I know, I know, I promised fiction and essays on the 15th and didn’t deliver. That’s pretty much what everyone expects, isn’t it — me being a day late and a dollar short?

Oh well. The wait was worth it, I assure you. Once you read this month’s goodness, you’ll forgive me. And how about Jack’s art — I mean, seriously, ya’ll — I’ll never tire of it.

-Valerie

Heat. The kind of heat that makes wiggly little lines appears before your eyes as you walk. The kind of heat that makes walking barefoot in hot gravel rocks a feat for only the brave or the unfortunate. This is the heat you miss in the winter and dread in the last faltering days of spring. This is the heat of Starkville, Mississippi, my home town. Starkville is not a famous place to anybody unless you are from Mississippi. For those of us who live there it is either the greatest place ever or the armpit of west hell. Opinions do vary and either could be right on any given day. Perspective is everything. Being born in July I have a love for summer time Mississippi. Who could blame me? The Fourth of July, summer break from school and my birthday. That list is only my personal highlights. When you consider the framework for these events you cannot help but be drawn to the “great state”.

Summer time in Mississippi is the time of the year when our cousins who escaped the state’s gravitational pull are shipped back down across the Mason-Dixon Line to reacquaint with family. It usually consists of some Yankee bred cousin being soaked in a moss filled pool or screaming in terror from the cicada that somehow “landed” on their shoulder. As I recall there were always tears involved and a fair amount of running and screaming. And laughter; at least until we had to explain the circumstances that now required the aforementioned cousin to be coaxed from the bathroom or closet. Innocence. “I was just showin’ em how catch bugs mama! It’s just a bug!” (Spoken with eyes open wide and eyelashes a flutter). Yep. That’s how we rolled in the Ville.

“Summertime…and the living is easy ~ Porgy & Bess Gershwin & Hayward”

A rite of passage for a young man in summertime Starkville was the building of the bicycle you would ride through the heat of the city. The undertaking was quite necessary as transportation was needed to traverse the distances between Westside and McKee parks, Wal-Mart on highway 12 (before they became super-sized), and the campus of Mississippi State University. While it was true the distances could be managed on foot, who wanted to walk when you could ride knifing through the warm breezes like a clipper ship slicing the Atlantic tides. The more affluent among us could purchase a brand new bike from Wal-Mart, Fred’s or Western Auto, but the true aficionados built their bikes from the remains of last year’s makeshift model adding pieces that were refurbished, scavenged, traded, or “found”. We all felt our self-tooled bikes were faster, better than anything pre-made by Schwinn or Huffy. Some kids used copious amounts of Krylon spray paint to personalize their swift beauties; I preferred the mismatched, roughhewed look not painting my bike allowed. If someone was foolish enough to challenge me to a race they would have to contend with the Jedi-mind screw of my post-apocalyptic, 20” wheeled nightmare cycle’s visage. A hell bike for the hellish heat of central Mississippi…or something like that. We rode a lot of miles in that unrelenting summer heat.

“End of the spring and here she comes back ~ Hot Fun in the Summertime; Sly and The Family Stone”

She stood there at the top of the lane. She wore braided pigtails, a salmon colored spaghetti strapped top, cutoff blue jean shorts with the tips of the front pockets peeping below the frayed denim and red five and dime flip-flops. I had known Linda Denise Brown ever since I was six years old and she was always a pretty girl, but standing here in the fullness of her pre-teen years she was the most beautiful girl in the world. As far as my thirteen years old world was concerned anyway. I in the awkward bravado that comes with early teens approached her with my coolest Richard Roundtree strut praying I did not trip on a lose stone along the way. She stood there, buffered from the August heat by the elms, dogwood and sycamore trees that were nestled among the thick kudzu that lined both sides of the lane. Her hands casually behind her back, her almond shaped caramel brown eyes locked on me and me alone. I could see the start of smile playing across her full, naturally pink lips. The closer I came the more the silk smoothness of unblemished, honey brown skin came into focus. One thing I learned in that moment and confirmed in my world travels as an adult is that there is nothing in all the world as fine as a girl raised in the south. The lane had to be a full 10 degrees cooler than the black asphalt on either side of it but the subtle temperature drop was of little use in cooling the heat that started in the pit of my stomach and radiated throughout my gawky teenage frame. “Hey Linda Brown”, “Hey Lil Demp” we greeted each one another. At her acknowledgement I tried not to grin like a village idiot; had to play it cool like Freddie “Boom-Boom” Washington on Welcome Back Kotter. Our conversation was as inconsequential as expired breath; content irrelevant, context immeasurable. I hung onto and played off every word that passed between her beautiful lips. Each syllable had been dipped in the thick batter of her hypnotic southern drawl, deep fried and served to me in savory morsels; I ate it like grand momma’s ambrosia. At the time I did not know that this and several more conversations would lead to our lives being entwined forever, but you can never tell what will happen in the southern heat.

“It’s like a heatwave burning in my heart ~ Heatwave; Martha and the Vandellas”

I was raised to be a good Baptist, but I was born into that all inclusive southern religion of SEC Football. Being born in Starkville my team choice was easy, Them Dawgs, baby, the Mississippi State Bulldogs. I was ringing a cowbell before ringing cowbells was cool. Loyalty to the dawgs is an implied thing. No one will tell you per se that you have to be a bulldog fan. I mean Mississippi has quite a few teams to choose from, but I’m from Starkville, the university is walking distance from my house. Any other choice is sacrilege. Although I grew up in Starkville I couldn’t afford the price of admission to a game but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t find my way to one. A couple times a football season my church youth group operated a concession stand on game day to make money for our activities. I always volunteered to walk the stadium aisles and hawk foot long hotdogs, roasted peanuts, 30 ounce Cokes and Sprites. The trays were heavy, the people were rude, the tips were sparse but I got to see my bulldogs play live! The heat during a day game could exceed 100 degrees; night games in August and September weren’t much better. But to see my dawgs in their home jerseys clash against our rivals was always an experience. The Ole Miss Rebels were the worst. I absolutely hated everything about the Oxford team from their mascot, the Colonel, to the Confederate battle flags they brazenly waved at each game. I disliked no opponent more…until the Alabama Crimson Tide came to town. Bama’s Tide was the spawn of Satan and had to be defeated in the Egg Bowl every year no matter if we didn’t win another game. The heat served to broil the players and the fans in the stands to the right temperature bringing Scott Field to the brink of eruption; every game, win, lose or draw. Days after the game you had to go to Starkville Café, Petty Barbeque, the Lil Dooey restaurant or Fleming Barber shop and parse the wisdom of Coach Emory Bellard in leading his team, our team. The dawgs didn’t always win, but they always played hard in the stifling humidity and omnipresent heat that was as much a sentient presence as any living person in my Starkville, Mississippi.

It has come to my attention that in order to be considered a genuine Southern writer, it is not enough to be from the South. It is not enough to live in the South. It is not enough to deeply love and chronicle all things Southern. No, to walk in the neighborhood of O’Connor, Capote, Lee and dare I say Faulkner, you have to kill a mule.

It is a Southern literary thing, this collective disdain of mules. I have known several mules in my time and this is my learned wisdom on the subject. Never, ever believe for even a second that a mule has come to like you. You may have fed and cared for the creature like it was your own blood relation, it may acknowledge the effort you have made on its behalf but it does not and will not, ever like you.

For those unfamiliar with the ways of the mule, let me fill you in. A mule is the offspring of a female horse and a male donkey. If the horse were male and the donkey female then the product is called a hinny, which is smaller than a mule. Hinnys just aren’t as popular, if popularity is the right criteria, as mules. All male mules and most females are sterile. The sterility is a result of the fact that horses and donkeys are two different species so their chromosomes just don’t pair up nicely. The word “mule” is from the Latin mulus which loosely translated, means mutt.

If you have spent any time around a mule and it has not kicked you, it is only because it has not found the opportunity to do so. You have either been vigilant or lucky and either category is finite, my friend. William Faulkner himself, who had a painting of a mule on the mantle overlooking his writing desk, once wrote, “A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently, for the privilege of kicking you once.” Faulkner speaks the God’s honest truth.

While I have an earned respect for mules, I hold no romantic notion that they will ever trot joyfully over to the fence line when they see me there, holding apples. Donkeys can be persuaded to show affection and playfulness, not so the dour mule. Sterility must breed bitterness, as evidenced by the reproductively challenged mule. I’d like to think that they chose a career over a family, but the mules just don’t see it that way.

I believe that you can correlate how many times a Southern writer has been kicked by just how gruesome the mule’s death is in their writing. I think the king-daddy of payback was achieved by not just one but two Southern writers. Truman Capote ingeniously hanged one from a chandelier and is matched by Cormac McCarthy who had one beheaded by a deranged opera star. I would guess that both these gentlemen endured more than three hits from a sharp hoof in their lifetimes to so creatively, ghoulishly and destructively dispatch with their literary mules, may the ornery buggers rest in peace.

I have affection for everything with fur or feathers so murdering a mule, even as a literary device, is an anathema to me. Yes, I’ve had mules spit at me and wheel to kick at me as I skittered away in the nick of time. Yes I’ve had a mule look at me with utter contempt. No, I have never had a tender moment in the presence of a mule even though I have experienced much joy with horses, donkeys, goats and llamas. Mules are the Simon Cowells of the animal world, a hard nut to crack and even harder to like. It’s just as well since they — like Cowell — don’t give a spit for you either.

I am simply not ready to murder a mule. Some day I will as a rite of passage, but not today. Today the mules of the literary world are safe from me, left alone to harrumph through their vengeful lives. But watch your back, mules. One day I too will be recognized as a Southern writer and it will all be because I killed a mule.

He unlocks the gun cabinet while his son watches.

The father chooses the .22 rifle. The gun is over sixty years old–an artifact from a Europe mostly known from textbooks–with a solid bolt action and a single piece of wood running from the buttstock to the foregrip. It has accompanied the father on many, many trips into woods, and he hopes to afford something similar to the patient child nearby.

The father loads the five-round magazine. He kneels in order to be eye-level with the boy and cradles the gun.

“These are the rules.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All guns are always loaded. Never point the gun at something you’re not ready to destroy. Be sure of your target and everything around it. Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. Those are the rules.”

“Be safe.”

“Yes.”

To his son he gives a Gerber mini-tool and the Tasco mini-binoculars; these the boy calls ‘noculars in the clipped argot of a child. They leave the house.

The truck shudders along a two-path road beside a tiny pecan orchard at the tail-end of the grandparents’ house. They go to the back of a field once full of peanuts and now barren even of the peanut hay. The father holds the gun, and they repeat the rules spoken before they left the house. The son walks on the father’s left side since the gun hangs from a sling on the man’s right shoulder.

Wind blows against them as they walk to the far corner where the same wind teases the limbs and leaves of the oaks in the hollow. The son notices a track in the dirt.

“Deer, Daddy.”

“Very good. Can you scan the treeline with the binoculars until we get there? If you see any squirrels, let me know.”

“I see your head.” The son smiles as the father looks back, and the sun is in his eyes while the sky is in the boy’s.

The father can’t help but smile back. “Please help check the trees and not my head.”

They enter a game trail, a cleft in dog fennels and briars, and follow it back to an old deadfall from last year’s clearing of trees. There are plenty of bullis vines back here, but they won’t last much longer since the first frost hit this morning. As he picks his way along, the son falls behind.

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t leave me.”

“I won’t.”

The wind gusts and rattle-rasps the trees. A crow squawks somewhere in the coverts of the oak hollow while the father and son pause at its fringe.

“What was that?”

“The wind and a crow.”

“I want to go back to the truck.”

“Why?”

“I’m scared.”

“This is part of going hunting. I would do my best not to let anything bad happen to you, you hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

The son scans the trees again with the binoculars. Neither of them see movement, and the wind has picked up.

“Daddy?”

“What?”

“Can I go to the truck?”

“Not alone. I’ll go back with you, but you have to show me the way back.”

“Why?”

“We must pay attention to the way we enter the woods so that we can get back out.” It is a simple test and one he knows the boy won’t fail.

“I know the way.”

“Then you lead. I’ll follow.”

“Come on, then.”

They pick their way back through the subtle snares of bullis vines and the crackling dry rot of year-old branches. The son leads with care but overshoots the trail they followed in because the wind has coaxed the dogfennels into bowing just so. It is an old trick the father knows, but he has a trick of his own.

“Heath.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You lost the trail. Stop and look. Look up. See that tree?”

“Is that the one where we came in?”

“Very good. Now, show me how we get to the truck.”

“Follow me.”

“Because you’re . . .”

“Leading.”

“Anything else?”

“I am brave.”

“You sure are.”

The corner of the field waits where they left it, and the sun reminds them why there shadows were so long coming from the truck. The son jogs to catch up and gets on the father’s right side.

“You should be on my right, Daddy.” The boy moves.

“Why?”

“’cause you’re carrying the gun on your right, so I gotta be on your left.”

“Exactly.”

They stop at the truck. The father ejects the magazine and hands it to the son.

“Can you shoot one of the trees?”

“No. It’s unnecessary. You never shoot unless it’s necessary. The tree’s done nothing, and I’m not wasting a bullet.”

He then ejects the unspent cartridge and replaces it with its fellows after the son returns the magazine, then sends the magazine home again. The gun goes in the back seat, and father and son get in and go.

“Just because we didn’t see any squirrels to shoot doesn’t mean the trip wasn’t worth it.”

“Well, maybe next time, huh?”

“We’ll see. Did you like going?”

“Yes, sir. I liked holding the ‘noculars.”

“You did a good job. Thanks for leading us out, too. Remember always to pay attention to the way you enter the woods so you can get back out. Let’s go home.”

They jounce along the two-path road and past the little pecan orchard, the barn, the old oaks. On the drive home, the father sees a squirrel bounding to a pecan tree at the corner of an abandoned farm lot. There is no use stopping, and the owner of the property is unknown to the father. He watches the squirrel scamper up the tree’s trunk.

“I had a good time, Daddy.”

“Me, too.”

“Can we go again?”

“Sure thing,” says the father as they ease into the driveway. Inside the house they return the rifle to the gun cabinet, which finds itself locked and holding new sets of memories with its old friends.

Two blue hydrangeas framed the concrete steps that led up to the back door. The smell of fresh baked pie wafting from the kitchen, made my mouth water like Pavlov’s dog. After the mile long walk on the dirt road from our farm house on a hot July afternoon, the welcoming coolness of the yellow linoleum floor on our bare feet was like an oasis in the Sahara to my sister Gay and me.

Mother knocked and called, “Judy?”

“Come in, Lois.” My aunt, in her housedress and crisp white bib apron, held the screen door open. Inside I glanced around looking for the origin of the delicious aroma. “Would you girls like some lemon pie?”

Maybe it was our hungry look or the pleading in our brown eyes turned toward Mother that provoked Aunt Judy’s offer.

“It’s bad manners to ask Aunt Judy for something to eat,” Mother had warned us. “Wait until she offers.”

With a nod of her head and a smile, Mother gave us permission to plop ourselves into the seats of high-backed chairs sitting at the round table covered with a worn green oilcloth.

When Aunt Judy brought the pie from the cupboard, my eyes lit up. Meringue, piled high and golden on the tips with little beads of sugar glistening like tiny jewels – my favorite.

Mother protested as Aunt Judy cut two giant pieces and placed them on blue and white plates. “That’s too much, Judy. Save it for Jimmy. I know he loves your lemon pie.”

Gay and I dug into the tangy sweet custard and the flaky crust. As Mother and Aunt Judy settled into rocking chairs to talk, Gay and I polished off every morsel.

At Cook’s place, a rented farm where my family lived when I was born, eight people shared a three-bedroom house – six children, my parents and Aunt Judy and Uncle Jimmy. Mother smiled when she remembered having Aunt Judy there. They were closer than sisters, she said. The miracle was that Daddy enjoyed having his brother-in-law live with him and his family. Nobody else in the entire world could have done that.

When my father bought a farm on the east side of the county, Uncle Jimmy bought a small piece of land down the road.

On their farm, my aunt and uncle built their neat little cinder-block home and a barn to hold the livestock. This was the culmination of their dreams. The best part was they were just a mile from us. Judy and Jimmy had no children. My brothers helped them build fence, gather hay, and inoculate cattle. Families helped each other, neighbors helped out when needed. No one had money to hire laborers. Everyone on Fleming Road worked hard, but enjoyed life for almost a decade, before the word came.

The day Aunt Judy found the letter in the mailbox from the United States government, she cried as hard as she did the day she buried her only child. Uncle Sam wanted their land and would pay them a fair price, but they must move out within a few months.

In the early 1950s, Colonel A. E. Dubber, fulfilling his duties, after a two-year search, chose a site in Dougherty County, Albany, Georgia for the Marine Corps Logistics Base. The Cold War was on between the Soviet Union and the United States, and defense building was in high gear.

Uncle Jimmy’s lined face creased even deeper with the sorrow and frustration he felt. “It’s not the money,” he said. “It’s just it ain’t fair to make us leave our home. We’ll have to start all over.”

Their hearts and souls were imbedded in the land, the pond, the barn, the house and everything that made the place special to them. They wanted to live there until death carried them away.

Around our dinner table we talked of nothing else but the impending move. Where would they go? Would they be able to find another piece of rich land on which to plant crops? I was young, but the worry in my father’s face and the hurt in Mother’s voice were enough to impress on me the darkness of the situation.

“Can we still go see Aunt Judy?” I asked. Not only would I miss her pies, but also the twinkle in her blue eyes behind her sparkling spectacles. I’d miss Uncle Jimmy’s tales of long ago when he was a boy, growing up in Mitchell County, before all the children had to go to work in the new cotton mill.

In time, we all had to accept the fact that we could no longer walk down the road to visit our dear kin. The largest Marine Base east of the Mississippi took over 3,000 acres of forest and farm land like Uncle Jimmy’s. The base was commissioned on March 1, 1952. Bulldozers razed the cinder-block house and the outside buildings. Within months the years of sweat and hard work vanished like a mirage in the desert.

Aunt Judy and Uncle Jimmy made a new start on land 10 miles away just off Highway 82. The fields were hard and rocky, not fertile and easy to plow. The aging couple found the work of rebuilding too much to handle alone. The planting and harvesting required hiring of laborers. Even though Aunt Judy helped with milking, the chickens and even stringing fence, they failed to make a profit. Uncle Jimmy went back to the mill. Aunt Judy fell into a deep depression.

Like the loss of a spouse or a loved one, the loss of their farm grieved this couple and brought on mental and physical distress.

Her anger and pain grew into an unreasonable paranoia. She made accusations against Uncle Jimmy. She thought he had found someone else. She complained to Mother.

I can still hear my mother’s soothing voice, “Judy, you know that’s not true. All he does is go to work every day and come straight home to you.”

Gay and I ate at the same oil-cloth covered table, while Mother tried to comfort my crying aunt. The pie never seemed as tasty in the new kitchen, probably because of the lump in my throat.

Uncle Jimmy died of a heart attack when he was 63 years old, never having restored his dream of being his own boss and making a living for his wife on their own farm.

My father lost trust in the federal government, even though it was a federal farm loan that helped him get his start. Today old people and families are forced to give up their homes for the building of manufacturing plants, big box stores or commercial developments. We hear this action is for the betterment of the community or these changes will help the economy of the area. Some fight it, but they always lose. Personal sacrificing for the good of the majority is to be commended, I suppose. But my heart aches

for the helpless people just as it did when I was a child and witnessed the devastation of the dreams of our neighbors and friends.

It could have been our farm that was seized back in 1952. We were just lucky. We lived on the other side of the road.

Three weeks of Mardi Gras beads cascade down Chelsea’s breasts—rain drops dancing on a terraced garden. Tonight’s boy, Emile, pulls her along like a toy on a string. She hitch-hiked here from a trailer park near Memphis with Bri and Ashley, only to lose those girls to a party on Upperline five nights into Carnival.

“This way,” Emile says. He wants to show her something. All her boys do.

They cross Canal and join the boiling crowd on Bourbon Street, neon and crystal meth streaking the night. Dick-masked college girls giggle past. A flashing form in a feathered cape slithers a hand between her legs. Up ahead, Emile’s muscled shoulders roll beneath his black t-shirt. She likes his smile and Cajun accent, his earring and dangerous ink. He shrimps out of Pass Christian with his brothers and their wives, is what he said.

They turn onto St. Peter’s and push past Pat O’Brien’s, Hurricanes brewing in alleys, dark shapes wrestling in wrought-iron courtyards to a jazz and Zeydeco beat. He steers her through Jackson Square, his rough hands on her slender hips, past pigeons, mimes and Voodoo Queens offering to read their fortunes, as if they have one beyond this moment and the next, beyond his shrimp boat and her trailer court with its crying babies and broken bottles, past the artists and horse drawn carriages, until they reach the River.

Beignets sizzle at Café Du Monde, the air thick with grease and powdered sugar. A breeze off the Gulf smells of oil and fish and money to be made. Emile spins her around and kisses her. He holds her tiny face in his large calloused hands, gazes deep into her cerulean eyes, and with fireworks bursting bright over the Cathedral, blue, green, and red spider webs slouching across the evening sky, tells Chelsea he doesn’t give a shit where she comes from.

For the first time in her life, neither does she.

Jimmy Ray Jamison was the luckiest cuss I’d ever known.

He was little when that spider bit him, and his leg swelled up bigger than a turkey on steroids. If Rita hadn’t gotten her boy to the doctor when she did, she would a gone from jilted mama to plain ole dumped, just like that.

He was about seventeen when he got hit outta the blue by lightning. Not a cloud in the sky, yet a bolt blazed into that street fair, smack dab into him. You’d a thought Jimmy Ray’d had a bull’s eye taped to his Stetson. Everybody figured he’d spend his days drooling down his bibbed overalls, yet all he got was a permanent wave to his copper-colored hair. If that was me, I’d a been left ogling the Gerber Baby while Mama spoon-fed me strained peas.

Jimmy Ray had a way with the ladies, too – inherited, no doubt, from his lying, cheating daddy – even though that ugly birthmark is there for all to see.

Couple years back, he cashed his paycheck at Hannah’s Hooch House and charmed Miss Hannah into letting him buy a lottery ticket. He said it wouldn’t do no harm since he’d “be legal tomorrow, anyhow.” The next day, the birthday boy turned on the TV and went to fetch his ticket. Rita was washing clothes, and he asked if she’d seen it. She shook her head “no” then let out a gasp and ran to the Maytag. Sure enough, there it was – stuck in wet gobs all over the fresh-cycled clothes.

She hadn’t meant to throw his money down the drain, but he was hopping mad and didn’t wanna hear none of her flimsy excuses. She felt so bad, she took the money she’d saved for church and walked down to Hannah’s to buy another ticket.

That next Saturday, Jimmy Ray won two million bucks!

He forgave Rita for, “neglectin’ to check my pockets before dumpin’ them britches willy-nilly into the wash” and paid her back the price of the ticket. She looked at Jimmy Ray with her adoring eyes. “Go have a good time with all that money, son. Nobody deserves it more than my Jimmy Ray!”

The first thing he did was buy a bunch of stuff he didn’t need. Then he entertained a lot of women he shouldn’t a been entertaining. Eventually he got bored with his hard drinking, partying ways. Me being his uncle and all, I suggested he spend some cash to make something of himself. I figured he was as likely to take my advice as I was to get fake boobs and learn to ride a unicycle. Imagine my surprise, though, when he went off to college to learn how to be a psychologist; said folks in town needed their heads examined, and he didn’t see why he shouldn’t be the one “reapin’ the benefits of their maladjustments.” Already he was using fancy words.

Jimmy Ray called saying his mind was wandering back to Laurie Ann, the girl he tried to woo in high school. Seems she had enough sense to peg him for what he was – a lying, selfish horndog. I tried to get him to realize she was too smart to put up with his partying and fooling around, but I might as well have been talking to that clover over there. He said he could change for his “soul mate,” a name I thought was silly to call somebody who wouldn’t a gave him directions if he’d bought her a hat and handed her tickets to Disneyland.

Jimmy Ray’s first client was Bertha Jones; seemed nobody’d listen to her unless she paid ‘em. She’s known to have a mouth bigger than the Grand Canyon, so it wasn’t a surprise when she blabbed the minute her foot hit the sidewalk. Said her psychologist was the best thing that happened to her since she won second to last place in that Pillsbury Bake Off contest years ago. Before long half the town was taking turns spilling their guts on Jimmy Ray’s couch.

One evening Laurie Ann called him saying she’d been laid off and did he need somebody to schedule his appointments and such. Being with his “soul mate” five days a week gave Jimmy Ray time to charm her, and she was convinced he’d stopped womanizing. He even cut out the booze, which his mama said was “a miracle in itself, Praise the Lord.”

Ten months ago, the youngsters said “I do.”

Well, yesterday Lady Luck flipped Jimmy Ray the bird. While we were standing inside his front door talking, the buzzer rang. I didn’t recognize the woman standing on his porch, and it didn’t look like he did neither. Her mouth scrunch up when she looked at my nephew’s blank stare. Then she lifted the blanket off the face of the baby she was holding and propped the little fella up for us to see.

The noise that came out of Jimmy Ray’s throat reminded me of those damned birds that hang around the courthouse and crap all over everybody – kind of a loud screech. I took a closer look, wheezed and went into a coughing fit. The kid’s birthmark was shaped like a deformed cow, matching the one on Jimmy Ray’s face to a Tee. Here’s the kicker: that baby couldn’t a been more than a week or two old.

I jerked around to face the son of my brother who swore up and down he’d changed his horndog ways. But Jimmy Ray was too busy sounding like a flock of sick birds to look me in the eye.

Then I heard the tap, tap, tapping of Laurie Ann’s shoes, and I turned to see her heading for us. She wore her welcoming grin, and I remember thinking the poor little darlin’ didn’t have an inklin’ how quick that big ole smile was about to fade away.

Damn you, Jimmy Ray!

“I used to be bad, baby, but no more.”

“I can’t imagine you ever being bad, baby.”

“But I stole, baby. Bold as brass, I stole from the dresser drawers of my friend’s parents, rummaged in their soft night things, shuffled through their secret photographs, worked my fingers to the back of the drawers and found their kruggerands, fondled them like cold icebox plums, took them as my own.”

“But darling, I know that’s all in the past. It’s sweet of you to confess, to confide in me so, but I know you’ve changed.”

“Baby?”

“Yes, baby?”

“There’s more, baby.”

“Doesn’t matter. Don’t nothing change how I feel about you. Whatever you were, you ain’t no more.”

“Yeah, but I hurt women, baby. Hurt them bad. Promised them love and forever and babies, baby. Some of them women I hit, baby. Slapped the shit out of them. Hell, don’t half remember why. Some of them I left knocked up while I hot-footed it to Mexico and Salt Lake City. I think about them babies sometimes, baby. When I think about them, they’re still babies no matter how long ago everything was, hungry babies too, always crying, always rolling their heads in that broken but not broken way babies have. It’s so long ago. I mean they could have grown up and started having babies of their own – even while I was still bad. Maybe they were my lovers, baby. Maybe they were my lovers, and I didn’t even recognize them.”

“Don’t say that, baby.”

“But could be. I could have made love to my own babies, baby. You know how when a man and a woman are attracted to each other it’s like they recognize something in each other? It has to be that way with children too, don’t it?”

“Maybe, baby. But it’s over now. And if it bothers you, look them babies up. Ain’t none of that too late. Not ‘til you’re dead.”

“I could, but there’s other things I might wake up too. Is it okay if I just let it go, baby? Forget about it? Can you still love me knowing what I’ve done?”

“Of course. I mean I can’t say I’m happy. I’m not going to fib. And the way you’ve said some of these things, the way you worded them —- it could across as creepy. But that’s okay. I know you’re just trying to set things straight. And that makes me love you more.

“That’s good. I feel like I can tell you the rest then, baby.”

“The rest?”

“During the war, the one before the last, I killed men.”

“That’s what you do during war.”

“Nah, it ain’t just that I killed them, baby. It’s how I killed them. Slow. Creatively. Like I was building something instead of tearing it down. It’s how much I enjoyed it. Ain’t nothing makes you feel like that, baby. It’s like standing stark naked in one of those big electrical winds that come with a storm. It’s like taking the perfect piss – that’s what killing is. And it ain’t just that I killed them. It ain’t that I killed their wives, their husbands, their children, their friends. It ain’t that I took the butt of my gun and bashed their dogs’ heads in. It’s that I organized all of it, baby. It’s that I was the one that said they should die. It’s that I was the one that said they were genetically wrong, that they were blasphemers. It’s that I wrote the manifesto. It’s that I was the general.”

“Shhh. What’s that line about the plank and the splinter? Who has the right to judge you? If others ain’t done it, you know they’ve still committed the sins in their hearts. And it was cowardice that stopped them I bet you, not that they were actually better. Don’t you worry about it, baby.”

“Yeah, but did I mention the programs of rapes I instituted, my numerous violations of the sin against the Holy Spirit? Did I tell about my use of dark magics, my pacts with demons, about the small business owners I drove to suicide? About the wives I stole and discarded, weeping and stinking of my seed? Did I tell you about these, baby? And those noises, the snuffling choking noises earlier you thought were coming from the pipes? It wasn’t the pipes. It was your mother dying in the basement – taking her sweet time as always. She came by earlier with some banana bread and started in on me. I busted her up good baby. With the axe. The good one. Now, the handle’s all messed up. And I ate the banana bread. All of it. In one go. I did. I feel so bad about it all, baby. I do. Truly. Not a crumb left. I feel so bad about the kind of man I was. It’s been hours now, but still the guilt just eats away at me.”

“Shhh. Shhh. That’s the past, baby. The past.”

Mama told us that the preacher man was always right.

I never liked him. He would shake your hand forcefully and squeeze it so tight that you could feel the blood thumpin’ at the end of your fingers. Daddy always said you could tell a lot by a man’s handshake. If that’s true then the preacher man was pushy. I didn’t appreciate the way he talked too close to your face, or the wild look he would get in his eyes when he got to yellin’. I told Mama that I thought he had those demons in him that he was always preachin’ ‘bout. She slapped me right across the face and told me to go ask for forgiveness. I was just tellin’ the truth and God says, “All liars go to hell.” The preacher even said so.

He also said if we gave as much money as we could to the church then God would take care of us. Daddy worked at the mines, Mama did laundry, and I helped by collecting bottles I found on the side of the road to make ends meet. Every Sunday, Daddy took money out of that rusty jar on top of the cabinet, even if we were down to our last penny. He was what the preacher man called “faithful.”

The mine that Daddy worked at caved in. There was a lot of smoke and rubble—and a lot of cryin’. Mama and I waited as the rain poured down and they dug out lifeless after lifeless body. Dad’s body was the last one they found.

I guess the preacher man is goin’ to hell.

This was before Ivan, so the road out to the fort was still open. Which was a damn shame, from the Jenkins clan’s point of view. The clan didn’t want to go to Fort Pickens. A trip to Fort Pickens meant driving more than an hour, paying three tolls, and having to sit on a beach where there was no shade but what you brought yourself. Any sort of people might be sitting right next to you, and there wasn’t much you could do about it. A beach full of strangers that weren’t kin was not the Jenkins idea of a good time.

The Jenkins weren’t big fans of Fort Pickens itself, either. It was an interesting enough old ruin, if you went for that sort of thing. But Pickens had been occupied by Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer, U.S. Army, in 1861, and held by him and 80 of his men for the next four years. As far as the Jenkins were concerned, this lessened its value considerably, and they would have sworn Auntie felt the same way.

But she was lost in some fantasy from her youth, when she was young and beautiful and danced on the beach with a handsome boy in a uniform who’d probably taken her up in the dunes and had his way with her before shipping out and disappearing from her life forever. This fact had been a source of shame and sorrow in her life for decades, but now, suddenly, on the eve of her 80th birthday, her shame was washed away.

When one of Belie’s female cousins suggested maybe a barbeque along the river would suit her better—the Jenkins were river folk—Auntie grew uncharacteristically snappish, demanding to know what did they ask her for, then, if they were just going to do what they wanted anyway. So off they went. They packed rafts and inner tubes and towels and chairs and homemade shade tarps, devised of large sheets of canvas and four fishing poles; and fishing poles, though none of them cared for the idea of gulf fishing much; and coolers full of sandwiches and beer and gallon jugs of tea and toys for the few kids they’d managed to produce in the past ten years. After decades of fecundity, the family was drying up.

They loaded all this stuff, plus the kids and the dogs, into three pickups and an ancient Lincoln Town Car that no longer shifted into fourth gear, and headed south.

Dogs weren’t allowed on the beaches, but the Jenkins would be damned if they let that stop them.

They arrived and unloaded the pickups. The men unfolded their camp chairs and sat in a crooked row drinking beer while the women made their tent, spread towels and blankets, and set out food on an ancient card table.

Belie was the only male who stayed on his feet to help the ladies. His mother, Mary, had him squirting catsup onto hamburger buns when one of the cousins started heading toward dunes. Belie watched as Eddie reached the dunes and yanked on one of the tall grasses that grew sparsely over them. He’d intended to use it as a prop in some prank, but he never got that far. All of a sudden Belie was in his face, pointing the catsup bottle toward him menacingly.

“What’s your problem?” Cousin Eddie asked. He was not inclined to tolerate Belie’s eccentricities.

“That there’s sea oats. It’s a protected species.”

“So?”

“Sea oats prevent dune erosion,” Belie said fiercely. “Take your paws off it.”

Eddie stared at Belie in astonishment. Dune erosion?

He did it, though. He took his paws off.

A few months later, Uncle Don got up a duck hunt one weekend. He’d rigged up some new blinds out in the swamp, and wanted all the men to go out together.

Belie had kept mostly to himself since May’s birthday party, but Uncle Don insisted all the male cousins had to go. Belie wound up in a blind with Eddie and their cousin Joey. The sun had just come up and they were just sitting there waiting, not talking much, when Eddie looked across the bog and saw some tall grasses, sort of feathery on the top. They looked just like the ones at the beach Belie had made such a fuss over.

Eddie decided to tease his cousin. He was bored, sitting there in the blind. He wasn’t crazy about duck hunting, being more of a hog and deer man himself.

“Hey, Belie, isn’t that some of those sea oats you’re so crazy about? You know, the ones that prevent dune erosion?”

Belie looked in the direction Eddie was pointing. “Those ain’t sea oats. You won’t see sea oats up here. Water’s too brackish. Those are Phragmites.”

“Phrag what?”

“Phragmites. The common reed. Such as sheltered the baby Moses when Jochebed hid him from the Pharoah’s wrath.”

“Sounds like you love those Phragmites just as much as the sea oats.”

Belie looked thoughtful. “Hard to say. Some ecologists consider Phragmites a nuisance. They invade marshes and overtake the ecosystem, crowding out other plants and even animals. Others say Phragmites marshes are valuable wetlands in and of themselves.”

Joey cut to the chase. “Belie, are they good or are they bad?”

“Personally, I can’t see how the reeds that saved the baby Moses can be anything but good.”

The Jenkins family tree had been invaded by a treehugger. Though it surely meant the End Times were nigh, Eddie had to admit he was impressed, hearing Belie talk like that.

Her name was Maybe and whenever she thought of herself, someone else was always there. Once she thought she caught a flash of herself standing behind strands of barbwire in a muddy barnyard, wearing rubber boots so tall the tops brushed her knees, but before the image fully gathered itself together an old man on an old tractor emerged and it was dry summer and the barnyard was gone. Behind her a cotton field bloomed and she could smell the honeysuckle and she was not alone.

Greggie’s eyes were bright as diamond flecks and sometimes on the hot, river-sweaty nights, she’d let him sleep on the window sill in her room. His eyes would turn into pins of blue in the half-dark when the moon was full and the light came through the screen. She’d watch them until he fell asleep and wonder if Greggie was tiny because he knew her imagination would not do what she wanted it to. If he’d decided that if he stayed tiny, it would be as though he wasn’t there. Then she’d wonder if in his imagination he wanted to see himself big but could only see himself small.

Greggie had grown a few inches since he was born, but rabbits and squirrels and even small birds like cardinals and blue jays still posed a threat. She had to be on guard when they went outside. On the first day of school after the bus had gone by she placed Greggie in the old music box she had removed the lid from, and they went down to stand by the broad river. She loved the river and Greggie did, too. He sat tall in his box and clasped his hands together as they stood on the bank and breathed in the rich air. Far out over the water three pelicans soared. A double-crested cormorant she would have to keep her eye on perched on a water stump downstream. So many things at the river could be a danger to Greggie without her there to protect him, and at that moment the joy of being his mother quaked through her. What did it matter if her imagination was not hers alone when she had moments like these? There was nothing more powerful than being needed, and for now on she would welcome her visitors and try to make them feel at home. The realization gave her such deep relief she smiled down at Greggie and lifted the velvet-lined box to whisper she loved him, but before she could speak he touched her ear and said, “Go ahead, mother, pretend I’m not here.”

We’ll add fiction and essays by the fourth (yes, we call it Fiction by the Fourth here on the First). Phoebe Kate’s been reading her eyeballs to the bone and she’s chosen some fine work that will coming up here in just a bit.

Enjoy the work by Jack Niven, whose art illustrates the poetry section right now but will be featured in our essays and fiction later on in the month. Read about Jack here on the Mule [with links to his website and more] and also, check out his art online at the Martine Chaisson Gallery.

Let’s all give a whopping round of applause to Helen Losse for this superb issue. She works diligently all year long to assure that the Poetry Issue will be the crowning achievement of the year for our Mule. The April Poetry Month issue of the Dead Mule illustrates what we show you all year long, every issue, month in, month out — the Dead Mule kicks ass.

Read more about Jack Niven in here in the blog section or in essays (it’s the same thing, published twice, just to make damn sure ya’ll read it.)

Peace and Prosperity (as Jimmy says and you know what I mean if you watch “Intelligence”)

–Valerie MacEwan

A Book A Day

One summer my brother built a tree house
in old man Sneed’s backyard across the street.
Just loaded up a wagon and rousted

me to help him carry nails and a sheet
of ragged plywood he’d pried from the door
of an old abandoned shed. In a week

my brother would be thirteen, willing no more,
he swore, to bow to our father’s stupid
rules. How every single day that summer

we would all have to read a book. Fuck it!
he shouted out every time his hammer
missed or bent a nail. I carried a bucket

back and forth beneath the tree to gather
up the mess that fell into the yard, old Sneed’s
one demand he yelled from his porch over

the racket of my brother’s frenzied need.
He hauled, he sawed, he nailed as the shavings
rained into my hair. No way would he read

his summer days away. He was packing
up his stuff and moving here. Finally
he wiped his brow and crawled in, me backing

up in case the thing came crashing down. I
could hear him through the floorboards, scrambling
around in there, trying to make his body

fit between the too–close walls and ceiling.
When he tried to sit, his knees scraped
his chin, driving him mad and cussing

out again. I watched as he walked away
and then climbed up and in. It was there I
spent the summer–ah!–reading a book a day.

**

Running Board

My brother begged to ride the running board.
Our neighbor across the street had invited us.
We were on our way to church to see the Lord.

A car was something we could not afford.
So we packed in as Daddy stifled a curse
and brother hopped up on the running board.

Mama didn’t go, but watched as her horde
disappeared from sight. She wrung her hands, trust-
ing she was doing right. Surely the Lord

would bring us safely back. The engine roared.
My brother held on tight. I watched his face
drain white as he clung to the running board.

Inside, our neighbor at the wheel was floored
each time Daddy took a nip from the flask
Mama warned would be the end of us. And, Lord,

was she ever right! Our neighbor turned his Ford
around and dumped us out again in all disgust.
That day not one of us so much as glimpsed the Lord.
Though brother had come close on the running board.

**

The Chosen One

One year my brother played the wind.
Paper streamers billowed from his hands.
The whole school watched
as he came running down the aisle.

Paper streamers billowed from his hands,
that older one who always seemed in trouble.
He ran like a crazy boy down the aisle.
Our parents snapped a picture and even smiled.

Oh, why could he not stay out of trouble!
The other five of us were always good.
We worked hard to make our parents’ smile.
They rarely did, though—it was all his fault.

The other five of us were always good.
Tried to stopper mother’s tears and father’s drink.
It didn’t work, though—it was all his fault.
If only our brother would just go away.

Mother’s tears and father’s drink grew worse.
The threats, the beatings, so loud the neighbors heard.
Finally our brother just went away.
We waited for the quiet to settle in

but the threats, the beatings did not stop.
Now Mother bore the brunt
as we pretended quiet had settled in.
At least brother was now safe in Viet Nam.

We never knew which bore most the brunt,
our mother or our father, of missing him.
Sometimes, after a rare letter from Viet
Nam, one of them would bring that picture out.

The one they took the day he played the wind
as paper streamers billowed from his hands.

**

Death of the Estranged Brother

—for Gary

This death will change nothing, I glibly said.
Let someone else mourn him, buy a white wreath.
I hung up the phone and went back to bed.

He threw a sharp pencil once at my head.
Its cold stinging point pierced my young cheek.
This death will change nothing, I coldly said.

Mama, get over it, you saw he was fed.
It’s not like you put him out on the street.
Please hang up the phone and go back to bed.

That time Daddy left us and things got real bad,
you gave him to Grandma. How old was he? Three?
This death will change nothing. Why should it, I said.

He should’ve just listened, and quietly tread,
followed, as I did, our daddy’s harsh creed.
I hung up the phone and crawled into bed.

Already a revenant before he was dead,
a fading blue dot on my aging cheek.
His death will change nothing, I’ve said and I’ve said.
I hang up the phone and take to my bed.

**

The Talk

When the red finally blossomed in the white
crotch of my cotton panties, Mama
decided it was time. Time for the talk
all respectable mamas have with their girls
when Granny comes to visit. Problem was,
with six children and a sorry-ass man

on her hands, she just couldn’t manage
to find the time. That night a sliver of white
broke through the crack in the curtains. I was
in bed with my older sister who said Mama
had assigned the chore to her, just a girl
herself whose job it was now to talk

me through the sordid mess. She started talking,
beating around the bush. “You see, the man…
well…the man is…okay, you know how girls
have….” We were both staring up at the white
ceiling. “You’ve got what it takes to be a mama
now,” she finally said. But what in the world was

it, I kept wondering. Kept wondering was
she ever going to spit it out. She talked
and talked, but how I could become a mama
kept lurking around in there somewhere. Man,
was I sweating! Outside, the moon throbbed white.
Finally she said, “Just start guessing, girl,

and when you get it right, I’ll let you know.” Girl.
When Mama used that word I knew I was
in deep. Then my sister just pulled the white
sheet over her head and began to snore. Talk
about deep! I kept lying there as the man
in the moon hung dumb in the big mama

sky outside. But that was okay. Mama
didn’t know I’d heard it all already. The girl
next door had told me everything. How a man

just peed inside you and there it was…
a girl, maybe, you’d one day have this talk
with. But you, you would do it right. In the white

respectable light of your white mama
words, walking the talk. Saying, “You see, the man…
well…the man is…okay, you know how girls…”

**

Hello Doll

is how my sister Rosi
answers the phone when I call,
in that deep, gravelly
fun-girl voice she picked up
from her favorite frazzled episode
of The Andy Griffith Show.

Hello Doll, she will say,
her greeting grown course
from the years of unfiltereds
those fun-girls, too, must
have loved. Who out
of the 1950’s blue
careened into Mayberry
one bright day
only to land
under lock and key
of Barney’s bumbling vigilance.

Fifteen months between us–
Irish twins, almost, an uncle once remarked–
she grew up like those fun-girls,
not at Barney’s mercy but my own.

The way, as legend has it, I would reach
through the bars of her crib
to steal the nourishment meant for her
until she, herself, must have seemed a doll
next to my healthier, hulking frame.

Yet there it is each time I call,
in that forgiving, gravelly voice.

Hello Doll.
Then I to her
as if those words might
rectify it all…

Hello Doll.