Tribute to Jim Still 1906-2001

ESSAY Tribute to Jim Still 1906-2001___________ Charles MayMonday was "JIM STILL DAY" in my two American short story classes at California State University, Long Beach. It wasn't what was assigned, but my students forgave me my digression, because I recently turned sixty and they expect such vagaries from a whitebearded old feller whose hair has stopped growing. It was the uncanny confluence of events I wanted to talk to them about - that and a writer whose voice was the only one I trusted to speak for my home. I told them that forty years ago I made my first pilgrimage to Hindman to see Jim Still. It was my junior year at Morehead State, just after I had finished his class in the short story, in which he introduced me to Turgenev and Gogol and Chekhov. He read his story "The Run for the Elbertas" to us and let slip a sly smile at the end when Riar Thomas shook peach fuzz down the shirt collars of the two young rowdies who had pestered him all the way from Georgia and ruined his load of peaches. I was twenty years old and wanted to sit down and talk to a real writer where he lived. I drove the winding road up to Hindman and found Jim in the library at the Settlement School, where he showed me boxes of manuscripts. With only a few amateurish efforts in my own files, I marveled at all the work and asked him why he didn't send it off to be published. "It isn't ready," he said simply, as if it were halfkneaded bread or green tomatoes in his garden. Last week I flew from Los Angeles to read a paper on the contemporary short story at the University of Cincinnati. One of my old Morehead college friends, Judy Henke Stewart, was there, the ex-wife of Albert Stewart, who died only a few weeks ago. Al gave me a scholarship to attend the Morehead Writer's Workshop in 1960, the summer after I graduated from high school. Judy told me that Jim Still was in the hospital in Hazard. With a few days to spare, I rented a spiffy red GT and drove down 1-75 to Lexington to catch the Mountain Parkway to Paintsville, mybirthplace, where my sister, Linda, still lives. On Thursday, I drove KY 80 "up the river," as my daddy always called it, to Hazard. The road was wider and less winding now, and the big coal trucks nearly blew me off into the median. But it was a 7 beautiful spring day, spots of white and pink blossoming trees speckling the new green of the mountains. I had the window down, bellering along with the Soggy Bottom Boys singing Man of Constant Sorrow over WSIP "New Country Radio." Lord, it was good to be home. When I walked up to his room on the second floor of the Appalachian Regional Hospital, I peeked in hesitantly. I guess I was expecting a frailer wisp of a man than I saw. After all, he was ninetyfour . But he looked pretty good, and I told him so. I told him who I was and said, "You probably don't remember me." But he said, with the breathlessness of worn-out lungs, "Yes, I remember you." And we chatted a bit. I told him about a new collection of Kentucky short stories coming out this summer, for which I had written the "Afterward." I told him I had interviewed Chris Offutt recently and how much respect Chris had for him. He was gracious, as I remembered him. He whispered, "Would you mind stepping outside for a little bit while I use the bed pan?" I told the nurse, and, after she helped him, she said I could go back in. "I'll just wait," I said, for I remembered his reserve and gentility. I talked to his doctor about his prognosis. "There's nothing in particular," he said. "He came in because of an infection in his hand. We've given him antibiotics and are taking him up to rehab this afternoon. He'll probably go home in...