Watering Places
Rent from DeepDyve- Watering Places
Pail on back porch table, dipper hanging from a nail— we all dunked the tin into water and drank— thirsty in summer after we climbed hills hemming in the mining camp, dry in winter after we sat by the coal grate where parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles retold stories of a life of bare-bone necessity.
We drank, no thought of lips before ours on the dipper, no worry for the communal pail. We drank our need, water tasting of iron, pump in the backyard creaking as we worked the handle, a trickle, then a gush to overflow the bucket, water brought by our own hands, as available as cousins, family, a supply we never imagined contaminated or sparse, a well we thought would never run dry. [End Page 141]
Connie Jordan Green first published in Appalachian Heritage in 1987 prior to the release of her youth novels and her poetry chapbooks. She was born in West Virginia, lived in an Eastern Kentucky coal camp, and grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She now lives on a farm in East Tennessee.
