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FATHERS & SONS
When my twin brother died at 27 of an accidental overdose, my stoic father cried. The sound he made was nothing like I had ever heard. It was an animal cry, primal in its pain, and I will never forget it. CONTINUE READING
A DARK VEIN
My dad was twenty-five years old when he saw a man die. He didn’t hear or see the slate roof fall, but he heard Bonsell Robinson scream. It happened in 1967 inside the Beatrice Coal Mine in Keen Mountain, Virginia, where my dad worked. He was just starting out, five years into a job he would do for the rest of his work life. CONTINUE READING
Stories Never Told
This is what I see when I imagine her: An old farmhouse at the head of a mountain holler. It’s just before dawn. Inside, a woman stirs under heavy quilts. She dresses quietly, careful not to wake her children in the two other beds in the room. CONTINUE READING
POCKET CHANGE
I am a naive boy of eight or nine from a remote coal town in the Appalachian mountains when I first see the little monkey. My family is on vacation at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. When the mines shut down for two weeks every summer — always the last week of June and first week of July — we always come here the first week and spend the second week working around the house. CONTINUE READING