What Mamaw Told the Creek

Ya ever heard water talk?

I have.
Back when the hills still held their hush
an’ the sky hung close like a quilt on a clothesline,
Mamaw’d say the creek knowed everything.

Said it whispered our secrets
an’ hollered our lies
when the rains come mean an’ fast.

She lived up Tucker’s Ridge,
in that two-room cabin her daddy raised
outta chestnut logs ‘fore the blight took ‘em.

You could smell her before you seen her—
pine tar, sweet snuff,
an’ bread baked with tears she never named.

Mamaw talked slow,
but her words hit like hickory.

“Don’t cross no river mad,” she’d warn.
“It remembers.”


I was ten when the water come up bad.
Spring, when the redbuds bloom like bruises
an’ the air’s thick with bees hummin’ songs older’n sin.

Sky turned the color of a coal miner’s nail
an’ birds got quiet—
like they knowed God was listenin’.

Mamaw had me stringin’ beans on the porch.
She stopped mid-snap, squinted toward the bend.

“Creek’s speakin’,” she said.
“Fetch the quilts. Not the good ones.”

I ran, feet bare,
floor creakin’ like it hurt to be alive.
Grabbed two threadbare blankets
smellin’ of cedar an’ old soap.

By the time I come out,
water was already lickin’ the stones
like a dog that knowed hunger too long.


Mamaw ain’t run.

She ain’t never run
less there was a holler from heaven
or a baby needin’ breath.

She sat down,
pulled me close,
quilt wrapped tight ‘round us
like we was seed in a pod.

“Let it come,” she said.
“Let it remember.”


An’ the water did.

It climbed the porch like it knowed the way,
found her rockin’ chair
an’ tried to take it.

She held it with her bare foot,
chin lifted like she was facin’
some old ghost wearin’ flood for skin.

I reckon the water knowed her too.


That night, we slept on the rafters.
Me with my head ‘gainst her rib
listenin’ to her hum
that song she’d learned from her granmama.

Ain’t had no words, just sound
like wind in pine
or grief that’d give up tryin’ to be loud.


Come mornin’, the creek had shrunk back,
ashamed maybe, or just tired.

Took half the garden
and Mamaw’s pie safe
but left the chickens
an’ her Bible.

She opened it to where the pages
still held the red clay dust
from her wedding day.

“See,” she said.
“Water knows love when it finds it.”


Years on, I asked her why
she ain’t never left Tucker’s Ridge,
not after the flood,
not after Papaw run off with the gospel singer
with teeth too straight for truth.

She looked out at the creek
run real quiet now.

“Sugar,” she said,
“place got memory, just like people.
But place don’t judge.
It holds.”


When she passed,
I buried her up on the hill
where the moss grows thick
an’ foxes cry like babies.

Carved a stone from river rock,
set it deep so flood couldn’t take it.

Etched on it what she told me
when I first kissed a girl
and felt my whole chest go thunderin’:

“The heart ain’t wrong.
Just loud.”


Now I live in a town
where folks don’t talk to water.

They bottle it, sell it,
flush it, fight it.

They don’t listen
when it taps their window
or roars at midnight
like it’s tryin’ to warn somethin’.

But I do.


I got me a boy now,
six and smart as a whippoorwill.
He asked me last night,
“Daddy, why the creek bend like that?”

I told him,
“That’s where it held your Mamaw’s tears
an’ decided not to carry ‘em away.”

He looked hard,
then nodded like he seen it too.


I reckon stories live
in the bend of water
an’ the warp of floorboards.

You just gotta hush long enough
to hear the truth beneath the noise.


So if you ever find yourself
in a storm,
wet to the bone,
an’ the wind’s got a voice you swear knows your name—

wrap up in a quilt,
sit still,
an’ let the water speak.

It ain’t mad.
Just loud.

Like Mamaw said.

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