Gunmetal Lullaby
The sound of gunmetal is our lullaby - hammer cocking against the barrel, once and once again, sawing back and forth since the shouts of the Civil War rang out within a fort somewhere on the ocean to the east. We are the lonely generation - mothers left to colder climes and faster jobs, abandoning children to the failed warmth of a Southern neighborhood weaned on Federal aid.
The simple gurgles of Norris countyes children fill the air, contented and inane, but the tired footprints of three misfits - we, the cynic generation - stamp the town with cheap Salvation Army sneakers. Shoelaces flop as I trail behind the others, his broad back and the off-white frills of her dress that she inherited from her grandmother. The town sheriff circles carefully, but wefre suspicious as crows and never show a crooked eye to the man. He leaves soon enough.
Then itfs the three of us again - the rough generation, dropped from the loins of discharged policemen and wine tasters, construction workers and blue-collar union criers who bellow until their necks go red and take pills for their heartache and upset stomachs. We circle up around the whistling tree deep in the woods, and although one of us doesnft have any calluses on her soft palms, we link hands with her anyway - shefs one of us.
June bugs fly from sprig of grasses to others, migrating to some Eternal South, as I watch the other two lean against each other like a pair of ancient oaks. Fingers twined, they lash out at the heretics and Ifm right there besides them, an attack dog baring its teeth at miscreants. They are both two years older than me and I donft know what Ifm doing.
As she sinks to the grass besides me and I feel the white pressure of her fingers against the pulse in my throat - I ask her what shefs doing, I know the answer. She gives me my first kiss in June and I never forget the taste of mint and the reticence of her touch as she starts to unbutton my shirt.
I was fourteen - fourteen the first time, and within half a year theyfre both gone. The girl to a foster fatherfs home farther to the East, and my destined brother gone far farther than that, up to the North; where he took a pistol and swallowed a bullet like all Southern gentlemen would; had dignity and honor and Chivalry, and the Honor Of The South, and the red fans of virtue painted onto the windshield of his car that Ifll never get to see - hefs too far away from me now.
If I had gone to his funeral, I wonder what I would have said; I donft know, because even dead he drowned me out with a pure, strong voice as clear as the echoes of Tennessee hills and a sort of Confederate glory, to take pride in whatfs already been lost. I remember that he laughed with a razor-edged smile, hellion and war hawk, and that I would have split mountains for him if I had to dig them up with my hands. I remember the clink of his dead fatherfs dogtags, gathered from the dusty medal-boxes laid out in a row, like a naked timeline, like a snake-skin, like the Mason-Dixson line drawn across the metaphorical sand that choked the conduct out of the South.
The last letter she sent me was half a page long and two years ago, and then there was nothing and I had to hold onto that yellow stationery and imagine, in surrender, hope in that shallow ink.
I watch now, as my South disappears; as the Honor he had culled bloody lambs for suffocated on aid bills, tourism, and folklore stereotypes propagated by insular mayflies that have never seen the throat-catching beauty of my home. Itfs not recent; all things wilt and die and, though I know, I must grab tenaciously at whatever slips are left and drag my, our, delusion back out into sunlight and splendor.
We are all the misfits, the bastard children of a greater nation that let us go and snatched us back, recalcitrant, bound in hypocritical slavery just as we had always done. A chain of dogtags, inherited, reaching back unto history, counts our pride out by four-digit numbers one after another, closing chapters and taping others shut.
We are the South, the red-painted dying.
And yet I canft look away. Therefs an axiomatic beauty in the autumns of Tennessee, above the cries of wounded trees as they shake and drip fire-hued ichors onto my carpet. Regal in their mortal parade and the finishing moments. Nothing is as beautiful as just before it dies, and my South, my precious South, I realize itfs nothing more than cultural self-arson, trying to drink down the flames.
Together, around the whistling tree, we - the failure generation - made our own passion-fed dreams, like sons of Dionysius. Drunk on exile, she sang a voice of angels and we clapped along on logs that hadnft rotted yet or at least had firm bark. I beat out a rhythm with a shattered slingshot, half the V left in a dark corner of my room; he beat boxed as best he could, but couldnft do it right. It was still a beat.
He had a catfs-eye marble for a right eye and saw salt and vinegar in dead roots and snapped guitar strings. It stared right through to the beautiful end in all things, and he laughed and told us our ends would be glorious, wouldnft they? Something to talk about. To remember. Our selfless pride in each other and the rapturous kiss of pleased mothers passed to the grave. His war hawk wings spread high about, a bulwark against the rain and the stares.
We were so proud. And I still am; because, every night, after Ifve written the last words of the night and put the notebook away, and turned the desk lamp off, and slide into bed; I find those precious dogtags I found in the mail one day, and kiss their muted aluminum gleam. The metal is warm against my lips, and I slip into a dream of scarlet fans and flags, and there is a stately, ardent fire somewhere deep inside my chest.
