THE LAST TIME HE TOLD IT

 

He loved the story and would tell it

at any gathering where the family in question

or any of their distant kin were mentioned.

�Old man Hillard Taylor, you know he always said

third grade was all the education he needed

for his acreage, had worked his self red-faced

slashing at brush and hacking low limbs

trying to open up the path to the Taylor cabin.

When Ben Simpson came along in his Model T

and asked old Taylor what he was about,

Hillard explained that he had had a letter

from his son away at Fort Wood in the service.

The boy had written that he was �coming in on a furlough�

and everybody knew they could barely get a mule

up this path.�  The last time he told it

was at the meal after they buried the Muse boy

sent home from Vietnam in his flag-draped box.

Some few chuckled.  Some coughed and all

looked away, out a window and over the fields

as though watching for the foreign words to come. 

 

 

Michael Chitwood