by Sara Shea

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His chicory coffee steams.
He leans, lithe and wiry, into tugging
army boots over dirty jeans and camo gear
from Tractor Supply. First light of dawn
ignites the crest of Lonesome Mountain.
October mist rises, drifts down Laurel Creek,
and thins over the wheat.

He climbs the old wagon road—
steep switchbacks up the slope until
the double-wide where his wife and children lie
dreaming is only the hint of metal gleaming
between golden sweet-gum groves.

Over his shoulder, a burlap sack.
In his holster, a .45.
In his left hand, a steady staff;
hickory handle of the ‘sang hoe.
He searches the hollow,
follows the creek bed higher
’til dim forest swallows him
in wild briar of muscadine vine.

This land…
he knows it so well. Where the morels grow,
rocky ledges where rattlers soak up sun,
the small clearing and plot where he buried
his first son,
several cousins, his mother—
who taught him to chew the root
for flu, whooping cough, abscessed tooth.

Lumbering low shadow of a black bear
through the tupelo. Indigo bunting, darting high—
it’s a flash of azure like October sky.
Dash of a doe—gone faster than petals from
autumn aster. Nothing worth the price of ammo.

Money is scarce, but he is still able
to contend with that stack of bills—
kudzu spreading ‘cross the kitchen table.
The truck don’t run. The children need winter boots,
books for school, and damn the rising cost of fuel.

But everything can be set right in his life.
A little tobacco for his pipe, a simple smile
from his wife and a nip of white lightning at night—
with a thousand dollars to his name before winter.

Five-finger. Indian tonic. Little man, man root—
mystical mountain mischief. You won’t find it
‘til it decides to let you. Is that true?
Ma always said Grandpaw knew.

Hidden in hickory, history, bracken
bloodroot, briar patch, crown vetch.
Now he knows the price it will fetch,
The weight of his own wallet, thick with cash.

Giddy at the sight of that bright luster—
A cluster of berries redder than Muscat wine,
or August tomatoes on the vine.
Red as fresh blood or cardinal wing-
redder than the wrapper of ginseng
chewing gum sold at the Five-and-Dime.

Today, he’ll kneel and pry
wise, old, gnarled knuckles of root
away from native clay—
and let them dry.

Hunting ‘til dusk sweetens the hills
with songs of whippoorwills,
until his hands are raw—
and he turns home for cornbread,
beans and slaw.

Tomorrow in town, the dry weight of his bag
will equate to a lost memory of the land.
Dollars. Hand-to-hand exchange.
Wild roots shipped to cities with exotic names:
Seol, Busan, Hong Kong, Shanghai;
roots sold by a man who will never know
a world beyond his county line.

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Sara Shea received her BA from Kenyon College, where she served as Student Associate Editor for The Kenyon Review, and studied with David Foster Wallace. While studying abroad at Exeter University in the UK in 2000, Shea won a “New Millennium Poetry Contest” sponsored by The Queen of England, British Parliament, and judged by UK Poet Laureate Andrew Motion.

Shea pursued graduate classes through UNCA’s Smokey Mountain Writers Program and Western Carolina University, where she studied under Ron Rash. In 2013, her short story “Shine” won the grand prize for creative non-fiction through Quarterly West, and Shea was awarded a fellowship to Writers@Work.

Her stories and poems have appeared in The Connecticut River Review, Quarterly West, The Key West Love Poetry Anthology, Amsterdam Review, The Ledge, Wrath-Bearing Tree, and Petigru Review.

Shea writes professionally, producing marketing materials for a fine arts gallery in Asheville, NC and crafting compelling SEO property descriptions for luxury homes worldwide.