KENTUCKY FOLKLORE (A SUCKER’S EVENING)
by Brian Beatty
My micro memoir borrows its parenthetical subtitle from Kentucky’s own Bonnie Prince Billy. Many times I’ve driven down to Kentucky to see live music or hike the state’s low, rolling hills. But only once did I cabin camp there.
Alone one night in a rented cabin along a creek owned by some local stoners up the hill, I killed enough mice to fill a poorly sewn pillowcase, using just a hat and a boot. Unfortunately, there was no getting back to sleep or facing my sorry self in the cracked mirror above the wash basin after that. So I did what anybody else would’ve done. My white sock foot already stomped a dirty gray anyway, I dragged the whole infested bed outside onto the shining blue grass to light it on fire from a safe distance in knee-high creek water. The sham ripping at the seams with my squashed dead from before I left hanging like an invitation not to follow me home from a nail hammered more quickly than well through the back of the cabin’s slamming door.
by Brian Beatty
My micro memoir borrows its parenthetical subtitle from Kentucky’s own Bonnie Prince Billy. Many times I’ve driven down to Kentucky to see live music or hike the state’s low, rolling hills. But only once did I cabin camp there.
Alone one night in a rented cabin along a creek owned by some local stoners up the hill, I killed enough mice to fill a poorly sewn pillowcase, using just a hat and a boot. Unfortunately, there was no getting back to sleep or facing my sorry self in the cracked mirror above the wash basin after that. So I did what anybody else would’ve done. My white sock foot already stomped a dirty gray anyway, I dragged the whole infested bed outside onto the shining blue grass to light it on fire from a safe distance in knee-high creek water. The sham ripping at the seams with my squashed dead from before I left hanging like an invitation not to follow me home from a nail hammered more quickly than well through the back of the cabin’s slamming door.