Square Dancing in Heaven

Square Dancing in Heaven James Alan Riley Dear Delbert, Things been moving slow on Little Mud Creek this week but I got this buddy what told me about this writers workshop over to Hindman. I don't like going to the city much, but I guess Fm as good working with wood as the next feller, and what I know of writers, which ain't much except they's mostly a lazy bunch that's prone to lies, I figured they might need some one to help learn them a thing or two about wood working and shop ways before one ofthem slices offa finger on a table saw or drills a hole in they foot. So I put my tools in the back ofmy truck and headed over to Hindman. It being that I ain't worked much lately noways, I figured a day or two ofshopwork, even ifthey was only writers interested, would be better than listening to the wife point out what has become a considerable list ofshortcomings and other failings I ain't never been able to do nothing about. Anyways, I come over to Hindman and I found that settlement school my buddy was goin' on about and I have to say, it ain't no wonder them writers needs a workshop cause you couldn't have scraped up so much as a hammer and nail between the whole lot ofthem, much less a handsaw or a square. (You can't work wood in a shop without a square!) But all they kept talking about was this brier. Well, I walked around the place a good bit and I didn't see no briers and it wouldn't have mattered ifI had cause I came for shopwork. IfI'd known what they needed was yardwork, I'd have throwd a lawnmower in the back ofthe truck and a couple ofweedeaters. (I got one ofthem gas jobs and it'll cut anything that grows up to and including most fence posts). Come to find out, the briers they was talking about wasn't weeds at all but this feller that they'd all known and was missing right smart, only for all I could tell I don't knowwhy they was missing him because he couldn't have been more there without being there than ifhe'd actually been there in person, which seems to me the same thing as being there only better in some ways cause it don't seem possible for him to go nowhere ifwhen he does he's more there than he was before he left. It ain't like that fer just James Alan Riley teaches at Pikeville College in Pikeville, Kentucky, and edits The Pikeville Review. He also was editor of Kentucky Voices, an anthology ofKentucky writers which is reviewed in this issue. 49 ever'body. Hell, lots oftimes I miss the wife more when she's here cause I can't get her to go nowheres else. My uncle Earl was that sort offeller. He was my mamma's brother-inlaw , which means he had the misfortune ofmarrying my mamma's sister, who was my Aunt Minnie. Now Earl was a good feller and all, but he never cared much fer going to church. He'd been raised Baptist but not verywell because it didn't take, and though Aunt Minnie, who was Pentecostal , kept after him his whole life, she couldn't get a rise out ofhim over the Lord, you see. The only thing Uncle Earl cared about was square dancing. Every Saturday night, Earl and Aunt Minnie would go down to they clubhouse where all Uncle Earl's buddies would be and they'd be dosee -doing and swinging-they-partners until the cows came home. Aunt Minnie, though she didn't believe in dancing, thought it might be the kind ofthing that would bring Uncle Earl to the Lord, what with the spirit ofthem square dances being similar, in some ways, to the spirit of the Lord. It didn't matter to Aunt Minnie what kind of heaven Earl was in, whether they were square dancing or singing hymns, as long as he was...