Judge Dr. Chea Parton has selected “Rebounders” by Don Stewart as the Best Short Story for the 2024 Best in Rural Writing Contest. Listen to Don read his submission below.
The audience helps choose the winner between the Best Short Story and Best Essay for the overall winner of the Best in Rural Writing Contest and the $500 prize. You can listen to and read Dr. Parton’s choice for Best Short Story, “Blood Brother” by Jeremy Haworth, here. You can vote at the end of either entry. Voting will remain open until January 7th, midnight GMT.
Rebounders by Don Stewart
I’m pleased to report the wild ground cherries that recently popped up in my front lawn survived a rough separation from what turned out to be a shared taproot, and have after some delay been happily transplanted into the vegetable garden. They are now thriving next to a tangled mound of blackberries and an aging parsley bush, already reduced to half its size by a handful of swallowtail caterpillars.
Nearby, an orange cloud of gulf fritillaries swirls above our maypop arbor, a shady, woven arch of bolted autumn olive branches cut from bushes introduced to the property decades ago. The butterflies take turns flirting and flitting between the purple passion vines and a six-foot bouquet of native sunflowers erupting not far from where I discovered the ground cherries.
These aren’t things we would have seen before the move. Not that these plants were unheard of at our last address. They just weren’t welcome. I can sympathize.
At an age when I expected to be retiring in the city, instead I’ve found myself a denizen of the pastoral South, again. I’m a rebounder. A prodigal son. A semi-voluntary repatriate to the countryside.
Aware that I too am a conspicuous addition to this rural setting, I take pains to share my appreciation for unconventional floral decor with my new neighbors, and the strangers who wander down our street, the one that connects at both ends to the same county road. I think they’re getting used to me, even if my colorful personality falls short of the beauty of our new surroundings.
Thirty miles up the Interstate, the regular application of weed eaters and herbicides would have prevented such suspicious natives from interrupting the clean lines of our former neighbors’ manicured lawns, or drawing attention away from the seasonal rotation of potted pansies, mums, poinsettias and Boston ferns highlighting their porches at the appointed time, each in its proper turn.
Tradition is strong in the South. Community rules must be leaned upon, not against – lest they be bent, or, Lawdheppus, broken. Acceptable garden additions may be found at the local nursery or the fancier grocery stores, not in the empty corner lot.
Dandelions may be a brighter yellow than daffodils, but the two cannot be allowed to share a bed. Snow peas among the clematis? Perhaps, so long as no one notices, or if passers-by can be convinced these peas are of the acceptable, decorative variety. Cantaloupes beneath the boxwoods? Never. Poor people may be forced to grow food in their yards; respectable folk have no need. (And no, one does not make pie from the decorative pumpkins crowding the front steps from Hallowe’en to Thanksgiving.)
To be truthful, we’re not living all the way out in the country, but a hard rock’s throw in three of the four cardinal directions from our back porch will get you near there, and probably within shouting distance of a person who is both respectable and hungry, at least some of the time. With fewer folks of either sort to judge, the rules are a little more relaxed here. I’m fine with that.
On close inspection, I might be reckoned a rule or two shy a full load of respectability myself. I’m fine with that, too, rules being made the way they always have been – for people, and not the other way around.
Back in the city, there are parades to celebrate the azaleas’ annual effusions of pink and white, festivals devoted to magnolia blossoms. Yet okra’s golden hibiscus, or the profusion of lavender trumpets that decorate our sweet potato vines enjoy no such fanfare, despite both being lovely, and delicious besides.
Neither do the dozens of native wildflowers that bloom incessantly from March to December in one part or another of our half-acre yard, if I don’t mow them away. Redbud, Rose-O-Shar’n, milkweed, boneset, elderberry, elephant’s foot, goldenrod, and an endless variety of asters from fleabane and desert chicory, black- and brown-eyed Susans and Jerusalem artichokes rise from our ragged lawn, happy for the chance to stretch up and show out.
I’m grateful for the chance do the same. Those parts of me lacking in rulesmanship may be taken up with wildflowerishness.
The son of a college administrator, I was raised on the fringes of ranchland in Texas and Oklahoma before charting my own academic course in big city Birmingham, Alabama. My wife, a rural physician’s daughter from East Texas, spent most of her time in Houston and Dallas, but never strayed far from family roots buried deep in cattle country. We both have a nostalgic appreciation for fields of prairie clover and lush bluebonnets, evening primrose and fiery Indian paintbrush stretching wide toward the sunset. And while we became thoroughly acclimated to the suburbs, we also never lost the proud sense of self-reliance fundamental to life on the southern prairie.
For twenty years we ran our own art studio in the middle of the Birmingham Metroplex, saving to purchase our rented home in the quiet community where we raised our children, where we planned to retire. Our only mistake was choosing to live in a suburb that lately decided to recreate itself into an exclusive, upmarket destination.
Exclusivity is a beast with two faces, smiling warmly on the favored few, glowering on the rest who fail to make the cut. By design, it shuts people out, and turns them away. After years of chasing escalating housing costs, many of us who assumed we belonged in our town suddenly felt the sting of alienation, and the prospect of an uncertain future.
Like so many others, the course of our lives was altered by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Flush with PPP allowances, our studio landlord informed us that we would not be celebrating our twentieth anniversary in the building he owned. Intending to renovate the property for his own use, he preferred that we vacate the premises, immediately, along with the other tenants in the building.
With the post-Covid real estate surge in full swing, we suddenly found ourselves searching far from home to find a suitable workspace. For the first time in decades, we were obliged to commute away from the city, struggling to rebuild our business in a new location after more than a year of lockdown. We did our best to take the change in stride, noting with some pleasure that we were now actually closer to many of our customers, and as reverse commuters, we never had to suffer the effects of rush hour in our daily travels to and from the bustling metropolis.
A few months later the other shoe dropped, kicking us even harder than the first on its way down. The popular movement to renovate and escalate spread from the downtown retail center out into the surrounding neighborhoods, wiping away hundred-year-old bungalows that gave our town its historic charm, replacing them with lawnless, hotel-ish superstructures designed to accommodate the appetites of the new uber riche.
Inevitably the trend found its way to our address, where we received another notice: By summer’s end we would have to relocate, or face a dramatic increase in rent.
The housing boom had already quintupled home prices in our neighborhood, pushing the possibility of ownership completely out of reach. The prospect of slowly draining our savings on rent with no return on our lifetime investment was devastating. Still working to get our business on track from a distance, we now had no choice but to look even farther afield for a new place to live.
That’s exactly where our search led us, through rolling fields and limestone glades, the folds and bunions of the Appalachian foothills’ weather-worn toes, to the tasseled fringe of an historic rural college town. Host to a small liberal arts university, a classic Main Street and an expansive park bordered by a long, lazy creek, the area was also an established art community – an unexpected perk that was immediately appealing to both of us. We felt at home before we even found a place to settle.
Moving away from the metropolis didn’t mean we’d left the housing shortage behind. Covid’s displacement of workers from office to home meant people across the country were suddenly free to leave the city, commuting electronically from anywhere. Many made a mad dash to the countryside, hoping to lower expenses and improve their quality of life. Small town housing suddenly became a popular commodity.
It’s a good thing we’re old, the Missus and I, and seasoned, and cut from country stock. We weren’t looking for new and shiny. All we needed was sturdy and serviceable. While most buyers at the time tendered competing, escalating bids on brand new homes in upscale developments, we asked our realtor instead to hunt for an ugly duckling – something with strong bones and lots of potential. Curb appeal was secondary, if it mattered at all. We weren’t looking for a manicured lawn, we told her, or the rules requiring us to maintain one.
What she found was a hand-wrought battle tank of a red brick ranch, old and staid, offering little in the way of design features to tempt the younger work-from-home set. But much about the house was familiar to us, something our parents or grandparents might have considered a half-century ago, with cabinets and fixtures we both recognized from our childhoods, still in fine working order. Solid roof. New paint. Decent plumbing. Working appliances and light switches. And not a thing had been done to the yard in thirty years, other than the occasional, random passage of a lawnmower, an effort to keep the surrounding woods in their place. We placed an offer immediately; thirty days later were moving in.
Ironically, we wound up commuting the same distance to the studio, only now in the opposite direction, with less traffic and nicer scenery. The Missus delights in counting the cows, horses, and driveway dogs, watching the enveloping seasons alter the passing landscape week after week.
I enjoy naming the flowers that decorate the fence rows and borrow ditches that chart our route to work. She has learned to wait patiently while I stop to gather berries and seeds, hoping to add them to the topography of our lawn, so I can point them out one day to the neighbors and the strangers who wander down our street, the one that connects at both ends to the same county road.
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View the shortlist of the 2024 Best in Rural Writing Contest.
(Photo: uetchy/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)
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- CONTEST: Rebounders by Don Stewart - December 15, 2024