Posted: May 24, 08 6:55pm

In a weak moment (grin) this morning I promised to write and post a story here later today so here it is.

Actually this story was written as an experiment, an exercise in critique and rewrite for those TWG members who aren't comfortable doing critique at Tier II or who find when they get there the stories are already critiqued and there is not much to add.

This exercise as I have it in mind will work better if the more accomplished writers and those who critique at Tier II will hold their comments until the revised story is presented at Tier II

So here it is, first draft and straight through the heart. Now it's time to critique for rewrite with the head. From this point all I do is type.

Soaking UP Life

"Here daddy, put this jumper on," my momma yelled up at grandpaw as she took his hand and tried to force it into a his faded, blanket-lined denim workcoat. That old coat of his'n was might near white from all the washings. Momma "blued" it time to time in the washtub as she did our overalls. Right now you couldn't tell it though.

"Where we going Grandpaw?" I yelled. But he didn't hear me.

Momma turned and looked at me and shook her head "No. "You stay here."

Grandpaw was trying to get his hand back out of the sleeve of his jumper. "I'll be sweatin' 'fore I get to the corncrib, Nettie...ah, Lucy, ah...I mean Audrey," Grandpaw stammered.

Momma looked at me and grinned. Grandpaw never could keep his daughters names straight, especially when he was in a hurry or a little upset about something.

Momma was trying to wrap him up like Santa Claus, as usual, before she would let him outdoors. I knew how he felt 'cause she done me the same way. Us menfolk just wanted to get outside and there she was fussin' and wanting us to wear more clothes in winter and her not even knowing what we were gonna be doin'. I was eleven now and Grandpaw had lived with us my whole life, him comin' to live here just after my daddy died from the black lung. That was right after I was born. I was a late baby, just like momma, I'd heard folks say. My three sisters was all grown and married by the time I came along. So, I pretty much grew up by myself back here in Colson's Hollow in Eastern Kentucky, except for grandpaw and momma.

"I'll burn up with that jumper on, Audrey. Already got my longhandles and a flannel shirt on."

"Well Daddy, it's Blackberry winter," momma said as she slipped the jacket up over grandpaws boney shoulders. You can pull it off if you get to hot when you get down the holler in the timber where the wind won't hit you so much."

"Very well then. I'll wear it. Grandpaw cut his eyes at me and grinned."

"Good," momma said, "It's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it."

"Come again," grandad said, wanting mom to repeat her last words. Grandad couldn't hear hardly at all. He mostly read lips unless someone was just about screaming. I knew he'd have that jacket off soon as he rounded the corn crib and have it hung on a nail.

"Where's grandpaw going Momma?"

"Don't forget you walking stick," momma yelled as grandpaw opened the front door and stepped out on the porch. "Might run into a Copperhead." Momma worried about everything, but mostly me an' grandpaw.

I heard the latch click when grandpaw gently pulled the door shut, just as he always had when he left the inside world for the world outside. I couldn't see him through the solid plank front door but I knew first thing he would do was take a deep breath. Then he'd look all around out over the place and down the hollow and a slow smile would come to his face.

Momma turned wearily but smiling and shaking her head side by side. "Stubborn as a mule. Still...if I'd been born in eighteen fifty and was ninety-one and went through what he did during that month in the hospital...I might act the same as him. I'll never forget how tears came to his eyes as he sat over there by the front window and watched his first sunrise come after getting out of the hospital."

I'd never seen grandpaw cry and didn't want to think about it. "Where's Grandpaw going? Why can't I go? Whose he going to visit?"

"Oh, he's ain't gonna visit nobody," she said, seeming a little flustered. "It's just a man thing, mostly his thing. He's liable to get sick again," momma said picking up the old long black poker. I watched as she lifted the door open on the potbellied stove and commenced jabbing the poker hard down in the stove to stir up the coal. Momma did that when things wasn't going just to suit her.

"But he said he was gonna visit his friends."

"Nobody. He ain't visiting nobody, Son, nobody but trees and rocks and chickens and frogs down at the spring and such. It's just a spring thing with him when it first gets warm enough for him to get outside. He's worse about it now since that 'newmoanie hit him last winter, worse than any spring since he's been here these neigh 'elemum year."

"How come grandpaw never worked in the coal mines like daddy did?"

"Oh, he did, momma said, for a week. Momma said he came home that fifth day like he did every evening, only he was spitting up coal dust and no money to show for it all. One thing was he didn't like the idea of working for food while the company store held his money. Momma said daddy said he weren't a rat or a mole or a snake either and he'd scratch with the chickens before he went down in The Hole again. That's what he called the mine. That all happened before I came along, when Nettie was a tiny baby. She was tiny, so tiny when she was born they bedded her down in a dresser drawer until she was year past old."

"Maybe Aunt Nettie should be called Tiny," I laughed.

"Oh, we called her that for years 'til she made us stop. Anyways, Daddy went to cuttin' timber for the mines after that. He used to be a stout man, could swing a double-bit axe all day. He wasn't always frail and dried up like you see him now."

I looked down at the palms of my hands and thought of grandpaw's big hands, soft now, but how calloused they must have been from swinging an axe all day, day after day, year after year. I had some callouses from chopping a little firewood out of the dead limbs that fell back in the woods behind the house.

"What's he do when he visits his friends?"

He's just soaking up life while he's still living, just breathing clean air and looking close at things out there. Never knowed a person to love nature the way he has his whole life I reckon."

I couldn't leave it alone. "But why can't I go with him? I do all time when I ain't in school."

I jumped when Momma dropped the poker beside the stove, it making a dull "clang" when it bounced off one of the cast iron legs of the stove and hit the heat mat on the floor.

"I know you do, Henry, I know you do. But this ain't one of them times," momma said, dusting her hands off, then wiping them on her apron. "I got to bake some bread. You mind now, and don't follow your grandpaw."

I looked down at the worn boards in the floor, thinking about her calling me Henry. It was Grandpaw's name. Mine was William Henry Ballard, the "William" coming from being my daddy's name. Momma usually just called me "Son." I knew when she called me "Henry" she was kindly torn asunder about something. I heard her sigh and I dared to look up.

Momma looked at me and sighed again before she pulled up a straight back chair across from mine. She sat down and looked me straight in the eyes like she was looking in my soul. We was just about the same height. I could almost hear her thoughts tearing through her mind like a herd of wild hogs on a stampede.

"Son, at times like these when you got these questions about man things...I miss your daddy even more than usual. I never understood menfolks any more than menfolk understand womenfolks. But me and your daddy got along and never fussed at each other and loved each other as much as a man and woman can I reckon. We just raised the girls and made do the best we could. Then you came along kinda unexpected and your daddy was happy as a man could be when he found out you was a boy. After the rest was girls he figured you would be too. Then in six month...he was gone. He died back there in the bed holding you in the crook of his arm. I never told you that did I?"

I watched momma's dark brown eyes become liquid pools before she went on. I reached out and took her hand in mine. She turned her head and looked out the window with a far away look in her eyes.

Momma didn't know it but sometimes late of the evening while she fixed supper I'd seen her crying sometime in the kitchen as she looked out the window, looking far away like she was looking for daddy to come walking up the path to our house after a day working at the mines. That's what grandpaw said it was anyways-why she cried sometimes. Said she loved daddy so much and he didn't think she'd ever get over him. She often went up to his grave behind the house where he was buried beneath a big ol' cedar tree.

"William Henry," she begin, "I knew raisin' you with me alone would be different 'cause boys and girls are just different to raise. Oh, your middle sister Lucy was a ring-tailed terror with her a tomboy growing up and packing snakes and frogs and bugs into the house here. Then she was a floosie 'fore she married and settled down and become a fine young woman and mother."

"Lucy was a floosie, heh heh. What's a floosie, Momma?" I asked, picking my nose.

Momma pulled my hand away from my nose. "Never you mind. Forget I said that."

"Yes Momma."

Momma stood and then I stood. She pulled me to her and hugged me tight for a good while. Maybe it was her way of beginning to let me go my own way and become a man. After that she kindly treated me different-like I was more grownup or something. Maybe it was her that changed a little right then and not me. Years later I dreamed about that hug and our talk that day while I was grabbing some sleep in a foxhole in Korea. There wasn't many dreams to be had there, just cold and death mostly.

Momma let go of me and stepped back. "Son, the point I'm making is some stuff you'll figure out yourself when you get older and figure out who you are-what you want and what you like. Then you'll understand why your grandpaw likes to be alone now and then. You'll understand about figuring things out and soaking up life while you can, whatever life is about for you. Soak life up while you got the time."

I nodded my head like I understood but I didn't, not completely. I started toward the back door and saw a picture of my daddy on the wall, face black from coal dust and him standing with two others, him being in the middle. I decided to go up and visit daddy's grave and be alone for a while and, while I was there, maybe take a closer look at the world around me.