Dirt Road Tales

                                                    Cafe N'awlins It wouldn’t tie right. No matter how many times Dobro tried, it just wouldn’t do right. The shirt was too big, first off. The collar was too big around for his neck, just like the new pants were too big around for his waist, but they might shrink, or he could grow. Better too big, he reasoned when he bought them, than too small. He wished he had something other than the cowboy boots to wear with the pants, but he only had the boots, or his running shoes. The boots were better, he reckoned, and looked similar to the pointy shoes the businessmen wore into the cafe.     The mirror was not kind. He had set a wet washcloth on top of his head while he worked on the tie, but the tie just would not do right. It was times like this that he wished  h e’d had a daddy. A daddy could have shown him how to tie it right, but his daddy was long gone, and it  w asn’t likely that  h e would ever come back.     Th

                                                         'Lil Bit I watched Sadie May coming from a-far off, inching along the face of Clinch Mountain. She was no longer one of us, but to fit in she had put on a plain, gingham dress like the rest of the Clinch Mountain girls wore. I was wearing one like it myself. She was coming by way of the North Ridge Trail, which not many used. I knew who it was the moment I spotted her, and I reckoned she was coming for my baby. I felt a catch in my chest at that  t hought. After three years of raising and loving that child I reckoned I had a good claim to call her mine.     I half expected her to draw up at “The Narrows,” as many  f olks do. The Narrows is a shoulder across the face of the mountain, a fifty foot stretch of trail where she drops off sharply on the one side, while the rest of Clinch Mountain, the very breast of Clinch Mountain, continues upward on the other side, the mountain above it there baring out her stret

                                                A Mile in Flip's Shoes It had always seemed to Flip that they were made to be together, but she was almost ready to beat-feet out. Two summers isn’t so long, but when every minute of every day is spent together, it can seem like a lifetime. He was smothering her, but what could she do? She could hardly leave. She had panic attacks thinking about life without him... she hated to imagine what would happen to her if he were to walk into the ocean and just disappear? It was not out of the question. That very thing had happened to one of her friends just last year. Something inside her warned her that she would be useless without him... a sole with no purpose. She would be lying, though, if she said she wasn’t worn out with their relationship. It had gotten to where she couldn’t even finish a thought without him butting in. When they were a brand-new pair that had been cute, and so had the beach weekends, and the night