Chinaberry

Introduction

when james still’s literary advisers, Bill Marshall, Lee Smith, and Bill Weinberg, first asked me, back in 2004, if I would be interested in editing the manuscript James Still had left behind at his death, I didn’t even have to think twice. I agreed instantly, feeling daunted but also incredibly blessed to have an opportunity to work on a manuscript by one of my literary heroes. For the uninitiated, a brief primer on that hero: James Still, born in 1906, is widely considered “the Dean of Appalachian Literature .” He is the author of such classics as River of Earth (1940) and The Wolfpen Poems (1986). He was an accomplished stylist known for his keen insights into the nature of people, animals , and the living, breathing world around him, a man who swooned for words and for trees. His novels and short stories and poetry are at the very heart of Appalachian literature. A native of Alabama, he came to Kentucky to work for the Hindman Settlement School in 1932 and never left, living there until his death at ninety-four years old. Mr. Still is also someone I knew from a distance. As an aspiring writer attending the Appalachian Writers Workshop at Hindman, I crept about the edges of his conversation, too in awe to ever have a real exchange. Sixty-five years his junior, I had been raised on his books, had grown up knowing him as the I N T R O D U C T I O N Silas House x SILAS H OUSE great writer who lived only three counties away from me. I once had my picture taken with him but was too awestruck to speak. The one time we actually talked, a year later, I asked him how to become a better writer. He told me to “discover something new every day.” This simple advice changed my writing and my life, making me more aware of every single thing as I walked through each day. I do not claim to have been his friend; it is enough to have been in his presence. I couldn’t wait to get started on the manuscript, but life kept interfering. Two years after accepting the challenge to edit the manuscript, Lee Smith presented me with Mr. Still’s briefcase— he had fashioned an old belt to stand in for its broken handle— and having that helped to center me and gave me the proper kick to get started. At last I was able to sit down and completely immerse myself in the book that has now changed me forever by showing me that every single sentence in any book has to be fretted over, polished, pruned, and also by solidifying my notion that the best writing has to be packed tight with emotion. Over the next three months I trekked down to my little writer’s shack every morning, fired up about helping to bring forth what I have come to think of as the book that Mr. Still most wanted to write. I think of it that way because I believe there is a yearning woven into every line, a longing to share his hard-won wisdom with as many readers as possible. Four more years have swept past us all since I finished the edit of the book. The story of a young, unnamed boy who travels to Texas without his parents and is taken in by a grieving rancher and his beautiful wife, Chinaberry is a remarkable capturing of a place and time that is gone forever, a place of ranches that went on for miles and miles, of cotton fields that stretched to the horizon, of free-range cattle, and of schools that were set up by the ranchers themselves. This is a book that forever preserves a place and xi IN TR OD UCTION time in history that might have been forgotten otherwise. And while it is a beautiful look at a pivotal time in the narrator’s childhood, it is also an unforgettable portrait of the people that narrator came to know during this trip to Texas: sad, troubled, yet confident Anson Winters; his caring and tender wife, Lurie; Ernest Roughton, the narrator’s honest and solid caretaker; the Knuckleheads, two inseparable friends who enjoy nothing more than a good prank (and are obviously literary kin to Harl and Tibb Logan, the prankster cousins in River of...