The Front Porch Prophet
Raymond L. Atkins
What do a trigger-happy bootlegger with pancreatic cancer, an alcoholic helicopter pilot who is afraid to fly, and a dead guy with his feet in a camp stove have in common? What are the similarities between a fire department that cannot put out fires, a policeman who has a historic cabin fall on him from out of the sky, and an entire family dedicated to a variety of deceased authors? Where can you find a war hero named Termite with a long knife stuck in his liver, a cook named Hoghead who makes the world's worst coffee, and a supervisor named Pillsbury who nearly gets hung by his employees? Sequoyah, Georgia is the answer to all three questions. They arise from the relationship between A. J. Longstreet and his best friend since childhood, Eugene Purdue. After a parting of ways due to Eugene's inability to accept the constraints of adulthood, he reenters A.J.'s life with terminal cancer and the dilemma of executing a mercy killing when the time arrives. Take this gripping journey to Sequoyah, Georgia and witness A.J.'s battle with mortality, euthanasia, and his adventure back to the past and people who made him what he is – and helps him make the decision that will alter his life forever.
Raymond L. Atkins
The Front Porch Prophet
© 2008
To Marsha, of course.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Special thanks to Ken Anderson, who took the time to teach me to write. Thanks to the Wednesday night group-Jeanie, Jon, Jess, and Amelia (I wish there had been pie). Thanks to Kerry and Helen for the chance to live my dream.
PROLOGUE
THE APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS MEANDER FROM the flatlands of the South to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They were ancient when first discovered by the human species-venerable even as age is measured in geologic time-and have endured with injured grace the attentions of that destructive race. In its impetuous youth, the range was formidable. Now, wind and water have brought the mountains low, although they are, in their fashion, still as wild as their larger western cousins. Lookout Mountain originates in south-central Tennessee, wanders west across northwest Georgia, and terminates in the farmlands of northeast Alabama. It is considered by some to be the southernmost principal mass of the Appalachian chain. To others, it is home.
A thousand souls reside in the town of Sequoyah, Georgia, sixty miles southwest of Chattanooga. Located in a mountain valley surrounded by peaks, Sequoyah does not differ significantly from countless other small communities dotting the Southern landscape. It has a store and a gas station, a diner and four churches. It boasts a school, a post office, a traffic light, and a town hall. There is a doctor, a lawyer, and an Indian chief-or at least, that is what he claims. Over the years, however, the settlement has developed a character unique to itself. The whole has exceeded the sum of the parts. The individuals who resided there have left traces, pieces of the patchworks of their lives. A child’s name. A house. The lay of a fencerow. A snowball bush. This is the way of towns and of those who people them. These are the relics of security, for it is not human nature to live alone.
One such memento of Sequoyah’s living past is A.J. Longstreet. His mother, Rose, succumbed to a venomous cancer when he was an infant. She was in hideous pain through much of her pregnancy but staved off the inevitable until her child was born. Her husband, John Robert Longstreet, was desolate. He paid the heavy price of sentience with his sorrow.
Time heals most wounds, but by no means all. On the day after Rose was laid to rest, John Robert quietly rocked his son. Rose had named the baby Arthur John after her father and her husband. It was a warm evening early in the spring, and the scent of wisteria pervaded the air. That aroma would sadden John Robert for the remainder of his days, the lying smell of illusory hope, the cloying sweetness forever tied to memories of the funeral parlor, the mound, and the gaping hole in the red Georgia clay. He sat with his mother, Clara, on the porch of the old family home place, in which had resided many generations of Longstreets. The sky to the west bled ruby into the night. John Robert sighed, kissed the baby, and offered him to Clara. She looked at him, discerned his fatal intentions, and refused the bundle.
“Take the boy, Mama,” John Robert said woodenly, his voice a bottomless melancholy. He was not a coward but had chosen the craven path, and he had a long journey ahead to regain his place at Rose’s side.
“No,” she said in a voice as unyielding as frozen time. “That is not the way. We’ll raise him together, but I won’t do it alone.” She spoke calmly and with finality, but a hard fear gripped her heart like an eagle’s claw. She had just lost the daughter she never had and was now in danger of losing her son. Loneliness was her terror. She had become a widow many years earlier due to a freak accident involving a hay baler, a rock, and a young husband who was counting on many long years of happiness. So Clara raised John Robert alone, and she had been overheard to say on more than one occasion that she had done a fine job. But she was an old woman now and doubted her ability to repeat the task.
“Mama, it’s time for me to go,” John Robert insisted. He stood and placed the baby on the seat of the rocker. Clara was a woman with unalterable concepts of right and wrong, and was known to be spirited when crossed. She had heard enough.
“John Robert, there will be no more of this talk. Do you hear me? Not another word. That poor baby doesn’t know what his mama went through to get him here, but he is here, and you can just set your mind to doing your duty by him.” John Robert hung his head, but Clara was not through. “I have never heard such in all my days,” she continued. “What would you have done if I had gone and jumped into that hay baler with your daddy?” She reached up and touched his unshaven chin. “What do you think Rose would say about all this?” she asked quietly, saving the trump card for last.
And that had been that. The talk of joining Rose was ended. John Robert would be with her in good time, but first he had to finish the task they had initiated together.
So he and Clara commenced the raising of Arthur John Longstreet, and the joy that John Robert had lost upon his wife’s passing was slowly replaced on a smaller scale by his son. He was subject to brief depressions for the remainder of his days, particularly early in the spring, but he never again allowed himself to be overcome. He never remarried, much to the chagrin of many of the available young women in the area-all of whom knew a fine catch when one swam by-but it appeared he was no longer interested in members of the opposite sex, which was a shame in a man so vital, handsome, and propertied.
Total disinterest was not quite the truth, however. John Robert had been comforted during his darkest days by a local angel of mercy, an iron-willed woman who had survived bleak times of her own and who had the uncommon talent of knowing her own mind. To her lasting credit, she determined to help this lonely and despairing man find solace, and as payment for her kindness she bore a son. Conception had not been her intent, but she knew a gift when she received one and recognized their scarcity in an indifferent world. So she was content with the outcome and burdened neither John Robert nor her husband with the details.
Arthur John Longstreet grew into sturdy, barefoot boyhood under the dutiful care of John Robert and Granmama. John Robert’s lessons were those of hard work, duty, family, and respect. He told Arthur John of his mother, Rose, and the boy learned to hold her in reverence. There were several photographs of Rose Longstreet in the house, grainy black-and-white slices of a life that had been. His favorite depicted her in a cotton dress sitting by a pond, smiling at the photographer, her long hair windblown. Arthur John had been to that spot many times, always hoping to find her, always convinced that somehow he had just missed her. He could sense a presence there, as if her arms enfolded him across time.
While John Robe
rt tended toward the larger issues of life, Clara was as practical in her upbringing of Arthur John as she had been with the raising of his father. She kept him clean and taught him manners. She read him stories and held him when he cried. She doctored his scrapes and made him eat his vegetables. She made him mind, and more than once found herself applying the business end of a hickory switch to his stubborn behind. She also took the boy to church each Sunday, but the weekly excursion was made without John Robert, who refused to go.
“It’s a good idea,” he told Clara when she first broached the subject. “Take the boy on down there. There’s a lot of good to be had out of going to church.”
“You ought to come with us, John Robert,” she said.
“I expect I’ll wait awhile. Me and the Lord don’t see eye to eye these days. We’ll get around to talking, directly.” But they never did. The betrayal had been too great, the theft of Rose into the night too harsh. John Robert had looked deep into his heart and found no forgiveness. He knew he was a minute speck in the vastness of the cosmos, but he was the injured party and expected an accounting. But no bush on the farm burst into voice and flame to reveal why Rose’s presence had been required elsewhere. Skulled specters did not trot in across the back pasture under a white flag of truce to clarify why her transition from here to there had been so ungodly cruel. So John Robert did not forgive. And he did not forget.
Arthur John became initialized early in life. Initialization is a Southern rite of passage akin to the Hebrew practice of circumcision, but it is sometimes less painful and does not always occur on the seventh day. So Arthur John Longstreet became A.J., and A.J. he has remained.
When A.J. was six, Granmama took him down to the school in town. It was a bright, sweet morning in early September, and A.J. was beside himself with excitement. He was decked out in stiff-as-a-board jeans, a blue cotton shirt, and U.S. Keds, black high-tops fresh out of the box. This was the big league, and A.J. knew it full well. After a brief, informal registration, he was remanded into the custody of Mrs. Williams, a sweet, blue-haired woman who had been teaching since John Robert was a child.
So it was that A.J. began his formal education. He loved the neat structure and implicit boundaries of classroom life and awaited his lessons with eagerness. He quickly and correctly learned all the material presented to him and always seemed hungry for more. He thought Mrs. Williams was a pearl and liked most of his classmates. His one problem was Hollis Battey, a bully from a long line of the same who took particular delight in harassing A.J. Hollis was seven and much bigger than A.J. The Battey clan esteemed only unemployment and alcohol above ignorance, and Hollis was in school solely because the county sheriff had insisted.
A.J. endured Hollis’s torments for the better part of a month. He did so for two reasons. The first was that John Robert had always told him fighting was to be held as a last resort. Secondly, A.J. was afraid of the brutish boy. He knew without doubt that when it came to blows, he was going to lose. So he tried avoidance, but that was tough to pull off in a class of eleven. Then he attempted accommodation, but Hollis was not to be accommodated. A.J. even tried to make friends with the Battey boy, but the novelty of having a comrade did not appeal to Hollis. Finally, A.J. turned to his father for advice.
“If he was after you, John Robert, would you fight him?” A.J. asked, perplexed by the enormity of his problem.
“No, I wouldn’t fight him,” John Robert replied. “And I’ll love you just the same whether you fight him or not.” So A.J. went on to school without a definite solution to his predicament while John Robert put on his jacket and headed for the truck. It was his intent to drive out for a chat with Jug Battey, father of Hollis and, in John Robert’s opinion, the root cause of the problem. Clara did not care for the plan.
“I’ll not have you rolling in the dirt with Jug Battey,” she firmly declared. “That man is as mean as a snake and as sorry as the day is long.” Clara disliked Jug Battey as much as any Christian woman was allowed-perhaps even a tad more-and she did not want any members of her family near him.
“I’m just going for a talk, Mama,” John Robert responded. “There won’t be any fighting.”
“What if Jug starts a fight?” Clara demanded. She knew there was a temper buried deep under her son’s fabled composure.
“I’ll finish it.”
While John Robert was chewing the fat with Jug, an animated discussion by all accounts, A.J. was arriving at a crossroad on the highway of life. It was recess, and Hollis had sought out A.J. and pushed him to the ground. Tears of anger welled in A.J.’s eyes. Then Hollis made an error in judgment and overplayed his hand. He told A.J. he ought to go cry to his mama, but that he didn’t even have one to cry to.
“People without mamas are bastards,” Hollis sneered. “You’re just a crybaby bastard.” A.J. had no clue this genealogical seminar was fundamentally in error, but he did know an insult when he heard one. He had had enough. He arose slowly, fists balled, and advanced on the bigger boy. He knew he could not win, but his anger made him momentarily fearless.
The combatants plowed into one another, and Hollis was surprised and a touch anxious at A.J.’s ferocity. Even so, it was only a matter of time before size became the determining factor, and soon enough A.J. found himself flat on his back with Hollis on top.
The drubbing was about to begin in earnest when a random factor presented itself. A small boy launched himself from the ring of spectators and landed on Hollis’s head and neck, where he held on for sheer survival. Hollis released A.J. to concentrate on the removal of the new assailant. With his freed fists, A.J. pummeled the Battey midsection with such dramatic result that Hollis was relieved when Mrs. Williams arrived a few moments later and ended the fracas.
At supper that evening, A.J. felt elated. He had stood up for himself even though he had been afraid. The whipping he received had not hurt as much as he thought it might, and he wore his faint shiner with pride.
John Robert’s black eye was a bit more pronounced. The talk with Jug had not gone well, its outcome inconclusive. Granmama was bustling around, slamming crockery onto the table while apologizing to the Lord on behalf of her son and grandson, stating she had done her absolute best.
It had been a day of meetings for A.J. He had met and mastered his fear. He had met John Robert as an equal, fresh from the field of battle, and they had met Granmama’s wrath in tandem. And he had met a small boy who had saved him. He had met Eugene Purdue, who was destined to be his lifelong friend.
CHAPTER 1
I’m dead, and I can still whip your ass.
– Excerpt of posthumous letter from
Eugene Purdue to Hollis Battey
TO THE EAST OF SEQUOYAH LIES FOX MOUNTAIN, also known as Eugene’s Mountain in honor of its owner and sole inhabitant, Eugene Purdue. The elevation came into the possession of the Purdue family soon after the conclusion of the Great War of Northern Aggression, also called the Civil War by certain scholars and historians. Upon his return from that conflict, Eugene’s great-great-great grandfather, Clayton, acquired the tract during a game of chance with Charles Fox, the last surviving member of the Fox family. Clayton Purdue was a rascal who claimed gambling as his vocation. Charles Fox was a drunkard and a fool, inalienable rights at that time of the sons of the gentry. The game was Five Card Stud, and the betting on the final hand was heavy. When Charles Fox drew his fourth jack with his fifth card, he wagered the mountain. Clayton Purdue had a great deal of money on the whiskey barrel and was bluffing a busted royal flush. Ever the sportsman, he drew his trusty Navy Colt and called the bet with finality. The dealer and only witness, Spartan Cook, swore under oath at the inquest that Clayton had acted in self-defense when he shot Charles Fox. In return for this middling perjury he received five-hundred dollars and subsequently relocated to the Oklahoma Territories to practice law. The judge at the hearing, Clayton’s cousin Samuel, ruled that the demise of Charles Fox was lamentable but unavoidable. He then awarded the mountain t
o Clayton after first advising him to refrain from attempting to draw inside to a straight. Both the mountain and the Navy Colt have remained in the Purdue family to this day.
A.J. Longstreet arrived at the foot of Eugene’s Mountain after driving the dirt road that wound eight miles from the state highway. It was noon on a Saturday. He parked his old pickup under the hanging-tree near the trail that snaked up the mountain to Eugene’s cabin. The trail had once been a road, but due to a bitter family disagreement, Eugene no longer had access to his father’s bulldozer and thus was unable to keep the roadway in good repair. The falling-out had occurred when Eugene inherited the mountain from his grandfather, A.R. Purdue. The inheritance had passed over Eugene’s father and on to Eugene because of a difference of opinion regarding a choice of brides.
When Eugene’s father, Johnny Mack, returned from the Big War back in 1946, he had in tow a beautiful French woman, Angelique, and her young son, Jacques. A.R. Purdue was charmed by Angelique and took right to little Jackie-Jacques was a bit too European for his taste-but all hell broke loose when he discovered that both newcomers bore the Purdue surname. He had been under the mistaken impression Angelique was a souvenir of sorts, along the lines of a Luger or a bayonet, but prettier.
“Did you think I just walked around France till I found one I wanted?” Johnny Mack asked, amazed at his father’s crystalline stupidity.
“What about that boy?” A.R. demanded, pointing at the child like he was a sack of meal. “Is he yours?”
“He is now,” Johnny Mack replied, looking at his father with disdain.
So Johnny Mack and Angelique set up housekeeping in the face of significant opposition. A.R. continued to rant and rave and pitch a general fit over the audacity his son had exhibited by marrying a damn foreigner, and a Catholic damn foreigner at that. These ongoing tirades caused Johnny Mack’s mother to take to her bed with a case of nerves destined to last for years. The newlyweds ignored the histrionics and plowed ahead undaunted, and Johnny Mack figured that sooner or later A.R. would come the long way around to reason. He was quite surprised at the eventual reading of the will to discover the old man never had.
The Front Porch Prophet Page 1