How John F. Kennedy Won the 1960 West Virginia Democratic Primary
                                   and Thus the November Election
 
good looking   give him that   Catholic   no little thing   nobody’s perfect   nice looking man   oh lord  is he really going in the cage? in them clothes?   don’t even faze him!   wish Jackie was here   too prissy   coal too dirty    shoot, did I forget lipstick?   there he comes   where’d Joellen get to?   sell her soul to meet him   move over lady I can’t see   is that him sitting on the tracks   union mens enjoying that   not my Dad though   Kennedys are crooks    yeah but handsome devil    ha! hands black as-   don’t mind getting grimy   where’s Joellen at?    wish I’d brought coffee   but a Catholic?   Dad never forgive me   well Dad ain’t gonna be in the voting booth. 

 
                   Tobacco Traders’ Tales at the Antiques Roadshow
  
Geez, I thought if I got here this early the lines wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe because it’s their first time coming to West Virginia. Kind of exciting, isn’t it? All these hidden treasures and who knows who’s been sitting on a gold mine. What did you bring? Looks like a banjo, well sorta. That’s sweet, your great-great grandpa made it. Can you play it? Sorry, a stupid question. I brought these cigarette booklets. I know they’re kind of weird. But I already know they’re worth something, I’ve been looking around online. See what they are, they’re more than 100 years old, and they’re sorta like baseball trading cards. Not exactly because they aren’t cards. And they’re not baseball players obviously, haha. But back in the day, when they first invented machines to  produce massive amounts of cigarettes real cheap, they thought the country was so tobacco crazy, these little cigarette packs would sell like flapjacks. But you know, it didn’t catch on right away. Products don’t sell themselves, my Daddy always used to say. Right? So cigarettes didn’t sell themselves back in the day either. Surprising, huh? So anyway, somebody got the great idea, this was just like 25 years after the Civil War, that what sells is heroes. Okay, so they put these little pamphlets with generals’ pictures and biographies in packs of cigs, and whaddya know, people started buying them. My great-granddaddy was a collector. He liked to trade for the heroes from Virginia and West Virginia. Well it was all Virginia when the war started. I brought a bunch of them, mostly Confederate generals, Southern heroes. Sorry, I know it’s not “woke” to call them heroes these days, but honestly, that’s what they were. Fighting for their home state. Every bit as brave as the Union generals. Braver, mostly. If they weren’t heroes, I mean, how could we cash in? And these are worth some little bit of money, I’m sure of it. Just because these men came from the South doesn’t make them evil. I mean, most of them didn’t even own slaves, or practice slavery, or however you’re supposed to say it now. And the ones that did, yeah slavery was bad, I mean very bad, but it was the times, you know?
 
I do know, having taken just a glance at the cigarette packets in her hands, something about these men she calls heroes. The men who went to war to preserve slavery. Some who “owned” other humans, some who owned very little of anything. But people did not themselves have to enslave other people to secure the benefits. The entire US economy, North and South, was supported by human trafficking and the free labor system. But I don’t say anything. We’ve come to the front of the War Memorabilia line, the lady with the cigarette packets, and I and my friend Lucy just behind her. Lucy and I hang back on the sidelines while the appraiser asks what the lady knows about her treasure and she says, “These are generals who fought for the South in the Civil War. For Virginia.” The appraiser confirms that and adds that some of them, like Jubal Early and Albert Jenkins, owned some of the biggest tobacco plantations in the state. Right. I could add that Early was a lifelong white supremacist and proponent of the Lost Cause. But now the appraiser is pointing out that one of the generals in her collection, Nathan Forrest, was not actually a Virginian. Also true, and I could add that he made a fortune as a slave trader and was the original Grand Wizard of the KKK. As if reading my mind, the appraiser mentions that, and then says years after the war, Forrest changed positions and advocated for Blacks’ civil rights. The cigarette packet lady smiles and nods. Well, they’ve moved on to the prize in her collection, Stonewall Jackson. Not plantation-born, but a small-time slave holder, from the northwestern Virginian wilderness that after Jackson’s death was part of West Virginia. “A fervently religious man, Jackson,” the appraiser is saying. “His belief in God’s providence sustained him in battle.” Yes, and I could add his religion also sustained him in his belief that slavery was sanctioned by God.
 
Later, Lucy asked me what it says about the human race that we can engage in cruelty on a mass scale and assume that it’s “just the times.” “I was wondering, too,” she said, “why is it this country’s heroes all seem to rise from doing the job of killing?” Because, as  she pointed out, the lady was right about her Confederate general trading booklets being worth “some little bit of money.” Their value was assessed at many thousands of dollars, more than ten times the figure given to the hand-made dulcimer I brought. “It’s a nice story behind that little piece,” the Musical Instruments appraiser told me. “The story, that’s worth a great deal,” he said by way of apologizing for the low valuation. He assumed I wasn’t seriously thinking of putting the dulcimer up for sale. Lucy got told pretty much the same about her family’s three campaign buttons with the short-lived 35-star flag on them. 1864 originals, manufactured between the time West Virginia became its own state in 1863 and Nevada entered the union little more than a year later. But according to the War Memorabilia appraiser those buttons aren’t worth but maybe two or three hundred bucks. What was it the lady said about how goods don’t sell themselves? Well, how creatively we package cruelty, how cleverly war is sold.
 

This what it says on the home page of the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park:
“On April 9, 1865, the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia in the McLean House in the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, signaled the effective end of the nation's largest war. Questions remained: could the nation reunite as one? How would emancipation be realized?”


​After Appomattox
 
We silence each other
with our love.
 
On different sides
of a divide,
once.
 
Long ago,
and yet
not so long
 
in memory time.
 
Then, we knew
rights, knew wrongs,
swore loyalty,
swore vengeance,
stood our ground,
even took up arms,
 
the bitter bile
of resentments
a daily fare.
 
Now,
there are no
arguments.
 
Nor any agreements
to speak of.
 
Our assault weapons
are decommissioned
are turned inward.
They hold
no ammunition,
 
inflict damage
all the same.
 

This is very loosely based on some experiences I had as a teaching artist one summer in an Indiana town that has seen successive boom-and-bust economic trends and was once a base of Klan activity. In one of its 20th century “boom” periods, the town attracted large numbers of migrants from nearby Appalachia. The writing workshops were conducted in a low-income neighborhood where many of these migrants’ families had settled decades before.
 
I want to make clear, however, that this is fiction and told in a voice that is not my own, but that of a fictional character. So when I say the story is “loosely based” on past experiences, I mean that I’ve drawn on real people and events, but this isn’t my – or anyone’s – actual story.

                                   WHEN A STRANGER COMES IN
                                                          Week 1
            When six women show up for the first of six classes, you say, “Hi and welcome to Writing for Our Lives.”
            You have to assume the group has had little if any formal training in creative writing. Few in this area likely have the resources for boutique education. But everywhere people have things they want to say, stories they want children and grandchildren to remember. And actually, one woman does have some background in poetry. Unlike the other five, whose families have been here for 80 years, 150 years, 200 years or more, Ellen arrived fairly recently. When she introduces herself she mentions that she’s originally from a more upscale place further east. But she likes the sense of community here. For some people low-income residency is like living in a commune, at an ashram, on a kibbutz. It’s a religious loadstone. People feel they can belong here. You think maybe you can too.
         The other women, the ones other than Ellen, can’t seem to string sentences together, even in casual conversation. Each utterance contains a thought or observation, but the utterances don’t connect. You listen - try to, anyway - but you never get their stories. How can there be stories when there is no narrative arc?  When sentences don’t connect?
                                                                 Week 2
          A memory, a happy memory, isn’t a bad place to start a workshop. The women in the group are in their thirties and forties. Old enough to have spouses, children, homes, habits, jobs. So you start with this: “Try to remember one happy memory from your school days: maybe a teacher, something you accomplished, a friend you made.”
            Myra starts to cry. She fusses with a backpack, looking for something. She pulls out loose papers, some tissues, a small notebook, a single orange mitten.
            “I’m sorry,” she says and leans back in her chair, still crying.
         You attempt to provide comfort, tell her it’s okay, nothing to be sorry about.
            She tells you she’s just having a bad day. She smiles, sort of.
            Around the table, the others are still and quiet. Expressionless.
           You suggest to Myra that she try to think about a happy memory. She nods.
            A minute later, everyone has pen in hand. They are writing, if haltingly, in the journals you’ve given them, still very quiet. Suddenly Myra drops her pen, sighs hugely. The tears come.
            “I’m sorry, I can’t help it. I’m just so upset,” she says.
          No one reacts, and you start to wonder if Myra is high, or is manifesting symptoms of a mental condition. Maybe something about the assignment troubles her, triggers something.
            Myra insists she’s just having a bad day. That she’s really fine.
            But Myra is not fine. In minutes, she interrupts the conversation you’re having about adding sensory details to the stories. “Oh God,” she moans. You let it pass, but then it happens again.
            “Oh God.”
            The others seem not to be upset by these outbursts, but you’re finding it impossible to run a workshop. Of course you want to be tolerant, nonjudgmental, inclusive, but you’re thinking, this is not a situation of someone having a bad day and needing the group’s support. No amount of compassion is likely to help. Anyway Myra isn’t asking for support. Obviously she’s not getting any benefit from the writing, and if she remains no one else will get the benefit of a workshop either. You have to decide: focus on Myra’s needs or intervene on the group’s behalf?
          Even as you analyze the situation, Myra breaks down, crying hard. You get up and stand behind her, hoping to urge her away from the group and into the hallway. Caroleen, who is sitting to Myra’s right, touches her hand as she rises. From across the table Ellen says, “No worries, Myra.”
You escort the weepy Myra to the community center director’s office. She’s invited to sit down, which she willingly does. You leave her in the director’s competent hands and return to the group. There you are met by two bowed heads and three pairs of intense eyes.
                                                                     Week 3
          You abandon your original workshop syllabus. It’s rife with so many elements and concepts that will surely have no attraction or sticking power. No one except (maybe) Ellen is remotely invested in the craft. In fact, you wonder why any of them signed up or continue to show. It’s doubtful they know.
          You subscribe to the Times, listen to public radio, read poetry, follow politics, invest in the stock market, support progressive causes, travel, watch the late night shows, have almost 800 Instagram followers. You’re conscious of your privilege, your values, your closeted ambition, your urge to do right, your craving for stimulation. You embrace cynicism, liberalism, irony. None of this has any relevance whatsoever.
            You ask the group to think of some political issue in their lifetimes as a way into a discussion about conflict, story tension, historical context. As examples you use apartheid, The Cultural Revolution, McCarthyism and Brexit. Those shorthand terms don’t register.
           “Is McCarthy still coaching?” Mandy asks.
            “Coaching?”
             “I think so,” Ellen says. “But he turned down the Browns.”
Understand they are talking about a professional American football coach. It isn’t the kind of historical conflict you had in mind, but at least it provides an opening. Everyone has something to say about sports: an unfair call at the plate during the World Series, their kids’ hockey coach, a husband going on a month-long binge every year during the World Cup.
           In the midst of all this you ask yourself what you’re doing here among people who can barely put three words together in a sentence, who can’t follow simple directions. How are you supposed to nurture creative writing in people who don’t seem to care about language, the art of language, the search for meaning through wordsmithing. Who operate on nonverbal principles you can’t begin to fathom?
            Imagine what’s it like for them. What’s it like to be with people who far exceed you in conventional measures of intelligence. Ask yourself, can they articulate their needs? How do they take care of their needs? Do they think their needs matter? What do they love? What is love to them? How do they even survive?
            You have an awful lot to learn.
                                                           Week 4
            In preparation for a writing exercise, you ask the women to use two words to describe themselves. Terry is the first to speak.      
            “Fortunate.”
             Caroleen asks why she thinks so. Terry shrugs. She says all her life others have been envious of her. She says good things have come her way, other people see that, it’s hard to explain.
            You can see why it would be hard to explain. Because what you see is that she lives in a rural community that has never seen better days. She has bad teeth and gray skin. Her clothes are well worn. She lost her job recently when Carson’s Hardware closed its doors. That’s why she has time to be here at the community center, taking a free creative writing class. She left early last week for a doctor’s appointment. They were doing a breast biopsy. She has arthritic knees. Her husband has gout and diabetes and is on disability. Where does her good fortune lie?
            You ask for her second word.
            “I can’t think of one,” she says.
            You say you’ll come back to her. When you do, you’ll find she can’t come up with a second descriptor.
            Meanwhile, Caroleen chooses “honest” and “sensitive.” Mandy says those are her two words, too. Bobbie describes herself as God-loving and grateful. The two words Ellen selects are “complex” and “curious.” When it’s Myra’s turn, the first word she picks is “stupid.”
This draws a reaction from everyone except Mandy.
            “You are not stupid,” Ellen says.
            “No, you aren’t,” Caroleen agrees.
            “You should pick something else,” Bobbie tells her, and Caroleen and Terry nod.
            “Well, okay,” Myra says. “I guess I’ll say I’m a good writer.”
            “That’s two words,” Mandy points out.
            Myra ignores her. “I mean, I’m not always stupid. I’m just in a bad situation right now. But writing helps. I love to write. I’m good at it I think. I wrote some stories for my nieces and I’m trying to get them published. Do you know where I can publish them?”
            You tell her Children’s Lit is not really your area.
            Now Myra pulls a folder stuffed with looseleaf sheets from her backpack.
            “I’m writing a mystery novel, too,” she says. “I showed it to my friend who’s an English teacher. He says it’s very good. I could read the first chapter.” She looks at you hopefully.
            “Maybe not now,” you say. “Now’s not really a good time.” You offer to talk with her about it after class. You ask if she has another word in mind that describes her.
            “Beautiful,” Myra says.
                                                                   Week 5
            You bring in small potted flowering plants. For a poetry exercise, you’ll have everyone write rhyming couplets about plants and flowers. They can paint the couplets on the flower pots and decorate the pots as they like. The idea is they can gift the flowers to someone. Mother’s Day is approaching.
            The couplets they write are mostly predictable, one or two syllable rhymes:
Daffodil is a dapper fellow/ He comes along dressed in yellow.
The snow melts, the goldfinch sings, / Flowers rise, it’s spring!
It’s not much of a gift but this little pot/ and this silly old poem is the best I got.
            You consider but make no attempt to talk about iambic pentameter. It’s not important. And why disturb the mood? For once the women are smiling, they’re talking. They share their rhymes.
            This isn’t what you expected when you signed up to teach a writing workshop. You are only here in this town because your husband accepted an offer to teach at a nearby college for the semester. Hearing that his wife was a writer, one of your husband’s colleagues told him about this center, and that it offers different adult learning opps. A chance to use your skills, get to know people in the community outside the academic circle, that’s what your husband said.
            You ask the group what they hoped for when they signed up to take the class.
            “Nothing, really,” Terry says. “Jamilla said to try it. Only she isn’t here being as it conflicts with her work. Her boss at Food Lion is, oh man!” She shakes her head.
            “Glad I don’t work. Except volunteer at the church,” Bobbie says. “Mostly the food pantry. Over at 7th Street. Jesus is my boss I guess. I took a painting class in the fall. I like to learn new things. Usually I sign up for something.”
            Mandy says, “Caroleen talked me into it.”
            “Well you’re a good writer,” Caroleen says. She turns to you. “She always wanted to write. Some teacher told her she’d never be any good. I made her come to prove her wrong.”
            “Is that true?” you ask. “A teacher said that?”
            “Yep. Really hurt me.”
            “You believed her?” you ask.
            “Well yeah.”
            “That’s terrible,” you tell Mandy. “She was so wrong.”
            “Told you,” Caroleen says.
                                                               Week 6
            It’s raining hard. Inside the community center you sit alone, waiting. The last class day, fifteen minutes past starting time, and no one has shown up.
            You wander over to the director’s office and poke your head in, just to say you’ll be taking off.
            “How’s it going?” she asks.
            Nobody’s here, so that’s a clue. Everyone had been asked to bring in their best work to read to the group. “Maybe I scared them all off,” you say.
            “Oh I don’t think so,” the director says. “People around here aren’t easily scared.”
            That’s probably true. Even so, you confess to not being sure they got much out of it. That you found it difficult to connect. “No one seemed all that willing to share,” you say.
            The director raises her eyes, looks steadily at you for a few seconds. “I doubt that’s the case,” she says. “When a stranger comes in, they don’t understand.”
            You stand awkwardly in the doorway, expecting more. When nothing else is said, you make your polite goodbyes and depart.
            ‘They don’t understand.’ You think, now there’s an understatement.
            You’re standing just outside the entrance manipulating an umbrella when you see Myra approach.
            “Am I late? Clocks change or something?” she asks.
            You tell her she’s “a little late,” but no, the clocks didn’t change. You say you just didn’t think anyone was coming.
            Myra says she missed her ride and had to ask her sister for a lift. “She isn’t too happy with me,” she says. She tells you it’s okay if you want to leave, since it’s her fault she’s so late.
            You say, “You’re here now. Why don’t we go in.”
            In the Crafts Room where the class usually meets, the custodian has already put away the chairs and is mopping the floor. He says the gym is open, though, so you and Myra go there and settle yourselves on the lowest tier of bleachers.
            You ask if there’s anything in particular Myra would like to do.
            “I brought my novel,” Myra says. “I couldn’t stay late last week, but maybe you could look at it now.”
            You read through the first couple pages. It’s a mix of memoir and fantasy, a far cry from the mystery novel Myra said she was working on. A few good phrases, but rambling, disorganized.
            You ask her what the basic story is she wants to tell. You invite her to describe it in a few sentences.
            This brings on a lengthy response, not about the novel, but about Myra, what has happened in her life.
            So you ask if she wants to write her own story, or fiction, and she says a little of both. Ninety minutes pass during which you ask questions intended to unbraid motivations and break down the process of writing narrative into manageable pieces, and Myra listens earnestly, almost desperately, and tries to explain her ideas and make sense of her life. In the end, you offer to take the novel home for a few days and send it back with written feedback. She declines. She doesn’t want to risk losing her only copy.
            “It’s on a hard drive,” she says, “but I don’t trust machines.”
            You tell her you’re sorry the others weren’t here to hear her read a bit of it. “Maybe the rain discouraged them today,” you say.
            “Probably not the rain,” she says. “Most likely they’re all at the Annual Barn Burner.”
               “The what?”
            Once a year, she tells you, the community holds a gigantic flea market. “There’s all sorts of giveaways. Games and karaoke and oh, all sorts of stuff. It’s only one time a year. Even in the rain. There’s big tents. Everybody goes.”
            “Wow. I wasn’t aware,” you say. An understatement.
            “I’ll probably head over that way now,” Myra says. “I mean, you never know what you might find. You should come.”
            She’s right, of course. So yes, you should go, you really should.

A lot of truth in this, if memory serves me.

                                                    Mountain Ode
Driving this winding road, nobody here but me. I’ve got the radio on. Seems like every song is about heartbreak. I know something about heartbreak. Broke some hearts, lost my heart. My own damn fault.
Today, driving this winding road, I’m remembering my introduction to West Virginia. It was on the back of a motorcycle, a little red Suzuki 250 cc., and I was with then-boyfriend, the one whose heart I broke to take up with the one who broke my heart. Final exams at Ohio State were over, and we took to the road, headed for Atlantic coast beaches. Via the backroads, no interstates, no turnpikes.
             We had a big double sleeping bag, a small pup tent, jeans, flannel shirts and tees, a couple towels, toothbrushes, change of underwear, some Coleman cooking gear, a compass. We must have had a map, but I don’t remember ever looking at it. We didn’t have a plan. One other thing I didn’t have was gloves. Boyfriend had leather cycling gloves, but it was June, summer in my experience and I dressed accordingly.
            It was a pretty straight shot from Columbus to Wheeling, but from there, straight didn’t enter into anybody’s vocabulary. We weren’t in any hurry, got lost plenty of times. Roads, twisted and narrow, veered sharply left, then right. We’d push up a steep rise with no clue of what we’d find on the downside, then feel our hearts leap into our throats as the Suzuki dropped from the knoll. We’d scrape sheered mountainsides for miles, then teeter on unguarded cliffsides into shadowed hollows. The sun was in our eyes in the morning and hidden behind our backs by midafternoon.
            Near dinner time we’d keep our eyes peeled for a campground or a park where we could pitch the tent and barbecue whatever we’d found in a Mom & Pop along the way. On the third day in the mountains, though, from about 4:00 on, the route offered no sheltering places. On the rare occasions when cliffside gave way to a clearing, that clearing would be occupied by a few tired-looking dwellings, no people in sight.
             Finally, in near dark, we came to a side road with a sign for a state park, and so we followed an arrow pointing off to the right. Thunder growled in the distance like a newly awakened bear. A mile in, we could only barely make out a big grassy area with an open pavilion in the middle. Not bothering to pitch the tent or scout out a fire pit, we rolled the sleeping bag out on the pavilion floor and ate peanut butter sandwiches as the wind picked up and the high pine trees moaned.
            In the morning, the jeering alarm of a lone blue jay woke us. The air smelled of new rain and honeysuckle, though the temperature had dropped to about 50. We were sore from sleeping on concrete, hungry, desperate for hot water. The Suzuki needed gas and my cold hands needed gloves.
When, about fifteen miles from the state park we came to a diner, we rejoiced. A clean restroom, hot coffee, lumberjack breakfast. Gas, we learned, could be found just around a corner. And gloves? That took some discussion, but the neighborly diners persisted in finding some way to help. In a kind of eureka! moment, someone reckoned gardening gloves could be bought at a farm & feed store, just up the road about fifty miles. Fifty narrow, twisted, steep and cold miles.       
             We thanked them, left a nice tip, and headed out. All along the way, I now saw signs of domesticity, chimney smoke, laundry hung out to dry, a soccer ball on the grass. Mid-morning, it started to rain, steady and hard, and soon everything was soaked through, including my newly purchased, soft jersey gardening gloves. It didn’t matter one whit. I’d found love on those mountain miles.
 
Now, driving this winding road, the radio on, nothing but heartbreak songs playing, I’m remembering my first time here, first love, discovering so much of living for the first time. I’m feeling not life passing, but the past. The past passing. This feeling is not nostalgia. It’s not regret or anything like that. It’s the infinitude of miles, the up and downness of them, the certainty of heading somewhere and the ambiguity of the destination. It’s the narrow gaps, the need to keep eyes on the road, the awareness of the great blue up above. It’s these mountains as companions, it’s knowing these mountains will still be there, even if love deserts you. This winding road, the road I’m driving on, this road rises into the mountains, then falls in search of a hidden stream, rises and falls, rises and falls with the land, rises and falls, as if the land itself had a pulsing heart. 

I think this qualifies as Historical Fiction.
I read that the term “glittering bait” is attributable to William Tecumseh Sherman, who referred to the appeal of war in this way.
 
                                           The Glittering Bait of War
‘These people they’d risk anything for you. We can get you safely to Canada sure enough.’
          The young man’s voice was soft and low, but clarion-clear as it passed between the bars. He was steady on his haunches. No sign of the intoxication that had landed him in the Jefferson County jail the night before. He’d lowered himself to a stoop in order to draw himself level to the old man on the other side who rested awkwardly on the stone floor, back to the wall.
            ‘Your plan is well intentioned, son,’ John Brown said. ‘I don’t know as it would meet with success. But no matter. God has other plans for me.’
            ‘All respect, Sir, but God helps them as helps themselves.’
Brown closed his eyes momentarily. ‘I’m old. I’m badly injured,’ he said. Then he opened his eyes again and turned their feverish intensity on his visitor. ‘I can do more for God’s children by dying at the end of a rope than ever I could do by living, even if it were for a hundred years.’
            Silas Soule knew that look, but he wanted to press his contention. Brown sensed it. He’d already noticed how, in the few years since they first became acquainted, Silas had affected an Irishman’s manner, even claiming to be of Irish – not Dutch – stock. Fast talking. Usually slow and deliberate in his own speech, Brown cut Soule off before the boy could muster his charm.
            ‘You’d honor me if you’d get the word out,’ Brown said. ‘Talk to the ministers, to the reporters, the politicians. Speak to the people. They know the time is coming. Speak the truth. Tell them to be strong. will you do that, Sile?’
            Soule lowered his chin in a gesture like a nod. He knew the discussion was over, John Brown would not allow himself to be rescued, he’d go to the gallows a martyr. But Soule wasn’t making any promises either. He said his good-byes and called for the deputy to escort him from Brown’s cell.
            John Brown never asked Silas Soule how he’d managed to get in to see him. Few were being given that privilege. But Brown knew Soule from his days in Kansas, knew his family. The Soules had come to Kansas as part of the Emigrant Aid Society, hell-bent on ensuring Kansas did not become a slave state. Their home was a way station on the Underground Railroad and as a teen-ager Silas actively engaged in conducting the hunted to freedom.
            Of course Brown had heard about the now twenty-one year-old’s daring exploits in Missouri earlier that year, when he executed a jailbreak for abolitionist John Doy. Doy had been convicted of jayhawking following a failed attempt to aid a group of enslaved people escape from bondage, an attempt that Soule had also been a part of. So neither was Brown surprised to learn the day after they said their adieux that Soule had beguiled his way back into the Jefferson County jail and made the same offer of rescue to several of Brown’s confederates.
            They, too, declined Soule’s offer to spring them.   
            Temporarily stymied in his efforts to turn the world on its head, and wanted or under suspicion in every state south and west of Maryland, Soule went in search of a new adventure. The Texas Rangers offered one possibility. Fighting Indians had some appeal, but Texas, a slave state, held no charms. He heard the slavery sympathizer James brothers, Frank and Jesse, were making a name for themselves with their robbing and gunslinging. Soule could cut and run with the best of them and could outshoot most, so taking it to the James gang and others of like ilk was tempting. But that would require organizing a gang of his own, and as he was fresh out of funds, and of a mind to gamble, Soule decided instead to try his luck with gold prospecting in Colorado.
            It wasn’t the adventure he’d hoped for, and he soon grew weary of storytelling and practical jokes as the sole form of entertainment. He wanted for cash but prospects were tumbleweeds. In the habit of spending money as fast as he made it, even if he’d struck it rich, which he didn’t, Soule would not likely have succeeded at Pike’s Peak. To support himself, he hired himself out as a blacksmith. Soon he began scheming how to marry a rich widow.
            Before he could work out the logistics of finding marital bliss, Fortune took another turn. War broke out between factions of the United States, just as John Brown had prophesied. Friend of the family Kit Carson recruited Silas to be one of his western scouts for the Union army. Anxious to be released from the drudgery of a laborer’s existence, Soule took what Tecumseh Sherman called “the glittering bait” of battle and joined a Colorado infantry regiment. Shortly after halting a confederate incursion into New Mexico, the regiment was officially converted to cavalry.
            Late in 1864, Sherman was crossing the state of Georgia with federal troops on his march to the sea. With the southern Rebs out of the way, troops out west turned their attention to the Arapaho and Cheyenne, confined since the mid-century gold rush to a hardscrabble corner of the Colorado Territory. Native warriors, unwilling to succumb to the deadly future predestined by every dubious treaty, were agitating and targeting encroaching settlers. Soule participated in the fighting and played a part in negotiations purported to bring a peaceful accommodation. When the accommodation resulted in a planned massacre of peaceful tribal members at Sand Creek, Soule refused orders to attack and instead wrote a lengthy letter to Army brass justifying his insubordination with a detailed account of the events that unfolded. Two months later he was a star witness at the Army’s investigatory hearing and celebrated as a hero. Allegations that Soule himself had profited from the massacre, walking off with a large stash of Indian blankets, were never taken seriously.
            The Civil War was coming to a close. On April 1, 1865, still haloed with the afterglow of his Sand Creek testimony, Silas Soule wed nineteen-year-old Hersa Coberly, daughter of a widowed innkeeper, in Denver. Not the rich widow he’d planned on, but love was its own adventure. Just over a week later, on April 9, Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox. Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14 and died the following morning. On April 23, on the streets of Denver, Silas Soule, too, was gunned down. No one really knows whether he was a martyr to the truth or just another hustler killed in a street fight. 

Entirely fiction.

​                                                            Cow Tunes
He was pretty sure it was not because he was high, but one morning Allan noticed the cows dancing. Some of them shifting their back legs, almost in a shuffle. Switching tails, heads bobbing, weird shoulder movements. In the days that followed, this happened with some regularity, especially when he put on the Stones or Jefferson Airplane. If he played Hendrix or Pink Floyd, though, the herd would get seriously agitated, until he reverted to some group like the Byrds or the Grateful Dead.
            It had come back easily, the mechanics of milking. The old barn was peaceful, and Allan actually liked the smell of fresh hay, fresh manure, detergent, and fresh milk. So much preferable to rotting jungle and napalm. He took pleasure in dipping his arms in the warm sudsy water, rubbing each udder with gloved hands, stripping each teat with a few strong tugs before attaching a suction device. Every go-round with the twelve cows took about three hours, but he could stretch it out with gentle strokes and conversation.
            An unexpected place to find himself, the home farm; he thought he’d left it behind for good. When he’d come back to the states six months before, he’d moved in with his girlfriend, but last week she kicked him out. She told him sleeping under the bed was not normal. She said don’t come back until you pull yourself together. She said when the baby comes, I won’t have you waking it with your nightmares.
            The baby. How did that happen? Of course, he knew how it happened, but he’d used protection. Maybe the kid wasn’t even his. Allan didn’t care if it was his or not. He didn’t really want the responsibility, financial or otherwise.
He couldn’t believe he was stuck in the same place he’d meant to flee. Inside the house he could barely stand the prattle of the five siblings still at home. Almost as unbearable were his parents’ silent resentments. Had he been an idiot to think his life would change? Three older brothers were already married. The younger two were college material. So he’d enlisted, his duty he thought. Allan had no skills, no special talents, no smarts. Sure, the cows liked him, but it was already decided that the twins would inherit the farm, Jann an experienced horse woman and Joanie with a knack for business.
            ‘I’m screwed,’ he said. ‘I’m always the one to get screwed.’
            Poor you, the cows all said.
            Allan thought he heard Gert interject something like someone in the family had to serve. She swung her neck in a wide curve for emphasis. Allan made a mental note to halter Gert. A basic rule: control the head if you want to control the body.
            But she had a point. Someone in the family had always served. His father in World War II, his grandfather in the Great War. Before that his ancestors had fought in the Franco Prussian wars, which had sent them fleeing to the United States. His mother’s great-grandfather served in Sigel’s all-German corps during the Civil War.
            Well, what of it? What now? Aggie clomped her hoof, always the interrogator.
            At times it seemed the noise Allan wanted to escape was in his head. But in the barn, at least, he could block it out with weed and music. He brought his cassette player in every day and began racking up a nice collection of tapes. In some strange way, it took him back to bored afternoons on base with his buddies. He could say this for himself, he knew how to lay low when volunteers were needed for unpleasant tasks, and he knew how to get along, even if he never really fit in.
 
            As the days passed, Allan came to discover that with certain bands, the cows grew still and actually produced more milk. He got to know their favorites, mostly long recordings: Aggie liked Light My Fire, Bertha went in for Whiter Shade of Pale, and Hilda relaxed to Hey Jude.
            With production up, Allan got to imagining better things for himself. Was there a market for a traveling music man who could increase a dairy farm’s milk production? That was funny. But maybe his sisters would see fit to cut him into the family business, assuming the old man ever met his demise. It didn’t seem impossible.
            One lazy afternoon, Allan woke to the sound of cattle stomping and moaning. His heart was pounding madly, a refrain going through his mind to the beat, VC VC VC, who’s hit? who’s hit? who’s hit? But Allan was in northwest Maryland, not southeast Asia. He’d fallen asleep with a joint still lit and now the whole dairy operation was literally about to go up in flames. ‘Shit, I’m screwed,’ he said to the cows. ‘Like always.’ The cows couldn’t have cared less. They were in a mood to stampede. Allan grabbed the nearest thing at hand, a six-gallon milker bucket, almost full. That doused the nearest blaze and gave him time to grab the fire extinguisher.
            The old barn survived, as did all the cows. Allan suffered a few surface burns, but two years in the army had paid off in muscle strength and survival instincts. The ancestors, if not his father, would be impressed.
That night Allan’s girlfriend came by with sugar cookies and a bottle of Chianti that only she liked. Her baby bump was beginning to show, and she invited Allan to stretch his hand over it. He wanted to tell her it wasn’t so different from massaging a cow’s udder, but instead he pulled her head close to his chest and kissed her neck. My hero, she whispered, without a hint of irony. Then she invited Allan back to her apartment. Maybe they’d get married, Allan thought. Maybe things would work out.

Part 1, mostly true, related in reverse order
Part 2, about half true
Part 3, all fiction except for the fact of the Highland Park parade events of July 4, 2022
​
                                     ​Three for the 4th of July
                1. Independence Day, 19th Century Retrospective  
Thomas Egan, proprietor of a general store in Harpers Ferry, ended his days in an asylum. For many months before being committed, he’d wandered aimlessly, in search of something to ease the pain that war had brought. His wife, too, died of a broken heart after all that happened. Perhaps it was no coincidence that on the 4th of July, 1864, a union soldier who’d been at the Egans’ store deserted his army regiment and enlisted in the US navy. The soldier was trying to escape something only half apprehended and wished not to be remembered. Earlier that day, another military man -- Colonel James Mulligan, commander of the Illinois 23rd -- when passing by the Egans’ store and learning of a fatal shooting on the premises, gave orders that the perpetrator be taken into custody on a charge of murder. Mulligan was in no mood for loose carbines and careless brawls. A thirteen-year-old girl had been shot and killed. The girl was standing at an open window of Egans’ store, calling to a soldier and waving a cap at him. She’d found the cap on the floor of the shop’s storeroom and had retrieved it with the intention of returning it to its owner. The Yank that lost it  – the very one who hours later would desert the army and join the navy -- had been in a scuffle with the girl’s father, the store proprietor. He was unceremoniously shoved out the door and onto the street by this store owner, Thomas Egan. A longtime resident of Harpers Ferry, Egan hadn’t taken sides in the Brothers’ War. He was a kind and generous man but he didn’t tolerate thievery. What precipitated the dust-up was the soldier’s refusal to pay for a plug of tobacco he’d taken. The scoundrel was probably drunk. Or he was well on his way to being drunk. Had he been in battle that day, the day before? The fighting never seemed to end. Here along the Potomac, the boundaries were never clear. It was the 4th of July, 1864, and federal troops were evacuating Harpers Ferry. Confederate forces were driving them out. Again. It was a grim business. Just the day before, with a miniscule fighting force, Colonel Mulligan had slowed the advance of six Confederate infantry divisions, five brigades of cavalry and three battalions of artillery. Only a year before, in July 1863, after Robert E. Lee’s goose got cooked at Gettysburg, the newly designated West Virginia town of Harpers Ferry was occupied by the Union army. It had remained in Union hands until the 4th of July day when a young girl was gunned down in her father’s store by a soldier wandering the streets in search of something to ease the pain that war had brought.

                           2. An Intimate Account of Gun Violence  
The Orlando Pulse Nightclub massacre brought to mind my 30th birthday.
My boyfriend Chaz, a lifelong hunter, his best friends Matt, a cop, and Cheryl, a park ranger, decided, as a birthday gift, they’d teach me how to shoot. And though I’ve never again dared to pull a trigger, that day I was stoked. At an outdoor range outside of town, the three of them provided excellent instruction. I proved to be an avid pupil.

I liked the physical sensations. For example: the rocklike stance. For example: the exquisite tension in my legs. I liked how everything below my spine was finely balanced in a slingshot. Liked the smooth cool comfort of plated steel between my palms, how instinctively I knew it would respond to a light touch of my fingers. Liked how my heartbeat was suspended. Breathing checked. That sweet orgasmic focus.

The specifics are a little vague. I can’t quite picture the surroundings. Don’t recall the gun, what it looked like, never mind the make, the model, or what caliber. But I know I liked the thrill of competence as bullet after bullet zeroed in, drawing ever closer to the target. I liked this game. I liked that I was good at it. I loved the power. The whole experience something like good sex.
So many times I’ve called upon that edgy rush in casual conversations about gun control. How I get it, this love affair with guns. But what I recalled on June the 12th, two-thousand and sixteen was something else. It was the subtext in a look that Matt and Chaz had exchanged years before, at my birthday outing, rolling their eyes like “what could we expect from her, a lefty liberal bleeding heart, not a clue about firearms,” their playful macho-guy contempt mixed in with relief.

Relief, yes, because what had passed across their faces in the seconds before this had the gleam of terror. I’d been talking, with my hands, as I am wont to do. So psyched. Oblivious of the weapon in my palm. Chaz approached me from behind, I picked up his body odor, animal sweat. He slid a hand beneath my forearm: steady there, he said, that thing’s dangerous. Gentle, quiet words, but, in his tone, unmistaken gravity.

Those are the details I remembered on June 12, 2016. Chaz’s grip, his words, the glance that he and Matt exchanged that telegraphed their fear: just one slip, a casual flick, a loss of concentration or awareness, and Cheryl, several yards away, could be toast, half-severed arm left to sag like shredded pork, or maybe a red geyser shooting from her abdomen, her sturdy skull split apart like ripened cantaloupe.

It would have been so easy.

                                          3. It Starts with the Flag  
If I told you the story about that 4th of July in 2022, I would have to start with the American flag. The flag I’m speaking of was one of many, about 8 inches by 5 inches and attached to a slender round wooden stick, a little more than a foot long. A boy was handing out these patriotic souvenirs to spectators along the suburban parade route. I remember thinking the boy would probably be starting school come fall.
     “Happy Fourth of July,” he said as he offered Old Glory to me.
     “Happy Independence Day,” my partner, leaning over my shoulder, replied.
    “Greatest country in the world,” said a grandfatherly man accompanying the boy.
     Feet in sandals and running shoes, arms holding babies and picnic blankets, butts in canvas camp chairs and on cement curbs, hands grasping water bottles and miniature flags, as bands and amateur floats passed by, we all waved those flags, same as people all across the nation, in cities and small towns, were waving these flags, as we in American towns and cities have been doing, come wretched heat or steady rain, every Fourth of July for two and a half centuries.
     On this day, the flag in my hand, courtesy of a six-year-old boy, wriggled then slipped from my fingers as I turned involuntarily toward the sound of erupting firecrackers, too close by for safety. I smelled metal, like imminent rain. I thought a storm might be coming.
     Only later I remembered the screams, I remembered pushing and sirens and frantic voices on cell phones. I remember scanning the road in search of the boy. Then the hand of love was on my shoulder. I remember my partner guiding us home, the sidewalk under my feet, littered in red, white, and blue, me fixating on one small flag in particular, like the one I’d held, on the grass near the entrance to the elementary school, splattered with blood.

Editorial Note: Falling Waters is a small town on the Potomac River in Berkeley County, West Virginia. A Civil War battle took place on the Maryland side of the river in the summer of 1863. In 1943, the local news reported the Potomac River had reached an all-time low due to drought. This 2023 Trip Advisor review says much about the present state of the site: “Not much to see but a nice little waterfall in a poorly kept area.” 

​                      Falling Waters Again and Again
 
1863:
There is a river. There is the river swollen with mud.
There are the sumac, their bearded old-man flowers
like chins on hungry veterans of damnable war. There
is the patchy grass, yellow and dry, drained of early
spring’s hope. There are the flourishing weeds, our sins,
countless and brazen. Raise your eyes to the heavens.
There is only the sickly yellow sky. Or what once was
sky, now the spew and billow of gunfire. A few clouds,
fistsful of dirty cotton caught in the vaporized vomit.
A stone’s throw away, sleeping artillery. One lonely
birdsong pushes through the sound of snoring men  
who mumble their way through dreams. Life passing by.
 
1943:
There is a river. There is the river swollen with mud.
There are the sumac, their bearded old-man flowers
nodding in the easy breeze. There is the patchy grass,
pale yellow after months under frosts, hope for early
spring. The weeds near the riverbank are flourishing,
countless and brazen. Beautiful in their own rebellious
way. A stone’s throw away, two wooden benches,
a trash bin, a barbecue pit, cold ash and embers.
From near the river, one lonely birdsong breaks the silence.
Look to the heavens. The West Virginia sky is new blue.
A few clouds drift, fistsful of cotton. A storm is coming.
 
2023:
There is a river. There is the river swollen with mud.
There are the sumac, their bearded old-man flowers
resisting the breeze. There is the patchy grass, yellow
and dry, ready for winter. There are the weeds, countless
and brazen, still flourishing. Breaking into the skyline:
towering powerlines, massive connecting cables filling
the space overhead. At ground level, two meager swings,
two metal benches, two overful trash cans dilapidating
with rust. A stone’s throw away, two unoccupied trucks
parked in the middle of a paved lot. The sky between
powerlines is a startling autumn blue, waving just a few
clouds, wisps of cotton. One lonely birdsong rises above
the sound of distant traffic. Look around: Life is passing.
 

A little context
“Take Me Home, Country Roads" is a song written by Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert (of Fat City and, later, Starland Vocal Band) and John Denver. It appeared on John Denver’s album, Poems, Prayers & Promises, and was released as a single in 1971. Denver’s first big hit and one of his most popular songs, over 1.6 million digital copies have been sold in the U.S. Ten years ago the song became one of four official state anthems of West Virginia.
 
Not everyone in West Virginia is enamored of the song. None of the songwriters had ever been to West Virginia at the time it was written and there’s long been a controversy over whether the song was even originally about West Virginia. Denver, who’d largely grown up in the southwest, lived most of his adult life in Colorado, a state that also adopted a Denver song (“Rocky Mountain High”) as a state song. John Denver died in a single-occupant plane crash in 1997.

                                        Take Them Home, Country Roads
            Five of the six Melvin sisters were speeding down the West Virginia mountain road in their rental van, headed toward Pittsburgh’s Hilton Garden Airport Hotel where they would spend the night before their return to Colorado Springs the next morning. Suddenly, from a back seat, Maeve shouted, ‘Stop Madison, up there!’
            ‘What the hell, Maeve—'
            ‘See that sign - West Virginia Made. Let’s try there.’
            Madison swerved into the lot, tires kicking up gravel.
            ‘You two will get us killed,’ Melodie said.
            ‘Well you wanted to bring back something authentic for Margaret.’
‘Okay but—'
            ‘This is bound to be better than anything at the airport. Which by the way isn’t even in West Virginia.’
            They crowded into the small shop. Melodie headed directly to the pottery, Mia and Maeve to jewelry, while Meredith and Madison just wandered.
            ‘Why do they call this place ‘Almost Heaven’?’ Meredith asked. Youngest of the six sisters, an afterthought baby, Meredith had altogether missed the 70s.
            ‘It’s from a John Denver song,” Madison said. ‘Country Roads. Country roads, take me home—'
            ‘Who’s John Denver?’
            ‘Some cowboy.’
‘He wasn’t a cowboy,’ said Mia, coming up behind them. ‘He was a folk singer, folk/rock, from Iowa I think. Really popular. Really good.’
            ‘I thought he was from Arizona,’ said Maeve as she, too, approached. She took a jasper necklace from Mia’s hands. ‘You aren’t seriously thinking of this for Margaret, are you? She’s never worn necklaces.’
            ‘Well, he wasn’t from West Virginia, that’s for sure,’ Mia said, taking back the necklace. ‘Or from Colorado either. He just took that name – Denver - for effect.’
            ‘Remember that old bumper sticker around Aspen?’ Madison asked. ‘John Denver, go home!’
            ‘So, who cares?’ said Maeve. ‘I liked him.’
            ‘Oh me, too, Maeve,’ Mia admitted. ‘Still do. And you know, Melodie was nuts about him. Big-time fan.’
            ‘Speaking of Melodie,’ said Melodie, coming up behind her sisters, two large tankards in her hands, ‘here she is. I adore these fat-belly mugs. Don’t they just look like they belong in a mountain cabin?’
            ‘Does Margaret drink coffee?’ Meredith asked.
            ‘No, but since she’s been sick, she’s been drinking a lot of tea.’
            ‘Well, okay. Maybe,’ said Meredith.
            ‘Will they fit in your suitcase?’ Maeve asked.          
            While Maeve, Meredith, and Melodie conferred, Madison moseyed toward the front of the store, where an array of weavings hung on a rack. She picked out a soft-fibered handwoven shawl in pale colors and draped it around her shoulders.
At the same time Mia headed back toward the jewelry with the necklace. But first she stopped by a bin holding old compact discs. Soon she found what she was looking for, a copy of John Denver’s “Poems, Prayers, and Promises” on CD. She held it up for the others to see.
            ‘Isn’t that him?’ Melodie asked, pointing.
            ‘Of course,’ said Mia.
            ‘Not that,’ Melodie said. ‘Up there, at the checkout counter.’
            They all turned to look.
            ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Madison said, ‘he’s dead.’ But she sauntered closer to the counter just the same.
            ‘We seem to be lost,’ a man with was saying to the store clerk. The man was maybe 35 years old and starting to go bald. Next to him stood a guy about 5’10” with long straight blond hair and wearing round, wire-rimmed glasses.
            As the clerk showed the two men a map and walked them through a route to their destination, the Melvin sisters closed around them at the checkout counter. Except Meredith, who held back, holding the pale peach and mint colored weaving Madison had dropped in her hurry to catch the celebrity. The four siblings all started talking at once. Is it you? Would you autograph my hand? Are you doing concerts again? Will you be back in Aspen soon? Can I take a selfie?
            Meredith sighed, then lost patience. ‘Hey, you guys, get a grip!’ She yelled. ‘Will you come here please and look at this?’ She stomped her foot, which, being the youngest, she was entitled to do. ‘You remember we’re here to find something for Margaret, right?’ Meredith said. ‘Margaret? Who’s very sick back home in Colorado, who can’t stay warm. This is perfect, it’s by a local artist, says they use traditional weaving methods. Authentic!’
            The sisters Melodie, Mia, Madison, and Maeve, turned to look. They did remember. Sheepishly abandoning their quest to determine if the man at the counter was really him, they trundled en masse to join Meredith. All agreed the weaving was the perfect gift.
            ‘Maybe we could throw in that CD, Poems, Prayers, and Promises,’ Maeve said.
            ‘That album’s got nothing to do with West Virginia,’ said Mia.
            ‘Was Margaret even a fan?’ asked Meredith.
            ‘Not really,’ Melodie said.
            Maeve shrugged. ‘Still. The title’s apt.’
 
            By the time the sisters converged on the service counter to make their purchases, the two men who’d come in to ask for directions were walking out the door. The dark-haired one turned to the shorter man with the wire-rimmed glasses.
            ‘What was that all about, John?’ he asked.
            ‘Couldn’t tell you,’ said the blond.
            ‘Well, who were they?’
            ‘Don’t know. A bunch of West Virginia hicks, I guess.’