backwoods, a lil bit more…

jack mitchell first saw sue-ellen at a local bar. she was different than the women he was used to charming. she had a stern eye, kind of, like she’d been through some emotional war and had to fight her way out to keep from sinking into it. by “it,” i guess i mean despair. she was never a suicidal woman, but the hard times she faced kept her close to death, in a sense. she probably knew more about death than most people, having been at the very surface of it, nearly as close as you can get without actually being there. she had a sense of doom about her for a long time, but she disguised it well. she wasn’t trying to get sympathy from anyone, so she spoke outgoing and kind to whoever happened to pass her way. the only thing that gave off her immediate desperation was the look on her face. when she smiled, you could still see it. her brown eyes were locked at an angle unfit for an easy life. she looked hard at whatever she was looking at, as if the object could show her it was more than what it appeared to be. jack mitchell thought she was the epitome of beauty. a rare gift in an unbelievably true form. he thought in her eyes carried the same weight the savior of the world’s eyes would have. he thought her slender figure and her collar bones could probably change his life. that was what he wanted, afterall.

sue-ellen stood around five foot six, with a thin, feminine physique that she wore well. she wasn’t especially sexual-looking. she was the kind of woman you wanted to take care of, to protect. he knew if he went to say hi, he would probably tower over her, and he wasn’t drunk enough to think about what he would say. she sat in a corner with a friend for a while, not speaking to anybody. she didn’t really know much of anyone there, but she was okay with that. in fact, she probably preferred it. she just sat sipping on something and gazing around, probably seeing something more beautiful than what you or i could in that dimly lit room.

people were dancing all in front of jack mitchell’s line of sight. he hated that more than he’d ever hated anything. he felt they were keeping him from her, and none of them had a clue. they were just dancing around, having drinks, singing songs. there was a country band playing, some local band that always got a lot of drinks as gratitude.

my father is a hard man. i don’t remember many times where he’s been genuinely happy. it seems his only interest in the world is cars. he would always, no matter where we lived, come home from work, eat dinner, and then go promptly out to the garage or shop to work on a car and drink a whole lotta liquor. he wouldn’t speak to any of us unless he was telling us our work ethic needed to improve, or something along the lines of “you are not yet what you need to be.”
he owned a car dealership for most of my life. it caused him great pain when things weren’t selling well and he would take it out on all of us. his mercies were limited, if even existent, and he remained silent when he knew he’d not done right by us.
once he found me crying in the kitchen. i was sitting in the dark at the table, with just a bit of light on my skin from a lamp in the living room. my father walked in holding a glass of bourbon and coke and sat down in front of me.
“what’s wrong with you?”
“i’m alright.”
“stephanie, you are beautiful.”
“daddy, i–”
“that’s all.” and he walked away, his boots so loud on the floor that it sounded as though there was nothing covering the woodwork. it was the only time i’ve felt comforted by my father, except from probably infancy.
when i was too young to have felt this way, though i don’t know that there is an ideal age, i could so verily feel pain that i didn’t know if i would make it all my life that way. if a disabled or upset person would walk into the room, i had to leave. i didn’t do it because i didn’t care, it was mostly because i cared too much. i knew that something was not right in the world, that these people who would give me candy and let me sit on their laps did not deserve what they’d been subjected to. i believe my father was also this way at some point, and life wore on him, for whatever reason. he learned early on that sometimes believing in hope proves fruitless.
i’m seeing this more and more in myself. today i sat beside amanda while we were making some silly video. she looked so young and pleasant, laughing and all. i sat beside her, just as humored, but i noticed i have a hard face these days. i look like i could cry at any moment. i look weathered. stern. not curious or bright. i don’t mind. i don’t feel the same way. i think i’ve learned a bit of life lately. of life and myself. the beauty in my face and in my soul, is dying, the youthful wonder and the lively eyes, and i’m glad for it to die. i’ll let it rest.
that doesn’t mean that i can’t have a good story or a falling star absolutely bring me to tears every time, it’s just that beauty speaks new words to me. it means that i’m no longer dancing in the moonlight and now i’m lying on my back, watching the world resolve itself, and smiling on my own. like the “in love” feeling that once was has turned into patience and understanding. i still love life, just differently than i did before. as though the dawn is fading forever. and i see people just like me everywhere, and i feel that i understand them. i can smile and keep walking without a word, cause i know all about those who make the decision to walk through the desert and find the oasis–sometimes you get hammered into the dusty ground and all you can do is lay there and try to enjoy the rain when it comes. and sometimes you die out there. but sometimes you find it. it may be nothing like what you expected. in fact, it probably won’t be, but it’s there. there is peace to be had. and, though i’ve only had small glimpses of it in the past, and though i feel as if i’ve been lying in the rain for years, i know it’s out there somewhere. i know it is. and i will rest there with my father, with my mother, with my brother, with jake, with amanda, with you, with the fallen and the victors, if only in my mind, the world will slumber, the dawn will fade, the horn will sound, and our eroded faces will watch it all. we’ll understand, i believe.

ok, ghosts are real.

tolkien, you saint

lord of the rings,
you are the greatest.

sincerely,
steph

backwoods

this is part of a short story i’m writing leisurely, because it’s fun.

“they live out in the woods. somehow they fitted together a radio–through wires and water and some crazy backwoods electricity they could probably slice and separate in their teeth. this is what my mind would tell me. they’ve got two dogs, one blind one, and one with one blind eye. some knife accident with the boys. i don’t know, they’re practically foreign to me, and most people would call my land backwoods. they see a tractor as a jealous machine, and take pride in their goats and machetes. they make bombs in the cellar, where all the moonshine sits. ms. sue-ellen’s favorite thing to do is sit out on the porch and scallop potatoes. i can’t say i blame her much, but blade use runs in that family like the dominant indian gene. who knows what they think of down there?

sue-ellen used to be a married woman. she bore all but her first son by one man. his name was jack mitchell, and he wore steel toed boots and carried his rifle every where he went, even if it required his hands to remain full all day long. he was well-liked among all the townsfolke, when he ventured that way. he had a farm, but it was one of the smallest you could find. he had his share of crops and animals, but not many. he didn’t want the work that came with owning a big farm. he didn’t like all the machinery. he called it nonsense under his breath most days, and if he had an audience, he was really just saying it to himself, as if it would convince him that his life was better the way it was. i suppose that’s a trait not unheard of. it comes in all shapes and sizes, and even sounds, but contentment is not an attribute of a human that comes along easily, painlessly, and unwisely. sue-ellen moved to the farm where she had tony and michael. she thought the names were contemorary enough, for in that time she was almost ashamed of her backwoods, southern nature. she tried to disguise her drawl on her hardest days, but when she sat down after a few swigs of moonshine to chat with anyone who was around, her accent came out in waves, depending on which word she spoke, but it was as thick as milk. really she wanted to name tony buckshot and michael willie, after lord jesus christ himself.

jack mitchell stood tall and wore plain clothes he didn’t think about too much. a pair of jeans and some sort of shirt. nothing special about his appearance other than his brooding height. he could walk in any room and have all the women turn their gaze toward him. it wasn’t because he was especially attractive or unattractive. he had a kind eye about him, though, and that combined with his stature could keep a woman talkin’ all night long, drinking more and more until he was sure she’d tell him any secret she had. he didn’t do that to them, though. he just liked to drink, and women tried to keep up with him. at least, the women he was used to meeting. they were usually regular looking, despite a few more than fair skinned thin women he cordially invited back to his place. he wasn’t interested in lying down with them most of the time. his intentions weren’t always on that. he kept his mind on something else, some far away dream of knowing another soul just as well as he knows his own. i guess he thought you could learn a lot about a person in bed, which is certainly true, but he didn’t need the physicality to learn the inner workings of a woman. he learned from the sound of a woman’s voice and thought most of the time it sounded like music. he liked what women had to say, even if he thought a lot of them dumbed themselves down to be on his level. he wasn’t much of a talker. he kept his most private thoughts inside himself and didn’t open the cupboard to gaze at them very often. he thought private things should remain private, even to a person’s own conscious, at times. afterall, secrets, when focused on for long amounts of time, can drive a person crazy with their solitude. secrets are lonely, and don’t like to stay that way long. they are little parasites and take hold of their host when the host allows it. jack mitchell was smarter than this. his main problem, which led to his later demise, was that he didn’t care for himself very much. and because he didn’t care for himself much, he didn’t work toward much. he kept his tiny farm in fair order, but didn’t spend extra time on it. didn’t love it like a farmer should. he didn’t dig his hands in the dirt and feel his own brown soul somehow sitting in his palms. he thought like a country man, in a way. he had an old romance about him, but he tried to hide that. this is why he slept with plenty of women. he didn’t want to at the end of the day, but he felt there was a certain manliness attached with it that he didn’t know how to find another way. he never had a woman give him an identity, because women, a lot of the time, are trying to find their identities in men. it’s a strange cycle, but jack mitchell and his concubines expected the same boring, old thing from each other, not realizing you don’t learn anything of yourself that way.”