Call and Response: George Etheredge and Kaitlin Williams

George Etheredge. April 22, 2015. Asheville, Buncombe County, North Carolina.

It wasn’t that the Buick was forgotten. Jimmy had put it there, drove it in the lot with the sort of half-hearted intention of things more wanted than needed.; a project for him and Jerryl when the heat of summer subsided. A September lay-away before the county fair and after the kids were out of their hair, back on the bus to school in Buncombe.

Jesse wouldn’t mind them fooling around the yard then. The days would slow and the leaves would begin to turn on the mountain. But then fall shifted to winter and Mamaw had gotten that cough that just wouldn’t shake and Jerryl found work in town and Jimmy just kept on drinking. The days dwindled into snow and before long the lot was filled with it and it would just be easier to wait for spring than drag it into the garage and pull out the heater.

Well March came and went and Jimmy was just too damn tired what with Jesse in a mood. Besides the cold lingered that year, even in April there were patches of ice in the yard, hemmed in the shadows. But when the lightning bugs emerged in those warm June nights Jimmy couldn’t think much of working. The beer was cold and the radio was just right and Jesse was looking something beautiful in that dress.

And so the seasons did pass and the kids grew tall and one or two left for the city. Jerryl met another gal then another then another. He couldn’t keep a woman, but he could hold down a job. Something Jimmy always envied. Jesse got plump. Jimmy got plumper. The lot turned wild and the confederate daisies cozied up to the rusting chrome bumper. Whenever Jimmy was asked about the old Buick in the yard out front he’d say he was just waiting for the heat of summer to subside.

Kaitlin Williams. Daphne, Alabama.

Call and Response is a photo-literary exploration devoted to the relationship between photographs and words. Using photographs from the Looking at Appalachia project, writers are encouraged to respond narratively to a single image in 1,000 words or less. We hope to use this platform to expand our community and encourage collaboration between photographers and writers. Learn more about how to submit here.

Call and Response: Alan Pittman and Mary Ann Bragg

Alan Pittman. March 22, 2014. A portrait of Jesus hangs near the bell-tower rope in one of the classrooms at Valley Grove Methodist Church, Charleston, Kanawha County, West Virginia.

As I page through all the photographs for West Virginia I stop at one with the sort of sunlight I know. The sheers are in a living room that I know, and the white wood chair is my white wood chair. I know that picture of Jesus in a robe. The benevolence of holding a lamb. He stands among sheep that crowd and follow him. I know the elements of this photograph, and I know the symmetry. I’m drawn to them. But it is the hanging cord that makes me shudder. It’s a rope for a church bell, soft and unfrayed with a trim tassel, but honestly it is awful in its off-centeredness and the way it ends in the top third of the photograph. The rope lacks a symmetrical twin. Its darkness interrupts the light from the windows. I think of it as malevolent. It immediately takes me to what must be in the back of my mind. A hanging. A hanging of some kind, either self-inflicted or as I write it just now a hanging inflicted by someone else. But the rope is quite slender. It could not cause that much damage to another person. Surely. A female, though. It could have hung a slender female. The tensions in this photograph are many. The benevolence matched with the suggestion of malevolence, and the symmetry matched with the sole dissymmetry of the rope. What I know to be true is matched with what is unknown. There is anxiety. I struggle with what I know compared to what I want to be.

Mary Ann Bragg. Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Call and Response: Meg Wilson and Larry D. Thacker

Meg Wilson. August 8, 2015. Paint Lick, Garrard County, Kentucky.

I’m driving to a fire, momma.

I hear there’s a fire on the mountain, momma.
That’s where I’m headed. Bare foot, pressing the gas
to the floor. I’ve been headed up that way for a while.
Toward the light. The glow. Since I heard
you and daddy whispering how there ain’t nothing
out past as far as I can see.
Funny thing, though.

You can see a little better with every little step.
Every play mile. And I’m burning a road out for my own
way up the hill, to the very top, with my eyes and ears.
Have been since you set the signal fires alight
In my heart. In my hands. Mostly in feet.

Ever remember doing that? Right when I was born?

I know I was born in this house. I still see it.
I catch versions of lives mirrored back in the flames
of a bonfire some men joked and drank around
while I struggled free from your belly, momma.
I smelled smoke.
I have ever since. We all have.

That same ground is dark with autumns of brush burnings.
With newspapers and bills. Leaves and tobacco spit.
Old toys. The black mud below is heavy spellbound
and I have a pocket full of it to take with me
over the ridge. The mud’s full of light and heat.

I hear there’s fire all over the mountain, father. Up
where all the answers are etched in boulders.
Who spends all that time up there carving wisdom
into such stubborn earth?
Some kind of angels?
Do they write with lighting? Is that how the fires started?

And will they wait for me to make it up there?
I want to meet them. I always have. But I’m moving slowly.

I ain’t going there to put any fire out, sister.
I’m taking my own. What I’ve hidden under our bed
these years. What’s been long out of control in this heart, unsung.
Waterless. What’s warmed our little room on cold nights.
When I add my own to lightning you’ll know I made it.
You’ll know I’m up and can see over
where we’re never supposed to have gone.
Look hard and you’ll see me waving back only to you.
You’ll hear it happen, too. I promise.

There’s fire in the sky, little dead brother in the ground.
But you know that. You’ve played in air since leaving us.
I’ve felt you swing by giggling.
Whispering, You’re it.

I’m taking you with me, if you’ll go.
Pack your airy things, light and sparkly like I glance you
sometimes in the branches, and sit with me.
We have lighting to create, flame to transport,
and fire to seek:
the other side of a dark ridge to discover.

Larry D. Thacker. Johnson City, Tennessee.