BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… BLACK PHILLIP. In the bleak conclusion of Robert Eggers’ film The Witch, the big black billy goat fatally gores the ever-angry Puritan father. The goat then transforms into the devil, seducing teenage daughter Thomasin and leading her into the forest to become a witch. I don’t feel bad about spoiling the ending.…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… OUR VERY OWN OZARK HOWLER The phone rang and I answered, made curious by the California area code. “Is this Joshua with StateotheOzarks?” Yes, it is. “Are you familiar with Ozarks lore? Yes, I am. “Can you get us in touch with someone who has seen the Ozark Howler?” Wait, what? It…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… JUST A BUNCH OF BULLY GOATS. The sun was warm that spring day in the barn yard and I was tending some 20 goats of all sizes, ages and temperaments. I loved the barn. I loved the goats and would much rather be out in the barn wallowing around with whatever baby…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT…. GOING DOWN TO EGYPT. The dark-haired boy is bent over blank white paper, black-and-red flannel obscuring a thin and insecure frame. His desk is dark brown, dark brown like his eyes, eyes like his father’s. The desk is handmade by his grandpa, pine impossible to scratch beneath layers of resin laminate. This…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… CEDAR GLOOM PUPPIES. My puppies are running, circling, wrestling in this overcast of Christmas Day, bounding through grasses brown and fledgling green. Christmas Day is a demarcation of sorts, singular handful of days over our lives, days to remember through the long years. Has this Christmas Day been better? Has it been…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… BIG TRUCKS AND FARMERS ALL. Solstice sunset, longest, darkest night of the year, and the big rigs on the big road are lit like Christmas trees in the cold. Orange and red and yellow lights frame big rectangles of American freight racing at 80 miles per hour, mile after long Missouri mile,…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… THE ONLY PLACE LEFT. I remember how cold the air was in the lonely hospital garden that Saturday evening in late November. Winter arrives early on the central Iowa plains and the wind played in that empty, man-made canyon, a hollow box of mounded earth and agreeably curved pathways. Over here, a…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… SCARY GHOST STORIES. I climbed into my truck at nightfall, trusty Basset joining on the console. Key in ignition, watchful reverse into the alley. Bright crescent moon in the Southwest peeked through poplar branches. Truck tires on gravel, then edge-of-town asphalt. Yellow street lamps light the way, one block, two blocks… At…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… THE DARK MOON QUIET. The cold night wind is in the elm branches, making a faint whistling sound. From somewhere nearer the creek comes the light scratching of talons on branch. Starlight is twinkling, save for patches of black, denoting clouds moving in. The weather is changing, getting colder. There is white…
BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… RED, ORANGE, BLACK. Night fell out on the big road, a thousand trucks lit like Christmas trees, 80 miles-per-hour stars in the sudden dusk, stars streaming west, following the contours of the land, west wind to a dying sun. This Osage land is where upland plateau — all rocks and hollers and…