In this essay by Joe Wilkins, a stop at a local farmers\u27 market evokes memories of growing up in Montana

Wilkins, Joe

English

DigitalCommons@Linfield

Linfield College DigitalCommons@Linfield Faculty Publications Faculty Scholarship & Creative Works 2014 Where Paradise Lay Joe Wilkins Linfield College, jwilkins@linfield.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/englfac_pubs  Part of the Nonfiction Commons DigitalCommons@Linfield Citation Wilkins, Joe, "Where Paradise Lay" (2014). Faculty Publications. Published Version. Submission 15. https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/englfac_pubs/15 This Published Version is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It is brought to you for free via open access, courtesy of DigitalCommons@Linfield, with permission from the rights-holder(s). Your use of this Published Version must comply with the Terms of Use for material posted in DigitalCommons@Linfield, or with other stated terms (such as a Creative Commons license) indicated in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, or if you have questions about permitted uses, please contact digitalcommons@linfield.edu. Coda JOE WILKINS WHERE PARADISE LAY B RIGHT , high-running clouds, the dry taste of grass and August blackberries-you're on your way back from the park when you see a hand-lettered sign for a farmers' market. It's nearly the kids' nap time, your wife's not sure what in the world you're doing, but you crank the wheel anyway and drive on down the old two-lane through bands of tree shadow, tum where the cardboard ar-row tells you to tum, and pull to a dusty stop by the old whitewashed Grange Hall. Your son and daughter, at four and two, are just old enough to wonder, ceaselessly, why. You don't have an answer. You just haul them out of the car, and while your wife shakes her head and wanders one way, you take in each of your hands your children's hot, small hands and wander the other way through the ring of ramshackle stands. The market's not really that much, jars of chowchow, and stones painted to look like ladybugs, though your son and daugh-ter find a spread of tomatoes red and gold and green as dreams and eat a couple right there as you wait to pay, the juice running and shining on their chins. There's a band playing over by the stand of cedars at the edge of the lot, and you pull your children along that way. The chalked sign by the coffee-can tip jar says it's Johnny's Country Band, though you can't tell which one is Johnny until this particular country waltz waltzes itself out, and the stringy old guy in the stonewashed jean jacket-dirty ball cap, droopy mustache, his voice like a box of rocks-apologizes for the empty drum kit in the back and jokes about the feck-lessness of percussionists in general. Tomatoes half-eaten in their small hands, your wide-eyed son and daughter are still as saplings-is this their first con-cert? You're not sure-and now your wife is here too, squeezing your hand, as an older couple settles into the pair of plastic chairs next to your children, the woman with her tight curls and cream sweater, the man wearing a white felt cowboy hat and pressed snap shirt, his Wranglers that break-of-day blue, the man smiling now at your shy daughter, asking for a bite of her tomato, a palsy trembling his lips and chin. Oh, no matter that you are a thou-sand miles from your high-plains home, this man reminds you-suddenly, might-ily, as if you have been hit by a good, hard wind-of all the cowboys and beet farmers you knew in your youth, all the stem, kind, O R I O N SEPTEMBER I OCTOBER 20I4 uncouth ranchmen who fathered you after your own father went ahead and died. And as the first dusty chords of John Prine's "Paradise" drift and eddy, as the old cowboy winks at your daughter and rises and offers his hand to his wife-as with the practiced and stunning grace of years they tum one another through the cool breath of cedars and the devastating light oflate summer-you begin to understand why you might be here at the Grange Hall this morning: "And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County," Johnny sings, that box of rocks really rattling now, "Down by the Green River where Paradise lay I Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking /Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away ... " You stagger. Go just plain woozy in the knees. Oh, it has something to do with how in Prine's song the son asks the father to take him back home, and the father tells the son it's too late, and the thing is your father died so young you never, ever remember asking a question he answered. It has something to do with watching, the last time you were back home, all those prehis-toric coal trucks rumble out of the Bull Mountains and then reading in the news-paper of plans for another strip mine across the Yellowstone. It has something to do with your son and daughter rising now and taking each other's tomato-streaked hands and dancing- Jesus, there they are, with that old couple, dancing in the gravel. PHOTOGRAPH I ALYSSA BISTONATH 

Where Paradise Lay

Name not available

https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&amp;context=englfac_pubs

Where Paradise Lay

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

DigitalCommons@Linfield

Name not available