A Guitar and a Pen

by Robert Hicks

  Ruby was standing at the stove, heating the bacon grease to cook the pork chops, when a strange feeling, one she had never felt before, started somewhere down inside her and worked its way up to the underside of her skin and out into the air. There was a hissing in her ears that grew until it sounded like locusts, then a high-pitched whine like a saw blade through oak, and then a sound from far away that was so loud it hurt. She looked over at the little table by the window and saw the fork that was sitting beside J.P.’s plate rise from the table, slowly move toward her, past her, through the doorway into the narrow room and come to rest on the seat of his rocking chair. At that very moment the phone on the small stand by the door rang. Ruby calmly picked it up and heard a voice say, “Ruby, J.P.’s dead.” She said, “I know” and hung up the phone.

  She ran the sawmill for several years after that, and did well with it, but when she was in her seventies she got an offer from a trucking company looking for space for parking. She sold to them and they tore down the mill. She quit driving in her mid-eighties, and moved into my mother’s house in Bryan, Ohio. Once, while I was visiting from Oklahoma, Gramma and I sat down and had a long talk. She was ninety years old and her health was finally failing. She told me without remorse or regret that she was ready to die. She said she had been blessed with a loving husband, eight stepdaughters, a daughter, two grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. Everyone from her generation and many from the one that followed was gone. She had outlived her time. The world had become a place she no longer understood. I was leaving town, and as I walked to my car I saw her sitting in the window in her rocker, wearing her thick glasses, reading the evening paper. She was holding it upside down. The next time I saw her she was in a pink dress, her eyes closed, her hair thin and silver, her head resting on a shiny pillow. She was ninety-one years old.

  A few days later my mother and sister and I were cleaning out Ruby’s house in Napoleon. We found drawers full of beautiful quilts and quilt scraps, boxes of sepia photos, and postcards from friends with very old postage stamps on them. There were newspapers from World War II; the entire front page of one was a gritty black-and-white picture of Pearl Harbor in flames.

  We were sorting through old memories too when I said something about the strange story Gramma Ruby had told about the fork rising from the table, floating through the air, and coming to rest in the rocking chair the day Grampa died. I said that when I first heard it, whenever that may have been, I didn’t know whether to believe it or not. Forks don’t float. On the other hand, Gramma Ruby was not one to make up a story like that, or ever say anything that wasn’t true. Both my mother and my sister said they had never heard that story, and my mother went on to say that Gramma had told her that on the day J.P. died she was in the kitchen making supper when she had a “premonition” someone was at the front door. When she opened the door she saw a man from the mill standing on the porch. She looked at him and said, “So it’s true.” He said, “Yes.” She closed her eyes and let out one long scream, so loud and so shrill she was deaf in her left ear for the rest of her life.

  I had no doubt that the story Gramma told my mother was true. And on that day, for the first time in my life, I began to wonder if I had made up the story I always thought Gramma Ruby had told me, maybe when I was just a kid, sparks from a saw blade striking a bit of metal, lighting the fuel of the imagination of a four-year-old grandson of a lumberman. Maybe it happened when my dad lifted me up and held me, leaning forward so I could see my grandfather. Black suit, white shirt buttoned at the neck, eyes closed, his bald head resting on a shiny pillow. So still. So quiet. The room barely breathing. Maybe then.

  John Hadley

  John Hadley was born in 1941 in Lisbon, Ohio. His father, who taught music in one-room rural schools, had a dance band and a machine that made acetate records. His mother and sister played the piano well, but not a note without the music. He says he never did learn to do that. They all played and sang into the machine, and he still has a cabinet full of those old 78s.

  John and his family later moved west to a farm near Van Wert, Ohio. The school graduated about ten students a year. His dad was the superintendent, his history teacher, and the band director. His granddad Hadley was his math teacher, and his mother was the secretary. They then moved to Bryan, Ohio, where he graduated from high school, going on to college in Athens, Ohio, and Madison, Wisconsin.

  From 1965 to 1988 John taught art at the University of Oklahoma, and he went on from there to be a staff writer for the new Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on CBS for two years. In 1991 he signed with Sony/ATV Music Publishing Inc.

  Today John’s family has grown to include his wife, Judi; sons, Jason, Jonas, and Josh; daughter, Jamaica; and grandkids, Ruby and Arlo. He’s still doing the same thing he’s done all his life: drawing and painting and writing songs. His songs have been recorded by a wide range of artists, including Roger Miller, Waylon Jennings, George Jones and George Burns, the Dixie Chicks, Tim O’Brien, Mollie O’Brien, David Olney, Kevin Welch, Kieran Kane, Trisha Yearwood, Garth Brooks, Wynonna, Linda Ronstadt and Ann Savoy, Joe Cocker, and others.

  The Box

  Kevin Welch

  There was a box, a boot box, large and dusty and familiar, beneath the bed of a girl in love with being in love. There was a ribbon around it, saved over from a gift from a special boy, a basket of soaps and lotions and candies. She had almost forgotten where the ribbon had come from by now, but still it was important, because if it wasn’t important, she wouldn’t have saved it.

  Inside the box were all the various love letters she had ever received from all the ones who had thought to write them to her, and every one was precious at the time, and never had she thrown a single one away. There were some that had revolted her, but she kept them anyway. Some had scared her a little, but she kept those too. Some had merely warmed her rather moist impression of herself, and were reassuring in their way. There were just a few down in that box, though, that were very private and very special, and these were the ones that she went to sometimes, late at night, to dig out and read and dream and weep and moan a little after the lights were out and no one would hear.

  Years went by. The box aged with her, traveled with her too, from house to house, always staying under whichever bed she slept in. She rarely read from it anymore, though she would occasionally drop in a movie-ticket stub, a matchbook, a backstage pass, photos of good times, little reminders of nice evenings, special nights. Sometimes she would sift through it like a box of leaves, and maybe unfold one or another and let her eyes pass over the familiar words, the color of the paper, the old folds, and then let it resume its practiced shape, and replace the lid of the box with a sigh.

  In time, she met a young man who she thought she loved. He began to sleep in the space above the box, in the girl’s bed. Night after night, every night, he and the girl made love and slept, and finally it began to seem as if he would never leave, and she was happy.

  One morning he woke up and couldn’t find his shoes. He started looking all over the place, by the front door, by the couch, by the bed, under the bed.“What’s in the box?” he asked.

  “Oh, just letters and stuff.”

  He looked at her then, clearly, then dropped the bedspread down and stood and leaned and kissed her and went to work.

  All day she thought about the box, and the look he had given her. Someday when she wasn’t at home she knew he might decide to investigate. Maybe he was the beginning of a whole new life, maybe those old letters and snapshots would hurt him if he read them— should she just empty the box? But then he would wonder why it was missing.

  Finally, she decided.

  She pulled out the box and went through it, removing all the most special letters, the ones with the heat and the promises, being careful not to look at the handwriting, recklessly sorting aside the warmest memories, the fondest dreams, the wickedest fantasies. The photos, every handsome boy, every kiss caught in a moment and a flash, all set aside wit
h a grim tremble and a blind resolve to do this thing before she thought about it one minute longer.

  She carried these into the kitchen, raised the lid of the trash can, and ever so tenderly laid them on top of the pile of banana peels, coffee grounds, papers, and such. Gathering up the edges of the plastic bag, she tied it off and carried it out to the alley, where the big cans were overflowing, waiting for the pickup the next morning.

  Back inside, she slid what was left of the box back under her bed, lighter and a little bit hollow. She felt better, she thought. Maybe she didn’t. She couldn’t tell; maybe she felt nothing at all.

  Hour after hour she waited for him. Suppertime, then 10:00, then midnight, then 2:30, and she worried and she wondered where he could be?

  3:30.

  5:00.

  And then she heard two sounds at the same time; the rumble of the morning garbage truck, and the front door opening.

  There he stood with a look in his eye she hadn’t seen before. Also a duck of the head and a shoulder hunch he’d never had. He wasn’t looking at her right. He was radiating guilt.

  And then everything shifted in her, just a sickening drop, and all of a sudden her head started humming and he was saying something but she missed it and then her hearing started coming back— and all she heard was a sound like wind in her ears and that garbage truck grinding down her alley, gone and gone and gone.

  Kevin Welch

  Born in Long Beach, California, on August 17, 1955, Kevin Welch traveled extensively till he was seven, when his family settled in Oklahoma. He made it through high school and one semester of music school at Central State in Edmond, Oklahoma, before he joined a bluegrass band, dropped out of school, and hit the road.

  He met John Hadley, a real songwriter for Tree International, who also taught art at the University of Oklahoma. Hadley was immediately critical of his guitar playing, which made him try harder just to get even.

  In 1978 he moved to Nashville with his new wife, Jennifer—like Hadley said they should—and started writing for Tree International. He had three kids, Dustin, Savannah, and Ada. Though Jennifer and Kevin split up, they remain good friends.

  In the late 1980s, Steve Earle, Don Schlitz, Mark Germino, and some other madmen suggested that Kevin get a record deal; his friend Paul Worley went over to Warner Bros. and got Kevin signed. He made two records, Kevin Welch in 1990 and Western Beat in 1992. Since Warner let Kevin do whatever he wanted, in 2004 he and his friends Kieran and Fats made a three-man record with no bass or drums, along with a companion record with their friend David Francey, the Scottish/Canadian poet and singer.

  Today, Kevin can usually be found in a chair in his office at home with a stiff neck, a warm PowerBook, and a cold cup of coffee. He lives with his beautiful and talented girlfriend, Claudia Scott, and they don’t have one single pet. You can visit his Web site at www.kevinwelch.com.

  A Rock

  Kris Kristofferson

  Well I’ll be go to hell!” my father said. He stood there with his hands on his hips and his Stetson pushed back far on his head.

  Then Harve Ginn said, “I was checking the flood damage to see what we’d lost when I saw the damn thing. It must of been covered mostly with dirt and all before the water come up here.”

  “Well, I imagine there was some mesquite around here to cover it up before the flood. And you wouldn’t notice it unless you came up on the right side of it anyway,” my father said.

  “No, I don’t suppose you would at that,” Harve said.“Boy, it’s really something, though, isn’t it?”

  Well, I had to admit that it was really something, all right. I couldn’t hardly believe my eyes when I saw it. What Harve had found was a big rock, oh Jeez, it must of been forty feet high, I guess. About the same size as the other big smooth rocks around there near the canyon wall. But this rock looked just like a big, naked woman. No kidding, that’s just what it looked like. She was lying on her back, sort of leaning up against the canyon wall, in a kind of embarrassing way, and she had a sort of smile on her face. I’m telling you, I’ve never seen anything like it. My father kept saying, “Goddamn!” Like he couldn’t believe it either. He and Harve decided that nobody could of done it. I mean made the thing, and that it must of always been there.

  “It’s just a freak of nature,” I remember he said. Well I didn’t care what it was, but I was sure going to let people know about it when we got back to town. I mean to tell you this was really some rock. I went up and rubbed my hand on it and it was rock all right. I think they say the rocks around there are some kind of granite.

  “Come on, Kenny, get away from there,” my father said.

  “How come?” I said.“What’s the matter with it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, “but I’m not sure it’s such a good thing for a boy your age to be seeing.”

  Well that kind of stuck in my craw, and all the way home in the jeep I said “hell” and “damn” and talked as old as I could until I said, “That sure is a hell of a damn looking fence ol’ man Palmer put up.” They both stopped talking and looked at me, and I felt a little silly and didn’t say anything else the rest of the way home.

  When we pulled into the driveway my father said, “I’m going to call up Earl Bright from the Herald and take him out to see it.”

  I jumped out of the jeep and ran across the yard to the house. My mother was standing outside hanging up clothes and I said, “We found a big rock that looks like a naked lady,” and I went into the house.

  My father and mother followed me in, and my father was saying, “It’s the damnedest thing you ever saw, a natural rock formation, and it looks like some sort of dirty statue.” He was dialing the phone and said, “It’s dang near thirty feet high— really a big thing,” and my mother was saying, “What? What? What are you talking about?”

  I said, “It’s at least forty feet high, and it’s a rock that looks just like a naked lady.”

  “Do you mean . . . all over!” she said, with a worried look.

  “Yes.” I was going to go on when my father motioned for us to be quiet.

  “Hello, Earl?” he said.“This is Len Tipton. Howdy, yes, I’m fine. Say, we’ve run across a thing out here that you might be interested in looking at. I think it was uncovered by the flood. It’s a big rock formation that’s in the shape of a nude. Yeah, a woman. No, this is really big, and it looks as real as any sculpture.” He listened for a while and said, “Well, actually, what it looks like is a prostitute,” and he laughed, and my mother sent me out of the room.

  Well, Earl Bright came out and he and my father drove back out to the rock and took pictures and things, and the next day there was a big story about it on the front page of the Wheatonsville Herald. Of course by this time the whole school knew about it and they all thought I’d found it and I guess I was sort of a hero. A lot of us went out to see it after school, those of us that had bikes, because that’s just what everybody seemed to be doing. And when we got there, there were people all over the place. Why I’ll bet half of Wheatonsville was there, and the other half on their way. They were all in a sort of half circle in front of it, staring, and pointing, and talking a mile a minute. A lot of the boys started making nasty remarks about it and laughing, and the women carried on something terrible. A lot of them acted mad, or embarrassed, and a few of them left, but most of them stayed.

  Well, the crowds kept coming to see it for a few days, and the women never stopped talking about it. The way I understand it, some of them were downright mad, and said it was a disgrace and all. So they decided to call a town meeting and talk it over, and my father was supposed to go, seeing as how it was on our property, and I finally talked them into letting me go too. My mother said she didn’t know if it was a thing for children, and my father said, “What the hell, he won’t hurt anything,” and so I went.

  I’d never been to anything like that before, except maybe Sunday school. Everyone sat in rows facing up to the front of the church, which was
where it was, and my father and I sat in the front row. The place was full of smoke, and hot, and everyone was red and sweating. They started right off when one man got up and said that something had to be done and he wasn’t letting his children see that filthy goddamned thing and what were we going to do about it. And everybody started saying, “Yeah,” and “That’s right,” and about then I decided I had to go to the bathroom, but I couldn’t leave since I was in the front row and my father motioned me to be quiet every time I’d go to say something about it. Another man got up and said it was a slap in the face of every decent woman in Wheatonsville, and he looked red in the face and all hepped up like he wanted to fight somebody. I thought that over awhile, about the slap in the face, but I never did get what he meant.

  Well they went on like that for quite a while, each one getting up and saying just about what the other had said and looking pretty pleased with himself when he finished. Then they all started saying, “What are we going to do?” and somebody said, “We could ask her at least to cross her legs,” and everybody laughed. I tried to tell my father I was going to go to the bathroom, but he couldn’t hear me for the noise. Then the man that had said that about the slap in the face got up, redder than ever, and yelled that maybe this was funny to a lot of people but he had a wife and three daughters and didn’t think it was very funny. Well this quieted the room down just like that, just as I was bellowing to my father again that I was going to go to the bathroom. It was like bellowing at a funeral; and I was so ashamed I felt like never going to the bathroom again, but I went out anyway, and when I came back they were still going at it. Mr. Ludlow, the Baptist minister, got up and said that it was the something-or-other of Sin, and that any fool could see that, and that it was up to my father to do something about it, since it was on our property.