rickyleebarnes

Steele

I come from a place where tornadoes hunt in packs, there are more prescriptions than people, and even the chickens fight with knives. If you have walked on Alabama red clay you know it has permanence. Some of us have been buried up to our necks in it. I grew up staring into burn barrels with people who I admired, feared, and felt sorry for at the same time. They were friends of my dad, who worked at the cotton mill. I tagged along. Unless it was Sunday. Then I'd be at the Pleasant Church with my mom. The kind of church where the hardsole shoes of the preacher clack along the pew backs. Where his shouts of rapture make the lights flicker. I'm the oldest of three boys. My mom was sixteen when I was born. She has played and sang Southern Gospel all her life. If you feel the Spirit in my songs, that is where it came from. I don't know if the darkness in my stories showed up after my parents split. It is difficult to remember before then. I do remember scratching the dirt looking for som