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I’m writing from the cusp of another visit.
All four of my grandparents died while I was still in my teens. I started playing guitar after my mom’s dad “Poppy” passed. One of the first songs I ever wrote was called “Life,” even though it was about death and the three visits we all endure at some point.
My dad gave me the “three visits” idea. His mom was in the hospital. That’s what got Dad thinking about how when you’re little your grandparents are the first to pass. Then, when you’re around the same age as Dad was then, your parents depart. And finally, if you’re lucky, you’re Poppy’s age and it’s your time to go.
Heavy stuff for a fourteen-year-old, I know.
I still play that song sometimes. I still think about those three visits and how it doesn’t work like that for everybody. Sometimes, the order gets mixed up. Some people only get one visit — their own visit — and that’s a hard thought to reconcile, especially when you’re seven.
That’s how old my daughter is now.
A few weeks back, we were visiting my wife's grandparents at the StoneBridge Senior Living Center. My daughter likes to hug the residents who hang out in the lobby. As a result, those residents love my daughter. After the visit, my daughter asked how people got to be that old.
I was thinking about daily exercise, avoiding carcinogens and red meat, when my daughter said, “They must just be good people.”
I said, “Yeah?”
“Yeah, Dad, you’re always saying, ‘Do good things and good things happen.’ So, those people must’ve been real good to get to live that long.”
I wanted to believe her. I still do. I want to believe that there are rules to this world and that good people get a fair shake. They get their three visits in order and depart peacefully in their sleep when they’re eighty-something.
But it doesn’t always work that way, does it?
Sometimes, life doesn’t make sense, and yet we try to make sense of it. We try to assign meaning to the meaningless. We create our own fantasies, our own myths, to help ease the pain.
The other day, after my daughter’s seventh birthday party at the aquatic center, we left her favorite towel — a blue-and-yellow octopus-shaped towel — on top of the car. We didn’t realize this until we were driving down a highly congested stretch of Highway 64 and watched the towel go flying into a roadside ditch.
A week or so later, my mom found a blue-and-yellow octopus-shaped towel in the middle of Highway 333, up around Dover, over fourteen miles away.
Our family is split on this discovery. Half of us think it’s not the same towel. The other half, the true believers, are convinced the towel somehow made its way back to my daughter. We’ll never know the whole story. We’ll never get to see the journey that towel made after it left us.
Life, and death, work the same way.
I wish the secret to a happy life was as simple as doing good things. I wish death stuck to the schedule and only made three, preassigned visits. But I’m not fourteen anymore, and my daughter’s already older than she was when she lost her favorite towel, younger than I was when I had my first visit.
| Books authored by Eli Cranor |
Broiler
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The troubles of two desperate families—one white, one Mexican American—converge rest in the ruthless underworld of an Arkansas chicken processing plant in this new thriller from the award-winning author of DON’T KNOW TOUGH.
Gabriela Menchaca and Edwin Saucedo are hardworking, undocumented employees at the Detmer Foods chicken plant in Springdale, Arkansas, just a stone’s throw away from the trailer park where they’ve lived together for seven years. While dealing with personal tragedies of their own, the young couple endures the brutal, dehumanizing conditions at the plant in exchange for barebones pay.
When the plant manager, Luke Jackson, fires Edwin to set an example for the rest of the workers—and to show the higher-ups that he’s ready for a major promotion—Edwin is determined to get revenge on Luke and his wife, Mimi, a new mother who stays at home with her six-month-old son. Edwin’s impulsive action sets in motion a devastating chain of events that illuminates the deeply entrenched power dynamics between those who revel at the top and those who toil at the bottom.
From the nationally bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author of Don’t Know Tough and Ozark Dogs comes another edge-of-your-seat noir thriller that exposes the dark, bloody heart of life on the margins in the American South and the bleak underside of a bygone American Dream. |
Don't Know Tough
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In Denton, Arkansas, the fate of the high school football team rests on the shoulders of Billy Lowe, a volatile but talented running back. Billy comes from an extremely troubled home: a trailer park where he is terrorized by his mother’s abusive boyfriend. Billy takes out his anger on the field, but when his savagery crosses a line, he faces suspension.
Without Billy Lowe, the Denton Pirates can kiss their playoff bid goodbye. But the head coach, Trent Powers, who just moved from California with his wife and two children for this job, has more than just his paycheck riding on Billy’s bad behavior. As a born-again Christian, Trent feels a divine calling to save Billy—save him from his circumstances, and save his soul.
Then Billy’s abuser is found murdered in the Lowe family trailer, and all evidence points toward Billy. Now nothing can stop an explosive chain of violence that could tear the whole town apart on the eve of the playoffs. |
Ozark Dogs
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In this Southern thriller, two families grapple with the aftermath of a murder in their small Arkansas town.
After his son is convicted of capital murder, Vietnam War veteran Jeremiah Fitzjurls takes over the care of his granddaughter, Joanna, raising her with as much warmth as can be found in an Ozark junkyard outfitted to be an armory. He teaches her how to shoot and fight, but there is not enough training in the world to protect her when the dreaded Ledfords, notorious meth dealers and fanatical white supremacists, come to collect on Joanna as payment for a long-overdue blood debt.
Headed by rancorous patriarch Bunn and smooth-talking, erudite Evail, the Ledfords have never forgotten what the Fitzjurls family did to them, and they will not be satisfied until they have taken an eye for an eye. As they seek revenge, and as Jeremiah desperately searches for his granddaughter, their narratives collide in this immersive story about family and how far some will go to honor, defend—or in some cases, destroy it. |
| Previous columns: |
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• Writing from my back deck
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• Writing on the day of the college football National Championship
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