You might find it somewhere around
6:30 in the evening
in August
when the heat and humidity
stop kicking you in the stomach
for a second
long enough for you to appreciate
how quiet and still
everything is
It's in the woods out here
somewhere along the Pinhoti
in the guts of the Talladega forest
or in the middle of one of those
abandoned pastures
in the backyard of the county
that you can't really get to
except by a road no one takes anymore
It hangs out around the draw strings
of your mother's apron
when she's in the kitchen
chopping carrots and peppers
and everything smells like fried okra
stewed squash
and chardonnay
It's at church, of course
the Baptist ones
the Methodist ones
Holiness and Church of Christ too
or anywhere else folks show up
to try and taste or hear something
that they've never been able describe in the first place
I've found it in-between the cracks
that've formed in the old, majestic architecture
in downtown Montgomery
(that useless swamp)
and in every ghost story you tell folks
the ones you're pretty sure aren't real
but you've repeated so many times
you believe them anyways
It moves across the loam
with the snakes on Sand Mountain
and rises with the dead
through the soggy dirt and shattered tombstones
of all the rebels we once called heroes
I can't think of a better way
to explain it to you
it's just magic here
I have friends in New York
who like to say
"It gets hot here too, ya know."
and maybe it does.
but not like this.
Perhaps in meteorological terms
the dew points and highs
might line up from time to time
but down here
deep in the heart of ol' Dixie
the heat is alive and conscious
punishing and relentless
forged from the sins of our fathers
and sent to us with malicious purpose
it will drench you
and possess you
and crawl up your nostrils
down your throat
and bleed out through your pores
It can kill
and it sometimes does
But what they don't tell you
is that
if you want to survive
you can't just hide from it
you have to embrace it
challenge it
on those July days
when it's 98 degrees in the morning
and 100% humidity
you go outside anyways
and work your yard
your little piece of land
your tiny fraction of someone else's American dream
because heat or no heat
there's work to do
You don't know it
but the resiliency of the Southern people
was built by tempting God's trigger finger
resting anxiously on the thermostat
every swing of the hammer
every gash from the axe
every trimmed blade of grass
every pass with the saw
every plunge of the shovel
is just to say
do it
turn it up, you son of a bitch
because even after the world has burned
and every city has turned to ash
and the son has returned to take his favorites away
we'll still be here
harvesting peppers and cucumbers
stained in sweat
and toiling just for the sake of it
I've tried my whole life
to make fried eggs and pancakes
like my grandmother
I'm talking cast irons and bacon grease
crisco and butter
the real shit that the doctor told
Granddaddy he couldn't eat anymore
you know?
I've tried standing at the stove
and smoking
thinking
maybe the ashes?
I tried praying
at the altar of the
tiny Baptist
church she attended
my knees planted in the
musty purple carpet
while some woman plays
"Come As You Are"
on the electric organ
Nothing.
The eggs never seem to get that consistency
or ever form into those
lumpy little oblong figures
and the pancakes don't puff up
kinda slanted
like hers did
maybe it was a time and place thing.
like the air was different then
and all the right elements
of the atmosphere
came together perfectly
so that the world's greatest
eggs and pancakes
could be created
but only in that moment
in that place
in that time
or maybe her hands are the only pair God ever made that could cook like that
Bio: My name is Matthew Tyson (matthewallentyson@gmail.com). I'm a writer and marketing strategist living in Anniston, Alabama.