LITMIR.BIZ

      Nonfiction

       I Left My Heart in Shanghi, Alabama

      A Migration of Clowns: Poems and Essays

       The People’s Lawyer

       A Writer’s Tool Kit

      NewSouth Books

      105 S. Court Street

      Montgomery, AL 36104

      Copyright 2005 by Carroll Dale Short. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by NewSouth Books, a division of NewSouth, Inc., Montgomery, Alabama.

      ISBN: 978-1-58838-187-3

      eBook ISBN: 978-1-60306-090-5

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2005015219

      eBook conversion by Sam Robards

      Visit www.newsouthbooks.com.

      “Emmett” first appeared in Appalachian Journal

      “Pitching” first appeared in Birmingham Magazine

      “Fesser and the Car Tags” first appeared in Oktoberfest

      “The Fish” first appeared in Black Warrior Review

      “The Mine at Saragossa” first appeared in Redbook

      “Paint” first appeared in Aspen Anthology

      “The Old Way” first appeared in South Carolina Review

      “Orion” first appeared in Canopic Jar

      “The Porch Swing” first appeared in Aura

      “Argus and the Elemental Things” first appeared in Roanoke Review

      “Turbo’s Very Life” first appeared in Aura

      For

      Darrah Jackson Short,

      granddaughter and storyteller extraordinaire,

      with much love

Contents

       Emmett

       Pitching

       Evening Glass

       Letters from Creekstand

       Fesser and the Car Tags

       The Fish

       The Sun and the Conjure Woman

       A Good Air

       A Gothic Retreat

       Throwing The Hook

       The Mine at Saragossa

       Paint

       The Old Way

       Orion

       The Porch Swing

       Argus and the Elemental Things

       Turbo’s Very Life

       About the Author

Emmett

      Here’s how you find him. You go the Horse Creek road and, minding the trees on your left, see where one is low and humped and so twisted that by the moon’s light a dark dwarf stands there—solitary, hopeless, but spun silver with worm webs and proud of asking alms from no one. Go past it. Go on by.

      And not by moonlight, come to think of it. Go in daytime, the first time you ever go, to tell better where the slag stops (past the twisted tree by half a mile) and the slate-rock trail slopes off toward the river. A black man at the crossing there, who lives back in the sweetgum grove, has bees. If you lose the way, find him and ask. He is deaf, and sells honey.

      On the trail, then: Go down it until all you see is kudzu, green as snakeskin, up and over all of everything, knit as a rug. Though the river is still a ways down, you can smell it there. Walk until the trail dies out in vines, and look for this: A square in the growth, four raised ridges like a fence vined over. Legend says it’s where they penned the Wiley boy (son of Old Fayette who was left with all girls when Fate Junior died) the summer he was dog-bit and taken mad. They say it kept him in the open air but put him safe away from the ones he tried to kill. That may be just a tale. Some say Wing Stevens raised hogs there, was all.

      But look for the fence, grown up. A footpath goes beside it. Take it then, downhill through the vines, to the place a clay cistern stands which no one claims. Water careens from high up its rim in drops as big as diamonds, and it trickles across the trail and keeps the dirt slick there. Step on across.

      The walking is better from here on. The path widens out into a pine grove with dry straw for footing. Past it are goldenrod stalks by the millions, waving yellow; stern hickory, with hard nuts knee-deep in their shade; sweetgums that are a constant orange and red, frostbit colors in the hottest of July; silver maples, green with white lace undersides.

      When a strong wind comes (and it will, as you pass) the maples rain down wingseeds and the goldenrods toss and the hickories bow down tattered and the sweetgums rattle like fire.

      Wait. When it calms you’ll smell a thing like freshening rain, a scent from the northern counties. And in the quiet, one shrill cricket note will leap up. Go off through the trees, because the path ends there.

      You’ll come upon him sitting in a wooden swing, his old head seen from the side frizzed white with hair and beard, leaning forward reading a book in his lap. By day his hair will be shot through with sun, by night with moon, or, lacking that, a lamp of kerosene beside him on an arm-rest green with moss. The sky is clear. No one has ever been to him in rain. Go up and tell him who you are. He will know why you’ve come.

      From his place in the swing, he watches a young man stand at the edge of the darkening grove. He holds

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