Dirt Road Tales

           The Tennessee Tornado This here is the story of two high-steppers. Like many youngsters on the edge of manhood, Duff and me wanted more from life than the confines of our little piece of Arkansas could offer, so we set our sights high above every geographical border, legal parameter, or moral constraint that stood between us and our dreams. Yes sir, that is exactly what we did. We sighted high at life, and then we pulled the damned trigger. Folks back home say that me and Duff are trouble when we’re together. The real trouble though is that we’re always together. It ain’t all mine, nor Duff’s fault either. Duff’s Pa and my Pa are cousins, which makes me and him some sort of cousins too. Our Pa’s put us out in the fields together a good many years back, partly because they needed help I suspect, but mostly to get us away from the house. Ever since then me and Duff have worked, and dreamed, together. Since we were fourteen ain’t neither of us never had a stitch of cl

                                           Foremost, a Man     The Reverend Gregory Thompson was awake, but as he did every night he laid staring through the encapsulating blackness without acknowledging its presence around him. Instead, he peered through it with a tunnel-like vision, gazing beyond it to where a singular, technicolor memory played on it's other side, a memory that shone beacon-like, carrying him back 40 years to the day when it became obvious to him that his wants and desires must be stashed away in his mind's deepest depths, lest they derail it all; his future, his mission, his eternity. Those wants and desires that had been hidden away his entire life, it should be noted, but for one April afternoon; one indelible, and undeniable, Sunday in Miami. Like it was yesterday The Reverend recalled how the clerical collar had scratched the razor burn on his neck as he roasted hatless beneath the tropical sun. He recalled the children in swimsuits and flip-fl