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** My Cousin Digs My Father's Grave Time is no obsession here. What can be done by hand still is. So my cousin and two deacons broke the hard October ground with mattocks and shovels. That afternoon we came. Out by the barbed wire that kept Randy Ford's cows from wildflowers and homemade wreaths, the deacons leaned on their shovels, waiting to cover a man they had not seen in years. My cousin waited too, under the ragged canvas tent, refused my mother's check with a nod, offered a few words and his strong, soiled hand, its confirmation of blood, blistered from a grave well dug. -Ron Rash It must have been around ten-thirty and there was a few people around, getting in their cars and trucks, driving off real slow, and Eugene Logsdon was out there with a coal shovel throwing gravel over the spot where the man lay and bled, when somebody noticed this car idling out by the feed shed-old Pontiac with a Michigan tag. It was the shot man's car and the state patrol hadn't noticed it. The man Fred Pugh shot had pulled it around there before he come in the store, and it had been idling there all that time. It was past ten-thirty, too late to go down to John's Run to see Toymae Fúgate stand naked in the window, or to try to find the house trailer where Jesus's face appeared on the refrigerator. I didn't want to go. Anyway, we could always do that another time. Homecoming In trying to be What I was not I had forgotten What I was. A child of the earth And the stars, More comfortable On pine needles Than on shag carpet Or wool rugs, More at home in moonlight Than the limelight. Tell them The old men I am home. -Casey Jacobs 27 ...

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