ROXANNE SEAGRAVES | TO TOUCH THEIR HEARTS OF GOLD There are places so far away from anything that it seems a miracle that anyone would live there. But they do, way up in the back hollows, behind piles of coal slag as high as the mountains they tore apart to get that coal. There in those tiny hollows where nature has slowly reclaimed her kingdom from the indignities of greed, people live. I was born in such a place, Independence, West Virginia. A town so hidden it won’t show up on your GPS, yet so real that I wake each morning startled by the sounds of traffic outside my window, having dreamt myself back there in the hidden hours of slumber. I dreamt I wandered up to the country store, barefoot like we did as children for a Coca-Cola and a package of nabs, fingering the quarters in my overall pockets, clutching yesterday’s bottle put in the dusty wooden rack by the door. I see the old men with their hats tipped back on their heads, shirt sleeves worn thin, frayed at the cuffs sitting there on the porch sliding handfuls of peanuts into the cola before each sip. Someone will mention a pain in their shoulder that the county doctor failed to diagnose on his semi-annual visit. One of the women leaning on a cooler will say, “You best take that to Miz Nettie, she’s the one who can fix it.” That’s when I wake, startled that I’m not there with them, those faces of old, probably dead, now calling me home. I call my office, “Yes a family emergency. They called last night. Well it’s a long drive down there; I’ll probably be gone all week. Yes, I’ll let you know.” I don’t tell them there’s no cell service anywhere in the county much less in the high country. Where I come from everybody knows that all you have to do if there is trouble in your house, or a weight on your heart, you go visit Miz Nettie. She’ll pray for you. Lay her hands on your furrowed brow. Stare deeply into you with her rheumy hazel eyes, and you will feel better. She’s available twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days out of the year. Some say that if you don’t have the time to spend the full hour in her company, all you need to do is park at the end of her driveway and touch her mailbox post with your right hand and she will somehow heal your suffering. It’s the kind of miracle you don’t hear about in the city where charlatan palm readers and psychics will take your cash and tell you what you want to hear but
Santa Fe Literary Review
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