Where Have All the Old Men Gone?

The men who knew
a boy was trouble
before the boy knew
the shape of his own hunger—
prophets
with ash on their tongues
and one good curse
left warm in the mouth.

Earshel died this morning.
June heat on the hospice glass.
Ninety fuckin four years,
one short sleep—
sleep took him
without siren,
without argument,
without jerking up
out of the dark
with one more
startled, wheezing
What—

The men who could say,
Boys, if you're gonna pull your pecker out,
you better cover it up,
and somehow make it
scripture and county law
in the same breath.

Ninth grade.
Gurley Stadium under Friday night lights.
Red devils against blue.

Jinnings and I,
hybrid devils of sorts—
brotherhood built
at the edge of the Village,
Starmount, out in Startown,
where the first dip
onto Shady Lane
lets you know
you made it.

Jinnings—
four months older,
one inch taller—
Earshel's boy by blood,
mine because of the long ride home.

We squeezed in the second row
like contraband,
still young enough
to think trouble
was somewhere you drove to—
not the thing
riding shotgun
the whole way there.

Earshel drove us home
through the dark,
Mavisdale blood—
Buchanan County coal country,
half a people
he never had to name,
bolo tie at his throat
like a man
who knew exactly who he was
and owed you no proof—
the AM dial cranked,
Friday scores crackling in
from every field in the region,
cranked,
because Earshel couldn't hear,
even with an ear
buried in his name.

One glass eye, too.
But that's another story.

He taught by respecting
oncoming traffic—
clicking the pedal on the floor
to drop the brights,
giving the other man
his share of the dark.

Red Devil sex ed
was a carousel slide—
gonorrhea,
engorged nutsacks,
the bill the body runs
and always pays.

The body was a matchbook,
and boys were born
dragging it
across brick
until something caught fire—
and the catch
always has a catch,
and the catch
has bars.

Grandpa Dick went first—
June twenty-two, nineteen ninety-three—
months before that fall's game,
and left a chair
we learned to step around
without admitting it was there.

Then Earshel stood near it,
not in it,
never trying to be blood,
just close enough
to keep the rain
off a boy's neck.

Maybe the old men
didn't always have it—
the time,
the faculty,
the patience
(selah)
a boy needs
to grow the way
only safe things grow:
slow.

Maybe Jinnings
never felt safe
because his father
never got to,
born where he was born,
raised by men
the mountains had already
worn down to flint.

We stepped there anyway.
We stepped there singing.
Set farts on fire.
Drove the mower
like a monster truck
around the Village.

Addiction eats the table legs.
Don't dress it up
in choir robes.

It pawns the wedding ring,
misses the birthday,
sells the socket set,
lies to the mother,
bleeds the sister dry,
teaches the children
to flinch
at keys in the door.

It thins the town.
It leaves the county jail
lit all night
like a Waffle House
for grief.

beneath the foil,
beneath the orange bottle,
beneath the court date
and the tired judge
reading names
like headstones—

there is a boy
who never found safety,
so he chased anything
that felt like a locked door
from the inside.

A vein.
A pipe.
A pill.
A woman's soul.
Fool's gold.
A false god.
A crawlspace
where morning, for once,
does not come swinging.

Before the cuffs.
Before the charge.
Before the county
opened its iron mouth—

Jinnings sat with his daddy.

And I imagine Earshel saw it—
six months of breath
coming back into the man
his boy had become,
six months of a voice
not scraped down
to gravel.

A father knows.
Even under morphine light.
Even with death
folding towels
at the foot of the bed.

He knew his son
had been held
without being handled.

Then the old man
took the phone.

And there I was—
a little runt,
his son's accomplice,
a pastor,
a heathen,
a Startown boy
with ash in my doctrine—

and I heard
the old seer say—
a man who read country
the way his people read it,
who knew that ground
by more than its road names—
Take care of my son.

Not preach to him.
Not save him.
Not fix him.
Not drag him clean
by the hair.

Take care.
As if care
were a machete
you keep sharp
for the dark.

And my last words to him
were these:
You know we're Startown boys, Earshel.

He grinned through the phone.
You could hear it.
Old men can grin
without teeth,
without lungs,
without leaving the room.

And I said,
You know what that means, don't you?

That long Southern draw,
stretched out slow—
because trouble deserved
the time it gave us
to look at what we'd done.

And I told him,
Startown boys won't start a fight,
but we'll sure as fuck finish one.

He laughed.
And I became convinced—
there are sacraments
the church never named.
A hospice laugh
is one of them.

Maybe nowhere.
Maybe it just hangs there
over Startown—
not a halo,
not a cure,
just smoke
above a struck match,

just the truck
idling in the dark,
just enough room
for two boys
to squeeze in
and ride home.