Note From Contributor: This is an excerpt of an early iteration of a theme Jody worked on over the years. I hesitate to call it a story, it was lore. Mythology.
i wish i could cleanse my voice
remove all these follies
loopy
Dec 23, 2010,
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.'” – Mary Anne Radmacher
when you’re not feeling holy, it’s your loneliness that says that you’ve sinned – cohen
Sometimes of a morning, i just get up and lay down in the floor. i like to pretend i can do a few hundred leg lifts before i put my real limbs down with a little pressure and stare at the ceiling. if it resembles the shape of the cross, you may think about bodies too much. who am i? i’m a guy that thinks a lot about how redemption is patterning that resists targeting. i’m your 14 year old preacher. i’m your hillbilly. you’re all in this hoodoo.
If any of my ancestors had wanted me to do this differently, they may yet listen to the right one. Theodocia. Bellview Baptist Church in the Collard Valley. The only damn town with that name. I swear. So many fire ants in your cousins’ yards. Swap Shop plays on the radio and me and Sarah and Becky listen so close. We put Kelly on the radios because she’s got that real black straight hair, that really doesn’t have any curls in it. You see it in some folks around these parts.
See, Tuckers and Tanners. That’s the part of the family I have got to know more about. I mean, spark your joy and do your duty. Collard Valley. Polk County. Rockmart that is. My great-grandmother has a stained-glass window in a rural Independent to Southern Baptist church and she was a granny lady.
What’s a granny lady? Well, so pleased you have asked. That’s what my great grandmother was. I know some stories. Do you care to hear them?
Why, yes, brother! I have found this old horseshoe here behind the middle school gym and the weight room. Remember where there were all those metal poles and it would flood and we would send water and mud just flying?
Hahaha, yes, 3G, that’s where we found the horseshoe. As I said before, there’s no sense wondering much on who of us it was what touched the thing first. We both did and that’s the beans.
Now for some pedantics, This is not a story of two boys finding a horseshoe and making a promise. This is not a story of becoming a dishwasher in a restaurant in Dawsonville, GA.