Two Poems and Two Stories

F.U. Review

Dear Ellie,

Thank you for submitting to F.U. Review. We are writing to inform you that you have officially submitted the worst pieces we have received in the history of the F.U. Review, a record that has not been broken in 20 years. We strongly request that you do not send us any more of your work, and that you abstain from sending it to any other literary magazine so as to not waste any time on either parties. We particularly disliked the voice of the work and comments on your pieces included “inaccurate” and “confusing.” We hope to never cross paths in the future, and that you don’t find success and well-being in your creative works.

Go to hell.

Sincerely,

Editor in Chief of the F.U. Review

The Big Place

You pass the bridge that goes over the river where you’ve been fishing and swimming a hundred times, floating down the river in kayaks where Little Brasstown creek meets up with the Hiawassee River and the two become one til death due them part. The same bridge where you ran over that groundhog the other night, and didn’t even feel sorry for it. He’s still sitting there in the road, guts spilling out, flies and buzzards circling around and you remember how you tried to make yourself feel something for him, feel bad for running over him. Like maybe he had a little groundhog family in the woods and you killed the father and all the groundhogs will form an army against you and attack you in your sleep. And you started to feel bad about not being able to make yourself feel bad and you remember this now and think about how Debbie likes to find roadkill and stick it in her truck bed for her freezer when she gets home for mounts and you decide not to care anymore cause he shouldn’t have been in the road in the first place.

And by the time you decide to stop caring you’ve reached what most people would consider to be Brasstown, population 777 people, and without you it would be 776 and that number just doesn’t sound right to you. Here you’ll pass by Clay’s Corner founded in the 50s as a produce stand turned into a general store turned into a gas station built for gas and old-time community jams--same place they held the annual New Years Eve Possum Drop for more years than you’ve been alive for, shut down when The Times got involved. And you still remember going late at night and seeing people standing on the corner and in the middle of the road in the cold to watch the possum being lowered from the sky in a box all lit up in American colors and lights, running off into the woods, eyes shining bright like reflectors once it hit the ground welcoming the new year. Now Clay Logan does the same thing he’s done every day for the past 37 years, talking to people who come in, thinking about those possums.

If you turn on the corner you’ll go up to the famous John C. Campbell Folk School, founded by Olive Dame Campbell. And here you start to think about how it’s the dumbest thing when women name things after men, like they don’t have enough things named after them already. And when Olive Dame Campbell stood on the land a hundred years ago looking over fields and fields and woods and creeks working and sweating and making things, she thought about how its right to name it after a man who never even stepped foot on the ground or looked at the fields with his eyes or worked in the dirt with his hands. And you think that if you had founded the Folk School you would have named it after a random woman you didn’t know before you named it after your dead husband, even if you missed him. Most people know it as a place to learn about being in the mountains, people who aren’t from here moving in and wanting to have that nice mountain experience, looking for a new home away from the place they were born. But you know it for learning fiddle tunes, contra dancing, walking in the fields and hiking. 

And if you know anything about anyone where you’re from, you know about how so many years ago the Scroggs family gave up their land for the community so folks could have a postal service and a general store. And as you turn on Settawig Road with acres and acres of fields and cows and Scroggs family houses you think about that old hidden cemetery up on the hill, with those tiny little baby graves that have cracks where big spiders could fit through, and every dead Scrogg sister or brother or momma or daddy that started it all and you get to feeling glad that they’re dead so they don’t have to see into the future of what they started, and then you get to feeling sad that you don’t get a choice.

Sidewalk

I’m wearing your shirt.
Do you miss it?
If I left it on the side of the road
I would miss it too.
But I didn’t.
So I’m not
missing it
because
I’m wearing it
because
It's mine now.

Dogwood Road

You don’t remember meeting Sandra for the first time, just that you went to school together, met in first grade. You didn’t find out she was adopted til she told you about her real parents, but all she’d ever say is that they weren’t “good people.” You’ve known lots of folks who weren’t “good people” so maybe making them “bad people” but you’ve also known lots of different types of “bad people” and you always wanted to know which kind her real true parents were, but your momma says its rude to ask about things like someone else’s parents. Her and her little sister have the same parents they say, but you just can’t see how cause they don’t look anything alike. One’s got dark hair and blue eyes, and the other’s got blonde hair and blue eyes and they don’t even walk or talk the same. The only thing they do the same is answer questions, they always have the same answers, like they’ve got the same mind. Sometimes when you look at her real intense you like to try and imagine what her parents looked like, as if merging something together and then reversing it all in your head. But you always have a hard time and it makes your mind hurt cause they look so different and you just can’t imagine them coming from the same two people, so you just stare at her til she notices and asks what’s wrong, and you don’t say anything.

Sometimes ya’ll like to go down and stare at the horses across the road at her house in that big old pasture, even though you’re not allowed to ride or go past the gate. Every time you try and jump the fence to go see them she gets all frustrated with you for not listening, like as if she can tell you what to do cause she’s 4 months older. You’re both in the 4th grade now and it doesn’t matter how many months old you are, it’s just 4th grade. She says that she’ll go tell your momma that you’re getting into trouble and that will be that, so instead you stand on the fence like you’re about to jump it. You can never ride her horses, they’re too crazy she says. You try and tell her about the time you jumped on a random person’s horse with no saddle or anything, stayed on for longer than she could hold her breath, didn’t even cry when you hit the ground. You like to think that she believes you but you don’t really know cause all she says is that her momma won’t let anyone else ride them, and you wonder if her real parents would have let you and you think they would.

It isn’t til freshmen year of high school that Sandra stops caring about things like horses and cows and starts painting her nails colors like hot pink and red, wanting to be around boys all the time. She tries to get you to moon a bus packed full of them when you’re fifteen, your face gets redder than her fingernails and your heart pounds right out of your chest. When you get your period for the first time and you think you’re dying she tells you it means you’re becoming a woman, something like a coming of age, she’s had hers for years like it’s just normal. She gets a boyfriend and you tell her you don’t like him and that he never treats her right. He’s the throwing and hitting type, gets angry at small things kinda type, but she doesn’t care. 

By the end of junior year she’s got a big baby belly everyone’s too scared to talk about or look at. You see her working down in the fields sometimes, planting things like flowers and sugar snap peas and she looks down talking to her belly, rubbing her hands up against it, in those pretty sundresses getting all tan. She’s got a tattoo with his initials on her arm, like how cows get branded by their owners, doesn’t talk to you or anyone. You wonder if she names the baby from that long list of names she’s kept in her head all these years, or if it’s a name she’s never even heard of. Will the baby have blue eyes or brown? You get to wishing that parents get a say on the looks of their babies, it doesn’t seem fair that the baby’s hair may not be dark and she might walk around looking like the man who won’t give a shit about her. When you go to college Sandra’s setting out alone trying to keep her child out of foster care. And while you’re learning about things like business and politics, you imagine that she teaches her little girl about how to feed a horse with your hands flat, so they don’t bite off your fingers without meaning to.