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Lena's This is an excerpt from a novella Jenni Finlay began writing during her first year as a student at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, 900 miles away from her own river home.
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A one-way street leads you
into the one-way town. It's a town smaller than the people full of new
hope and broken dreams.Tired, weathered men sit at the post office and
revel over the Flood of '72... the raging waters that washed out and flooded
in most everyone who remembers. Young, restless boys sit on
the porch of a movie set building, sharing their dreams and telling their
tales of the time Clint Eastwood came to town. They all can remember the
1957 T-Bird used in the film--not a ding on it. They remember the excitement
he brought with him, and the sound of his tires as he peeled around this
very building for the 30 second scene in the forgettable movie. The houses off main street
are sagging and gray. Dirty children play in the spray of pale green waterhoses
and run in the empty streets. Dull-eyed dogs bark fiercely at the strange
cars that pass by. Every It's a lonely town full of only beginnings and endings. Those who are born here rarely
ever stay very long. They go far away to sek what they only dreamed about
on the cluttered porches and shabby front yards. But for some reason, they always find their way home in the end.And they remember. The town lies flat across a winding river. The river is what draws most people together. Yet, it divides those who are getting out and those who are coming home. And on the bank of that river with her faded jeans rolled up above her ankles and her bare feet hanging in the water sits a girl who doesn't know which side she's on. |