Degrees of Elevation: Short Stories of Contemporary Appalachia (Appalachian Writing Series) by Chris Offutt & Valerie Nieman & Chris Holbrook & Silas House & Crystal Wilkinson & Rusty Barnes

Author:Chris Offutt & Valerie Nieman & Chris Holbrook & Silas House & Crystal Wilkinson & Rusty Barnes
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Bottom Dog Press
Published: 2011-09-22T04:00:00+00:00

Gravity by Jarrid Deaton

The Given Growth Kentucky Parade is the highlight of the year for all the front porch sitters and sidewalk strollers in this town. Every year is the same. The Mayor pulls himself up into the passenger seat of the antique 1949 American La France fire truck, while the fire chief steers the sad old beast, and they lurch from the city proper down the short road that leads to the county line with high school band kids and bored coal miners and housewives sore-kneeing their way behind in the wake of the motor’s sputter and smoke.

The unbroken weeds reach to my hips as I stand just over the hill near the side of the road where the parade will pass by. Waiting for the rumbling of the engine and the blaring of brass, I keep my eyes on the horizon for the hundred ghost shadows that will slither over the small rise just seconds before everything comes into view.

The Mayor is why I’m here. It’s been thirteen years since I’ve looked him in the eyes. Thirteen years since I felt sick seeing his rusty beard and broad, thick face. My mom had to look at that mess for as long as he’s been Mayor. My mom answered phones and typed city council meeting minutes until it became her career because he kept getting re-elected. My mom, feeling the scratch of that rusty beard on her thighs during those sun-dying evenings when my father taught a night class in history at the local community college because that’s the direction it all went.

Three years old and I’m in the parade. Mom says we rode on the back of the truck. Me in her arms and Dad in Frankfort interviewing for a teaching job he wouldn’t get. That’s the only time the parade had me in its line. From my memory, I always said no. It was my world, not theirs. Mom said the Mayor would offer to let me ride in the truck, blow the horn, wave out the window. I remember those offers. I would just shake my head and go back to whatever I was controlling. Back to where my name was secret and known just to me. Dad always called the parade stupid. Growth, he would say. What a joke. The last time this town grew, he would say, was when we got a Wal-Mart ten years ago. Dad saw the parade as a communal acceptance of mediocrity shaped by fear. Half the town, it seemed, would march to the edge of escape only to get scared of the outer world and retreat back to the womb of Given. It was an almost-birth before the baby changed its mind. Dad and I got out. Then Dad got out again. He got out of it for good. But he didn’t leave when he wanted. He still had one thing to do.

Six years old and I’m sitting on the tiled floor of city hall. Mom’s legs are beside me.

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