Portrait of the Appalachian Enfant Terrible

Death In A Small Town The New River floated on, never stopping to notice. The trains still ran late and the wind piled the leaves against the old store whose proprietor would never return. It was the end of something without a new beginning, the silence after a door has closed forever, a small graceful town without vitality disappearing in ways tangible to see. The leaves are the only things stirring, maintaining a semblance of form without color or life, dryness in motion. Are we ever ready? I would ride the river until the sun shone through me and I became senseless as the air on a perfect winter day, going home. -WB. Spillman, Jr. Portrait of the Appalachian Enfant Terrible Toughass, hard-nosed, curse words all the time... because underneath the veneer a sentimental fool. —Jonathan Greene 97 ...