I Wish I Was Back in Kentucky

          Up in the high country of Wyoming, beyond the far purple, among the cedar shoots sprouting and last July's snow, alone, a long way from home and heaven spoke the man of despair.

          " Kindle the fire in the wild wood, Joe, lest it be seen. Kindle the fire in the wild wood, Joe, bring us no wet wood or green. Send no smoke up from the mountain, Joe, show no trail on the wind."

          Joe spoke no words of an answer. Joe lay silent and still.
          " Please, give me just one more bullet for my pistol, Joe. I shoot straighter than you. Give me just one more bullet for my pistol, Joe, and I will be sending it to the heart true."

          Up in the high country, a lonesome wind wailing, the slow sun climbing to the peak's snow, the man of despair sat crying into his empty hands. He was talking to Joe, although, he knew Joe lay silent and still beneath the big pines over yonder. Joe was sleeping the slow sleep beneath God's wet, black earth. Joe was forever looking south.

          The alone man sat crying and staring at heaven. His hell was in the holster slung low on his hip. Joe has passed through the sad, long divide, he at last realized, and has began his journey down into the sweet valley of sleep.

          " Farewell, Joe. My brother, my friend, my pard. Farewell. Joe, I knew you well, and I never knew you. I am sorry, Joe. I somewhere lost my way. I failed to point your turning toward the right fork in your trail. Farewell, Joe. When the time comes and I begin that journey into the slow sleep, I will prove up to the trust you took in me."

          Oh, I wish I was back in Kentucky, he whistled the words mournfully and low beneath the wail of the wind of Wyoming. I can see the old, red mule and I. We are plowing on the hillside. It is early morning and I dream of Mama's red hot, melting in your mouth biscuits and milk cooled in a crock brought from the spring. There across from me, their chairs pulled up to Mama's kitchen table, sits Tom and Sally, the two little ones and Daddy. Oh, I wish I was back in Kentucky.

          I see the old, broken-barreled, sawed-off shotgun way up on the mountain...and me. I hear the catbirds meowing in a thicket, and I am walking unaware into the face of a great horned owl. I clutch my hands at my quickening heart. I am holding the life of a small pine tree in my hands. I found her on a Sunday morning, her green fading to brown as she strained to take life from the crack in the rock cliff she had fallen into. I put her in a better place. The last time I saw her, she had grown big. It was over twelve years ago when I replanted her.

          I am catching a chipmunk from a hole in the earth she had went into. She is underneath a great rock and I am moving it with only a stick I have picked up from the thickly packed oak leaves under my feet. I got that chipmunk from the dead end hole she had went into and I am holding her in my hands. She is warm, soft and moving. She tickles the palms of my hands as I am holding her wishing she was mine. I called her Caroline. I am sorry, Caroline, for making your heart beat fast on that day so long ago. I am sorry, Caroline. My heart told me to set Caroline free after a while, though. I had realized that as long as I was holding her, she wasn't really a chipmunk. She had to be running along dead tree trunks, climbing to the tops of beech saplings and any other thing she wanted to do.

          Oh, I wish I was back in Kentucky. I remember the clear, blue sky seen from the high up backbones of mountain ridges. I listen to the music of the Kentucky wind as she moans her songs among the branches of the way up there tulip poplar trees. I play who blinks first with a red-tailed hawk as he sits on his perch of contemplation not believing I am there. I have been as silent as a purple violet as I approached his perch. Neither of us move an eyelid. Perhaps, he knows I hold only admiration for him, or maybe he waits for the sounds of mountain meadow mice. I am content to take my pleasure from looking into his eyes.

          I remember the old, mountain orchard. We started out early in the morning, my brothers and I. It seemed as if we walked all day to get there. We walked till our bones were aching and we thought we could feel our spines sticking out of our skeletons. Those pears we had set out to bring home were juicy sweet when we got to bite into them, though. Oh, I wish I was back in Kentucky. I wish I had never crossed that line.

          There is a time when a man looks into his heart, and he can feel the rightfulness of what he is being told. Sometimes, a man can be crossed up and lost, not knowing where to turn. This happened to me when I crossed that line. I set my shoulders square and stubborn, pointed to the west, and I kept on going, never looking behind me. Oh, I wish I was back in Kentucky. I wish I was home.

          It was somewhere past the western outskirts of Tulsa, Oklahoma when a hard page of reality first introduced herself to me. I knew right off, that she and I would never become friends. As far as I knew, most women were fashioned from the mold in God's right hand, coming out of the mold made sweet, kind, gentle and loving. I was to find out soon, that despite her beauty, the face of reality was a harsh face.

          The three dollars and twelve cents I had left Kentucky with had dwindled to sixty four cents by the time I entered the streets of Tulsa on that early morning in the first week of winter. As my horse and I stood on the main street of Tulsa eating the flinty soil being stirred by a northeast wind, I debated on the best way to spend that last sixty four cents. I finally settled on a ten pound bag of shelled corn for Old Reb, a handful of crackers, a square of cheese and some sour pickles for me. I got off Old Reb, and he and I followed the general flow of farm wagons along the street till we came to a place called, Ezekiel Kane's Oklahoma Mercantile. I tied Old Reb's reins to the hitching post and went in to make my purchases.

         Mister Ezekiel Kane was a generous man. After sacking up the shelled corn and placing it on the counter, he sized me up and down with a hard stare or two. Then he said, "Boy, you can't be any more than seventeen years old. Take all of that cheese and those crackers you want, and get yourself a can of peaches on Ezekiel Kane. December the twenty third comes but once a year." I almost didn't take the cheese, crackers, and the offer of the peaches, but the peaches kept looking at me, and the warm heart peeking out from Mister Ezekiel Kane's green eyes spoke the words I needed to hear. It wasn't but two steps to the peaches, I covered those two steps in a hurry, and I was standing there holding a debt of gratitude to Mister Ezekiel Kane in my heart and a quart tin of peaches in my hands. " I thank you, Mister Kane," I choked out past the sudden lump of gratitude that was working its way quickly upward toward the back of my throat.

          " Never you mind about that, son. It's best you be setting your tracks, it's working its way toward snow and the night is close behind you. I noticed you don't carry a bedroll on that sweet Appaloosa you're riding, there is a canvas tarp and an old, cotton blanket there in the corner, take them with you on your way out." As I said before, "Mister Ezekiel Kane was a generous man."

          I walked from Mister Ezekiel Kane's Oklahoma Mercantile carrying fifty one cents in the pocket of my Levi's and the memory of Mister Ezekiel Kane warming a place in my heart. As I stepped from the door, I was greeted by a wind stiffened by the nearness of night and the certain promise of snow. As I mounted Old Reb, I could hear the voice of Mister Ezekiel Kane calling after me, "Hey son! Make sure you are carrying plenty of matches."

          Old Reb and I slowly moved toward the outskirts of town, leaving the voice of Mister Ezekiel Kane talking to the wind of Oklahoma.

          Mister Ezekiel Kane had been right. It was coming on for dark and the snow was on the potbellied stove. There was a storm a cooking its way toward me, and I needed to go to ground afore any kind of formal introductions were made. I urged Old Reb to a faster walk, all the time looking for the right place to hole up.

          As I rode, my thoughts whispered in a silent conversation with myself. A buffalo wallow sure would appeal to me right now. I could hunker down in it and be sheltered from the wind for the most part. There was that creek I had seen on the way in to Tulsa, though. She and I had been following the same general direction and I was certain she was over the next rise. It would be a good thing to nestle down in a clump of cottonwood trees, strike one of those sulfur tipped matches into a fire and boil a pot of spicebush tea.

          Way back there behind me, so far the beauty of it had began to appear as a thin line in my memory, I could see a holler in Kentucky beckoning to me. I could hear the songs rising from it of an early autumn morning: the stale wisps of a late fog beginning to stretch out its hands from the broken turtle shell where it had sought shelter, the silence of frost-sweetened Roman Beauty apples slowly falling through the sunlight, and an awakened black cricket greeting me wordlessly with her haunting strains of A Sweet Irish Maiden. The silent wail of anguish I carry fluctuates through my heart as I remember, and I see in my heart the beautiful face of a girl named Mollie. Oh, sweet Mollie, why did I leave you behind? I blink to halt the slowly seeping tears, and cry to the cricket's violin of another Irish maiden.

Oh, there was a sweet Irish maiden
down in Pikevilletown.
Her ways were sure and winning,
a right sweet lass was she.

Oh, my sweet Marie Anna,
sing me a song of a sweet Irish maiden,
tell me of a tale, or two.

Tell me of Irish Johnny come walking
the highlands unbidden,
come for to
his true love woo.

Come listen young children,
come listen I say
and I'll spin you a tale
you can make of
what you may.

I'll show you the fresh dew
round bright on the green glades,
and I'll weave you a tragedy
of love...both young and true.
I'll sing you a sad song
old, and yet new
of the fresh spark of steel
from the glancing of blades.






in progress