Homestead

  

      When I was a boy, I lived on a mountain outside a small North Carolina town called Banner Elk. Smack dab in the middle of deep Appalachia, and surrounded by mailboxes stenciled with the same last name, I moved into an alien world. That world might as well be a monoculture with a typical name. A bland name so common, there's no real logic behind my association with It and terms such as ignorance, malice, or genuine grotesque human behavior.

      The last name I want to hear is Smith.

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      My mother packed up my sister and I to leave from Florida in hopes of starting anew after the divorce. My father held the same idea, but he decided to stay near to his son. My sister is from a previous marriage, but he couldn't leave his son. He went with my mother to find the cabin. He then stayed behind for a few weeks to close the sale of our University Pines home in Sarasota. Three weeks after our first night in the woods, my father settled in a modest apartment in nearby Boone. He took a Respiratory Therapist position at Watauga County Hospital; across the street from his lonely lodging. I could tell he was lonely. My rambunctious presence filled his void four or five evenings a week. Within no time, my father and I grew very familiar with the slithering route between us.

      A foul-mouthed man with tobacco staining his teeth introduced himself to my mother the day we unpacked the U-haul. Though his speech was slow, his chance to articulate the sounds belching from behind his teeth was clearly not taken. In exaggerated, cartoon-ish tones, we learned his name to be D.C Smith. He then spit a gob of dip so sweet, we could smell it as the wind blew towards us.

      Now, I don't recall the names of his wife, son, or daughter, but I am more than fine with that. Neither do I remember the name of D.C.'s nephew, whom our property was also familiar with. To be honest, I have only a vague recollection of any physical features tied to any of them besides a child's demonized view of men and women whose clothing and faces were as decrepit as the dwellings they crept from. Once again, I can live with this.

      I was four years old when we first opened the doors to the cabin. I was five years old when we closed them for good.

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      I was probably playing with Ninja Turtle figurines when my mother and sister shook our new neighbor's hands. I overheard them discussing the occurrence later. Frank questions arose about where the man of the house was, and why we had not plans to attend the local Baptist church. More than the questions, it was the ghastly reactions by the neighbors that mystified my mother and sister. In particular, my mother's admittance of a non-religious household was not a big hit with the Smiths.

      Apple trees were not sparse in the near fields, woods, and our yard. I never bothered eating or even picking the forbidden fruit. Instead, I enjoyed destroying the fallen few with sticks and rocks. I could throw them in the air to set myself up as both pitcher and batter; place my action-figure soldiers around their fresh battlefield and berate them with the wormy sweets. I examined, dissected, built, and burned the apples. But I never picked the clingers, and I never put that bitter s**t anywhere near my mouth. I was curious. I was discovering. I was being a kid. There wasn't much else to occupy my hyper time.

      On a cold autumn evening, I was running my usual apple tests. I wandered beyond my own yard. By the time I realized I was outside my respected bounds, my heels were already high on my way back to the porch. Mrs. D.C. Smith did not appreciate my child-like wonder as much as I did, that's for sure. My mother met me at the front door just in time to witness the kink-eyed woman sprinting after me hoping to get one substantial swat on my a*s with an old wick broom. The ladies shared words.

      It seemed to us that the initial meet and greet (where things like “Well, y'all shoul' have a man a' livin' here,” were said when D.C. became aware of our single-mother household) in combination with the Apple Witch incident caused the beginning of what eventually would have taken place anyway. It was inevitable.

      I'll start with the ditch-digging.

      We all began coming home from the evening to thoughtful, prejudicial acts on our driveway. In retrospect, as beautiful as our log-cabin was itself, along with its encompassing three acres, the one major downfall of the property's aesthetics was the fact that we shared a narrow drive with this humble home of hicks. Bad design in any situation, if you ask me. Off Hickory-nut Gap road, our drive came sloping down diagonally. D.C.'s home was roughly forty yards down this tributary. Another sixty yards or so sat my mother and sister's dream home. This very small annoyance of land development was barely thought about by the parental figures; certainly over-looked by me. This, of course, was until we found ourselves abandoning our Taurus leaps before the steps of our porch due to six-inch deep trenches which mysteriously grew over the previous few hours. These snow-melt filled, gruesome pits only happened to start after the blue house with which we shared our trail to shelter.

       It was clear, even to a child, these people had no love for a family of three from Florida. I believe my mother just let it go, accepting my father's invitation to fill the holes in. I wasn't sure why until later, but it definitely was not the reaction the Smiths wanted.

       Watching my mother sob while she held her convulsing Chow-Chow couldn't have been anything other than detrimental to my young perception of other people. When my mother was called home from work by my hysteric sister, she did not know what exactly to expect. She pulled up next to our cabin a while before my father and I. We both knew something was wrong; assuming my father knew more than me at that point in light of the rifle on his gun rack. I stepped into the dim light of dawn floating in my foyer. Piercing sounds of gurgling and crying attacked my senses. My mother lay on the floor of the living room with an eighty pound dog frothing by the mouth cradled against her chest. My sister was frantic and pacing; my father dumbfounded.

      Usdi Yo Na, the Cherokee phrase for "little bear," was the name we had given to the family pet, but she was primarily my mother's dog, so her devastation was confounded by favoritism. In turn, my mother wanted to end the dog's suffering, so she told my father to take her out back near the creek and put our pet out of her misery. The rest of us waited on the porch for the crack of gun powder. It came and weeping commenced further. As my father rounded the corner of the house, D.C., his son, and his nephew came out of their garage across the way. The nephew -- who we reflected later was probably gay and exiled when his "offenses towards god” were suspected by those in his wide family who loved their “god” a bit more than blood -- held a dripping drink bowl for animals in one hand and a bottle of antifreeze in the opposite. His smile made me nauseous. My mother's hectic outbursts when she put two and two together made all three inbred men cackle with little effort. There lived no doubt in the adult minds present that Yo Na's death was a poisoning, and it sure as hell was not an accident. This notion was only supported by the amount of pleasure in the stooge's eyes.

       My mother ended up off the porch, and in the faces of the perpetrators. She practically leaped at their throats, demanding answers to why? Why had they done this? She wanted to know what made her small family system offend these people to such a level enough to cause this kind of evil. Could it really be such an asinine prejudice towards “a woman run household,” and missing portraits of a bloody Christ on our walls? My mother ached for more human reason or logic than these snake-charming zealots could offer. They ignored her venomous verbal attack by looking over at my father and spewing, “You bes' git your woman to back up in 'er kitchen.” This was when my father raised his rifle and told the intruders to f**k off. I will admit their steadfast casualty during all of this was slightly impressive, but then again, that's what you get with men deep in Baptism, subjection of women and all other outsiders of their geography and faith. Without a flinch, all three looked at my father up and down before advising, “Boy, ya need ta think 'bout droppin' that there bee-bee gun, an' folla' yer b***h and rug-rats back into yer kitchen.” Another added, “We don' take too kindly to ya folks. Ya ain't one a' us, ya hear? Y'all git back to where's ya came from.” D.C. winked before they turned and strolled back to the blue house in quite the nonchalant fashion.

      The next morning my father and I walked around the property because we were missing another dog. A new Boxer pup named Layla. We noticed our firewood pile spilled its stacks over. We picked up piece by piece until we came upon the crushed little body of Layla. Apparently the same fate for her. Three days after this, my sister opened up the back door to find a dead stray kitten who had been visiting us for the last few weeks to scam free milk a few times a day. We simply called her Kitty.

      We filed a police report. We filed another. Then the station began to dodge our phone calls. It was bizarre. In between were constant discussions which quickly mutated into solid plans to get the hell out. We put the house on the market, took the first deal and waited for the closing of the sale to finalize. We had no absolute plan of our next destination besides going to stay with relatives on my mother's side of the family. So the goal was to make it to Indiana as soon as possible.

      For a rural area, I didn't actually live too far from my elementary school. I rode the bus most days, and about a week before we were set to hit the road, I rode the bus home for the last time...actually it was the last time I attended school in Banner Elk. From the uncomfortable school bus seats I saw smoke rising through the dingy windows. As we approached my home, the smoke did not veer in a different direction. The smoke stayed right where my fear held it.

      Yes, someone made an attempt to burn our lives to the soggy ground. They failed...barely. In fact they burned two acres of wild rhododendron to a sappy crisp. By the time the litter of fire engines, hoses, and more rednecks in yellow hats made their way to extinguishing the flames, the smoldering coals halted less then twenty feet from our rear porch. So close, the backside of the cabin showed moderate smoke damage. My mother was less hysterical but fuming, nonetheless. Police took her statement. They then reassured her that this was not arson. When she pushed for them to listen, they refused and told her she ought to be glad her house was still standing. We left two days later.

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      For years I was not privy to the fact that my mother fought with both the local fire department and Police Chief. I wondered why she didn't take the issue up with someone higher. She said it wasn't worth it. She began some light research on professional individuals from the hospital where she worked as a nurse, as well as the fire and police departments. She specifically looked up the Police Chief she'd conversed with before. She found a family tree with vines eroding miles of Appalachian hills.

      She asked me years later -- as a man, not a boy -- if the local protection wore insignias blazed with the name “Smith” in golden lettering, would I have thought it was worth it myself? I said no.

      I can only imagine what black depths exist in the soul of someone named Smith on Hickory-nut Gap road. Through our neighbor's bloodshot eyes, we Gleesons were eternally damned. I have no plausible excuse for the torment. I have no pity for the tormentors. We had tucked ourselves tightly into Satan's bed. We still stay, wrapped in a womb of sin. I suppose we'll never see the love and light of the same Lord who shone on the Smiths. I suppose we're all too warm and cushy in our filth and bile to poison dogs in the name of God.