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434 The Kentucky Anthology Bobbie Ann Mason “Shiloh” Bobbie Ann Mason may not have as many murders and high crimes in her books as Sue Grafton, but the stories, novels, and memoirs she has based on the people and places in her home turf of Graves County are just as dramatic and interesting. I became aware of her work in 1980, when a friend called to tell me about a short story in the New Yorker. I read the story, which is reprinted below; it was clear that here was a writer to be reckoned with, a writer of great natural talent who had found her literary turf in the backyard of her own family and childhood. Indeed, with her subsequent publications, she has put western Kentucky on the contemporary literary map. Her voice joins those of earlier writers from west of Interstate 65, such as Irvin Cobb, Robert Penn Warren, and Caroline Gordon. Moreover, in combination with her contemporaries Joe Ashby Porter of Madisonville, Louise Natcher Murphy of Bowling Green, Coleman Dowell of Franklin, Joy Bale Boone of Elizabethtown and Elkton, and Tony Crunk of Hopkinsville, she has made western Kentucky stories and accents heard and understood and admired around the world. Mason’s books range from such novels as In Country (1985), the story of a young woman’s obsession with her father, who was killed in Vietnam, to Feather Crowns (1993), which probes the sideshow consequences that destroyed a family with quintuplets in the early twentieth century. Mason’s short stories have been collected in several books, but it was Shiloh and Other Stories (1982) that announced a new master of short fiction at work. h Leroy Moffitt’s wife, Norma Jean, is working on her pectorals. She lifts threepound dumbbells to warm up, then progresses to a twenty-pound barbell. Standing with her legs apart, she reminds Leroy of Wonder Woman. “I’d give anything if I could just get these muscles to where they’re real hard,” says Norma Jean. “Feel this arm. It’s not as hard as the other one.” “That’s ’cause you’re right-handed,” says Leroy, dodging as she swings the barbell in an arc. “Do you think so?” “Sure.” Leroy is a truckdriver. He injured his leg in a highway accident four months ago, and his physical therapy, which involves weights and a pulley, prompted Norma Jean to try building herself up. Now she is attending a 434 Bobbie Ann Mason 435 body-building class. Leroy has been collecting temporary disability since his tractor-trailer jackknifed in Missouri, badly twisting his left leg in its socket. He has a steel pin in his hip. He will probably not be able to drive his rig again. It sits in the backyard, like a gigantic bird that has flown home to roost. Leroy has been home in Kentucky for three months, and his leg is almost healed, but the accident frightened him and he does not want to drive any more long hauls. He is not sure what to do next. In the meantime, he makes things from craft kits. He started by building a miniature log cabin from notched Popsicle sticks. He varnished it and placed it on the TV set, where it remains. It reminds him of a rustic Nativity scene. Then he tried string art (sailing ships on black velvet), a macramé owl kit, a snap-together B-17 Flying Fortress, and a lamp made out of a model truck, with a light fixture screwed in the top of the cab. At first the kits were diversions, something to kill time, but now he is thinking about building a full-scale log house from a kit. It would be considerably cheaper than building a regular house, and besides, Leroy has grown to appreciate how things are put together . He has begun to realize that in all the years he was on the road he never took time to examine anything. He was always flying past scenery. “They won’t let you build a log cabin in any of the new subdivisions,” Norma Jean tells him. “They will if I tell them it’s for you,” he says, teasing her. Ever since they were married, he has promised Norma Jean he would build her a new home one day. They have always rented, and the house they live in is small and nondescript. It does not even feel like a home, Leroy realizes now. Norma Jean works at the...

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