The Great Flood, and: The Pig

Abstract

The Great Flood, and: The Pig Lana Austin (bio) THE GREAT FLOOD Hazard, Kentucky is no differentthan a hundred rural townsstarted as a trading post,funded by coal that turned lungs and hands dark at the startof the twentieth century.And while I love the storyof Hazard folk making the Stone Gap journey,having to go overBig Black Mountain, it isn’tthe shantytowns left behind when businesses went bust,or the lung cancer cases,either, that draw me.It’s the dust and the mud I come to see. The samedust and mud that alwaysclaim this town, where historyis marked by the water that’s made Hazard its own—the Great Flood of ’27,the Great Flood of ’37,and the black magic sevens go on [End Page 82] into the Great Flood of ’57and…where before meteorologists,people could predictthe size of the maelstrom coming by watching the dust swirlin the middle of the streets,a dirty gypsy-likefortune-telling dance, with small bits of graveland earth twisting aroundbefore, overhead, the clouds’bulk fell in grey blocks to the ground until the nearbyKentucky River bredand claimed a new space,making a Venetian world where no public roads survived,just miles and miles of mud. Archivedphotographs have captured thismurky, wet distress: “Note the automobile barely visible under the flood waters,”says the back of one. “Looking acrossthe river from town, see the iron bridge,”says another, “to the train depot that lays destroyed,” [End Page 83] and my personal favorite, “A view up Main Streetwhere Rita’s and Jonnie’s Diner is destroyed”written on the last. I don’t know why I like itso much, except that I can imagine Rita and Jonnie, not unlike my own familyfrom these Eastern Kentucky parts, their determinedpupils paying homage when dilatedto round pieces of coal. I see them methodically boarding uptheir restaurant, still holdingsand bags in their hands as the waterstarts to ooze through the door. [End Page 84] THE PIG Now, you’d thinkif he had enough senseto get up there,he’d have enough senseto get back down.The archived photographdeifies him enough to give himthe benefit of the doubt,standing up there in 1957on that filing cabinet God-like.Reminds me of the Stonewall statue,the pig astride a filing cabinetand Jackson on his horse, bothof them with muscles tightand if they were dogs,their hackles would be up.He must’ve used the office chairthat was found floatingaround the roomto get to his metal refuge.And that must’ve been whyhe couldn’t get down.Those witch-possessedHazard, Kentucky watersrose so much that even somethingfairly big like an office chaircould just float away.Huge things could driftaround, too, like cars. We’re not [End Page 85] talking about today’s tinyFord Fiestas. We mean behemothgas-guzzlers with testosterone-infusednames like Thunderbird,emasculated, bobbingaround in the floodas if they were a little boy’s toyboats in the bathtub.Whatever you do,don’t call the pig cute. [End Page 86] Lana Austin A finalist for the 2015 James Wright Poetry Award, Lana Austin’s work has appeared in Mid-American Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, Southern Women’s Review, and Zone 3. Her first chapbook, In Search of the Wild Dulcimer, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Austin has an MFA from George Mason University. Born and raised in Kentucky, she has lived in England and Italy but currently resides in Alabama with her husband and three children. Copyright © 2016 Berea College