Karen Spears Zacharias @ Bowling Green, pt. 2

The second of two dispatches Karen sent from southern Kentucky this weekend. She'll be doing another book festival next month in New Orleans, and I hope we'll get to hear about it...

If dogwoods are the lace of God then Kentucky is God's Belgium.

Silas House said his wife told him this morning that the dogwoods are blooming along their river bed. It's difficult to sit at a table in a huge conference room hawking books on days like this. It's even more discouraging when only a couple of people turn out to hear you read and only a few buy your books, as was my experience and that of others at the Southern Kentucky Bookfest.

But every festival has its strength and Southern Kentucky's is the associations one makes. First thing this morning, Silas introduced me to one of his personal favorites, the poet Jane Hicks of East Tennessee. Since my father was an East Tennesse native, Silas figured Jane and I to be practically cousins. I've been collecting poetry and was quick to pick up her Blood & Bone Remember. The colorful cover depicts a handstitched quilt. Silas said he'd wanted to use it for his Parchment of Leaves cover but since that didn't happen, Jane used it for her own collection.

Her "Spring 1991: Reunion" tugged at my ragged seams.

"Thirteen small flags at the head of the table
for country boys who forgot the lessons
of our grammar school days, duck
and cover, safe routes homes …"

Jane said that's how many of her classmates were killed in Vietnam. This from a rural school in remote east Tennessee. My father was such a man.

I deal daily with the families who are losing loved ones in this war. And daily I bear witness to a disengaged public. I once heard Barry Hannah claim, "It's the juxtapositions of the South that get to you--the rich, the poor, the black, the white."

That's not just true of the South, but our nation as a whole. I spent two hours on the phone yesterday with widows in Fort Hood, Texas and Smiths Station, Alabama. They've been reading Hero Mama and finding their lives reflected back at them.

President Bush met briefly with the widows in Fort Hood last Wednesday. The Washington Post reported that one of those widows, Linnie Blankenbecler, gave Bush an earful about her and her daughter's plight. The other thing Linnie did was hand-deliver a personalized copy of Hero Mama to Bush. Journalists are always asking me if I wrote the book as an antiwar message. I reply that it is simply the story of a family's sacrifice. I have a hard time trusting that a president who doesn't read newspapers will bother reading a book, especially one with such an intimate and honest account of what happens to the family of a soldier killed in action, but maybe Laura will have the courage to read it.

For the most part, the American public simply can't cope with such an uncomfortable topic. They'd rather not think about the children who lose parents to war. "Too close to home," one lady said as she put the book down.

Try telling that to more than 1,000 children who have currently lost fathers or mothers to this war, I want to shout. But I don't. I sit there and smile and try to be charming and witty, when what I really want to say is, "Two years into the Vietnam War, nobody thought we'd still be there ten years later, but we were. How many years will pass, how many more children will lose mamas or daddies, before someone decides enough is enough?"

Okay. Deep breath. Exhale.

Hannah's right. It's the juxtapositions in life that are so disturbing.

And that's why what we do as writers is so necessary. We coax along the timid, help them find their voice, their values, their passion, share with them our courage. And if we are really skillful, we make them laugh, make them cry, make them care about themselves, and momentarily, maybe, their enemies.

Patriotism and the way it divides us has been troubling Silas of late. He's penning a story about it. I leave Kentucky thankful for the dogwoods that bloom along the river bed, because as my heels sink in the mud created from sacrificial blood, I'm able to steady myself against the powerful prose of native sons like Silas.