Country Foods

The room was dark now. The man was illuminated only by the pale, blue-white glow of the TV as he sat in the recliner watching the same film he had watched the night before. And the night before that. The film Paul had slipped into a coat pocket at his mother's house. The film he watched as he sat in front of the TV with a remote control in his right hand and a pistol on his lap. Fast-forward to a woman wiping her brow as she set a basket of rolls on a table with a family gathered 'round. Re-wind to a sister saying she loved her brother. Re-wind. "He ain't hard to love. He's just hard at bein' loved." Fast-forward to a lonely man with tears in his eyes. Country Foods Country ham, red as a child's skinned knee, with eggs and grits, cured salty, aged beyond perfection, by hands old in moldy wisdom. Farm eggs, not pale sun shadows, yolk-rich by earthworm and bug, are protected by miserly old hens: gold too good for city folk. Sorghum, if they knew the sweat in syrup from hand-stripped cane, boiled tliick in copper pans and sweet as a farm girl's kiss. Buttermilk biscuits, morning made, with sourwood honey, fox grape jam, coffee, black as Lucifer's back: glorious sunrise country food. —John Cantey Knight 44 ...