Grace In the Shadow of the Big Tree - Chapter 2

the kitchen wasn't much, just big enough for Abe to put his feet up on the table after a long haul in the rig while Amy cooked dinner and the kids ran underfoot, and she chattered about all of what he'd missed, the way that the silo touched the clouds yesterday and he looked at her and listened to the rush of words and smiled 'cos he'd made it Home and there was just one more haul before christmas and he could settle back and listen to her talk for more than a few hours at a spell, spend more than two nights in bed next to her, they could hear Elvis on the radio like it was 1957 again and he's just met her and they cut a rug like no one else in the soda joint after bar rush when everyone was out and they liked to talk over eggs.

Abe liked to be Home and the last load almost killed him this time, the ice, and every year right around this time they planned to look at the records and count their pennies and see if maybe they could sell the rig for christmas, said that this year, just one more load before christmas and he would be home again and find a stay around job and help her with the kids and the cooking and enjoy the family for a little while.

the kitchen wasn't much, just
the space enough to hold ghosts that liked to put their feet up at night and this is where i set up the typewriter and restrung my guitar and you and i talked until three and listened to Elvis and made up stories about the people who had lived here before us, Abe and Amy and their little boys who both got Red Rider bb guns for their winter birthdays and learned how to shoot when Abe was Home from the road and the dishes were done.

when Joey and Allison came, they cooked spaghetti 'cos that was all they knew how to cook and we sat in the kitchen and belched and elaborated on our own stories and picked at the wallpaper and found plaster underneath it. we played cards, laughed at ourselves over coffee, wrote songs that would have split a dog's ear. we liked to be Home the way that Abe liked to be Home, and it took too long to get to a gas pump for us to call anywhere else Home.

when Lee came 'cos she wanted to be away from other people, she pickled things in a bath over the old oil stove, canned apples from the little trees outside before she knew they were crabapples and shitty for baking with and we saw her laugh for the first time since highschool and didn't really ever stop laughing. we had never really known she was clever, we just knew that we liked her, we were glad to find out why.

Lee baked pumpkin pies and sang out loud in the kitchen and i tuned my guitar to her voice and was pleased as hell to know her. you used to pick her flowers, do you remember that? i remember her telling Snow White to the cat who ate up the mice that you were afraid of, and scolding him for not being a vegetarian. she named him something silly. she cooked a lot of kidney beans.

the table in the kitchen was a perfect assortment of x-acto blade scars and paint stains and the place where we took apart things and set books. just enough room for five. just enough light to read by. the table was close to the stove, and warm in the winter. i would paint as you hooked rugs and never did a newspaper cross the grain of the table. from the window you could watch the chickens knock each other around. we lived on apples and chicken for the first winter. we were too proud to drive five hours for variety. we would, tho', drive that far to trade apples for cigarettes. we smoked a lot of cigarettes and spilled a lot of paint on the table. Joey sanded it down once but never varnished it, and it stayed a good place to rest your feet, listen to people talk about low clouds and play cards.

Grace In the Shadow of the Big Tree - Chapter 13

Amy wrote to friends back home not so frequently, 'cos she didn't know if anyone would understand her, she hoped that no one thought she was crazy.

Dear Bobbyann
it can get real quiet here when the boys are asleep and Abe is off on the road. i notice the way things sit still and do what they're supposed to do, and when they do, it's never what you expect - things mimic other things. the corn sounds real weird at night when it's raining, like someone spilling handfulls of pebbles into the sink...

the trees off on the hill are pieces of my father's electric train set - models cast in coral and sea stuff glued to the plywood. and the train comes through and makes its sound and it's like where all the wildlife all went to; if i close my eyes real tight and listen to the corn in the rain, i can hear the traffic past my father's house, i can hear the ocean.

i wrote letters that i never sent.
i couldn't think of anyone that i want to send them to. i never did like too many people, got along well on my own, and kept to my own. and i met you and i never had anyone else that i really wanted to talk to, so i just didn't.

me and Joey sat in the bed of the truck on a sunday morning and were watching the rain go out, it had been doing that all of last night, and we were sharing a sandwich and watching the top of what had been the silo some time ago touch the bottom of the clouds and talking about georgia where he grew up, and you were looking at the two of us, you standing on the porch, not knowing we were looking at you, in your blue skirt and my sweater and leaning up against the beam holding a cup of tea. i said to Joey, that you were a sight for sore eyes and he said that if we all hadn't been up all night i coulda woken up next to you just like every other morning and what was i talking like i'd been gone all week for? i said that sometimes i thought i missed you even when i hadn't gone anywhere. i guess you just stayed under my skin after the first time we'd made love and it was like magnets, when i was ten yards away from you i could feel you pulling at me, like i missed you when i was gone but i never really left. a craving.

making love to you is like a taste i never want to get out of my mouth, something just right, when you want something to eat but you're not really hungry and you don't know what would be right just now and you go into the refrigerator and you paw around and you can't find anything that you want to put in your mouth so you light a cigarette and find out that that's what woke you up at this loud hour of the sun burning off the fog. just right, the perfect taste of that cigarette. making love to you is like a taste i never want to get out of my mouth, just right, like a tall drink of water when you've been turning over mud all day and still couldn't find the roots of the corn and you're that perfect kind of thirsty and the water is real cold but it doesn't burn your teeth and you remember that taste when you're thirsty, but it's never like it tastes when you've been working hard at something that just
won't budge.

and i had laid down beside you, us both naked and september coming to scare off august, throwing leaves around, we took in the cool air against our shoulders, sliding under the covers, and my hand was first to touch your thigh after we'd been up talking all night and never knew we would end up in your bed and somehow made it up here, we just knew where we were going when we crept up the stairs to go to our separate bedrooms and my mouth had been the first to touch the back of your neck almost by accident. and my hand was first to touch your thigh after we had undressed each other so quietly and so slowly and you traced the line from my shoulder down my stomach like it was something so strange, like you had never seen anything like it and it was precious and i had never seen me as precious, really, but when you ran your hand across me like that i felt precious for the first time ever. and my hand was first to touch your thigh as we slid into the blankets and it was like we were first to ever look at each other and you were crying and i said what's wrong and you smiled up at me and kissed me on my mouth and i knew nothing was wrong at all

and the sun came up through the window burning off the fog

and we took in the cool air against our shoulders, gentle fall of the blankets and fell asleep looking out the window, watching the sky mimic the ground as the sun started to come up reflecting across the fog and the colour of the changing trees.

and when the clouds fly low it's a sight for sore eyes.