On some level I felt like it was truth. She’d spoken up. She’d said what she believed. “Matt Carter is a loser! He won’t amount to anything. I don’t want you screwing around with him.”
Silence.
I whispered “it’s OK” and stepped out their front door hoping she didn’t know I was at the bottom of the stairs. They looked like young soldiers in a WWII film, privates, in green, greasy hair with a helmet cocked to the side,a little hair around the lip they’d missed while shaving because of a shaky right hand and a broken mirror, a little red in the face but at once, completely white, as if they’d seen the dead walking in the streets begging for their lives back, realizing they’d just been part of a bombing, where innocent children could be found dead in the basement... at the bottom of the stairs.
The tapes played back.
Explicit adjectives and verbs placed all along the sentence. This was not reality. This was only in my head, my loser brain, my won’t-amount-to-anything mind.
Sticks and stones may break my bones but your words may kill me. My teachers had lied to me for years. Words hurt.
They stung like bees. Big bees. Japanese Hornets.
“Way to go mom!” the youngest child yelled back. I’ve often wondered: did she ever find out I’d heard? If so, why didn’t she apologize? Was it true? Was she embarrassed? If she read this now would she apologize or would she denied it happened? Or would she shake her head and think “who could dare say such a thing?”
Well, if you read this, know this, I’ve forgiven you but it doesn’t change the fact that it still affects me. Is that fair to say? You didn’t do it intentionally, after all.
To this day I struggle with words. Words I’ve said. Words that have been received. Words that were too afraid to speak up. Words with French roots. Words with no filter, a missing levee, an open gate. Too few words and more often too many.
My father, a gifted orator, shaped some of my words. My mother, a country girl from Seneca, makes me laugh with her words. For instance, “did you hear Michelle Allen is getting marid?” Marid. What is that? My father says “perfeck” rather than “perfect.” He also replaces “Ackera” for “Acura” and “Criiiist” for “Christ.”
Once, in a heated argument, my father called me an asshole. My horribly baseless self-righteousness and an immediate need to divert all attention from the situation of which I’d been caught wrong in gave way to me saying “How dare you use such language? You’re a preacher!” In perfect time, he volleyed back “what’s worse, for me to call you an asshole or for you to be one?”
These words with which we can slay one another, encourage, correct, tear down or brighten even the darkest day must be chosen wisely. God says that no man can tame the tongue and that it’s a double edged sword. Those are some amazing words. Therein lies truth.
Her words were truthful. Her words were not in love though. Daddy’s words were truth. They didn’t really sting because they were righteous. They were in love. I hope my words will always be in love and truth. Friends, I pray will both understand and hold em accountable.
5.21.2008
eight hundred dollars and new boots for the kids
Tom Dula was hanged as best I can recollect just outside my Boyscout Master, Rusty McClelland's, shoe store at the end of a long street in front of Mitchell College on May 1, 1868. Upon prompting, kids replied "MIT" as their choice of educational venues post high school graduation. Mitchell In Town. Vicki Brafford, later Caldwell, but to me, always a Brafford, was a librarian at Mitchell College or MIT as it were. Keith and his librarian wife, Annie, would no doubt scold me on Vicki's proper position title at the library, but to me, if you work in a library, especially a college library, that makes you a librarian. I'm not sure but I'm willing to bet the title "librarian" is reserved for those who, regardless of educational background or intellectual prowess, can actually explain Mr. Melvil Dewey's system of organized knowledge which was created some eight years later than Mr. Dula's hanging, perhaps to harness such knowledge on how to hang a man or how to harvest the first crops. Another friend of mine, Michelle, works at the county library, much larger than Mitchell's. She is not a librarian. She's very well read and an extraordinarily intelligent person but it's not a college library nor could she explain the Dewey Decimal Classification System if her life depended on it, though I've never asked her about it. I'm sure there are some books in the 020 (Library & Information Sciences) and 021 (Library Relationships) range that could help folks better understand what makes a librarian a librarian and what the Dewey Decimal Classification System is all about. Michelle did once hold employment with a college library but I think once you leave, you lose "librarian" status.
I remember camping with my father somewhere in North Carolina and fishing on a either a lake or river, I don't recall the name, and catching one bluegill, not typically found in streams, so we'll presume this body of water to be a pond or lake, depending on size or depth or water temperature or it's tributaries, and frying it back at camp. A friend of mine, Jonathan Dearman, a certified raconteur, had given me a book for my birthday or as a get well soon present or just out of friendship called "Me and My Dad Go Camping." It was one of the those 45 Records | Read along books that made the "bong" sound between page turns to signal the reader / listener that there were but precious few moments left to view the sloppily crafted hand-drawn pictures before the narrator would begin without you on the next page. Placing the needle back down on a 45 to find your place was completely out of the question. It was about a porcupine or hedgehog or something and his father going camping, as it was so aptly entitled. I kept thinking a bear was going to come and take our fish like in the story with the spiny beasts. Our solitary fish with head and skin intact, lying there in a frying pan, looking up at me. I hate the taste of fish. But this was a good fish. We fried it up as soon as we caught it. Somehow though, in the 3 minutes or so between catching the fish and frying it, I had time to think of the book and time to daydream about a bear taking our fish. Our solitary fish.
Later that night my father and I laid on our backs and saw more stars than we'd ever seen. We both remember one star in particular that shone far brighter than the sum of it's peers. It looked as if it were only an arm's length away, like in a 3-D movie, except without the obscure glasses. God opened the heavens and blew away the clouds so we could see it's splendor. (Side Note: I should start writing for that Christian magazine, Open Windows, I'll bet they eat up cheesy junk like that.) Dad sang the song we'd earlier learned that day written on a mandated state of North Carolina historical marker plaque in the park and taught to us by the local ranger:
"Hang down your head Tom Dooley
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head Tom Dooley
'Ol boy you're bound to die."
Tom Dula was accused of brutally murdering his woman in Wilkes Co. with a knife of great substantiality. Though no body, weapon or proof could be produced, they arrested him none the less. Tried twice in my hometown, the one with the shoe store near MIT, he was found guilty twice and hung once as was customary, for up to this time, hanging once usually worked. On the gallows he uttered some crap about his hands and her hair not being touched and then they dropped him like a bad habit, no doubt, near the shoe store where the big Buster Brown ads hung with the picture of the sissy boy and his meth-fueled dog with rabid, crazy eyes named "Tige," short for "Tiger." Ridiculous getup, the boy had, and certainly, a worrisome dog. If ever a beast of the canine sort used any substance produced from the coca plant, Buster's dog did, wide eyed and nuts.
Across the street was a musical instrument retail store where a man once tried to sell my father a set of Slingerland drums once owned by the drummer from the Ed Sullivan Show. The kit had Evan's blue double ply hydraulic heads. I loved those heads because you could press down on them and watch the oil flee from your thumb like Lot and Co. running for their lives at Soddom and Gommarah. My father declined on the Slingerlands and after a few years of beating on pots and pans, purchased a proper drum set. CB International, real turd-esque kit. Jamie Dew had a set of CB-700's. My kit was bigger but he was better. We later ran into one another at Toccoa Falls College. I also sold the kit and purchased a Slingerland kit, though very different from the previously offered set and with no blue heads. I still own a Roger's Super 10 snare my dad bought from Bob Bunch for twenty-five dollars when I was in fifth grade. It was my first drum. Bob had 70's hair, a push-broom mustache, molester glasses and a stellar set of wind chimes. He also used a goat skin tambourine and played a five-piece butcher block set of Roger's drums from which my snare came. I lost contact with Bob. Terrific drummer. Hawaii-Five-O!
Legend has it that Tom Dula killed his woman for giving him syphilis. Many hold that Dula's other lover, who also received this lovely gift, was the actual murderer and Tom just helped with the burial. When I was a kid I remember hearing of a kid in Philadelphia who was murdered for his LA Kings Starter jacket. I've never known anyone with syphilis that I know of, but I'd bet it's worth killing someone over, certainly more than over a King's jacket. Let's face it, the Kings ain't all that and besides, kid, you're in Philadelphia, home of the Flyers! Furthermore, you don't even need to order from Eastbay anymore, you can buy Starter jackets at Wal-Mart now.
While I do realize I've more than likely destroyed this story with faulty information, one gets the gist of it and nonetheless, can grasp why it made for such a fine song. The Kingston Trio made a hit of it in the late 50's and really stirred the crap with a legal battle over the song's origin. Some codger was awarded eight hundred dollars and his kids got some new boots. Rusty's store was unfortunately unable to supply the tobacco farming balladeer's children with said boots as Rusty wasn't living yet and seeing as the family of the eight hundred dollar award was from Wilkes Co., it's most likely they purchased the boots outside Iredell Co. However, the previous owners of Rusty's shoe store might have also heard the story of Tom Dula and probably had contemplated having an annual "One Day Only, Tom Dula Shoe Sale."
Anyway, he was hanged in Statesville, North Carolina, where I was born in 1978. Don't let that last sentence fool you. He was hanged much earlier as previously stated in paragraph one, sentence one. Pay attention to story and the commas or the lack thereof, they are telling. Also, it's "hanged", not "hung." This may contain bits of scandal, but I'm earnestly seeking a clean read here.
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