New Voices - 2012

and he was prouder of that bike than anything else that he owned, aside from his bird dogs. For years I would see him riding that motorcycle in his chewed-up loafers and hunting jacket, sometimes on the highway, and sometimes on the muddy paths of his shooting preserve. Some months went by, and I hadn’t seen Mr. Welch on his bike. He was once again driving his old burgundy Toyota pickup, his dog Blue Duck in the seat beside him. I asked him where his Harley was one day, and he told me that he didn’t have it anymore. His grandson had failed the eleventh grade a couple of times, so Shorty told him that if he passed, he would give him his bike. The next year the boy passed, and Mr. Welch made good on his promise.

As I have grown older, I have become more aware of the intricacies of living in New Hope, South Carolina. When I stop at Harvey’s Grocery to buy a Coke and fill up my truck with gas, the old man behind the counter talks to me for a while, and Ms. Barbara invites me over to her house for supper as she sweeps the wooden floors. The man in the yard sells me squash and okra, and I give him a ride down the road to his sister’s house. I know when the little boy down the road gets a whipping, and when Shorty’s favorite dog dies, I hear about it. Those are things that don’t happen everywhere in the world, and they are things that you don’t realize mean so much to you until they’re gone.

A few weeks ago, I was driving by Shorty’s place, and there was a cluster of police cars and a coroner’s van parked out by his fly-pen. I saw Mr. Welch leaning against his truck holding his head in his hands. I carried on home, wondering what had happened. That evening, he came down to our house. He told us that, early that morning, he and his son had put out a few birds and worked their dogs together. Shorty had to leave, so his son stayed behind to clean the birds and the guns. When Shorty returned, he found his son lying in a pool of blood, shot in the head with his own gun.

No one knows for sure what happened to Mr. Welch’s son. Shorty says that something happened when he was cleaning the gun, perhaps he forgot to unload it and it went off unexpectedly. In truth, it doesn’t much matter what happened, as he is gone and nothing can change that. For selfish reasons, I grieve over this man’s passing. I never met him, but his father is a man that has been a part of my life, and I wonder whether he will ever be the same. I fear that he may not find the same joy in his dogs and the birds they hunt. I fear that he will not make time to pick grapes so that my grandfather can make his wine. I fear that the words with which he weaves his bizarre, antique stories will begin to falter. I fear that the old man will die.