Here you'll find introductions to a few pieces found online that are also featured in Uke Rivers Delivers.
Tube Rose by R.T. Smith (Originally appearing in
the Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 2004.)
The last evening I saw Granny Annie she was rocking in wicker, the whole porch
creaking with the weight of her grief. All the neighbors and relatives had
eaten and gossiped and gone, leaving their plates and tumblers and stains
all over the house, their condolences trailing behind them like coon tails
on aerials, and the flower wreaths were wilting on the grave.
"I can't believe my William is gone." She was rocking and weeping
in cadence, swallowing the dregs from her Sun Drop and fiddling with the snuff
tin in her lap. I could see by her eyes reflecting the yellow bug light that
she was mustering up a song.
"Don't sing." ...READ
FULL EXCERPT
Docent by R.T. Smith (Originally appearing in the
Missouri Review, Volume XXVI, Number 1, 2003.)
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen from hither and yon, and welcome to the
Lee Chapel on the campus of historic Washington and Lee University. My name
is Sybil Mildred Clemm Legrand Pascal, and I will be your guide and compass
on this dull, dark and soundless day, as the poet says, in the autumn of the
year. You can call me Miss Sibby, and in case you are wondering about my hooped
dress of ebony, my web-like hairnet and calf-leather shoes, they are authentic
to the period just following the War Between the States, and I will be happy
to discuss the cut and fabric of my mourning clothing with any of you fashion-conscious
ladies at the end of the tour—which by the way will be concluded in
the passageway between the crypt and the museum proper. If anyone should need
to avail themselves of the running-water facilities, I will indicate their
location before you enter the basement displays; and please, all you gentlemen,
remove your caps in the chapel, and also, ladies, kindly ask your little darlings
to keep a hush on their voices as they would at any shrine. No camera flashes,
please, in the General Lee alcove. No smoking, of course—a habit I deplore.
Now, I am sure you know a lot already, and I may cover ground you have heard
before, but please respect those who enter this tour with an open heart, and
I will periodically pause to entertain questions, though I do not personally
see any reason why they would arise.
The Lee Chapel, before you, was completed with intricately milled brick in
1868 on a Victorian design during the General's tenure, but it wore no green
gown of ivy to begin with; I myself adore the ivy and do not care for the
decision to trim it back. At this time of the afternoon it turns the light
attractively spectral, wouldn't you agree? And I do not believe ivy could
rip the building down. The chapel itself, which has never been officially
consecrated by a legitimate denomination, should not be confused with the
Robert E. Lee Episcopal Church, which you can see, with the steeple facing
Washington Street, at the end of the paved walk. I am told there are two Episcopal
churches in the world which are not named for saints, but that is not one
of them—which is told locally as a joke, if you think such things are
funny. ...READ
FULL EXCERPT
I Have Lost My Right by R.T. Smith (Originally
appearing in the Missouri Review, Volume 24, Number 2, 2001.)
When we heard the horse we moved from the firelight by the ivied oak where
we'd been bivouacked and stood to our mounts. It was coming right at us. Pistol
aimed at the snapping brush, I called out a challenge. Virg was crouched beside
me, his hackles stiff and fangs bared. Haemon Willis and Coates had their
Sharps at the ready. Nobody was our friend; we couldn't be too careful.
"Name your Jesus or get misery and oblivion." I cocked the hammer.
"Gentlemen, my Jesus is the roaring boy Jeff Davis," the voice came
back. "I smelled your smoke."
He could have been the worst foe, might have been our nightmare, and we couldn't
allow him to go back and reveal us.
"Approach and be recognized. Come slowly, stranger."
The rider emerged from the copse astride a huge chunk of a horse, wide as
a wagon, and Coates called out, "What in the black hell is that? Looks
like you could have the whole Trojan army stowed in that thing."
I didn't like Coates. He was cross-eyed and ornery. I didn't trust his resolve,
but I was stuck with him. ...READ
FULL EXCERPT
Trebuchet by R.T. Smith (Originally appearing on
thepedestalmagazine.com)
Wendell Lyons hated his neighbors, which was unsettling to a man of faith.
He had, to the best of his recollection, never managed to hate anyone before,
except his second wife Roxanne, who had revealed her true nature by running
off with a Baldwin piano salesman and half of Wendell’s Virginia Fireball
Lottery winnings. In one fell swoop she’d sabotaged his entire forty
years of Christian charity, prudence and restraint, all of which had managed
to survive, though severely tested, even the rocky year between their wedding
vows and her nocturnal and surreptitious departure. Not even his habit of
woodsmithing in the shop—the beveling of edges, sanding for patina or
shaving a tenon to wed its mortise exactly—could prevent him from feeling
that cold heat of rancor in his bowels.
Over those tempestuous months of wedlock, not even Roxanne’s chronic
laziness, her outbursts of china flinging and money-draining schemes to take
the greeting card market by storm had succeeded in decimating Wendell’s
habit of hoping for a harmonious future. Hope supplemented by his routine
morning prayer: “Oh Lord, give me the strength and understanding to
seek the good." After all, hadn’t he met her at church?
Despite her snit fits on the week-long Cancun honeymoon and the endless ordeals
of the ensuing seasons, Wendell had been certain that patience and tolerance
would prevail, as the Gospels promised. But when he discovered she had loaded
her suitcases into the trunk of her new Volvo and slipped away while he slept,
Wendell simply snapped. By the time he discovered that she had emptied their
substantial checking account, he was already too furious for words. ...READ
FULL EXCERPT
