The Real Memphis Mike (don't settle for imitations)

The Bible was always clear on the subject: the dead would rise again.  Thessalonians, Corinthians, Isaiah, John, Revelation - they all foretold it happening. Even the Torah and Quran gave fair warning.  I guess no one took the advice too seriously. Most folks just preferred quoting the parts that felt personal. Scripture has long been used in attempts to justify our inhumanity toward one another. But then it happened. Evans City, Pennsylvania was a small town of fewer than 2,000 people. Another 4,500 lay buried in its cemetery. It was the latter figure which presented the initial problem. No preacher shouted, " the dead in Christ shall rise! " There was no warning at all. Scripture had always been clear on that too. One by one, the dead did rise. And they were angry. Imagine resting peacefully, presumably for eternity, and something wakes you. Not unlike disturbing an afternoon nap, they rose groggy, confused, and downright pissed off. And they were hungry too. Maybe they gue...

There is, among the older settlements north and east of Pittsburgh, a class of stories which sensible men ordinarily dismiss as the natural offspring of isolation, excessive winter weather, and the habitual exaggeration of country people. These tales persist nevertheless. They cling to the valleys the way mist clings to the hillsides. One hears them in fragments beside potbellied stoves, in the back corners of feed stores, in hunting camps after midnight, and occasionally from old women who lower their voices without altogether realizing they have done so. The subjects vary. Certain ridges are avoided. Certain hollows are said to “carry sound wrong.” There are roads where livestock refuse to pass after dark. And in the deeper Pennsylvania country, where the fog settles low and stubborn among the hills, there remain whispers of a people once known as - though never openly discussed -    the Shim-O-Mites. I first encountered mention of them during the winter of 1856 while t...

There’s old folks up through the hills of Pennsylvania who’ll tell you, plain as day, not to whistle after dark. Most young people laugh at it now, of course. They laugh at haints too, right up until some lonely night when the woods start sounding a little too alive. But the old folks always knew better. My gran used to tell us this story whenever the evenings got still and the thrushes, warblers, and whippoorwills started up beyond the fields. She’d sit out back with her old pipe, rocking slow, the tobacco glowing red in the dark while us kids huddled around trying to act brave. “Don’t you kids go whistlin’ after sundown,” she’d say. “Ain’t nothing in them woods meant to answer back.” Then she’d tell about Elias Griggs. This would’ve been a long time before I was born, back when there were still logging camps scattered through the hills and whole stretches of mountain where a body could walk half a day without seeing another soul. Elias Griggs lived alone in a little cabin near the ti...

He had a head full of demons - and they always had questions. “WHY?” was the loudest. Why did he do that? Why didn’t he do that? Then came the endless parade of shoulda-coulda-wouldas. How and When appeared less often. The devil, he suspected, wasn’t nearly as interested in details as people liked to believe. Only if they served his twisted purpose. He’d noticed a behavior pattern emerging among his aging contemporaries. A desperate need to relive the same dreams they’d spent entire lifetimes chasing. They were all old men now, though some refused to accept it. Maybe they’d simply avoided the physical cruelties of time. Maybe they were more stubborn than he was. Or maybe they were too damned blind to see the world in front of them. His own relevance had risen, dwindled, and changed shape more times than he could count. Most days he just wanted a nap. Another cup of coffee usually sufficed. He didn’t miss the hangovers, though he occasionally missed the feeling that induced them - that ...

He'd been trapped in his house for five years.  Not imprisoned exactly. No court had ordered it. No chains held him there. His own body had simply staged a quiet rebellion and won. A series of health problems had reduced his world to a few safe pathways through a three-bedroom house in a respectable neighborhood with a respectable yard. He had once traveled the world. He had stood on foreign streets where he could not read the signs or understand the language, and somehow had felt less lost there than he did now standing at the bottom of his own staircase. The stairs terrified him. They waited every morning like a dare. Go ahead, old man. Climb. One wrong step and they would finish what time had started. So his life became measured in reachable things. The bathroom. The kitchen. The chair beside the window. The distance from the couch to the front door on bad days. The slow geography of decline. His wife still worked. Still moved through the world with purpose. They loved each othe...

Sometimes old stories become songs. Sometimes it's the other way 'round. - MM The grass out back needed cut something fierce. Following the heavy afternoon rain, the whole yard shimmered in the early evening sun like diamonds had somehow taken root in the dirt and grass alike. Steam rose from the fields beyond the house. The air smelled of wet earth, fish grease, and mildew. Inside, the baby just would not stop crying. Eddie sat slumped at the kitchen table while Mama had just started frying bluegill in an iron skillet blackened by thirty years of suppers. He looked bad. Worse than he had in a good while. His hair hung damp against his forehead and there were dark half-moons beneath his eyes. His shirt was streaked with mud up to the elbows. He kept rubbing at his temples like he was trying to press the pain out through his skull. “Can Mary fry some fish, Mama?” he muttered weakly. “I’m as hungry as can be.” “I’m already fixin’ it,” Mama answered softly. Eddie lowered his head...