Excerpt from “Sawmill Boys.” Appalachian Heritage, vol. 34, no. 4 (Fall 2006). June 4, 2009

Excerpt from “Sawmill Boys.” Appalachian Heritage, vol. 34, no. 4 (Fall 2006).

For more information about Appalachian Heritage, Berea College’s literary journal, and to order back issues, visit http://community.berea.edu/appalachianheritage/

by Neva Bryan

“Where there’s loggers, there’s bound to be sawmill boys.”

Sawmill boys. I liken them to trees because they possess two kinds of beauty. The first kind is in their natural freedom, the beauty of a tree standing tall with its brothers. But when the sawmill gets a hold on them, they develop a second kind of beauty, the kind that comes from being cut down, sawed up, and spit out. Rough cut, splintered, shaped for utility.

A sawmill boy can take a 4X4 between the eyes that’ll lay him out flat on his ass and then get back up to finish his workday. They all wear a strange cologne of diesel fuel, hydraulic fluid, and cigarette smoke. Sawdust trails them like breadcrumbs for the lost. They’re lean, with knotty arms and hard faces, but their eyes are dreamy.

Wendell, my ex-husband, was a sawmill boy. I remember the first time I saw him, more than five years ago. He was coming out of the ABC store with a bottle of Jack Daniels tucked under his arm. He had that sawmill boy look – lean and hard – but he was dressed to party: Dark Side of the Moon t-shirt, faded jeans, black and silver biker boots.

His fair skin was ruddy from working outside all day. When I got close I saw that his knuckles were skinned, scabbed, and scarred . . . a perpetual state for sawmill boys, I learned later. At least he had all his fingers.

When he cocked his head at me and grinned, I saw a slight gap between his two front teeth. As he smiled, his eyes darkened from coffee-and-cream to pure black liquid. His hair was the color of my Granny’s apple butter; I thought how sweet it would be to free it from its tight ponytail and watch it tumble down around me. Just looking at him made me hungry.

Before I knew it, Wendell and I sat on the bank of the Clinch River sharing Jack and naming stars. By turns he was raunchy and sweet, sad and funny, goofy and sexy. I gave up to him with an immediacy – an urgency – that was quite foreign to me. It seems I had taken a 4X4 right between the eyes. Wendell Kennedy was a splinter who had worked his way straight into my heart.

“Lonely Hollow” Excerpt May 5, 2008

Sherwood Anderson Short Story Contest, 2nd Place, 2003.

 

The boy followed his mother to the kitchen. She pulled a round tub from the pantry and set it in the middle of the kitchen floor. She poured two kettles of hot water into the tub while Allen ran some cold water into a large pan. He poured it into the tub. Janie handed him a towel, a wash cloth and some soap. She laid clean clothes across a kitchen chair and left the room.

Allen stripped and stepped into the tub. He sat down, Indian-style, with his legs crossed. Water dribbled back into the tub as he washed. Flick-flick: he glanced up and saw a moth hitting the naked light bulb. He could hear the creaking of the ironing board in the living room. He felt ill at ease and finished as fast as he could.

He dried and dressed, and then he emptied the tub in the yard. He turned it over and leaned it against the side of the house to dry. For a while he sat on the porch and listened to the pulsing symphony of crickets. When he went inside, his mother was still ironing. A stiff line of shirts hung on a rack.

“Why are you fixin’ so many clothes?” he asked.

Janie shrugged, but she didn’t look up from her work. “Might as well get’em done now while I’ve got the chance.”

Allen rubbed the back of his neck and stared at his mother. She said nothing more, so he padded down the hall and climbed into bed. He lay a long time without sleeping, listening to his mother work. The furious creak of the ironing board sounded like a monster crawling through the house.

“The Pawpaw Tree” excerpt April 10, 2008

The family sat on the porch in silence, watching the world fall apart. Lightning raked scars across the air. Hail fell then, in ivory bits that reminded Katie of knucklebones. It seemed that the sky was sloughing off its skin to reveal its skeleton. A wail rose up around them and Jim leaped to his feet, his lips pulled back from his teeth. He pointed, though there was no need. They all saw it.         

The funnel emerged from the bank of clouds like the proboscis of some terrible insect. Katie pressed herself against the wall, fearing they would be sucked up the long snout to be devoured by this black dread. Jim grabbed her and pushed her into the kitchen.

 

 

“The Pawpaw Tree.”  Short Story.  2006 Explorations, MECC, Second Place.