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Show Blue Run/96 now and may be more dream than truth-like Joey gets things, a place in- between. Still, a night comes to me, plays in my mind during storms and bone-cold nights when O.W 's off delivering butchered turkeys in Rocky Mount or deadheading across the river bridge, about to hit West Helena and that long stretch of highway between here and there. He's given me a pistol, O.W. has, and on nights when I need to, I take it out, let it lay on the night stand in its little brown case. It was Jimmy's gun, in his gold Grand Prix when the wreck happened, six .22 long rifle cartridges, just like now In the dream that is not a dream, the one that brings Jimmy's pistol to my night stand, the night is pitch black and we're on that road out past Wonderview High School, where Daddy'd played basketball his senior year. The stars just blaze, no moon to light the gravel roads Daddy navigates by heart. He was born out there on Stepwell land, the Trail of Tears where Cherokee had walked and wept, it was in his blood and bone. Daddy's headlights reflect back at us in the red eyes of animals. We were quiet, I don't know what had happened, but him and Dee'd just had that knock-down-drag-out. He'd hit her in the head with a peanut butter jar-I don't know why And now I was in Daddy's tmck, in my sunflower pajamas, five or six maybe, riding into the Solgahatchia bottom where an old rickety monument mars the Trail of Tears-right down the middle of Stepwell land. Out past Saint Vincent's Catholic, and past the invisible line where electricity stops and people still burn for light. We drove past boundaries out Tri-County road with its steel bridge missing boards like a man missing teeth, so silver water shone through. An owl swung down into the beams of Daddy's bright lights, maybe a barn owl-I don't know-but there it was and Daddy hit it. "Goddamnit," Daddy said. "Fuck everything." |
