a land more kind than home

Craft Essay

Jane Ellen Smith

First Semester 11/04/2014

The use of dialogue to create a sense of place and characterization

In a land more kind than home Wiley Cash has given us a window into the family- centric, lesser educated-world of rural North Carolina and much of Appalachia. He tells the story of a small church that’s been overrun by a self-proclaimed, charismatic preacher who practices snake-handling and poison drinking as evidence of his being filled with the Holy Spirit. Three narrators give us their accounts--a young boy whose brother dies, an older woman who tries to protect the children of the church, and the sheriff, almost an outsider. Cash uses the native speech patterns and colloquialisms of his characters to help his readers see and hear the North Carolina hills.

Many writers believe the best way to demonstrate the relaxed speech of Southerners is to drop the gs at the end of words in an effort to duplicate the softening of word endings. They try to create new spellings for words to help the reader hear their character’s voices. Unfortunately, instead of enhancing the dialogue, labored spellings act like stop signs. The reader has to stop and figure out what the character is saying. Done mindfully, a colorful word or an idiom well-placed is a reminder now and then of where the story takes place, and its cautious use doesn’t intrude into the story in the way that Twain’s use of the vernacular can make Huckleberry Finn nearly unreadable for modern readers. Thankfully, Wyle Cash is a master with dialogue and his characters’ voices flow smoothly through his story.

Words like reckon and figure are appropriate to both the Southern character and place. Many of the characters attend a church practicing a primitive orthodoxy, and it’s common for these churches to use only the King James Version of the Bible that contains an idiomatic English from the 1600s. The King James Bible has verses like this one in Romans 8:18, “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. The Scotch-Irish who settled the North Carolina mountains would have been comfortable using reckon to mean to think or expect, so hearing Adelaide or Clem use reckon is true to type. When Adelaide says on page 2, “...I reckon some folks believed him; I know some of us wanted to,” we hear the history behind her voice.

Figure is another good choice. “I figure everybody in town knew what was going on...(9)” Using “figure” to mean “think” is an idiom common to Southerners. It’s a holdover from an earlier time when working out numbers in equations was referred to as “figuring.” Jess Hall uses it on page 50 when he says “I figured everybody in the church’d heard me holler out for Mama...”  

Ain’t is a contraction for “am not.” It was brought over by immigrants from England, about the same time as reckon came, where it was verifiably a part of Cockney speech in the 1700s (Oxford--aint). Ain’t is hanging on today in the South, even though schoolteachers have done their best to eradicate it. Cash’s characters use it comfortably.  

• “ ‘You ain’t going to find a man’s body in there,’ he said (101).”
• “ ‘You ain’t no Jesus,’ I said. (19)”
• “ ‘You ain’t got to be afraid if you believe,’” he whispered (21).

One construction that Cash doesn’t use is “I been,” unless I missed it. I been is extremely common even among college educated adults in the South. We don’t even notice when someone says “I been cooking all day.”  I use it. I don’t write it, but I say it without even thinking about it. I was surprised to see it missing in the dialogue, but there’s no lack because of that.

I thoroughly enjoyed compiling a list of colloquialisms he used in dialogue.

• “Lord have mercy, Addie, it’s me...” (192)

• “...he watched her catch hold of the Holy Ghost...” (5)
• “We even had us a big purple quartz rock...” (29)
• “(God speaking)...but you know you can’t leave them children behind (9). I find it interesting that God speaks to Adelaide in her own speech.
• “I’d been a member of that church in one way or another since I was a young woman, but things had been took too far, and I couldn’t pretend to look past them no more.(9)”
• “If they do, they’ll come outside here and wear us out for spying on them. (41)”
• “ ‘We had us a healing in church today,’ she said. (60)”
• “About what all has happened...”
• “...that old buzzard’s truck drove clean off the road...(201)
• “...me and him shimmied down that bank and waded a piece out into the water. (201)
• “‘You fixing to turn in?’ she asked me?”

And I’ll repeat a quote I used earlier because it has a great contraction:

• “I figured everybody in the church’d heard me holler out for Mama...”

I don’t know if Southerners are the only people who use these phrases or constructions because I’ve only lived in the South and Southern California. I can tell you that they aren’t common outside LA from personal experience. a land more kind than home is completely evocative of the South for me. I feel like I know these people. I hear the voices of people I knew in Southwest Virginia and my family in Northwest Georgia when I read these words, and their voices draw me into the South once again.

Wedding Letter

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Sanchez,

This quilt is my gift for you on your wedding day. It isn’t perfect. It might be the wrong colors. It’s definitely tested my faith and perseverance, but I give it to you in the hopes that you will warm yourselves beneath it and know that you are loved.

No one sets out to make an ugly quilt, just like no one begins a marriage planning for it to be difficult and ugly. No, a quilter spends time carefully designing the pattern, selecting just the right fabrics to best express it, expects a masterpiece and begins cutting the pieces with a little fear and trepidation. What if I cut it the wrong size? What if I didn’t plan the right amount of fabric for that part of the pattern and I run out before I’m through? What if I hate it when I’m finished? Making a quilt is remarkably like making a marriage. We plan; we prepare; we hope and pray.

Sometimes a piece is cut a little small, so we finesse by carefully stitching the narrowest of seams. Sometimes a block comes out lopsided or too long on one corner, and again we twist and turn and force the block into the proper shape and slice off the part that doesn’t matter. Your marriage will have those places where there’s just not enough time or money or patience. You will have to work hard to keep yourselves stitched together even though there’s barely enough love there to hold on to. But you will hold on. You can do it. Sometimes one of you will seem more important than the other and your marriage will feel lopsided and off-kilter. Then you will have to stop to see if you’ve allowed something or someone to become more important than the two of you together. Sometimes you might have to slice off a part of your lives that, in retrospect, really isn’t as important as you thought because what’s important are that you two stay one.

Piecing the top of the quilt is fun. Arranging the lovely colors, watching the pattern develop, anticipating the next section as the quilt grows from one block to a whole quilt top. You are in the piecing stage of your marriage now. What a wonderful time you have ahead of you! You’ll discover bright new dimensions between the two of you as you join together. Life will seem more full of color and vibrancy. You’ll delight in each new day. Marriage will seem easy. And that’s the way it should be.

But, I’m sorry, but there will come times when you step back and look at your lives and realize that one of the blocks is upside down or the colors clash and the whole pattern is in disarray. And you’ll have to do what every quilter has done: rip out the seams and start over. You’ll do this because it matters, because your marriage is too important to leave the wrong piece there messing up the whole top. It will be hard. It will hurt to see the good parts tear away from the bad, but you will do it because your life, your marriage is worth it. Then you will turn the block around, put it into its rightful place and sew it all back together. And it will be more beautiful than you ever expected.

A quilt is more than the beautiful patchwork on top. There’s a layer of batting sandwiched between it and the solid backing fabric. All three parts are important. The batting adds warmth and fullness. The backing fabric is smooth and soft against those who snuggle underneath it. You will also add parts to your lives together. Brothers, sisters, parents...and eventually children. You will all be sandwiched together, stuck to one another because you are family. In a quilt, what holds that sandwich together are the quilting stitches. We all want perfectly even, consistent quilting stitches that glide from one side of the quilt to the other. What we often get are stitches of uneven lengths with gaps at places or stitches which suddenly bunch up leaving an ugly mess. Quilters use tiny, sharp scissors to carefully trim away the bad stitches and then replace those with better ones. The way to avoid messes like this is to watch carefully. Watch where you’ve been. Watch where you’re going. Stitch slowly enough that you can catch yourself before you’ve made a mistake, but keep going stitch after stitch after stitch.

Then when the top is finished and the quilting is done all that’s left to do is the binding. Binding is a thin strip of hand-sewn, folded fabric that wraps around the edge of the entire quilt. The binding seals the quilt together. What will bind your marriage together? The two of you love the Lord. We’ve seen that already in your lives. The faith that you share, the love that you have for Him will hold all the parts of your lives and your marriage together.

Colossians 3 says “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must forgive. And above all these, put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony. (Colosians 3:12-14.)

Love to you both,

Jane Ellen Smith

October 12, 2013

On learning some Southern California friends of mine were moving to the right coast

Here are a few things to remember about moving into a southern state from just about anywhere else:

1. Southerners are proud of being southern. We are proud of our stubborn, do-it-ourselves history and though we may smile and nod when you talk about coming from somewhere else, we are really thinking--you poor thing.

2. Southerners know we do everything the right way. You can do it however you want, but it will always be the wrong way. Ours is the right way.

3. Skin color doesn’t matter. Where you are born, which organizations you belong to, how long you’ve lived here, what schools you attended, what your folks did, what their folks did, what states did all of them live in--these things matter. If you and your grandparents didn’t grow up in the south, none of those things matter much anyway.

4. We recognize the necessity of your moving to our states. We may not like it, but we will tolerate it as long as you don’t try to make us change too much, too soon, too often.

5. Southerners are fiercely loyal which explains why a white woman who hasn’t got a racist breath in her body can still get angry over Sherman burning the south. Women and children weren’t fighting the war, but the war was brought to their doorsteps, white and black, and they were the ones who suffered deprivation and starvation, loss of homes and protection, physical assaults ...see, I still get het up over it. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

6. We go to church, and we expect you to go. Whichever church you want to go to. As long as it meets on Sunday. Or Saturday. We’ve learned to accept Saturday as a church-going day. If you go on Wednesday, too, that’s even better. Tuesday night works. But not Friday. Friday is for football unless it’s springtime, then Friday nights are for youth lock-ins which is also church. Church is good. Church is where you learn to love God, live as a community and take care of one another. Everyone needs to go to church.

7. Be ready for that question: you go to church anywhere?. It will be the third question we ask you. (My name is --------. What’s yours? Where you from? You go to church anywhere?) If you can’t answer it, be ready to be invited to ours. And say thank you, that you will look forward to it even if you don’t plan to go. But we may ask where you were when you don’t show up.

8. We don’t talk funny. You do.

I is pronounced “eye” not oi-ee.

Both is pronounced “bow-th” not “buth”.

Chair is pronounced like it is spelled. “Chay-er” not “churr”

Same goes for there, their, they’re.

We’re is pronounced like a contraction. “We yer” not were. Not “Wuhr going over thur.” Open your jaws when you talk, for heaven’s sake.

9. Courtesy is expected. Put the s’s on your yes’s. Smile. Hold the door for older folks and children. And women. Say please and thank you. Ask someone how they’re doing and wait for the answer. Talk about the weather. Be friendly. Stand back for someone to walk ahead. Courtesy is extended toward everyone. Everyone. Period.

10. Give me a minute. I'll think of it.

Note to a Press Enterprise reporter concerning backyard chickens

Flightless Birds

I have two flightless birds living in my back yard, so my interest in Corona's chicken ordinance is not casual. I think what the council is missing is that most people who want to own chickens are not interested in chicken farming. We don't intend to build large chicken houses and sell eggs by the dozen. Some of us just love chickens because they are cute. My flightless birds think they are dogs. They come running when I walk outside and squat so that I can pick them up or scratch their backs. They hang out with the dogs and sleep on top of a box. They do bark, but it sounds more like bok, bok, bok, and they are never as loud of the neighbors’ dogs who howl each time the sirens go buy which, where I live, is many times day and night. Around 10AM they are the loudest because they lay their eggs and are right proud of it. They go to bed at sunset and never make a sound, also unlike dogs. Hens are less noisy than roosters. I'm not a proponent of rooster husbandry. Because my flightless birds aren't caged, they are actually much less smelly than dogs; they eat lizards, bugs and japanese beetle grubs; they scratch and soften the soil and speed up decomposition in my compost pile.  And they provide a food source for chicken feed (which is about $7 per 25 pound bag which lasts about two months at my house.) If my neighbors comment about the presence of large flightless birds, I give them several medium-sized eggs. And flying chicken feathers in someone's pool? When I owned a pool all sorts of debris flew into it, including wild bird feathers. Again, as long as the chicken owning is in the pet category and no butchering is regularly taking place, feathers in someone's pool isn't likely to be a problem.

Now if you'd like to use any of this in a future article, that's fine, but I do hope you'd protect your source as I am afraid that someday someone may knock on my door and tell me that I can't have chickens in my yard which is considerably smaller than 10,000 feet. But then I don't have chickens after all. I have Buff Orpingtons which are simply large, flightless birds who happen to lay eggs that are quite delicious scrambled.

15 minutes

Maybe men are only good in 15 minute segments.
Good sex,
compassion,
eye contact,
laughter,
conversation.
Maybe that's all we get.
15 minutes of good,
a lifetime of good enough to get us through.



February 20, 2013

Hate is not a hard enough word.

I loathe him.
I like the sound of that one.
Loathe. It stretches out the tongue and draws the lips together.
Loathe. Webster's says that it expresses utter disgust and intolerance.

Execrate. I execrate him and all he stands for.
"to declare to be evil or detestable"
Sounds shitty, just like him.

I abhor him.
Abhor--to regard with extreme repugnance.
Abhor has that hard air sound in its middle like the sound made when
preparing to spit.
Yes. That works.
Except he's not worth spit.

April 1, 2013

That damned mirror

I'm going to throw away that damned little mirror
that shows me the crinkles, those damned little wrinkles.
I'm going to rip down the closet doors which haunt
me with truth each time I pass by.
In my mind I'm
old enough to know what sex is
how to make the most of it,
and attractive enough to make it worth his while.
And how I long for those hot, panting sessions
of athletic pleasure.
But that damned little mirror reminds me
that I sit here in my grandmother's body
trapped by weight
with bad eyes, bad knees, rough skin
knowing that it's over.



February 24, 2013

Evening Walk

In the dark
my dog and I walk
quietly across their lawns
down their roads
around their corners.

In the dark
we see vignettes
in the windows
hear the voices
loud or soft.

In the windows
we see tv flickers
lifted hands, but not to praise
hands that raise
against another blow.

In the windows
we see light and laughter
soft embraces
sleeping children
quiet peace.

On the lawns
are men smoking
holding drinks
talking sports
and children's birthdays.

In the dark,
my dog, we wonder
when will we be
loving family
and quiet peace.



September 12, 2012

To clueless on the cellphone walking her dog near the apartment

I saw you coming with your prissy dog
and I moved my solid dog twelve feet away
from the sidewalk where you'd pass by;
But you came my way anyway.
You brought your little sofa dog
three feet away from us and upset mine.
He jumped without warning, wrapped his leash around my knee,
sliced the tender back of it with the nylon webbing,
threw me into the tree that stopped him from running after you.
Did you even take the cell phone away from your ear?
Hey, hey! Watch where you're going with that dog!
"Not my problem!" you yelled back.
Right. Next time, my dog won't give way to your expensive
rug rat. Next time, you can fall into the bushes.
Not my problem.



July 4, 2012

On reading

When I finish reading,
could you not do that old beatnik thing
where you snap your fingers to show
your appreciation?

How about you hold your breath

while you digest words and then let it out
slowly with an
ever
so softly
mouthed "wow..."

Don't just listen to the words.
Inhale them as you might the fragrance
of fresh cut grass on the hottest day.

Or breathe the words in, then spew them out
as though you've driven through
the musky sweet fog
of dead polecat
two days old.



July 3, 2012

On the other side

I have passed the gauntlet.
I have run through hell.
And now I can stand on the other side
and breathe.

Standing here,
hell cooling in the distance,
I think it wasn't so bad.
Like labor pains are forgotten
in the first flush of love.

I have come through the pain
and the labor and I am
New again.
Stronger.
Happier.
Scarred but not scared.
I am ready.



December 7, 2012

History

Thirty three years we go back,
Of course I think of you when I hear it.
Twenty five years of listening, questioning, understanding...
Of course I think of you.
My mind isn't a spigot I can turn off  and forget the water that flowed through.
I think of you when I was proud to be your wife, proud of your accomplishments.
What does she know of those?
She doesn't know      you.

She doesn't       know       you.

She hasn't loved you through the rages and disappointments,
through the utter giddiness of new fatherhood, through your father's death, your mother's pain.
 She didn't thrill with each promotion, plan homes, plant gardens, hope for thunder, dance in the rain, live on  bagels for lunch, play badminton in the dark.
She hasn't dried your tears over a son's illness.
She didn't play bridge for five years and remember
friends or know their son who died, the tow -headed little boy who made us think of becoming parents.

What comfort can she give?

She doesn't know you.

She knows this creation you've become
in Hollywood jeans
and weekend hikes without attachments.
She knows your daughters as  bait--what a great dad--your sons as accomplishments; your wife as an anchor
who held you down, held you back
when all along I thought I was your support.

She doesn't know you.

And neither do I.


April 20, 2013
On hearing of the death of the young man who'd been that tow-headed little boy.

What does divorce do?

Here’s what a divorce does:

Divorce
Takes a remnant of a family from the house they moved into 10 years before
when their family numbered 6
then added a 7th

Divorce
Takes them from the house where a new daughter came home
a new Marine came home
the first daughter-in-law came home
the first grandchild came home
the newest daughter to be came home
where we battled illness and survived
where we laughed till we cried.

Divorce
Takes them from the house where friends have gathered to celebrate
birthdays
bonfires
a prom
a dinner dance
a wedding.
Divorce
takes one away
puts two in limbo
makes three leave
four-legged family members
who can’t live
where they are going.

Divorce
shatters family
abandons dreams
mutilates memories
condemns the future.

Divorce
only helps the one who wanted it.

4/13/2012

Not another

Please.
Not another
you make my heart beat fast poem.
Not another
life is worth living because you are in it or
can't live without you, or
happy, happy with you,
sad, sad without.
Not another one of those.
There are more ideas than love
and starry skies
and broken hearts.



March 29, 2014

I want to see Jesus.

I want to see Jesus.
Not the storybook one in the white robes with the blue eyes,
the dark-eyed Jesus, brown-skinned and stained.
I want to see Jesus the man who was God
the man whose feet were dirty
whose sweat dripped as he sawed the wood with Joseph,
whose hair fell into his eyes as he bent over his work.
I want to see Jesus whose lean back was muscled from years of hard labor
whose hands were rough from handling raw timber,
who could have fought the soldiers and won because he was fit and able
but who didn't because that wasn't the plan.
I want to see Jesus strong, respected by men, honest and capable,
used to negotiating prices, smiling and confident.
I want to see Jesus the man who loved his mother
and followed her instructions even when he would have preferred not to.
I want to see Jesus the man who was God
when he walked through the crowds who loved him,
disappeared from those who would harm him
and strode across the water as though it were land.
I want to see Jesus the man
who gave up his healthy, well-liked, successful life
to become the savior of the world.
I know God--
invincible, maker of heaven and earth, almighty, omnipotent, omniscient, always with us.
I want to know Jesus
who came to earth
just because he loved me.

Old and New

I wonder.

Is he embarrassed at all to show off a new wife

when they knew the old one too? 

Does he think about it? 

Does he wish that he could remove the old one from history

so that he could introduce the new to the people they once knew?

Oh I forget. He did that. He took the new back in time 

across the continental divide and showed her to the people 

who knew the old. He did erase her in their minds. 

Only the old is embarrassed to be replaced.

Only the old thinks of these things. 

She is not busy being new 

and so remembers. 

But old and new are such common occurrences

that no one thinks anything of it now.

It is how it is. 

That’s all.

Good Enough

I don't know if I’m good enough.

Oh, I can string the words

like silvery, satin, wild-caught pearls 

along a silken line...

or foment strong, heavy words like

boots that march in bloody mud

or hot, shivering sand.

I can spit them out

when they cloy.

I can bite them back 

when like silent razors 

they slice swift and clean.

But every day...

every day when the word count rises

when writing’s the thing and not the play

when words must stick together in factory formation

to add up, to bring forth, to produce...

maybe I’m not good enough for that.

June 17, 2012

I was married for 31 years, 5 children, 27 years as a full-time homemaker. Comfortable living in a comfortable house, but not elaborate. I spent countless hours deciding what to put into each room, what it's purpose was, how to make it prettier and so forth. It was my job to make the box we lived in a home. Then I lost that job when my husband fired me and moved out.  Now, I've given away, sold or donated roomfuls of furniture, trinkets, art, plants, brand new appliances. My two daughters and 20- year old son and I are living with two dogs and a cat in an apartment with less than 900 sq.ft. After a month here I'm still trying to find places to put things. All we have are twin beds, a sofa, a cushy chair and $99 stainless steel shelving units from Sams. You'd think that with 2000 less square feet would be easier to keep clean but it's still a struggle. Even so, it has become home because my children are here, their friends come to squeeze in with us. We watch tv, celebrate graduation, and talk so much more than we did before. We are connected more than we used to be because you can't hide very long in this little space. There's only four doors to stand behind. I am grateful to be sharing a room with my son, each of us on twin beds, telling one another good night, hearing him snore. I am grateful that I have time to lean over the porch rail and watch my little girl play with new friends. I'm amazed and thankful that my daughter isn't ashamed to bring her friends here, that she's happy and doesn't complain about sharing a room with her little sister. In fact, she hasn't complained about any of the struggles or mess, she's just born them right alongside of me. 

This has not been easy. It's been the hardest few months I have ever known. Heart-wrenching, bone-crushing painful months. But the Lord has sent amazing people who've prayed with us, helped us in so many ways from boys who never cut grass before who figured out how to do it, to women who've held me while I sobbed, to men I hardly knew who loaded trucks and spent their Saturdays moving us.  Mother had planned a trip out here weeks before I knew I'd need her and was here the next week. She's washed dishes and made food and forgiven me for outbursts and loved her grandchildren and has been more of a blessing than I've ever told her. 

The hurt isn't over. The problem isn't solved. But we are stronger and we can find our way one footstep at a time.