Untelling
UNTELLING
Bernard Clay
Where I’m from, like here, words are the currency that enriches us, the bustling economy that can never be debased—their value derived through exchange, infinitely multiplying denominations for ‘most anyone to bank. And back in the west end of louisville, we had a relative phrase: “ain’t no telling”—a cousin to this word, close but not quite the same, lacking the swiss army knife versatility implied by its Appalachian kin’s literal meaning: to cut those ole albatross of inherited truths noosed around our throats off; unravel those sinister stories that we echo.
This schrodinger‘s-cat-of a word I wished was nestled in my back pocket when I first moved here to eastern kentucky. What serenity in inhabiting the spaces between the known and unknown—to have accepted then that these woods surrounding my displaced suburban-style ranch plunged in the throat of a holler slope were not my front lawn. Whatever shuffled out there beckoning me in the middle of the night wasn’t neighborhood kids and didn’t need to be chased. But there I was barefooted, nostrils filled with mycelium molecules, neck-goosebumps prickled to the slasher movie score of a billion tree frogs’, iphone in hand, its pinhole flashlight futilely hammering at the night—In all my learned gentry-ness (that needed untelling) yelling “who goes there?” into the void like I own what was never ownable.
No, if I’d truly understood untelling back then, I would have instantly choked down my urge to dominate, would’ve let them woods be the woods, and kept it moving like I didn’t hear a damn thing.
And maybe when I saw those zigzagging tiny tanks that, every time it rains, turn my cave-cool concrete basement floor into a hunting ground—mirroring the south-face sandstone-addled hill rising off the driveway—I wouldn’t have had my breath taken by their glassy obsidian exoskeleton, pincers snapping as dual threats, flanked by a poised-to-strike cobra-like tail barreling on a peloton of eight blurry legs, leaving me to question, “what are you things”—creatures that should be locked away in some insectarium or off in some far-flung savage desert—”doing here?” In this rare corner of Appalachia, where I chose to put down stakes?
And I asked this of these primordial ancients—here longer than banjos, longer than danny boone’s stolen trails, here before Those who revered this place most deeply still walked it. But if I’d embraced the ontelling’ist of it all, I’d have counted my blessings of never being stung (just dozens of stare-downs, eye to constellation of eyes), and I’d have named this place Scorpion Holler instead of hollow.
But the best use case emerges when those from ‘round these parts are taken aback, asking through disdain and disbelief: “What are you doing here? In Berea?” like it’s the biggest mystery ever. Instead of unfurling the whole history—my herbalist partner, my dream of collabo’ing with Earth to grow, my folks imprisoned at the ashland plantation 30 miles up the road just four generations ago, the legacy of Farristown just minutes away, where the college’s first students lived pre-day law—as the poser’s eyes glaze over with each detail, now I just leave it up to them to interpret my intent and meaning and I break them off a little change and say: “Oh, (unbearably long pause) it’s untelling.”
A Kentucky native, Bernard Clay connects the lively streets of Louisville with the misty hills of eastern Kentucky. He resides at Scorpion Hollow Holler Farm with his partner, herbalist Lauren.
ISSUE 2 | WINTER 2024
