i.
Mama took us children to Sunday School,
that is, if she could pull
me from the cowboy show with Roy and Dale,
but I went often, willingly, to play
with the twins and Noel,
the boy who would drown in Hungry Mother
when we were 12. I did not understand
that water in a cup
could sanctify. I knew a lake could kill.
ii.
I don’t know where Daddy was—in the den
reading Lee’s Lieutenants,
in his office by the railway station
phoning deadbeats to cajole and threaten
to repossess their cars
if they did not man up and pay on time,
or crossing barbed-wire fence to walk beside
the Holston’s middle fork
running along with its living waters.
iii.
Then Mama made us lunch, and Daddy drove
Route 16, winding south
up and down three mountains, past Sugar Grove,
Troutdale, tiny Volney, Mouth of Wilson’s
row of company shacks.
Then we crossed New River, passed Piney Creek
where my parents went to school, passed a mile
from Mt. Zion Church where
Daddy’s mother belonged and Daddy lies.
iv.
We burst shouting from the car at our two
country stores—my mother’s
mother’s, creekside, then my father’s father’s
just up the hill. We played tag with cousins,
ate ice cream with wood spoons,
gulped peanuts we’d poured into our Cokes, heard
stories about the dead, hugged the grannies—
it was required—and ma’amed
and sirred. The burrs on the chinquapin bush;
the peach tree rooted mid foundation stones;
the red kerosene tank,
pink bologna loaves, and yellow salt blocks
v.
lodged in the memories of Methodist
and Baptist, the lone part-
Mormon family, the obnoxious drinkers,
the hunters, tobacco farmers, bankers,
owners of a hardware
store, cattlemen, factory hands, teachers,
abused and abandoned wives and children,
the engineer, the ball
players and bricklayers, banjo pickers—
vi.
each the image of God, whether we marred
or honored our making.
The same rain fell on us, the same sunlight
and Light of Christ illuminated us,
more alike than different,
since all fall short of His glory: every
story by its end will honor Him. On
those Sundays long ago
the men played checkers, horseshoes, and poker,
vii.
the children shinned up (or tried to) the pole
topped with the Shell gas sign,
and mamas kept an eye on everyone.
So did the Holy Ghost, though it was like
a little mouse, crouched un-
noticed in the corner, darting out un-
seen to guide our step. Too often we kicked
the mouse. But all around
those stores and our stories a halo glowed.
🡶
🡳
M I X
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