R. T. Smith

Because someone thirsty enough to trust Old Testament wisdom followed the deepening greens and found a spring, silver in the shadow of blue ridges, I can kneel beneath this spill of willow limbs a century later and drink water risen from roots to enter the evening through a spout, the way Cherokee stories say the first people were born, washing into the world of such trees whose bark, like the water I cup to my parched mouth, tastes leafy and sweet and has the power, the old ones say, to heal.

Down here we say we dare defend our rights, our state motto. I’d back Charlton Heston for any office in the land. A Christian, he speaks right up. He’s got his head on straight, and people listen. Even on the screen of a honky-tonk TV he still looks like a hero, and he wouldn’t let freaks take over our country. If it takes firepower to keep us free, I say stock up. Keep your powder dry. Everything is dangerous these days. Life sucks. We suck too. Disaster is coming. Even God’s gone spleenish. Bless the common man against the government. They lie. They grind us up. Winchesters might be our last resort. Hellfire preachers say we best prepare for a dark event, but maybe Charlie Heston could keep death off our backs and tone down Jehovah’s wrath. Sweet Jesus—and this is the gospel truth— is pissed off at our newfangled unfaith. He’s coming back, and he’s armed to the teeth.

If it’s true that Johnny Weismuller stole his Tarzan yell from the Alpine yodel, did Hank Williams in the back seat of his Cadillac dream the ululation of Bedouin women welcoming the horsemen back from war? When I was a boy only a fool would fake a country sound, and my father made his voice over to ring as simple as Jack Parr’s Midwest porkless, yamless, no-cornbread-or-cracklin’ patter. He didn’t want to be from Butts County, Georgia, and hated farm chores and coveralls. Football got him out. The FBI gave him a way to travel under cover, but I have heard him, years later, after choir practice and the church social, sit back with a Pall Mall and follow Eight-Finger Fleming’s banjo frail. He’d hold that smoke deep, his ash glowing till his throat was bathed in tar, and then he’d cut loose and scroll it out, a yodel to make Roy Rogers blush. It was no hymn, I’ll tell you. We had a brick split-level in the suburbs, and the radio station of choice adored Perry Como’s croon. My mother adopted words like boocoo and oodles to mask her peach-orchard drawl. An uncle might tell a farmer’s daughter joke, the rake fleeing the cocked shotgun stopping on a hill to yodel, “Andyouroldladytoo,” but nobody could say ain’t or you’uns or I’ll get to it directly

I like it quiet like this, Alton. I like to think. I love the way spring light falls easy, soft. This morning I was driving the cruiser, savoring gold pollen everywhere out in the south of the county. Real nice, seeing forsythia and daffodils, ditch irises, and a few Cherokee roses opening white. It was a blue day, and I had a Tampa Jewel, just counting cows, seeing an April breeze in the catkins and new leaves, the radio off. I know that’s hardly right, but curse any citizen who’d grudge me an hour’s peace. Then I started seeing this marksmanship in the caution signs, the yellow diamonds that warn of deer or curves ahead, a steep grade—there’s one of those. Four circles and a jagged hole, likely a thirty-eight slug, smack in the center neater than Willard cleaves meat at the joint. A dozen and more. I got mad because I get paid to protect what the county commission declares holy— the park with its petting zoo, the rebel sentry on the square, and all the highway signs— and here’s all indications that some felon has no respect, some felon who can shoot. I admit my feelings were mixed, that right indignation at the broken law, but envy of his eye for centers. Mind you, I saw nary a rip on the fringes or a near miss. Bull’s-eyes, every sign I saw. A fool is what I feel, you understand, cause I motored over to Pig Burton’s store near The Bottle and asked him—he was stacking feed sacks on Robert Ring’s vehicle— who the hell was the target king of Beat Three. Pig always has his hands in every pie; he’d know if some individual had been hauling off all the turkey shoot prizes. I know I should know, too, but a sheriff’s got beaucoup chores to do, mostly idiot paperwork. I’ve lost touch since the last bond vote hired me four new deputies, all dirt-dumb. Well, old Pig has that laugh he can’t hold back, and he points his finger pistol-like at Robert, who’s got a shamed look on his face. “Pow,” he says at me or Bob, looking back and forth, just “Pow.” Seems Bob’s boy Earl, the one that ain’t got the sense of a chicken under that cowlick red as a rooster comb, is known to have sneaked Bob’s Colt a week before and shot every yellow sign he could till his pa ran him down and whacked him good, then locked him in the fall-down curing shed overnight—he’s a hard man, but he loves that boy. I remember once ... but how the hell can any half-wit you wouldn’t trust to milk hit the bull by the eye first time he ever gets loose with a handgun? “It’s easy,” says Bob, less shamed than afraid now he’ll have to pay for fresh metal—his people have always been tight—but he’s showing a grin I don’t like. “Real easy. He just cuts loose from the hip, five short feet back, sometimes maybe six, and comes back later to paint the target circles wheresomever his bullet hits. He aims that paintbrush right smart.” Blessed if I don’t feel the fool for being full dumbstruck at a trick Earl’s not bright enough to see as a joke. But I didn’t write it up nor charge a soul, just ground my cigar in the dirt and helped myself to a Dr. Pepper, made believe it didn’t mean a thing, but all day I’ve been riding, listening to crime reports on state radio— robbery at the mall, attempted rape maybe, wrecks on the bypass and a set fire in Brill’s deer woods. It gets to be too much. I shouldn’t even take the time to sit here watching this dark space where folks have been dancing all evening, hearing the quiet after all those raucous songs, but Alton, don’t you see, the feeble boy’s right, or half right, at least? It all comes to the same, whether you get what you want in the end or want what you get. The law works that way: each law makes more crime, but it’s not my job to say. Warm up my cup just one last time. I’ve got to circle Ampex once more before I turn it home. God, this dark feels right, no matter what flowers out there shed spring light. The dark is what hits me as holy. I’m calling it a day. Catch you later. Night.

When fall brought the graders to Atlas Road, I drove through gray dust thick as a battle and saw the ditch freshly scattered with gravel. Leveling, shaving on the bevel, the blade and fanged scraper had summoned sleepers— limestone loaves and blue slate, skulls of quartz not even early freeze had roused. Some rocks were large as buckets, others just a scone tumbled up and into light the first time in ages. Loose, sharp, they were a hazard to anyone passing. So I gathered what I could, scooped them into the bed and trucked my freight away under birdsong in my own life's autumn. I was eager to add to the snaggled wall bordering my single acre, to be safe, to be still and watch the planet's purposeful turning behind a cairn of roughly balanced stones. Uprooted, scarred, weather-gray of bones, I love their old smell, the familiar unknown. To be sure this time I know where I belong I have brought, at last, the vagrant road home.

Surprised by a frill of white flower where I'd never planted an eye, I decided to fence it with sticks and let the renegade live in undoctored soil where the garden gave way to volunteer poplars and acidic white pine. Why not? After all, away from the tribe, in clay where beetles drill and weeds emerge inspired, it might grow eccentric, proliferate and thrive. When autumn air said disinter , to fill the bin for winter, I troweled under and pulled the stem until a rabble of rough spuds red as Etruscan urns emerged as if to prove that whatever urge drove the rogue to sow itself and strive beyond all cultivation might offer a vital lesson to any apostate instinct aspiring to survive.

My husband was in the CIA. That’s the kind of woman I am. Lived all over Asia in suites decked out for the embassy staff, lounged around pools with sweet Singapore Slings, but now that I’m on my own, I can’t stand to waste a minute, not a breath. You may know my regular work at Helen’s Mademoiselle Beauty Nook downtown, but on the side I help women trim their belly fat. “Lose weight now, ask me how.” A thin American girl is a happy one, I always say. Oprah, too, but the drugs witch doctors sell can kill brain cells quicker than liquor. And your will, your liver. Listen, herbs are just what you need to cut that cellulite. I learned that in the Orient. I had spare time to spare and paid attention. Embrace herbs and exercise daily with a proper purge, just like the monks of Buddha. Tablets help, and fruit shakes, too, make you frisky as a prime-time preacher, but here’s my recent love and pleasure: invention. True, I mixed a chemical rinse that made great colors like the ao dais in Saigon, but some of the girls said it burned. Then I worked with Gene Graddick on a special quick perm you can get wet, but he cut out before we got it perfectly perfected. Beauty, though, that’s the ticket. I knew that even in Nam, while Jim-ass was off on his secret missions. The new machine I’m the mother of will move senior citizens and the, you know, “crippled” gals to the swivel chair without a hitch. I saw too many women, men, and sad children with stiff legs (or one or none) who couldn’t move after one government or another gave invitations to mortar fire or a claymore mine. With this machine I could prop them straight and wet-cut any willing guinea pig—pardon my calling the handicapped that—blow dry and comb them out with no inconvenience. My prototype is getting made in a LaGrange body shop this minute, if Bish is working late like he promised, and I aim to franchise, since Jim left me flat busted—well, you can see that’s a figure of speech—with back bills piled to the ceiling. The government has laws that business can’t fairly slight the challenged, so if I get it right, it’s got to sell. I can’t tell you how it works, you know. I learned secrecy from an expert, covert fool. It’s called “The Phyllis,” after me. What’s wrong with that? It’s no brag if you really did it. Hell—excuse my French—you know Snake Grillis of Snake and the Grass? He can pick the fiddle better than any man alive, and says so on stage. It’s no lie, so let him waller in it, I say. Look, I’m salt of the earth and have all the right attitudes and skills, not that selfish royal act my Jim put on when we went to the market. He called the people “slants” and laughed when they didn’t savvy. It’s no wonder he carried a Colt in his belt; they could tell how superior he felt, and they hated him hard. That asshole—pardon my French, but it’s so. No thanks, I stick to coffee. Hard stuff was what my ex used to wet his whistle and make him sharp for following spies, and cocaine, too, I suspect. Myself, I don’t need a jumpstart when loving’s on my mind. I got a tummy tuck, a boob job, a wardrobe straight from Penney’s Gay Parisian line. You’re a devil, but you smile like a G.I. on leave, and I can cure your entire cowlick problem. I’ve got a chair and a whole outfit at home, plus a queen waterbed and a Sony VCR on credit. I’m maxed out! Grab your jacket, buckaroo, and to hell with any sour memories. I’ve got bourbon and branch, black lace, and oodles of time. I’ve got a Walther in my purse and boudoir kung fu tricks for two. I’m here now and just for you. Call me Phyllis or The Phyllis or Boo, then just call me in time for breakfast. Ain’t this a lucky rendezvous?

I’ve caught fish everwhichaway they can be. On the Chattahoochee River I’ve used nets, gigs, trot lines, and bare hands. Even electricity. One day Braleigh and me caught so many that two-ended punt boat nearly went under. We were boys and didn’t know any better. Catfish were plentiful as water for all we could figure. That was back then. We’d wrap the copper pipe and drop it in, then use the telephone battery to make a wet cell of that whole muddy dogleg of the river. The small channel cats would rise, then recover, but big whites and blues would float, belly up, and we’d haul ’em in, fill the boat to the oarlocks with fresh fish to eat or sell. Their backs shined so bright it was a wonder. But let me tell you this: it was also a danger. If you caught the coil wrong or touched iron binding on that old craft with a live wire, it was enough to knock you on your ass. A man could get killed just trying to catch fish. Of course, such a method was a sin against Jesus and man, fish and fresh water, but we didn’t savvy. We were just free as gnats for the summer, a little enterprising and a little hungry. Besides, we hadn’t heard of sport or mercy. That was a cooter’s age ago. That was then.

We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. Two nights he came to me, mute, on fire, no dream. I woke to find the window embered and fog filling the willows. The third time he was milder and early, his gray form all ash. He said to me at bedside, kneeling, “You must say your life to save it.” Midnight, hoarfrost. I was not yet ten and didn’t know what to make of so brief a bedtime story. His features were simple and familiar—the smile, both eyes shut in bliss, I guessed, head and torso echoing an antique keyhole. From sleep’s icy edge I asked, “How?” But he was gone, the room all hazed. The air smelled of struck matches, scuppernong, a copperhead’s musk. What next? The moon was new in the budding bird cherry and Venus startling overhead. Dizzy for water, I followed my flashlight down the stairs where the black mantel clock was bonging. Beside it sat the twin of my herald, a stone bookend from Kildare and no more able to speak or take wing than a weathercock. His closed eyes told me, “Look inside,” but I ached to see him blaze again and say aloud how change could shake me to a shining. “But I must be the key,” I thought, and stepped over the sparkling threshold. My nightshirt floated ghostly across the scalded lawn, under the arbor, beside the barn, my soles not troubled by white grass crackling all the way to the well shed, the burning that must have been coming from me.

Nostrums? Lordy, I have seen them all. Alcohol’s the favorite. Many a quack’s panacea bottled in a cellar and hawked from door to door is thriving still. Bindweed’s supposed to heal a bruise. Cherokee remedies still survive, and slave recipes—hyssop, juniper, chives. Waitress, freshen this elixir, if you please. One day a hefty woman who works a loom down at Pepperell Mills sauntered in with no appointment and perched herself prim as an English queen in the waiting room. What happened next? For a prolapsed uterus, folk medicine recommends inserting an Irish potato. It works, if you can stand the weight, my friends. Well, she’d relied on that specific since winter. We’d hit, you understand, July, and her complaint, not one bit shy, was, Leaves in my virginia. Not beatific, no, but she was composed, no maniac, and it made some sense. What better place than a protected pocket, warm and moist? But the spud had sprouted, sent runners amok. You never know in these flatland burley counties if your manual skills will bloom as sawbones or private gardener. Deftly, I removed the obstruction and took it home. I’ve raised a whole colony in my window box, and bake, fry, or boil, I’m proud as hell of this year’s crop. The woman paid her bill with eggs and applejack. Life is a paradox. Now I’ve got to rush back and tend my flock. Got appointments at four—a pregnant lady, a leg to set, twins to inspect for chicken pox, and Marvin with his routine emergency. I guess you could say my practice is thriving. Drop by, and I’ll fry you up some shallot hash browns in Margie’s seasoned skillet, a flavor I can promise is sure to revive any ailing soul. Where do I get my onions? Don’t ask. The whole sweet world is a garden.