The Hollow of the Thigh

* THE HOLLOW OF THE THIGH by Terry L. Roberts I'm going there to see my father I'm going there no more to roam I'm only going over Jordan I'm only going over home. "Wayfaring Stranger" I slept for a long time on the bus from Knoxville, and when I woke up, I was lost for a minute and shouted out to the driver. He just laughed, and I was embarrassed . I tried to go back to sleep but couldn't for the wet pounding and washing of the rain. I'd been dreaming all along about the river, about seeing it after two years away. In the dark bus, with my eyes closed, the rain sounded like the river washing, and Ijerked awake again, this time really awake and scared because I'd missed my stop. In 1938, the bus ran the old route over the mountain from Knoxville through Madison County into Asheville. 62 Fd meant to get off down in Madison somewhere near home, but I was tired from hitchhiking, and I slept right past it, right by home and when I finally woke up, I was going away from Madison toward Asheville. I was mad and scared. I only had two or three dollars and an old suitcase; it was December 23, and I was getting further and further away from home. I was so thrown I didn't even try to stop the bus north of town; I just rode on in, trying to rest and waiting. If I'd woke up five minutes earlier, I'd have seen the French Broad, big and muddy in the cold December rain. I looked at my watch when I got up to get my suitcase off the rack, and by the streetlights, I -eould see it was 4:30 in the morning. In the twenty minutes it took us to get into Asheville (December 24 then), the rain stopped, the clouds blew off, and my bus window began to fog. Temperature change, mountain cold, and when I stepped down onto the dirty pavement of the bus station, I got the first tingle of home. Cold: the eyes water and the feet hurt; the inside of my nose ached from the cold air, and I was crying when I walked around the bus station corner to look at Asheville. There was an almost full moon and all the puddled water from the rain was beginning to freeze in the hard, white light. I spent ten cents for coffee from a fat colored woman in the cafe. Then I carried it and the suitcase down the tile steps into the rest-· room. Once down there, I gulped coffee and listened to water drip while I put on most of the clothes I had in the suitcase. Coffee gone, some all the way through in those five lonely minutes, I swung the suitcase on my back with some twine and started walking, out the front door and up the steep street toward the north end of town, and then out of town toward home. I knew that if I kept moving, I wouldn't freeze, and that if I got out on the river road by dawn, I could probably hitch a ride down into Madison and get up home to Highlands before another dark. Walking out of Asheville, I took a short cut to get to the river. I cut up through the old ritzy section of town, walking the steep streets and keeping my mind off my cold feet by looking at the high, white houses. You could see scars of the depression acid etched across that place even in the dead quiet hours before dawn: boarded-up houses and overgrown, deserted yards. It was a dead, cold prospect for a winter night. I went nearby the big, old cemetery cutting down off the hill to the river. I got colder every minute until I broke through the trees and saw the river flowing . I fired up inside then, and I was just standing still, looking in the moonlight. The French Broad was down below, slowly winding away to the north. Nothing moved on her...