3 Stories

Grave Truths

In a Tennessean valley, there is a church with a steeple that reaches for Jesus. Behind the church, the dead dream beneath limestone. And at the open mouth of the graveyard, there is a secret. See that patch of dandelion. See how it kneels by the gate. If you are lucky, come here on a late spring night when the moon is swollen. Come only if a thunderstorm boils green on the horizon. Come only on a gut full of vinegar and grits. Squat to the seeding flowers. Do not pluck. Eye the shortest of the bunch, and you will know the tuft is not of white seeds, but tight coiled curls. The seed head is the old, brown face of a woman.

And in the face of the sprouted matriarch, there are rules. Do not tell her that she looks walnut-wrinkled. Do not ask about the weather or the meaning of life. Do not probe into the dreams you had the night before. She will not be interested. Do not ask her why your pound cake comes out too dry or why your heart feels syrupy when you think of the one name, always the same name. Listen. She will tell you of the Red Summer, how the gunfire on cobblestone rained hail heavy. How the black bodies shimmied with bullets. How, as they died, their thoughts wandered to the ingredients of buttercream or how windchimes sound like funerals. Nod in polite interest. She will lament, and the wind will be hot. Let her finish. She will ask you to return, to water her roots with bone broth or sugared tea. Agree. If you lie, your heart will stop before the rain reaches the nape of your neck. If you return, you will find love before the sun goes down.

As you exit, you will hear a choir sing in the belly of the church. Do not seek the voices. It will be late, the creeping thunder will join their hymn, but the breathing congregation will be sleeping in cabins, in doublewides, in shacks, dreaming of light and rolling Sunday clouds.

New Year’s Bash

[11:00 p.m.] In the burning house, Johnny Cash’s ghost sounds like church. He and others croon: Daddy sang bass, Mama sang tenor. The parents drink moonshine with soggy peach chunks, watch the edges of the walls char midnight black. Goodwill china scrapes. The children eat smoke. Singin’ seems to help a troubled soul. The mason jars in the pantry swell in the heat and bleed jam, honey. The mother sees the sticky mess on the floor, hopping and dancing to avoid scorched toes, and knows this means no balm for cooked skin. It never snows in Tennessee.

[11:45 p.m.] The patriarch twists the muscle of the clock forward because he cannot celebrate properly with dusk in his lungs. A knock on the door. Another family, huddled on the porch, eager to abandon the blizzard. The Christmas lights that still choke the railing pulse, turn the newcomers’ flesh to red, to green, to frost. The children watch as the strangers enter, wonder if they notice the flames licking their hair. They lean back and forth and back in the rocking chair.

[11:59 p.m.] Cigarettes and a skillet seasoned thick with saved lard. A new year, a new life, baptismal to be sure!

Mortician and The Child

Aunt Lynch:

She has painted the nicotine-jaundiced nails of trailer park whores, pasted concealer over the purple, pocked arms of filthy pill heads, contoured swollen faces of those fat messes whose veins are clogged with gravy. The selfish many. The gluttonous masses. Aunt Lynch cloaks sin in its Sunday best every shift, knows how it manifests in the body, and this is why her nephew’s behavior frightens her. After church, when hunger possesses, she explains the sermon to Johnny over collard greens and thin cube steak: The Good Lord’ll protect you from all, as he sees fit. Johnny blows bubbles in his sweet tea, puffs the straw out of his mouth, Not Blackholes, they’d gobble you right up. Silence thick as prayer, and he adds: Greens taste like horse shit.

In her dreams, he is Satan.

She hides a Bible behind the microwave, under couch cushions, in the pantry. In the hall, she hangs the massive portrait of Jesus kneeling in the Garden of Gethsemane where foliage chokes the earth. Beneath, she mounts two taper candles, red as scarlet beebalm. She does not know if Johnny will notice. She only hopes Johnny’s wicked temperament will be hushed while she displays His Glory in the cramped apartment.

Johnny Lynch:

He is insatiable when alone. Buttered cornbread, ham hock, banana pudding. When Aunt Lynch comes home, he wants to fast until ribs poke through his flesh. Her stench is a bouquet of lilies and sick. Lilies and magnolias and sick. When she’s around, he feels like copperheads writhe deep in his belly. She looks at him, too, like she knows he is disgusted. Sometimes he can force food down, or he will sneak in her purse and munch on peppermint puffs and butterscotch. He wishes most that she carried chocolate or pralines or taffy. He likes the way it feels to coat his cuspids with sweet.

And then she hangs Jesus.

But below that, two candles, holy-blood red. One time, he ate a crayon, and it was salty, and he felt that he had a secret, and his guts were hot with the possibility of getting caught. When Aunt Lynch slips into the heaven you can wake up from, he sneaks from his room. Two clocks are in this quiet place, and the tickticktick reminds him that hell is real. He wrestles a skinny candle from the holder, lets the smooth sit on his fingertips. He brings it to his nose, inhales. It does not smell like cinnamon or apples, only muted dust and paraffin. He squats below the Garden, considers blessing his food but decides against it. He chomps, chews, swallows—back of his throat slick with red wax.