My Southern Journey Read Free Page B

of myself,” she admitted.
    It is not her fault; this evil was visited upon her. A friend, well-meaning but ill-reasoned, brought her a cat that had not been fixed. Let the hilarity commence.
    They named the smoke gray cat Stinky, because it was.
    “We thought it was a boy,” said my brother Mark.
    But along came a raggedy stray tomcat my mother named Will.
    “He was a travelin’ man,” Mark said.
    Will begot, with Stinky, four kittens: Little Will, Shorty, Little Stinky, and Elvira. “Elvira?” I asked. “I liked the song,” Mark said.
    Will, his work done, hit the highway. Another stray, Big Spooky, moved in. Before Stinky—who was now referred to as Big Stinky—could be caught and fixed, Big Stinky delivered into this world a second litter: Little Spooky, Vincent Price, and Stephen King.
    “I been watchin’ spooky movies,” Mark said.
    A fourth kitten had Siamese markings.
    “Possum Willy,” my mother said, “because he looks like a…”
    “I got it,” I said.
    Shorty, who was also believed to be a boy, produced a litter.
    “Haven’t named them yet,” Mark said.
    The problem in this narrative—well, one of them—is that Little Stinky soon eclipsed Big Stinky in size, making Little Stinky Big Stinky and Big Stinky Little Stinky, so that I can no longer adequately follow what is happening.
    I so miss that dog. Don’t worry—a veterinarian will soon be involved, lest there be any mean letters. (If there are any, send them to the Editor in Chief.) I told my mother we will try to cut her cat population off at 13 by first spaying the females. But the cats are half wild, and most of them will let only her touch them, and she is too old for cat wrangling. Mark, who I suspect enjoys naming them way too much, will probably not step forward. My older brother, Sam, is too deliberate. A deliberate man cannot catch a cat. There are just some things a steady man cannot do.
    I wonder who that leaves.
    But I fear it is already too late. My mother is now the crazy cat lady. Cats hang on the screened doors, mewling for food, which she buys in big bags. The cats share it with the raccoons and possums, a kind of modern-day Noah’s Ark there on her 40 acres of mountain pasture.
    Her driveway is about a quarter-mile long. She walks to the mailbox, for her health.
    “Now they all follow her in a straight line, all of them, there and back,” my brother told me.
    “I am ashamed of myself,” my mother reiterated.
    “You’ve just got a soft heart,” I said.
    “They swirl and swirl ’round my feet,” she said.
    I patted her.
    “I didn’t even like cats,” she said.
    There ain’t enough pats in the world.
    We cannot give away even one cat. People promise to take one, and we watch the driveway.
    They never come. But another stray did, a kitten.
    “Sylvester Highstockings,” Mark said.
    I told him I did not want to know.
     

    THE PORCH
    Southern Living , Southern Journal: August 2012

    T he old house has started to fade inside my mind. I try to remember it but the walls are mostly blank, the hallways filled with shadow. The fights, hugs, prayers, and curses that occurred there still linger in my memory, but the wooden boxes that held those things, the rooms my paternal grandparents once shared with their great extended family, have lost form. I think it was painted white, that house. It seems like it was white.
    But the porch, now...I still see the porch. The last time I stood upon it I was 6 years old, but I still see the nail heads in the weathered pine, still hear the squeal of the rocker pressing the planks, still see tiny comets arc across the air when somebody flicked the glowing nub of a Pall Mall over the rail and into the night.
    I remember that it was wide and deep, as high off the ground as a man is tall. The planks, once painted, were worn down to a bare, ancient gray by rain and sun, and by a few billion brogans, black wingtips, and scandalous high-heeled shoes. But it was built to stand until the