Bill Earngey

Down by the Arkansas, near its old river crossing at Toad Suck Landing, the Ozark Mountains peter out, changing to bottomland soil and odd sandy roads headed east toward Lollie, a little place, small, without charm or a promise of it. White folks have lived here by the tens, not hundreds. The dead ones are happier.

  Lean-to shacks lean, keeping the renters, like them, poorly built and leaning away from the wind in a boring, irrelevant list -- unafraid of what no one knows here -- miles from the Suck, but not beyond it.

  Maggie McNeeley was born close to a beaten gray leaner. Her mama never made it back to the broken boards of the front porch or through the last push, squirting Maggie into the real world.

  Folks down the road found them both spread-eagle. The father, Little Tom, didn't have the cash or the caring to dig a deep hole for the dead woman. Maggie left with strangers, unaware.

  Twelve years, a groan of river-bottom time, passed before he came back to claim her. Drunk as a way of life, he came back with no need of knowing why, except a small, forest creature's tingling that his daughter child could be worth something.

  Little Tom carried her on a beaten-down mule to Toad Suck Landing, then traded the crippled animal for a short boat ride west, bucking the current of the Arkansas to the Petit Jean, then south to where they were left off at Danville, county capital of Yell, and temporary home to the boys making small change sawing hardwood somewhere in the dark forest. The money was good, so it was said, the tents leaked dew, and the good times were rough whiskey and solitary sex.