Redneck Press with Fried Chicken and Coffee

Dear Sam,

Once they sprung you loose from the war, why go to a no-name Okla­homa town, among strangers? Why hole up in a board­ing house with a freck­led girl who has no idea the shine and pur­pose you held in 1932? Why, Sam, do you pre­fer flat plain to the glory moun­tain? Why not come home to the sis­ter who wrote you when writ­ing seemed the least effec­tive means of relay­ing devo­tion? Come back to your peo­ple, who would lav­ish love and for­give­ness in equal mea­sure for all you sac­ri­ficed over there. We’d bind your wounds, every one. I would.

The preacher would pour praise from the Sun­day pul­pit like Saul anoint­ing David, and those pray­ing in the pews would sing your hero­ics. You were our cho­sen one, Daddy’s cho­sen one, first born son, and he never got over you leaving.

While you’ve been gone, Daddy’s told sto­ries we never imag­ined we’d hear. Dar­ren, he only half under­stands. To him it’s another way of Daddy sooth­ing him to rock-a-bye-land. The hare­lipped mid­wife, once Mama expired, Daddy said, she snapped the pelvis easy as a chicken’s wish­bone to get that baby free. Woman said, “She never should have had more than one.” The one being me, and believe me, I wear that mark of being “the one” like a birth­mark. Thus, the baby stuck in the canal, our lit­tle Dar­ren, got deprived of some oxy­gen. At least the way he is he’ll never be going in the mine.

Oh, Sam, no rea­son now not to come home to this West Vir­ginia holler, where I know your heart is, where works a daddy who loves you like a wor­ship­per his God. He took and tried bury­ing that deep affec­tion, but every day Daddy comes up from there more rock and less man. All this time we’re sup­pos­ing you’re part of the mar­riage ‘tween him and a first wife. But the woman, he revealed in a fit of drink, took off to be a singer, “or mostly a whore, while I gave my name to another man’s son.” His secret wiped the world black a minute, then the stars came out, twin­kling so bright they hurt my ears. My mind clanged like a pis­ton so I hardly heard him add: “Chose my first wife for vices, chose the sec­ond on her virtue.”

I know what I’m telling you here is all back­ground, all edge of story because to tun­nel to the truth, to write it on paper any clearer would be like greet­ing the dark mouth of the mine and the deci­sion to take each new day down into it. Like the loco­mo­tive you stared at til you real­ized star­ing wasn’t going to stop it, til you real­ized in that con­test it was you or fly­ing steel and it was never gonna be you.

Me and Dar­ren, we make the home now. Moth­ers gone. Yes, two moth­ers AND two fathers. Sam, I loved you, I love you still. Don’t you see we aren’t blood kin after all? And it would be all right. It would. Even the preacher would say so.

You have my heart.

Lor­raine

Born and raised in Cincin­nati, Donna feels very nearly south­ern, what with that Ohio River and Ken­tucky prac­ti­cally part of her back yard. On her mother’s side of the fam­ily every uncle and male cousin has been a truck dri­ver. Before trucks they drove wag­ons, mostly ice deliv­er­ies to the bars in Over-the-Rhine, an inner city neigh­bor­hood in the heart of down­town Cincinnati.

Donna’s sto­ries have appeared or are forth­com­ing in dozens of print and online pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing Nat­ural Bridge, Hawaii Review, Merid­ian, Gar­goyle, Broad River Review, Hur­ri­cane Review, Front Porch Jour­nal, Beloit Fic­tion Jour­nal, Sto­ry­glos­sia, Inso­lent Rud­der, Turn­row, Night Train, Juked, Smoke­long Quar­terly, Another Chicago Mag­a­zine, and Ginosko.