I would sit on the dingy old shag carpet,
My toes curled in the plush fibers
As if digging them into hot sand.
I basked in the warmth of her love,
Waves of stories washing over me. She
would softly tell me tall tales
Of imagined lineage; old Okie conceits,
Attempting to link our people back to
Stonewall Jackson or Billy the Kid.
As if we should be proud of this, These
myths of Southern poverty,
Hanging around our necks like the harness of a plow,
Dragging behind us as we toiled into the future.
She told me a story of her father, And
why he hated Johnny Cash. Johnny
had beaten him up When they were
children. ·
He would explode in expletives any time
Johnny came on the radio.
I remember how small and mean He
seemed in that moment,
Persisting in his hatred like an outcropping of rocks
Spitefully jutting from the surface of the water; Refusing
to subside below the tide.
Years later, my Father told me a story That
my Mother never shared.
My Grandpa, this large man made small in my mind,
Was one of the "Chosen Few".
Abruptly, I could see him clearly,
All the hard bitter years smoothed from his brow, Colder
than death and terrified;
Skin ripping from sticking to the icy body of his rifle, The
blood freezing even as thewounds became exposed. Hell
frozen over.
17 days colder than the vacuum of space.
Bodies made concrete and stacked for barricades. Frozen
foxholes full of dead
Without a single bullet being fired. Huddling,
shivering behind a solitary tank As they
attempted to escape.
Men falling to the echoes of sharp cracks
Like icicles snapping in the wind.
Suddenly, that mean old man made sense to me.
His stubborn hatred crystallized in that chilblain cemetery
Like a frostbitten blood diamond. •
His glacial malice kept him warm.
Survival necessitated he make virtues of his vices. He
found salvation in his sin.
Who was I to judge who he had been?
At my Mother's feet, I learned as children do: Warm,
secure, and fluid. Embryonic.
At my Father's side, I learned the complexity of truth: Hard, unforgiving, and colder than a North Korean winter.