Appalachian Heritage

Dark Rain A morning of dark rain: four wild turkeys walk stiff-legged at the edge of the leafless woods, picking at the wet ground. This is early, before bitter coffee starts to flood my veins, sluicing into the flesh of my arms and belly. This is before bitterness tries to take the day, before my mother falls apart, shouting "I don't know what to do," before my grown children precisely point out my failings. And before all that, I sat in the one-room school in the country and identified myself as an eight-year old, shameful and amazed at what I was doing there, wearing a faded cotton dress with gray and purple roses on it, and hand-me-down brown shoes. I was about to be given a double promotion because I could read what they gave me, although I didn't know who Pearl Buck might be, or why the Chinese woman squatted in the field to give birth, or what this had to do with me. Don't take me literally, I learned to say in high school, and kept saying it all along. Sometimes they wouldn't take me at all: I suppose it was too much trouble. For awhile, I saw what death showed me 100 and said what it told me to say. It had to happen: I couldn't stop it. Everywhere I looked, a hand had carved a sharp stony outline around a tree, a flower, the living blossoms traced in hard lines, the intricate cold shapes like the screens of the Taj Mahal, love turned to marble. For awhile, everything was sharp and cold, barbed against the touch. Death had soaked into the landscape, dried and hardened it with dark blood. It had finally taught me a lesson: I couldn't go on like I was. I couldn't go on thinking I was the only one, that the others were here for my presence. And my mind reeled and fell on its knees, my mind I had been so proud of. —Irene McKinney 101 ...