BETWEEN THE TRACKS

You still have time to get a copy at Amazon.com. Or, on TYbee Island on Friday night at Bingo, you can pick up an autographed copy. $20.00

Ezekiel 16:6: Then I passed by and saw you squirming in your own blood. You were covered with blood, but I wouldn’t let you die. Ezekiel was an Israelite priest and prophet. Babylonian Exile. Visions. Destruction of Jerusalem. Restoration of Israel. 593 to 571 BC, give or take. My Aunt Anzie was neither. Not a prophet. Not a priest. A Gunther woman. Tradewater River. Dalton, Ky. That’s all that…

Personally signed books available locally on Friday nights at Bingo at the Tybee American Legion. $20.00.

A U.S. Army Cessna O-1A Bird Dog (s/n 51-12711) in flight. (Photo US Army) Dawn on Con Son Island, South Vietnam April 29, 1975 Before a shred of sunlight tore into the horizon, Con Son’s runway in South Vietnam lay swathed in an acrid hush. The air tasted of iron and dread, thick enough to crawl under Major Buang-Ly’s collar and stick to his spine. He stood on crumbling concrete, each scuff…

Once a Jarhead Always … I’ve known Marines. Jar heads. Hair silvered. Eyes holding stories. Mr. H.C. Beck’s back is bent slightly now. He settles into a wheelchair. Humbled by a car that hit him while riding his scooter. He’s still kicking. Mr. Dale Vaughn’s voice rumbled through the library conference room. He read his poetry. Was Kentucky’s poet laureate. One of the finest teachers in our…

The best gifts for fathers are the ones you can talk about later. BETWEEN THE TRACKS by Darryl Armstrong is a collection of “down-home-heartfelt” tales gathered over sixty years-stories about mercy and redemption (Louis and his stray hound Oscar), about living fully (ninety-year-old Lincoln’s last Disney ride), about finding extraordinary moments in ordinary days. These characters, from eight to…

Memorial Day, 1979. Washington, D.C. She had invited me for the weekend. D.C. was as much a taste in my mouth as a place. A city that hung itself over my shoulders. Pressed against my tongue. Thick with the scent of wet asphalt, garbage, pot smoke, fireworks, and the sound of stories circling the monuments. In D.C., dusk leaks in through the seams of every window. It’s a feeling that is slow…

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth hosts a reenlistment ceremony for U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Joey Jones at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., May 20, 2026. (DoW photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Madelyn Keech) Joey Jones, Marine, Re-enlists in the Marines It just makes sense. Joey Jones is hard to stop. Same as always. Marines are like that. You could see it in his eyes. The part of him that…

River and mountain people know things. Before the rest of us do. There are signs if you watch and listen, they say. 12 May 1998. Good spring day. Dogwoods are still holding. My father was in his final hours. Cancer took him slowly. He held the line. Scared, I think. He had finally begun to live his life. His depression had been overcome by the realization. A terminal illness will get your…

November 1846. The Essex II rode a low swell toward Nantucket Shoals. Iron-sheathed bow. Cold Atlantic water. Before dawn, she scraped an uncharted reef fourteen miles out. The hull shuddered. Then split. Saltwater exploded through the seams like molten silver shooting through cracks in a stove. Timbers cracked below deck. Men shouted. The deck pitched bow-down. Water poured in by the barrelful.…

I married a linguist. She studied language. How it moves and changes. Where it comes from. I didn’t know much about any of that. But she did. And when she met Momma, something lit up in her. Momma was a country woman. Grew up down on the river. Her people were from the mountains. She talked the way they all talked in her upbringing. I never thought twice about it. The wife would lean over at…

Mother’s Day always arrived first as a smell. Cut grass, turned earth, the faint sweetness of something blooming just out of reach. By May, Mom’s garden was already wide awake. Tulips she’d tucked into October soil now stood trembling, three feet tall. Roses she’d hacked down months before had come back furious, their canes heavy with bloom. Easter drew her out onto the porch and down the…

December 10, 2021. They called it The Beast. An EF-4. The National Weather Service tracked it for days. They got it right. It plowed through Princeton—my hometown—as though it had been waiting all its life. I was in Georgia, watching the radar on an island of quirky folks. The miles felt like iron chains. It missed our cabin on Lake Barkley by a hundred yards. One hundred yards. Across the…

Twenty years ago. May 5th. Momma died. Peacefully. At home. Miss Juanita called. Kay and I were in Washington. Kay was running a big event. She was outstanding as always. I was toting boxes. Doing what she told me. We were at the Air and Space Museum, the one out near Dulles. Bigwigs. Blowhards. The kids loved it. I asked Miss Juanita to hold the phone to Momma’s ear. I talked to her. Told her…

I see their pop-up camper by Lake Barkley in the heat-hazed 1970s. Its once-bright paint has softened to chalky streaks, and pine needles form a fragrant carpet around it. Becky and I bounce along rutted dirt roads in my battered International Scout, the back piled with a springy foam mattress and two quilts as thick and heavy as town blankets—one patched in florals, the other in bold…