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      August 13, 2021SmokeJeff Daniel Marion

      Junior Hughes had just stepped out from Chick’s Burger Bar
      squinting into the glare of early summer sun,
      his toothpick bobbing at a jaunty angle
      when he heard it, a long low wailing rising to a whine,
      a sound heard all over town: the fire station’s siren call
      to all volunteers to hustle to the station.
      Any minute now Rogersville’s one fire truck would be rumbling
      up Depot Street at close to 10 mph, its two main occupants
      Chief Noah Britton and his right-hand man
      Pete Anderson. Chief Noah would be driving
      because Pete at age ten had lost sight in his left eye
      during a fight, the untreated eye having grown into
      a gelatinous mass that frightened children as well
      as many adults. Junior swung aboard as the truck
      squalled toward Main where Brady Gladson dropped the sack
      bearing a pound of tenpenny nails in his customer’s waiting hand
      at Boyd-Lawson Hardware before he pushed toward the door
      and in a single leap swung onto the rear of the truck
      now nearing 11 mph. Next came Clay Jenkins who laid aside
      his leather-stropped and honed straight razor for Hobe Russell
      all lathered and settled in the chair and ready for his daily shave;
      from around the corner came Snooky Burns, sure this would be
      a big scoop for this week’s Rogersville Review;
      loping out of City Newsstand came Sweetenin’ Jones
      leaving behind his True Crime magazine,
      and last came Shoofly Goins, towel wrapped
      around his neck and a mound of lunch dishes left waiting
      in the sink at Lackey’s Restaurant. The great ship
      now revved to 20 mph as Chief Noah shouted
      to Pete: “What’s the address?” No human voice
      broke the siren’s whine for a long 30 seconds
      until Pete stammered, “I thought you got it.”
      Then followed sounds only of the rumbling
      truck and its lonely siren song until from somewhere
      far back on the truck came a clear voice of direction:
      “Watch for smoke, boys.”
      In the long smolder of time, they rise, these men
      long silent in their graves and their stories like smoke
      drifting forever over these streets,
      these storefronts with now unfamiliar names, this place:
      Watch for smoke, boys!
      Watch for smoke.

      from #72 – Summer 2021

      Jeff Daniel Marion

      “When I was a boy growing up in east Tennessee my father took me after supper to his favorite ‘loafering’ place, the 96, a combination country store and service station where we sat for a couple of hours listening to various friends telling tales. I admired these men and the easiness of their talk and the ways their stories unfolded. Those years of listening marked me, left me always hungry for a good story rich in detail. Then in fifth grade the tables turned when my friend Wayne Price begged that I take part in our afternoon program by telling a story to our class. Thus it began. And over the years I watched lives unfold in this place where the oral tradition and good talk were as natural as breathing. But times change. Farms become subdivisions; Walmart replaces the local store. ‘Look quick, son,’ my father always advised. In that intersection of past and present, the old and the new, lies the possibility of story.”

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