Dogwood by Chris Fabry Read Free Book Online Page B

describe something so immense? or the way the sand feels?”
    We eased into a rhythm of driving and talking and silence. I tried the radio once, an AM station giving the news about a highway fund being blocked at the capitol. The former governor was under suspicion of fraud. An investigation into three robberies at gentlemen’s clubs in the valley.
    Our tires hummed on the road and provided the soundtrack for our trip, background music for the conversation. As we passed another of the seemingly endless patches of green trees coming to life, Ruthie began singing. I thought I had experienced it all until I heard her blast out “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
    I joined in, which is what you have to do as a native of the Mountain State. Some people stand at the singing of the “Hallelujah Chorus.” West Virginians stand, at least in their hearts, at the singing of “Country Roads.” I remember the first time I heard it on a radio station, though the song seemed like it had always been there.
    There’s something peaceful and melancholy about the way the words and the music coalesce, like the dirt roads that crisscross my state, that wind through the hills and rocks and trees and make their dusty way home. West Virginia has a soul that remains untouched by the outside world. No matter how many chain stores and restaurants try to take up residence, they seem strangely out of place. There are parts of the state where it seems no human being has set foot. Arrowheads still wash up on creek banks, remnants of life burrowing deep into the land. Take a lungful of air, especially in the spring, and you take in a fecund aroma of history. This is not the tidal plain smell of shrimp and salt water but an ambrosial aroma of manure and wet, fertile ground waiting for someone to turn it over and plant. The ground screams to be worked by farmers, yearns for the violation of the till and plow. To have seeds planted deeply in verdant soil.
    Most people know West Virginia from news stories of tragedy. The torch the state holds is alcoholism and the lottery, and those who take but a cursory look will see only the vacant stares of children from a front porch littered with washing machines and spare tires. A bad Foxworthy joke. A redneck, hillbilly, barefoot, incestuous, drunk, blaze orange, country music, cigarettes-rolled-in-your-shirtsleeve, tobacco-chewing, NASCAR-loving cutout.
    The Deep South has its poster children of Confederate flag-wavers and men in white sheets. West Virginia, since its inception a state not allied with the South, carries its emblems on its sleeve, the curving, unending back roads that seem to lead nowhere to those on the outside.
    But not every road has an end.
    A state defined by its political divisions—a Democrat, union stronghold for economic reasons, but flag-waving, committed to any war our country decides to fight.
    Some think of West Virginia as a place they need to escape. But most people here, if they have a steady job, a good church, and a satellite dish, wonder why anyone would want to leave.
    “You thinking about him?” Ruthie said, snapping me from my self-induced trance.
    I told her my thoughts about our state, the people, the past, and the future. I should have known Ruthie was more concerned about the present.
    “What’s your heart telling you right now?” she asked.
    “That what we’re about to do is scaring me half to death. When I think of actually seeing Will again after all this time . . .”
    “You told me about him watching out for you once. Were there other times he helped you?”
    “I suppose there were. I think he was always watching out for me.”
    “And you were attracted to him?”
    “Yes and no. He seemed safe. He had a certain promise when he was younger, but as I compared him with others in high school, he seemed more like the kind of guy you went for if you wanted two kids and a trailer. You know? I measured people by what kind of chances they’d take, how far I