Monday, March 13, 2006

Dolly Parton and Ansel Adams take on the Rednecks 060313b


Dolly Parton and Ansel Adams Take on the Rednecks

 

Sky stretches overhead.  Dramatic clouds, perfect shadows

on the rocks.  Dolly watches not shadows, but pick up trucks

on the horizon.  She imagines a new song.  Underfoot:  clay pigeons, broken

by birdshot or bullets, and one real pigeon, 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 hums, tapping her fingers on the spare tripod. 

When she begins singing about forsaken love, imagining Ansel ignoring her,

he whispers, "Shhh, you'll scare the heron."  The pick up trucks speed toward them.

The first truck donuts in the wet field, spraying mud on the Hasselblad. 

Dolly Parton giggles.  Nervously.  Her breasts jiggle, but Ansel Adams, wiping mud

off the camera with a hankie, smearing the bright white, doesn't notice breasts.  It's not enough,

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

The next truck fires 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 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 it with mud.  Cold

mud.  The goose moans.  Dolly shrieks.  She swings the spare tripod 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 Hasselblad

and Ansel airborne, arms akimbo. 

 

Mary Stebbins

060313b, 060312a

 


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

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