The Absalom, Absalom Pub Crawl went off without a
hitch. It is such a pleasure to work
with folks like Kay Moore of DGI, David Murdock of Gadsden State
Community College, Brandy Hyatt of the GPL, Gene Millican of the Downtown Tavern and Chris & Christi Robinson of the Blackstone Pub & Eatery…they
make my job so easy! And to always have
the support of the community, well that means even more. I never in my wildest dreams would have ever thought
that Gadsden could
have a Faux Faulkner Contest…but we did, and it was great! This may end up being something we do every summer...
Two really great articles on the event, one from Andy Powell
at the Gadsden Times
and the other from William Thornton of the Birmingham News
And although I was not able to enter the Faux Faulkner
Contest (on account of me being the host), I wrote what would’ve been my entry
if I could’ve been a contestant:
“You better get yourself back in here right now!” was all that the bleeding and manure-covered Vergie heard as she lit out across the yard as fast as her twelve-year-old legs would pump. If she hadn’t been so intent upon getting gone from her Uncle Rube’s house, she would’ve probably noticed and possibly admired the fine gold-colored light of the late autumn day upon the pump house where the well that fed water to at least two of the buildings on the property was ensconced; the well that was dug on the exact spot where the willow branch Vergie herself three years ago had held and fought with her own hands the downward pull of as it indicated water when Enoch and his boy had come down to witch the property and had shown the begging Vergie that if she paid attention, that if she held the willow just right, then she could do what some thought was the breaking of the First Commandment, but what others knew was just dowsing.Vergie was the daughter of a truck driver, a truck driver who had trucked himself out of her life once and for all when she was seven. When she remembered him, she remembered the sardines he ate on saltine crackers with fingers darkened by axle grease; she remembered now the goody bag of nickel candy or once even a beaded Indian doll necklace from a reservation in Oklahoma he’d brought home to her when he’d been gone on the road for longer than he should’ve. She still had that beaded Indian doll necklace, but now the leather skirt was missing from the beaded body and Vergie couldn’t bear to wear it anymore on account of how it felt wrong, just wrong to expose that small naked body for all the world to see.
