In this issue we bring you part 2 of Ellen O’Neal’s short story, Carol’s Tale. There’s also a poem from Charlie Alison about the questions needed when looking for a home. Also a phrase or two about the little white dog and a last word.
Carol’s Tale
SHORT FICTION, Part 2 of a Four-Part Serial
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, READ PART 1
By Ellen O’Neal
Carol told her fellow bicycle travelers that the mother, Sandy Merrick, looked close to her own age, maybe a touch younger.
“I felt sympathy for her,” Carol said, “but I again tried to explain our policy about not doing stories about missing children unless the police department asked us to get involved, and also that it was highly unlikely that United Press International, or any other news distribution service, would pick up the story.
“Sandy persisted, so I asked her some questions about the case, figuring I could relay this information to the editors, and they would make a decision. They could play bad cop.
“You said her name was Kelly? When did your daughter run away,” I asked.
“Three years ago,” she said.
Inside my head, I thought, woah, three years ago! That’s one cold trail. Then Sandy told me they were living in Utah when Kelly ran away, and I thought: Utah? Wait, wait, wait, how in the world does anyone expect a news story published in our little newspaper in Port Angeles, Washington, too help find a missing girl last seen 400 miles away in Utah after three years?
That question tumbled around in my head over and over as I continued aloud with the rote questions of news reporting. “How old was your daughter when she ran away?” Sandy said Kelly had been 13 years old.
“So she would be 16 now?”
“Yeah,” Sandy said. “Kelly’s birthday was in May so she’s 16.”
Legally, still a minor, I wrote in my notes. Will miss her prom, sophomore biology class, her first kiss.
I asked Sandy if she had a picture of Kelly that we could use with a story, if in fact the editors allowed a story.
She pulled one out of her purse. It was in a clear, plastic protector. She removed the protector, ran her finger along the edge of the picture, and handed it to me. It looked like a snapshot from a city park. Kelly had long, straight brown hair, braces and green eyes. Pretty smile. She looked happy, like a nice kid. But there was also a longing in her eyes.
I asked, “What was your daughter like?”
I had meant to find out why Kelly might have run away, but the words didn’t come out that way. I don’t know if it was the tone of my voice or my use of past tense or what, but even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I knew it sounded as though I were asking: “What was your dead daughter like?” I knew that’s how it came across. And so did Sandy.
Tears started streaming down her cheeks. She looked up at me with questions and doubt in her eyes and then put her face in her hands. I reached out, put my hand on her knee and began crying, too, knowing the pain and fear I had caused. All I could think was, fuddle, now I have to write something, but what?
After we both dried our cheeks, I pushed ahead with questions. What had happened? Sandy said it started during a period when she and her then-husband were not doing well together. Her daughter started sneaking out of a bedroom window in the evenings of early summer to run around with friends. “Kelly was miserable in the house, listening to the constant bickering between Jim and me,” Sandy said. During her nights out, Kelly became acquainted with an older guy, and Sandy thought Kelly had run away to stay with him.
Sandy thought Kelly would reappear on her own, but she didn’t and Kelly contacted police near the end of the summer. They investigated as far as they could, identifying someone named Nebber Dallet as potentially the older guy, but otherwise they had no leads on her whereabouts.
I wasn’t sure what to ask next. Sandy didn’t give me the chance.
She said she moved to Port Angeles recently for a job, but once she got settled she again contacted the police in Salt Lake City. A detective named Clive Barder reopened Kelly’s case. Barder called Sandy on Monday, asked a lot of questions and told her he would see what he could find.
Good, I thought to myself, someone official I can talk with.
Sandy said that Barder also told her there was a dairy company in Utah that might publish Kelly’s photo on their milk cartons to help find her. It was a long shot, he told her, but he gave Sandy the company’s phone number. She had called them just this morning, and they were on board.
I had never heard of such a thing — putting people’s faces on milk cartons — but it might be a good hook for the story. More importantly, I thought I had a story now. I thought I might make this work. It was no longer a story about a missing girl but a story about how far a mom would go to find a missing daughter.
NEXT: In Part 3, Carol talks with a sympathetic police officer in Salt Lake City.
Ellen O’Neal is a writer working on a novel about America, and “Carol’s Tale” will probably become part of it.
Questions for a Home Inspector
POETRY
By Charlie Alison
The purchase of a home should call questions to mind, Things you should ask, answers to find. Any rot, any mold, any liens on the house? Is the foundation cracked and letting in the mouse? Any bats in the belfry? Any roaches in the basement? Are there spiders galore? Or termites in the casement? How old is the heater? How new is the fridge? Are the roof shingles missing at the top of the ridge? Is the nearest grade school an intelligent sort? Are the faucets working fine? Do the doorknobs comport? And the soffits, yes, the soffits, oh, the dad-gum soffits, I don’t even know what to ask about the soffits! In my excitement to buy this age-old home, I did not consider what may one day come, Nor did I ask, the paperwork signed so soon, Whether this house came with a moon. To my good fortune — though, for the seller a pity, He was moving his address to New York City — He had no need of a full harvest moon. So it hangs in the window of my eastern room, Beaming as softly as a pale daffodil, The full moon rises broad as Hanover Hill And reminds me of you at the end of the day For when we first met, I did not think to ask if you would stay. Next time I will.
Chronicles of the Little White Dog
By Mark Pennington
We've cut off the little white dog from her opioids. She seems to be fine, though resentful. Which is her normal demeanor.
The Last Word
dreens | drēnz
Paul Faris, a writer and photographer in Arkansas, started documenting log cabins of the Ozarks in the 1950s, sometimes returning to the same cabin in the late 1960s to re-shoot photos and see how well a cabin or barn was faring. Usually, the answer was not well.
At some point in that time period, he visited the Henderson family, who lived in a log cabin down near the bottom of Center Point Road. While at the cabin, Faris asked the patriarch of the family, J.H. Henderson, whether he would demonstrate how he hewed logs. Henderson had not only hewed logs intended for cabins but also more than his share of railroad ties at 10 cents a piece in earlier days.
When done with the demonstration, Henderson asked Faris if he would like to see the Goat Trail, a narrow ledge across the face of Big Bluff, overlooking the Buffalo River. Faris said yes. They followed a rugged trail to the bluff, said to be the tallest edifice of stone between the Appalachia and the Rockies. They walked out along a stone ledge midway up the bluff, the river 340 feet below them.
Looking out from the ledge, J.H. Henderson could see the meander of the Buffalo River up the valley to the south. Well kempt agricultural fields and tidy farms spread across the river bottoms. Little folds of shadowed tributaries angled to the left and right, carving small valleys into the depths of the mountains that hemmed the river. Henderson told Faris:
The way I figure it, these hollers come when Noah’s Flood went down and the water collected in the dreens. I don’t know, but that’s the way I figure it.1
Dreen, or occasionally drean, is a variation on “drain,” used both as a noun and a verb in the Ozarks and southern Appalachia. Examples of its use as a verb include: He dreened all the water out of the bucket. As a noun, though, it gets more at the meaning of “little creek” or “small stream” and less frequently is used to refer to the seeps that spill out from a hillside, such as this instance:
[Moonshiners] set up their still on a little dreen, a good place for a still because revenuers hunt up creeks and a dreen would be hard to find.2
That shift in pronunciation from the long ā to a long ē happens with Ozark words, such as pronouncing “scared” as skeert or “afraid” as afeared. And we’re afeared that’s the last word. CEYA
Have an interesting word? Send it to editor.ozarkhollow@gmail.com. Include your name and hometown as well as why the word is of interest to you and what, if anything, you know about the word.
Other Contributors to this Issue
Editor of Square Jaws — Burl E. Mann
Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts — Tiffany Lampshaide
Director of Investments — Penny Wise
Faris, Paul. 1983. Ozark Log Cabin Folks: The Way They Were. (Little Rock, Ark: Rose Pub. Co.).
Montgomery, Michael B. and Jennifer K.N. Heinmiller, eds. 2021. Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English. (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press.)