its name doesn't fit it any longer. Not that there won't be fire or meat or blood. On the contrary, there will be more of all the above. Blood & Grits is a title of Harry Crews' anthology of essays and also a descriptive term employed to delineate folk of the hard scrabble South. It's comical and apt and makes much sense here.

The last few months this blog has featured shorter short stories mostly about people and food in rural Georgia. There will be more of those to come. They are written flash quick every day while I eat lunch and GSV III naps. No edits. Not a word changed. I guess we can call it "automatic writing." Some of the people are real and maybe even still living. Some of them aren't real and never were living. That's how it goes.

Thanks to New York Times food critic/writer Sam Sifton (um, and LA Weekly), this blog has seen more traffic than ever. That's great. If you're a new reader, welcome. Make yourself at home. If you're an old reader, thanks for sticking around. I'm not sure why I write about people or food or both, but I know I can't ever stop no matter how hard I try. Thanks for indulging me, but fuck you sideways for not leaving comments.

EYE FOR EYE

2011-05-03T08:18:00.000-07:00

Warden Stourley Bend felt the heat through the soles of his boots. It was like he stood still in smoldering embers. He'd told Magda Prae it was illegal to handle, harbor, and harm black snakes. He'd told her such more than 10 times in the last five minutes. All while watching her move from coop to shed to stump. Her hands tight round thick cord of snakes. Their heads weaved in air. Their tongues shot out thin and black tasting air. They were so black they appeared blue.

Now don't think I don't understand your anger Magda Prae, Warden Bend says. If I come out sunup and find my hens lose and gone and all their eggs been eaten on by heap of black snakes, I'd work same course as you. Bend wiped his forehead. Magda Prae grabbed hold of machete. Its blade ran thin and then bloated at the head. It was orange with rust. Magda Prae held a black snake to the stump with her boot. Its head weaved upon the wood and then was gone to the grass. Its mouth wide and breathless like a fish dead on the bank. Magda Prae held the body squirming upon the stump with her boot and worked pliers from the tail to the neck and the skin come off like a sock. Thin as onion paper. Sun shone through it gray and it seem as shadow made material and real.

You know, Magda Prae, I, you see, I wish you stop killin them snakes while I stand right here to bear witness, Bend says. It aint like you hidin it. Cicadas screeched in pines and Bend could hardly hear his own self and he stopped talking and watched Magda Prae as she beheaded and skinned another snake and another and tossed their headleass skinless bodies into an orange Home Depot bucket and carried them into the house. Bend stood and looked at the pines spindly and thin standing in water brackish and boiling with flies. Bend followed Magda Prae inside. She set the bucket down by the stove. Cast iron pot on flame. She scooped lard from a bucket with a wooden spoon and slapped it into the pot and it hissed and then went from solid to liquid, white to clear. She cut the snake into one inch pieces with a rusty boxcutter and shook the pieces in a brown paper bag filled with corn meal and season all. She set the pieces in the bubbling lard and they fried up brown and she took the pieces from the pot with the wooden spoon and set them to dry on another brown paper bag.

Snake skins and turkey beards tacked to walls. Two gator heads smiled shiteatin grins on shelf above the sink. Black velvet painting of Christ on the cross hung over kitchen table. Pile of okra in a basket below it. Magda Prae motioned to the table and Bend grabbed a seat. She put a heap of fried snake on a paper plate and handed it to Bend. She put a bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce in front of him. She heaped fried snake on another plate for her self and sat down across from Bend. You want a drink, she says. That'd be fine Magda Prae, Bend says. She get up and ran the faucet into a coffee mug says JESUS LOVES ME THIS IS KNOW on it and a rainbow over the sayin. Way you do this is shake some hot sauce on them pieces and then gnaw away the meat around the bones like this, Magda Prae says, her little brown teeth chewing away on the fried snake. Bend picked a piece up and gnawed on it and he chewed and says hey this aint too bad and he chew some more and by the time he's done with one piece of fried snake Madga Prae's eaten four and her plate is red with hot sauce. This crime I done committed, Magda says. Bend waves her off and gnaws some more. Only sound other than their eating is the cicadas screeching.

A LADY WITH A LAMP I SEE

2011-05-02T09:44:00.000-07:00

When I was nine I wanted to be Florence Nightingale. Liked her name. Thought a nightingale was a bird that sang after dark. A small silver bird whose song was low and long and sweet. Saw her name on the blackboard in school. Mrs Prusser wrote it up there and call on youngins to come up and diagram sentences about Florence Nightingale. Mrs Prusser called on me first and sentence I was supposed to diagram was, Florence Nightingale believed God called on her to become a nurse.

Must be powerful thing. Havin God tell you what you do. He aint told mama or daddy what to do. Mama worked the police station workin radio for patrol. Daddy worked Southern Bell most his life. Climbin poles and fixin em. Reckon I'd work police radio too after school if I made it. Kept waitin for God to call on me and tell me what I was or what I would be. He never did. Wondered why he tell Florence what she gone be. I heard bout other folk bein called on by God. Wondered why he aint never called on me. I went to church. I sang them hymns. Paid attention to preacher's preachin. Nothin ever happened.

Couldn't diagram that sentence about Florence Nightingale. Drew a rocket and lines comin off the rocket but I aint member how to put the words. I just wrote FLORENCE on the side of the rocket in big letters and I turn round and look at Mrs Prusser and her face all wound up tight and sour. Liked the way the rocket looked. Looked like somethin that led to Heaven. Florence's rocket. Gone ways to Heaven. To be with God.

Next time I heard that name was at Huddle House ten years later. I was waitin on the manager, Mr. Bix, cause he was gone interview me for waitress job there and the other girl I was waitin with her name was Florence Nightingale. I say uh uh you lyin when she tell me her name and she say no I aint and ask me if she can have one of them Basic 100s and I give her one. We sat there and drank tea and smoked and sometimes it got weird cause we aint had nothin to say. An I reckon it was the job, either her or me. And when I think that I got all mad at her. I ask her if God call her to Huddle House.

What did you say girl, she said. I said did God call on you to do this job. God called on Florence Nightingale to be a nurse. I reckon he call on you to be a waitress. You aint got to tell me. I just never met no one who got called on. That's all. You want another cigarette?

Mr Bix was busy with something in the back and he come out few times and apologize to both of us and asked us if we wanted to get something to eat before he talked with us that would be fine. I member his shoes was so shiny I could see my face in em when I look down. Just like a mirror. He had one of them thin mustaches that don't look like a mustache at all an he had a pocket watch. Aint never seen one of them. Aint known no one to carry one. Florence got a fried chicken sandwich with extra mayonnaise and pickles and I got brown toast and grape jelly. It came out real quick and Florence ate her chicken sandwich like she aint eaten in days and ever time she took a bite mayonnaise would drip out the back and onto her plate.

You know how to diagram sentences, I say, and she look at me and chew and then she says, what? And I said, sentences. You know, how they cut up the words and put em on lines and things comin off rockets. And she goes no. I aint seen that. And I tell her I diagramed her name once. I went through my purse and got a pen out and drew a rocket on a Huddle House napkin and wrote FLORENCE on it. See, I say. I showed her the napkin. Just like that. Do you like the way it look? I guess so, she says. We sat quiet and Mr Bix come out the back and met first with Florence and I hear him ask you go by Flo and I aint able to hear what she answer.

It was quiet. I tried to think about how a Nightingale's song would sound. I thought maybe it would sound like God's voice when he call on you. Like it aint words sayin somethin. It just sound but you known what He meant. No ways about it. I wondered if I aint missed my song. Like I wonder if He already sung to me and I aint picked up on it. Maybe I aint ready to hear no song. Maybe He only call on those who ready. Wonder when I gone be ready.

Florence squealed all loud and did this karate kick in the air right there in Huddle House and half folks in there jumped when she did. I jumped and I seen it comin. I got the job, she says, her face all red like she overheated. Mr Bix tells me he gone keep my application on file. That's what they do. And I hear him and it's words and not a song, long and sweet and slow so I known that I aint called on to do this and that I just got to keep lookin and listenin out so as I aint missed it again.

BARRY LYNDON

2011-04-29T05:14:00.000-07:00

Line goes out the door and into the yard and down Hiram Street and people wait in their cars with the AC on and smoke and when I ask them what they're doing they say we're waitin it out and I say well OK alright. Walk in the house and there are Demy's three sisters all seemingly same age smelling heavily of rosewater perfume and weighed down in jewelry and sipping Asti Spumante from Stryrofoam cups. He would've wanted us to do this, Avery says, pointing to the dusty Spumante magnum resting in a painter's bucket of ice. Ima hands me a Styrofoam cup of Spumante and leads me into the den and there's a walnut dinner table buckling with china and silver and tea services.

There's University of Georgia memoribilia. There's three or four pipe caddies and large glass containers of pipe tobacco. Stacks of smut pulp paperback. Stacks of coffee table smut. Three books alone on Bettie Page. The Irving Klaw photos. Open one and there's Bettie bound and gagged. Ima grabs my hand and closes the book. Honey, please. Just cause Demy loved his ladies doesn't mean we have to look at them. Candelabras and candles and plaques celebrating journalism awards won while at papers in Macon and Albany and Athens. There are no less than 10 typewriters for sale. Extra ribbons. Reams of paper. Avery walks into the den with the last of the Spumante. Tops my cup off.

Demosthenes "Demy" Eckerd Paxton III went on to his eternal reward this past Sunday. He is survived by brothers William Tell "W.T." Paxton, and Knox Dale Paxton; sisters Avery, Ima, and Imogene Paxton. Demy was born in Hazelhurst Georgia to Cap and Cola Paxton in 1929. He worked his father's hog farm while he attended Branley High School in Broxton and then studied literature and classics at the University of Georgia. He gradutated cum laude from the Univeristy of Georgia Journalism school and worked as a reporter at The Albany Herald, The Athens Banner-Herald, and The Macon Telegraph. He later served as publisher of the Huber Times-Picayune in Alma County where he settled with his wife of 50 years, Willa Mae, who passed away in 1980. Demy was active in local social circles and a member of Civitan and the local Lion's Club. He served as a Deacon at Abel Baptist Church in Hueytown. Demy was known for his love of Georgia football and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Just about perfect, Avery says still holding the newsprint. She holds it out far in front of her face like it's art. Y'all did fine job with this obituary, she says. Lord that picture makes him look so handsome. I point to the table at a stuffed cat. Avery smiles. That's Barry. Barry Lyndon. Demy loved that cat. So much he had him stuffed. Guess it's time to open the doors. I'm not drunk enough to do this. Too bad we don't have more wine.

Imogene come into the room with sterling silver platter of tea sandwiches. Wonder Bread squares with heavy mayonnaise and mashed banana. She offers me one and I taste it and it's like heavy glue under the teeth. Avery and Ima scarf them down. Bracelets tinkling. There's not a word in the room and the sun is laying through the window and catching in the crystal from the candelabras and prisms of light swim the walls in spasms of green and violet. Ima pulls a small silver flask out of her purse and sips from it and passes it to Avery who sips from it and passes it to Imogene who sips from it and hands it to me. Old Grand Dad, she says. Demy's favorite. To Demy, I say, and sip from the flask.

FEED ME

2011-04-28T08:59:00.000-07:00

Newlywed Game's on. Dinner rush's over. Ronald's already taken his apron off. Mary Lee slumps over the counter, arms folded, eyes blank brown tired. Slashes through nearly all dishes on the slate behind her except for Feed Me. I order Feed Me. I get a cup with ice and fill it with sweet tea from a plastic pitcher on the counter. Contestants keep saying "whoopie" on Newlywed Game. Some sayings are bleeped out with a cuckoo sound.

Tall Coca-Cola cooler to left of counter full of orange juice and Minute Maid sodas and premade salads. TV sits on top of that cooler. Tall Coca-Cola cooler to right of counter full of Cokes and Diet Cokes and Sprites and creamer. Ronald keeps cans of Budweiser hidden behind the creamer. Ronald starts drinking beer around nine p.m. It's almost nine p.m. Mary Lee sets my plate down and asks if I need anything else. It's a platter, a paper platter, brimming with reheated leftovers. Feed Me allows Tony's Restaurant to dispense with leftovers. When people order Feed Me they are asking to be fed. Whatever you got. Put it on my plate.

Tonight it's jambalaya, red beans and rice, dirty rice, andouille sausage, onion rings, and garlic bread. Platter's full of butter and grease and smells like file and sage and fried stuff. Gal on Newlywed Game says strangest place she's had whoopie was "in the rear." Ronald laughs so hard he sprays beer all over himself. He keeps a handle of Inver House Scotch under the counter. It comes out around 9:15. It's 9:15. Handle's out. Ronald's drinking Inver House out of a Tony's Restaurant coffee mug. No one that works here is named Tony.

Coroner sits alone at the long communal table. He's talking to Mary Lee. She's still slumped over the counter. Ronald brings a Budweiser to me in a cup. He winks at me when he sets it down. I thank him. He gives me the thumbs up walking away. Did she just say she took it in the butt, Mary Lee asks no one in general. Coroner's still talking about something. His way of talking is slow and agonizing and he's talking about something agonizing and terrific in the true sense and it doesn't look like Mary Lee wants to hear about it.

She loaded up the El Camino with the kids all seven of em and the dog and their goshdern pets too the turtles and hamsters and the little gals got their dolls and the little guys got their army men and squirt guns and she loaded them up in the car and drove from Cork all way to Jackson Lake and she drove through the gate and drove through the chained off ramp and drove down the ramp and goshderned drowned herself and them youngins and their pets. She killed em all. Prolly would've killed her husband too had he been home. He come in from Newton County from his firefighters job and po lease got to tell him his family drowned dead cause his wife. You never seen such nothin on a man's face.

Coroner's still picking at a piece of strawberry shortcake and he's got the whipped topping all over his sleeve and he's sucking on a toothpick all while eating at it and Mary Lee sits there looking blankly at the TV. Ronald's standing there sipping Scotch from the mug and he looks at the Coroner and says, Jesus Chrise don't that beat all? And the Coroner looks over at me and says, this for few ears and not for the goshdern paper. Hear me, partner? I nod and Coroner looks at my platter and looks at Ronald and says, what in the hell's he got to eat? Looks like mule shit on a plate.

AINT GOOD WHEN THEYS THAT BIG

2011-04-27T17:55:00.000-07:00

REDNECK RILLETTES

2011-04-27T09:51:00.000-07:00

JUNIOR'S GRILL RIP

2011-04-21T05:22:00.000-07:00

THE MESSAGE

2011-04-19T10:50:00.000-07:00

Sun just coming up it seemed and it was hazy and J Geils Band was on the radio. Dad was snapping his fingers. He was having trouble quitting smoking. He would light a Vantage and then drag on it and then stub it out in the ashtray. Honeybaked ham sat wrapped in its copper colored foil in the back seat braced with a belt as if it were sentient and required protection. Past the Lampost Lounge and decayed non-descript industrial structures and smokestacks and water towers empty and the random stray stopping to smell and pee and then trotting on. We crossed over tracks and up into the labyrinth of government housing and past the liquor store with its crime scene tape wrapping front to back as some sad gift, several men standing still in front drinking from brown bags, ignoring massive NO LOITERING sign affixed to front burgular barred door.

We stopped. Ree Ree was outside. She was wearing a halter top and hot pants and no shoes. Her hair was tied in corn rows. She was smoking and talking to a man. Dad unbelted the ham and picked it up and we walked down the concrete stairs to the aparment. Broken bottles and trash pocked the stairs and stray cats wild and distrusting shifted about the roofs and trash bins. I heard music blaring from outside. Dad knocked on the door. Clifford came to the door after several knocks. Clifford smelled like smoke and he looked tired. Clifford opened the door. Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" played on the stereo. Stack of Sugar Hill singles on the floor. Card table crowded with men. Top covered in ash. Lowenbrau bottles piled on the table top. On the floor. Moreen laughed. Lord what yall doin here Mister George, she says. Moreen smelled like smoke and she looked tired. We brought you an Easter ham, Moreen, Dad says. Yall nice. Yall too nice, she says. Come in hear, I makin up some eggs and grits for all yall an I want yall to have some, she says. Clifford gets up and sets the stylus back on "The Message."

Moreen cleaned our house and my grandparents' houses and aunts and uncles houses. She lived with Clifford. She had fourteen children. Ree Ree was one of the fourteen. Ree Ree was always pregnant or having a child. Many of the fourteen were always in trouble or in juvenile. Moreen made the best fried chicken I've ever had. She made the best scrambled eggs too. Her grits were great. She used to cut up a whole chicken on the counter at home and save the gizzard and liver and then she'd soak the legs and thighs and breast in buttermilk. While she waited on them soaking she fried up the gizzard and liver. She ate them and said mmmm mmmm while she chewed and sipped coffee spiked with Chivas Regal.

Moreen's stove is going full keel. Cast iron pans on four burners, who knows what in the oven. She spoons something brown and thick from a soup tin. Use drippins, she says. That what give them eggs good taste. Drippins pop and melt in the pan. She cracks eggs in her huge black hands the way chefs do, holding them between thumb and forefinger and both yolks slip into the bowl and she beats them into soft yellow with a forks tines and slops cream into them and salt and pepper and into the pan. The pan screams. She shakes the pan on the fire. She circles the fire with the pan. Egg settles and goes white and she hits it with pepper again. Eggs fluff and she shakes the pan and they peel off the bottom and are cooked through and glistening with fat. Grits spit and pop on back burner. She adds water from a measuring cup and stirs them. She tastes them. She salts them. She stirs.

Clifford hands dad a Lowenbrau. He drinks it. The kitchenette clock says 8:14. There are sirens going by. Ree Ree comes in the kitchen and takes a cigarette out of Moreen's pack of Kools on the counter. You bet stop that smokin girl, Moreen says. You bet stop smokin my Kools girl. Moreen stirs the grits and tastes them again. She spoons drippins into the pot and stirs them. She cuts an inch of butter and folds it into the grits. Clifford screams at a man at the table. That bullshit, he says. That bullshit as ah mothafucka, he says. Moreen screams at them. Aint you known we got chillun in here, she says. Aint you known?

She hands me a paper plate of grits and eggs and red hots. She hands dad the same. She pulls a Kool from the pack and lights it and drags and exhales smoke through her nostrils and picks at her afro. Aint they known how crazy they actin, she says. It Easter mornin. Aint they known that? Moreen looks at dad and asks what we have planned for the day and he tells her we are going to his folks place for supper and she says that real nice. He pulls her aside and hands her a card and tells her not to tell Clifford or the others about the card and I see her open it and ball up the cash and put it in her pocket. Aint yall nice as all, she says. Aint you? She smiles and her teeth are chipped and broken and her eyes are huge and brown and yellow like mica. Clifford screams at the man again and he comes across the table and they are fighting and Moreen is screaming. She grabs the pot of grits off the stovetop and throws them at the man and he is there on the floor screaming, the grits stuck on his face and hair and Clifford is laughing and kicking him and saying that what you get for yo bullshit.

BLAZE BEERS

2011-04-13T11:42:00.000-07:00