The Front Porch Prophet

Raymond L. Atkins The Front Porch Prophet

© 2008

To Marsha, of course.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

Special thanks to Ken Anderson, who took the time to teach me to write. Thanks to the Wednesday night group-Jeanie, Jon, Jess, and Amelia (I wish there had been pie). Thanks to Kerry and Helen for the chance to live my dream.

PROLOGUE

THE APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS MEANDER FROM the flatlands of the South to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They were ancient when first discovered by the human species-venerable even as age is measured in geologic time-and have endured with injured grace the attentions of that destructive race. In its impetuous youth, the range was formidable. Now, wind and water have brought the mountains low, although they are, in their fashion, still as wild as their larger western cousins. Lookout Mountain originates in south-central Tennessee, wanders west across northwest Georgia, and terminates in the farmlands of northeast Alabama. It is considered by some to be the southernmost principal mass of the Appalachian chain. To others, it is home.

A thousand souls reside in the town of Sequoyah, Georgia, sixty miles southwest of Chattanooga. Located in a mountain valley surrounded by peaks, Sequoyah does not differ significantly from countless other small communities dotting the Southern landscape. It has a store and a gas station, a diner and four churches. It boasts a school, a post office, a traffic light, and a town hall. There is a doctor, a lawyer, and an Indian chief-or at least, that is what he claims. Over the years, however, the settlement has developed a character unique to itself. The whole has exceeded the sum of the parts. The individuals who resided there have left traces, pieces of the patchworks of their lives. A child’s name. A house. The lay of a fencerow. A snowball bush. This is the way of towns and of those who people them. These are the relics of security, for it is not human nature to live alone.

One such memento of Sequoyah’s living past is A.J. Longstreet. His mother, Rose, succumbed to a venomous cancer when he was an infant. She was in hideous pain through much of her pregnancy but staved off the inevitable until her child was born. Her husband, John Robert Longstreet, was desolate. He paid the heavy price of sentience with his sorrow.

Time heals most wounds, but by no means all. On the day after Rose was laid to rest, John Robert quietly rocked his son. Rose had named the baby Arthur John after her father and her husband. It was a warm evening early in the spring, and the scent of wisteria pervaded the air. That aroma would sadden John Robert for the remainder of his days, the lying smell of illusory hope, the cloying sweetness forever tied to memories of the funeral parlor, the mound, and the gaping hole in the red Georgia clay. He sat with his mother, Clara, on the porch of the old family home place, in which had resided many generations of Longstreets. The sky to the west bled ruby into the night. John Robert sighed, kissed the baby, and offered him to Clara. She looked at him, discerned his fatal intentions, and refused the bundle.

“Take the boy, Mama,” John Robert said woodenly, his voice a bottomless melancholy. He was not a coward but had chosen the craven path, and he had a long journey ahead to regain his place at Rose’s side.

“No,” she said in a voice as unyielding as frozen time. “That is not the way. We’ll raise him together, but I won’t do it alone.” She spoke calmly and with finality, but a hard fear gripped her heart like an eagle’s claw. She had just lost the daughter she never had and was now in danger of losing her son. Loneliness was her terror. She had become a widow many years earlier due to a freak accident involving a hay baler, a rock, and a young husband who was counting on many long years of happiness. So Clara raised John Robert alone, and she had been overheard to say on more than one occasion that she had done a fine job. But she was an old woman now and doubted her ability to repeat the task.

“Mama, it’s time for me to go,” John Robert insisted. He stood and placed the baby on the seat of the rocker. Clara was a woman with unalterable concepts of right and wrong, and was known to be spirited when crossed. She had heard enough.

“John Robert, there will be no more of this talk. Do you hear me? Not another word. That poor baby doesn’t know what his mama went through to get him here, but he is here, and you can just set your mind to doing your duty by him.” John Robert hung his head, but Clara was not through. “I have never heard such in all my days,” she continued. “What would you have done if I had gone and jumped into that hay baler with your daddy?” She reached up and touched his unshaven chin. “What do you think Rose would say about all this?” she asked quietly, saving the trump card for last.