The Rugged Outdoorsman

The Rugged Outdoorsman

I have long fancied myself a woodsman. Growing up in a small town, my classmates dreamed of escaping to the cities, Atlanta, Baltimore, even New York, while I read accounts of pioneers and mountain men of the nineteenth century and fantasized about becoming a latter day version of the same.

In high school, while they cruised the parking lot of the first fast-food joint to appear in the county seat, I rode the back roads. While they watched ballgames on weekend afternoons, I wandered the forest. So it was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream when, approaching the age of 50, I moved to a cabin on a forested hillside in Kentucky.

A neighboring piece of property was offered for sale recently. I acquired a key and drove to the site. The house was underwhelming, but I was more interested in the land, anyhow.

Snow still covered the ground as I began my trek up the hillside to investigate. Behind a barn that was tucked away on a remote plateau, I found tracks I didn't recognize. The paw print of a bear, perhaps? The black variety were rumored to haunt these parts. Or maybe a panther. I took a photograph and continued on my jaunt.

The land was more farm than wild, I decided. Some nice acreage, but not suitable to a outdoorsman such as myself. Returning down the hill, I spied an owl perched on the chimney of the house. I moved closer. I stopped and took a picture, lest my approach spook the creature and I be left with no record of him. From directly behind, I took several excellent shots. Then I circled the home to approach from the front.

I felt certain my appearance would cause the bird to take flight. Perhaps I could capture an image of his ascent for my blog! I held my breath and walked on tiptoe. Rounding the corner, I raised my camera... and took the picture shown. I had stalked a plastic ornament someone had placed atop an unused chimney.

I made a 180 degree survey of my surroundings. No pedestrians were nearby. No traffic passed on the road below. Holstering his camera, the rugged woodsman hiked back to his Nissan and drove home on roads scraped clean by county workers.

The paw prints proved to be those of a large dog. Perhaps a coyote, but who knows? Tonight I think I'll stay inside and watch a movie.

___________________

Author: Randy Lowens

Author Bio: Randy Lowens lives and writes near Berea, KY. Since this
peice was written, he has learned that the plastic owls are intended
to discourage birds from building in chimneys.

Don Jennings - He Will Be Missed

I was very sorry to hear that Don Jennings, one of the Dew's storytellers, has passed away. He shared some excellent stories with us over the years. His pen name was Randy Lowens and if you're interested, you may find some of his writing by following the below link.

http://todaysdeepsouth.blogspot.com/search?q=Randy+Lowens

The Hammer and Sickle Tattoo

The Hammer and Sickle Tattoo
by Randy Lowens

When the iron door clanged shut behind me and I stepped into direct
sunlight for the first time in six months, I knew the first place I
was headed was Ace McCray's Hometown Tattoos and Video Parlor. But I
wasn't going to get a tattoo. I was going to have one removed. The
hammer and sickle on my left shoulder blade had to go.

Big city jails have changed over the years. We all griped when they
banned smoking, of course, but other changes were made, too. Like the
cameras that watch you day and night. The automatic lights that go on
at eight AM and off at eleven. Except they never all go off, so a man
lives in a state of perpetual soft glow that blends with the ceaseless
chatter of the card players nearby and the hum of traffic in the
distance. You rest a little, but you never really sleep.

But the Beauregard County clink wasn't like that. It was, and I assume
still is, a pokey of the old school. You never saw such a backwoods
stinkhole in all your life.

Beauregard County is the poorest in all south Alabama, so I reckon
that says a lot. No tax base to pay for cameras and security lights.
Instead, a guard still patrols the hallway—or doesn't, if the sheriff
is gone—and turns the lights on and off whenever he deems it necessary
or convenient.

I liked it at first, early in my sentence. I mean, at night a man
could sleep in total darkness. And it was near abouts to quiet, too,
cause the card sharks couldn't see to play after the sun went down. So
you just lie in the cool of the evening, feeling the breeze from the
fan ripple the sheets against the steel frame, listening to the
birdsong and crickets outside. And the other sounds, too, of course,
the ever present jailhouse sounds: the rhythmic creaking of a man
alone on his bunk, or the moans that escape a pair of lovers. Stifled
sobs. A sudden cry of terror in the morning hour. You always hope it
was only a bad dream, and try to go back to sleep.

Anyway, I was pretty happy for the first month or two of my sentence.
Or as happy as a man in lockdown ever gets. Then the midnight visits
started.

#

You get to know your cellmates when you serve a sentence. You don't
really want to, but you do. Each stretch starts with the same
attitude: “Just gonna build my time. Stay out of trouble. Stick to
myself, and be out before I know it.” But you get bored. You get
lonely, so you join in an occasional conversation. Besides, there's
nowhere to hide.

The one thing that no jailhouse, urban or rural, offers is privacy.
You take a shower and step out into a room full of men. Some guys love
it; you can tell. They take their time, taking long, slow swipes
across their backs with the towel. Others get out, grab a rag and
throw it around their waists before they're half dry.

A hard attitude, or a reputation for savagery, goes a long way towards
protecting a man in jail. So does striking an imposing figure while
dripping wet. I never minded being middling size, myself. Never wanted
to be a small fellow who invites attack, nor so large as to draw a lot
of admiring or envious stares. I'm happy to blend in the crowd, to do
my time as anonymously as possible. That usually worked pretty good.
At least, until someone recognized the symbol on my shoulder.

Why on earth did I get a hammer and sickle with the inscription Che
Lives! painted on my back? Because I'm a second generation Communist.
My mother was a Maoist in Atlanta during the sixties, a member of the
so-called New Left. (We never knew who my father was, because I was
conceived during an orgy. Or so I'm told. You know, free love, make
love not war, and all that.) So anyway, in my early teens, when I was
on fire for the workers revolt that all our family and friends were
certain lay just around the corner, I got the tattoo.

Of course, said revolt never materialized. Instead came disco music,
the war on drugs, and a long reign of Republican Presidents. There I
was, through it all, stuck with a Stalinist tattoo. I took a lot of
beatings on account of it during the Reagan era before the Soviet
Union collapsed, and for a while afterward when memories of the
specter of The Evil Empire were still fresh. But, over the years, as I
became less political, more addicted, and brown-faced Muslims wearing
turbans became the new enemy, I learned to deflect the attacks.

I would tell people the tattoo was ironic, a joke. Sometimes that
worked. But some old boys didn't think it was funny at all. What
finally worked best of all was the truth, when I admitted that I got
the tattoo as an expression of love for my mother. One thing no
Southern boy will do is talk bad about your mother.

“My Mama was a Communist. But she was a good Mama, and I loved her, so
I got the tattoo. You got a problem with that?”

“Sorry, man. I didn't know.”

Amazing, the allegiance of Southern manhood to the notion of mothering.

#

My bunkmates in Beauregard County were the usual mix. Jerry was black,
a joker and a coke head who stole a weed eater and hocked it for dope
money. Larry was a red-headed mill worker, a young tough in tennis
shoes, jeans, and tee shirts with one too many drunk driving charges.
Ralph was someone we all left alone: he didn't finish killing his wife
before burying her. Said he was in a Xanax blackout; claims he didn't
remember anything about it. He seemed normal enough around the
breakfast table, but, nevertheless, we all steered clear of him.

Sam, on the other hand, had committed no heinous crimes we knew of. He
was just run-of-the-mill crazy. An old man in overalls who talked to
himself, kept a mumbled monologue running about god-knew-what under
his breath all day long and half the night. Had a mute brother serving
time in the same jail who, by all appearances, was right in the head,
if not especially bright. It was Sam who got to me after a while.

Me and Sam slept in neighboring cells. Each cell contained six bunks,
filled to half capacity during the summer lull, a season when
three-hots-and-a-cot didn't have the same appeal as in wintertime. Not
a bad gig, crashed out in a half-filled jail, if you had to build some
time anyway. But every night around midnight, Sam took to walking over
to the wall of iron that separated us, hanging one wrinkled, hairy
knuckle off the bars like a monkey in the zoo, pointing at me with the
other hand, and moaning. Groaning and howling like a banshee at a
black mass. Of course, as usual, you couldn't understand anything he
said. We laughed at first. But after a while it got eerie. Irritating.
Downright maddening.

Jerry claimed Sam just had the hots for me. But Sam never did anything
sexual. He just pointed a crooked, gnarled finger at me and moaned.
For hours on end, sometimes clear into the dawn.

It was Larry who finally made the connection between Sam's shenanigans
and my tattoo. One afternoon I stepped out of the shower, stood for a
moment, then snatched my towel—not lingering for attention, but not
covering up so quick as to reveal my fear, either—when Sam started
moaning and pointing. When his dumb brother slapped my tattooed
shoulder, silently nodding his head and pointing, Larry crowed, “It's
the damn commie tattoo that ole Samuel don't like.” So that was it.
This was why I was being denied a decent night's sleep: a couple of
half-wit convicts hadn't heard that the Cold War was over.

I was lucky I didn't kill Sam. I tried to. Honest, I did. I'd had two
months of sleepless nights, of being stalked by a psycho, my nemesis
always on the far side of the bars. So when he started pointing and
moaning in the bullpen where the common shower was, with no iron
between us, I went for his throat. I found it and squeezed, harder and
harder as his ugly, puckered face went from pink to crimson to
scarlet, and that's the last I recall until Larry and Jerry pulled me
off him.

“My Mama! My Mama!” was all I could say for the longest time. My
buddies had me pinned to the floor, naked, dripping wet, hands locked
behind my back, and still I yelled, “You two retard sonuvabitches
better NEVER talk about MY Mama again!”

I mean, yeah, I was a Communist once. But I was always a Southern boy
first of all.

__________________________________________

Author biography: Randy Lowens is a native of Georgia who now lives
and writes in central Kentucky. He has been published in Fried
Chicken and Coffee, JMWW, and Unlikely Stories 2.0, and has stories
upcoming in Wrong Tree Review and A-Minor. He blogs at
oaknpine.blogspot.com.

Working Without a Net

Working Without a Net
by Randy Lowens

John dropped his bookbag on the sidewalk and stretched. "First thing after graduation," he announced to a passing car, "I'm designing a backpack that doesn't turn students into educated hunchbacks." He pulled a box of Marlboro Reds from his shirt pocket and lit up.

His mother nagged about smoking. The habit was out of fashion among his fellow students. Carol, his wife, complained about the smell and wouldn't let him smoke inside the house. John was forever "trying to quit", but that was just what he said to excuse the habit. Dying from emphysema or cancer, at some point in the distant future, was the least of his worries.

Cocaine, now, he really was trying to quit that shit. Soon, as in immediately, before Carol figured out he'd invested next month's rent in Peruvian flake. Besides, he hated peering out the blinds at four AM, searching for shadows of policemen in the alleyway. Three weeks had passed since he'd tooted up. Hardly thought of it, anymore.

He leaned against a waist-high brick wall that lined the sidewalk and blew smoke out his nostrils the way he'd seen Charles Bronson do in a black-and-white spaghetti Western. Across the street, a parking garage was being built. John was an engineering student, but he wasn't thinking of how the principles of physics applied to the structure. Instead he watched a fellow on the second floor roll up a drop cord.

The man appeared about John's age. He wore a mustache, jeans, boots, and a plaid shirt. If he traded his hardhat for a Stetson, he might have been the Marlboro man. He had finished cleaning some welds on an I beam with a rotary brush and had started gathering tools, preparing to depart.

John wondered where the guy was headed. Probably down to the corner bar to toss back a few. He'd shoot some stick, maybe croon a tune with his pals, then turn some cowgirl's head before turning in for the night. When this guy lit a smoke, nobody nagged. Men slapped him on the back, and women waited in line to two-step. No paranoia in the wee hours, no bleeding septum or bills he couldn't pay. John was suddenly filled with the conviction that this man lived a simple life, a healthy life, his body nourished by manual labor and his spirit by the camaraderie of his fellows.

When the man disappeared, John considered tailing him. If he hurried, he might catch the guy in the parking lot, ask what bar he frequented and make plans to meet later. Instead, John snuffed his butt on the sidewalk, shouldered his book bag and started walking towards home. Otherwise, Carol would rag his ass.

#

Carol leaned against the windowsill and watched a garbage truck backing up the alleyway. "I'll thank the Lord when you have your degree, and we can afford a real house with a lawn," she said. "That's not so much to ask. It's not like I want a mansion. A little A frame in a suburb would be fine." John stared at the sweat on the side of his bottle of Heineken. He held his breath and counted one, two, three: "Your father would loan you the money for a down payment, Morris. If you weren't so proud."

Carol always called John by his middle name, Morris. She said John sounded common and Johnny, childish. At first he'd liked that she had a special name for him. But lately when she called him Morris, he felt she was talking to some alter ego he'd never met. So he sat quietly and waited for this mythical Morris to reply.

John wondered if Construction Man was married, and if so, if he endured this crap. Probably not. He probably returned home each evening with a brand new beauty on his arm, until one midsummer's eve he crossed fates with a Debra Winger look alike, all soft brown curls and chocolate eyes, who moved in soon after. She secretly longed for a ring, a promise, but was too demure to ask. Construction Man was tempted to propose marriage, but thought better of it. He knew their love must be given freely, or not at all...

Carol's voice snatched John back into the room as surely as if she had jerked his necktie. "God, I hate working second shift," she whined, slumping into a chair. Red lacquered fingernails worried blonde ringlets that cascaded across her shoulder. "I swear, I must have the worst job in all Chattanooga. I should have stayed in school and let you support us."

Talk of finances reminded him of the upcoming rent. He thought, too, of the money owed his dealer. His wife's check would cover one or the other, but not both. If he paid the dealer, would the landlord evict them? If he paid the landlord, would the dealer slam a desk drawer shut on his fingertips?

Carol muttered something unintelligible, snatched her purse from the table and left for work.

#

John watched the clock until his wife had been gone precisely fifteen minutes. He stashed his book bag in the closet and strode to the bedroom. Reaching beneath the bed, he removed a mirror that was larger than a compact, but smaller than what hung on the walls. A razor blade lay atop the mirror. The surface was wiped clean.

He carried the apparatus into the kitchen and stepped on the pedal of the trash can. He hesitated, then dropped the blade inside. Next he walked purposefully to the window, opened it, and slung the mirror as hard as he could against the brick wall across the alleyway. To his dismay, it struck the wall on its edge and fell unbroken to the street below where it landed on a cushion of castoff cardboard. John fancied he saw a face in the mirror, grinning up at him. He pulled the window shut, turned, and sat on the sill. His breath came fast and his forehead was slick with sweat. Looking up he saw Jesus on the wall opposite, kneeling to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane.

John returned to the kitchen, his hair sticking out from the sides of his head like rays from the sun in a child's drawing. He fetched a bottle of Chivas and a highball glass form the cupboard. Crossing the kitchen, he stopped in mid stride and stood chewing the hair on the back of his hand. He returned to the cupboard, replaced the bottle and glass, and vanished into the bedroom. When he reappeared, he wore what Carol called his "slumming clothes": a pair of denim pants, a shirt with no tie, and boots.

An hour later his Camry crossed the Alabama line. It entered a gravel lot and parked next to a portable sign that read, "The Wagon Wheel". The second e was missing, but the message was clear.

Like the sign that advertised it, the bar and grill sat on a trailer. A porch had been added, fashioned from rough cut two by four's, and a wooden wagon wheel hung from the railing. Straightforward enough, John figured.

He sat with his lips parted and stared at the front door. As if suddenly remembering an appointment, he glanced at the seat beside him. A pint of Maker's Mark nestled beside a plastic bottle of Seven-Up. John took a sip of each and got out of the car. He locked the car doors, and the horn beeped as he walked away. He climbed the steps, took a deep breath, and stepped inside.

As the aluminum door swung shut behind him, he had the feeling of being naked before strangers. Two old men at the bar, the bartender, and a waitress swiping a cloth across a tabletop all turned and stared. One of the patrons wore a ponytail that trickled out from beneath a straw cowboy hat. The other was hatless, his hair neat and secured with Brylcreem. Both men wore plaid shirts, faded Wranglers, and cowboy boots with pointed tips. The cumulative effect was that of rugged men's wear, in contrast to John's Calvin Klein denims, pressed cotton shirt, and Timberland footwear. His hesitation snowballed into naked fear.

The bartender spoke. "Grab a seat, young un, and Karen'll be right with ya." John knew tables and booths should be reserved for larger parties, but he didn't want to join the gang at the bar. Since the place was nearly empty and it was already eight o'clock, he stepped around the pool table that occupied the center of the room and sat in a booth.

The waitress approached, wiping her hands on an apron and smiling. "Name's Karen. How are ya?"

He offered a weak smile and nodded.

"What can I bring you to drink?" she asked.

"I'll have a bourbon. Maker's... No, Jim Beam," he decided. "Make it a double, and a Miller on the side. High Life, not Lite."

Karen rewarded his selection with a smile and strolled off to fill the order. John watched her walk away. He released his breath and turned towards the guys at the bar. On a television screen above their heads, a youthful Jack Nicholson sporting 60's era sideburns climbed into the bed of a delivery truck to play Chopin on an old piano. The bartender changed the channel as his drinks arrived.

He tossed down some of the bourbon. It burned, but he recovered with only a small cough. The cold beer tasted good behind it. The muscles in his shoulders began to relax as he finished the whiskey. He burped silently, with his mouth closed, and signaled Karen for another double.

Sometime later that evening, Construction Guy arrived. John wasn't sure when because he'd placed his wristwatch next to the restroom sink as he washed his hands and somehow lost it. The cock on the wall was no help, either. It was only a blur.

John was certain the latest addition to the party was Construction Guy. He could tell by the way the fellow dressed, all metal and leather, by the deliberate way he ambled in and waited until he was leaned against the bar before removing his motorcycle gloves. (Why hadn't John thought of that before? Construction Guy rides a Hawg!)

Karen delivered John another round. He raised his shot glass and toasted her departing rear end, which was looking better all the time. He resolved to take her home come closing time. Construction Guy was going to see what ole John was made of.

He chuckled, proud of himself. He looked down at a puddle of beer on the table and got lost in it. From there the evening progressed like previews of a movie, flashing from one scene to the next with only the vaguest connection between. The pony tailed cowboy was standing nearby saying something about treating Karen, the waitress, with respect. John had no awareness of traveling from his seat to the doorway, but when the gravel parking lot chewed his knees and landed a haymaker upside his head, alertness returned. He rolled onto his side, curled his knees against his stomach and lay laughing.

#

The next day, John's kneecaps looked like Tennessee Pride Real Country Sausage. The bandage on his head kept coming loose, and he was suffering the Stone Mountain of hangovers.

At the head of the class, Dr. Tallmadge pointed at the blackboard with a yardstick. The equation was incomprehensible. John couldn't remember what the various terms represented, much less how they related to one another. He tried to focus on the instructor's words, but they were distorted like the voice of an adult on a Peanuts cartoon.

The class was Dynamic Systems 305. The first week, Dr. Tallmadge had used a quadratic equation to model the motion of an object attached to a spring that moved through a medium. John had found the analysis straightforward enough. The second order term was the acceleration of gravity, the first order was the spring's coefficient, and the damping action of the medium provided the constant. But during the second week, the instructor began to apply differential equations to analyze electronic systems. John had struggled with differential equations in math class, and as for electronics, he had no intuitive grasp, nothing concrete on which to hang his understanding.

The fifth week of class found him hopelessly lost. The subject matter seemed utterly intangible. The class was like a speeding train, and he stood on the station platform craning his neck in a futile effort to catch a glimpse inside the most recently passing car. The metaphor made his neck hurt. He rubbed it and leaned back in his desk to look out the window. What did Dynamic Systems have to do with designing a parking garage, anyhow?

As he examined the skeletal structure across the roadway, he thought of Construction Guy. He wondered what floor the man was working on today and if the hombre at the bar had really been the same fellow. He had felt certain at the time, but according to the principles of Probability and Statistics 202, probably not. He wondered if Construction Guy suffered for two days whenever he got drunk, or if upon awakening he had only to shake his head to clear it before flexing his biceps and tossing his toolbox into the back of his pickup truck.

A prolonged silence in the classroom brought John hurtling back inside the window. Dr. Tallmadge was looking at him, as was the young lady in the next row. The instructor must have asked him a question. "I, ah, I'm sorry, Dr. Tallmadge," John stuttered, "Could you repeat that, please?" The professor rolled his eyes, turned to the girl and nodded. She responded that a Laplace transform was necessary to describe the effect of the various stimuli upon the capacitor in question. John knew leaving class was a bad idea, but he figured puking on the floor would be even worse, so he hurried out the door towards the restroom.

#

Carol squinted at the strip of paper in her hand. She tossed it into the toilet and flushed. "Praise the Lord, at least I'm not pregnant," she announced.

"We could try some more."

She cut her eyes at him, but said nothing. She crossed the hallway into the bedroom and began placing clothes inside a suitcase that lay open on the bed.

"How long will you be gone?"

"How long? I don't know," she replied. "I don't know that I'll ever return."

John looked at his Timberlands, moping. Carol preferred him in loafers. He yearned for a pair of boots, real cowboy boots with pointed toes like the guys at the Wagon Wheel wore. So he wore Timberlands, and no one was satisfied.

Carol snapped her suitcase shut, lugged it out of the bedroom and placed it beside the front door. "I'll be back when you change your ways," she proclaimed. "I'll be back when the rent is paid in a timely manner, by your hand rather than mine. In other words, Morris," she lisped, oblivious to a speck of saliva clinging to her lip, "I'll be back when you grow up."

"Give your mother my regards," he called as she reached to close the door behind her. The latch clicked, and he was alone. He walked to the closet, removed a large cardboard box and began to pack his own belongings.

#

Midway through the second week, the East Ridge motel room was a dump. A thin, rectangular shaft of morning sunlight leaked past the drapery onto a table top littered with pizza boxes and potato chip bags. A mound of cigarette butts overflowed an ashtray and spilled onto the nightstand. "Damn things smell like my mouth tastes," John said with a groan as he stumbled toward the bathroom.

He had to brush his teeth twice, and finish a can of beer left over from the previous night, before he had confidence to brave the lobby for coffee and a newspaper. When he returned, he began sweeping the table's refuse into a plastic garbage pail.

He glanced at the styrofoam cup in his hand. "This coffee is grounds for divorce." He'd always loved that joke, but, somehow, today it wasn't funny. He slumped into a chair. The plastic cover made crinkling noises against his back. He wiped his eyes and rubbed his forehead. There was nowhere to go but forward.

He placed the chair on the sidewalk outside the door and balanced the ashtray on its arm. After retrieving an ink pen and some mail from his car, he sat down and opened his grade sheet. Dynamic Systems Analysis showed an F. He crumpled the paper, set it alight, and dropped it into the ashtray. Next he crumpled a past due notice from his landlord and burned that as well. Finally, he repeated the ritual with a letter from his estranged wife, a note that spelled out the timing and conditions of their divorce. Each flame began modestly, consuming only a corner of the paper, then peaked into a great leaping blaze that covered the entire sheet before collapsing again into timidity and ash.

Returning inside with the chair, he spread the want ads across the bed and began methodically searching for job prospects. Periodically he sipped his coffee. His courage grew with each swallow, in direct proportion to the caffeine that entered his bloodstream. By midmorning he was ready to start calling.

He dialed the first number. A woman's voice answered, curt and efficient. "Headrick Brothers Construction. How may I direct your call?"
"I, ah, I'm calling to inquire as to your procedure for applying for employment," he stammered.

"Yes sir, and what are your qualifications?" the voice immediately responded.

"Qualifications? Well, until recently I was an engineering student..."

"Do you have a degree?" After only the briefest pause, the voice continued, "I said, do you have a degree? We have an opening in structural design, but the position requires a bachelor's degree in engineering."

"No. No, I don't have an engineering degree."

"The engineering division also has an opening for a draftsman..."

"Oh, that's great."

"...which requires certification from an accredited technical school. Are you a certified draftsman?"

"Certified? I can draw, but... well, no, I don't have a tech school certification. See, I really wanted to be a Construction Guy, anyhow. I mean, I wanted to work as a laborer." John lowered his voice, aiming for a gruff tone. "You know, flex my muscles outdoors, hang steel and stuff like that."

"Can you weld?"

"Weld?"

"Yes," the woman replied with a sigh. "Can. You. Weld."

"Umm, no."

"Then tell me, what qualifications do you have to become an employee of Headrick Brothers Construction?"

"Well, ah, I don't know. I guess I don't have any."

"I'm sorry, we only hire unskilled laborers through temporary employment services. Have a nice day, sir." The line went dead.

John stared at the classifieds page. It was inked up with check marks and exclamation points throughout the Building Trades section. He opened the blinds and for several minutes stood watching the sun climb towards noontime. At length he whispered, "Well, Cowboy, here we are. What the hell you gonna do now?"

________________________________

Author bio: Randy Lowens' stories have appeared in A-Minor magazine,
Wrong Tree Review, Metazen's Christmas charity e-book, and elsewhere.
He resides in the central Kentucky city of Richmond.

The Age of Belief

Painting by Ralls Jennings
http://www.rallsjennings.com/

The Age of Belief

Growing up, Tucker's maternal grandfather was his hero. By the time Tucker knew him, the old man was retired from twenty years in the ore mines. He lived far away, in Birmingham, so the family only visited a couple of times each year. But those visits were special. They were magical.

The family would roll out early of a morning, children dragging suitcases and teddy bears down red brick steps to pile into the back of the station wagon, a Chevrolet with quarter panels blue as a robin's egg and a faux wood trim. The morning air always smelled fresh and damp.

Tucker's father sat behind the wheel with a ceramic cup in one hand, steering with the other. Periodically he blew on the cup, and steam would rise around his face as the smell of fresh coffee filled the car. Their headlights were long yellow columns that swung like great clumsy arms as the car rounded bends, sweeping fog from their path and revealing mysteries hidden on the roadside, birds, four legged critters, wooden crosses erected as monuments to fatal accidents and small stone structures built long ago for reasons now forgotten.

When they reached I-75, there came a lull. When they had gunned down the ramp and joined the mass of automobiles barreling along the interstate highway, the flatness of the miles stretched out to monotony. Tucker and his brother, Dennis, would begin to wonder how long until they arrived; soon after, their father would forbid their asking the question again. Tucker napped or thumbed through a comic, ignoring his mother's warnings that mobile reading caused headaches, nausea and who-knew-what-all manner of illness.

Around noon their mother would begin to point out landmarks, and the kids would realize they were nearing Birmingham. The excitement would escalate once more. Down the ramp they'd go, off the highway and into the satellite neighborhood of Lipscomb, Alabama. As they pulled into the narrow drive that led to the small white house with green-and-white aluminum awnings above the windows, they'd spy Pawpaw sitting on the porch swing, a guitar across his lap and a Good Book on the seat beside him.

Pawpaw was an evangelist of sorts. He was never pastor of a church, but he used to lead ad hoc worship services among the miners. He told his fellows not to despair, despite the fact they were forced to spend the better part of their lives beneath the planet's crust. Soon enough, when they died, they were headed to a place where the sun always shined. (Oh, they tell me of an uncloudy day.)

He was quick to whip his Bible out, Pawpaw was, and show things to you in black and white. But he didn't shout or try to talk over a body. His voice was deep, calm and steady. He spoke as though patiently explaining to a child something the kid probably couldn't understand anyhow. When he did that, folks often stopped arguing and started listening, straining to get the point of what he said.

Most of the time, though, he preferred singing to preaching. He said a smile and a song spoke louder than any sermon. He wasn't a fancy guitar picker, just an old man who strummed simple chord patterns and sang with a mid range, slightly ragged voice, the voice of a man who had breathed too much subterranean dust and smoked too many Camels.

Pawpaw would be there waiting, sitting on the porch swing with a guitar across his lap, a Bible at one hand and a smoldering cigarette at the other. As the family piled out of the car, he'd lay the flat top down. Tucker would run across the yard and throw himself into his grandfather's arms. The old man would pick him up and swing him around, and you never saw two happier fellows in all your life. He would hug Tucker's mother, scuff Dennis's head and shake Tucker's father's hand. Then they would all follow him inside to be greeted by the smell of sizzling catfish before the door swung shut behind them. Tucker's grandmother always fixed catfish and hushpuppies on the day they arrived. Tucker never knew why. They never ate catfish at home, but they never ate anything else for lunch on the first day of their visit.

After the noon meal, if it was the autumn visit, Pawpaw would take Tucker out back to the orchard. The old guy was proud of his fruit trees. Some had been in the ground when he bought the place, but most, he'd planted himself. He would carry a bucket and show how to select the best apples from off the ground, ripe but not rotten. When the bucket was full, they'd tote them into the kitchen which now smelled of cinnamon and brown sugar, and where rows of glass jars stuffed with pickles, tomatoes and jam lined the shelves. Grandma would dip flour from a square tin with a rooster on the side and start peeling the apples, preparing to make pie for the desert.

By then, Dennis would be watching a show on television. His father would be seated nearby, watching with him or skimming through the local newspaper. But Tucker never watched TV at Pawpaw's house. Instead, he would follow the old man out to the porch and sing along, give me that old time religion, and preaching, praying, singing, down on the public square, the same standards every visit about the love that Jesus had for all men. For Pawpaw, religion was all about tradition and about the person of Jesus Christ. The old ways were better, and Jesus was the Path and the Light to take you back. Tucker wondered sometimes how much of Pawpaw's faith was simply nostalgia. He thought maybe Pawpaw's focus on the past and on the person of Jesus Christ was mere distraction, smoke and rumbling that served to distract from some greater, terrible truth. Young and fearless, Tucker wanted to see God's face.

As evening fell, they would go back inside for supper. Gathered around the Formica table, with the pear tree's laden branches swaying in the breeze outside the window, Pawpaw would say Grace over a table full of roast beef and vegetables. As they ate, the old man would tease the child, calling him names like Jingle Joe, and the boy would beam in return. Pawpaw would ask if he had been kissing any little girls, and the child would act grossed out.

Finally, came the pie. Pawpaw always drank a last cup of coffee with his pie. When it was finished, Tucker would climb into his lap and taste the sweet mixture that remained in the bottom of the cup. His mother would cluck her tongue, but she didn't forbid him tasting it. He didn't really like the flavor of coffee, even sweetened, but he liked sitting in his grandfather's lap and playing at being grown.

After the meal, Grandma would clear the table while everyone else settled into the living room to visit. Sometimes, instead of joining them, Tucker would venture into the surrounding neighborhood to play with the children who lived thereabouts. Or else he'd sit alone on the walk in the front yard, listening to cats caterwaul in the gravel alleyways that separated the houses and counting stars as they came out. He would make a wish on the first to appear. Which was sort of like praying, he supposed.

Pawpaw had made a walking stick for his grandson, just like his own, from an old cedar post. Tucker kept it hidden under the porch, and he would fetch it to point at the first star of the night. The power of his wish was magnified in the presence of this magic wand made by his grandfather's hand. He would wish for a new bicycle or a stereo. He would wish that his father would quit playing golf and start hunting or fishing instead. The wishes rarely came true, but that never caused him to doubt the power of his stick. He never doubted the power of the stars themselves.
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Pawpaw's yard was a magical place when Tucker was a child. In years to come, after his divorce, after a tour of duty overseas he never talked about, after a stint in rehab for alcohol abuse, he would sit alone inside his efficiency apartment, listening to the hum of the half-size Frigidaire. The noise was a strange comfort, like the purring of a cat. It filled the little room with its presence as he bathed his limbs in the soft blue light of the silent television.

Occasionally he thought of the stars that used to hang above his grandfather's house. He remembered, too, the magical cedar stick that Pawpaw carved for him. He smiled as he recalled the certainty with which he had believed in its power.

Shortly after his thirtieth birthday, he returned to Birmingham to visit family and old friends. While there, he stopped at the little white house with green-and-white aluminum awnings above the windows where his grandfather used to live . After an uncomfortable word of explanation to the woman who lived there, he looked in his secret spot underneath the porch. But the magic stick wasn't there. It was gone, and he couldn’t for the life of him think where he might have put it.

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Randy Lowens is a native of rural north Georgia with
kinfolk in Alabama. He eats dinner at noontime rather than during the
evening. He was most recently featured in Fried Chicken and Coffee,
and full publishing credits are listed at
http://www.myspace.com/randylowens.