

SWEETHEART

Ernest Slyman copyright 2017

www.ernestslyman.com

Sweetheart

They came to a funeral of the man they respected most, admired like a giant. His name was Jack Trayer.

When he died it was like they'd been deserted at birth. As they approached their hometown the streets and the houses spoke mysteriously of them. Who were they? Why had they come back to Bristol?

What did the town know about them? Did the town hate them? They came from poor families. Poverty had a craggy face, so ugly it would scare the life out of anyone.

But it was the death of Jack Trayer that welcomed the boys. Everyone else hid from the boys. The boys who were once famous for singing for Jack Trayer. He came out in the alleyway behind his restaurant and three boys sang a church hymn that knocked Jack Trayer down. He couldn't believe his ears.

Now years later the boys come back to sing the same hymn at his funeral. The day they buried Jack Trayer would go down in history as the saddest day in Bristol.

Sweetheart 1

I seen him fidgeting, his head ducked down, eyes closed, his mouth making a fizzing sound like it was releasing the grief we all felt. He looked back over his shoulder like something I said bothered him. He wondered what I was doing. Nosey thing. His hand disappeared into that paper bag. Come out with the liquor bottle, took a nip. The bus just kept going, like it didn't care if we was going to get drunk. Jack Trayer was dead. And that made us sad. He was a man who we much admired. Oh Lord, he was something.

I couldn't stop thinking about Jack. Although I knew I had to stop thinking about him because we when you get that much sorrow inside you it's going to cut your circulation off. Your legs go numb, arms droopy. I don't know if I can live in this world without Jack Trayer out there somewhere.

Not that I've seen him lately. Living up Morristown way. So many miles from Bristol, knowing his voice don't carry that far. What if it did? Would he tell me I was all grown up? It being some thirty years since I seen him. Jack's my best friend, even though I ain't talked to him all these years. I loved him like he was the one who believed in me.

Somehow we was flesh and blood. Even we weren't related. Him being older than me. It was everything I could do to keep myself from crying my eyes out. When I heard Jack Trayer died it hit me hard. Right in the breadbasket. I couldn't breathe. My head burst, my eyes let go them big tears. I was in my truck, and the news come over the radio. Jack Trayer dead. What that mean? Who killed him? He got old, some spell that catch him, make him gray haired, circles under his eyes. Give him some kind of illness that take away his great big heart.

"Hey, Gladstone. What are you doing? Don't you like funerals?"

I heard that voice. I knew who it was. I turned around. Gladstone was smirking like he knew something. Like he was immune to the sorrow. I know he wasn't. Cause I see him cry back there coming through Bluff City. I seen his hands tremble, come up to his mouth, try and cover the melancholy that mouths get when somebody croaks.

Finley and him was playing poker. Taking nips out of that liquor bottle. What did they think they were doing? Somebody die that mean so much to you there's no time for poker. You've got to let that sadness come over you. The things it do to somebody is like some wild animal find you in the dark. Eat you up.

Grief all covered with fur and angry about something. It don't care who you are. It never going to be somebody that admires you. Somebody give it a hard time. Somebody just don't care what it's going to do with them. What's the matter with us? Somebody die like Jack Trayer make us feel things we never felt before. It takes things from us. Gets deep inside us. I ain't going to tell you I like it. Though I know people who make of it something small.

Jack Trayer was not small. He was as big as Bristol. And that old town was his sweetheart. When they met they was seldom seen apart. Went everywhere together. Lord, you could pry them apart.

Sweetheart 2

We was coming to Jack Trayer's funeral? Of course there was more to it than that. It was immense what was about to happen. Hit us in the gut. Got there in a hour and a half. How was we going to keep ourselves from balling our eyes out. That old cheap motel room stank of aerosol spray. Guess we'd let our noses sniff that like it was some kind of savior. Pink face, chubby cheeks. Lace collar. I heard the toilet flush. I could swear it said something to me.

We didn't feel too good. Grief make you immature, you know. Go around punching your buddies. Laughing, burping. You never when your friends will pull your ear off. Sorrow does stuff to you that you'll never understand. You don't cry in front of your buddies. You just feel like chicken manure.

And what's the matter with that? Somebody die you're covered with that stink. You can't get away from it. Death has its ways with us country boys. Grab us by the scruff of the neck. Pull us down, get on top of us and don't let us up. The great Jack Trayer was dead. His funeral only a few hours away. The thought of seeing his casket lowered into the ground just about enough to scare the life of you.

The cigarettes was eying us like we was helpless. Dangled from our lips and when you spoke they dropped ashes on the carpet of that old cheap motel. Ashes it seemed appropriate, long as you don't have to sweep them up. They probably knew we was hopeless skunk drunk. Cigarettes know all kinds of things.

They got ears, you know. They hear what you say. What you think. Cigarettes are smart. You think they knew about Jack? Did they feel sorry for him? Dying in bed and his last breath taking the town of Bristol with it. We could see outside that Bristol had crawled out. It was sunlight that came and brought Bristol back from the dead. It wanted to go with Jack. Bristol loved Jack. He was the one. Bristol was Jack's sweetheart. They was a number. Holding hands everywhere they went. Johnson City, Kingsport, Greenville was jealous.

The newspaper in Bristol started crying like a baby. You know it was a terrible thing to happen. Jack Trayer he was deceased, and nobody was happy in Bristol. They was all totally crushed up, and it was a wonder they could bear the grief. The loss of such a great man took them by surprise. You see them. I looked out the curtain they had these dumbstruck looks on their faces. Even the dogs couldn't believe that Jack was gone.

The clock on the dresser said it was fifteen minutes after eleven. Only had two beds. We didn't care cause we weren't going to stay the night. We were going back on the bus. All we planned was to do right by Jack. Come to his funeral, hear the eulogy that would hurt us for the rest of our lives. We near expected to receive bruises from it.

Fear ain't the word. It was more of cold, numb feeling that crept over us. We knew Jack was gone. It was something we couldn't escape. It wanted to stay beside us. A feeling that would clutch at you, pull you across east Tennessee. And what if it wanted to visit, live with you. That was all right. It was a piece of Jack. Tall fellow, broad shoulders, crumpled smile. Hands in its pockets like it had seen everything, done everything. And all it wanted was to come along. Maybe sleep beside us for no other reason that to keep us company for the rest of our lives.

"Whatcha looking at, Marsh? Don't you wonder if anybody recognizes us? They put our names in the Bristol paper. Didn't have no pictures."

I give him a dirty look. I wasn't expecting Finley to come out with that. It's not attractive. What people say to you when you feel lost matters a lot. I was ready to collapse on the bed. Just let myself recline on the soft mattress. I figured beds didn't know I was in need of solace. A comfortable pillow might spare me. I was certain how beds knew they could give me what I needed. I was betting they could help me feel a little better.

"Why would they recognize us? We ain't famous?" Gladstone said. I could tell he was drunk. His voice was stumbling in the graveyard of knowing how utterly awful it was knowing we was in Bristol. We had something to do. It was going to take a lot out of us. We didn't know if we had what it took.

"Nobody knows who we are in Bristol," I told him.

"And if they did, who gives a dang? They wouldn't know what we look like. We all growed up," Finley said. His cigarette smoke come up and curled around his cheek like it was trying to comfort him.

"I'm telling you it's anybody's guess we're in Bristol," Gladstone said. "Can't tell me there's anything expected from us. The front desk clerk didn't crack a smile. She's unaware of anything."

"Are we going to eat something before the funeral?" Finley asked. He squinted at Gladstone.

"We could order something in," Gladstone told him. "What would you like?"

"Nothing. I couldn't eat a foreleg on a stick. I feel lousy," Finley said.

"How about you, Marsh?" Gladstone asked, holding the menu in his hand, checking out the sandwiches.

"No, I'm all right," I said.

I was amazed at what happened next. Gladstone ordered a cheese burger and fries with a chocolate milkshake. How could he do that? His voice jumped right into the telephone like it was hungry.

"Could you give me plenty of them little ketchup packets with it?" Gladstone said.

That was what did it. I was wondering what kind of man would feel like he needed to eat something at a time like this. It seemed outrageous. He actually had an appetite.

Sweetheart 3

I was the one who took the last gulp of whiskey. The bottle lifted up, spilled a bunch of drops down my throat. I thought I was going to taste something amazing. And all I got was a tiny gulp that crawled down my throat and sang a lullaby. What more could you ask for? I was surprised I felt a high take on my grief. Not that the whiskey could roll it up, make a soft whisper out of it. What I thought I felt was a lonesomeness. Like it was apologetic that it couldn't do more for me.

I couldn't tell if my eyes were poor. Or was I plum intoxicated, encumbered with the whiskey's spell. How would I know? I looked down at the Holy Bible on the dresser. One of those motel bibles that will save your soul, just let go with its sweet passages, hug you like a teddybear. Kiss you all over. Leave you think you wasn't alone in the world. That you wasn't unloved. That Holy Scripture could make you feel like you was doing fine. Nothing to worry about.

Like it had thrown a shroud over Jack. Covered his face, those closed eyes nothing to worry about. Would I look like that when I died? Stretched out in a coffin? A cold look on my face that swung around Bristol, slapping everybody in the face? Pulling their hair out. Telling them things that they'd never heard before. Like don't you ever believe that anybody die? What's the matter with you? You just one dumb country boy, ain't you?

We all had white carnations in our lapels. Give us the look of somebody who could appear like they was present at the funeral, full of respect, a reverence that couldn't be denied. And occasionally we took turns sniffing the carnation. Gladstone would sniff his carnation. Then go over to Finley's carnation and place his nose right on it. When I seen Gladstone come over to me I knew he was going to sniff mine.

I lifted up my lapel so the flower could smooch his nose. He got a whiff that gave him a nice feeling. Then I went up to his carnation and took a sniff. Finley returned the favor. We were sniffing those carnations as though we wanted them to give us something that would quell our sadness. It didn't do much of anything for us. What carnations do is just sit in the lapel with their hands folded, looking at us like we're fools.

It never occurred to us we were ticked off. And you know that's what death does. Makes you madder than a bull stung by a bumblebee. We knew it. We tried not to be all angry about Jack. But we couldn't help. Went around the room of that motel, punching each other. Grief makes you immature. We shrunk up. We was children. Poking each other, pulling the other's sleeve. Making faces like all them funeral guests we'd see later.

Gladstone, I think I saw him cry. He put a napkin up to his eye. Right between french fries. One fry jumped down to his aluminum plate. I don't know what it said. Maybe it took away some grief. French fries can do that, you know. Those little ketchup packages can help you out, if you're at funerals. I told myself I needed to remember that. It could come in handy when I got back home.

I heard a sniffle from Finley. So I sniffled back. I didn't want him to feel like he was the only one. A sniffle is God's way of telling us we're sad. We don't know how sad we are until the sniffle arrives, like an old friend. The sniffle loves me. I know it does. Why can't have more sniffles when we're happy. They don't let us wail. The things that sniffles do for us we take for granted.

What don't like is people who cry and they don't sound they're crying. It's more of a broken promise. All whimper and self-pity. Arriving to satisfy the nose dripping like an umbrella in the rain. Little drops showing their wet faces, leaping down to the floor. The sounds they make a hardly audible. More of quiet that don't have nothing to say. Though you better know they understand what they're in the world to do. Stay put. Don't worry. The sniffles that drop from our noses are always loyal, hard working. They're full of comfort for those who mourn the loss of the dearly departed.

The throat's got its hands full. We're never too far away to hear the sighs and gulps. All blessed mourners of the dead. One sigh traveling across the room caught Gladstone off guard. What did he think we heard a sigh from a boy he growed up with. Finley crouched over, sitting on that bar stool, just not quite knowing what to do. The sigh done took him and throwed him down a hole in the morning. A place where country boys like us live on days when their best friend dies.

A sob's got every bit of knowledge. And some wisdom, don't you know what sobs do for country boys. We all surprised that each other got a sob. It's tall, you know. It's bound to bump its head on the ceiling. Got no shoes. Goes barefoot. Pulls up its trousers. Sobs have no faces. They're all plain and you can't ask them nothing. Do you know sobs have absolutely no idea why they're in the world? They're aimless wanderers. What would expect from them? If not to appear on the verge of hollering. The wail without the sob ain't worth nothing. It's going to come up short.

And when sputter arrives it's too late to save yourself. You sound like an old truck trying to start on a cold morning. Sadness with its speaking voice coming up from the dead. It's never a pretty thing to hear. Why would the sputter ever come out? If not to make it clear that it was to say things for us we couldn't say.

How can you say what the sob knows?

Sweetheart 4

I'd drank a couple of coffees. I opened the newspaper. Did 't notice anything about Jack Trayer funeral. Then I turned a page and his obituary stuck its thumb in my eye. The long column held more words than I wanted to see. And all them roared at me like lions. I didn't want to know anything. Yet I came across a whole section that made me feel terribly sad. It was people gathered outside in restaurants all over Bristol and up Southwest Virginia. Jack had over two dozen restaurants. People stood outside. Sad eyed mourners who couldn't believe it. The obituary held me around my neck and choked me. I thought I was going to suffocate.

Then I heard a loud cry the other room. Gladstone and I ran it. Turned on the light switch. There was Marsh was lying on the floor. We didn't know if he'd taken a fall or what. The ceiling light groaned. Marsh tried to stand up. His feet grumbled. Marsh's legs stood him up. He rubbed his eyes. It was as though somebody had struck him over the head.

"I don't what happened," Marsh mumbled. He couldn't see. He rubbed his eyes. He give us a look that we haven't ever seen from him. Marsh was frightened. His face all hunched over. His nose kind of sat on his upper lip. Didn't move an inch. His lips started riding a bicycle. They couldn't find their way to anything but a scowl.

"Geez. I'm feeling bad," Marsh said.

We figured whatever happened to Marsh was he'd lost something. We knew he was on his and knees. He'd dropped a photo from his wallet. He was down there looking for it. The dang photo when it hit the floor, skated under the bed. Maybe whispered to him. 'Over here.'

We considered Marsh. He'd gazed upon the photo. Jack Trayer in his restaurant, an apron white as a the look on Marsh's face. He was scared out of his wits. Maybe we figured his soul jumped out of his bones. We understood when you lose your soul you don't feel good.

Somebody dying can cause a commotion inside you. Grab that silk lining that we call the human spirit and drag it out, throw it high into the air over Bristol, my hometown which I hadn't seen in twenty years. The town of Bristol don't like to be left behind. It don't appreciate our absence. That's when you hear the dogs barking at night.

When Marsh looked down at his photo Jack looked him with affection. Jack's eyes widened, his mouth moved. His nose had nothing to say. Though it did twitch.

At that moment, in that cheap hotel, with the room deodorant smelling like old bread, we came to one overwhelming conclusion. Something was wrong with Marsh. He didn't look too good. Face was pale like he'd seen a ghost. He was all trembling. His eyes looked glazed over. And when he come out with it, mumbling his excuses we didn't take to it very kindly.

He had a whole list of complaints. His voice was shaky, pretty gone. It was on the fritz. What happened we asked him? Marsh got all flustered. He waved his arms around. We heard his gasp. His voice come out like it had something wrong with it. A shrill cry. He sounded like a stuck pig. He wheezed. We could see his Adam's apple jumping up and down. We come to one conclusion. Marsh didn't want to sing for Jack Trayer's funeral.

The reason didn't come out for a while. He kept it for himself. He got this puzzled look on his face as though he'd been hurt. The fear got inside him. Took something from him. He'd lost every bit of confidence he'd had. He was deprived of his gift. That voice that had shaken up Jack Trayer. Come out of Marsh's mouth and astounded Jack.

Marsh didn't feel comfortable. Grief had abducted his voice. Thrown it into the river. There was no way he could get it back. Why bother? He'd tried to get his singing voice to hold a note, but there wasn't a chance. The note come out like a pig squeal.

He felt he'd let Jack down. Marsh not amounting to much. Having growed up to be a mechanic. Sometimes he'd work on weekends at the bus station selling tickets to travelers. He just felt that he'd disappointed Jack Trayer.

He knew that was why we came to Bristol. It was our time to give Jack the song he loved so much. That church hymn that left him dumbfounded. Gave him something that he didn't have.

The thing that we got all excited about was singing for Jack. The same hymn we sang for him when we were children growing up in Bristol. We were poor kids and we ended in the alleyway behind Jack Trayer's restaurant. He came out and heard us singing. His eyes got real big. He was amazed that children could sound so beautiful. He gave a free supper.

And being that we were poor that amazed us. That we could chow down on one of Jack Trayer's blue ribbon cheeseburgers. The fries gave us a look and jumped right into our mouths. We were so hungry we couldn't speak. Jack's generosity, rewarding us for a church hymn changed our lives right in the alleyway.

We didn't know such a miracle could happen. Bristol's famous restauranteur Jack Trayer come over to us and said, 'Boys, I never nothing like that in my life. You sing like angels.' And we just couldn't believe our ears. He was talking to us. We was nothing. Just poor old country boys. We didn't know nothing. We didn't know nobody cared about us.

Gladstone's daddy was a drunk, his mama never loved Gladstone. Finley never had a dad. His mother worked in the factory, sewing on buttons to shirts and blouses. Me, my daddy died when I was six years old. He drove a truck for the potato chip company. My mama never lived to see her fortieth birthday. We was all poor. We didn't have nothing. All we had was each other. And we planned to stay together no matter what.

But Jack changed everything. We'd never had no luck until he come along. Lord, how do you ever get to know a dollar bill. We never got acquainted. Poor children don't have no association with cash money. We never believed anything good would come of us. Jack Trayer seen in us something. We don't know what.

He found is us the Holy Spirit. It come out of us and whooped it up in that alleyway. He couldn't take his eyes off us. He called us the Jack Trayer Trio. We only sung for he that one time. And the whole town of Bristol knew us. We was celebrities. Couldn't been more than eight years old each of us. Didn't know how to spell or count. Geography, history, book reading was something somebody else did.

Aside from not being from educated families, we were so poor we couldn't eat nothing but beans and greens. Corn on the cob. We didn't much pie or cake. If we ever tasted pie it was what we stole from Mrs Mumpower's window. She'd put out on the windowsill to cool. And we'd highjack them. Apple pie, peach pie, cherry pie. It gave us hope to eat a slice of pie.

I noticed Marsh was holding the photo in his hand. "Can I see that photo," I asked. Marsh it over to me. I saw Jack Trayer's stick his face at me. He smiled like Houdini. And just then I understood what Marsh knew. Jack Trayer's ghost was going to haunt us for the rest of our lives. He'd be tailing us. He'd never let us out of his sight.

Cause when somebody like Jack Trayer dies it's extraordinary. He don't just go away. His spirit comes back. Strolls around Bristol. If it finds somebody it knows it will glow. Gets inside us. And then what?

Sweetheart 5

Ghosts don't cast a shadow. It's a clump brightly lit, a glow that falls on the floor. Sometimes it sticks to the ceiling. Or hides under the living room coffee table. See one outside they might be floating or flying. You see in Bristol we're up on ghosts. They come out of old haunted houses along Anderson Street. It's quite interesting. Many people come out of their houses just to see the crowds of ghosts. Mostly ex-Bristolians, a few Confederate solders. The most prominent ghosts are those that can leap over a house. Maybe gaze into your bedroom window and make a sound like a turkey.

Bristol's an old town in Tennessee and Virginia. It don't know where it is. It might be in Virginia and then again it might be in Tennessee. The ghosts in Bristol go around making sure we know which is which. They'll come right up to you and point in the direction of your destination. Ghosts have the best street maps written in their minds.

You see a lump in the yard. It glows at night. That's a ghost gazing down into the grass, looking for something it lost. Probably a valuable gold ring or brass belt buckle. The howls that ghosts engender don't frighten anybody in Bristol. We've gotten used to them howls. One howl comes out of the east, meets another howl. They reminisce. It's nice when howls have something to talk about, besides the AfterLife, which we know in Bristol is our reward for believing in the Lord.

The glows from ghosts often gather on our faces. We learn of our faces glowing when we open the refrigerator door at night, that little light jumps out at us. We catch with our faces. Nice snag. It's sort of like the catcher receiving a curveball from his pitcher. Strike three! The fried chicken leg is out!

Any footsteps in the yard would whisper our names. That's what ghosts want us to know. They never forget us. They remember things going way back there. Have you asked a ghost what they remember about the War Between The States? They get all puzzled. They don't understand why we'd ask about such a thing. And don't we know? Isn't it written down in our heads what happened?

Every detail of the past is scribbled in our heads. Every minute of time going back to the beginning. God made the earth. It was a splendid day. Made much better when God made Adam and Eve. They lived in the Garden of Eden, which we know is in Bristol. Some say it's on the Virginia side. Others proclaim it's on the Tennessee side.

And there are others that say the Garden of Eden moves around. Somebody said that saw it up in Richmond. And sometimes it's all over Knoxville. All that fruit from a roadside stand comes from the Garden of Eden. You can bet on that.

Whatever you do, and this is good advice, don't ever tell a ghost to do you a favor. They don't like people in Bristol taking advantage of them. It's all right if you gawk. It's all right if you get frightened. Just don't ask them to paint the garage or wash your car. It's not what they expect from us. Ghosts want to be treated with respect. Like they was once alive. And now they're just a puff of smoke. The glows they give us make us feel happy. We don't understand why the glows of ghosts give us a thrill. But they do.

You can carry a glow home with you. You find one out on InterState 81, beside the road. Pick it up and put it in the backseat of your car. Don't forget it will light up at least one room, if not two. The glow will whisper the names of everyone in Bristol. They don't have to be good or bad. Or even interesting or up on the latest ball scores. The glow likes everybody.

In Bristol, the glows from ghosts give us confidence that the spiritual world is fine place. Lots of things to do. Gather up the dearly departed, catch them if they fall. The spirits of Bristol often sleep on rooftops or find their beds beneath the pine trees of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They sometimes go swimming in Steele Creek when nobody's looking. They've got a prudent streak. Don't enjoy anyone seeing them shimmer in the trees. It's not becoming.

I wondered if the ghost of Jack Trayer was somewhere. Would it come to its own funereal? What if Jack Trayer heard us sing again? What if Jack knew Marsh didn't want to sing? Wouldn't Jack want to give Marsh the heads up? Fear has its flaws. The confidence that is robbed of us when someone dies would be large. Big as the moon.

I wanted to help Marsh. I smiled at him. He didn't smile back. What are we going to do? We're a trio that sang for Jack Trayer so many years ago. And now one of us is all confused. He don't want to sing. He don't even remember the lyrics. He done forgot. How do you like that?

Just cause he experienced a loss of confidence. And his voice was broken up. Couldn't he get his voice into shape. Drink a cool glass of beer. Let the vocal chords get wet, maybe take a few laps in the moonlit pond in the throat. Trill like an insect. That usually gets the vocal chords to buzzing. What does the singing voice do when its seen a ghost?

Sweetheart 6

Bristol loved Jack Trayer so much it didn't want to let go. It held Jack in its arms. Kissed him on the forehead as it passed by his coffin. Probably the birds in Bristol felt sad for Jack. You could hear them peep all over town.

I thought of this as I washed my hands. The motel room when we first entered seemed large. Now it was about the size of a green pea. And how it held the beds and had enough room left over for us I didn't know. Some kind of motel know how was responsible for that.

I thought back on when we first entered the motel room. How it sort expanded like it knew we were arriving. Three drunken country boys return to their hometown to sing at a funeral. It was a cheap ride on a cluttered bus they took. All full of old ladies and old veterans chattering. Radios shouting the news. Three hours of boredom

The departed Jack Trayer, a prominent business owner who helped them when they were growing up, has passed away.   
We recall growing up in Bristol. One night they showed up in the alleyway of Jack's restaurant and sang a church hymn. Jack came out and showed his appreciation by giving the boys a free supper. The boys were dumbfounded at Jack's generosity. The boys being poor and too young for real jobs.

We were boys who had worked hard all their lives. Simple men who never missed a day of work. All honest, incapable of consuming anything we didn't earn. You want something you work for it, that's what we live by. Life is supposed to be hard — we knew we had to fight for everything we'd get.

Life had shortchanged each of us in different ways. We knew we were uncivilized. What we lacked in civility could fill the Grand Canyon. Our drunkenness caught up with us, even though we sipped black coffee hoping to prepare ourselves for the big event that night — singing at the funeral of Jack Trayer.

Our low social standing, alcoholism, poverty, lack of education, an unwillingness to wear business clothes, unacquainted with perfect manners and delicate matters which would require some tactful approach. Like kindness, a measure of compassion — we'd rather ride a cow or horse around, flapping our hat in the air than pretend to be someone we're not.

Marsh didn't want to sing for Jack's funeral? He offered numerous reasons why. He felt uncomfortable — he believed he had disappointed his childhood hero Jack Trayer.

Marsh grew up to be a factory worker. Married his high school sweetheart. Unfortunately, Marsh's marriage was in trouble. He and his wife bickered often. Roger didn't make enough money to make ends meet. He felt like a failure.

We were three drunken mourners, all country boys, exhibiting an awkward array of drunken walking back and forth in motel room, taking turns kicking the trash can. Sometimes standing, wiggling our arms, occasionally resembling windmills. Stretching as though our bodies were tightening. We practiced twisting our torsos, reaching upward, a few golf swings. Fly swatting contests. Scratching. Putting fingers in their ears to check the oil level. Wax taking to our fingers. We wiped it off on the sleeves of our shirts.

Our faces loose, sloppy, eyes gurgling the light. As our inhibitions left back on that old bus. Embarrassment's got its head stuck up its butt. Can't see or feel even the smallest shame.

Often we couldn't stand still. We'd cross the room and walk back again. Surprised that we could find their way back. We were dumbstruck by Jack's grief, which filled our heads with a darkness.

We felt intimidated by the birdsong we heard outside. The squish of cars racing around in the rain. And we didn't know what to expect when we got there. Bristol had its eyes on us. We felt afraid.

Oh, it was the motel room. The chairs want to hold you. The lamps didn't speak a word. Their heads drooped. We were surprised constantly by their wild hands gesturing as though they were directing traffic. The light from the bathroom murmured some solemn prayer that rubbed us the wrong way.

Drunkenness had bequeathed to each of us an immaturity. Sometimes we vacillate between children and teenagers. As much as grief weighed us down, trembling in our voices and faces, was thoroughly bereaved young men. Suddenly seized by a grief that swallowed us up. Our voices roes and fell to the memories we held of Jack Trayer, the deceased.

Each of us possessed by a hillbilly ancestor. The spirit comes out and wiggles. One fellow simply point at another. Laugh. Make a pig sound, chicken cluck, horse snort, slap his knee like it would put a curse on somebody.

Grinning, stick out their tongue, making motor boat sounds, toots, whistles, bombs going off. Pings, balloons bursting with laughter.

We cross the room to punch each other on the arm. Mess with their neckties.

"I like your necktie. But the knot is smirking at me. Could you do something about it?"

One could observe a spirited monkey in each of us. Sometimes more patient than you'd expect. Hands often flying off like birds to perch on a shoulder. Our voices often bungled. Loss of expression drawn in the air.

Sometimes one of would rise and scream 'yee-hi!' Because we're country boys. We got dirt under their feet. We speak with a twang that's going to dig a grave for Jack Trayer, the greatest man they ever knew. Bristol's own hamburger king. Flapjack maker and milk shake man. His fries gave us the joy of life.

Sometimes we'd hear Jack's voice in the wind outside. The sound of one of us throwing up in the bathroom accompanied by church bells from a nearby Baptist Church. As well birds twittered in the trees. It's nature's way of distracting us from obnoxious events.

We occasionally accidentally fell. The floor of the motel seemed to wiggle and we try our best to throw them. Drunken feet and drunken arms have a strange way of talking. You can just hear them asking for something to hold onto. So nobody falls. Look out. Here I go.

Our shoes don't seem to understand their job. Hold onto the floor.

The effect is comical acrobatic gibberish as body language goes. It could merely be stepping from one place to another or rising from a chair the sound effects are various members of farms. Chairs are pigs. Pictures on the wall cockadoodledoo. Sometimes the night table seemed to moo, snort like horses, ever so dearly yammering like young cattle. The oink of a pig never crossed our lips. But you know its deep inside them itching to come up for air. Somewhere the pig lived in our hearts. It was all sorrow with a curly tail.

Sweetheart 7

Just don't expect Gladstone to give you nothing. He's all into the church hymn that knocked it out of the park that night in Bristol. He recalls it over and over. Coming to town on that bus, Gladstone rolled out the red carpet. We could hear him croon. That church hymn we sung for Jack came out of his mouth and smacked a few heads as it zipped around the bust.

That singing voice stuck the key into the lock. We stepped through the door of the motel room. Throwed our bags around. Kerplop on the floor and kerplop on the bed. A duffle bag looks glamorous when its lying on its back. Gazing up at the ceiling.

We wasn't particular which bed we wanted. Patting a bed, seeing if it's firm or soft. Not particularly impressed. Noticing the mattress had only a few things to whisper. And none of them was about singing.

Our lips were as large as Bristol. We knew what would be coming out. The church hymn we sang for Jack Trayer had a ring to it. We understood the subtle sounds that awakened the man we adored. Jack Trayer's ears could hear things from far away. He could hear a chickadee peep all the way from Blountville.

Of course, that didn't explain for a minute why when we sung out Jack was lifted off his feet. He looked fifty feet tall. Legs as long as State Street. His face was handsome moon wearing an apron. Those eyes jumping on the church hymn and riding it around Sullivan County. He come back in just a few minutes. We seen Jack wiping his hands on his apron. All starlight on that apron. Lord knows his hands could tell your fortune.

The sound of Jack Trayer's voice warm, tender as a buttermilk biscuit. You could smell the fried chicken in every word he said. The words all buttered up, some grits said what you wanted to hear. Some corn just about took the cake. It was Jack who invented the Bristol Cake. One side full of strawberries, the other side full of fudge, pecans running around looking for the right mouth to baptize. Love is like that.

Admiration for one person like Jack. A folk hero. A man who could cook, boil, fry like an angel. Desserts from Jack Trayer still haunt the town of Bristol. People can't stop talking about his Chocolate Fudge Pecan pie. It's legend.

Now Jacking being no fool heard about Bunting's hotdog. The chili had visited Jack's restaurant and kicked him in the chin. Got him down on the floor and started to punch him in belly. The cherry smash told Jack where he could go.

You hear a sweet voice like Jack's and you're assured of his cheerful blessing. If we ate at his restaurant, the sunlight would follow us home. We got perks. The things we got was immeasurable. Of course, being poor boys we didn't have money to blow on food. Our consumption come looking in the mirror. Our eyes took a bite of a buttermilk biscuit. We spoke our obligation to honey. If we don't eat honey once a week, we might die. And that's how people in Bristol know the power of honey and butter sticking its two cents into a buttermilk biscuit. The investment totally rewarding.

The mouths of Bristol knelled down when Jack's pancakes come around, pleading the Fifth. Not wanting to be accused of adding unnecessary baggage onto anybody's belly or caboose.

Sweetheart 8

Sweetheart 8

Gladstone took his hat off. He tossed it on the bed. It bounced and turned to flop on the floor. "Great to be in Bristol," Gladstone tooted. His voice was a locomotive. He could sing like Tennessee Ernie Ford.

Me, my mouth don't sound like that. It hides somewhere in the corner of the room. If the song it lets go ever reaches an ear, there's very little charming or sweet in it. I've got a lemon drop voice. If the acoustics are right, the words that come out of me will kiss you, hold you hand. Maybe even share a cigarette with you. If I see your cigarette unlit, I'm going to sing like a fire. Give it a helping hand. Till sparks romance.

The ladies on the bus when I sang turned around and give me an ugly look. Like I was strangling a french poodle on the bus. That wasn't nice. I'm an all right singer. Jack heard in my voice a fish jumping out at Holston Lake. He told me he saw the sunlight walking on them notes of that church hymn we sang in the alleyway that night.

Oh, Saturday night, what you got in store for three poor children. Oh, Lord, when Jack come out of the backdoor he was covered in starlight. The white apron stood before us. Jack's face was amazing like it was the Stone Castle. His eyes lit by a secret current by run under the ground. His smile opened up the summer night and walked right in as though it owned it. Jack was quite the charming gentlemen.

His ears heard something extraordinary in our voices.

"Glad we could get together," I said. It wasn't like they didn't know. I was merely throwing a few sticks on the fire that burned in each us. That night we'd sing for Jack Trayer. We'd set the world on fire. We'd shake the leaves out of Bristol. Sweep the dust from the corners of its eyes.

"Maybe we drank too much on the bus," Marsh said. He'd learned a long time ago, honesty gives him its secret charm.

Gladstone give him credit. Slapped him on the back like he was congratulating a pig for winning a blue ribbon at the county fair.

"Brown bags don't tell drivers anything," Gladstone said. "He never knew when we were taking swigs.

"He probably seen us as three old drunks and paid us no mind," Marsh told him. Hiding behind a grin. Which was big a dining room table.

"I'm not intoxicated. Are you?" I asked. My eyes give me away. Told Gladstone, spilled the beans right into his lap.

"No. I'm sober as a red balloon full of gas," Gladstone answered. "Climbing high, way up there in the sky. Where the air is full of itself. Always trying to be a blue sky, and just not able to get the job done."

"You're drunk. You're stinking drunk." I gazed at Gladstone with a small measure of contempt. He sometimes needed the sharp edge of voice to poke him in the side.

"All right. I got a buzz on, Gladstone admitted. "But it's mostly in my legs. I've got to sit down. Take a load off."

"Me, too," Marsh said. "I feel like I'm going to wobble like a three legged table at a Jehovah's Witness meeting. Everybody jumping up and down. The whole town of Bristol scared out of their minds. It's an earthquake. Hold onto your hat."

"That bus all full of old men and ladies chattering."

"Radios shouting the news."

"Three hours of sheer boredom. The yellow sun fell asleep on the mountain. Couldn't keep its eyes open.

I up said, "I wouldn't miss this for the world. Love my old hometown. Nothing like Bristol."

"Why'd we drink so much?" asked Finley.

"The bottle told us we had to finish it."

"Yeah, I remember that bottle saying that when we popped the cork."

"Bottles always going on about what they like and don't like. It's just fizz doesn't care what you think. Fizz tells it like it is."

Sweetheart 9

There comes a time when you have to sing. And all I wanted to know from Marsh was he prepared to sing that church hymn at Jack's funeral. I gave Marsh the chance to make good. I asked him to sing for me a solo. "Do you recall singing church hymns for Jack Trayer in the alleyway of his restaurant?" I asked Marsh. The light came on in his eyes. The iris grabbed a suitcase and packed it with socks, shirts, trousers. You know the pupil just sat there on a barstool. Never got up, did twist its neck around, reach for a pig's knuckle. Eyes don't alway see things. Some eyes just twiddle their thumbs. Let the light have its own way. Stealing everything they could get their hands on.

"Ain't never forgot it," Marsh replied. I could hear in his voice a little man rowing a boat out on Holston Lake. The spot he was aiming for was just down the stream, a little to the right. Take a left a big puddle of moonlight. If the fish ain't biting, you can hold to your bait. Fry it up when you get home. Little bits of bacon work miracles when you fry them sitting next to two egg yolks. Ever notice egg yolks look like raccoon eyes watching for the moon to step through the woods, seeing if it could find moonlight making love in the dark to a stinkbug.

"We were all poor" Gladstone joined in. He was sitting up in bed, his long legs nearly biting the tail off a quarter after twelve. Lord, let the clock mediate with the grieving flock. We felt a sadness creep into our flesh. We understood the fatigue we felt was part of the grieving process.

"We sang for our supper, Marsh added. What purpose did it serve that we were sequestered from our inner resources. Confidence didn't get off the bus with us. We left it behind like an old raincoat. Sorrow plunders the human race. We stood in line to accept the diploma of Grief. Oh, how we were disappointed that Jack Trayer died. The call came when he was asleep. His spirit managed to lock up his bones, so his soul wouldn't leap out. But I'm telling you Jack's soul sneaked out the backdoor. A little hole in the back of your head.

"Jack was fond of us," I couldn't leave that out. I was reaching for a comment inside my head. All I could find was a few marbles that I used to win the championship at Rosemont Elementary School. My thumb kicked the blue monster out of the circle. The red marbles all wept. Which was exactly how I felt.

Sweetheart 10

Grief's celebration contained a can of worms. You had to eat it. And if you didn't those worms would take away something from you you don't want to give up. Not in a million years.

It could be your hearing or your seeing. If you pass the girlie magazine store, do you notice those girls on the cover waving at you. Whispering soft remarks about how you've got a great build, strong shoulders, arms that could lift the town of Bristol. Put it on your back and carry it for a good country mile.

All the way to sadness. A small town outside Bristol where nobody plays golf or rolls a bowling ball down a shiny wooden lane. When love cries it sounds like its sick of loneliness, feels like a dead man sitting quietly in his coffin, hands folded over. The look on his face causing crickets in backyards to play a Beethoven Symphony.

Lord, when you ears get wind of the corruption of one's reputation by a dog's bark. Someone who wants to smear mud on our name. Jack's name was as big as the Earth. You couldn't say it without closing your eyes. The name itself was full of magic. Once I said Jack's name before going to school. I passed ever test. One arithmetic quiz tried to strangle me. I fought back.

I hate numbers. They never get anything right. I wish they could add up my life. Carry the four. What's with arithmetic? Doesn't it know we need it? Why be hard to get? Don't hide in the closet. Let's share some light from a far away land. Isn't the land of numbers a cannibal tribe on the island of Algebra? They will eat you alive. Or they could smoke you like stale cigarettes found along the beach at Steele Creek. You never know about numbers. They come and go. They lie down, get some sun. They spread strawberry jam on their toast every morning. Why can't the scrambled eggs be more careful about blurting bacon's secrets.

The numbers quaint their simplicity of thoughts. No one number in whole world could occupy the hot seat. Do numbers know of death? Surely they do. They volunteer for statistics. Five hundred people died in Bristol in the last fifty five days. The numbers that tell of their passing speak in a low voice. They tremble when you catch them on the page.

And what of words? Spoken they'd shoot your eyes out. The smallest word tenderly spoke when it uses the word 'death,' fire can be seen inside. A blazing campfire in the word. 'Death' with flickering lights, then sudden the burst of a fiery beast, long tail. I say Big Foot. Death looks like Big Foot. All furry, ape-like, his arms two country boys. His feet as big as Sullivan County.

What of the letters in 'death'? Do they deplore their birthplace. And do the letters go wherever they please? Them other letters know where the 'death' letters keep coming back, staying for a while, then heading out?

If the 'd' spoke kindly of Jack Trayer surely Bristol understood the praise. Jack's death marked on the calendar. Who could ever forget?

The 'e' that hide out in 'death.' The 'a' eating an apple while listening to the ball game on the radio, while sitting in the backseat of that hearse. The presumptuous 'a' wearing a black necktie, playing poker with 't'. The face on 't' looking like it had stayed up all night.

The 'h' I hate to tell you couldn't tie its shoes. Or button its shirt. Don't think its washed it hands for a thousand years.

Sweetheart 11

How does grief affect you? A sip of whiskey knows a thing or two. Cigarettes will help you. They envelop death in a puff of smoke. The smoke curls around and stands up, spins upward to cling to the ceiling. That's where it puts its feet up and relaxes. Unafraid, smoke gazes down. Smiles at you.

I know of sadness. Yet what grief when it escapes from its cave in the back of our minds. It's been there all the time. Comes with being born. You start to gasp and scream. That's when grief sticks its head into your room. You awakened it from some lost world nobody ever cared about. A place that only the wind goes when it's good and tired. Can't make heads or tails out of nothing. The wind's head all full of air. And when the wind gets like that it can't think worth a dang.

We being three country boys we understood death was a straw chewing country bumpkin. Didn't know a dang thing about nothing. It kept its hands in its pockets when it got out of jail. Went looking for the elderly. Drunk drivers, people who can't see or sometimes walk out into the highway. The cars don't seem to miss anybody. You cross in the moonlight and they'll come along and wish you good night.

Death drags its followers from place to place. There's no time for sobbing. Sad eyes don't carry their share. Hands haven't anything to say, only gulping a liquor bottle. That love that sustains the sot will seldom find any comfort for the tea totaler. Though I can see why death is like a cup of tea. You sip over the years from its brim. The steam rises to tickle your nose. Tell you a few false stories about coffee. It can't touch its toes. It can't chew without making a lot of noise. There's the splash, when the spoon plunges into the lagoon. Who's going to save the life of the spoon. Will sugar speak its magic spell upon the coffee? The reward that coffee gives the grieving awakens the sleeping giant that has just rolled over, tucked up legs, snoring like a mountain stream excited to hear the hoot of an owl.

Sweetheart 12

Why do people die? I ask you this like a little baby lying in bed, giggling at the existential void between the TV and the birdcage, kicking your fingers to the toot of your whistle. Every moment of your life is precious. Believe that every minute counts. There's no saving of time. You get your days and next thing you know is they've turned their backs on you. Letting you know how they feel by kicking you in the nuts.

Don't treat minutes like they're your slave cause they ain't. They don't do windows. Everytime it visits your home you make it do housework. Dishes, clothes, every inch of the house clean up and down.

If a minute tries to escape you, run after it. Grab it by its short hairs and hold it to your chest like it was your baby. Born of your flesh. Now crying in the night. Someone's got to get up and address the panic. The sudden need to hear the truth, as though every truth was a country far away, strange customs, language unknowable. Elephants living in white cottages somewhere up in the mountains of east Tennessee.

Sweetheart 13

I was hanging outside, getting some fresh air when Gladstone come out. He wasn't full of himself. He inhaled deep the Bristol air, his chest swelled to the size of that old bus who dropped us off up the road. We walked the rest of the way, carrying our bags. The blue sky above gazed down at you. Mourners who knew what they had to do. Sing for Jack Trayer. His funeral only two hours away.

"Jack Trayer saw something in us," Gladstone said. I turned around and saw him coming out the door.

"Wasn't he amazing?" I said.

"I don't know what he saw in us."

"He loved us," I said, making certain he agreed, waiting for him to check in with a look of approval. At least, nod his head. Or let his eyes tell me how there was nothing ever said that was so true.

"He said he'd never heard three boys sing like we did," Gladstone said.

"That church hymn put a smile on Jack Trayer's face big as the moon. Got all happy. Eyes turned bright. Give me a look like I was on fire."

"Never seen nobody so pleased by a church hymn."

"I seen a photo of Jack. Handsome man. What a smile he had. Big as Bristol. You could tell by that picture he was a fine man. He could see in people things that no one else could."

"I half expected Jack to be waiting for me when I arrived."

"Haven't been in Bristol in twenty years. I never expected to come back like this. All sad for somebody who died. Jack had a spark of life in him that he shared with everybody."

'For some reason, Jack saw me like I was somebody. A plain old county boy like me ain't suppose to go no where."

"I've been to Blountville. I'm a man of the world."

"I'm plain folk."

"So am I."

"Grew up on a farm."

"Many of my friends were pigs, chickens, a good little goat."

"I loved cows."

"Last time I seen either of you boys it was ages ago.

"Why didn't we stay in touch?"

"I don't know."

"Why would we stop talking to each other?"

"I went into the army."

"I went to college."

"What did you study?"

"Girls, beer and pizza. And lots of dirty laundry."

"You got some education."

"Jack had all the brains. He had a fine mind."

"Brilliant man."

"We're singing tonight. Somebody should tell Marsh it's a command performance. That way we won't have to kidnap him and drag him out to the funeral."

"Everybody in town will be there."

It was just at that moment, I felt tinge of anxiety. My vocal chords done turned feeble. I could hear in my throat a little hum like a junebug. I wondered if I was like Marsh. Scared out of my mind that I'd mess up. Trip over the words. Burst inside me the wind of an old tuba. My lips not on their mark. My voice climbing up a tree and leaping off. Somebody done twisted my voice and took it out to Holston Lake and held it under. My voice drowned, kicking the minnows away. My voice eaten whole by doubt, the terrible gulps for air. Me, thrashing around in the water. My voice limp and like a rotten willow tree limb just floating around, birdsongs coming to the rescue. Too late to save me.

Sweetheart 14

"We hit the big time. Going to sing for Jack Trayer," I heard Gladstone call out. I wasn't prepared for it. The sound it pushing me off balance. I wondered if when we hit the spotlight would we make the grade? Would voices reach for the sublime or would they crawl on their hands and knees though the muck and mire. Just ordinary voices with nothing to do, but twist a church hymn's neck. Pull its legs off. Would the piano complain after we sang. What would Bristol think? All those mourners come to Jack Trayer's funeral. Every sad eye in Sullivan County.

Where do mourners get those solemn looks? I wondered if you could get a few at the local discount store? Do they have one in my size? Will it fit? Or do I need to be measured? A solemn look should be at least a mile long. And take its time getting out of bed. And when walking around your mouth, would it turn toward the local bar? Or would sit atop your lower lip, like an acrobat on a balancing beam. Hungry tigers down below, eating for the first person in Bristol to frown. A sudden release of confidence bursting out of the crowds' mouths. Suddenly grown large as the moon. The mouths when they primly go around cemetery, dropping flower petals along the way.

Lord help us if we lose our way. The hearse drove at a slow pace. We heard the engine purr like an alley cat after a rat. Then we heard the tires rub their noses on the road. One could hear in the black suit that drove the hearse a beautiful church hymn jumping out of the glove compartment and dancing on the front seat cushion, waving at everybody passing by. There's Louis, Tatters, Paul, Betty and that floozie that works at the girly magazine shop. The one with round red balloons out front, dangling like they wanted to get to know you.

The silence of grief like a wave of cool air that robs the entire planet of anything to say. What word would divide grief into smaller parts. It's an old cheese. Smells like the month of May in which every horse fertilizes the fields of Sullivan County. The patties point their fingers at each other. No one believes the wind, a dirty rotten believer in sin. Who hasn't been tempted by the wind?

Sweetheart 15

I felt a chill cover me when I thought I saw Jack's face in the bathroom mirror. His round face with the chubby cheeks bobbled in the glass. A little steamed since I turned on the hot water. My hands still a little wet. I grabbed a towel to wipe Jack's smile off my hands.

"I've got something to tell you," Marsh said.

"What?" I asked.

"Something in my head clicked," Marsh said. "It occurred to me coming over on the bus."

Gladstone give him a look and said, "What occurred to you, Marsh?" "It might not be a good idea for me to sing tonight, Marsh said, he bit on his lower lip. Them words come out of mouth and stung us.

"What do you mean?" said Gladstone, irritated by the notion. What was happening? How could things be so bad that Marsh wanted out? somewhere something awful had taken place. Robbed Marsh of his confidence, wrung it out like an old wash rag.

All he had inside him was grief and it had eaten all his singing ability. What he had in its place was all the grief he felt. Covering up every church hymn he'd ever seen. So now he couldn't remember singing like a lark. He felt like a doorknob. And doorknobs don't know no church hymns.

"I can't sing tonight," Marsh confessed.

I closed my eyes. "Did you say what I think you said?" I asked.

"You got it right," Marsh replied,

"Marsh, what are you pulling here?" Gladstone asked. He gave Marsh a mean look, as though not singing would be a crime.

"I said...I said I can't sing."

"You can't what?" I inquired.

"Sing." The word offended Gladstone. It was as though it hard as rock.

You're going to sing, Marsh

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"I ain't got it in me no more."

"You must be kidding."

"I'm sorry."

"We ride a bus all the way up here, Gladstone told Marsh. Punched with his finger in the chest. I seen a button fly off. "We come here to sing for Jack Trayer. It's what we was born to do. It's what we got to do. Don't have any choice. Our reputation is at stake."

"You think it's that easy."

"You quit on us?"

"I don't mean nothing by it."

"You never even brought it up coming over here."

"I'm bringing it up now."

"What happened to change your mind?"

Sweetheart 16

Marsh grimaced. He understood our stern objections. A voice come to town to grieve could get disappointed by a startling surprise. Not singing was unthinkable. Our irritation burned bright in the motel room. They enveloped him. He seemed perturbed that we didn't climb aboard his excuse. He didn't want to sing for Jack Trayer. What did that mean? Were we supposed to accept his refusal? Didn't understand we wanted more than anything in the world to sing? We were astonished when we received the invitation. A blessing that caught us off guard.

"You're not going to sing? That's a huge disappointment. What's come over you, Marsh. Haven't you any respect for Jack?" Gladstone sounded annoyed.

"His grief makes him immature," I said. "He's turned into a little boy right in front of us. He's around seven years old. That night we sang for Jack he was a child. Look at him. He's afraid he might hit a sour note. And the whole town of Bristol explode."

"I come to my senses. My voice is gone." Marsh's voice shook. You had to feel sorry for him. He was seven years old. And when you're that immature you don't nothing. The adult in you got kidnapped. You could see Marsh. He'd shrunk. No bigger than he was when we grew up together. He never was one for taking risks. He'd hesitate before rolling down a hill. He'd get dizzy from the tumbling. Closed his eyes.

Whooshed as he turned upside down. Marsh thought if he got dizzy he might gain something. He'd lie on the ground, gaze up at the sky. Waiting for his brain to stop spinning. His braincells would come to slowdown, more so if he closed his eyes.

It was strange to see Marsh so small. The fright inside had shrunk him down to a small boy. He looked at us, and understood we knew he'd lost at least eighteen inches. His nose was smaller. His mouth seemed not to know it had regressed.

"He's a little boy," Gladstone said, patting Marsh on the head.

I didn't say much to Marsh about his loss of height. I did glare at him, expecting he might come around. And say, 'I'd like to sing tonight, my voice is a contraption, a jalopy, don't you think I know it squeaks?"

Right at that moment, I seen Marsh turn from a child into a bird. A sparrow sitting on a chair, nibbling some cheese crackers. I wondered if grief does that to all of us. Takes something away. Changes us from adults to scrawny birds.

I wondered if Marsh could peep. Would that be enough to get us over the hump. He could come with us, open his mouth, everybody seeing that he was a bird would be impressed. Don't all birds sing? They don't get afraid. Grief comes only in the autumn when birds get the chill and have to warm by flying around Bristol, stopping off at chimneys with a fire going on down below.

"Let me hear you sing," Gladstone insisted. "I want to know if your voice has what it takes. If it don't, we'll examine your voice. Pull its ears, poke its eyes out, grab its legs and make a wish."

"My voice is a lost cause," Marsh confessed,. When I was on the bus I tried to wake it up. Stuck my head out the window. The wind took my voice."

"Let's not play games, Marsh. We're asking you to sing tonight. It's your solemn obligation. You owe it to Jack."

Marsh folded his arms. He narrow his brow. "I think when your voice goes," Marsh said, "it's because somebody took it. When you get afraid, your voice hides from you. You got to go looking everywhere. So far I ain't seen it."

"You've got a fine voice," I told him. 'So don't try and fool us. You're the finest singer we've ever heard. Your voice blooms like a red rose when you sing."

"You don't mean that" Marsh said. Impressed and gloating. It was as though somebody had filled him up with confidence. His pride came tiptoeing out. Took a bow.

Then Marsh reconsidered. His voice must've gotten a cramp, or didn't like the expectations of mourners who might detect a sour note fly out of his mouth.

"Get a hold of yourself, boy!" Gladstone demaned.

"My voice got a black eye from a church hymn. I been prating all week. My voice is accident prone. Fell down stairs and skinned its knee. It's plum feeble. It won't come out."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "What in tarnation is happening?" I asked. "You can't perform?"

"Never said nothing coming over," Gladstone said.

"You just now figured that out?" I asked. "Voice don't die. They might get all upset when somebody dies. But they come out swinging. One church hymn won't kill you, Marsh. But I just might."

"I can't get my singing voice to make a sweet sound. I used to be able to start my singing voice by smoking a cigarette or chewing gum. But so far nothing's helped."

Gladstone ripped a page of the phonebook. He glared down at the address and number. It was Jack Trayer's phone number. Gladstone called the number and a voice came on grabbed him by the collar and throwed him down on the carpet. I think Gladstone expected to be greeted warmly. He got fried.

Sweetheart 17

"What kind of foolishness do we have here?" Gladstone said. He couldn't understand Marsh's limp excuse.

"You don't look well, Marsh," I said. "What's gnawing at you?"

"I got a touch of the fever, Marsh offered. "Might be a cold coming on. My throat itches. My left hand hurts. I think I've got a rash on my right hand last I looked."

"Does it itch?" I inquired.

"Little bit," Marsh said, scratching the hand in question.

Gladstone shook his head. "Hard to swallow?" Gladstone said. He was getting tired of Marsh's refusal to sing. It was a hard to take. How you going to swallow that scrawny fish?

"It died on me, Marsh said. He showed me the rash. The rash was pointed like the arrows of a compass. Appropriate since we were all lost. We needed some way out of the woods. How could we find our way back? And would Marsh sing when presented with the problem? His hesitancy was like a poison that we'd swallowed.

Marsh looked down at him hand. Examined the rash like it was some kind of evidence in a trial.

"How's your throat, Mash? I asked.

"Can I look, I said. "Open up. Let's take a peek in there."

"Maybe we can revive it," Gladstone said. Looking over my shoulder into Marsh's gaping mouth. It was as big as the Bristol Caverns. He had one gold tooth on the left side and another gold tooth somewhere hanging around the right side. The gold teeth glowed from the light on the nightstand. I couldn't see in the dark of his mouth any offending itch. I wondered if Marsh's mouth was capable of carrying a note. It came to me that Marsh's throat was a vessel in which a country song could squeak out, squirm into the air. I wasn't satisfied his voice was dead on arrival. It might just need a little assistance.

Marsh frowned and said, "What can you do? My voice has crashed and burned?

"We're going to dig down in there and rescue it like a child who accidentally fell down a well," Gladstone asserted.

"How you going to do that?" Marsh asked, shaking his head.

"Spray it with some rose water," I offered.

Marsh closed his eyes and said "Don't like people looking in my mouth."

"I don't see nothing," Gladstone stated like he was on the witness stand. And I guess I was the judge. The jury was somewhere out in Bristol getting dressed for Jack Trayer's funeral.

"You ain't going to climb in there, are you?" Marsh inquired. His eyes kind of rolled back in his head and snapped like they was rubber bands and the looks Marsh give was paper wads that stung, if you didn't duck.

"What do you see in there?" I asked.

Gladstone turned back to look at me. "It's kind of dark," Gladstone said. He squinted, tried to take another peek, lifting the mouth up wider, gazing inside to detect any specks that could cause his vocal chords to fall mute. Or was a scratchy throat against the church hymn.

We decided to pray for Marsh's singing voice. We got our knees, all of us, including the one with the bad throat. Already we had Marsh squeak and peep his way around the subject. Marsh's voice box was a Jack in the box. A scary clown who'd fallen downstairs, got its leg broke. The singing voice lay on its back, looking at the stars. How could revive the leper throat?

We prayed and prayer. The Lord listened to us. We knowed that because we heard church bells coming to save us. How could the Lord in his mercy not save Marsh's voice? Wasn't it impossible to understand our predicament? A singing voice had fallen on hard times. We opened our eyes after an hour of praying. Marsh looked like a changed man. Or was that the picture window with the plastic red butterfly dancing in the sunlight, asking for coffee to cure a hangover. My head hurt like a little boy getting whipped for peeing in the backward, killing a row of red roses and what's the punishment. The moon cutting his head off with a Hank Williams' song? The back porch lamp riding a night sky over the mountains?

Sweetheart 18

"Have you tried to sing?" The question came out of Gladstone's mouth, sat down on Marsh's head. A good place to see and hear what was going on.

"I'm all broke up inside," Marsh offered.

"Why? What happened?" I asked him. It was like talking to somebody who had just seen a ghost.

"You know what took my voice," Marsh said.

"No, I don't," Gladstone corrected him. "Could you explain why your voice is shot. Did somebody grab it and throw to the ground. Stomp on it. Like an old wooden log they needed for the fire."

"Jack Trayer died,"

Three words that cut like a knife. You bled sorrows. You understood that the life of a man you worshipped was gone. The broken heart not like an old clock you can repair. Put on the thick glasses and poke around with a steel toothpick. While whispering what clocks like to hear, telling them the AfterLife is near. Just don't tick when you should tock. That way time will step aside and allow you to pass.

I told Marsh. "You've got to rise the occasion."

"I got the shakes," Marsh said.

"I'm going to give you the shakes in a minute."

"Are you threatening me? Marsh asked, hoping he'd heard it incorrectly. Them words smeared with chicken manure. And smelling up the motel room, which was shrinking, down to the size of a thimble. Don't you wonder how anybody can live in such confinement?

"What's wrong with you, Marsh?" I spoke angrily. "Get it together, will you?"

"I've got to tell you...."

What?" Gladstone asked.

Marsh's brow suddenly leaped up. Arched its back like a cat about to hiss. "I'm not going to be able to go on tonight.

"What's the matter?"

"You scared? Need somebody to hold your hand?

"I've got a terrible feeling. I feel it in my gut, like I was a kid riding the Farris wheel for the first time. There's a dark spirit inside me and it don't want me to sing. If I sing the whole town of Bristol will perish. Now, we don't want that to happen, do we? The town who discovered country music deserves better."

Sweetheart 19

"Should I strike a blow for reason?" Gladstone asked. "There's no reason in the world that someone who can sing won't sing."

"The church hymn is waiting for us," I reminded Marsh.

"We sang it when we were kids in that alleyway back of Jack's restaurant," Gladstone announced. "An old church hymn in which Jack observed the moon and all the stars in the sky. He heard in our singing some giant that stood up in Bristol, boasting of God's goodness and mercy. Three children, poor as church mice. Opening their mouths and letting go the sweet music of a church hymn. One that could sweep you off your feet. Lift you right up out of your pew. Look in your face and see the lights of the AfterLife. Heaven a thousand mansions in them words from that church hymn. And you could see the souls inside the words. Just smiling and waving."

"What can I do?" Marsh squealed. "My voice is gone. All beat up. Stretched across the bed. Just lying there. Moaning. I'm a squeaker. All that comes out has been soaked with kerosene and set on fire. My throat hurts like somebody run over my head. My mouth feels puffy. It needs to take a nap. Do a little meditation. I think my mouth is tired of living. It needs a vacation. Be honest I ain't been kissed in two years. My wife Myrtle and I don't get along. The last time we kissed was Christmas. I don't know what got into us."

"Your voice needs comforting. I sure wish I reach in your mouth and pull out your vocal chords. Slam them on the carpet and stomp them like they was on fire. Listen to them squeal like pigs being stuck with prods, spanking them on their curly tails. And screaming along with them."

"Maybe we ask your vocal chords to cheer up. Lie down for a while and close their eyes. Vocal chords can be kind of touching. And when you want them to sing they get shy."

"Your voice, Marsh, is the most important thing in Bristol. Thousands of people will be disappointed if your voice doesn't get better. How do we coax your voice out? What bribe would appease your voice?"

"I'd say your voice wants to sing. But something's holding it back. Won't let go for nothing. Your voice is caught by fear. The blood done run out the back door and left your vocal chords holding the bag."

"Something got a hold of it," Marsh said. "Maybe it was the Devil. He don't like church hymns."

"Let me tell you how I feel," Gladstone said.

"I'm listening," Marsh said. "I got ears. Ain't nothing wrong with them. It's my throat that hit the skids."

"The reason I came into the world was to sing like a bird for Jack Trayer's funeral, Gladstone said. "You got it, Marsh. Let your ears take that with them. I'm up to here with you."

"Don't be mad at me. I'm struck. It's grief come over me. It took my voice. I can't sing with my heart broke."

"You don't impress me anymore," Gladstone told him. "I'm terribly disappointed in you, Marsh. You've hurt me. It's a bruise that will never go away."

"I'm sorry I prayed for you. It's embarrassing knowing I asked the Lord to save your voice. Know what? I don't care if your voice ever comes back. If I saw it, I'd stepped on it like a garden snail on the sidewalk."

"Are you certain? You backing out? You don't think your voice can stand up for itself. Are you telling us you can't go on?"

I'm sorry. It's not my fault.

"Who's fault is it?"

"I haven't got it in me."

"Marsh, look at me," Gladstone growled. "I've known you for a long time. We grew up together in Bristol. This town is depending on you. The soppy eyed mourners. Ladies wearing black dresses. Some knowing that death had limitations. More shortcomings than a dead polecat beside the road. And there we all picking at body like we was vultures. What do think we can find? Our sense of mortality is busted up. Somebody done throwed it off Holston Bridge. Didn't you hear the splash?"

Sweetheart 20

Marsh mumbles up a storm. Words come out of him that I never heard of. They're all jumbled, got a buzz going on. But they ain't saying nothing. He's mumbling like an old man who got kicked by a mule. He's bumbling for something to say. He can't quite get it out. Comes out on all fours and moos. One thing is clear his mumbles don't know nothing.

He's hemming and hawing. It sounds as though he's auditioning for a stuttering and mumbling competition. He's a winner. Give him a blue ribbon.

Gladstone listened to the gibberish that rolled out of Marsh.   
"What is he saying?" Gladstone asked me.

"Marsh got the mumbles.

"Good that he's expressing himself.," Gladstone said.

I seemed remember a time when Marsh was in grade school. He'd get nervous. Every time he got up in front of class to give his book report in elementary school. I never thought he'd ever read the book. Mrs Hicks would listen to him. She'd nod her head, and you wondered what she was thinking. He got so nervous in front of the class his knees shook something awful. You thought he had seen a ghost.

"When I hear somebody mumble I think maybe they're heads are full of leaves and twigs," Gladstone told me. "Mumbles have nothing to say. They're always covered with night. Once and a while a mumble will say something. You're not certain what it's going on about. The mumble keeps everything to itself. The mumble rolls out and you can hear it tumble. Gets in your ear and hollers like pig callers trying to get their pigs to come home."

"He's a country boy," I said. "Just like you and me."

"He's a sorry sot. All mumbles and no singing voice."

"I wish we'd never bought him," I said.

"Why?

"That way he'd never hurt Bristol. This is going to stab Bristol in the back. Lots of people in town looking forward to us singing. How we going to make up the difference. People can count. They're going to notice somebody is missing.

"All I hear is mumbles coming out," Gladstone said. "He's got a string of mumbles. It's like when he was a kid playing with a yoyo. Walking the dog. Remember that trick? Around the world? And the baby in a swing?"

"Mumbles have a strange allure for ears. We listen like they were words."

"Are there any important mumbles?"

"Don't think a mumble ever got in the history books."

"Grief makes us all mumble. Why is that when someone passes away people get all nervous?"

"Get all confused."

Marsh jumped up from his chair. "I know what happened to my singing voice."

"What?"

"It got run over when it wasn't looking, Marsh said. "I ain't nobody. I'm nothing.

"A singing voice doesn't cross the street without looking both ways," I pointed out.

"You figure my voice is still hanging by a thread?" asked Marsh.

"We got to sing, Marsh. We got to lift this town right up out of its misery. Jack died."

"Don't you know how many people will be there?" I asked him.

"Got everybody in Bristol waiting for tonight," Gladstone said. "Two church choirs bowed out because the Jack Trayer Trio was coming to Bristol."

"Think of the people you'd disappoint."

"They want us to do what we do," Gladstone announced.

"Sing like angels. Let Heaven out of us. Let it fly around Bristol."

"You can't disappoint them."

"Reach down deep inside you, buddy," I said. And I meant it. I'd never wanted anything more in my life than to sing at Jack Trayer's funeral. And I wanted to do with my buddies. And the fact that Marsh had reservations stung me.

"What you got?" I asked Marsh.

"I got nothing."

"Don't you say that," Gladstone snapped.

"What you need? I'll give it to you," I said. "Pull it out of my pocket. I hope to die if you don't sing South Holston Dam going to bust. The yellow sun is going to look down on Bristol. And you're the only one who ain't going to shine."

"I'm debating wether I should stomp you into the ground," Gladstone said. "Or should I do the gentlemanly thing and tell you how awful I feel. Sick. I got chill. My whole body is hurting. I'm sick to death of you, Marsh. It's inside me, eating me up. I'm never going to speak to you again. It's crawling all over my insides. Like I ate something. A plate of old fried crawdad, maybe a cup of sour milk that don't like me. They're inside me complaining to stomach. I got a thunderstorm in my liver. A cloudburst in my intestines."

"I can't think. My head is an old bag of potatoes."

"My soul is all flustered. I feel like an old man."

"When I feel better I'm going to break every bone in your body," Gladstone said.

Marsh bowed his head and said "I'm all out. Nothing inside me but a pimento cheese sandwich I had coming over here."

"It's all right," Gladstone said. "Then you better let that pimento cheese sandwich sing. Or something bad is going to happen to you."

"Let me alone," Marsh said. "I don't want to get on that stage. It's all right if I stay behind. I don't belong up there on that stage."

"No, it ain't all right if you stay behind," I told Marsh.

"My voice has gone away," Marsh said. "It split. Hit the road."

"I don't know what to say," I told Marsh.

"This is pitiful," Gladstone said.

"I can't do it."

"Why not?"

"I ain't got it in me. Grief's a spell some witch done cast over me. I'm hurting. I can't sing. My voice is shrunk. I think it's no bigger a little insect chirring in the grass. I just can't sing tonight."

"What holds you back, boy?" I asked Marsh.

"I don't know why I came here. I can't sing for Jack."

"You're all we got, Marsh, I told him. I didn't know it he was listening. Marsh had turned away. He was off somewhere, lost in the Blue Ridge Mountains looking for his confidence.

"I'm a big nothing," Marsh said. He turned around and looked us in the eye. "Got no reason to be here. It's embarrassing to know I ever thought I could sing at Jack Trayer's funeral. Gosh what was I thinking? I can't get up in front of people and sing. I'm all full of moos and oinks and snorts. I'm a farm boy."

"So am I?" I said.

"Me, too," Gladstone said. "Pigs and chickens. They all love me. See me in the yard they come up to me and peck my shoes, nuzzle my leg. An oink is as a good as a cluck if you need one.

"Marsh, you need to sing tonight," I told him."It about our destiny. We was born to sing in Bristol for Jack Trayer's funeral. All these years we've been waiting for this moment. And it's arrived. Come right out of the blue. I know it hurts. I feel it, too."

Gladstone sighed and said "It's required. It's what Bristol needs. Or I'm going to beat you with this broom. Wrap you up in the carpet and roll you down the highway. You might be dizzy from all that gyration. How'd you like to have a broom pushed in your mouth. Pry that voice out."

"You don't scare me none," Marsh said. His voice quivering like it had the weight of the world on it. Holding it up, trying to get it out of his throat.

"He's so drunk he don't know nothing, Gladstone said. "Look at his face. It's all crumpled up, fell off the wagon."

"He's got whiskey on his brain," I said.

"Wobbly. He can barely stand up."

"I'm steady, Marsh said. And then he fell down. "I can stand on my own two feet."

We was none too sure of Marsh. He'd taken on more than he counted for. Jack's death had grabbed him and sat down on his face. Marsh couldn't get up. He just lay on the floor and groaned, like somebody had struck him in the stomach. He was windless. He could't apologize for his wrong.

Gladstone and me started to cry. Oh, Lord, what was going to happen to us?

Sweetheart 21

Gladstone reached inside his baggage, removed a hymnal. The church hymn sprung out and struck Marsh in the face. Marsh yelled. His voice could be heard all the way to Blountville. Gladstone gave the church hymnal to Marsh.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" complained Marsh.

"We'd like you hold it for us," Gladstone said. His face got all soft and glowing. His eyes kind and beckoning Marsh to accept the book. Marsh didn't reach out for it.

Gladstone grabbed Marsh's hand and placed the book in it.

"Why do you want me to do with this?" Marsh asked.

"We want you to get to know it," Gladstone said. The hymnal is not a beast with sharp teeth. It's the Lord's music. He's got some humdingers in there. You remember the one we sang for Jack Trayer?"

"I know what a hymnal is?" Marsh said.

"It's not a tiger or rhinoceros," Gladstone said, smiling. His voice tiptoed across the room and kissed Marsh on the cheek. "Hymn books don't come along often like this one. It belonged to Rosemont Presbyterial Church. Remember? Same hymnal that could hold all them beautiful church songs. Everybody loving each one they was perfect. And once you sang them you could feel the light from Heaven coming down all around you."  
"It's plenty old. I bet it's thirty years old," I said.

"It's got a nice feel to it, doesn't it? Like shaking Reverend Jeff Monroe's hand. Him squeezing like he did when we was little. His smile letting us jump on and ride around. The kind of church hymnal that never let a congregation down. It could give you joy. The words of a church hymn all golden and starlit on a Sunday night. The moon could be heard in each church hymn crooning like Tennessee Ernie Ford. You know he could sing a church hymn and it would go around the world, chatting with France, Japan, West Germany, Spain. Oh, it rubbed shoulders with gauchos. I bet the camels in Egypt got a kick out of them church hymns dancing across the desert, throwing back their heads and letting go with the sweet voices. Church hymnals sing, you know."

"I don't need this," Marsh said. He gave the hymnal back to Gladstone.

"Don't kid yourself, Gladstone said. "A church hymn is your best friends?"

"What could it do for me?"

"Bring you all the things that make you happy — or break your heart, just like you're doing now to us. You've pulled our hearts out and stomped on them. Did you know that?"

"I wouldn't put anything past a church hymnal. They're pretty suspicious characters. I read somewhere a church hymnal caught a bank robber coming out of the First Bank of Bristol."

"It never rains on Holy Bibles and church hymnals" I said.

"Have you no sense of decency?" Gladstone begged.

Sweetheart 22

I thought the saddest thoughts. The sad thoughts began to grab me, twist my arms, give me a black eye, broken nose. The thoughts wanted to teach me a lesson.

All of them stood around me. They wanted me to do their bidding. Sad thoughts want everybody to get down on their knees and pray. The sad thoughts have strong arms. They stand over us. They wave their hands.

It's a ritual sad thoughts have been doing for a thousand years. The sad thoughts are tall, and they have sad eyes. When they speak you feel in your head a river rushing toward a waterfall. You want to stay on top of the river, so you swim along, kicking your legs like you were Johnny Weissmuller. A crocodile following you through the mist. What will do when you're eaten by thoughts?

Will you succumb to their hunger. They need to consume your flesh. Throw off your bones. You don't them anymore. You're the slave that caters to the thoughts in your head. Let go. For goodness sake. Don't appease the inner resources who cry for their release. They're all going in the pot.

Events speak with loud voices. The things that are voices do require ears. One ear, two ears. They add up to the hearsay and naysay and what'd you say of a very fine conversation long as a country mile. The things we say to get our way known only to us. Expressed as our birthday wishes. The candles on the cake whispering little anecdotes like you find stuck at the end of a story in that magazine 'Reader's Digest.' You know the one that shortchanges it's audience by publishing little bitty articles no longer than a few pages. Photos and words running underneath them, saying how wonderful you look, pretty reader. You should be a movie star. You've got hands that hold 'Reader's Digest' like you wanted a date.

A jolt of lightning struck me just at that moment. I was dragged off a mountain top. My mind a landscape inhabited by sad thoughts. They brought me into the public streets of my brain. I heard marching bands playing. The Bristol Band festival was going on my head. I could see crows that lined the streets of my brain. A white line ran down the middle. It separated the two towns. Bristol Virginia and Bristol Tennessee. In Bristol growing up kids left the comma out on purpose. They put in the pockets for a rainy day.

I don't normally raise my voice. But that moment I heard myself shouting. "We got thrown into the limelight when we was kids! People heard about us! That story about singing for Jack when we was kids run all over Bristol. Jumped a few fences! Walked on water out on South Holston Lake! Everybody knew about us! We became famous!"

"Why are you shouting? I'm standing in the same room with you. Can't go anywhere. I'm sitting here like a rubber tree plant from the five and dime. Can't you see?"

"I'm acquainted with that fact."

"Then why the loudspeaker?"

Marsh didn't exactly take my side. "Do you have something to say?" Marsh asked.

"Grief has swallowed up Bristol. We've got to save them. If we sing that same church hymn we sang for Jack Trayer so long ago, we do the same for Bristol. Fill them the Spirit of God. How it jumps out of church hymns and grabs everyone by the ears. Shakes them like a bag of hard candy when you want to impress your girl friend."

Sweetheart 23

Oh, don't think me unkind, I hear death say. He was in my head, playing a banjo. There's a fiddle in everybody's head that was ever born in Bristol. You know it's playing everytime we sing in church. I wasn't ever in the choir. One of those white robes, though, would look good on me.

Death and I been friends since my father died. Got killed in a hunting accident. His best friend shot him. Lord, the pain should Sullivan County. It rained little voices that sprang out of puddles and covered us with shame. That one of us had killed somebody. We ain't no grizzly bears. Horses and cows don't ever hunt for people in Bristol. We seem to die quite well on our own. We don't need any help from chickens, ducks, goats. All right we could use a pig or two for absolution.

Death as a voice like Tex Ritter. A twang that comes out and slaps you. Turns you upside down. Every day you lived falls out of your pockets on the ground. The love you felt makes the days spin around like pinwheels. Every color of the rainbow bursts inside you when you die. You bloom like a dang red rose on a vine out at Steel Creek. What is that we're supposed to feel when somebody dies? Is it love? Is it loss? The two cannot live in the same hour. They'd get claustrophobic.

Death's ears are large as elephants. They detect the heart's complaint lodged in the soft marrow of our bones which speak only when spoken to. The bones having their say when invited to pray. Lord, have mercy on our souls. Death's door unlocked by a spell. The terrible curse unleashed upon us all by shame. A four legged lamb to the slaughter. Have you heard the bleat that comes from shame? It's kind of cute. Why shame follows us all we don't hazard a guess. It's probably cause shame thinks we're all undeserving of immortality.

The days of Paradise begin when we stop breathing. The light brims inside us. We are hurled across the Blue Ridge Mountains. We land in the pine trees. We have wings. We're birds. Don't everybody in Bristol know that's what happens when you die. You turn into a bird and fly around Sullivan County.

You sing. You eat insects and worms. There are caterpillars that will praise you the moon, if you let them crawl off into the tall grass. You can whispering, 'we sure fooled that guy." Death overheard in the hollow of an oak tree grumbling about the Stock Market. And what that report about educational institutes hiding under the stairs, dressed as Dracula and The Wolf Man. The Invisible Man carrying the American government around on his back. Two million tax payers chewing gum while playing the piano for the American spirit. What happens when money talks and it's got a twang?

Southern money smells like fresh baked cornbread. Where's the butter? The buttered biscuit give death all it wanted. You're living and you eat a buttered biscuit you hear Death sigh, turn over and die. You never see its face again. It has no power over anyone in Bristol. We're all going to live forever.

We find in God some solace that blots out the brilliant light that Death shines in our eyes. Burns out brains out. Or at least a portion of us, never recover from the awful news that someone close to us has passed away. The spell leaping from such bitterness changes us. We grow mustaches and wear hats that make us look odd. All furry on top, soft mouths that kiss our heads.

We hear the sound of thunder and we think of the sudden disappearance of someone. Jack Trayer, please come back. We need you now more than ever. The food we been eaten has made us sick. How else can you explain the emptiness inside?

Sweetheart 24

What does the quiet say when it's interrupted? 'Now where was I?' I found a little quiet in a small motel room. Our voices could be heard walking on the ceiling.

I found it hard to take. Every voice in our motel room was consumed by Marsh's refusal to sing. The whole idea of coming to Bristol had a touch of sadness in it.

We didn't come to argue. Gladstone are getting nervous. And so was I. The question gnawed on us. A mad dog that waited for us, soon as we opened the motel door. Marsh got that frightened look on his face. We should've known what was about to happen.

Somehow we believed coming back to Bristol was going to change us. Singing for Jack Trayer again was a chance we never thought we have. Our voices were ready. Gladstone has a sweet look soon as we hit Bristol. He sang a hoot. So did I.

And then what happened. The axe fell. Our heads lopped off. Marsh's frightened face took something from us. It was a robber that we never suspected would take advantage of us. We felt jilted. The effect was shocking. Like we'd put our finger in a light socket. Our hair stood straight up on our heads.

Marsh gave us broke our spirits. We felt miserable. We had a headache. A barn burner between our ears. It felt rotten. The whole day had been shot out of the sky. We watched it flop on the ground. We heard the hour confess of our misery. Guaranteeing us of the coming day when we will perish. Previously that sort of news had been withheld. Unless you read the secrets that are kept in that little black box in your head. It's always right behind that shoebox in the left corner of your mind.

We couldn't catch our wind. We could see clearly. What blocked our view was a dirty curtain smudged by years of worry. Nothing about our childhood innocence came to save us. We were disappointed the souls of our ancestors allowed such disasters. The body ceasing its miraculous life. Eyes closing around the world. Taking a part of Bristol with them, as they vanished. Their coffins lowered into the earth. A whine like Death's imperial complaints. It doesn't want to take us. What excuse can Death make that will change the way we feel. The loss robbing us of our immortality. The grubby hands that clutch at our happiness, taking more than their share. The things we lose when our friends die are rivers and mountains. Everyone knows what happened. And yet they cannot express the words that will comfort us. Because grief cannot hear. It's ears are stuffed with the cows, chickens, pigs, goats, ducks that it gobbles up. Every farm and all the vegetables. All the corn and cabbage. The carrots and peas being asked to do their part. Feed the fever. When death comes over us what food gives us allows us to overcome the fear.

Immortality comes along to spare us from misery. Belief in the Lord enough to save us from the nasty, wicked shame upon which Death sits on a pretty red cushion. Legs dangling over the side. Prettying up when the sun rises. Making certain it takes its place in society. A member in good standing. One of those guys who sells life insurance. One pretty lady with long sexy legs sitting in the middle of Coleman's Cafe, eating a hamburger steak and french fries. You know her by the purr she makes when she sips her coca cola. Shows her napkin to her lips. They meet and smooch. It's kind of unexpected. Everyone who spots it turns away, so as not to know about it. Pretend that it never happened, until sorrow leaps over the fence, starts neighing and snorting behind the red barn.

The absence of someone taking from us our most prized possessions. The soul tugged out like a child who didn't belong. Never belonged. Had no business ever being inside us. How do we cope with the loss of someone so close to us, like Jack Trayer. We become dead like him. We're all dying. And there's nothing we can do about it.

Jack took with him what we held precious. His life had somehow entangled with ours. We couldn't get out. We were inside his soul, walking around for years. And now without warning, except for that dang telegram they sent us, we didn't have a toe in that soul. It had burst like the Hindenburg over the skies of Bristol. All of Jack's friends and family gone up in smoke. Bodies falling like leaves in Mrs Mumpower's backyard. She eyes them with displeasure. Her rake has never refused to gather piles. She's ready for the worst.

Absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder. The heart clicks its heels and rolls along the country road toward Hungry Mother Park. A place where hearts wear bathing suits and take dips in a sun warm lake. The wild birds perched high in the limbs of spruce trees repeat the words we say to each other about the dearly departed. The mountain creek carries on its back the memories we cannot bear to recall. We'll catch up with them downstream.

Sweetheart 25

"We were just children" I said.

"With empty bellies," Gladstone added. It was important to know our state of mind that night. We didn't expect anything. Nothing like what happened. Jack was a big man. It took us by surprise when he came out, walked down those stairs, his face shown in the streetlight, a man who never expected to do what he did.

We opened our mouths and what came out was a church hymn that shook the town of Bristol. Didn't have a church piano to accompany our singing. Our we had was our puny voices. But something happened. The Lord done took upon us. Lifted Heaven out of each one of us. The music come up from deep inside us. Burst all over town. We could feel the vibrations of hymn strumming the streets. Crawling up the buildings and calling everybody God's children. For surely there was no time in our lives that we sung so well. Our lips come out with a glorious sound. It must've struck Jack's ear with a mighty music. We noticed but he had a look on his face that plum took us up. We must've stood ten feet off the earth. The night was crazy about church hymns, like it had never heard one. The stars looked down on us. They listened to that church hymn. Who knew stars cared enough to stop what they was doing. And pay attention to kids in an alleyway. It was a moment that we'd never forget.

"That's roast beef was the best I ever had," Marsh admitted.

"That church hymn gave us a reputation" Gladstone said. "Jack couldn't stop talking about it. Every chance he got he told of three children who sang a hymn one night in the alleyway behind his restaurant."

"We ain't supposed to be famous," Marsh said. "It ain't right. All we did was sing one time."

"It was the fellow we were singing for that got us famous," Gladstone said.

"Happened a long time ago," Marsh said.

"People talking about us," I said.

"What did we do?" Marsh asked.

"We sang for Jack Trayer."

"What's wrong with that, Marsh?" said Gladstone. He looked over at Marsh. "Why you scowl at that?"

"I'm offended by it," Marsh said.

"Why does it offend you?" I asked.

"I done it because I was hungry," Marsh said.

"It comes when your Daddy don't have a job. When he's stone drunk all the time. When he's lying in bed, his eyes closed, him arguing with my Mama about who took his old ragged jacket and throwed it away."

"We ain't famous," Gladstone said. We understood what he was saying. The news had arrived a long time ago. We sang from Jack Trayer and every since that day we could never measure up to what the town of Bristol had made us into. We was legends, in the same way that people believed in Bristol. Some things that happened just grew larger and larger. When they wasn't no bigger than a little story that somebody told happened. Nothing come of it. Just that it was Jack Trayer who was amazed by us. And that amazement rubbed off on Bristol. Oh, Lord, what kind of good luck is that? We done fallen into a hole in the ground. Such small measure of fame comes upon those who least expect it.

Sweetheart 26

"Where'd you go, Finely? I missed you."

"I took a nap," I told Gladstone. I wondered if he could understand what I was feeling. When I closed my eyes I stood quietly in that big room with the fluorescent lighting, like someone who had come to identify the body of Jack Trayer.

I saw a small box no bigger than an egg carton. It lay on the floor and I heard a hum come from it. The sunlight fell on the box. How did I know who lay in there?

Flies buzzed around the egg carton. A maid come it and dust it. She gazed at me with a certain detachment. She didn't seem to mind a dead body lying in the motel room.

The flowers murmured lovely things about Jack. I was heartened they mentioned Jack's love of church music. I was startled when Jack's spirit came up to me. What did it want? It was a haunting. Jack slipped inside me. He sat down in kidneys. He spoke of his life, a long journey that took him all over Appalachia.

The manicurist came at that moment. Jack got his nails done. His shoes purred like cats. Sunlight came through the window to pay its respects.

Jack loved Bristol. He understood the town. He fell in love with Bristol. It was love at first sight. They were seldom seen apart after that. Jack was happy being the boyfriend of Bristol.

It seemed natural to see Jack lying so peacefully. Why did gaze over at me when I turned my back? Did he think I was the traitor? It was Marsh. I wanted to point that out. And I did. I told Jack our boy Marsh was a spineless demon. He didn't want to sing. We'd rolled him up on the floor in a red rug. We'd asked him questions that twisted his arm. All we got out of Marsh was no's. Seventeen no's. His shaking his head. His scared out of his mind.

Jack didn't say nothing. He was convinced I was lying. He glared at me. "You think I believe Marsh could do something like that to me? What kind of fool do you think I am?"

He gave me a pat on the back. I was frightened. Where could I go? I was stuck with Jack's soul. His face took a toll on me. I couldn't gaze upon him. He was glowing. His soul wrapped around me. I felt the warmth of his spiritual body.

"Can I get you something?" I offered.

"No, I'm all right. How do you know Marsh can't sing?"

I didn't know the answer. What terror had removed Marsh's voice had no name. It affected him. He was numb. His voice torn by doubt in himself. Could it be that Marsh could sing? And what method of recovery would enable him to let go. That church hymn running up from deep with his body. The beautiful voice that Marsh once had suddenly raised from the dead.

I understood that inside me pall bearers were approaching. How could I explain Jack's spirit? Did the pall bearers know of such things? Had they seen ghosts about Bristol? What could you do if a ghost got inside you? I felt unnerved. A heard a voice inside me inform me it had taken over.

I was no longer myself. I was the property of a ghost. It clamored in my heart. It sat down inside, made itself at home. There was a garden inside me. The ghost walked along the tulips. I don't know how many times the red roses bloomed in the starlight. I could feel in my flesh a hundred ghosts gathering. What could I do? Where could I run? My eyes grew large. My head so wide and heavy I couldn't move.

Sweetheart 27

"I tried it out a while ago in the shower," Marsh said.

"You tried what out?" I asked. I didn't quite understand what Marsh was saying. Was I supposed to get it? Nothing about Marsh was easy to understand. His uneasiness resulted in the loss of his voice. Mostly a peeper now. A baby chick sitting high in a sycamore tree. Peeping.

Truth was Marsh not only refused to sing. He broke our friendship. The loyalty of old friends is often determined. Yet it may not accept the burden. Marsh's grief had stolen his voice. Put it in a bucket. And walked to Holston River and let it go. Watched it sink to the level of crawdads and little minors nosing around, looking for a morsel to eat. And so gobbled up his worm shaped voice.

Marsh had disappointed the whole town of Bristol. Killed us. We felt awful. Our hearts beat a sad drum for Jack. Marsh had stabbed un in the back. The sadness had a sharp edge. You could shave in the morning with it.

Marsh had blood on his hands. He killed us. When he said he wasn't going to sing for Jack Trayer it was like putting a gun in our backs and pulling the trigger.

"My voice. I tried it out. I got a squeak that jumped out. A whistle that came out and flew around the room."

"Is that the caterwauling I heard coming from the bathroom?" Gladstone asked in a gruff voice.

"That was me," Marsh said.

"You singing in the shower?" Gladstone inquired.

'Yeah. The acoustics I figured was ideal." Marsh said.

"How'd you do? I asked. Plum interested to know if Marsh was trying to tell us his voice had returned.

"Came out and fell right to the floor. A kind of whoop that flapped its wings, crossed the ceiling. Then come around behind me and bark like it knowed somebody was in the yard."

"Your voice has returned?" Gladstone asked.

"I tried to get up, fell back, Marsh reported. I put my lips together and whistled like a bluejay. My voice got down on all fours. Took a run at that church hymn. Throat bowled over, come out with a croon that ricocheted around the tub. Punched the wall, fiddled with the faucet. Then it just heaved a sigh, closed its eyes and give out."

"So you found your voice?" I inquired.

Marsh give me a strange look like I'd asked him a question he couldn't answer. "It went around and around when It fell down along the tub. It was grumpy, irritated by its gravelly voice, that squeaky wisp that it kept making, kind of sounded like a mouse with its tail caught in the door," Marsh told me.

"What happened to your voice?" Gladstone asked.

"I think it went down the drainpipe," Marsh said."I heard it gurgle."

"I'm going to drag your voice out, Gladstone growled. "I hope you don't mind."

"Let my voice be," Marsh said. Noticing Gladstone was disturbed. The refusal to sing had approached him like a hangman. He'd rather not allow the noose around his head.

"If you can talk you can sing," Gladstone said.

"Let's not quarrel," I intervened. I turned to smile at Marsh. Hoping the effects of politeness might serve as an intermediary approach. Slowing down the unmerciful anger that had seized Gladstone. I'd twice seen Gladstone clench his right fist.

"The voice of our partner is a chicken. I can hear it clucking. How many eggs, Marsh? The rooster is Bristol and it's going to be disappointed. The chicken all thought you were a rooster. And they appreciated your cockadoodledoo. What happened to it? Did the fox come into the barn and make off with your precious voice. The one that greeted the morning sun. Every rooster who loses its voice might as well resign from the hen house."

"Why do chickens cluck? Marsh said, trying to change the subject. "I've always wondered."

'They're afraid of silence. Got to fill the world around them with a few tender thoughts. Mostly about their fellow chickens and the kernels of feed along the ground. The sunlight in the yard wants every cluck to praise the morning light. The rooster's cockadoodledoo lifts the earth up, pushed the yellow sun out. What would we do in Bristol without roosters? We lie in bed all day. Never get a dang thing done."

Sweetheart 28

"You all paralyzed by doubt and fear, aren't you? Gladstone said. "What happened? I remember you as a kid was a brave boy. You killed a fox in Mrs Honeysucker's basement. Shot it right between the eyes. That fox had it coming. I remember you stomped on Mickey Kaiser's foot in gym class, when he tried to pull your gym shorts down. You had a knack for killing flies. And eating them at the lunch table at Bristol Tennessee High School. The girls didn't like it one bit. But the guys found you could catch flies with expert precision.

"You had a way with dogs. They all loved. They'd come to you and sniff your shoes. Fall in love with you. Follow you around Bristol like you was going to give them something to eat. What did you do to those dogs? Each one couldn't take their eyes off you?"

"You know what I thought it was," I said. "It was your voice. And your good looks. Dogs like good looking boys. They're attracted to boys who can talk like Tennessee Ernie Ford. Wagging their tails as they sat down right at your feet."

"Do you really think so?" Marsh said.

"I know it," I said. "A voice like yours, Roger, so beautiful, vibrant. A virtuoso. You've got a gift.

"What is it about my voice that you like?" Marsh asked, pleased that his voice had qualities he didn't know about.

"It's real smooth," I told Marsh. "A velvet voice that sweetly approaches the ear. Pretty highs and lovely lows. Crescendos of melodious sounds. The ear is seized by your beautiful, charming voice. Impressive. It makes me jealous to hear it."

"Are you sure?" Marsh asked. Not believing the good news.

"Your voice wants to sing, Marsh," I told him.

"Why should I ask my voice to do something it doesn't want to do?" Marsh argued.

"You've got no sense of responsibility, do you?" Gladstone said. "I called you up soon as I got the letter. You agreed to sing for Jack Trayer. The greatest man who ever lived around these parts. He could cook like a dream. He fried, poached, sautéed every inch of Bristol. The whole town was a fresh fried chicken steak. Hold the pickle.

"Do you mean to tell me you would refuse the wishes of a man who went out of his way to help you?" I asked Marsh. I wanted to know. He was ticking me off. His vocal chords were sore losers. They couldn't put their shoulders to the wheel.

"You made a promise," Gladstone said.

"I'm afraid my voice has cracked, Marsh testified. "Ain't what it used to be. It's broke down like an old jalopy."

"When I spoke to you on the phone you were excited," Gladstone said. "What happened, Marsh? Did your voice die on you? Has it no compassion for Bristol. The whole town wants you to sing. If word ever got out that we weren't singing there'd be protests all over Bristol. It's a town that loved Jack Trayer. Loved him to death. Used to walk by his restaurant and wave at Jack."

"And now that Jack is gone what can they do? They're all sad. The sorrow in Bristol covers them like a dark cloud. Jack Trayer was 'Big Jack.' They knew they'd never see the likes of him again. What he gave Bristol cannot be estimated by the food and service he brought to this town. Jack loved Bristol so much he and Bristol were seldom seen apart. They stuck to each other. Shoulder to shoulder. They danced all day, they spent their evenings covered with moonlight as they walked around Bristol. Moonlight is downright disappointed that Jack died. It doesn't know if it will ever shine again."

Sweetheart 29

The blessings of church hymns had been apparent in Bristol. They were a keen hearing group of folks who attended church. Those hymns gave people blessings. One lady Mrs Pippin swore up and down after attending Sunday Worship, listing to Reverend Monroe give a sermon, then hearing choir stand up in their white robes, letting go with a church hymn, she could read the thoughts of people around her.

She why she was born. The church hymns gave Mrs Pippin the wisdom of the ages. She knew why birds sang. She understood Sunday was a day you could unpack and find the most wonderful things inside.

Mrs Pippin wondered if church hymns could provide medicinal benefits, like a balm you rub on your arms and shoulders. Let that church hymn ease tensions, relax muscles. Mrs Pippin wondered if you could wash with church hymns. Get the smells of garden soil off your hands. Or use a church hymn to wash her dog Reginald.

She sang church hymns in her garden and noticed the green peppers and the cabbage and corn perked up. The string beans had a jubilee, couldn't stop dancing a jig. The tomatoes and the potatoes wanted to know what bliss had such a lovely sound.

Mrs Pippin found in church hymns places where she could lie down. There were green fields in church hymns. There were farm houses and red barns. There were large houses along tree lined streets in church hymns. Big windows in which you could see the people of Bristol gazing out. They all seemed to know the luxury and beauty of living in church hymns.

There were blues skies that stretched for hundreds of miles. There were starry skies in church hymns. The shimmering lights of distant worlds in which church hymns resided. Some church hymns lived next-door. You could see them out on the front porch siting in rocking chairs, knitting sweaters for their favorite members of the congregation. And how would a church hymn determine the worthiness of the winners?

It all came down to the singing voice. Was it a sweet church bell chiming in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains? Was it the brilliant voice of the school bell, allow children to run home? Each one singing like cat with a soprano voice. Or a parakeet trapped in its cage?

There were many factors. Did the voice have pretty face. A nose like a red rose? Was the voice dressed formally or informally. No voices in bare-feet. No fancy footwork. The voice needed to dance, yes. However the voice should wiggle its hips. No lascivious thrusts that bounce off the acoustics. Make the voice sound like it had stuffed itself with fried chickens, buttermilk biscuits, sausage gravy. What kind of fool would a voice have to be to overeat before a chorus.

The members of the choir hurl their voices to the Heavens. Their cheeks are puffed up like rhinoceros butts. Lips wiggling like Elvis on Ed Sullivan. His big shoe had a hole in it. I hear he left by way of a rain puddle. What ungodly things do rain puddles know about the human species.

What do the raindrops that fall on the church roof know about us? The raindrops fall and cast upon us the holy scripture which raindrops learned when they were born in Heaven. Same place snowflakes get their personalities from. The apparent likeness to snowflakes as they look like God. The similarity is striking. The stars would argue that the Holy Spirits holds each star in its arms. Where do think stars learned their reverence? The agility to leap and a few knee tucks. Spin like a baseball with knuckles dug into it. The sneer of the pitcher giving the ball an extra dip. You couldn't it if your life depended on it.

Sweetheart 30

Unfortunately Marsh had lost his voice. It come to me that such carelessness was a frequent occurrence in Bristol. You had to know you could look around and suddenly something so important as your voice had flown the coup.

If you ever lose anything in Bristol, it's a good bet you won't get it back. Things disappear in Bristol. When I was a kid growing up in Bristol I lost a variety of personal possessions. To this day, I don't know how they slipped off. Or maybe it was my negligence.

So when Marsh lost his singing voice it seemed appropriate. Certainly it got me to thinking. You've got to keep an eye on your stuff. Bristol being a righteous town, more religious than some and more devout than most. Sin comes to Bristol. It's a visitor, don't stick around too long. Hangs out at the bus depot, maybe goes over to the pool hall, shoots a few games of eight ball.

I knowed Bobby Stoots lost a big toe mowing a lawn. His daddy found the toe and kept it. Put in a mason jar full of formaldehyde, so when somebody asked Bobby how he lost his toe, he could tell them he didn't lose his toe. He had it at home in a glass jar.

I knowed Roger Duffield lost his front tooth. Got knocked it out in a football game. He got a replacement. It brung his smile back. When he knew all he had to do was grin nobody to could tell them difference.

I had a dog named Hinkley who got in a fight with a bear up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Hinkley lost part of his tail. It wagged all right, nothing out of the ordinary about a chewed up dog's tail. And Hinkley didn't seem to mind much. So I decided if Hinkley could look the other way, so could I.

I suppose everybody loses things that's important to them. I knowed Betty Hampton lost a pretty red hat one Sunday at church. She come out and run down the church-steps. Her hat went flying off. The wind took it up and all you could see of it was a red thing flying over a bunch of pine-trees. Reverend Mickey Rice gazing up. Squinting his eyes at the sun. Watching that red hat circle back over Bristol. Never did come down.

Betty seen it flying off. A tiny dot in the sky. Should've known it was antsy. Had a feather in the hat. Them kind of hats are like birds. Get frightened, fly right off. You never know when something like that can happen.

Sweetheart 31

Things get lost. I've never understood how it happens. I've lost money. I've lost time. You never know when you've got something and then it's gone. Figure on holding onto whatever you've got. Watch carefully. Keep your eyes open. If it twitches just a little it could take off. Things we need have wings. The more we need things we find ourselves having to do without.

How you get back what you lost? What's the best technique of recovering from the loss of a favorite coat or shirt. I couldn't tell how many socks and neckties have run away. In my house, the old shoes stick around forever. I've got old coats that go way back. Trousers don't age. They get better every year. And unlike shirts they love wrinkles.

Thing is you never know what might go missing. They're fast on the trigger. Flip a coin and when it comes up heads you wonder what's missing now. Cause the law of averages is that things get lost before they get found. It's astronomical. That old watch that kept good time don't give a hang. It's out in the glove compartment of your car just ticking off the seconds that love has past it by. Alarm clocks get lonesome, too. You don't ask them to bang their steel drum every now and then, they turn their noses up at you.

The old pennies grin at you from a cigar box. They're lost. They're confused. A penny for a mad man's thoughts will get you in a lot of trouble. You're head will soon be in the fire. Illumination is fine and dandy. But don't get carried away. Light finds everything we lose. Except what we need.

Disappoint replaces happiness. It's been sitting on the bench for a thousand years. And now it's been sent into the big game. Do you think disappointment knows the plays. Can it catch a spiral? Will it run around the end? Kick the ball with its toe? Why would the crowd roar for disappointment.

Of course, the opposite can happen. You never know when what you're looking for might just turn up. Be right where you left it. Discovering what was lost is one of life's greatest thrills. Things that are lost have one thing in common. They all eventually confess to the crime. Displacement is punishable by sorrow.

The things we do to find what we lose is staggering. We get down on our hands and knees. Look under things. Inside things. We turn over everything. Peek at what appears to us. A ghost of a can opener. A figment of our imagination.

I had a notion Marsh's voice could do just that. Why didn't he ask his voice permission to use it? The polite thing to do was to climb aboard the voice, throw your legs across its back, like you was mountain a horse. And gallop off.

The lost voice could be found. Just because the dark falls is no reason to think a voice can't be discovered. Got its hands over its face. Shivering like a little girl being haunted by a ghost.

The voice could recover. Wiggle out of the ropes. Stand tall, and quietly enter the world. A voice holding a candle lit by curiosity. You've got to wonder why people stop looking?

Maybe what we lost knows its way back. Come right back to where it once was. Like a bird come home to its nest.

Sweetheart 32

"When voices die we don't plant them ten feet under," I told Marsh. "We just walk right by. Stepping over the voice, lying prone on the sidewalk."

"Is that so? You some kind of smart aleck smacking your lips at me. I'm hurt."

"What hurt?" Gladstone asked. "Did somebody hurt you, boy?"

"I didn't want Jack to die. It never occurred to me I'd have to bear his grief. I can't carry it around with me. I've got to put it down. Maybe leave it in Bristol. How do we know if we can go on? I mean I'm sagging. I can't hold my head high. This bag of sorrow that I got to hold is going to bring me down."

"How do you think we feel, old buddy? Don't you understand we're suffering just like you. Only difference is we know how to handle grief."

"How do you do it?" Marsh asked. He sincerely want to know.

"It's not easy," I said. "

"There's a time when you don't think you'll make it," Gladstone said. "But you know that Jack's last wishes were that we would sing at his funeral. We promised to sing that church hymn, the same one we sang in the alleyway that night.'

"Promises are important, Marsh," I said. "You break one and the whole world explodes like a firecracker in the hollow of an oak tree."

"Can you reach down to the voice and lend it your hand, help it up," I suggested. "If it needs a kiss, if it needs a hug, don't hesitate."

"The voice needs love," Gladstone pointed out. "Appreciating the voice comes with tenderness and deep affection. Perhaps if we're kind to the voice it will return like the sparrows of Capistrano."

"The voice is a humble servant," I said. "It serves us breakfast in bed. Never leaves our side. When we die, the voice passes out cigars, celebrating it precious freedom. Not all voiced are loyal. They can wander off the reservation."

"Not all voices make sounds," said Marsh. "They're monks who took  
a vow of silence a hundred years ago. The one sound voices enjoy  
making is the sigh. You can climb aboard a sigh and ride all around Bristol."

Marsh grimaced at what he was going to say next. "All I can tell you is when you're grieving the sky looks like it was feeling poorly, the sun can't get up the mountain. The birch tree in the morning is grouchy. Don't mean nothing by it, but it yells at the sparrows."

"Can't stand those lousy peepers," Gladstone said. "What can't they sing like larks? Or be robins with cheerful tweets. Or let the wrens know who's boss."

"In the afternoon," I said, "the pine tree sits in a sunlit meadow sipping a glass of sweet tea. At night, elm leaves along the ground plot the overthrow of the moon."

"Starlight falls in small clumps," said Marsh. "It's night's job to divide up the starlight among the blades of grass. Give a cup of starlight to the old red barn where cows, chickens and horses wait for the quiet to pass through the golden gate."

"If dark hasn't sharpened its axe by eight o'clock, then you know the minutes will be sitting around, keeping themselves busy by eating cheese sandwiches and drinking starlight from an old cowboy hat."

"The morning light crawling along the treetops. Every wild bird satisfied they can out sing the river."

Sweetheart 33

"Where'd your voice go, Marsh?" Gladstone asked. "Jumped out of a window? Run down the hall, get itself an ice pack to put on its head. Voices get a fever when they first asked to sing, I hear. I guess you know all about that, don't you, Marsh."

Marsh didn't answer. He did glare, his mouth give out a whoosh. It come out of Marsh like a big gust of wind. Gladstone didn't care none for the disdain, coming from the coward. "You're afraid to sing, aren't you?

"My voice has problems sometimes when it's asked to do things that our out of the ordinary, Marsh said. You tell his voice had a few cracks in it. A few of his words whistled. They hung their heads in shame. And when words you speak feel like they wasn't no good they get kind of grumpy. Sad eyed words have feelings that give you a pain in the butt."

"Singing for a funeral takes a lot out of the voice, Marsh went on. There was no stopping him. His voice had escaped. Got out and was walking on its hand and knees on the ceiling. You knew his voice was determined to scream at any moment. He didn't being called a creep or a coward. His voice was one thing he understood. His voice was proud, tall, broad shouldered. Nothing to take seriously. However, it was a voice that could stick up for Marsh.

"It might faint," Marsh said. "Voice gets knocked over the head. Of course, it drops to the floor. Hammered by sorrow, numbed as though the cold of a hundred winters froze its tongue. A pink pig that lived in Marsh's mouth. Going to come out and oink all over you Sullivan County.

Right it sat down on the floor. It had no better place to go. It was a voice that dared to wave its arms, growl like a grizzly bear. Everytime you thought you knew the voice. It changed into something. An old grandfather clock in the hallway of Jack Trayer's house. A bolt of lightning. Thunder with its arms stretched out wanting to catch the quiet, grabbing a blue sky and beating it over the head. That's what a voice is good for.

The fight not even close. The voice bumped over the head, another jumped on top of the voice. And before you knowed it there was an argument. That means two voices were getting at it. One throwing a jab and the other ducking.

What happened? The voice spun around. Got so dizzy it could stand on its two feet. Fell flat on its face.

Voices often run away from funerals. When they're at graveside they all look puny. Pussy cats. Trembling like they'd been put out in the cold. Little beady eyes, hands trembling from the cold that come up from inside them. Voices are full of a wood. Sorrow is a strange wood. The voice don't want to go there. They suspect they might not ever come back.

"I hear some voices are self destructing," Gladstone said. "Love the taste of honey. Think it gives them chubby cheeks and pretty eyes. You ever see a voice standing in front of mirror. Can't take its eyes off itself. Voices are plum egotistical. One wrinkle under an eye and the voice starts to worry that it might die."

"Some voices throw in the towel. They've run out of sounds. No trombones or drums, not even a bagpipe. The birdsongs that hide in the mouth, perched on a limb in the back of the throat. They know the birdsong that begs for mercy. The birdsong that cannot believe the beauty of a morning sun spreading its shiny blanket all over Bristol. Waking the town one child a time. One old man at a time. Elbowing the lady who cannot rise from her recline. A dream holding her by the hand."

"Love is on the tip of every voice's tongue," I told Marsh. "What sits in our voices is what holds us in the world."

"Grief is hideous," Marsh said. "The word itself strikes fear in every ear. The word sharp as an axe. We know from previous experience the word 'grief' lends only reward in the form of sorrow. A currency that will buy a ticket to a funeral."

Some come to funerals to pay their respects for to the deceased. Others seek to collect sorrows and spend them wherever they can. In Knoxville, you can buy a car. Get yourself a motor boat. Maybe a new cow or horse or flock of chickens.

Either way it's a deal that will shortchange you. Take from you your self respect, your confidence. Run over the essence in which you hold yourself. A little ball that bounces high. Caroms off the moon. Don't ever assume the little ball will always be around. There are dogs that will bite it and carry it down to the creek. Drown that ball like a bad man. A ball screaming your name. A ball with its eyes closed. Teeth clenched. The ball that you lost as a child comes back to you. Rolls right up to your feet. It's a round ball made of grief.

Don't want it around the house. It's persona non grata. And don't you just hate it when it walks around the house in its bathrobe. Whistling some Hank Williams ballad.

The voice that speaks the truth. Sometimes sets fire to itself. Just to shed a little light on the world. Not easily put it. Marsh, needed to be invited all over again. His voice sought to stay home. However, there was a way to coax his mouth out into the fresh air.

Sweetheart 34

I didn't like hearing the word 'funeral.' It had come up several times for air. Sometimes the word had wings. Other times it only had legs. A scrawny little lizard. I could see its tongue slithering in and out. I didn't like the way it hopped from shoulder to shoulder when we was in the bus. The word 'funeral' smelled like a dead rat.

In the word 'funeral' there's a body lying in a coffin. The pallbearers lift the coffin and carry it to the burial site. Interment awaits. All in a seven letter word. A dark sky, mourners with column faces, flowers dressed like they knew the dearly departed. The automobiles bumper to bumper in the word. The grave lying down on its stomach. The sorrows that birdsongs contain pass amongst the linden trees. Every leaf with a sad eye.

We live in a world where people keep the word 'funeral' in a hatbox, maybe a shoebox. The word has brown eyes. Carries a pistol. It will shoot you if you don't come to the funeral. Hunt you down and kill you. Take your head off with a smile.

There are those who don't attend funerals. It's nothing that anyone should offended by. The sight of mourners contrasts with the birdsongs always arriving late for the wake.

You go to funeral and something happens. You grow a third leg, a third arm and another head. How is it possible? Suddenly you've got an extra toe on your left foot. Your head is full of leaves and grass. A few grasshoppers make their way into your conscience. A puff of smoke rises in the right hemisphere of your brain. Smoke signals that say sorrow has arrived. Would you like to unpack it? Save the red ribbon for tomorrow.

The mind chews with its mouth full when sorrow gets out of debtors prison. The manners of a mind judged by those who find it coming up short of polite. You know the mind is a pig. It eats all the time. The house you grew up in was the mind's late night snack. The mind's a storehouse for country hams, pork chops, lamb, sirloin. The best ideas are fine cuts of meat.

When you serve the word 'funeral' it should be cooked medium rare. Both sides juicy, delicious. A thought lifting its fork to its mouth after using its steak knife to slice a thin bite off the sirloin steak. The right mind would use a napkin. Occasionally making good on its promise to solve the hungry mouth's problem. The mouth a four legged pig with a curly tail. Can't get enough biscuits and sausage gravy.

Back the word 'funeral' into a parking place, far back in your mind. It doesn't like being spoken after dark. It cares deeply for each one of us. The word's a well known psychic. Read your mind. Give you the gift of sorrow. Terribly kind, isn't it?

Sweetheart 35

It wasn't as though we didn't know Marsh was unpredictable. He was often doing the unexpected thing when we were growing up together in Bristol. We got accustomed to his erratic behavior. Something we forgot as we grew older. We assumed he had matured. Unfortunately we were wrong.

It was something we didn't talk about. The danger of bring it up would cause more trouble than it was worth. We never approached the subject, and for good reason. The stakes were high.

It was a sad day in March. We never suspected such things would happen to us in Bristol. Our hometown that wrapped its arms around us and kept us warm in the winter. And entertained all summer. The months shorter each year. School waiting like a fire breathing dragon at the end of summer.

When I think of the incident I weep. It struck me like an axe. Cleaved my head. I can still remember hearing of the terrible news. I was sitting in Coleman's Cafe, eating a piece of Sadie's apple pie. And suddenly the news was told me. A man sitting on a barstool. His name was Loafy. He had only one leg. Someone said he used to run liquor across the state line. A pretty capable bootlegger.

Oh, certainly, growing up I'd heard stories about Marsh. They seemed to compete with each other. In each one, Marsh failed to kill a rabbit jumping along the woods. He fired his shotgun. Missed by a mile. But he blew off Larry Ryder's right ear. How could you make such a large mistake? It was unthinkable. Then we understood that Marsh's eye wasn't sharp. He often trembled right before he pulled the trigger.

Yes, we remember Marsh being careless. A recklessness came over him. It was almost as though he needed to take a chance. His mother had died two years before. His father drove a truck and wasn't at home much. The fear fed him little red sirloin steak. He was a ferocious eater of fear. Shame seemed to know how to fall asleep in his arms. They loved each other. What shame gave Marsh was a cup of warm milk and cookies. A drink that dispersed Marsh's loss of his mother. A terror that cuddled up to him every night, cried like it needed picking up and sung to by a boy named Marsh.

Not that I want to remember it all. The terrible things that happen to you when you're young give you a neurosis. One of those crazy spells that buzzes inside you, like a bumblebee.

The incident he was involved him. A dangerous one. It frightened us to learn of it. The foolishness he exhibited took our breath away. What he did was astonishing. It presented certain problems we hadn't anticipated.

He was around eleven years old. Playing Robin Hood in his front yard. He shot an arrow into the air. A neighbor was waiting for the arrow to land in his yard. The moment the arrow struck all of Windsor Avenue learned of the accident.

Didn't he ever think if you shot an arrow into the air, another boy in a nearby yard might get hurt. The arrows shot high have no sense of humanity. They go where they're aimed. The boy could've received an arrow in the eye. And how would he see again."

"It was all an accident."

"Don't accuse of me being so careless."

"I remember that day. We were both standing in my yard. You shot the arrow to a neighbor's yard across the street. Walter Sawyer gazed up and saw the arrow coming down. Struck right about his right eyebrow. He bled a little. His mother screamed. Her voice put out the sun like it was a candle in the window."

"Have your forgotten what else happened?" I asked.

"The voice hides when it sees arrows falling from the sky," Marsh said, not making sense, but trying to speak his mind on the incident. A crime was committed. How can you not remember what happened next?

"Don't you remember Walter Sawyer was struck in the next few seconds by another arrow? A whiz was heard. The arrow whistle to the yard. It flashed like a bolt of lightning — struck Walter square in the right eye and penetrated several inches into his brain. He died on the way to Bristol Memorial Hospital. Poor Walter. The pain and the sorrow hasn't gone away. It's just hiding from us."

"The emergency ambulance arrived. They found the boy bleeding on the grass. Everyone screaming like there was only one chance of saving Walter. Prayer. The whole town of Bristol prayed for Walter. Went out on the radio. People called in. Fortunately Marsh's name never got mentioned. It disappeared like a puff of smoke. The rumor was Walter had shot himself in the eye. Testimony from all those involved. Marsh explaining his part was only standing in the yard and screaming. He didn't really see anything. His voice had covered its ears and eyes. When Marsh spoke he barely got out a whisper. And it weighed a ton.

Sweetheart 36

Memories of childhood made us feel good. It was a fine circus in which the elephants did what we wished. The lion tamers came to our house for Sunday dinner. We never understood how the lion tamers got their way with those beasts. All we knew was they all had mustaches. We called 'uncle.' They wore loud neckties, narrow in those days. Don't remember them ever asking me how old I was. Children seem to get asked that a lot. As though when folks get older, it's hard to guess what age children are. The eyes of lion tamers haven't the slightest idea.

As children we knew less than we thought. Our educations were small. What we learned was limited to dinner conversation. The chatter, if you kept up with it, informed us of what lion tamers were all about.

We were gifted children. Except for that one glaring thing that made us blind. All we had to do was look back at Walter. We went to do his funeral. Dressed up real nice. Sorrow didn't swallow us up. It spit us out like it had a bad taste in its mouth.

Somebody said Marsh had a problem. We agreed. Although we spoke for Marsh, saying how his mother died and all. The sorrow of losing a mother is the greatest sorrow of them all. It would make the moon and stars go dark. Turn the doorknob to morning and let that yellow sun fly around Bristol.

Liquor make you talk crazy. The words come out all wobbly, some of them missing a leg or an arm. The best words stand up straight and throw their shoulders forward. Speak like a rubber band throwing paper wads around Mrs Miller's homeroom class.

Liquor hold your tongue. Pull your leg and twist your arm. Punch you right in the nuts. Why would you want to invite liquor to a funeral. It don't even know the deceased. Jack never touched a drop. He looked liquor in the eye and it got scared and run off into the woods. Liquor hasn't got the good sense to live a clean life. The bottle is just another vagrant in Bristol. Why you expect it to go to school, get married, get a job. Bottles don't do the expected. They're empty. Heartless. They break.

And then came the knowledge that Marsh was emotionally disturbed. The terror in his life had inflicted great pain. The shock took from Marsh his soul. We didn't know how it occurred. Marsh seemed to be off center, confused by the smallest thing. He couldn't cope with even small problems. In arithmetic the number four was always chasing him. Waiting for him to make a mistake. The number four was his father's favorite number. It hurt Marsh to see it lying on the page. He often scratched it off. Thereby eliminating any chance for Marsh get the right answer.

The memories we keep are like sips from a bottle. You can just take so much. Then you've got to lie down. Rest your head on a pillow covered with moonlight. Marsh often said a prayer before he closed his eyes for bed. A few words to the Lord. Wishful that whatever it was that chased Marsh would stop. Let him go. Let him escape into the warm afterglow of morning. The big yellow sun up there, just waiting for anyone to gaze upon it. And see the bright light of a new day. One in which everyone started fresh. Nobody remembering what happened back there.

Something tells me a bottle of liquor doesn't have to be reminded of its job. It's got a career giving people the pink eye. I don't know liquor too well. It's a stranger to me. We never got to know each other. Met only a handful of times. Just the occasional time or two at the drive-in movie. Moonlight Theater had some great westerns. I loved them Tarzan movies, too. One time I saw this Jungle Jim movie. An alligator came off the stage. All the children wrestled it to the floor. You wouldn't believe how many children would've been eaten, if it hadn't been for Jungle Jim coming off that stage and busting that old alligator over the head. Bubblegum and lollipops come out. Some popcorn, too.

I asked Gladstone about Marsh's daddy. That day he went fishing and slipped. Hit his head on a rock. Died instantly. They dragged nets in the water. Found the body two hours later.

Marsh was just a child, watching his daddy wade out into the water. He didn't know the rocks had taken his father. That early bolt of lightning come down and took something from Marsh. We knew it was that Marsh didn't have. Cause it had been taken from him. It was me and Gladstone who always tried to give back Marsh what he lost. We didn't know it might cost us in the end.

And maybe what Marsh needed we didn't have. Or maybe if we gave it away we'd never get it back. And that troubled us. We never were certain if we wanted to take the loss. Yet we sure wanted Marsh to know we'd be there for him. It was a responsibility we accepted without question. Marsh was a poor boy in many ways.

Marsh was a part of us. Not a blood relative. But one who we had lost so much. His grief had changed him, taken from him. That was what we hated. We wanted to give him his chance to recover what he lost, if only we could.

Sweetheart 37

The next moment caught us off guard. We heard Marsh in the next room. He was singing. A low voice that sounded like a cello that needed tuning. Maybe it had been left in the attic too long. A dusty musical instrument that had a grouch attitude toward a melody. It groaned. It shook off the light. The voice that belonged to Marsh was more shallow than we remember. It fell down. It got up. A voice that tried to make of itself a junebug. The hum had a lot to be desired. Yet beggars can't be choosers.

"You voice has climbed out of you, Gladstone called. "It's good to hear you singing. I was afraid your condition was permanent."

"I'm still a little itchy," Marsh said. He felt his throat as though by placing his hand on it gently. He didn't want his throat to know he was worried about it. The throat being like a passenger that jumped overboard for reasons of its own.

"I thought it had been scared it off?"

"How do you feel, Marsh?" I asked.

"My voice is shot," Marsh said. "It's been corrupted by smoking and drinking all these years. I can't do it. I haven't sung in years."

"May it rest in peace," Gladstone said. "It was a good old friend of mine."  
"You've got a natural, sweet voice, Gladstone said. "The ear hears it, loves every syllable that comes out of your mouth. Sweet as honey, spread it all over toast. Can't beat it."

"I remember Jack's voice was sweet," Marsh said.

"His voice was like the morning rain," I said. "I heard him speak to the bread man. Jack's voice turned doughy, soft with sesame seeds on top. Warm, you know like he'd baked his words in a hot oven. If the butcher arrived his words smelled of pork and beef. A chicken came out his mouth and began to peep.

"He was a kind and generous man," Marsh said.

"I remember his apron stained with barbecue sauce," Gladstone said. "He called pork sausage the cure for everything from sniffles to bad marriage."

"He once told me forks didn't like spoons," I said. "Because the spoons had no stomach for sticking food in the back."

"Jack loved Bristol," Gladstone said. "It was love at first sight. Once they met you hardly ever saw them apart. Bristol was Jack Trayer's sweetheart."

"Jack Trayer invented the Bristol cake, the Bristol pie and the Bristol cookies. The Bristol cake was seven layers of luscious chocolate so dang goof that it made you dance and sing. You got happy."

"Jack was generous with his desserts," I said. "Gave everybody a large slice. The Bristol pie was apple, sometimes cherry.

"Pecan was popular in Bristol," Marsh remembered. "Nobody could resist Jack's pecan pie. A scoop of ice cream on top gave it a look of sophistication. You thought it was rich and famous."

"If the pie didn't object, sometimes Jack let the pie be lemon meringue. Or peach cobbler. A hobo who traveled around the dessert circle. Very likable."

"He could prepare chicken dumplings that could please the Queen of England," I said. "Jack was a skilled man."

"His voice once caught a bluegill at South Holston Lake," Marsh said. "He reeled it in and then let it go. Too small for frying."

"Jack had a way with food," I said.

"Yes, you sure did," Gladstone said. "And the food Jack prepared had a way with all of Bristol."

"Jack Trayer's chicken salad sandwich. Dee-licious."

"His tapioca pudding went around Bristol. Everybody thought it was the best thing they ever put in their mouths. Give everybody who had a spoonful a happy mouth. Made you smile."

"Everybody in Bristol flocked to Jack Trayer's restaurant," Marsh said.

"The man who could cook like a dream," I said.

"He was the king of cheeseburgers, fries," Gladstone said. "Onion rings would do anything for Jack."

"Love those cherry crushes," Marsh said.

"The milkshakes gave you good night kiss," I said. "I remembered my first milkshake at Jack's. It bent me over backward, held me in its arms."

"How many cheeseburgers did Bristol eat?" Gladstone inquired.

"More than the stars in the sky," Marsh said.

"Everybody was coming to Jack Trayer's restaurant" I said. "The rumors ran wild. Albert Einstein when he come through Bristol went to Jack Trayer's restaurant."

"Don't forget Christopher Columbus," Marsh said. We laughed at our good fortune. Jack Trayer fell in love with the whole town of Bristol. We couldn't get it out of our heads that he'd died. Like most survivors we wanted Jack to stick around. We made up things about the dear departed. Jack was a giant. He drew all kinds of people to his restaurant.

"I hear Abraham Lincoln come by," I said.

"Mahatma Ghandi," Gladstone said. He understood the unlikely event of such a thing occurring. It didn't make any difference. It somehow lessened the grief we felt.

"He came in Bristol?" Marsh asked.

"Yeah," Gladstone said. "Loved Jack's fish sticks."

"Hank Williams ate there."

"Tennessee Ernie Ford," I added.

"Minnie Pearl, God bless her pea picking heart."

"When I was a kid growing here everybody in town got excited when Ernest Tubb come around," Marsh said. "I seen him through the window one night."

"Conway Twitty sat down in a booth. Ate a ground steak with cornbread, mashed potatoes and gravy. Be still my heart. When your stomach was empty you went to Jack's restaurant. Where stomach never growled. It was too busy thanking its lucky stars for every bite."

"Ain't that something," Gladstone said. He understood the need to shed light on Jack Trayer. Maybe it would help Marsh recover.

Sweetheart 38

With all the memories of Jack and his famous guests, every dignitary from Lyndon Johnson to Hank Williams, we understood the need to lift Jack's spirit. It was as though we had an obligation to release it like a wild bird. You can't keep somebody's reputation caged up. You let it go. It was a spirit that Bristol needed. It would fly all around Sullivan County. It would slip inside everybody who remembered Jack Trayer.

Love. What other spell could raise the dead. The birds in Bristol were trying their best. They sang from every tree in town. You heard them warbling. It was the birds' job to cultivate somebody's soul after they left this world. Insects, too. Grasshoppers and honeybees and junebugs put their shoulders to the wheel. You could hear the rivers singing hymns for Jack Trayer.

The church bells in Bristol didn't shirk their responsibility. We heard lift their voices. Speak of Jack's undeniable contribution to Bristol. It was marriage made in Heaven. When Jack met Bristol you knew they would hit off. Could see it coming. And everyone understood why. They were two of a kind.

The streets of Bristol filled up with light from Heaven. Everywhere you looked Jack Trayer's memory was trimming hedges and mowing lawns. Everything in Bristol that happens the day somebody like Jack dies is in memory of him. A great man. Even the buzz of a honeybee, or dog's bark. Jack was remembered. The wind told stories of Jack's accomplishments. He built an empire out of our appetites.

"Jack's fish sandwich hooked just about everybody," I said. "Jack changed Bristol a cheese burger at a time. Slice of pie, cake, bowl of rich pudding."

"The whole town of Bristol was a dinning room, Gladstone said. "Turn it into a long table. Everybody got a seat. Fork on the left, knife and spoon holding up the right side. The napkin smiling to beat the band. Don't anybody ever tell you Bristol's all full up. There's always room for one more."

"You had it made if you sat down in Jack Trayer's restaurant," Marsh said. "The spoons would talk to you. Say the nicest things. Forks could sneer at you, if you didn't hold them in the right way. A knife that kissed butter was giddy."

"I once asked Jack," I said, "if he liked salt more than pepper. And he told me they both had good qualities. But if they ran for mayor, he'd pick sweet relish."

Sweetheart 39

When a man dies the sky can't stand. It has a long neck and long nose. The clouds conduct their business in plain sight, exchanging postcards with old friends. Those stars that go on vacation when the sun rises. You wonder if the moon believes in the rising sun?

The sun's bears the hours and days we are given on its back. It gracefully crosses the sky, seeking its resting place in the far off places of tomorrow.

We gratefully accept our share of days. We know of no reason to turn them away. They come with their baskets of grapes, apples, pears. There are flowers in the eyes of our days. We hear birds singing in our tomorrows. They perch in our flesh. What good things tomorrow brings we never know. We anticipate the love of the future. Though it may be full of sorrow and wickness. Tomorrow's song is full of fallen men and women. Every child who died in a house afire or swallowed lake water, thrashing helplessly in the cool jaws of a lake.

The light bends to the road. The fields lie down in the sun's bright face. The warm arms of a blue sky wrap around the mountains. I'm much impressed how in honor of Jack Trayer the trails stand tall. Faces full of promise and expectations of the AfterLife. One knows only the AfterLife from those you love. Children carry the Afterlife in their backpackers. A smile of a young girl contains all of Paradise. There are many mansions there. The streets are filled with spectators, all leap to touch the sky.

The rivers obey the sunlight's request, shimmering with bright promises. The bridges listen for the roar of tyrants in the sky.

A thousand blue skies each made from birdsongs. That's Jack's reward. The late arrivals of larks and sparrows sing cheerly of our lives. The twilight lets go of the mountains struggling to free themselves. The light of dusk races across the fields like wild rabbits chased by hungry wolves.

The old farmers hold the fields close at night. Their security blanket with its rows of cabbages, corn, beans, cucumbers, spinach.

What vanishes inside us the dark finds in our bones the woods. The cries of crickets understand. What the starlight says before it vanishes over the hill. Some favor promised the dwindling moonlight that pays tribute to fancy, dreams, visions of starry skies grabbing hold of each one of us. Begging us to live like there was no tomorrow. They might a limit on the number of minutes that you can fish and hunt. The sunny disposition of Sullivan County difficult to ignore. It's talking pretty. Mountains, fields, farms that kick up their heels. Rivers that pose like frontier heroes. See Davy Crocket's face in the lake. Smell the beautiful aroma of ham, eggs, bacon, grits cooking all over Bristol. Biscuits as big a truck rolling down the highway.

How is it that so many nights our children climbed the mountains of sleep? What were they seeking? If not the love of stuffed animals with soft noses. Capable of sharing their lives. For as long as they could hold their stuffing.

Where have we journeyed? Across the long goodnight. The moon at our side yearning to find its way into the world

The dim lit fields yammering for a blue sky The sun's pretty head caught in the backyard fence like a young lamb who seeks the sweetest leaves from inside the sunlight, reaching down with a handful. Certain if the sun could nibble the leaves it would shine brighter.

So bright the earth would sing for Jack. The corn would beat a drum for Jack. The beans in their green robes would stand up and bellow like a church choir and sing for Jack.

And like a church choir the cabbages stand up and bellow a church hymn just like the one we sang in that alleyway.

The dogwood listens for Jack. Misses Jack's voice. Jack's mouth three miles wide. The moon's ear contains everything we say. Do you have a clear sense of your place when someone so important as Jack Trayer leaves? It changes everything.

And how do we change without him around. The lark song knows it cannot sustain its incredible beauty without the memory of all those who passed.

The grass holds the light in his memory. The night finds the moonlight to its liking? Jack's face glimmers up from a yard strewn with moonlit patches. Each one singing of someone who passed.

Is the night sky interested in our well being? All of us. Does it remember our nights in the backyard, hugging sleeping blankets and eating corn chips?

At night, when the dark lifts its head, we hear the crickets yield their night music. The fields are cathedrals in which the masses of insects worship.

Only the lightning bugs can solve our problems. The garden snail doesn't appeal to the stars. It's the contradictions that attracts starlight.

The philosophically arguments burn bright along the clothesline. The dandelions whispering their prayers, when a gust of wind shows them the wild truths in the tall grass. The chill will touch only those dandelions who need healing.

Once night kicks the bucket. Morning's up at dawn. The birdsongs speak of love, terror and the many things and merry thoughts of flowers. How their scents change the world. Impose on the stink of animals the beautiful smell of tulips and daffodils with soft eyes and tender mouths pressed to the sunlight. Their colors envelop the mountains and coax for the trails a destination that will take them far away.

How the morning sun frequently confides to us a great mystery. Each morning sun fills the need we all hold inside. The anticipation of accomplishing little moments that will hold us. Keep us safe.

Comfort's ability to be anywhere astounds. Grief pulls comfort up to its table. They share a meal fit for both mourner and stranger. The mourners are all big eaters. They can go right through a dozen plates of buttermilk biscuits. Throw some sausage gravy on them. They'll thank you for it.

Know Bristol grief has sweet eyes. It can't believe the things grief says. Jack Trayer was a hell of a man. It once cooked the moon. How would you like that? Medium or rare. How's well done fit you? Stars Jack Trayer mixed in with the scramble eggs. When a car horn cried out in the street, Jack threw that in. A mild pepper. Nothing like the french fries that could raise the dead. One sniff of Jack's cherry pie could inspire children to grow up tall, hungry for more pie. The cherries in Jack's pie were carefully chosen. Jack named them. Phyllis, Kate, Peggy, Lynne, Brenda, June, Mildred, Joy, Jim, Johnny, Edgar. Oh where's Bob when you need him?

Sweetheart 40

Those who loved Jack Trayer numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Each one had accepted the terrible news without calling upon their resources. They knew the Lord needed Jack for a reason. Why else would the Lord make such a request. Seize him like an old raincoat left at the bus deport.

For surely I thought that's what happens when you die. You're all raggedy and full of holes, only the light of Heaven shines through. You soul like a puff of a cigarette climbs up a ladder. Is that Jacob's ladder. He leaves it out all over Bristol. The clotheslines give you the idea they can do any job. But they're narrow minded, can't see the rainclouds beating their drums. The flute players are hungry for a funeral.

The birds at funerals conduct themselves like polite congregations. The choir in the oak tree is itching to get at it. Why not allow the crows to pretend to sing? Ain't nothing that would flatter Jack more. Jack loved the sound of country music.  
Ernie Ford ate his restaurant. Order a T-bone steak with all the trimmings.

You never know what food will appease your sorrow. Ice cream tries like the devil. But it comes up upon its worst enemy. Chocolate whips out its lips and kisses you like Marilyn Monroe, maybe Johnny Weissmuller. Strawberries start smoking cigarettes and chewing their fingernails. Sweet pickles lift your eyes to gaze upon the green hills of Paradise. Have you ever bitten into a slice of apple pie and not heard the prophets of the Old Testament decry the demons of the flesh. All right to kiss pies and cakes. It's the flesh that may take away your soul.

Jack's soul was pure. It may have had a few mustard stains. Let go the sweet tea to splash the long spiraling souls of men like Jack. You cannot look upon anyone's soul without knowing them well. An exchange of words been passed between you. Words that grabbed hold and ate you up. The warm regards of words that needed your love.

Jack's voice came into the world, riding in a flaming chariot. We heard his voice once and understood the need to save our appetites from oblivion. Appetites with broad shoulders and long legs. Arms that can life a spoon. Did you know forks have no means of visible support. They're freeloaders. Studious as they are they never passed Geometry. Miss Bogart once stood in front of class and told us triangles and rectangles could sing a church hymn like the Jack Trayer Trio.

We was sort of famous. Word had gotten out that night in Bristol when we sang for Jack. He told the newspaper we were three angels who burst into a church hymn in his alleyway. Next day our pictures in the newspaper showed us smiling like three Cheshire cats. Our tails curled up behind us. Astonished that anybody would want to know anything about us.  
All we did was sing for Jack Trayer. His recommendation came as a shock. It was like there little country boys and been lifted up into the sky over Bristol. We wiggled our toes at the State Line. It wiggled back. And you know when the State Line in Bristol does that it's impressed. Going to follow you wherever you go for the rest of your life.

The State Line in Bristol watches over us all. Once it went into Coleman's Cafe and ordered a beer. Those pickled pigs feet on the counter looked good. Hot sausages give you a wink and a nod. A bag of chips could change your life.

Sweetheart 41

"I still got an old necktie from Jack Trayer," Marsh said.

"How many times have you worn it?"

"I never have worn it," Marsh said.

"Don't you like it?" Gladstone asked.

"That's not the point," Marsh replied.

"What is the point, Marsh," Gladstone snapped.

"I'd feel strange wearing Jack Trayer's necktie. It wouldn't be right."

"I can see what you mean." I said. "The necktie that Jack gave you believes you're a dope."

"Why would say that?" asked Marsh. He seemed rattled by the notion that neckties could make enemies with those they disliked for whatever reason.

"That necktie knows the kind of man you are, Marsh," Gladstone said. "It knows you don't have any guts. You're full of chicken manure. Can't tie your shoe laces. Got to have somebody do it for you."

"That's not true," Marsh said. Gazing down at his shiny loafers. There weren't any laces down there. Why argue a moot question?

"It's that yellow streak that gives you the frightened rabbit to flee across the green fields of east Tennessee when the morning light touches the grass, Gladstone said. "You're frightened when you get up in the morning. And frightened when you hit the hay."

"I am not," Marsh stated with conviction.

"Mornings maybe you see the light," Gladstone said. "Everything trembles up. Light builds a fire in the day. The blue sky screams for its breakfast. Two thousand scrambled eggs and country ham smelling up the town of Bristol. A river of black coffee coming around from house to house, murmuring the encouraging words that awaken the dead. And suddenly buttered biscuits drag us out of bed. Everybody up and just about out the door. Alive, teeming with excitement, except you."

"I didn't know neckties said so much," Marsh said. "What's wrong with them? Are all neckties liars, spreading rumors nobody can substantiate? I'd rather not listen to a necktie tell me anything. I'd rather lend an ear to jukebox. In Bristol, we got jukeboxes that make you think you're a country singer. Sometimes I'm Conway Twitty."

"I once noticed Jack's wrist watch," I told them. "It was made of gold. The big hand did what it wanted, just stood around like a vagrant on a street corner. The little hand slapped the hour like a pig. You could hear the oink from across the street."

Sweetheart 42

Marsh pulled a photo from his wallet. "There's something about examining a photo of Jack. I have this same photo on my wall at home. It's in the living room. And each time I pass by the photo I'm aware of him. He watches me. Everything I say Jack hears. I'm not afraid to tell you I'm hurt. His death stepped on me like a bug. Squashed me. I felt awful. I cried my eyes out. I must've frightened my voice away.

"Looks like that photo in your wallet got torn to bits, Marsh," I said. "What happened to it?"

I tore it up when I got married. My wife got jealous of me taking it out. Looking at it. Everytime I needed to do something important like get married or go to my mama's funeral. Anything that frightened me. My first daughter Sally. I couldn't stop looking at the photo. I was changing. I asked the photo if I was going to be all right. Jack nodded his hear. Smiled. I stopped worrying about becoming a dad.

"You put it back together, I said. "Looks like a cracked mirror."

"Think I'll get seven years bad luck?" Marsh asked, smiling like cheshire cat sitting on a willow limb.

I thought my own collection of Jack Trayer photos. I'd clipped a few from old newspapers. They poked me in the eye everytime I opened an old Bible. The clippings perched in the Book of Psalms. A few migrated to Saint Mathews, guess they were tired of waiting for me. Jack was more than a newspaper clipping. He lived in my house. The guest room was his place to sleep on visits. He never haunted when my wife wanted a divorce. He could've helped me out. Tell me what to say.

Or perhaps Jack understood it was my call. My mouth reached down deep into my soul and I told my wife how much I loved her. I mentioned the young woman who accompanied me to that motel outside town. She caught my eye. I'm not certain how it happened. All I know is she spoke to me and her words wrapped me around their little finger.

Next thing I know she's got my heart in her hand and she's bouncing it on the counter of that italian place that served meatballs made of pork. The ones I love as though they had a thing for me. I wanted to return the favor.

It must've been only a matter of minutes. I heard a hammer fall and break the heart like a piggybank. The coins spilling out. A few girls from high school running across my bed. Why were they screaming? What had I done?

Adultery's like the trick in which the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. And the marriage vows are holding their tongues. The memory eating its own flesh. The blood dripping down the corner of its mouth. The memory's soft eye, its tender voice. A thousand years old. Where does it come from? Some deep place inside us. The soul would know exactly where to go and look for it.

The words we say to each other when we do terrible things are made of stone. Rough, sharp they scrape away out skin. We're filleted like fish caught out at Holston Lake. Fried up in butter and you know the skillet's going to sing. Just put it into the campfire and listen to that church hymn.

Sweetheart 43

"Jack was a giant," Gladstone said. "A great man who cooked like a dream. Fell in love with Bristol. Jack asked for Bristol's hand in marriage. Got down on his knees, begged Bristol to come live with him. A beautiful girl with long sexy legs, blond hair down to her shoulders. And a nose that could catch bluegill at Holston Lake. Bristol's nails done by pioneer ancestors. A tattoo on Bristol's butt — the entire Carter Family on the right buttock and Jimmie Rogers on the left buttock. That's called show business."

"His southern delicacies were well known," I added. "Apple raisin jubilees, pecan clusters that could make you cry. Every blue cheese omlette sat down in your mouth like a rocking chair and knitted a long sleeve sweater. Skinny people who ate at Jack Trayer's came out plump. They walked gracefully. Clump, clump. The sugary wealth of peppermint pie had a way of giving a fortune. You carried it around on your buttocks. A place where pie lives and breathes.

"Bristol growed a potbelly," Marsh said. "It had trouble getting out of chair. Needed a nearby county to help it up. "

"Jack Trayer could fatten up a skinny country road. Turn it into an Interstate Highway. Wearing droopy drawers and an cheap top that makes it look like it had lost control. Let itself go."

"He put some pounds on you. All it took was a look at the menu and you gained a few pounds."

"Onion rings would chase you out the door."

"Bristol growing larger and larger. It weighs over a hundred tons."

"No wonder it never goes anywhere. Bristol had to let out its belt a few miles."

"It was the cheeseburgers that got everybody. Kidnapped everybody in Bristol. Wouldn't let them go, until they finished their last bite."

"Marsh, don't you feel compelled to sing for Jack," Gladstone said. He came over to Marsh and whispered in his ear, "The memory of Jack Trayer should be celebrated, don't you agree?"

"Of course," Marsh said, "But how do I recover from my hoarse throat. It still itches a bit.?

"Do you have something against your voice?" Gladstone asked Marsh. "If your voice was inside me, I'd let it out."

"I ain't holding it back," Marsh said.

"Yes, you are," Gladstone argued. "You don't like your voice. You want it to stay down deep inside you. Like a hermit. Never come out for anything."

"We want the voice to step out," I told Marsh. "The very same voice that Jack Trayer heard in that old alleyway when we were kids."

"Voice sweet as chow-chow," I said. "Put it all over my beans and sometimes a baked potato."

"The voice that lived inside you, Marsh, gave Jack a blessing," Gladstone said. You know that, don't you?

"Where's that beautiful voice?" I said. "Is it inside you, Marsh?"  
"I know that night many years ago it was beautiful."

"You broke the bank, Gladstone said. "That old hymn wrapped its arms around Jack. Gave him a hug."

"You think Jack and that hymn had met before?" Marsh asked.

"Maybe many years ago," I said. "And when it came back to visit Jack welcomed it like an old friend."

Marsh, you've got a lovely voice," Gladstone said. "We couldn't sing without you being by our side. How could we? Can't conceive of not going on without you. The audience would be great disappointed."

"You've got one of those A country voice that shakes the rafters. A voice that knows how a church hymn enjoys the ride. A church hymn doesn't enjoy members of the congregation that squeak and squeal. It can give a church hymn a headache, bad back, trick knee. Sometimes the church hymn loses its appetite. Doesn't eat for days. Never goes out, sits on the front porch in the swing, smoking a cigar.

Then there are church hymns that everyone just loves to have around. Great personalities, make you feel at home. Most of them can cook and clean. Be your best friend. You'd swear you were related on your mother's side.

The twang with nothing better to do than impress everybody. Sing sweet. Let the lips blow like there was no tomorrow. The twang loves to wear white robes, dress up real nice and impress the whole congregation with its church hymns. Each one unwrapped from their boxes. Standing up tall and shining like a great big lighthouse. One that loves to sing a church hymn.

A country boy like you raised in the church choir. Cultivating your voice. Growing in it some peas and carrots and corn. That way your voice is rich, one fertile garden in which church hymns can grow.

"I think that church hymn was supernatural," Gladstone said.

"Supernatural?" I said, puzzled.

"I heard that hymn went around Bristol, knocking on doors, climbed onto of a few rooftops," Gladstone exaggerated, I could see that crazy look in his eye like he was pulling a rabbit out of the hat. "Who would think a church hymn could light every star in the sky. Woke up the moon. It glowed brighter than anyone could remember."

"There are church hymns that go home with us. We love to have them for supper. We often give them the guest room. We hope they will stay for as long as they like."

Sweetheart 44

I remember Jack tried something different on Friday nights. It was french mixed in with southern cuisine. Jack referred to it as 'Le Trough' night. All you could eat for five dollars.

Avez-vous turnip greens? You got? Roast chicken gizzards smothered with truffles? We hungry, eat a horse raw in french sauce or not. It the grand opening at Le Trough, one them fancy restaurant chains  
specializing in southern dishes fixed in the traditional french style.

It gall-dang, gosh-darn, mighty powerful, lip-smackin finger-licking good.

Union of the haute cuisine of two great countries. Le Trough is French-Dixie. Exquisite and rare entrees—polecat a la normande, porkchop sur le plat, pickled ham aux fines herbes, cauliflower cake, skunk Newburg, dandelion au gratin, tadpole flamed in brandy, turkey giblet aux duselles or just plain meatballs des nouilles?

Avez vous, hamhocks, sil vous plait? Some fried clam omelet, plate of scratch biscuits, bowl of gravy, a whole bunch of Charles DeGaulle corndogs, trois juicy Johnny Jumbo burgers with a heapin' tall side order of Giant Jack's onion rings, tout de suite.

Mess of Bobo pie, fried green tomatoes swimming in blue cow-tail cheese.  
Give me a helping of them sour cream fritters? Glazed ham. A bag of them tasty Davy Crocket barbecue des pommes frites, and I'll wash it all down with a glass of Snake Eyes beer.

At breakfast, a bowl of Colonel Quacks rice cereal, the breakfast of good ol boys. Two dozen frozen Fat N Fancy cinnamon rolls, three scrambled eggs, a side of Smoky Mountain grits, six pork sausages, two stacks of flapjacks and a pot of Robert E. Lee coffee, the preferred hot beverage of the confederate army, endorsed by Robert E. himself and 'still the best dang stuff that ever wuz'.

Le Trough is buzzing with hungry southern people. The butter and egg kind of folks who don't count calories or fat content. They love to eat up a storm. Pretty much you can count on their appetites being large. You taste them stompers, a kind of meatloaf made from squirrel, blended with cornmeal and whiskey, fried on a grill and served between two slices of cornbread.

Appetizers at Le Trough include acorn cookies, owl crackers, sweet tweeties and nutty pops, and down the line on a highly successful array of snack foods from Big Belly enterprises, which include Frosty Finger candy bars, Boo-Hoo crackers, (the cracker so good it makes you cry) and Mystery mints and Fink gumballs and Juicy juice, a carbonated beverage, and a chocolate drink called Muddy Moo.

Delightful and exotic southern delicacies as squirrel pate, turnip de frois gras, Grandma Huddles tangy chicken wings simmered in moonshine sauce, apple oil, goober peas, bubble gum, honeysuckle soup, pecan pie with a crispy mooncrust, rabbit bouillon cubes, dandelion mustard, Daniel Boone baked beans, Jimmy Dean greens and Elvis Presley fishsticks.

Not to mention, Big Foot peanut butter, crunchy and smooth.

And don't forget the puree de grits de terre, Dixie pommes in robe des champs, plateau de pork sausages, cuisses de grenouilles, specialite du chef possum souffli, cabbage ratatouille, chicken gizzard au pistou, sur commande pigfeet, varmint vol-au-vent, salamander supreme and beaver bordelaise. Southern cuisine kicking up southern-style dishes---cornbread muffins, green bean casserole, hickory nut pie, fried chitlins in brown sauce, rabbit gizzards swimming in buttermilk, possum belly rice, roast duck, poached carp and chicken neck stew.

In the gift-shop, grab a bag of Appalachian Trail mix, which comes in two flavors. Mild and wild. The milds has gooseberries, pecans and beef jerky in it. The wild's full of everything from pulverized bullhorn, cornflakes, buzzard bits to pig rinds and dried fruits like smoked apricots, raisins. A scattering of sunflower seeds dipped in snuff, and once in a while you'll taste a pinch of gunpowder, a sprinkle of jalapeno pepper to keep away  
the mosquitoes and, in general, makes you feel strong as a grizzly bear.

Le Trough is east Tennessee's first drive-in Dixie-French Truckstop.  
Reservations are recommended, as the crowds of folks get wind  
of the unique combinations of them cultures thrown together.  
Mixed up and jumbled sideways to amuse and confuse the tastebuds.

Right nicely.

Sweetheart 45

Last funeral I went to was way back when I was a teenager growing up in Bristol. Just learned to drive. And I'd volunteered to drive a group of teary-eyed mourners to the grave side of his Uncle Carl, I'd never expected anything so awful could happen to him. It was a Saturday morning. Rabbit and squirrel season in Bristol, Tennessee, a small town where everybody knew everybody else. But on the way to the cemetery I got kind of lost. I took a wrong turn. It was an honest mistake anyone could make. A rather small departure from the funeral route which, as best I could recollect, accounted for the hostility.   
"Is that the idiot who drove you?" a lady asked one of my passengers.

"Uh-huh. That's him."

"Who does he think he is?"

"Can't you follow the car in front of you, buddy?" a man remarked with a haughty voice. He jabbed me in the necktie with his index finger. "Huh? Can't you do anything right?"

"I asked for directions at the gas station," I said coolly. "But they'd never heard of the cemetery."

"Why didn't you ask the people you were driving which turn to take?"

"I did!" I insisted. I felt relieved the man had lifted his finger from his necktie. Though the man was now shaking his head, a motion of disgust over the whole matter. They had arrived late to the funeral, missing it by a good half-hour.

"You never opened your mouth," a lady who had sat in the backseat offered up. She grimaced at me.

"I asked for help!" I said, "But all I got from the backseat was moans and sobs."

"Moans and sobs?" the finger man repeated.

"Yes," I told them. I told them all, "Everybody was crying so loud I couldn't hear myself think."

"You never had a thought in your life!" a lady charged.

"Yeah. You're right on the money with that," the finger man said. "He hasn't got a brain. Have you a brain?"

"I've got one," I squeaked out. It wasn't a nice thing to say to someone who was trying to help.

"How old are you?" the finger man wanted to know.

"I'm seventeen, sir."

"Oh, you're seventeen, are you?"

I nodded his head

"What grade are you in?"

I cleared his throat which was dry as a lunar landscape. "I'm a senior in high school," I answered

"It figures," the finger man said, his arms folded.

A few moments later, mingling with the last mourners, I felt his shirtsleeves loosen and droop. In those days he had the terrible habit of biting the buttons off his shirt cuffs and sucking on them like dinner mints. It wasn't something I did consciously. It just happened. I bit things. My fingernails, pencils, match sticks, paper clips, bottle caps, but mostly I preferred buttons. They have a nutty quality.  
"Who's the woodchuck?" I overheard a lady inquire.

"He's the nephew," the man standing beside her said.

"The one who couldn't find the funeral?"

"Yeah. That's him."

"That must surely be the dumbest boy in east Tennessee."

I cleared his throat, real loud, his uh-hum registered. But it did little good. There was no stopping the mourners they were glaring at him, and each of them held it against him, like he had deliberately taken the wrong route.

"They don't mean nothing," Uncle Hank said. He could see I was taking it all pretty badly. Nobody was heaving any rocks. But the bad-mouthing was picking up steam, rolling down a mountain of blame.

"They hate me," I said.

"Nah," Uncle Hank shook his head. "Nobody hates anybody in Bristol."

"They got real mean looks in their eyes."

"Nah. They all Christians. Born again. They just don't like missing a good funeral. Folks like to see the dearly departed off. You know they kind of sentimental."

"I feel real bad," I confessed. "Real god-awful rotten."

"Don't take it so hard."

I wandered off. He threw the keys in the car and took off through the cemetery. There were flowers scattered all over. Baskets. He murmured to himself. His thoughts long and sad and dark. And, in an attempt to comprehend it all, knowing every manner of affection and familiarity account for little more than empty gestures; as all words fall short, and seemingly the more good a person attempts for the dear departed the less they accomplish, for what was intended as appropriate may not merely be deemed inappropriate, but indifferent, far-fetched, reckless and not in the least bit accommodating or cordial.

I felt drunk with sadness. I least expected this. How could it have happened? The sad mourners and their blubbering tearful whimpers played in his ear. The mourners of all their genuine selves-perhaps more repugnant, more disrespectful for the bargain-the thing one should never forget he told himself over and over was that no matter how intensely one grieved one should feel even more deeply for those left to carry on.

When somebody is born in the next world, when a person leaves this one, having no more use for the human body, feeling so light- headed the spirit jumps up there in the sky, a high-flying soul, it's all pretty much printed all about it in the local paper. How somebody went peaceful or not. How it happened and all.They write the prettiest words about people that ain't around anymore. Everybody in Bristol felt so sorry that people were gone and all.

There were those that take it plenty hard, and there are others that don't feel much. Those that do experience an interval of dysfunctional turbulence. An absence of mind, the body, too, sometimes found itself at a terrible fierce loss, irretrievably dumbfounded, while they spirit was rendered most feeble. Broke by sorrow, and the inner-self draws its strength from thoughts of escape, and the presence wears thin, ghostly, so transparent one's efforts pretty much nearly all the time-fall short, and all that remains is the haunting-the touching of hands, the sad whispers, the knowing glances born in the corner of the eye and vanishing when needed most. When meeting the gaze of others, wishing to impart some meaningful fragment of ourselves, and finding we have only our grief to share, don't help none.

Some folks don't give in to grief. Some folks bumble. I decided he was a bumbler. And bumbling was a thing of beauty, derived of that brainless state of mind. He meant no harm to anyone. So he didn't jump off Watauga Bridge and drown himself, like he had wanted to do. When he got home he didn't shoot himself with his shotgun. He didn't eat rat poison or take a bath with the electric fan going. He ate a pork chops and biscuits and gravy. He went outside and gazed up at the stars and saw the moon was great big round and fat and pretty shining down on east Tennessee.

He felt so good he drove over to Millie Chamber's house and knocked on the door and when she come out he spoke in a squeaky voice and asked her if she would be his girl. She being the prettiest and smartest girl in east Tennessee, and she said she'd think about it. And that he should come back sometime wearing a necktie and not them ugly overalls that smell like old stinky fish.

Sweetheart 46

Marsh always fidgets, like his coat doesn't fit him. His clothes either too tight -- sleeves too long. He has a tendency to pull up his sleeve as though his arm was growing, or his leg suddenly grew a few inches.

His feet, Marsh believed, were occasionally fastidious about shoes. Feet lived in shoes. They sometimes murmured. It was the toes that did all the grumbling. All about what toes hold sacred. The reasons that toes live has to do with the socks. The cotton socks were adventurous. They like to take risks. Sometimes they could crawl up your leg. Right above the kneecap. Where they sang a country ballad.

Marsh's necktie, the one he brought to the funeral, swung with a swagger. It was black as the night. The tip of the tie smiled at you. Tried desperately to tell you how much it hated funerals. The knot in the tie was a windsor know. One of these fancy profession knots that looked like a triangle made of black cotton, shiny and winking at you, could give you a wish. Neckties when we was growing up in Bristol gave little boys wishes. We always wished for a pony. Nobody ever got one. The neckties liked to fool us. Pull one joke after another. Neckties that you wear on Sunday are reverent, always bowing their heads and saying their prayer.

Perhaps we were all a little fidgety. Coming to a funeral we're all tightly wound. Our shoes don't feel comfortable. Neckties push us around. We can hear the footsteps of air deodorant. That motel stank like an old man who drank too much rot gut. Why did the smell french fries always occur to you when you thought of Jack Trayer?

Sorrow comes upon us, strolling like a tightrope walker. It's high above the circus. If it slips, holding that long balance rod, the rope swirling like a snake. Sorrow could fall all over us. The precipitation at least a few inches, floating in our stomach, gurgling up like a polecat innards. The things sorrow tells us. Immortality has kicked the bucket. And in its place sorrow portends to provide us with a saving grace. A nice plot of land, a rectangular bed of earth and grass. Many sad eyed birds warbling in our bones.

At funerals, there's things to think about. You need to prepare. For example, the sadness leaves in the air a residue. Like ash, more pale, don't spread it on your face. You'll never get it off.

The blue sky often makes an appearance. It's not happy about being asked to another funeral. It wears a formal blue suit, blue necktie. There's little monkey business when a blue sky attends a funeral. It's not considered to be in good taste to imitate jet airplanes humming country ballads.

As well, the obligation to express our deepest regards. It's our eyes that do all the talking at funerals. Hands jump on the bandwagon. The nose has tendency to drip the fountain of youth. A sticky residue like crazy glue. Touch it and you can't get loose you. It's got a hold of you and what else can you do?

We tend to see invisible things around us. Lamps float in their air. Windows toss sunlight at us. We either catch the light. Or we step aside. Sometimes a birdsong from the outside whispers some delicate truth in our ears. We're struggling hard to keep our composure. We're singers. We need to contain ourselves. Keep everything neatly arranged in our heads. No thought out of place.

We assume a physical transformation will occur before the funeral. Men turn into mice. Women into sad cats who have lost their appetites. The trend is to muss the hair of everyone. Pull the ears, stretch them a good county mile. Till the pain renders inside them a foreign resignation. The upper lip curled up, the lower one trembling in the dark, grabbing hold of mumbling sounds that float up from the upper intestines and made a sound like a locomotive coming over the moutain.

And with that comes the ultimate metamorphosis. The sorrow licks all our merry thoughts in the brain. Coaxes them to retain their former greatness. Not diminished whatsoever by the spell of sorrow. Surely a witch's spell. More dangerous for its sweet disposition and capacity for swallowing us whole.

Our souls inside us will assume the shape of our bodies. Though we may experience swelling in our abdomen and buttocks. The souls sometimes large as mountains. They climb our bones. One hand over another. They don't want to fall. The drop is a wicked way to die. Souls love us for our spiritual appetites. The number of bible verses we know is always greater than the number of lies we tell. How many broken promises have we made. The prayers we make before bedtime tend to broken promises. Mend them like old socks.

The souls believing they're immortal, hoping only that we can follow the soul from one life to another. Quick change artist. The trick being how to leave one world and enter another. Souls tells us secrets about ourselves. One minute we're dumb the next we're smarter than Einstein.

Souls come all sizes. One's as large as the Milky Way. That's the one Hank Williams and Tennessee Ernie Ford and Minnie Pearl wore everyday of their lives. The souls can be tiny. They expand like balloons. The soul is full of cornbread. You've got to supply the butter.

Souls smile at you when we sing church hymns. When we pray to the Lord our souls swell to the size of mountains. Souls quite generous with their size. They'll fill us out, place their hands against our flesh and hold out the sorrows around us.

Sweetheart 47

When attending funerals, even at length of hours to arrive there, the inconvenience of emotional commitment, memories suddenly popping up like scrambled eggs and bacon at a truck-stop. The pull of the past stronger than ever. It wants to pick our pocket. Ask us the most embarrassing questions. How did he die? What was his age? What were his last words? And who did he say goodbye to? Did he speak of his faith? Or did his death occur without his knowledge. An event hidden from him like an easter egg. The scavenger hunt of one's life always ended with the object being uncovered.

I somehow felt a dark enter me. It started on the bus coming to Bristol, a darkness crept inside my shirt. It felt cool, nothing uncomfortable. I suspected it was normal for all those attending a funeral. The dark accompanied everyone. Some felt it, others didn't.

I was ready for the unexpected. You never know what dark will bring. The kind of dark that comes grief rubs its nose all over you. A cold, wet nose like a puppy that needs you. Not that it had a way about it that could distract you. The needs of funeral guests were simple. Feel glum, reminisce about the departed. Know of them what they gave to those around them. An abundance of joy enough to leave impressions of their personalities, words, moments in which you found them interesting, so much so the dark gives way. Light falls all around them. Memory shines a light on their faces. We're unable to hear them speak. Their eyes closed around us. We can't move.

When I was a kid I believed the dark gave me things. It was generous. You could count on the dark to lend you its quiet. Even the dark in the front yard would follow you around. Sometimes all the way along the sidewalk up the little hill which embraced a maple tree.

The dark wanted us to speak out. Interrupt the silence that dark kept around like a pet. We spoke out so that those who can't or won't listen should understand how dangerous it was to be in the dark.

It's a wild animal that sits on its haunches and waits. It's a dumb old man carrying a walking stick. He's doing things that would astound you. The dark knowing what the stars and moon were saying. It interpreted every glimmer of light from the planets. And some of us watching were blind.   
And others listen to the dark were him deaf, hearing whatever we wanted to hear. The dark never perturbed that we didn't insist that it would hold its tongue.

What are we to dark, but luminous mouths and ears. Our legs and arms, our eyes glimmering as though to challenge the dark. Eyes bright with their souls shimmering in the dark. Who doesn't know eyes hold the soul captive until the last breath, the flight across the sky to the AfterLife a short one hour trip. Pack lightly. The places that Paradise holds are almost as exotic as the Great Smokey Mountains. All those tourist attractions. Love that mechanical bear that will come up to you and shake your hand.

Inside sorrow is a land of forbidden things. Not just bad apples and dead cats and run over first puppies. But the high grass of mortality, how it stretches out for miles. The stars and the moon and the planets hold no rooms for the tortured soulless among us.

The first thing dark thinks of when it wakes up every morning is how do I get out of this? Is there a crack in the ceiling? Does anybody know the morning light will pop open its eyes and sing.

The dark an unwilling devotee of a strange culture. The religion that hides things where you can't find them. Covers up whatever you do. Every illegal, immoral wrong tossed into the depths of the earth. A hundred miles deep within the moment. How do we dig ourselves out of the dark? How can we spare ourselves from the cloak that dark asks us to wear?

The dark's voice sometimes sweet enough to make the crickets ring their bells and the cicadas strum the tambourines. The late birdcalls unwrapping their blessings in the distance. One birdcall like a cry from Paradise. The green hills hearing it and yearning for starlight to leap over the mountains and claim their birthrights. The pine trees asking for more than they deserve. The mountain creeks running down the trails toward the bottom where the sounds of rivers spoke their confessions. Confederate soldiers who never regretted the bullets they fired. The times that let out with the rebel yell. The one that frightened the Union Soldiers turned them to stone.

weetheart 48

"Froglegs! I wish I had some froglegs! Marsh said.

"I know he served them," I said."

"They was alway wiggling in the frying pan," Marsh recalled. "Jumping around. Gig them with your fork. Mouth watering, yummy like a frog-leg should be. Garlic and butter. The perfect companions. The hot skillet licking its lips."

Marsh didn't know it, but frog legs were one of Jack's delicacies. I told Marsh of the frog leg draught in Bristol, when the frogs disappeared during the Fifties. Ran off to join the circus, I told Marsh, laughing loud so he'd get the joke.

"I'm crazy about froglegs," Marsh said. If I could eat a mess of frog legs I bet I could sing?"

That moment was when Gladstone recognized the opportunity. He called room service and ordered a plate of froglegs. They arrived in a matter of minutes. Frog-legs all crispy and smelling like fried chicken. Lying on their backs in an aluminum plate. You could almost hear them whispering to Marsh. 'You've got to sing. You got to perform tonight. Frog-legs will give your voice back.'

The frog legs getting their due. A sort of strange respect. They might loosen Marsh's larynx and give him his voice back. It could change the whole evening's complexion from mummy gray to red roses. Gladstone assumed the voice was temperamental when it was being resurrected. It would first whimper, then disobey the musical scale. Nothing melodious, just chords that sounded like they came from a donkey. That might do the trick.

Everybody who loved Jack Trayer would be at the funeral. They expected to hear us sing. We were the only musical group. We didn't need a piano. All we had to do was sing a cappella.

"I always loved Jack's face," Gladstone said. "He was handsome. When he worked late his face looked like a bed somebody slept in.   
There his smile got a good night's sleep."

"You know what I liked to eat at Jack Trayers?" Marsh asked.

"No, what?" I responded.

"Jack's most popular menu item — grilled cheese, milkshake and fries," Marsh said. He licked his lips as though he'd just taken a bite of a grilled cheese."

"Jack Trayer," I said. "I can remember when his name was spoken in Bristol. It had a shine to it."

"The name gave you a good feeling," Gladstone said.

"I loved Jack Trayer's coffee, I said. "I remember tasting Jack Trayer's coffee. I was a kid and blew on the hot steaming sea before me. The sudden jolt of some dark mystery. The hot beverage that Jack brewed."

"My mouth got all excited. It was a summer's day at the beach."

Sweetheart 49

"I remember Jack," Gladstone said. "He never saw a chuck steak that he didn't like. They were his friends. Why he loved chuck steak better than other steaks was a dark mystery. Had they done things for him that the others refused. Was the chuck steam more humble."

"Jack loved fried green tomatoes. They were his favorite side dish. A delicacy that Bristol couldn't get enough of. Fried green tomatoes had Bristol's heart. They'd gone on a hayride together many years ago. And all of a sudden they hit off. One puckering up and other accepting the lips. Green lips. Beautiful green lips. They'd lay on the plate. Roll their eyes, place their hands behind their head and whisper sweet nothings into the air. The sweet nothings flew around Jack's restaurant. Giving everybody a measure of bliss. They understood the gift of bliss was precious among the green tomatoes, who rather wanted to keep it to themselves, but Jack knew better."

"Jack was famous for his fried green tomatoes," I said. "They were so delicious you couldn't stop smiling for three days after you had them. The fried green tomatoes were generous. They gave Bristol a few hundred blessings. The blessings flew around Bristol, perched in the elm trees and sang. You'd get excited when you saw them coming. Flapping their wings along Windsor Avenue."

Marsh listened, then said "Jack held his head high, his apron murmured, mooed, oinked, clucked depending of what he was cooking."

"He wore a white chef's hat — sometimes it spoke and interrupted you. Asked questions like does this chicken cutlet need pepper?"

"How many times did Jack Trayer get his picture in the paper?"Gladstone inquired out of the blue.

"A million times," I said. Exaggerating, if only to make a point. I didn't remember opening the Bristol paper without seeing Jack Trayer grinning out at me."

"He was famous, Marsh said. "A legend. Just like Davy Crocket."

"Davy Crocket couldn't cook like Jack Trayer," Gladstone argued.

"We can't bring Jack Trayer back."

"If I could see him again —" Marsh said, cutting himself short, knowing there was a high wall that in the way. Jack had died the day before. Unless someone could summon his spirit, he wasn't coming back. Besides, it's his funeral. That would be arguing the question, a coarse thing to do. The dead seldom come back so soon. What kind of indian chant could raise Jack's spirit?

It was a matter we all considered. A memory of someone was like being haunted by a ghost. The ghost lived inside you. Sometimes on the tip of your tongue. Or hunkered down in your mind, right behind your childhood, or school days. Either way you had to find a place, a nice comfortable room for those who you never wanted to forget. You could hear them in your head. Buzzing with the latest gossip. You stomach growls like a lion. You've got an itch behind you, your back is crying out, "help, scratch me you fool!"

Sweetheart 50

How I knew it — let me tell you. Let me tell you before I burst. I've been holding it in since I started this story. Can't ever expect anybody to believe it. That's the problem. But I got this intuition that Jack's ghost unbeknownst to us was standing right behind us. We couldn't see him. He made no sound. Sometimes ghosts snap their fingers or shuffle their feet to let you know they're around. Jack stood there admiring us. Well aware we couldn't see him. He held his arms behind his back, hands clenched and walked around the room.

I wasn't surprised to see Jack Trayer. And it caused some worry that I didn't shriek. What ghosts give the living is the blessing of the spiritual world. And besides everybody in Bristol was a Christian, and they saw spirits all the time. Coleman's Cafe's full of spirits drinking draft beer and eating pickled pigs feet. You could find spirits in the drug store buying paperbacks. Some spirits leaped off the sidewalk into the air. Headed straight for home. Right after work spirits preferred an outdoor barbecue. Baked potatoes, burgers, green peppers sizzling like there was no tomorrow.

Spirits in school, little spirits carving their initials into the desks. Trying to answer arithmetic problems that wouldn't shut up. Insisted that numbers were everything in the world, important factors in determining the success or failure of the world. Numbers didn't expect much. Just the right answer. Don't count your numbers with your eyes closed. Give the numbers a chance to be themselves. Honest, hard working country people.

Sometimes people had spirits inside them. Three spirits, maybe more to get right in your spleen or kidneys and go along for the ride. Help you make decisions about spiritual matters. Or what you were going to have for breakfast. Oatmeal or scambled eggs and bacon. Or what bait you were going to use to catch some bluegills.

The spirits often clutched your insides. They hung on as your went about your business. The best spirits lifted our faiths. They read scripture to us as we showered, never interrupting the voice that rang out in our heads. The voice of the Lord that inspired us to sing a church hymn in the shower about his glorious ways. How we were born to give him praise.

Sweetheart 51

The gift of seeing spirits most likely occurs when you first arrive at a funeral. They're sitting in the eyes of mourners. A few minutes after the eulogy you might see spirits flitting about, some sit in trees. Others stand reverently at the graveside.

The memory of Jack Trayer was intense. It shone like the sun in the sky. People moved more slowly, weighted down by grief. You couldn't get the memory out of your head. It's all wrapped up in there. Always murmuring about the amazing things Jack Trayer accomplished in Bristol.

Could it be that sorrow was a spirit? It inhabited us, and it haunted us. We were full of sorrows. They were inside us. They lay down in our flesh. The marrow in our bones turned sad. Jack Trayer died and the news went around Bristol, knocking on doors, leering into windows. The sun sang a dirge. It's sad journey near an end. The sun strolled along the Blue Ridge Mountains. The sun with its mouth closed tight, hands behind its back.

Of course, the age of sorrow was infantile. When you first felt sorrow you understood sorrow had yet learned to walk or speak. It would take a few hours for sorrow to get up steam. Stop crawling on the floor, yammering for attention.

The sorrow's best bet was to lie down inside you. Find a place to rest its head, close its eyes. Meditation, remember the dearly departed. The one who left the world without saying goodbye.

Sorrow took its time maturing. In its final hour, it was old as the hills. It couldn't see or hear. Sorrow was an old man in a rocking chair. Watching the children play in the yard.

Sorrow requires our attention. When it arrives you've got to unwrap it. Remove it from the velvet pouch in which it was sent. A sorrow no bigger than a willow tree. There are birds that sing from sorrows. There are lakes in sorrows. Green hills in sorrows.

And when sorrows hold us up they do so to show us their strength.

The spirit that comes around to fold the sorrow up like a white linen and wrap it around us is the comfort of a prayer spoken silently. The birds are singing eulogies for Jack Trayer.

Seeing spirits wasn't a gift everyone had. Faith inside us allowed us a spirit made of bliss to flash a grin. The eyes full of expectations. The way we spoke gave us away. Happiness was a spirit we courted. None of us could make of happiness much at all. It was a spirit that we often met at anniversaries and holidays in which everyone joined hands and bowed their heads. They prayed to the Lord.

The Lord's face shining inside our heads the moment we were born into the world. The moment we spoke his name. The moment that we heard a church hymn. The spirits in church hymns escaped into the world the moment the piano asked them to rise.

We awakened in the spirit of morning. The morning sun blurting out a few psalms, and the birds' sweet voices robbing the world of any sorrows. Those beasts that gave birth in the world. Dark that shook us, terribly frightened us. We depended on spirits to keep the dark away.

The spirit of merriment being a sensation. A gleeful moment that we perceived as a state of mind. The spirit opening inside us a window in which light from Paradise entered our bones. The flesh grazing like a cow in the meadows of our heads. We could feel them inside us. Not everyone could see them in Bristol. We saw what the spirits did. We just didn't see them doing it.

They made us do things. The spirits gave us generosity, compassion. Everything that made christians the spirits were meticulous about. Giving us our ethics. Politeness that made our kindness shine in our eyes. Kindness being a spirit. Compassion as well. The good deeds we do for each other are spirits. They enter the world through our actions and words. A single word is a spirit that flies around the world. Love is such a high flyer. Forgiveness doesn't take lightly our obligation to believe in others. The heavenly light that falls from confidence enough to spare the victim of hate or fear. The hate and fear seeking to devour the spirits that dwell inside us. We cannot allow the abduction of our spirits. They mean too much to us.

Sweetheart 52

"How come you got circles beneath your eyes?"

"I feel the loss of Jack Trayer. I was up all night. It hit me hard."

"Has it got anything to do with you singing in church last week.  
I heard you messed up that bible hymn."

"It was a solo. The choir was listening wit big ears."

"What happened?"

"The hymn had a flat tire. My mouth couldn't walk a straight line. The lips trilled when they should've leaped into the green fields of Paradise."

"What does that mean, Myrtle?"

"It means I'm never going to sing that church hymn   
again. "There's A Church In The Wild Wood," took me for a ride."

Once I heard 'Amazing Grace' tripped up Marsh Fowler. She got so flustered she dropped her hymna.

"'Ave Maria' did a number on Myra Hinkle. She never sang again. Her voice got all froggy."

"How about 'Holy Holy Holy.' That could throw you. Try and sing in a cold like Bobby Laird did last February. The song give out. It was like the whole hymn was uphill. To sing it you had climb up a dogwood tree. That hymn has a few problems that are surefire boobytraps. You hit one flat note and another and everybody in Bristol gets a headache.

"And the 'Battle Hymn Of The Republic.' You see it coming you better duck."

"'Rock Of Ages' will punch you in the stomach and fly out the window. Old church pianos love that hymn. They got attached to it and can't let go. They need to lay off for a while."

"This Little Light Of Mine" is my favorite hymn. Everytime I sing it a light gets inside me and I beam like a floor lamp."

Joan Bailey loved that song. She sang it one whole summer. Every day and night. And she was full of light. When she went over to Kay's house for Peggy's birthday party, everyone knew it something happened. Joan lit up the whole living room. Everyone wondered how she did it. Was it her new husband, Phil? He was a good man, though he didn't seem the sort of fellow who could turn Joan into a floor lamp.

Or maybe it was Joan's new diet. Joan had stopped eating bacon last. That was around the time she began to shine. She turned vegetarian. Preferring broccoli, Brussels sprouts, spinach, kale, peas, carrot and green beans. She became a connoisseur of rice cakes. She chewed her food thirty times. Drank almond milk. Pure distilled water. She immediately brimmed with high energy. Her eyes brightening. And soon her whole body spilled a puddle of light on the floor. She a tall fluorescent bulb wearing a pantsuit.

She never went anywhere without strawberries. The sweet tart taste wasn't the only thing that attracted her. It was the calming of her mind that strawberries bequeathed. A hand full and she relaxed, emptied her mind of unnecessary thoughts. Her worries vanished, and suddenly she was free of stress.

Or how she had begun to exercise. Walking seven blocks at a rapid pace. They knew she had started to cleanse. A beet and carrot tonic that apparently awakened in her a couple of hundred watts.

She had begun to take yoga class. As well she had learned a bit of french. She would call your attention to the fact that she had been sleeping well. She attributed to her mediation each morning. Not to mention, her listening to Brahms, Mozart. A little Harry Connick, jr.

People noticed how she glowed. She had a following. At the beauty salon or public library, people were drawn to her. It seemed natural for people to follow her around. Particularly on dim lit streets. Moths would come along with her and circle her head. She was careful not to boast about her light. It seemed that she thought a small gift. If it pleased others, it was all right. She was willing to share her light with everyone who needed it.

"This Little Light of Mine" was a church song she sang in the car. She didn't have to hunt for her keys in the dark. Because the dark on hiatus. Cast out by her own bright lantern of her head. Her hands brightly shining in the evening dark. A glow that could've been spilled by the moon on the street.

People pointing at her and waving. It's the Luminous Lady. How does she do that? How is it possible a lady could brighten a whole street? The last time I saw her she lit up West Twelfth Street. Everyone was thankful. Safety, you know. A well-lit street keeps the burglars away.

If she went to a movie theater, people complained, cried out "Could you turn that thing off?" The beam was bright and annoyed people sitting both in front and behind her. What could she do about it?

She had a terrific personality. Her voice was soft. She possessed the gift of gab. She loved to talk. A people person. She always end every conversation with a 'thank you.'

She was charming. A former girl scout who sold a record number of cookies in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Recently she had unpacked her flute from the attic and played it to hear the sweet notes, watching them float out the kitchen window and catch the birds by surprise. They sang back to her.

Then she turned to reading Balzac, Proust, Stendhal, and Dickens. She read poetry. Yeats, Cummings, Frost, Bishop, Dickenson, Donne, Pope and Milton.

She joined a health club. Slim Gym. The health club was a little town in which people could go and perspire. She loved the sound of exercise. The panting and magical clink of weights that spoke of honesty and hard work.

It had a swimming pool. Joan swam every Wednesday and Friday at three o'clock. She was a familiar visitor in her blue polka dot swimming suit. She'd do her backstroke in the shallow end. Her head slipping beneath the water and then bobbing up for air. Her lips round and pursed against the air. She began to appreciate the miracle of water. It believed in her. Gave her the confidence she needed.

In June, Joan took up tennis. She had a played a little in high school and college. So it was foreign to her. It got her excited to strike the ball. The arc was a perfect smash. The ball jumped off her racket and bound forward into her opponent's court. Why would anyone not love tennis? It had a certain likability. How could anyone resist?

That same month she tossed her television. It wasn't doing anything for her. It was news, old movies and commercials for soap and chewing gum. Mostly it was a braggart. A bully, a sticky-fingered kleptomaniac that stole her leisure time.

The last thing she wanted was to go dim. She felt a little dark when her Aunt Susan died. She didn't understand why her light was failing. She didn't like the dark. So she slept with her lamp on beside her bed.

A week later, rising from her night's sleep, she saw a puddle of light scramble across the floor. It followed her into the kitchen. She was glad to see that she was lit again.

Grief had power to take away her light. She understood it that took away things from people. A certain gloom that invaded the immediate survivors. And one didn't know what would be taken from us. The regret of not saying more to the deceased. Not comforting them in their final days.

The light was Joan's to share with them. She visited their homes. Uncle William in Bristol, Virginia, cousins Mary and Sheila out on South Holston Lake, two nieces Tom and Thelma on Anderson Street.

Joan begging her light to burn its brightest. Oh, if only the light was kind and carefully made of itself a comforting thing. The light sat down on the floor. The light stood up and hugged everyone. I love you, I love you. The light said the nicest things.

Sweetheart 53

Then a moment so unexpected arrived, and how would anyone know such a thing would happen. It began when I noticed the motel room fall dim. I turned around, disbelieving what I saw. There I stood, dumbfounded. I observed the ghost of Jack Trayer. he was staring at me from the motel window. He was in the courtyard. Bent down to gaze through our motel window. Squinted, I saw his nose large as a red barn swing from one side to the other.

He was large, as big as Bristol. And he'd bent over to peer through the window at me. It was shocking to see Jack's eye blocking out the sunlight. Was I the only one who noticed? A ghost that blotted out the sky.

I shrieked. It was all I could do. Then I gasped. A whoosh sound came out of me. It was though I was exasperated. A ghost as large as Bristol was looking at me. Did he know me? Did he comprehend why I'd come?

I was puzzled. Were all spirits were so large. I'd sworn I'd seen Jack no bigger than himself. Spirits change. Sometimes they're enormous. I immediately understood the soul of the departed was like a storm. I heard thunder, I saw lightning. Jack's soul had enlarged. He stood up at the window. He shot up into the clouds. I peered out in time to see his handsome face high over Bristol.

I saw his lips moving. Though no sound came out. Only the howl of the wind. The crackling of thunder clouds. The sky hung around Jack's shoulders. He seemed not to know how large he was. Why was a spirit miles around miles tall? What is it lends the dearly departed their proportions?

I heard a knock on the motel roof. The spirit of Jack Trayer was alerting us to his arrival. In a moment, I was face to face with him. He was a few inches taller than me. He stood in the motel room, smiling at me. He'd shrunk to our size. Obviously to address us. He understood the importance of the moment. He'd come to help us. How I understood this occurred to me when I heard his speak.

"Glad to be back in Bristol," Jack said. He shook our hands. He went around the motel room, slapping us on the back, as though he understood our fear. He wanted to make us comfortable. The dearly departed having a measure of politeness that could smooth over the hysterical reactions it might encounter upon reentering the world.

Sweetheart 54

Jack's voice was full of spirits. Every word he spoke had an old face like our grand parents we recognized. The words were wise, old ladies and gentleman. We understood Jack, even though we suspected words spoken by the dead had different meanings. The syllables spun of golden cloth.

We were afraid of Jack. We stepped back. Admiring him for his many contributions. We were his most admiring fans.  
"How amazing!" Marsh said. "How did you get in here? How did you know we were here?"

'I listened to your church hymn many years ago. I know your voices. Who could sound like you boys. I stood in front of your so many years ago and you sang a church hymn. I was blessed when you sang. My mind suddenly became a bowl of soup. Fish, chicken, lamb, a few onions, paprika, admiration of three young boys in Bristol. You sang and your voices rang through my bones. I was dumbstruck. I understood what life was about. That church hymn changed my life."

It was never occurred to us Jack had been so impressed by our singing a little church hymn. We had no idea church hymns were full of power and wonder. They were alive. Church hymns were alive. They were all ten feet tall. Lord, help us to sing a church hymn. For surely a church hymn is our redemption. Our voices clamor for sweet Paradise. The flowers in our voices blooming like roses, daffodils, gladiolas and petunias. The butterflies of Sullivan County come around when we croon. The church hymn getting down on all fours and babbling like a baby. The melody of a church hymn wearing red robes and flowery hats. The better church hymns knowing what was missing. And providing the necessary parts. Nothing that christian doesn't possess. The nimble pitch, nothing nasal about it. We were sweet boys that let go from our inner being the church hymn that changed Bristol.

Sweetheart 55

In Jack Trayer, we saw ourselves as children. Little boys from poor families. It was as though Jack had held onto us. We were small coins in his pocket. We jangled when he stepped into the room. We were children again. And Jack Trayer had arrived to hear us sing once more. We were expected to rise to the occasion. Did we have it in us? To claim his soul. And by claiming it, give him life again.

If we sang again, Jack might be reborn. We gathered together. We plotted our move. We wished more than anything to claim Jack's soul and restore to its rightful place in his flesh. That hiding place where the soul curls up like an alley cat. Purrs when you get close. Seek to pat it along its head.

We understood Jack's heart. It beat our messages it wanted us to receive. The messages were nostalgic. They asked questions. 'You know what passage in the Bible Jack loved the most? The loaves and the fishes. Jack couldn't stop smiling about the miraculous success they had in the Old Testament. Catering the multitudes Jack figured wasn't ever going to be simple. You need truckloads of potatoes. More beef than the cow can allow.

Jack's heart spoke of noble deeds. Hard work. The making of biscuits from scratch. Fresh sliced plums smashed into jam. The rye toast telling the world of its goodness. Butter didn't always tip its hat and jump into the frying pan. Bacon had to beg for butter's visit. Not wanting to appear needy. Though butter gave bacon its due.

Jack believe the integrity of food. The gifts it brought us. How much it gave us. Every bit slipping inside us. Changing us for the better. Making us stronger, more vibrant. One patch of spinach, one fresh picked basket of okra, string beans, peas could start a revolution. Solve any problem, social or political. The potato could campaign all over the nation. Shake hands with everybody, giving advice to the issues — potatoes know everything.

How was it that Jack understood our dilemma? Marsh's voice had tagged along. We tried to hide our feelings. We never wanted Jack to know Marsh might well upset our plans.

We heard Marsh singing in the bathroom. He had a timid voice. He sang a simple melody that resembled the musical scale. Vowels. A, E, I, O, and U. A comical tenor who sang without fear of embarrassment. His voice resembled a squeaky tenor who embarrassed us. We overestimated his voice. It was droopy. It had trouble climbing up the scales and tripped going down. Could Jack help lift Marsh's voice up?

The dearly departed deserve so much better than a squeak front door. As it stood, the squeaks and peeps out numbered the squeals. It's every squeak and squeal and peep for itself.

Sweetheart 56

Maybe we'd drank too much liquor. When you hear the glass bottle clink you know it's done. The booze was inside us. We had our own spirits. Mine was wobbly. Gladstone's was leaning up against the door. Marsh lay on the floor, trying to get up. Then stumbling back.

You get gassed up and you can't see straight. Things all have a glow about them. You ears are clogged with a sticky residue. The harder you listen the less you hear. I'd heard a voice. It was a voice I recognized. I hadn't heard it since I was a kid. 'Hey, Marsh. How you doing?'

I looked around. What? I was astounded at what I saw. There he was. I couldn't believe it. "Who's that standing over there?" I yelped.

Who is that?" Gladstone said. He recognized Jack. He just couldn't comprehend the spirit of Jack. He was gray, puffy, a cloud with two arms and two legs.

"I think I know him," Marsh called out.

"Jack Trayer," I said. I pointed at the cloud. A tall misty fellow who wore a hat and a business suit. You could see it shining inside the cloud. Jack stepped out of the cloud. He waved at us. He said something spirits say. I wasn't certain what it mean. I only saw little moons of light flicker from his mouth. They hung in the air and passed over head.

"How could it be?"

"Is it a ghost," Gladstone said. "Lord, help us all. The ghost of Jack Trayer. He popped up out of no where. What's he going to do? What's he going to say to us?"

"What do we do? Do we want to be here? Marsh asked. "Shall we run? Where would we go? Surely a ghost can fly all over. We'd never get away."

"He's a memory," I said. "He's haunting us."

"Ghosts have such privileges," Gladstone reminded us. "Let's hope Bristol doesn't get the jitters. A ghost don't usually attend their own funerals. They stick out like sore thumbs."

Jack moved toward us. He stood in front of us. His face glowed like a porch lamp. His arm was bright. He reached inside his coat and withdrew a little moon. It was a cigar. He lit it. He blew puffs of smoke that burst all around us. The moons were trying to tell us something.

"Bristol will be fine," Jack said. "Bristol will always be my sweetheart. We were rarely seen apart. We stuck together through thick and thin. She never gave up on me.

"What's happening here?" Gladstone inquired. He'd watched the little roll across the floor. They each held some precious truth. We shuddered to know what they meant. The dearly departed bear with them their days. One can hear a wind blow from Jack's chest. He inhaled the air around us. He spoke with a voice that robbed our thoughts. He simply leaped out of no where. And came close, closer to us than any spirit we'd encountered.

"What has happened?" Gladstone inquired. He was adamant about it as though he wasn't prepared to accept a spirit's presumption. "What do you want from us, Jack?"

"I want to thank you," Jack said. "I want Bristol to hear you sing. That's why I came back."

"Don't get me wrong," Gladstone said. "I like spirits. Have nothing against them."

"I can't see him," Marsh squealed.

"There he is," I said, pointing in the mirror.

"Where?" Marsh asked.

"That's him right there," Gladstone said.

"I'm not always visible," Jack said. He gestured for us to sit down on the sofa. He had some business he wanted to discuss.

"Why do want to frighten us?" Marsh pleaded.

"Is it frightening," asked Jack. "Memories haunt those who remember. It's an invitation to visit. Spirits love to travel. I can't tell you how good it is to see you boys again. Can't wait to hear you sing that lovely church hymn."

It was then we looked at each other. We understood his request. We felt gratified that a ghost would ask us such a thing. The fright we felt overcame us. We were no longer children. We were men. Though our knees knocked. We gasped to look upon Jack Trayer's moon glow of a face. He had a smile like a church window waking to morning light.

Sweetheart 57

"Did someone conjure you up?" Gladstone asked. He lay his voice at Jack's feet.

"I heard my name called," Jack said. "All over Bristol they say my name. I'm delighted the folks of Bristol remember me. They use my memory to light the stove. A memory that's long as a country road. It's as though I knew everyone in Bristol. I cooked for all of them. They're grateful that I was a citizen of Bristol. She was my first and only love. Bristol had a cute way of walking down the street. Her pretty face took me by surprise. Swept me off my feet. Oh, how love Bristol. This day the birds in Bristol sing for me. The melody of one's life is short and sweet. You hear it on the radio. It sounds like a top ten hit."

We didn't dare interrupt Jack Trayer. His voice was mighty powerful. We were afraid he might say something to us that would change us. We understood the words he spoke. Though surely words from the dearly departed resonated deeply inside us. They went to work touching us, reviving us. Grief had run out the door. What Jack proceeded to give us was the power of Bristol. Jack had taken the power from Bristol, a loan perhaps. Kept in his pocket. Who deserved the power more than Jack Trayer? It was handed to him by pioneer ancestors. Who starved for years, not eating much of anything. Rabbits and squirrels on the menu. Then came the burgers and the fries. The country ham. The chicken steak.

What did Jack? Surely he understood the gifts of country food. Grits got out and pushed. Cornbread beat its drum. Biscuits come out dancing, kicking their legs high. The yellow sun getting kicked down the road.

"You're a spirit, aren't you Jack, "Marsh asked.

"I'm the ghost that lived in Bristol. They all called Jack Trayer. I rose at the crack of dawn, arrived at my restaurant, and one evening something happened that changed my life."

"What was that, Jack?" Gladstone asked. "What changed your life?"

"I heard three boys sing a church hymn behind my restaurant," Jack said.

"We gave you what, Jack?" Gladstone inquired.

"Was it something you didn't have?" I asked.

"It was all I wanted and more than I deserved," Jack said.

Sweetheart 58

We heard Jack's charming voice. It warmly greeted us. Not as a voice from the grave, but an old friend who returned to show his gratitude. What we had done for Jack must've been amazing. We had no idea we had such a gift. All we did was sing for our supper.

"I don't like lying down. I'd rather climb out and walk around. When you wake up that means you have your eyes open. Resting makes me restless. My feet get giddy. My toes want to fly around Bristol like they used to. I've strolled up and down State Street for many decades. My shadow knows every inch of Bristol. My shadow knows all the other shadows. They tell each other stories. How shadows don't always enjoy being swallowed up, bitten on the behinds by light snapping and chasing us across green fields. Those shadows have no sense of who they belong to. You'd think they'd listen, watch us, learn all about us.

We wondered if all the voices from the grave sounded so charming as Jack's. We were frightened to know that he cared about coming to us. What was his purpose? Did Jack need us for something. A last request before his soul flew to Paradise? Was it important for Jack to break his silence. We imagined his spirit was a great. We could see him shimmering in front of us. He glowed. Every word he spoke rolled from his mouth. Sailed across the distance between us and him. Each word a little moon that whirled, flickered when it entered our heads. The impact of Jack's words were like raindrops on your soul. We felt them tingle, hum in our fingers. We understood what Jack wanted so desperately was one thing. He wanted us to sing.

A blessing and yet it frightened us to stand in front of Jack Trayer. His eyes upon us were cool. They grabbed us as though they wanted something from us. What?

Suddenly we understood what we'd done for Jack. We'd given him his soul back. Somehow Jack had allowed his soul to collect mustard and mayonnaise stains from cooking all them years. Pickles don't have much respect for souls.

Our church hymn gave Jack's soul a good scrubbing. Washed, dried it, folded it and put it away.

Jack gathered from his mind the bright stars that shone. Each bit of starlight was what Jack loved. The starlight spoke about Bristol. The town that placed its arms around Jack Trayer, just as he was not feeling well. He closed his eyes and Bristol gasped. Surprised that such a man had fallen in love with it. Bristol's eyes darkening, its footsteps slow and everytime Bristol thought of Jack Trayer, it got a lump in its throat. It's boyfriend had grown old, died in his sleep. Oh, Lord, we see his soul cannot sleep until we sing.

Sweetheart 59

Why is it we don't see many ghosts in Bristol?" Marsh asked. "We hear rumors. Nothing spectacular. Newspapers don't always use the word 'haunted house.' They prefer to say there was a supernatural disturbance."

"My impression of spirits is that they pass for storms," Jack said. "I understood this when I was alive. Now that I've passed I find myself feeling light headed. I'm always buoyed by the wind. It picks me up like a blade of grass or dogwood leaf — tosses me high into the air."

"Like a strong wind blowing trees down. Hailstones falling on country roads. Lightning's omen. Thunder's din. The sky has lost its marbles. May the tournament begin.

"Memories go where they like. Slip through keyholes. Cracks in sidewalks, hollow knots of trees. Spirits have a way with small apertures. Even words contain ghosts. Don't ever be surprised that a spirit may rise from the page and accept the invitation of your mind to share a bite to eat. The mind's a feast of great proportions. There are roasted pigs and mashed potatoes and sausage gravy in the banquet hall of our heads. The buttermilk biscuits get all the love. You can hear the cornbread yapping for attention. Love is what the fried chicken legs wants more than anything in the world."

"Where are the souls?" I asked.

"The souls often find themselves places in our minds," Jack said. "The souls asked to conform to anger, friendship, shame, kindness. The emotions felt by the living are spirits who seek to enter the world once more. It could on the backs of pity, indignation, envy, love. What of the other thousands of pilgrim souls who seek to know it they may be remembered. The spirits sometimes living in sadness, surprise, joy, disgust, trust, anticipation. disdain, reflection, suffering, self attention. The vanity of us all is merely the millions of spirits looking out from our eyes. What do they see? What do they want? Is tomorrow enough to last us forever?

"The migration of the soul. People die more often than we'd like to admit. You shouldn't be afraid. There are those who depart, shed their flesh like drops of dew off mountaintops."

"Is every funeral an invitation to a haunting?" Gladstone inquired.

"Fear accompanies the spirit as a body guard. It informs those who see the ghosts of the dead that the bright hemisphere on the soul is full of teeming spirits. Billions of ghosts all in search of one thing."

"What is that?" Gladstone asked.

"They all want to be remembered. Don't like anonymity. It's unbecoming.To remember those who passed is to find in them a part of yourself. One that you hold sacred."

Sweetheart 60

"We are the spirits," Jack told us. He spread his arms out to indicate the presence of a vast army of spirits that surround us. "Every minute of our lives the spirits assist us. They listen. They hear in our voices the soft lullabies of country music. A church hymn is in everyones first and last breath. You just got to listen for it. Let it touch you. Let it sing like a lark."

"You couldn't do anything unless you had a spirit inside you. It could be holding onto your heart as it beats its drum. It could be between your braincells, hanging on by a thread. It could be in your tongue where spirits live to speak their minds. Spirits are the ones who tell the truth. It's the tongue that hides from its fear of shame. Shame has all the ghosts it needs. Pride could use a few more."

"The spirit I find most disfavor with is jealousy. It's always a distraction. Spirits shouldn't remove things that don't belong to them. Taking away what someone feels is too much like conjuring. The spirit that often leaves first is admittedly that of love."

"The spirit doesn't take kindly when love's absence occurs. The great mountains of love are within us. We cannot allow them to escape. We need to keep them around. Spirits made of love have kind faces and speak more softly than a gentle breeze."

"Grief hasn't any discretion. It makes us small. We bow to grief. Understanding the weight upon is great. We cannot hear well while sorrow stuffs us. Our ears fall off. Our eyes crawl into their graves. A smile cannot be allowed to be seen in public. Do you think eyebrows should leap up on foreheads and hiss like cats?"

"Happiness gets the reputation it deserves. The boy or girl who finds love has a gift for them never expects it. The treasures we're given by our parents amounts to more than we deserve. We cannot find more happiness than we're given by our parents. Whatever happiness does for us we acknowledge as the gift of a spirit. One who lives inside us. We cannot deny it. Happiness is a vast ghost with many followers. It drops breadcrumbs behind it. We follow it. The cold wind around happiness doesn't discourage us."

Sweetheart 61

"What do spirits do?" I asked. I saw Jack glow. His face burned bright. The light from his eyes fell to the floor. I saw the puddle light spin. I wondered what it meant.

"They bury the dead," Jack said. "They plum the depths of the living. They live in our hands and feet. They swim in our blood. They stare out our eyes.

"How do they speak to us?" Marsh asked.

"They speak with our tongues. They hear with our ears."

"Are there good spirits and bad?" Gladstone asked.

"The best spirit is kindness," Jack said. "The one spirit that everyone seeks. It's easily conjured. Not by spell or potion. But by compassion — the one spirit that everybody wants to know. Never underestimating it, not in any way pushing it aside. It needs room. We either know it or we suffer for our lack of familiarity with it."

"Opening a door, pulling out a chair. If your house is on fire they put out the flames. If you get lost they tap you on the shoulder and point in the direction of your home. They will buy you a drink at a bar. They will praise you up and down, until you understand how wonderful you are."

"The spirit of despair is quite rare. It treads lightly on our flesh. It invites itself into the pores of our sky. Despair will ask of us many pointed questions. None of which we know the answer to. We get a blank face. We scowl. Despair tries to talk with its hands. We watch despair's eyes glow bright. We don't understand anything despair says. It's got a language all of its own."

"A spirit can change. It can appear suddenly in front of you. What word is empty is suddenly full of light. Despair doesn't expect much from us. It wants us to lie down and close our eyes. We who know of despair feel empty. We stop combing our hair. We look a mess. Our heart can't speak for us. Despair holds the heart's tongue. Why can't we hear what the heart believes? Who knows what the heart wants more than the heart? It's all about grabbing for everything we can get. Being loved by those we leave behind. We seek their adulation. Please speak our names. In Paradise, if someone says your name everyone knows about it. A heavenly fame isn't easy to attain."

"Spirits can live well in music. A church hymn may hold a hundred spirits. A fiddle holds a house full of spirits. The guitar as well. The banjo is a haunted house. Hear a country song and listen to the words awaken in the deep underground tunnels in which country music lived before the Bristol Sessions. It was Bristol who lifted the lid of pandora's box and let country music fly out."

"Spirits can come from a variety of sources. Music is full of spirits. Some spirits are invited. The conjuring of love comes when called. The spirit of friendship has keen eye sight. Perfect hearing. Not all spirits can listen. Some may seek solace inside us. There are spirits that hide in our flesh. A few spirits hold out in our bones."

Sweetheart 62

You brought my memory with you, Finley," Jack said. "Memories have a way of following us around. A memory is a spirit that haunts those it loves."

"Must've crawled in my suitcase," I said. "No wonder I didn't enough room."

"Why do you all seem so distant from me?" Jack asked. His seemed puzzled, perhaps we were strange to look at. A spirit who hadn't observed people might not see us clearly. I wondered if we were misshapen. Twisted in some way.

"You're a spirit," Gladstone affirmed.

"You know me," Jack said.

"Memories like to argue," Gladstone pointed out. "Ask questions. Poke their nose into everybody's business.

"So you feel guilty, Marsh?" Jack asked.

I'm ashamed" Marsh said. "I never lived up to your expectations. I'm not who you thought I was."

"I believed in you, Marsh," Jack said. "I know your family. It was tough you growing up without a mother. " We understood that what a spirit said was absolutely the truth. It gave off a light. The light surrounded us. We assumed that the light intended to give us its blessing.

"She died when I was young," Marsh said, barely getting out. There seemed to be part of him that didn't want to let go of such pain. A spirit that inhabited Marsh. It broke inside him. Snapped like a net that entrapped him. He'd never escape. He understood there was no way to crawl out.

"I know I'm just a memory," Jack said, resigned to that admission that the dearly departed must make. "I know I'm glowing like a matchstick struck in the dark. A match with eyes that pierce, a voice that yearns to return to Bristol. Would they know me if I returned? I'm a six feet, three inches tall ghost who once lived in Bristol."

Jack adjusted his necktie. Each one of us it seemed was his mirror. He gazed into our eyes. The image we reflected was one of a handsome man named Jack Trayer.

"What else did you expect?" Jack said. "From a well dressed memory."

"We're happy to returned, Jack," I said. "We missed you so much."  
"Haven't you ever seen a memory wearing cufflinks, necktie, shining shoes," Jack said. He laughed. We'd never heard a spirit laugh. His gentle voice gave off a warm breeze.

"It's a tall, handsome memory with bushy dark hair and a blue and red necktie," Jack said. "Sadness has its feet on the ground. Happiness has its head stuck in the clouds. Flattery is what moves the sun around the sky. Gets behind the moon and stars at night. Places its broad shoulders against the night sky. Tows them around in a wagon load of summer skies. One for every boy and girl in Bristol."

"What do you want from us, Jack?" Gladstone. "Whatever it is you've got it."

Sweetheart 63

I suspected a church hymn of few things. Other than its sacred purpose to awaken our spirits. What of Jack Trayer's appreciation. Surely a spiritual song was a blessing. The hymn we sang for Jack was "I'll Fly Away."

It had awakened in Jack a strong believe in the Lord. Jack's affection for the song was so genuine. A sweetness inside came forth. Jack was suddenly seized by the expectations of arriving in Paradise, having worked hard for many years, dedicated to the town of Bristol, Jack's reward was his place in Paradise. The song enveloped Jack in its luminous vision. 'I'll Fly Away' was all wrapped up in eternal life, heaven and acceptance of the Lord.

Faith a spirit that inhabits all God's creatures. The people of Bristol were full of the christian spirit. It was a wind that danced inside our heads, ran around the shoulders and down into the belly. Those legs sticking their feet, then the toes into the Heavenly light that streamed in our bones. Shimmered up in our blood. The Lord's presence one abiding assurance and willingness to assist us as we dutifully worshipped him. The church always there for us.

When the first words that night so many years go escaped. We heard the sky sing along. The stars flickered to the rhythm of the melody. The Lord was in that hymn, and the entire town of Bristol was lifted up on that song's shoulders. Carried it around, didn't put it down until morning came. The yellow sun all proud that three poor boys had sung for a man named Jack Trayer.

Jack's soul as large as east Tennessee. You can throw in Southwest Virginia, too. The song we sang consumed Jack Trayer. Ate him like a strawberry plucked from the field. The song held everybody in Bristol who'd ever been born in its hand. Lifting it up to the Heavens.

I remember that night. He was surprised. The song shook him up. He understood his life had suddenly changed. The song had entered his head and rearranged the furniture. Straightened any crooked pictures. Picked up a few toys off the floor.

Jack opened his eye wide. He smiled at us. Jack was full of the spirit. Once it had lived inside him. Now it was back again. But this time the spirit was there to stay. A hundred yards tall. The spirit grabbed Jack's mind, and waded in the sea of his braincells. A nice pond, no bigger than Holston Lake.

I assumed that spirits did this service for those who it most respected. The spirit smiled with no regret. The spirit of the song claimed every ear as its own. One ear, two ears, you run out of ears, if you're a church hymn or a famous spiritual song like 'I Fly Away.'A toe tapping spiritual that would tuck in your shirt, if you had it hanging out, wiggling at the congregation. It could do a split, handstand, roll its eyes along the sunlight that streamed from its head down to its feet. That song could dance. You never seen no spiritual song with moves like it. It was a mambo and a tango and a cha cha all rolled into the one. And every step along the way led the world closer to the Lord. Praise God Almighty. We need songs that can do amazing things. 'I'll Fly Away' had a lot of potential. The way we figured it was the song was a force to be reckoned with. It could fight Satan barehanded, throw him right into South Holston Lake. Everybody would come by to see Satan baptized. Him gurgling, thrashing the water. A strange look in his eye like he didn't see it coming.

The song was a perfect spiritual. How many angels lived in that song? Half of Heaven and at least everybody who loved the Lord. You know the Lord loves that song 'I Fly Away' cause everytime somebody sings it they rejoice in the Love of God. The gospel that's all rolled into them lyrics. The church piano sprinkling holy water all over them beautiful notes.

The song's notes prepared to solve all the problems in the world. If only we could allow the song inside us. Open up those pores and let it sink into your flesh. All you need is an ear to hear the Lord's Voice coming right of them lyrics and kick the wind's teeth out. Let those angelic voices jump over the moon.

The spirits of church hymns ever present in our heads. Though sometimes we lean up against the wall, don't pay much attention to them.

The church hymns relaxed, sitting in the choir, hands in their laps, waiting for the moment when church hymns stand and throw their hats into the ring.

They're pleased to meet the living. They come around only to perform their work on us.The song 'Ill Fly Away' came with decades of saved souls, people getting hitched, some dying. The song a sweet eulogy to them.

Sweetheart 64

The day after Jack listened to us sing 'I Fly Away' he was a different man. He walked with a sprightly gait. People remarked that his feet didn't touch the ground. Bristol loved Jack Trayer like a teddy bear they took to bed with them when they were young. They had Jack Trayer's ear and they told Jack secret messages. "Hold the mustard. Could you slice this sandwich in half? "Do you have any hot sauce? The pepper shaker is empty. I think it could use a refill."

The questions that Jack heard were music to his ears. He could dance with I'll take my hamburger stadium 'medium,' please. Could you cut me a slice of apple pie? Just a chocolate cake would hit the spot, Jack, please I need to know what chocolate knows. And chocolate cake tells me it loves me. A chicken leg, Jack, one of those bowls of mashed potatoes, Jack, just a truckload of sausage gravy, Jack.

Save me, Jack. I need a grilled cheese sandwich. And could place the toothpick the heart of grilled ham sandwich. Show no mercy, Jack. Did I tell you Big Jack that I love your cherry crushes. They whisper little things as they go down my throat. I just love it when they start to yodel in my stomach. There's a lot room down there, Jack. I suppose you know that. Stomachs in Bristol can expand to large as the Hindenburg Blimp.

I watch the bubbles, Jack, in my cola. They're always excited to see me. They'd do just about anything, Jack, I asked them to, except washing clothes and doing the dishes.

Jack, look out the scent of spaghetti is in the air. Bristol loves the smell of italian food. Once meatballs rolled around State Street. Which band festival was that? I forget.

"I'm going to tell you this in a whisper," Gladstone said. "I don't want just anybody listening to what I've got to say."

'What's the matter? Gladstone, you have a scowl on your face. Like you ate something you weren't supposed to.

Gladstone gave Marsh and I the Bristol scowl. It was down on all fours like a wild animal. You were afraid it might jump on you. It was the kind of scowl that lived in an alleyway. And it didn't like listening to church hymns. That 'I'll Fly Away' spiritual wasn't going to stop what was about to happen. A complete and utter surprise. It came right and lifted its leg like a dog and piddled on Bristol.

Then it went around kissing everybody and saying things that would pluck a chicken on Sunday morning. Or wag its tail like Mrs Mumpower's fox terrier. I loved that dog. When it died I cried. The whole of Windsor Avenue was dumped into the sorrows that run deep beneath the streets of Bristol.

It was the kind of sadness that blew the leaves from all the trees. We spent hours raking the leaves and placing them in plastic bags. This sadness had a trumpet. This sadness had kettle drums. This sadness held us in the palm of its hands. This sadness drank down the Holston River. It kicked the moon over the mountain. It spit on Bristol. Jack lay dead. Old age had frisked him from head to toe. Taken the life from him.

How outrageous one giant had been taken from us. The emptiness spread all over east Tennessee. Nothing was everywhere. Only sorrow for Jack Trayer. We saw the sorrow in our eyes. We felt it in our hands. We observed sorrow in the sky. The yellow sun stopped breathing, clutched its chest -- you know like in them western movies, when the crook gets shot in the chest. He falls, he closes his eyes. He's still got his boots on. Bob Steel's face can be seen in every sunset in Bristol. Morning sun, dang you know that is? Does I have to tell you? Shines down on us. Lord, he comes to save us all. He's the brightest thing in the sky. He let that blue sky out of his pocket. Love us, Lord. We need your comfort. Jack Trayer is dead. He's gone. What are we going to do. There ain't enough sorrow in the world already. What's Bristol going to do?

Sweetheart 65

'I Fly Away' strolled into Bristol that night. It had its eyes on one man. His name was Jack Trayer. Lifted him up. Carried me around Bristol on its bony shoulders. Kissing Jack Trayer like he was the greatest cook ever born. Yes, sir. That's our Jack.

The spiritual song stood up. It could've reached the moon. I think 'I Fly Away' is the most beautiful spiritual song ever written. The words get in our bones. The flesh accepts the melody.

The song kissed Jack, hugged him and threw its legs around Jack's neck. They was going to tango. That night that spiritual song got Jack by the legs and made a wish. It tickled Jack's chin. It whispered the most precious words anyone could. 'I love you, baby. Let's go to the picture show.'

Jack fell in love with the song. The song had soft eyes. It hummed in Jack's ear the mystical things that bumblebees say when they've had to much nectar. Their eyes got watery. Bumblebees know their limit. Got dizzy, couldn't walk. Don't even ask to fly around Bristol.

Jack was smitten by 'I'll Fly Away." Some can take it and some can leave it. That song served up a plate of pork sausage, grits, biscuits, mashed potatoes and gravy. The sweet potato came out and banged a drum for Bristol.

Jack was under the spell of 'I'll Fly Away.: He said I love that song. It's what I want sung at my funeral when I die. So he wrote that in his last will and testament. The letters were underlined. The document arrived signed by Jack. We read with sad eyes. In his will, Jack stipulated we would sing at his funeral 'I'll Fly Away.' He stated that we'd sung with great fervor. It had bright lights in the lyrics. The whole state of Tennessee hummed along. Even them who couldn't sing understood the value of a spiritual song like 'I'll Fly Away.' It had something inside it. A heavenly nourishment and everybody wanted a bite.

The melody that resided in 'I'll Fly Away' had an affection for Jack. It gave Jack many gifts. Chief among them a recipe for chicken gizzards sprinkled with rabbit innards. He never told nobody that secret recipe. The melody give Jack a recipe for apple pie. The pie was so good that law enforcement attempted to adjust the morality in Bristol.

Then come with the Law of Pie.  
'Law of Pie' as it was cited. There's been a mess of folks that did evil things. They flirted with their neighbors at country dances. And you know smiles at country dances shouldn't mingle with smiles that need comforting. Adultery could get a bad name.

The Law of Pie was enacted to save us all. No broken promises or you could be put on the No-pie list. And you know what that means. It means apple pie and cherry pie don't like you anymore. They're afraid your lack of ethics will spread all over Bristol. So pie's keeps its distance from you. You turn right, it turns left. Pie's got better thing to do than reward a varmint that sneaks around the chicken coop. Pie don't like that. Keep your hands to yourself. Marriage vows are the pie's favorite thing. Pie sees you doing things that hurt your marriage, your children, it's going to put its foot down.

Things in Bristol are governed by pie. We got the law of pie. If you caught drunk driving in the Bristol, you got to recite Bible verses and you can't eat pie for two weeks.

If you rob a bank, and kill two tellers, you can't eat pie for six years. If you cheat on your taxes you can't have pie for six months. And if you and your wife fuss and fight over nothing, like who shot the dog. You stop making love. One of you uglier than the other. Here's some pie. You need it.

If you go to church you deserve a piece of pie. If you dressed up nice and your shoes is shined, you get pie. But if you don't pray or read your Bible, if you use the Lord's name in vain, if you womanizing, drunk, gambling, cussing, you ain't getting no pie. Don't even ask.Everything in the Bristol are governed by pie. We got the law of pie. If you caught drunk driving in the Bristol, you got to recite Bible verses and you can't eat pie for two weeks. Not a single bite.

But if you don't pray or read your Bible, if you use the Lord's name in vain, if you womanizing, drunk, gambling, cussing, you ain't getting no pie. Don't even ask. Don't whine about it. Don't smack your lips and point at your open mouth and rub your stomach. You ain't getting no pie no how no time.

Use profanity and you go right to the top of the list. And if you smoke or drink too much or gamble or get into a brawl at the local pub, your pie privileges will be suspended indefinitely. If you get caught speeding in your car, if you run a stop sign, if you tailgate or use your cell-phone while driving, what do you think will happen? That's right. No pie.

Of course, for good god-fearing people, the Law of Pie is easy as pie. But there are those who can't find it within themselves to obey the law. And for them, the Law of Pie is tyrannical, unforgiving and all encompassing. It's one dessert that governs us, teaches us how to live within the Law of Pie.

You don't want to get on the no pie list.

For them that live outside the Law of Pie, you'll know them because they will be sickly and scrawny. Not eating pie robs the body of nutrients and minerals. Let this be a warning to renegades and ill-mannered folks. Pie has spoken.

Sweetheart 66

The music was in the air. It floated around Jack Trayer. As though Jack was its favorite listener. Jack wanted to hear the sound of angels in Heaven. And when the song came out of the jukebox Jack was pleased. He couldn't stop listening to 'I'l Fly Away.' That spiritual song grabbed him. Jack Trayer loved that spiritual song like it gave him gifts. All sorts of recipes. There was a chicken surprise. A tuna casserole. Biscuits that could make you feel like a country boy. Everytime Jack's biscuits came out of the oven you could hear them yell 'Yippee.' It was a rebel cry them biscuits got out. You knew they was coming to the table. Butter slapped them biscuits. Always trying to kiss butter. Biscuits love to flirt.

Bacon had a way of curling up on your plate. Jack's bacon gave a look in the eye like it was doing you a favor. Sausage could play a piano. Something by Hank Williams. The melody come out of sausage and ring in your ears like a marching band. Grits was Jack's way of telling you the truth. Those grits knew more than anybody. Jack's eggs, where scrambled or fried sunny side up, whispered a Bible verse or two. The toast would flip for a spoonful of honey. Toast knowing everything it needed to know about Bristol. It was a town that enjoyed toast. A whole slice of toast could bring you to a wakeful state. Almost Buddhist Zen, a little Baptist religion, not too much, just enough to make you feel like a monk. Like a saint that had been awarded a piece of golden toast. A kind and highly devoted breakfast staple. The toast could please everybody in Bristol. Cause it knew what we wanted out of breakfast.

Jack was consumed by that spiritual. 'I'll Fly Away' kissed Jack on the lips. It hugged him. It asked him if he needed anything. What can I do for you, said the song. 'I'll Fly Away' wanted to wait hand and foot on Jack Trayer. What can I get you? Would you like some corn beefed hash. A spot of tea. The sweetest raspberries in east Tennessee.

Jack loved having the song around. 'I'll Fly Away' was good company. He hummed and whistled it all day and night in his kitchen. The dishes and the saucers couldn't get enough of it. The melody was delightful. Showed them things. Like how the Lord was waiting for us. Up there, got a place reserved for us. Name on the door.

The notes of 'I'll Fly Away' had pretty faces. A few knobby knees. They liked to gather in a circle and buzz around the room Oh, Lord, you knew they were coming. The lyrics to 'I'll Fly Away' gave Jack Trayer a certain charm that he hadn't had before. Not an angelic charm. More disciple of the Lord's Supper. Jack always said the Lord's Supper was a seven course meal. The dessert was a plum pudding with a sprig of parsley sitting on the edge. Just waiting to dive in, whenever the time arose.

They sang along. Tapped the spoons on the glasses in time with the music. Who didn't love that spiritual? They never believed their ears. That spiritual was ten feet tall. And it run around Sullivan County, jumping over red barns and howling like it had a won a blue ribbon at the prize fair.

When the song wasn't playing it was sitting in a chair next Jack. At bedtime the song slept beside Jack. There was a always a struggle for the pillow. The song insisted on laying its head on pillow. Nice and soft the way songs like them.

Sometimes the song talked in its sleep. Jack awakened to hear the song compliment him, praise for his string beans and corn on the cob.   
Anyone who was in the presence of Jack Trayer understood how much the song had changed Jack. All for the better. Jack whistled more. He had a great laugh. When the song came along Jack's laugh became more robust, louder. It sounded like a shotgun blast.

Jack's gaze was tender. He could look a plate of pork chops in the eye and they'd start to blush. After listening to 'I'll Fly Away' a thousand times, Jack grew two inches taller.

He was kinder, wiser. A man with a heart that beat for Bristol. Jack was a healer of anyone who needed comforting. He hair grew curly, a touch gray. His nose got in the way when he tried to bark out orders in the kitchen. He had to take it off and set it down. Sometimes he forgot where he put it.

He was full of bliss. He was tireless. He could work around the clock. Sometimes not sleep for days. 'I Fly Away' gave Jack the energy and stamina of seven men. His amazing memory could recollect every recipe ever written. He knew how to make barbecue beans in his sleep.

The food understood Jack Trayer. They worshipped him. Especially the cabbage and the okra. Okra couldn't speak in Jack's presence. It held its tongue. So awed by Jack okra closed its eyes and sang 'I'll Fly Away.'

Sweetheart 67

What had we done to deserve Jack's visit? We understood his love of the hymn. How it represented his life. That single spiritual hymn in the alleyway of his restaurant. Sometimes in Bristol people were kidnapped by church hymns. They could affect you various ways. All having their hands on your soul. Holding onto it. Just grabbing for it till your soul burst. You could hear the soul cry from two blocks away. The church could hear it. A baby's pronouncement. A squall that suddenly awakened in Bristol the most delightful things.

People sitting on the back porch, eating water melon. The kids taking turns spitting the seeds at the dog. Couldn't stop wagging his tail for nothing. Them seeds that lay on the grass. Full of moonlight.

You know what moonlight is, don't you? It's Jack Trayer's soul. It's up there and it comes down. Pours all over East Tennessee. Collects in little puddles in Bristol. You can down in the puddles and see Jack Trayer's face. He's smiling at you. Wants to know you. Have you had any good apple strudel lately? Jack could make an apple strudel that draw crowds all the way from Johnson City and Kingsport.

It had a life of its own. It had lived inside all of us since that night in Bristol. Jack's light could shine for miles. It could hold you up, tell you how important you were. Little children, poor as we were, didn't have nothing. All we had was our dumbfounded look that never left our faces. Oh, we still wear it now. Jack gave there children a free supper. We being poor. We wasn't going to eat that night, unless somebody gave us a few crumbs. We imagined a plate of beans. Maybe a small cornbread. It would look at us like we were kings. When we bit it our mouths would never be the same again.

What Jack served us was country ham, mashed potatoes and sausage gravy. Carrots and peas shook the plate when we touched it with our spoons. Our forks were nervous. We poked at the country ham. It didn't seem to mind. How do we ever thank Jack Trayer for his generosity?

And the biscuit come out and sing 'I'll Fly Away.'

I gazed up at the sky and I swear they was singing along. The night clang its cymbals in the ears of street lamps. We was three lucky boys. So poor we didn't have a penny to our name. All we had was this long shot. Sing a spiritual for Jack Trayer. Do something for him. Give him everything we had. We plum put our lives into that song.

Did I tell you that country ham was superb? Did you know cornbread can change the world?

Marsh got a sweet pickle. Gladstone was delighted to nibble a piece of apple pie. The dessert came out of the blue. We bowed to it. Knowing apple pies weren't something poor children get to eat.

Sweetheart 68

We didn't know we was going to sing that song. 'I'll Fly Away' chose us. It handpicked us. A spiritual song had the ability to impress itself on a young, inexperienced singing group like us. It could size you up. Read you like a book. 'I'll Fly Away' had the gift of reading your mind. It could see in your eyes that you were susceptible to its many charms.

We took our time deciding between a few songs. 'When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder' was of our favorites. 'Blessed Redeemer' could shake the leaves from the trees. 'Old Rugged Cross' always got us going. We were pleased that it loved us as much as we loved it. 'How Great Thou Art' had an impressive sound. The lyrics were delightful, praising our Lord and Savior.

We came upon 'I'll Fly Away' by accident. It shook down on us. We were unsuspecting. It come to us and we noticed it was eager to please. Ready for anything. A song with a pleasant disposition. It gave us the eye. We thought about it, discussing the advantages of using it. And we agreed it was a good choice. But which version? There were plenty of versions and all were full of rapture. Keen for being sung at night when the moon was shining bright. Or if you happen to know the words. The ones that come shining up. Just busting out. Then you could show it off. It would please every ear in Bristol.

Of course, there were things to consider. Some gospel singers thought it best to sneak up on it. Don't let it know you're coming. 'I'll Fly Away' could get cold feet. Jump over a mountain. And you'd have to chase it. Grab it by the tail. And hold on for as long as you could. Hopeful it didn't drag you off.

It was an old spiritual we'd heard on the radio. Alison Krauss was singing it. She sure busted down the door to Heaven. The spiritual song buzzed like a bumblebee around us. We watched it circle the sky. It understood its place in the firmament of spiritual music. It was right at the top. The song had a rightful place in our hearts. We couldn't say 'no.' 'I'll Fly Away' would never forgive us.

Truth was it picked us. We were lucky 'I'll Fly Away' saw in us a chance to bust out. All we had to do was remember the words. Sing like a trio of wild birds that wanted to praise the Lord.

The song came out of us when we saw Jack. Allison Krauss sitting on the words, riding them around that alleyway. She had a cute smile. Her eyes were pretty as the Blue Ridge Mountains. And you never knew when she would sashay out of the song. Those long legs sticking out of the lyrics. Her red lips dancing in the air. Oh, Alison Krauss could sing a mountain to sleep. She had a voice that cut the rug. Her sweet vibrato rub you all over. Like a Swedish massage.

You hear them words she sung come out of the radio and you think you're in Heaven. Alison Krauss could sing like an angel. She had a blue sky inside her voice. A pretty summer day. A green meadow that stretched for miles. You could hear her voice chirping up a storm. She could give those lyrics a light from Paradise.

She had one of them sweet voices like a tulip that bloomed in your ear. Sullivan County got excited everytime 'I Fly Away' was heard. It mattered none that you'd heard the song a thousand times. Alison Krauss could make new. Like biscuits from scratch. She could bake those words in that song and you'd just eat them up. She gave a mystery. You hear it you wasn't too sure. You had to unwrap the song. Pull the shiny ribbon. Let that song jump out on you. Run over you like a truck along a country road.

Alison Krauss was just plain charming and beautiful. And when she sung that song you swore she went around kissing everybody. I mean the whole human race. And how she done that I don't know. 'I'll Fly Away' could do just about anything. It could jump inside you and make you happy. Shine your shoes till the lights of Paradise come up for air. You love that song. You want that song. If you don't hear that song you're going to die.

Sweetheart 69

Glory to Him. Lord God Almighty. We understood we were his vessel. And inside us there was a treasure. A spiritual song for the Lord. It was forever and to His church. Holy in this age of adoration, glorious essence and expression. Love for the Lord and Savior. Those words to the song were from Paradise. The angels played in our voices. They came out to sing for Jack Trayer. How they ever got stuck in our voices we couldn't guess. 'I'll Fly Away' maybe had always been inside us. And that night it broke loose.

The words comes to us in a flash. Our minds full up with such beautiful words that made sounds like trumpets that Gideon and all them other musicians in Heaven were playing to accompany us. It surprised us that the song had a thirst for starlight. Must've drunk down a few hundred gallons. Like it was punch at a church social.

Seemed like everybody in Heaven was singing that spiritual. Singing along with us. Methuselah, Moses, Adam, Eve, Ruth, all the disciples, prophets, lifting they voices to help us along. It was exciting to hear our backup. They gave it all they had and more. Come Lady Magdalene, Joseph, Mary, Aaron, Jacob, David, every flower in the Old Testament bloomed in that song. Sweet voices that lifted Bristol up on their shoulders and carried it around.

"I'll Fly Away"

Some bright morning when this life is over  
I'll fly away  
To that home on Gods celestial shore  
I'll fly away

I'll fly away, oh glory  
I'll fly away in the morning  
When I die hallelujah by and by  
I'll fly away

When the shadows of this life have gone  
I'll fly away  
Like a bird from these prison walls I'll fly  
I'll fly away

I'll fly away, oh glory  
I'll fly away in the morning  
When I die hallelujah by and by  
I'll fly away

Oh how glad and happy when we meet  
I'll fly away  
No more cold iron shackles on my feet  
I'll fly away

I'll fly away oh glory  
I'll fly away in the morning  
When I die hallelujah by and by  
I'll fly away

I'll fly away oh glory  
I'll fly away in the morning  
When I die hallelujah by and by  
I'll fly away

Just a few more weary days and then  
I'll fly away  
To a land where joys will never end  
I'll fly away

I'll fly away oh glory  
I'll fly away in the morning  
When I die hallelujah by and by  
I'll fly away  
I'll fly away

We only sung that spiritual one time before. We was walking home from Rosemont Presbyterian church. It was inside us and when we turned to walk along Windsor Avenue it come out. A sudden impulse had reached down inside us. Grabbed it and pulled it out. It was a large angel. It was a church piano. The choir lived inside us. How come we didn't know we had a choir inside us?

The song covered Bristol. The song had a thousand voices. It was the moon singing along. It was the stars crooning like they knew how important it was. It was a bird that come out of us. The first time we sung it wasn't Allison Krauss' version. It was the old one with its slow way of rising. Beautiful eyes and wavy hair. This one has never seemed more beautiful. Bristol hears it. Gets all pretty. Got to powder its nose. Like a lovely lady waiting for a dance with the one that brought it. Loyalty, a good night's kiss and holding Bristol's hand like it was precious. Looking into her eyes. You don't know what Bristol's thinking. You just hope she's got you in mind.

1.   
Some glad morning when this life is o'er,   
I'll fly away;   
To a home on God's celestial shore,   
I'll fly away (I'll fly away).

(Chorus)   
I'll fly away, Oh Glory   
I'll fly away; (in the morning)   
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by,   
I'll fly away (I'll fly away).

2.   
When the shadows of this life have gone,   
I'll fly away;   
Like a bird from prison bars has flown,   
I'll fly away (I'll fly away)

(Chorus)   
3.   
Just a few more weary days and then,   
I'll fly away;   
To a land where joy shall never end,   
I'll fly away (I'll fly away)

Sweetheart 70

We looked around. I didn't see Jack. Where'd he go?Gladstone had no idea where Jack had gone. Marsh was talking to himself. Nothing unusual about that. Odd that Jack would make himself invisible. But that's what he did. We couldn't hear his voice. It had slipped under the carpet and ran up Marsh's leg. Caught hold of his ear. We could see Marsh was squinting, straining to hear the spirit of Jack Trayer tell him the most charming things in the world couldn't stand up to Marsh's beautiful voice. One of those humdingers that could unscrew a lightbulb from across the room.

Marsh's voice was formidable. It had feathers, wings, a beak that sang like the sunrise. A whole gang of birds stuck in that cage we call the sun. Squawking sometimes when the rain comes over the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Jack was impressing upon Marsh that no other voice had so impressed Bristol. Some of the streets are named for church hymns. You sometimes could hear the church hymns sung by streets. Anderson Street had a deep voice that could bring up enormous light from the center of the earth. The sophistication of Marsh voice was remarkable. It could go anywhere. People would hear it and suddenly open a door, pull out a chair. The microphone was always on when Marsh came around. It wanted to eat Marsh's voice. Tasted a little like rock candy.

Jack understood the gamble. He requested Marsh believe in his Lord and Savior. Heaven was a place where angels conducted their business out in the open. Songs were handed out to the deserving. What you needed to do to sing for the Lord was courage. The acoustics in Heaven being quite good. Your voice, any voice could find itself attractive. A voice with a pretty face. Red lips that kiss you all over. Let me kiss your hand. I just love the taste of knuckles. Reminds of a pig I owned as a child. It was named 'Henry.' Ate every meal out of a trough. That trough smelled so bad, everybody in Bristol held their nose when they passed by. The smell was strong. It could lift up the Blue Ridge Mountains. The smell had fancy clothing, frilly sleeves. Carried an umbrella in its right hand. The coonskin cap was a favorite in Bristol. We gave it a standing ovation one night at The Stone Castle.

'I'll Fly Away' had been done to death. What it needed was a voice like Marsh. Then it could fly away. Then it could perch in the heart of Bristol. A town that needed to know every minute of the day where the Virginia side was and where that Tennessee side had gone. You can never trust a town with its hat in one state and his shoes in another.

'I'll Fly Away' came out of retirement to tell Marsh that his voice was beautiful. Let it ride. Put everything you've got into tonight's performance. 'I'll Fly Away' will be there beside you. Never doubting you for a moment.

You could tell what was taking by looking at Marsh's face. First it was cantaloupe with two ears and a mouth. Then it was a potato patch. Marsh's nose went around picking potatoes, digging them out of the ground. Using a small farm tool called talent.

Sweetheart 71

"You're singing tonight?" Jack asked Marsh. He approached him, grabbing him around the shoulders. Smiling as though to give Marsh the power and confidence that had somehow been abandoned. </p>

Marsh accepted the gift. Jack Trayer had asked him to sing. It was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to Marsh. The request sank inside Marsh. He couldn't resist the notion. That Jack Trayer wanted him to sing like a lark.

"I going to give my best," Marsh said. You knew he would. You could hear it in his voice. Jack has lifted Marsh's spirit. Given him the courage he needed. His voice didn't wave. It was smooth. Marsh's voice had arrived in Bristol. The whole town was going to get their ears full of 'I'll Fly Away.' Marsh would make certain the song came with all the trimmings.

"I love you boys," Jack said. "I need to hear that spiritual song one more time. I hope you can let it fly. It does me does me to good to know you boys will sing it with great joy. Bristol will be full of Heavenly light. The streets will dance. The birds will sing like they've never sung before. The rivers will shimmer with the lights of Heaven tonight. It gives me pleasure. It gives so many gifts. I never realized how much I loved that song, until I was gone."

"We're going to sing for Bristol," Gladstone said. "It's what we were born to do."

"I'm ready," Marsh said. "Let's do it."

"All my life I've been waiting for this moment," Jack said. "When you sing 'I'll Fly Away' there's going to be a pleasure that comes to Bristol. People will know the things they love. The things that mean so much to them. The things they hold dear. For me, I've expressed my gratitude to food, those edible, juicy truths, leafy and delicious goodness, sought for their sumptuous flavor, youthful inspirations, spells that change us, all their wondrous, nutritional value. Their consumption much appreciated by the consumers."

"Truth is what food gives us. Pleasure that holds us. Loves us. Keeps us headed in the right direction. Keeps our feet on the ground. What would we do without food? We need to associate ourselves with what grows in the ground. What would we do without butter, onions, garlic, the herbs of east Tennessee take good care of us. We participate in our nurturing of the cooking process. The scents of the kitchen giving Bristol everything it wants. With potatoes, beans, cabbage, corn, peas and carrots we can accomplished remarkable feats."

Sweetheart 72

"The ultimate bloom in the garden talking about spring. The secrets that come up in Bristol. Every harvest bearing wisdom. The truths of tomatoes, green peppers, the spiritual benefits of okra, spinach, string beans. The garden with its congregation sustaining development of all descendants. The goal of harvest time one of nourishing the body and the spirit."

"I was in love. Kissing my sweetheart Bristol and jiggling a frying pan full of chicken. Biscuits in the oven. Then come the spinach, carrots, potatoes sliced like they was followers of everything the knife said, muttering under its breath some soft farewell. We all nothing but feed for the world. It's got a big appetite. Going to eat us up. Like it couldn't resist. We all good to the last crumb. Come fry us up in butter and garlic. Glad to serve the world. Open up. I'm coming through."

"The most delicious plants sought for consumption. The best flavor, the pepper, the garlic, the salt pinched to change the pot. Gone. Packed off. Good to know you. Where's my spoon? I need to know you are delicious. Can we sustain ourselves. The big appetite comes around."

"I'm apple dumplings. Take your spoon and help yourself. Everybody who leaves this world does so by way of the supper table. Every bite tells a sacred truth. It isn't hard to believe the hunger that exists will disappear when we do."

"All the nutrients, spiritual benefit, knowledge we leave behind to the sustaining development of those who follow. The harvest nourishing the hungry ones who need us the most."

"Get ready," Gladstone said. "It's time for us to sing."

"I was never more ready," Marsh said. "Let me at it."

"The curtains getting ready to spread its wings," I said. I was gasping for air.

We sung at the funeral of Jack Trayer. The words come out of our mouths and lifted the city of Bristol high into the air. You could hear people for miles away. Excited, knowing what they suspected would happen — the spirit of Jack Trayer was big as the sky. Everytime you look up at the sky and see that blue jacket, Jack was standing there. Watching over us.

When you think about it Jack never left. He stayed in our memory. He ain't going away. There's too many people in Bristol who love Jack Trayer. And what did we ever do to deserve a man like him? The music that we made for him was all we could give.
