His wife sat next to him on the porch. Out of the corner of her sight she watched him breathe like a man in the middle of a heavy labour. She’d see him stand up and look down the road and say ‘Alright boys, time to go.’ every time he heard an engine, or what might have been an engine, gearing in the distance. She’d sit silent when he realised no one was coming and shook his head in frustration. She’d have time to think ‘What can I do?’ just before she fell back into the muddled fadedness that was taking up more and more of her days.

She’d start remembering her mother and her mother’s children – eleven in all, and she the oldest – and how her mother would fry up big chunks of pork fat to pour over greens and onto bread. Then she’d be there, in the kitchen, fourteen years old and holding a cast iron skillet, tilting and turning it, with the heat from the stove so real and hot she could feel the burn on her face. She’d turn around to talk to her mother who was saying something about the baby in the other room, and she’d think, just for a second, ‘How good momma looks for a dead woman.’ And as soon as she thought it, ‘dead’, she’d think ‘That’s right. Twenty five years now’ and that was always enough to bring her back. To the sun on the porch and to her to husband. His white hair and impatient stance. Looking, watching, waiting…

“You haven’t lived until you’ve been to a Piggly Wiggly. And that’s all I have to say about that!”

——-

On the night Cosby Puckett was murdered most of the town – and all of the Bean Boarding House – were bunched up in a brush arbor down by the river waiting for Brother Ernst Muncey to preach from the book of Isaiah. Like the prophet, Brother Muncey had seen Christ’s glory and had come to tell about it. As the miners and their families listened to the missionary from Mercer beat on about Kingdom Come and Glory, the only daughter of Octavia nee Bean and John Paul Puckett was on her way to discover the hereafter for her very self.

This short has been getting a lot of play time around the house lately – since my sister-in-law urged every one to “Vote for Maybe One Day by Chris Cottam” because “It’s great. And he is my lovely friend.”

Well, we did. And, it is. Beautiful. Really. Everything from the lighting to the writing. Especially the writing. And the lighting. (Okay, it’s all great.)

To celebrate the launch of the new Samsung i8910 HD mobile phone, four top Directors were commissioned to capture life in High Definition. The four minute film ‘Maybe One Day’ was the winner. Watch it and you’ll see why.

All things fade and quickly turn to myth; quickly too utter oblivion drowns them. But what in any case is everlasting memory? Utter emptiness.

He died. Five years ago. I still can’t say his name, or hear it said, without losing my breath. Without feeling like someone has set their lips to mine and sucked all the air from me. Forcibly.

It hurts. A real physical pain. And reminds me, every time, of Giles Corey. Crushed to death. Beneath heavy stones and boards. Peine forte et dure. Beneath the weight of a word. His name…and the color of the paper the funeral home printed his service details upon.

Families have their sacred cows. Some of us make our own. He was mine. But in a good way. His name was Blue. And for whatever reason, I’m thinking about him today.