Gunshark

I’ve never been a car person, but I loved Miss Brenda’s Grand Am, especially the eight-track player in the console. She had several of the same tapes my mother had — Reba, Dolly, Kenny Rogers, the Statler Brothers and the Oak Ridge Boys. She’d play my favorite tracks off each album, saving our favorite singalong-song for the end.

Along the way I’d point out all the landmarks to Miss Brenda like a tour guide. When she’d slow down to avoid bottoming out on the concrete slab by the old Shocklee place with all its car-chasing dogs, I’d remind her that we were crossing Peter Creek. I’d later learn it was named after my ancestor, Peter Shaver, the first white settler in these parts. Miss Brenda’s people were originally from over on Janes Creek a few miles west. My dad said we were all from the old families, which made no sense to me then, but later I’d learn he meant our families had arrived here before the Civil War.

Once Miss Brenda turned south onto the highway, I’d point out where Jewel Dean Hayes lived in the ranch-style behind the trees. The sweet old woman lugged a portable oxygen tank to church and for this reason fascinated me.

“Yep, that’s the Hayes place,” she’d say.

Downhill we’d cross Tattle Creek, then ease around curves, pop over some hills, and coast through some hollers, until we eventually slowed down as we rounded the sharp curve before the crossroads at Ingram. This wide place in the road marked where she lived with her parents, across the road from Grandma Gumdrop’s.

I had inadvertently renamed Grandma Guntharp after a Candy Land character, but Miss Brenda never corrected me. After I pointed out Grandma Gumdrop’s house, we’d cross Tennessee Creek and then Camp Creek. When we passed the junction with Highway 328 West, I’d remind her that it was the road I lived on.

She’d say, “Yep, there’s your road.”

Then we’d cross the narrow bridge over Gross Creek, and I’d tell her I knew Miss Ida Gross, who lived downstream in an old farmhouse with a dogtrot porch way up on an embankment of orange clay.

“Yep,” she’d say, she remembered that I knew Miss Ida.

I would announce Attica Hill as we climbed over it in her Grand Am before descending into the village of Attica. The members of the Oak Grove Baptist Church had a pretty little brick and white church building there, and I’d inform Miss Brenda each time we passed that they were not Church of Christ.

“Nope, they’re Baptist,” she’d say.

Eventually, we’d cross Knotts Creek and pass by Mrs. Pearline Helms’s little white house with all the flowers before getting to Arkansas Highway 115, which led to Pocahontas, the county seat and our afternoon destination.

About the time we’d cross the Mansko Creek bridge just before the city limits (I’d later learn it was Mansker, but in true Ozarks fashion, all the old people mispronounced it the same way), Miss Brenda would ask me where I wanted to eat. She had turns to make up ahead based upon our decision.

There were three suitable choices to take a child for a meal in Pocahontas in the mid-1980s, and Miss Brenda would place the article “the” in front of each one: the Sonic, the Dairy Queen, or the Pizza Hut.

Sonic and Dairy Queen were across the old Black River bridge, and Pizza Hut was out on Highway 67 across from the iconic Hillcrest Restaurant and Motel.

I didn’t like to cross the Black River bridge because my worry-prone mother had made me afraid it was going to fall down, but I did like the soft-serve ice cream found only in East Pocahontas. At 5 years old and the son of Susan Seawel, I didn’t realize the unlikeliness of the bridge giving way. After all, London Bridge from the twisted nursery rhyme had fallen. That, and there was some sort of metal grid that rumbled as you drove over the swift, murky water. The whole experience creeped me out.

Miss Brenda felt certain the old green iron suspension bridge would not collapse. “We’ll be real careful,” she’d say.

I’d think about my choices, weighing the bridge against the ice cream and wondering if there were other options. Old people went to the Hillcrest. My cousins’ cousin had dubbed another local joint the Choke and Puke, so working up an appetite for that establishment proved a stretch. Besides, they allowed smoking and I was staunchly anti-tobacco.

Miss Brenda knew what to do. “What do you say we go to the Dairy Queen today? That-a-way we can get some good ice cream when we’re done with our burgers and fries,” she asked. The woman had taste.

In town, Miss Brenda knew everybody and spoke hellos to everyone, all of them familiar. When we were together, someone would always ask the not-old-maid schoolteacher, “Have you finally got a boyfriend, Miss Brenda?”

She played along, unoffended. “Yep, I’ve found me a feller,” she’d say, then give my worried little literal self an exaggerated smile as if to say, “But, of course, I’m just joking, right, Jamie?”

She always knew just what to say and do.

She’d order my food because once out of the car, I was a shy little boy again. She knew my order though.

“And give this little guy a plain cheeseburger – just meat, cheese, and bread with some French fries and lots of ketchup.” She’d go back to the counter for our ice cream after burgers.

After lunch we’d cross the river and enter back into the hills. After passing through the court square, we’d make our way to the car wash at the corner of Park and Pyburn across from the Masonic Cemetery. Each time we went, I feigned being scared of the big, monster-like spinning brushes, even though I’d been there with my mother and knew full well the car wash wouldn’t turn against me.

The blue beast hit the windshield while the power washers ominously pelted the dust off the sides of Miss Brenda’s car. My companion would play along with my game. We would cower and hunker in tandem and then coo and sigh in relief after the looming figure passed over us.

Going back into the hills the same way we’d come, we’d resume listening to country music. Other than mumbling along with “Jesus Loves Me” because my mother and the congregation’s old people watched closely, I didn’t sing much in church.

No “Hilltops of Glory” or “Paradise Valley” for me, not with all those people — 25 on a good Sunday — looking at me. Being one of the only children at church made me somewhat of a celebrity, which I liked just fine one-on-one, but I didn’t want a gaggle of old floral-clad women fawning over me all at once. I certainly wasn’t sure enough of my little boy voice to sing, especially as there were no instruments to drown me out.

But in the car on the backroads with Miss Brenda Gunshark, I sang the lights out, and she sang with me.

Little did I know then that she was setting me up for her own amusement.

The Oak Ridge Boys would start off with “Eyes that look like heaven, lips like sherry wine.”

Of course I sang “cherry” and judged them for drinking anything stronger than Welch’s grape juice, which, depending on which lady prepared communion, I could or could not get a swig of after church. Mrs. Ava Jewel Haley didn’t play. The Lord’s Supper was no game. The Wilson women would wink and pass me a shot glass of Welch’s.

I could never remember the lyrics to “Elvira” until it got to the good part, so I stayed silent and ready until Miss Brenda prompted me.

“Now, Jamie, you know we have to sing this next part real loud, okay?”

I nodded. Fine by me.

So I’m singin’ ...

Hell-fire-up, Hell-fire-up
My heart’s on fire for Hell-fire-up
Giddy Up Oom Poppa Omm Poppa Mow Mow
Giddy Up Oom Poppa Omm Poppa Mow Mow
Hi, Old Silver, away

When we sang the giddy up part, I pantomimed riding a horse. One named Old Silver, naturally.

Oh, how she would chuckle! I’d ask why, and she’d just say she really enjoyed this song and my singing of it. Getting the preacher’s kid to sing “hell-fire-up” instead of “Elvira” apparently tickled her.

I wasn’t allowed to say cuss words, but I was allowed to sing along with country songs on the radio no matter what they sang, and the Oaks were clearly saying, “Hell-fire-up!”

Memories such as these remind me how much I loved church as a child, back when my world was simple, being a Christian was easy, and everyone loved me. “Sweet little Jamie,” the church ladies called me, knowing full well my name was James. While my brother and the other boys were described as 100 percent boy, rowdy, or rambunctious, I received a feminized nickname and was lauded for my kindness.

In time I’d come to identify with progressive politics and religion, seeing the larger world far differently than I did growing up on the country roads of northeastern Arkansas. I also finally came out as gay.

Supporting Obama and Hillary were the penultimate straws that eventually broke the proverbial camel’s back, but divorcing my wife and coming out proved more than many church folks could take.

I was no longer sweet little Jamie in their eyes. Many of the people who had thought me the persimmon’s pucker as a child dropped me like a hot potato as an adult. They no longer knew what or who I was, other than someone who appeared to have abandoned their way of life.

Finally, with my 40th birthday barreling down on me, I am reclaiming the peace I had as a little boy. This preacher’s son has disappointed many — including God, insist many of the faithful — but I take comfort in the hope I find in the words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew.

“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall rest unto your souls.”

My life has changed, and for the better. Darting in and out of the Ozarks at will or when called suits me better than living in those foothills full time. My childhood and the implied innocence that came with it has vanished, my grandparents have received their heavenly rewards, and I just don’t seem to fit the mold anymore. Those who insist it’s me who’s changed, not them, are correct, but it doesn’t mean it’s not still my home too.

I miss the dirt roads, the singing, the fellowship, the food. I miss the good old country people. I miss Miss Brenda Gunshark, who, though beloved, was also only one of many folks from my childhood who made me feel like I belonged, at least for a while, for no other reason than I was just a sweet little boy.

They say you can never go home again; I say you can only go home in your memories. I go home every time I hear and sing along with 1980s country songs like “Elvira.” I believe Miss Brenda Gunshark is in the great cloud of witnesses singing too, and smiling all the livelong day.