The Front Porch Prophet

DEDICATION:

To Marsha, of course.

THE APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS MEANDER FROM
the flatlands of the South to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They were ancient when first discovered by the human species—venerable even as age is measured in geologic time—and have endured with injured grace the attentions of that destructive race. In its impetuous youth, the range was formidable. Now, wind and water have brought the mountains low, although they are, in their fashion, still as wild as their larger western cousins. Lookout Mountain originates in south-central Tennessee, wanders west across northwest Georgia, and terminates in the farmlands of northeast Alabama. It is considered by some to be the southernmost principal mass of the Appalachian chain. To others, it is home.

A thousand souls reside in the town of Sequoyah, Georgia, sixty miles southwest of Chattanooga. Located in a mountain valley surrounded by peaks, Sequoyah does not differ significantly from countless other small communities dotting the Southern landscape. It has a store and a gas station, a diner and four churches. It boasts a school, a post office, a traffic light, and a town hall. There is a doctor, a lawyer, and an Indian chief—or at least, that is what he claims. Over the years, however, the settlement has developed a character unique to itself. The whole has exceeded the sum of the parts. The individuals who resided there have left traces, pieces of the patchworks of their lives. A child’s name. A house. The lay of a fencerow. A snowball bush. This is the way of towns and of those who people them. These are the relics of security, for it is not human nature to live alone.

One such memento of Sequoyah’s living past is A.J. Longstreet. His mother, Rose, succumbed to a venomous cancer when he was an infant. She was in hideous pain through much of her pregnancy but staved off the inevitable until her child was born. Her husband, John Robert Longstreet, was desolate. He paid the heavy price of sentience with his sorrow.

Time heals most wounds, but by no means all. On the day after Rose was laid to rest, John Robert quietly rocked his son. Rose had named the baby Arthur John after her father and her husband. It was a warm evening early in the spring, and the scent of wisteria pervaded the air. That aroma would sadden John Robert for the remainder of his days, the lying smell of illusory hope, the cloying sweetness forever tied to memories of the funeral parlor, the mound, and the gaping hole in the red Georgia clay. He sat with his mother, Clara, on the porch of the old family home place, in which had resided many generations of Longstreets. The sky to the west bled ruby into the night. John Robert sighed, kissed the baby, and offered him to Clara. She looked at him, discerned his fatal intentions, and refused the bundle.

“Take the boy, Mama,” John Robert said woodenly, his voice a bottomless melancholy. He was not a coward but had chosen the craven path, and he had a long journey ahead to regain his place at Rose’s side.

“No,” she said in a voice as unyielding as frozen time. “That is not the way. We’ll raise him together, but I won’t do it alone.” She spoke calmly and with finality, but a hard fear gripped her heart like an eagle’s claw. She had just lost the daughter she never had and was now in danger of losing her son. Loneliness was her terror. She had become a widow many years earlier due to a freak accident involving a hay baler, a rock, and a young husband who was counting on many long years of happiness. So Clara raised John Robert alone, and she had been overheard to say on more than one occasion that she had done a fine job. But she was an old woman now and doubted her ability to repeat the task.

“Mama, it’s time for me to go,” John Robert insisted. He stood and placed the baby on the seat of the rocker. Clara was a woman with unalterable concepts of right and wrong, and was known to be spirited when crossed. She had heard enough.

“John Robert, there will be no more of this talk. Do you hear me? Not another word. That poor baby doesn’t know what his mama went through to get him here, but he
is
here, and you can just set your mind to doing your duty by him.” John Robert hung his head, but Clara was not through. “I have never heard such in all my days,” she continued. “What would
you
have done if I had gone and jumped into that hay baler with your daddy?” She reached up and touched his unshaven chin. “What do you think Rose would say about all this?” she asked quietly, saving the trump card for last.

And that had been that. The talk of joining Rose was ended. John Robert would be with her in good time, but first he had to finish the task they had initiated together.

So he and Clara commenced the raising of Arthur John Longstreet, and the joy that John Robert had lost upon his wife’s passing was slowly replaced on a smaller scale by his son. He was subject to brief depressions for the remainder of his days, particularly early in the spring, but he never again allowed himself to be overcome. He never remarried, much to the chagrin of many of the available young women in the area—all of whom knew a fine catch when one swam by—but it appeared he was no longer interested in members of the opposite sex, which was a shame in a man so vital, handsome, and propertied.

Total disinterest was not quite the truth, however. John Robert had been comforted during his darkest days by a local angel of mercy, an iron-willed woman who had survived bleak times of her own and who had the uncommon talent of knowing her own mind. To her lasting credit, she determined to help this lonely and despairing man find solace, and as payment for her kindness she bore a son. Conception had not been her intent, but she knew a gift when she received one and recognized their scarcity in an indifferent world. So she was content with the outcome and burdened neither John Robert nor her husband with the details.

Arthur John Longstreet grew into sturdy, barefoot boyhood under the dutiful care of John Robert and Granmama. John Robert’s lessons were those of hard work, duty, family, and respect. He told Arthur John of his mother, Rose, and the boy learned to hold her in reverence. There were several photographs of Rose Longstreet in the house, grainy black-and-white slices of a life that had been. His favorite depicted her in a cotton dress sitting by a pond, smiling at the photographer, her long hair windblown. Arthur John had been to that spot many times, always hoping to find her, always convinced that somehow he had just missed her. He could sense a presence there, as if her arms enfolded him across time.

While John Robert tended toward the larger issues of life, Clara was as practical in her upbringing of Arthur John as she had been with the raising of his father. She kept him clean and taught him manners. She read him stories and held him when he cried. She doctored his scrapes and made him eat his vegetables. She made him mind, and more than once found herself applying the business end of a hickory switch to his stubborn behind. She also took the boy to church each Sunday, but the weekly excursion was made without John Robert, who refused to go.

“It’s a good idea,” he told Clara when she first broached the subject. “Take the boy on down there. There’s a lot of good to be had out of going to church.”

“You ought to come with us, John Robert,” she said.

“I expect I’ll wait awhile. Me and the Lord don’t see eye to eye these days. We’ll get around to talking, directly.” But they never did. The betrayal had been too great, the theft of Rose into the night too harsh. John Robert had looked deep into his heart and found no forgiveness. He knew he was a minute speck in the vastness of the cosmos, but he was the injured party and expected an accounting. But no bush on the farm burst into voice and flame to reveal why Rose’s presence had been required elsewhere. Skulled specters did not trot in across the back pasture under a white flag of truce to clarify why her transition from here to there had been so ungodly cruel. So John Robert did not forgive. And he did not forget.

Arthur John became initialized early in life. Initialization is a Southern rite of passage akin to the Hebrew practice of circumcision, but it is sometimes less painful and does not always occur on the seventh day. So Arthur John Longstreet became A.J., and A.J. he has remained.

When A.J. was six, Granmama took him down to the school in town. It was a bright, sweet morning in early September, and A.J. was beside himself with excitement. He was decked out in stiff-as-a-board jeans, a blue cotton shirt, and U.S. Keds, black high-tops fresh out of the box. This was the big league, and A.J. knew it full well. After a brief, informal registration, he was remanded into the custody of Mrs. Williams, a sweet, blue-haired woman who had been teaching since John Robert was a child.