Dolly Parton and Ansel Adams take on the Rednecks, 1a

Dolly Parton and Ansel Adams Take on the Rednecks

 

Sky stretches overhead.  Dramatic clouds, perfect shadows on the rocks, but Dolly doesn't notice.

When she sees pick up trucks on the horizon, she thinks of a new song.  Underfoot:  clay pigeons, broken

By birdshot or bullets, and one real pigeon, his neck exploded.  The no hunting sign is full

Of holes.  Ansel's on his knees fiddling with f-stops and shutter speeds.  He doesn't notice

the trucks coming or the song Dolly is humming now.  When she begins singing

about forsaken love, thinking about how Ansel is ignoring her,

he says, shhh, you'll scare the heron.  The pick up trucks speed toward them. The first donuts

in the wet field, spraying mud On the Graphlex.  Dolly Parton giggles.  Nervously.  Her breasts jiggle,

but Ansel Adams doesn't notice.  He's wiping mud off with a White hankie.  It's not enough. 

He'd like Dolly's skirt, all that voluminous fabric, but untucks his shirt instead.

The next truck shoots not only mud, but A half-filled beer can.  When it hits the camera The spay

splashes Ansel's face. The third truck is shooting At the first, and red shells pop out the window. 

Buckshot whistles around Ansel Adam's head.   His geese rise from the pond, the heron

lifts from the shoreline.  It's not hunting season, but three of the geese  fall to the ground

around Dolly with plump thuds.  She thinks goose dinner, until one moans,

soft and gurgly.  She rushes over, wants to be sick, wants save it.  But the rednecks

are splashing by again, spraying her dress and the round

flesh above is with mud.  Cold mud.  Dolly shrieks.

She picks up the spare tripod and swings it at the next truck,

cracking the windshield.  She runs toward the third truck,

screaming and waving the tripod.  Through the muddy lens Ansel captures a shot of it, and another

of the truck bearing down on Dolly.  In the last shot, the grill is inches from the Graphlex

And Ansel is airborne, arms akimbo. 

 

Mary Stebbins

060312a

 

--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats
Mary