Page 14 - WTP Vol. IX #6

Anatomy of Circumstance
O that my tongue were in the thunder’s mouth!
Then with a passion would I shake the world,
And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy Which scorns a lady’s feeble voice, Which scorns a modern invocation.
—The Life and Death of King John [3, 4]
MORNING GLORY GULCH is an unincorporated community (pop. 175) in the heart of the Virgin- ia Piedmont. I was born there on a bluff overhanging its north flank. At the foot of the dirt road that wound its way to our little house was a yellow, diamond- shaped sign—NO EXIT—pockmarked with bullet holes. As a kid I used to brace my bike against the
tall post that held that sign, and, standing on its seat, reach up and wiggle my fingers through those holes. That’s how I measured my growth—by which finger would fit—instead of the way Beau McMurray did, holding a table knife against the top of his head while I marked his bedroom wall with the stub of a pencil. Today, my pinky would get stuck in the holes of that sign. And its message seems prophetic.
Bluff Road held three identical brick ranch homes that had been built “on spec”—one at the first bend, one at the second, and ours, on the cul-de-sac that sloped severely toward the Gulch. The developer had intended to construct more along that thickly wood- ed stretch but went broke when the first two didn’t sell. He’d intended the third for himself, and my parents “got it for a song” when the country slipped into recession.
If you turn left off Bluff Road you’ll go down into Morning Glory Gulch on a narrow macadam lane that runs past Old Man Kelsey’s Handi-Foods store to dead-end at the foot of No Business Mountain.
I was nearly a teen before I understood how that mountain got its name. “Bobby,” my Dad explained, “it’s because it’s no business of yours what goes on up there.” In the fall of the year, on bright sunny days after the trees had lost their leaves, the extension bureau of the state’s ATF division would circle that mountain in its helicopter, alert for telltale glints of metal below. One night, when I was five years old, my parents woke me after midnight and hurried me
cir-cum-stance /'sәrkәm stans, 'sәrkәmstәns/ noun:
a condition, fact, or event accompanying or determining another: an essential or inevitable concomitant.
—Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
in my pajamas out to the carport, beyond which the dark horizon was laced with flames. Somebody’s still had exploded. I remember that night well, because exactly one year later my mother died.
Starting at Old Man Kelsey’s Handi-Foods store an- other macadam road turns abruptly south, descend- ing through a series of dells and “hollers” into the humid sub-tropical interior. At one point a mossy pipe emerges from the high-side shoulder, dripping spring water into a small pool. Empty white milk jugs litter the area there, left by locals who came for the cold water in pickup trucks. I never went down that road on my bike—the thick canopy of locusts, tulip poplars, and clinging vines made the way far too dark. But I always enjoyed driving down there with my parents.
Farther down below that mountain spring, where the descent flattened a bit, a noisy stream ran parallel to the road. A ramshackle cottage sat on its far side. The only way the crazy couple that lived there could get across was by a rope bridge, which made me think
of Tarzan. Dad would always slow down at that spot, and if no one were home, jump out to photograph the cottage and rickety bridge. Mom and I would jump out, too, to pick violets and buttercups in the ditch by the berm.
In the fall, whenever we drove all the way down the mountain, we’d see large hogs hanging in weedy front yards, strung up by their hind feet with block and tackle, guts gone, blood dripping into shallow basins or galvanized tubs. Tarpaper shacks were tucked away farther back, with old cars on cinder blocks beside them. (The County allowed two such cars, but not three). Some abandoned refrigerators cluttered these places as well, their heavy, danger- ous doors still attached. Occasionally there’d be a
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Claude Clayton smith