by Jeff Zentner
“What were you looking at earlier?” Her tone is calm but insistent. I wish she’d be unambiguously angry or annoyed. I can’t read her mood and it’s unnerving.
“Nothing.” My head is pounding.
“I can tell when someone isn’t looking at nothing.”
“Um. The trees outside.”
“Why?”
I take an extended pause before speaking. I consider inventing a story. But she’s already sniffed out my bullshit once. “I was thinking about my pap—my grandpa and—”
“What were you about to call him when you caught yourself?”
“Papaw,” I murmur. “It’s our word for grandpa back home.”
“I called my grandpa that,” she says softly. “Where’s home?”
“Sawyer, Tennessee. You haven’t heard of it.”
“No?”
“You have?”
“I got my MFA in poetry at Warren Wilson in Swannanoa, North Carolina. My wife used to cater in Nashville, and we’d drive through Sawyer.”
“I can’t believe you’ve even heard of it.”
Dr. Adkins twists one of her rings with the adjacent finger. “My turn. I’m from Louisa, Kentucky.”
I shake my head. “Never heard of it.”
“It’s about four hours northeast of Knoxville, almost in West Virginia.”
As she says the last sentence, I detect a hint of accent for the first time. “So…”
“I’m Appalachian too.” She pronounces it right. Apple-atchun.
“Wouldn’ta guessed,” I murmur.
“My name is Britney Rae Adkins. That name sound more like I was born in New York City or in a place like Sawyer?”
I laugh.
“My latest book is called Holler.”
I’m brightening as I realize she didn’t keep me back to fuss at me. “I heard that. I assumed it meant yelling, as opposed to a place where people live.”
“Nope. And my hunch about where you were from was absolutely right.”
“What tipped you off?”
“Your name. Your accent. Mostly your looking lost all the time, though—no offense.”
“None taken.” (But I am embarrassed again.)
We look at each other. Her eyes are the sort that burrow inside you to see hidden and buried things.
She says, “Now. You were going to tell me what you were thinking about while looking at the trees.”
I take a deep breath. “I was remembering a morning in October when I was sitting on our porch with my papaw and mamaw and my best friend, Delaney—who’s at Middleford too. It was a good morning. And I was thinking about it because now my papaw—” I don’t know what made me think I was ready to tell a near stranger about his condition. I haven’t even told Vi or Alex. The immediate waver that comes into my voice tells me I’m not prepared.
Dr. Adkins doesn’t fill the silence as I look away and back out the window that got me into this. I’ve come this far, so I finish. “Is dying. He has emphysema and he wasn’t doing great even before I left. And now—” I stop before I break down.
“He’s doing worse?” Dr. Adkins asks gently.
I nod.
“And you’re here, and here is far from him,” she says.
I nod and stare at the ground.
“And so you’re thinking about him a lot.”
I nod. A lone tear escapes and flows down the side of my nose. I quickly brush it away with the ball of my thumb. I lower my head so Dr. Adkins won’t see.
She pushes back her chair and stands, then walks purposefully to a bookshelf. She returns with several slim poetry volumes and hands them to me. “New homework assignment: Read at least one poem out of each of these books. Then, write a poem.”
My heart starts racing again. “About what?”
“Whatever. About your favorite deodorant, for all I care.”
“I didn’t think we were gonna be—”
“Correct. We’re not writing yet. Just reading and listening. But lucky you, going on the advanced track.”
“I don’t know anything about writing poetry. I don’t even have a favorite poet.”
“Guess how that changes.”
I eye the books in my hands.
Dr. Adkins continues. “I have two intuitions about you. The first is that you’ve got it in your head that poetry has to be elaborate, and that’s what’s fueling your hesitancy.”
“One for one.”
“Number two: that you’re someone who pays attention to the world around him.”
“I mean…if I were good at paying attention, we wouldn’t be talking.”
She smiles. “Fair point, but nothing I say in this class is as important as watching leaves fall. You pay attention to the right things.” She hesitates and then quickly adds, “But don’t push your luck with other teachers. They might feel differently.”
We laugh.
“Mary Oliver—she’s one of the poets in your hand—said something important about writing poetry: ‘Just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate.’ Do that. Pay attention. Patch a few words together. Don’t try to make them elaborate.” She looks at me. “You’re still skeptical.”
“Kinda.”
“Ever sit on your porch with your papaw and listen to him tell stories?”
“All the time.”
“Appalachian people are storytellers,” Dr. Adkins says. “We’re lovers of words. Poetry tells stories through words. This runs in your blood. You named after Johnny Cash?”
“Yeah, my mama and my papaw used to listen to him together.”
“You even have a poet’s name.”
I sigh. “Okay. I’ll try.”
“I pay attention, Cash. You can’t be a poet unless you do. And I see in you someone who wants to experience joy and is having a tough time doing that right now. Life often won’t freely give you moments of joy. Sometimes you have to wrench them away and cup them in your hands, to protect them from the wind and rain. Art is a pair of cupped hands. Poetry is a pair of cupped hands.”
Tears well in my eyes and I try to blink them clear.
“Okay,” Dr. Adkins says softly, pretending not to notice my crying. “I’ve taken up too much of your lunchtime. Go eat. Go read. Go write.”
I clear my throat a couple times and hold up the books. “I’m gonna do my best.”
I’m almost out the door when Dr. Adkins calls out behind me, “Ever tried the cornbread in the dining hall?”
I turn. “My mamaw makes amazing cornbread.”
“Figured. That’s why I asked.”
“No. Scared of it.”
“You’re right to be.”
* * *
I’ve saved Dr. Adkins’s homework for last because I know it’ll be the toughest.
I open the Mary Oliver book and skim as my mind wanders. I think about what Papaw’s funeral will be like. I wonder if his old friends will show up for him. I wonder—
I force myself back to the page. I promised Dr. Adkins I’d give this my best. I start reading again. Really reading. Letting myself taste the words, each one melting on my tongue.
Something happens. A slow daybreak inside me, the first rays of a new sun peeking over the gray horizon. I don’t always understand what I’m reading. Poets use language in ways I’ve never considered, to describe things I thought defied description.
Dr. Adkins picked poets who write about the world. About rivers and fireflies and formations of geese and deer and rain and wind. Things I love.
By the time I’m done reading at least one poem out of each book (usually more), I’m experiencing a deep calm, like I feel after being on a river, under the sun, in the wind, feeling the spray off my paddle. For those brief moments strolling through the forest of wo
rds, everything had disappeared. Papaw wasn’t dying while I was far from him at a place where I didn’t belong, always on the precipice of disappointing him. I had stolen moments of joy from a hungry world that devours them and protected them for a while in cupped hands.
I sit with the feeling for as long as I can before it fades and loses definition, like a cloud formation.
Then I remember the second part of my assignment. To write a poem. This part makes me more apprehensive. I open my notebook to a blank page. Something about using a pen and paper feels more right. I stare at the white wilderness in front of me. It seems to grow with every second. I sit for almost an hour. I’ll write a line. Then I’ll think it sounds dumb or trite, and I’ll scratch it out and start over. Repeat. Repeat. I get distracted by the sound coming from Tripp’s headphones across from me.
Why can’t writing be like mowing lawns or chopping wood? You put your back into it; you get sweaty; you get the job done.
Well. She told me poetry doesn’t need to be elaborate. I write,
Words are stuck in my mind
Like an axe buried in a stump
I dwell on it for another few minutes. It feels half-assed even for an incomplete poem. As if I were hurting for yet another way to fail here.
I told Dr. Adkins I was no poet. If she pays attention like she claims, she’ll see it.
I sit across from Delaney at dinner. Alex is at either a Young Democrats or a Christian Student Fellowship meeting, and Vi is at Coding Club. So it’s just the two of us. This doesn’t happen often anymore. I haven’t had a great day. I got a C on a paper for my marine biology class—one I’d worked my ass off on.
“Talked to my mama yesterday,” Delaney says.
“No shit?”
“None.”
“And?”
Delaney gives me a what-do-you-think look.
“She’s gotta hit rock bottom,” I say. “Isn’t that what they say?”
“That does seem to be what they say.” Delaney takes a bite of burrito.
We chew quietly for a few minutes.
“I gotta go,” Delaney says, standing.
“Already?”
“Got work to do in the lab.”
“Just hang out a little longer. The work’ll still be there.”
“Can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?” I ask.
“Won’t because I can’t.”
“Come on, seriously? We’ve barely hung out for more than ten minutes over the last two weeks.”
Delaney rolls her eyes.
“Don’t,” I say. “You’re never around, which is fine. But when we hang out, you don’t even ask me about my day.”
“How was your day?” Delaney asks with fake sweetness.
“You really wanna know?”
“Sure.”
“Well, shitty, Red, thanks.”
“Sorry it was shitty.”
“Wanna know what the day before that was like? Shitty too.”
“You accusing me of something?”
“You feel accused?”
We don’t speak for a few moments. We’ve certainly fought in our time as friends. But this feels uglier. More fraught. It’s scary to fight with someone who doesn’t seem to have any need for you anymore.
“You realize this is the first time it’s been just us two hanging out for like two weeks?” I ask.
“Been busy,” Delaney says.
“No shit. All your new science nerd buddies.”
“First off, no; part of it is science program stuff taking up time. Second off, they’re nice; don’t be a dick.”
“Oh yeah. They were real nice a while back when they were shit-talking you.”
“I’m not friends with the shit-talkers; I’m friends with the cool ones. And you’ve been perfectly happy to make friends with Vi and Alex.”
I push my tray to the side, my appetite gone. “Not at the cost of our friendship.”
“I’m just doing what you’re supposed to damn do when you go to a new school.”
“Yeah? Maybe I should start doing what I’m supposed to be doing and abandon you back.”
“I’m tired of you acting like I’m a bad friend,” Delaney says loudly.
“Keep your voice down—you’re embarrassing me,” I say through gritted teeth. “And stop being a bad friend, and I’ll stop acting like you’re one.”
Delaney stands, draws close, and whispers in my ear. “I hope this isn’t too quiet for you to hear me tell you to fuck off and not talk to me anymore.”
And with that, she stalks away briskly without a rearward glance.
My stomach feels like it’s filled with ice shards. I sit still, my face burning, staring at the table for a long time. I pull my tray back to me and pick at my food for a few minutes.
Delaney and I have always fought this way, on a tightrope, with no net, spiraling out of control before either of us knows what’s happening. I don’t know why we’re like this. Maybe it’s because we both assume that loss is life’s default setting and we can beat it to the punch by setting fire to our friendship. I couldn’t tell you. We’ve always managed to mend things, but that was back home, when neither of us had much else. Here, Delaney has a new paradise, full of people smarter and more interesting than me. People who’ll be able to accompany her on her journey upward.
This isn’t the first time Delaney’s told me to never talk to her again, but this might be the time it actually sticks.
I have nothing in my life that isn’t falling apart.
As I’m packing up to leave class, Dr. Adkins waves me over. “Stick around for a sec,” she says. Everyone files out. She motions for me to sit back at the table and I do. She slides a piece of paper over to me. “Short poem, short comment.”
I look at the paper. It’s my poem.
Words are stuck in my mind
Like an axe buried in a stump
Underneath, in messy, chaotic handwriting, Dr. Adkins has written, Bullshit.
Ever since Delaney and I stopped talking, every day’s been even harder and lonelier, and this doesn’t help. I’m so tired of looking dumb here. Blood courses to my face. “I wasn’t trying to be cute,” I say. “That’s all that came to me.”
“I believe you. And yet: bullshit. What did you mean by ‘Words are stuck in my mind’?”
I ponder the question. “I guess…that there are words in there. I can hear them like someone is talking on the other side of a wall. But every time I go to write them, they’re gone.”
“You read from the books I loaned you.”
“That’s part of the problem. They’re all so good. I got nothing compared to them.”
“That’s exactly the opposite conclusion from what I hoped you’d draw.”
“What was I supposed to get out of it?”
“That poetry is observing and speaking truth, and that there are many paths to do that. You have a truth. Speak it.”
“Easier said than done.”
“You have to give yourself permission to fail.”
“So you want me to write more poems?”
“Sure do.”
“Seems kinda unfair that I’m the only one having to do extra work in class.”
She shrugs. “Don’t do the assignments I give the rest of the class. Do this instead.” She looks at me for a while. In this light, her eyes look like an overcast sky with the sun shining bright behind the clouds. She hesitates before speaking, toying with one of her rings. “Cash, if I’m overstepping here, tell me.”
“Okay,” I say apprehensively.
“I sense you’ve dealt with a lot in life. Not just with your papaw’s health.”
I pause for what feels like an inordinately long time before I murmur, “You’re right.”
She points to he
r missing tooth, the one I’d wondered about. “When I was sixteen, my stepdad left me with this nice gap after he found a love poem I wrote to a senior girl with blue hair and a lip ring. I could’ve gotten it fixed by now, but that would have felt to me like an acknowledgment that he’d made me less somehow. I wear this absence as a monument to living the life I chose for myself. I know the look of someone holding on to something.”
I want to tell her about trying to open that death-sealed bathroom door. About numbly sitting on the porch and listening to distant sirens. But the moment I do, it will all follow me here. I need to hold on to the illusion for a little longer that I can outrun it.
“Is that why the poetry?” I ask.
“Every hurt, every sorrow, every scar has brought you here. Poetry lets us turn pain into fire by which to warm ourselves. Go build a fire.”
Since we quit talking, I haven’t checked out Delaney’s Instagram. It hurts too much, and I don’t want to see evidence that I’ve been replaced. I’m about to head there anyway, though, when beside me Tripp flips the book he’s reading—Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates—onto the floor.
“Racist. Dude hates white people,” he mutters to the air. “Wahhhh, there was slavery a thousand years ago and now my life sucks and it’s everyone’s fault but mine,” he says in a mocking voice, pulling his headphones down around his neck.
The only thing worse than studying wordlessly next to Tripp is trying to study when Tripp has something to hash out. And he only ever does that when he has a grievance of some kind.
“I’ve never owned a slave,” Tripp says. “You ever owned one?”
“No,” I say tersely and quietly, setting down my phone and picking my poetry book back up. I don’t like the goading in his tone.
“How about your parents? Or grandparents?”
“Why you asking?”
“You’re from the South. If anyone would have, you guys would have.”
“I think slavery’s evil and people who owned slaves were evil.”
“How about your neighbors ep thar in Tennessee? Any slaves?”
Tripp smirks as he mocks Papaw again, like it’s some sort of inside joke we share.