|
Dream
Appalachia
•
Carrie,
let's say there's a mountain. A good mountain, great even,
like where we could have that utopian farm we talked about
having, and let's say it exists in a Dream Appalachia where
the people of every mountain shout songs across every valley
to every other mountain and let's say that this South is a
finished place where, in the aftermath of a healing marked
by reparation and forgiveness and grace, nobody feels bad
(or even ought to feel bad) about calling themselves a citizen
of Dixie.
And let's say that on our farm we're growing half-wild dreamily
expansive fields of marijuana-not rectangular fields either,
funny-shaped ones. We're not growing pot because we've become
stoners but because it's the kind of thing that makes a lot
of people happy and we want everyone to be happy, and anyway
in Dream Appalachia there are no governments to snatch the
joints from high school kids or the homeless or grandmas.
Plus we need some livelihood beyond our food-crop, and also
strong hemp threads to make ropes and shirts; and more thread
for sacks in which to take our harvests down to the Dream
Appalachia Peoples' Square (which is in a large valley and
people peddle in from every peak and hillock to trade and
mingle; a coffee shop is there, and a little playhouse, and
an open-air market every Wednesday, all just like Gainesville,
FL where we first met has-imagine the odds!)
So let's say we're out there on our farm, and all our best
friends live there too (of course) and some folk heroes have
taken a vacation from American History and come to stay with
us, um, Johnny Appleseed and Rosie Riveter, let's say, and
it happens that one night they are sitting up late in the
parlor over glasses of scotch and a thin joint. They're talking
about something personal between them… Now we didn't
know that they had this secret (heck, we didn't even know
they knew each other); we were just also up late and also
wanting to share some talk over a glass (one of us mentions
the unique pleasure of sucking on a scotchy ice cube, and
the other of us-whichever-thinks this is very true and funny)…
So we're sitting in the breakfast nook, which is through a
door-less door frame bordering the kitchen and then there
is a little hallway which adjoins to the parlor (where a fire
eats Dream Appalachian pine logs that crackle and hiss out
sweet-smelly sap-gas as they are disappeared into that holiest
mystery-the Mouth of Flame). An oak-wood door with a photograph
of Joe Hill taped to it separates the parlor from the little
hallway, and this door is ajar, but only slightly, like they
pulled it behind them when they went in there to sit and talk
but didn't close it fully for fear of someone being woken
by the clork of wood on wood. I forget just what you and I
are talking about but anyway the point is that we stop when
we hear them- voices sort of rising and serious for a second,
not angry but… Concerned… So we creep to the shadow-line
of the door and crouch under the mustachioed grace of Joe
Hill, and listen to what they're saying to one another.
(In Dream Appalachia there is a magical rule, infallible as
gravity, that after two drinks or so everyone starts to talk
like a Faulkner character; and every year on Flannery O'Connor's
birthday we climb on the roof of the farmhouse and read her
stories to the sky. We do these things because we value metaphysics
over physics, and the nearness of intentions are more dear
to us than strict allegiance to geography-her Georgia, his
Missippi… Spiritual delegates of each are present in
Dream Appalachia.)
Let's say we missed most of their conversation, details don't
matter much anyway-they never do-but we hear one of those
snippets. You know? We catch a sound-bite which distills out
the complications affiliated with specificity and presents
an elemental truth, like a vanilla extract or a single malt
scotch (and I know you know what I mean, Carrie, we've talked
about this-you and me did!)…Anyway Johnny Appleseed says
to Rosie Riveter: "it was time what was always wrong,
y'know, and I'd a fallen in love with you if'n things'd been
diff'rent, but, y'know, bein things as they was-well I dint
let myself fall in love with you; but I coulda;" and
Rosie she says "Yessum, John, there was once I did spec
you might say like that to me, but I'm sposin it was better
you dint never love me;" and he goes "yeah, spec
that's so…well, y'know, well, and maybe I did anyway…Even
though Ida sided not ta let myself; maybe I jest did anyway…"
And let's say that she says…
Well, actually, let's say we don't hear what she says back
to him. You've a bit more sense about certain things than
I do, so let's say you tug on my little finger and pull me
away from the parlor door and whisper something like let's
leave each to their own and I am curious to hear what
that woman answered to that man, but instead I follow you
back to our breakfast nook and over the clink of our
scotch glasses (which I pretend is simultaneous with a satisfied
clink in the parlor, but who can say what happened
to our folk heroes?) I turn to you and-knowing we have both
drunk ourselves only slightly Faulknerian-I say: "y'know,
I meant to say something like that to you once, dunno why
I dint-scared I guess;" and you say: "think I member
when you dint say that, how it was in your eyes what you wanted
to… Reckon we drank scotch that night also, yeah?"
and I think back and back to that other time and place and
that little upstairs room with the furry white rug and the
snoozing kitten, where we had sat on the floor, and I say:
"yeah, that scotch we drank was yours, weren't it?"
and you go: "yeah, I dint want and bring it over your
house, on account of your friends'd drink it all up so quick,"
and I go: "yeah, scotch aint a quick drink. It is rather
for sipping… Say…I ever thank you for that? I reckon
it was damned fine, and I don't think I ever said thank you,"
and you laugh at me, and go "I spec we traded glasses
of scotch nough times ere aint no sense picking one glass
to be thankful for more than the others-and anyway I'm sure
the years have seen us even;" and I agree how all that's
probably true, and you say then that you're tired and goodnight
and I say goodnight; and you go off to sleep and I sit in
the breakfast nook-sipping on the last of my drink, relishing
the tart freeze of one more scotchy ice cube, and I guess
I'm thinking about whatever we said, or didn't say, or maybe
I'm drinking the quiet and blaze of a moonlit Appalachian
farmscape that wafts in through the eastward-facing windows
like the drawing warmth of country supper. Then I creep back
over to the slightly ajar door (pausing a moment to breathe
quiet prayers over the spirit and memory of Joe Hill) and
stand in the door's shadow and go back to listening in on
Johnny and Rosie, who are laughing about something they both
remember. I'm not there to hear the specifics. I am simply
enjoying the tidal rise-and-fall of good conversation-the
gist of sentiments and fondness passing between legends in
a Dream.
|
