CAROLINA IN THE SPRING & SO WAS THE GIRL
Kris of Summer by J. Tenney
The town was thick with the smell of grass and earth. It was the end of April and I’d been back for nearly a month. Nights spent drinking Dad’s Millers and sitting on the big porch with Mom talking about the long ago in California, my childhood, her sisters and when she was a girl. I was weary and pissed about being away from the city and losing my job, but sitting out in the cool air next to her voice as she smoked those horrible skinny cigarettes and the lone cherry tree above us was comfortable and I knew it would be fine.
The great oscillating quakes of March 11th sent the gang in Tokyo scrambled in all directions, escaping to Hong Kong, Paris, London, South Korea and all the way home to the belly of N.C, where all the goons go to brood the impossibility of something else. The nights went on and blurred together. Things were the way you left them, and we were forever in a mode of return because of a refusal to accept our unhealthy attraction to the lazy pace of a day. It was no good, but I’d wake in horror at the thought of it changing.
I rode the white JEEP with its bad
front-axel down East Marion and crossed highway 74 to old Earl. The night sky (more…)