In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

K i. !» .".·V 'VJl'' A *b*.v 1((.'(I STAwe ¿?? ¿d SPeabon, by Terry Roberts I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. —Ecclesiastes 3:10 This is the story of the gun. I've had the story ready for the boy for sometime now. But the moment is never exactly right or the boy will melt in front of me as the story comes up to rattle behind my teeth. The other night we were sitting on the porch—his momma and the others inside—and I spoke to him. "Windy night, isn't it, boy?" And he said, "Yes sir." Then the story welled up in my throat as if I'd throw it up suddenly and sickly. The next thing I'd have said was for him to go to the big closet for the shotgun. But I choked, and the baby came out and climbed in my lap, and the story swallowed itself. But the heavy wind kept on, and I've heard the sound of that wind ever since that night; thought of it during the day and at night. So I'm trying now to write the gun's story because I'm afraid the simple moment may be far in the future—the moment when the boy will need the story. Perhaps so far in the future I won't be there or won't remember . You can lose a story just like you can lose a boy. My full name is Angus Amos Fite; my wife has always called me Amos. But long before I met her I had another name. I picked it up in school, and I guess later I earned, even proved it. 4 Three or four years before I met my wife, I worked as a jailer at the Saluda County jail. I worked the graveyard shift from eleven to seven, seven nights a week. I looked at the prisoners occasionally if there were any and answered the phone if the deputy was out. But that's not it, you see; that's not what I was there or where I was. I've been inside the jail in the last few years, and though it's the same building, it's not where I was. Neither is a jailer what I was. It's hard; my name then was Rat. What I was was a drunk, a slobbering, idiot-faced stink, owned and operated by hard liquor. They made me night jailer just because I was the logical choice; I was in the jail half the nights drying out. Joe Bailey, the sheriff, kept me as a pet. He let me sleep in the basement of the jail (with the other rats) during the day just so long as I showed up at eleven every night sober enough to run straight up the steps to the cells on the third floor. It's been over fifteen years, and my guts twist and stew in the ghost of white liquor when I think about it. I sit on the porch and spit while I try to write this— spit out the eternal sour taste and the dry tongue. Understand how it feels to wake up in jail in pain—looking out the open cell door at the deputy that was kicking your bloated kidneys the night before. He grinning in his damnation, you crying in yours. Spit; the tongue is like damp, white ashes. No fire; ashes. The town hasn't changed since then, although it is vastly different. Then it burned in my mind like a huge map—wet spots shimmering wherever bootleg liquor could be bought. In the center of this halt vision was a tobacco brown brick set on end—the jail. In reality, then as now, the Saluda County court house sat on the hill in the center of town where Main and Cole Streets intersect . Just behind it, on the flank of the town known as jailhouse hill, stood the ancient, three-story jail house. My brainmap , lit with the pure fumes of what I drank, spun crazily around that building. It...

pdf