Kaden Hollow (by Ryan David Orr)

Samuel "Sketch" Tibodeau

2009-01-25T11:04:00.000-08:00

Sketch was too big for himself; too tall and long. He could never quite control his feet when he moved and his hands fumbled with everything he held. Everything except charcoal. Somehow when he held the charcoal his hand was steady and did exactly what he wanted it to do. It was for that reason alone that he was hired by the Kaden Hollow Weekly.

His Aunt was the first person to call him “Sketch.” From the time he was seven years old he was never without a pencil and paper. He drew religiously. The walls of his room were lined with images of anything and everything, from trees to buildings, from clowns to rainbow trout. Being abnormally large and irreparably awkward made him an easy target for name calling as a boy, and he subsequently gave up on the idea of school at an early age, devoting his time to nothing but his drawings. His parents had died earlier than he could remember and his Aunt had long since moved to Ohio, abandoning him in Kaden Hollow, and he was alone in the world.

A kind hearted nurse named Olivia Mott found him in back of the general store one night when he was eleven years old. He had run out of people to stay with and had resorted to sleeping amidst the bags of thrown out paper goods. She couldn’t tell how long he had been there, but ever since, he had been allowed to stay at the Kaden hospital. His room was small and hidden in a back corner of the basement, but it was indoors, and he didn’t mind. Though she could never get him to go to school, Nurse Mott did her best to raise him the ways she new how. He was an orphan and she had no children of her own, so the experience was new to both of them, and in time became a relationship much the same as any parent and child. They loved and respected each other.

When he turned eighteen, she instructed him to find some kind of work.

“What it is doesn’t matter so much,” she had said. “Not as much as you bein’ able to pull some weight around here.”

He understood, wishing most in the world to never be a burden, and set out the next day to find something. He applied to grocery stores, book stores, gas stations, restaurants and anything else he came across in his search. He had no luck. Standing almost seven feet tall, his long arms and jerky, clumsy movements made him a strange and intimidating figure. Most employers turned him away based solely on the thought that they may at some point need to reprimand him for whatever reason, and no one wanted to see him angry. In reality, Sketch was harmless, and had no intention of harming anyone. His only intentions were to have people like him and to draw pictures.

As he sat alone on the town square one day, having given up on the thought of being hired by anyone, he began to draw on the back of an application for the movie house. In front of him were the courthouse and the clock tower. Tall oak and cottonwood trees stood on either side of the buildings, swaying gently in the April breeze, brushing the deep red bricks with the thin branches that reached out from the massive bows above his head.
As he drew, he disappeared inside his drawing, and didn’t notice the man that happened to walk up and stand just behind him. The man watched intently as Sketch laid out the entire scene in moments. His hand flew over the paper and a vision of the courthouse, the trees, the sky, the grass, the shadows, the textures, came into stark view. When Sketch finished he sat staring at his work.

“Well, I’ll be,” said the man in disbelief.

Sketch jumped in fright, thinking he was alone.

“Sorry, son. Didn’t mean to scare you. Name’s Lloyd. I run the Kaden Hol…the newspaper.”

“The Weekly?” Sketch asked quietly.

“That’s the one,” replied Lloyd. “That’s somethin’ of a picture you got there.”

“Thank you.”

“You do that for fun?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How’d you like to do it for a paycheck?”

Sketch didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t imagined one might get a paycheck for doing what they were going to do anyway.

“Okay,” Sketch said feebly, not sure how to respond.

“Yup, we can sure use a man like you at the weekly. Pictures of events and the town and such. Can you do that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay then. You come by my office tomorrow and we’ll get you started. What’s your name, son?”

“My mama calls me Sketch.”

The man laughed a loud and full-bellied laugh. It sounded friendly and Sketch smiled.

“Well, that’ll be just fine then, Sketch. See you tomorrow.”

And so it was. It had been four years since Lloyd Carter hired Sketch, and Sketch loved his job. He stayed in his room at the hospital and walked to work every morning at 5a.m. There was never a moment he wanted for anything more than what he had.

That is, until the day he came home to the hospital after a day of drawing wedding imagery and profiles of past presidents, and walked through the halls of the hospital to get to his room. As he turned the corner before the stairs, he passed a room with its door open and glanced in. An elderly lady lay in a bed, looking up at the ceiling. Sitting beside her, eyes red from crying and head rested on the old lady’s shoulder, was a young woman about his age. He paused in the doorway and the young woman began to look toward him. Embarrassed at having looked in, he moved swiftly past and didn’t stop or look around until he got to his room.

Once there, he got out a blank sheet of paper from his desk drawer and a pencil from the cup by the lamp and began to draw. As his hand erratically traversed the paper, an image began to take shape. An image of an old lady lying in a bed in the hospital. Her hands were folded over her heart and she looked blankly upward. And then he drew the younger woman. He recalled every contour of her face and how her hair fell in the dingy yellow hospital light. He finished the drawing and reached for another sheet of paper.

He began again, but this time the image was different. There was no older lady, simply a larger, closer picture of the young woman, every line perfect, every detail preserved. And he did it again and again. Page after blank page filled up with the face of the young woman, locked in a moment of untold sorrow. He drew faster and faster and each time, tossing each one aside until the floor was covered in repeating images of the young woman in the hospital room.

Finally he stopped. He was out of breath and his hand hurt. He looked down at the sweet, sad face staring up at him from the floor. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

Matilda (on Sunday)

2007-11-12T19:35:00.000-08:00

‘In fifteen years, I’ve missed church one time,’ Mattie thought as she applied make-up in thick coats to her oddly shaped, oblong face. It was a practice she mastered as a small girl before Sunday school and for years after. She studied her make-up like she studied her bible, religiously. And she had bright colors and flowery, springtime scents. She had gaudy bejeweled rings and bracelets that clinked when she moved her arms. She was a rather round woman, who took big heavy steps that she pushed her way through. Her hair was a brownish cinnamon color, but also bright from years of hair dye. In fact everything about her was bright and big and prominent. She was always best at making herself known.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she thought, ‘I will stand out and be noticed and respected for this’, but she let the thought pass without giving it any attention. She thought that same thing every week, but was not quite conscious of it. The custom for widowers was to be in mourning for around a year. Wear black and dreary colors. Then after a year, fashion was fair game. Most women (or men for that matter) dressed up after about a year and kept dressing up until they were married again. Mattie thought it best to play the part, though she really had no desire to remarry. She always thought it best to play the part, whatever the part entailed. People didn’t look at you strange if you played the part.

The great boat of an Oldsmobile in the driveway was rumbling softly and warming up and she carefully aimed her brightly colored rear end at the middle of the driver’s seat and let herself fall in. The car clunked and jolted down the long driveway to the road and she blessed Jesus that it hadn’t broken down in all the years it had been her own and then she accelerated and was gone.

Behind the house, at the edge of the barn a bush rustled and a few twigs cracked in the forest and out came Phabian Teague. He looked around the side of the house and up the road to see that Matilda had gone, and then he hurriedly hobbled around to the front carrying a duffle bag that rattled and clunked. He set the bag in the dirt and stood staring at the house for a moment trying to decide where to begin. Then he pulled two large stones from the barren lawn and heaved one of them through the window next to the front door.

“How’s ‘bout that, you nasty bitch?” he mumbled under his breath. Then he slung the other one through a window in the bedroom.

He picked up the duffle bag and unzipped it, spilling the contents on the lawn. All except a carton of one dozen eggs, which he carefully lifted out and held in his hand. He proceeded to open the carton and pummel the house with the eggs, breaking another window in the process. The rest of the bags’ contents consisted of spray cans in a variety of colors. He picked one out and shook it as he neared the front wall of the house. He popped the cap off and the first thing he scrawled in huge letters across the front door was “SINNER.”

Clem Jackson's boys (and how a story goes)

2007-10-27T14:13:00.000-07:00

Over a hundred and fifty years ago, a man named James Poff was hunting in the woods near a waterfall with only a gun and his two dogs. The waterfall was calm and mostly ran down the side of a hill, but the creek that fed into the falls wound around the forest for miles. Poff pointed his dogs in the direction he thought deer might want to be, and the three set off in high hopes.

After two hours of searching and not finding anything, Poff decided maybe it would be best to steer back away from the creek and see what was going on in the meadows. He called his dogs and threw his gun over his shoulder and tried to enjoy the day even if it wasn’t going to yield a kill. He was just resigning himself to the smell and feel of the Tennessee air in June, and how the thick, wet scent of wildflowers was inescapable, when one of his dogs began to bark from up ahead to his right. He dropped his gun back down and stealthily crept to where the ruckus was emanating. It was coming from a thick grove of cottonwood trees that touched branches overhead and shielded the forest from the sun. In the middle of the grove was an old, run-down cabin with cracking walls and rotting stairs and a rusty swing on the porch. By now both of his dogs were barking and yelping, but neither of them would get too close.

‘Well hot damn,’ he thought, ‘I bet nobody even knows about this one.’ He walked curiously to the front porch and looked in a window. He couldn’t see anything from his angle, so he walked up the steps. He turned and addressed his barking dogs.
“Okay, shut up now!”
The dogs reluctantly obeyed. They resorted to whining with concern and walked uneasily among the trees.

Poff stepped lightly on the porch for fear that it might collapse, but made it safely to the door. For good measure, he knocked. As he expected, no one answered and he turned the door knob, which opened easily enough and he walked in. Inside were the remains of a life that seemed to have been left abruptly. Dishes were on a table that was littered with tools and dust. A fire had apparently been burning in the stove and ashes were strewn across the floor.

Outside, one of the dogs began to bark again, but this time with a sense of urgency. The other dog joined in. Poff shook his head at their disobedience and walked toward the next room. As he entered the room, a living room of sorts, he froze in terror as he saw, in the corner, a man sitting in a chair. At first he was startled because he had intruded upon the owner of the house. Upon further inspection, he realized that the man was in fact dead, and had been for some time. It didn’t exactly make him feel better, but it postponed his fear, made it less present. He got near to the body and saw that it had been an older man, who died drinking something out of a brown glass bottle. Many thoughts raced through his mind. How long had he been here? Who was he? Does anyone else know about him?

Concluding that there was not much he could really do about any of it, Poff turned to take one last look at the house and then get back home, where he would tell people what he had found. He had just walked to the doorway when he heard a raspy, airy voice say “C’mon stay for supper.” Poff froze and his heart jumped up into his mouth and his breathing stopped. He slowly turned and looked back over his shoulder at the dead man, still sitting in his chair.
“S-s-s-sir?” Poff stuttered out.
The dead man sat motionless, as dead men do, and Poff shook his head and swallowed. He turned back to the doorway.
“Supper,” the voice hissed, almost inaudibly under the sound of the barking dogs.
Again Poff froze. He slowly turned back around. Not being one to give into his fears, Poff walked slowly back to where the man sat. He looked down on the man and studied his face, then his hands, his dusty overalls.
“You didn’t just say something, did you?” Poff questioned softly, silently mocking himself for being so unreasonable. Then just as he was about to turn, he heard the chair creak. And then it creaked louder and he saw that the man was shifting forward, moving, putting his hand on the arm of the chair, standing himself up. Poff couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak. The lifeless man slowly rose from the chair and stood up straight, lifting his face to stare with sunken, skeletal eyes into James Poff.
“I said c’mon stay for supper!” the dead man hissed and reached out with his bony hands to grab hold of Poff, and he never let go.

Now, nobody knows for sure what happened to James Poff, except his dogs. Some folks say he did stay for supper and he’s still at supper to this day. Some say he died right then and there of shock. Others say that his mind made it all happen and he went crazy and never returned home. Who knows if the story is true? It’s over a hundred and fifty years old. But some version of the story was told to every child in Kaden Hollow at some point, mostly to keep them from wandering off in the woods. Some story tellers would even make it scarier by turning the old man into a devil worshipper or a gravedigger. One such teller who loved to spice up the story was Clem Jackson, and Clem had three sons: Ernest, William who they called Billy, and Clem Junior.

Katy (with dirt on her hands)

2007-10-14T20:29:00.000-07:00

When sensation finally returned to her hands, Katy stood up and steadied herself on her feet. A light breeze was drifting by and on it was something cold that the twilight made bigger. She bunched up the bottom of her nightgown and wrung the water out. She let it fall back down and then she tugged at the sides to straighten out the wrinkles. She hadn’t meant to be outside this long and her eyes had grown accustomed to the dark. Overhead ribbons of clouds were backlit by the blue haze of the sky, left dim by the sun’s retreat. Slowly, she took one step and then another, as if remembering how to walk. ‘Why again?’ she thought, ‘I said never again.’ The tough skin on her knees was tingling with the cold; and she rubbed the palms of her hands together to make the imprints of dirt and dry grass go away. After a moment her walking was normal. As normal as it could be at night, outside, without shoes on. Her mind was one big regret. Swirling thoughts of guilt and shame were pummeling her brain, but she paid no mind because she had to get back to the house. She never paid those thoughts any mind anyway.

The house was dark except for the nightlight in the kitchen that was always on. Katy slowly opened the front door and pulled it almost shut. One could pull it just so and it wouldn’t open, but wouldn’t be completely closed either. She left it like that and turned to go upstairs. In the living room her grandfather was fast asleep with his feet up on the couch. A book about bow making was opened on his lap and a lamp was burning next to his shoulder. She took her house coat from the closet by the door and pulled it on to fight off the chill. She now had all the feeling back in her hands and legs and she was freezing. Then she walked into the living room.
“Hey, Grandpa,” she whispered.
His tired heavy face came to life in slow motion, eyebrows first, lifting with all of their might to open the old eyes.
“Grandpa, it’s time for bed.”
“Oh, I guess it is,” he replied, with the sweet old tone she loved so much.
She picked the book off his lap and placed a receipt from the table in between the pages. As he stood up he noticed her gown was wet.
“Katy, you’re all wet.”
“I know, I….” She started, but she couldn’t lie again, so she just let it go.
“You go out after dark too much you’ll catch cold,” he said, “’specially if you get wet.”
“I know, Grandpa.”
“We’ll see you in the morning, then.”
“Okay, Grandpa”
“I love you, dear.”
“I love you, too.”

It was their routine. She always woke him up to go to bed and he was always asleep to be awakened. And he always said ‘We’ll see you in the morning, then’, which was left over from the years when her grandmother was still alive and there really was a ‘we.’ Now he just said it because he was used to it.

Upstairs, Katy took off her gown and put on a pair of long underwear. She curled her legs up and sat on her bed with her back against the wall. ‘Okay, this time it’s never again,’ she thought. ‘I don’t care what he says. I don’t care what he thinks either.’ Her nose scrunched up and she fought the sudden urge to cry. ‘That’s it, damnit!’ She reached to the foot of the bed where an old afghan was folded and she tugged it up around her body. She pulled a pillow out from the bedspread and rested it on the wall, leaning into it and balling her self up. She fell asleep and dreamed about being in the backseat of a car with no driver, which was sinking into the ground.