Crooked Creek

Crooked Creek My father's wishes drowned in the creek that crossed his home. The oldest sister, who whipped him for spilling the springwater he hauled through acres of danger to the house, at last grew old and kind forgiving his imagined crimes. My father grew up silent the youngest half-forgotten by the door throwing thin shadows at his father asleep, worn out from breaking soil into a living. Carving whistles from twigs my father tuned his isolation for the dance, and the fiddle's hidden frets found his fingers. Some said the Devil was playing for his soul. Heir to a hellfire faith, my father moved on to preach a kinder gospel. Still my father dreams of that homely creek; leaf-stained it twists across the land he left. He dreams of going back in waders and crumpled hat to coax the speckled trout that flicker through the dark of a loss he named Crooked Creek. -Carol L. Edwards He raised us on puns and cowboy songs handmade stick horses comb honey from the white, tiered wood hives in our yard. For decades we crisscrossed his wishes, came upon them by surprise, a silver glint of gills in the dark stream of his silence. Puzzled we tossed them back. 68 ...