Читать книгу Planted by the Signs - Misty Skaggs - Страница 17

Uncle Charlie Loves You

I remember tired, washed-out women

warning us young’uns

with his name—

“Uncle Charlie’s gonna come,

gonna come all the way

out here

just to get you.”

I remember we believed it.

I remember the good ol’ boys

rounding up a posse

fueled by boredom

and Pabst Blue Ribbon

every damn time

he went up for parole.

He might get out,

he might come home.

No-Name Maddox,

backwoods bastard,

progeny of a prostitute

with no paved streets to walk.

He could’ve been one of them,

with a Mamaw on Mauk Ridge.

Might’ve been another nobody

puffed up on Kentucky windage,

bedding high school girls

in the bed of a beat-up

pickup truck

saying,

“I don’t know

what somebody is.”

Or maybe

Uncle Charlie

could’ve been a country preacher.

A powerful, primitive Baptist

running the church house like a family.

A short feller filled

plumb up to the brim

with rural route righteousness,

briar-hopping the pulpit

instead of hitching to Haight-Ashbury.

The Holy Spirit in his wild eyes

instead of homicide.

I know

I hear Kentucky in his voice.

Hiding in the space

at the ends of words

where consonants drop off

and disappear.