Horton's Store

Over smashed beams, batten and soffet
the bent tin roofing was rusting in a sorghum
field gone to yellow dock, but I thought
I could raise it - woodstove, scarred counter,
one raconteur warming up to his story:
the man who never … the dwarf who nearly ….
Where Trestle Road farmers gathered
for tobacco, Hadacol and yarns, the shack
was a haven, even if hog prices dropped.

Just learning the itch for fiction, I listened
to Newt Cooper blowing smoke and vowing
Muscogee ghosts ate a dozing plow horse
down to its bones. Ed Thaxton showing off
the banjo Old Scratch swapped for his soul
drove me under the counter with its jangle.
Cade Seeger whispered about a girl
who bathed in rose honey so she could fly.

Wanting every tale to have the gospel glow,
I was too amazed in the shadows to know
how every story cauled a grief, regrets,
cruel ruin and a world of the darkest scars.
In the lull after the last session's hum,
I dreamed of the long-buried and unspoken,
the way one glazed-over cracker would step up
and reach past facts as his neighbors' faces
strained to catch the tune of soothing untruth.

I wanted the knack, every bittersweet
technique that moved a tongue to utter amen.
I yearned to delight and bewilder and bind,
but looking back, I can't resurrect the hour
of cricket chirr and the lighted wicks.

Those evenings of cold Sun Drop, ambeer
and the odor of sweat seem half-hijacked
from Faulkner novels and country clichés.
The stuffed goshawk and knife-scarred floor?

Tainted myself, I'm just not sure. Licorice
whips and sen-sen drops? Yes, but what
of the Talmadge ham lynched from a rafter?
Was it Cy Whitfield or his brother Collis
killed later by a bucking baler who swore
a good story was the best part of being
a whole man? Did Hovis say then, "I swan,
it puts me in mind of the time my twill
trousers caught fire for no reason but spite"?

It's all a jigsaw now, a shambles asking
if I can't reach deeper than dock leaves
and rubble, to pull it up - threshold, joists
and ridgepole. To hear the floorboards
creak with human weight and catch Besom
Horton's sorghum voice and his hazel eyes,
I'll have to conjure that rapt Georgia boy
not quite baptized in the waters of story,
only half a man but already ready to lie.
Magic banjo? Rose honey? I'll have to fly.

*R. T. Smith's books of poems include THE HOLLOW LOG LOUNGE (Illinois) and BRIGHTWOOD (LSU). His forthcoming book of stories is UKE RIVERS DELIVERS (LSU) and a collection of poems coming in 2007 from Arkansas. He is the editor of SHENANDOAH: THE WASHINGTON AND LEE REVIEW and (with Sarah Kennedy) COMMON WEALTH: CONTEMPORARY POETS OF VIRGINIA (UVA Press).