Saturday 26 June 2021

'1967' by Jayne Martin

The bank had taken our land, but my grandpa swore they would not take our house. It was near dawn when they hitched it up and we hit the road. Cows bellowed their good-byes. We took the back roads, me and grandpa sitting up front with the truck driver. Me waving at the people bending their heads near all the way ‘round at the sight of the old house groaning past. I could tell we were out of Kansas when the smell of freshly tilled soil vanished and the air turned brown from factory smoke. There didn’t seem to be any place to put our house and I wondered how well Grandpa had thought this out. He said we were taking it to Graceland, that Elvis would let us put it on his place, that they’d been friends in the Army. He’d called Elvis “son.” A fly buzzed around our heads in the cab. I opened the window and it flew back toward Kansas.

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