Winter Light - A Fiction

He sinks to the depths about now.

Plunging, and making no effort to still the descent.

Taking comfort in the pitch where no one else is allowed,

or wants to be.

The safest place ever.

 

It begins with a confluence, a perfect storm.

Christmas, another fucking birthday, the New Year.

Rarely measuring up to images conjured.

Memories blurred without remorse,

but not without contrition.

The lapsed belief in the baby Jesus.

The Big Cheese altar boy at Midnight Mass.

Nothing more special to his mother.

And the strange non-Uncle,

the perfect Santa except for those roaming hands.

Green soup and lasagna. A ham.

The candles blown out, the ball dropping.

It all saddens the man.

 The missing of those moments.

           

How he loves winter.

Visible breathe with the first step out.

The biting air, the sharper the better.

Add some wind, he prays.

The depth of the forest.

Frozen ground – crunching and hard.

The smell of wood smoke and

soup simmering on the stove.

Dogs laid up on the couch. Like they own the joint.

New images, he thinks.

A clear reality not faded by time, or muted by innocence.

Seen with gratitude and lived with pleasure.

The Darkened Roost

They kept chickens. Sometimes they had more than others, often as many as thirty. The chickens did their jobs – they laid eggs, ate ticks and other bugs, and kept the ground stirred up with their always scratching and pecking. And they were pretty to look at, what with the different breeds and colors. 

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At night, they closed them up in a wired coop to keep them from the fox, bobcats and other critters looking for an easy meal. After the chickens jostled for spots on the roosting poles, the man would enter the coop. It’s dark, his headlamp the only illumination. As he stoops low to close the opening to the threatening outside, the birds coo and cluck their approval from above and around him – so peaceful and calming. But it’s an eerie peace that hints of havoc. Perhaps a peck on his hairless head. Sometimes, the man thinks Hitchcock or remembers stories of farmers knocked to the ground and flogged to death by their chickens. They go for the eyes first, he’s heard – striking at the shiny reflections of themselves. 

 

A Good Walk Soiled

It was their first walk together in a long time. The bum hip had kept them from it. But now, new joint in place and mostly healed, they set off down the driveway as they did when they first met. Talking, holding hands, enjoying the time and place together, free of aches, and pain. Remembering reasons for being here in the first place.

The forest this time of year is a soft brown, devoid of the brilliance of spring and fall, so open you can see deep into the trees. Around a turn, a flash of bright assaults us from the edge of the road. Plastic bags, filled with all manner of shit, literally, as they mostly hold used disposable diapers. Tossed, left for dogs and creatures to shred, the earth won’t ever absorb it. You think, “What ignorant fool would do this?” But it isn’t the first time and you know it won’t be the last.

Along Anderson Branch Road, Madison County, December 2013

We get to the one-lane bridge that is our turnaround spot on this day. The creek is beautiful here – light and water tumbling over rocks, creating large pools of sunlight where one can spot an occasional fish, following its age-old path to the river and the sea. A bubbling brook some writers might call it, but not in a heavy rain.  A look from the other side of the crossing reveals the dead deer – hide, a skeletal carcass, forelegs with just enough sharply-cut meat attached to the bone to tell you this was the work of man. Killed, skinned, gutted, and butchered; the remains thrown in the creek, where it will feed others for days to come.

At Anderson Branch where it meets PawPaw Road, Madison County, December 2013

ShatterZone - a fiction

The road leveled out and they passed an overgrown field, barely enclosed by an ancient fence with rusted wire and still sturdy posts. “What was that for?” The boy asked. “Grandma and Grandpa had a lot of animals up here." the man answered. "You've never seen many animals. They had goats and sheep, lots of chickens. Mama said when she was little they had horses and llamas too. Grandma liked working with the animals,  Grandpa did too. He liked them for the work they did around the place and he liked to eat them."

Deaf and Blind on Shelton Laurel

Hickey's Fork, Shelton Laurel, Madison County, NC, 2013.

A couple of weeks ago, as we drove up Hickey's Fork looking for a barn with tobacco hanging in it, we passed by this sign. We were already driving slowly, but immediately slowed even more in case we encountered this unseen "deaf resident." I thought of this person and the sounds he was missing - the wind and rain in the forest, the bugs at night, a screech owl calling a mate. I also thought of a photograph I had made in 1998, also shot in Shelton Laurel, not far from where I was today. In it, the driving public was warned of a "blind resident" who walked Highway 212. I included the earlier photograph in my book, The New Road: I-26 and the Footprints of Progress in Appalachia. 

The two signs are, for me, reminders of the intimacy and immediacy of small places. They tell me of the concerns of real people, of neighbors and family, who have real concerns that could be affected by our actions. These are not signs one would see on the Interstate. Rather, they are gentle suggestions of acceptable behavior in this small, quiet and slow place. A place where values and lifestyle are such that disabled residents are at ease walking our roadways; knowing drivers will heed their personalized appeals, slow down, and respect them for their strength and resilience.

 

Highway 212, Shelton Laurel, Madison County, NC, 1998.