Short Folk #24: Bayou

 Note: James Best, my good buddy and my co-conspirator in this 30 stories in 30 days project is now up visiting me in Canada.  This is a piece from a writing exercise we did last night. I know, we do writing excercises together. Nerd writers of the world unite!  The inspiration for this piece was the 3rd verse of a great folk song called "Silver Dagger". The most recent (and best ever) cover is by the Fleet Foxes, but any cover is great.  The song is extremely old, and I find the lyrics fascinating.  Here is the third verse:

My daddy, he's a handsome devil
he's got a chain five miles long
and on every rung a heart does dangle
of someone  he has loved and wronged. 

Then we had 15 minutes to come up with some piece of writing inspired by that verse. Here's what I came up with.

Short Folk #24: Bayou


We came down into an ochre valley. Sunken trees or broke off at the stumps. Fireflies. Humidity that felt like drowning, where the wet air rushed fast into every space our bodies left in our walking.  I couldn’t stand anymore to be the one in front, the fear had me so. But I couldn’t stand to be the one in back, either. That was a different, snatching, fear. So Sarah and I walked side by side down the trail, mud and rotted bark and mulch.  Drawn onward. I felt drunk on all the liquid in the air.

Further down the smell of a bonfire and then further, a riverbend clearing and a bonfire. Trash all around it in circles, like the fire was a mass with its own gravity. Empty tin cans, their tops pried away as with great force. No clean lines or cuts. Milk Crates. Some food eaten, other food just smashed.  Sarah called “hello”. I couldn’t speak.  And then a man, pulling back an army surplus tent flap and moving towards us. And something about him that made the air lose all is humidity in his advance. I was cold. I gravitated closer to the fire.  He came with long strides, loping and casual. Sarah moved closer to me.  “Who are you” I said. I lost it. “Who are you, I shouted. To have us on a string like a cosmos.” I felt like a plaything, an amusement. It wasn’t fair. “Well we’ve come” I yelled. “Who are you and what now?”  He had clean white teeth when he smiled. “Car trouble?” is what he said, the cold, dry air pressing through his teeth.