ON THE SAVAGE SIDE is inspired by a true crime case known as the Chillicothe Six out of Chillicothe, Ohio. Chillicothe is a town I have known since I was a child. Part of my research in writing the novel, was to revisit those familiar ghosts. The Chillicothe Inn, the street that cuts through downtown, the river, and the paper mill that exhales its smoke like an old dragon on the edge of town.

It was on paper from that mill that I wrote my stories on when I was a child. Writing is the first thing I remember doing as a kid without being told to do so. There was an innate urge to grab the crayon and write down what was in my head. I would make my own homemade books using cardboard as the covers and bind them together with my mother Betty’s crochet yarn.

I published these homemade books under a publishing house named Sunshine, Sammy, & Fancy Paw Stories Publishing House, which was named after my cats at the time.

PICTURED FROM RIGHT: THE FOUNDERS OF THE PUBLISHING HOUSE: Sunshine, Fancy, and Sammy

I have always wanted to be a writer and I was lucky enough to be brought up in a house full of books and by a mother who stressed the importance of reading. I was raised in Southern Ohio, which is a place of myth and legend. It is there that the dense woodlands hang with mist and twisting grapevines. Where the rock, as old as anything juts out from the hillsides to remind you that the land had once known dinosaurs. From the time I was a kid, I found story in everything. A fork could be a wizard’s wand, the leaf fallen at my feet was the footprint of a brontosaurus, and the river was the long tongue of the jaguar stalking the trees that I climbed to the very top of.

 APPALACHIAN DREAM

I quicken my pace across the open

and bewildered dance hall. The yard, monstrous, heaped

with fists and stars. I gaze out

through the holes in your handkerchief.

The finest soft milky moon, balances

upon our shoulders. I remember the springs,

like a fever of red clover. The old plow marks, filling

up each rain. The wild rabbits are witchy, beyond

hearts and hills, continents above,

they eat the white paper notices.

When grandfather was twenty,

the plants grew for him.

Now the notices stick on the windowpanes

like snowflakes caught

from old winters past.

Grandmother begs to stay. She eats her chocolate

and thinks of better days.

She now jumps

over the tub, fearful of the moving hands

in front of the mirror.

I’m married to the moon, she says. I can’t leave my husband.

But the coat’s pocket is empty, and the fields are barren.

A goodnight sails across the darkness.

Under old trees, in the crystal path,

we must carefully place the memories. 

I shiver into the firm beating of the dirt.

My bones hidden amongst the promise of the Appalachian dream.

I twist away until I am taller,

away from the ventriloquist to break my wires.

I open my own mouth to say,

Here is my song.

I was fortunate to be raised not only in the Cherokee culture, but in nature, surrounded with gardens bursting with plants, in woods full of wildlife, and in the hills that were ripe with legends of their own. Standing on the banks of the river, where the gars emerged with their heads up like alligators, my father once told me a zoo had gone belly up and released its lions, tigers and bears into the woods. I walked with the dragons of lore. It is that same stirring of mist and myth that I returned to as I wrote ON THE SAVAGE SIDE.

NEWSPAPER ANNOUNCEMENT

Folklore is fierce.

Beloved and ignited

In folk devotion I take my body

to the rich bottom lands in the

foothills of the Ohio valley.

It is tradition here to make

the furniture for the wedding

bed. Like a crown

or a superstition,

the hillbillies are ragged

and the customs are twinkling

out against modern cures

and tokens. Crime is king.

Drug is centered.

In the pasture, victims lay

with the pigs, wondering

when the doe got so violent

and bullet holes were the easiest way

to be buried by our fathers

who drank too much milk and butter.

I have over twenty novels written and in many, I flip through my personal memories. In the case of the characters of Aunt Clover and Addie in ON THE SAVAGE SIDE, I remembered those moments I spent with my aunts Fraya and Flossie. I wrote of them in my previous book, BETTY. My aunts were women who each dealt with addiction in their lives. The savage side of life exists. For some of us, it exists a little more.

MY AUNT WAS A WITCH

The frog stiffened

into a flinty lure. Beyond the buried

spells we invite

sparks and squeals,

piteously ignorant of the dumb thanks

we ferry across the shore.

We tried to catch the rain

that flooded your life,

drop by drop.

They say when you drowned,

it was a curse.

But this is a mortal story,

unseen except by the dust

spelling forth, like the hatred

of your burial. They hung her

for revenge. She would pay

your death, they said, her legs swinging

back and forth over the dandelions.

Bright yellow. And a crack

in the flesh. We can blossom

out of protest to your hanging,

Auntie.

We can pray you

into a lady, but you’ll still

be jagged

under the cape and the urn

will still be full

of your ashes

we have yet to spread. We fear the flowers

that grow. This pious town has already lit

the match, believing the devil

is in your daughter, too.

In many ways, going back to Chillicothe with this story was also rewinding the years. I had grown up in communities impacted by drugs and generational addiction in both south central and southern Ohio.

 I played with kids like Arc and Daffy, the twin sisters in the novel. I knew these kids were coming from different homes than my own. Their homes were broken by addiction and they often suffered emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. One of these kids, I have remained friends with throughout our lives. Though her path has led her down a road similar to Arc and Daffy’s, she shares their survivor spirit.

SAID THE GIRL ON MY STREET

My mouth is wide and has no name,

but I am shiny and ride among the stars. 

Causing a flood with my tears,

I follow the galaxy line, past the planets

And their festivals of men. In a metal

Universe, I catch the iron butterflies

Their wings like a wormhole I travel

To the reflection of myself. At the speed

Of light, I refine my generation into a sculpture

That is not without thought. In a room

Full of authors, there is one god.

Resting in the heavens, the sky black,

But detailed in violet, I can smell the odors

Of power. There is science in my heart, but savages

On my body. Kicking and screaming, I tell them

I am a god. They write hieroglyphics with the smoke

Of their cigarettes, while I wear an eclipse

On my complexion, shading out the sun

For another night.

As I wrote the characters of Arc and Daffy, short for Arcade and Daffodil, I knew I wanted to explore the entire arc of their lives, from childhood to adulthood, so that they are fully formed, and not just the shadows of the headlines from the crime. Together they form a small band of friendship with local women. They call themselves the Chillicothe Queens. They escape to their distant mountain by the river where they speak in their own language of myth and legend.

GIRL, BE GOOD

Little sister? Did you boil

the sugar in the kitchen?

Until it’s crystal clear enough

to see our futures in? 

I am the shape

of someone’s mother.

I don’t know her.

I think she lives

in the shadows,

or works only weekdays

when the mornings

are parted by hymns

and nylons.

My bed is preface to blame.

Despite decisions already made,

I toy with trouble.

Give me a few seconds

to put my flesh back on. 

I love feeling the grimy power

of old

and good wonders.

Little sister, here’s my wisdom,

few understand how sweet honey is.

Do not be one of them.

I have always lived by a river. Anyone who has grown up by water has likely learned how to skip a stone. An important lesson, passed down through the generations. Because if something as heavy as a rock can skip across the delicate path of water without sinking, then there is hope that we, too, may skip across the tides to the shelter on the other side.

LOST OHIO

The doe was no match for the tricking

wood that sourced

recollections from beloved pride and ignited

the folk to devotion.

Pioneers would have had better ways to bewitch

the raccoons and pigs

in an expression of molasses. The Appalachian dialect

is now boiling

like apple peelings left too long in the oil.

No more quilting

bees or literary box suppers or pie

socials. The singing schools have all closed

and the Halloween parties are too poor

for masks. Maybe the spiders still meet

in the big meetings. The ghosts passing third base, peddling,

to the horsemen who still walk the peach trees,

looking for hitchhikers and lost lovers in the mist

that stops at the edge of Ohio’s farthest county.