A Truck Driver from West Virginia

Abstract

He called himself Billy, although we knewhe had another name, him here telling ushow he hated white people, him as whiteas the white people we knew but crisscrossedover in his mind by the groove Appalachia makesup and down the back of this country. His blueswere made on the backs of folk more blue thanblack folk origins of the blues, Billy so loudhe could make loud hide itself in white shame,taking his breaks with us, waiting for his truckto be filled with what washed the dirty laundryof a country he believed did not believe in him,tipsy drunk as he was on the days he announcedto us he was a hillbilly, like a lone wolf howling,sitting on its back legs, lost in the woods, afraidof what to feel in a space empty of whiteness,filled with strange cruelties, this the holy spaceof who can look down at us. His arm in a cast,Billy broke a thing harder than he was, the thingthat tried to let him own a certain kind of dignity,the cab of his rig easing out of the truck yard,his baseball cap bouncing him back to the hills.