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I’m writing from my thirty-sixth year.
It’s snowing.
Mom claims the winter of ’88 was the worst one ever. I can’t remember. I can barely recall ten years back when I’d just been hired as the head football coach of the Clarksville Panthers.
I was twenty-six and thought I knew everything.
Ten years before that — the same distance between the author version of Eli and the coach version — I was a sophomore quarterback for the Russellville Cyclones, and yes, I still thought I knew everything.
Time is strange.
The older you get, the more it shrinks. Literally. I’m talking fractions here. One year to a two-year old is half of his entire existence. One year to a thirty-six-year-old is only one thirty-sixth of his life.
Or, as Coach Williams once put it: “Life is like a roll of toilet paper; the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes.”
Amen, Captain. Amen.
It’s been a slow, cold day at the lake. The kids are out of school, stomping around above my office, waiting until I’m done “working” so we can go outside and play.
Last year, my son’s sled hit a tree. He was okay but it scared him. He keeps saying he’s not going to sled. My wife, a master subject-changer, asks both kids: “How old is Daddy today?”
One says forty-nine. The other eighty-something. I’d take eighty-something. Johnny Wink’s eighty-something. In ten more years, my dad will be eighty-something, too.
When we go out to my parents’ house, Dad gets “air” on the blue sled. He also veers off into the woods and almost takes out both kids. After witnessing Dad's daredevil moves, my son decides he’ll give the blue sled a try, too.
Little man starts at the bottom of the hill and slides down. After such a slow ride, he moves up a little. Then a little more, and more. Until, finally, my son is at the top of the hill with the rest of us, as high as we can go.
Back at home, the kids are exhausted.
My wife and I get them to bed early, a little before eight, then sit down cross-legged on the living room floor. The lake is calm through the nearby picture window, a pane of black glass against the snow-lined shore. My wife sets a timer for three minutes. We press our backs together. We close our eyes. We breathe.
Of all the 1,440 minutes that compose today, these three are my favorite, shorter — relatively, fractionally — than the three that came before it, but deeper, somehow, too.
The timer goes off.
I open my eyes and feel my wife’s back moving, her vocal cords rattling air that tickles my eardrums, forming words I’ve heard but never quite felt like this before:
“Happy birthday.”
| 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: |
• Writing From Forrest City, Arkansas
• Writing From Nap Time
• Writing From Winter Park, Colorado
• Writing from the end of the year
• Writing from First United Methodist Church
• Writing from the end of the first semester
• Writing from the cusp of another visit
• Writing from a Razorback Game
• Writing From: The End
• Writing from Oyster Island
• Writing from Jayne Lemons
• Writing from Bed
• Writing from Witherspoon Hall
• Writing From: Coco
• Writing from the Beach
• Writing From: Crooked Creek
• Writing from a Nursing Home
• Writing from a Firework Tent
• Writing from a Boat
• Writing from the Stars
• Writing from the Pool
• Writing from the Kitchen
• Writing from Summer
• Writing from Kindergarten
• Writing from Mom
• Writing from a Plane
• Writing from Home
• My second novel’s publication
• A New Marriage Milestone
• An Invitation to the Party
• Writing from a Thunderstorm
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• Writing from a Soundbooth
• Writing from “Jazz Beach"
• Writing from the Sabbath
• Writing from somewhere between Little Rock and Russellville
• Writing from my back deck
• Writing from the morning of my thirty-fifth year
• Writing on the day of the college football National Championship
• Writing from the space between breaths
• Writing from 2022
• Writing from the glow of a plastic Christmas tree
• Writing on a rollercoaster of triumph and disaster
• Writing from the drop-off line at my daughter’s elementary school
• Writing with Thanksgiving on my mind
• Writing from the crowd before the start of a Shovels & Rope show
• Writing from the depths of a post-book-festival hangover
• Writing from the Ron Robinson Theatre
• Writing to you on Halloween Eve
• Writing from my bed on a Saturday morning
• Writing from my office with two darts clenched in my left hand
• Writing from the shade of my favorite tree
• Writing from my desk on a Tuesday morning
• Writing from a pirate ship
• Writing from the airport
• Writing from the hospital
• I'm writing from the water
• Writing from my wife's Honda Pilot
• Writing from my office |
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