Days of Wildfires, or (The End of My Father’s Drug-Addicted Life)
A memoir of the time immediately surrounding the passing of my father in late 2016, following decades of active hard drug addiction.
“Mountains rough this time of year. They close the highway down. They don’t warn the town.”
— Jason Isbell, “Traveling Alone” (song)
The mountains were on fire, and I drove as Amanda rode beside me. The smell of burning forests penetrated every gap it could find in Black Betty, my 2012 Chevy Impala, the first car I ever bought on my own.
Black Betty had done her fair share of trips into the Cumberland Gap since March 2014, when I first bought her.
From my hometown of Clinton, Tennessee, through the Powell River Valley, and into Tazewell, Tennessee, where my Dad had been arrested multiple times on various drug-related charges.
First, it was the one where he and a girlfriend got arrested for passing out in his Toyota Highlander, fucked up on God only knows what.
There was the one after that where he had to turn himself in for an outstanding charge in Anderson County, Tennessee…
