A word has followed me my whole life. It describes a state of being, it rests heavy in the world of terms and such, it lays down at the feet of existence as the most sublime and sinuous of adjectives. The word is not thrown around often by too many people. You had to have grown up with it resting heavy on the hearts of your folk and deep in the bowels of your existence. Lolling around in the populous East, I would assume you never hear it, at least not anymore. When I let it roll out, it’s always with a scratching in the throat and a murmur. To emphasize it would be to remove it’s power. Lonesome.
When I hear the plainative vocals of Hank Williams, it comes across and devastates. In his quaver and nasally delivery of lyrics full of colloquialism and truth, you catch it. The man knows how to say the word. It hits in a register that defies your apathy. I can sing, sometimes well. But not without the scratching ache of the word in my voice. When it’s a style of singing, it’s high lonesome. When you’re on your own, and know it well, it’s just plain old lonesome.
One time I was riding with my dad while he ran gas out to the farms south of Cahone, Colorado, along the old 666. somewhere on one of those straight and rust red roads, the old International Harvester bobtail tanker blew a head gasket. We sat next to the hulk in the acres and acres of beans as far as I could imagine. And I had trouble imagining past the San Juans, the Blues, the Sleeping Ute, the La Sals. They stood sentry around the Egnar Plains, scratching the sky. The Utes called the Blue Mountains the Abajos and believed that they held up the sky. I would have believed them at that age. I was young enough not to be in school, I know that. My dad walked away to a house huddled in some cottonwoods and willows and called for a tow.
When he came back, he sat down on the running board of the truck, next to where I was squatting in the shade under the fender. He had on a dirty white t-shirt stained a little red by the dirt tucked into a patched up pair of jeans with a pink shop rag hanging out of his back pocket, but he always seemed neat and tidy. He smelled like diesel. The wind kicked the Indian Paintbrush and the Sunflowers along the bar ditch around and we sat under the sky. I asked him what will happen to us, all the way out here.
He just stared off into the beans and said we just have to wait around.
Just us? The cedar and sage rimmed the bean field and disappeared over a low hill. Clouds, the few we could see, drifted along with shadows pulled underneath them on the beans and the maroon dirt.
He just sat on the running board and stared off into the Blues where he married my mother. They had to marry in Utah since Colorado would have required she be at least sixteen years old.
Just us, he said. All on our lonesome.
