#ofhcstility

He was wandering the small length of Sylvester one evening, and had just knelt to photograph a man he had photographed previously in the breakyard of the mine coming home to his family. The man’s children’s excited screams filled the night so he didn’t blame himself when his viewfinder suddenly filled with a shock of red tangled hair and half a dirt smudged cheek, and a muffled angry young voice spat out ‘what the fuck are ya doin’ huh?’ His surprise at the voice made him tip over backwards, to the sound of a choked off throaty laugh, a bit like a fox gekkering. By the time he straightened himself out, his sneak attacker had assumed the position he had been in, trying to figure out what he had been doing. ’Whatcha doin’? Taking pictures of Mr. Gerald? His kids ride the bus with me. I don’t like any of them. Why are ya takin’ pictures? Are you a perv?’ The words were flowing as fast as Big Coal River behind them, and Alexi wanted to laugh when he fully observed her. A little girl who was about ten or 11, tangled flame colored hair and dirt streaked limbs crouched in the dust, a bottle of soda as big as her thigh beside her and a suspicious glare as she moved her sucker around her mouth. Her school bag was still on her back, and Alexi had to wonder if this little girl lived in one of the surrounding houses on the street. ‘I’m not a perv, but you shouldn’t be talking to strangers kid. I’m taking pictures for a book. Where’s your house? What’s your name? You shouldn’t be wandering out here at this hour,’ came his reply to her rapid fire of questions. ‘You look like a perv with your fancy camera, but nobody interestin’ is ever here so I wanted to talk to ya. And there ain’t any strangers here except you. I’m Cassie Poe, and I live over there.’ She pointed to a set of glowing lights set up the hill. And that’s how he met Cassidy Poe, who would become the main subject of his third photobook — ‘Pack’s Branch’ — named after the road she lived on. 

Cassie followed him repeatedly through the following two years as he learned more about the young girl’s life. She was just as loud and rude as she was when he first met her in those two years, and became intertwined in his life. She would often follow him on his travels around Sylvester as he finished up his photographs for his second photobook ‘Comminution’ which documented the declining coal mining industry in the Appalachian foothills. He taught her how to take photographs on his Leica R3, using the makeshift darkroom he convinced the manager to let slide, all while continuing to work as an auto mechanic and worming himself deeper into the community.

And part of that community was the rest of the Poe family. He felt similarly towards Austin Poe Jr. as he did towards his older sister but he thought their father was a truly dangerous man. This was only proved when one afternoon, Cassie climbed through his window with a kitten she plopped on his desk against his protestations and then flopped onto his bed saying with startling casualness that her father wanted to drown the kitten so when she wanted to save it he had slapped her. Alexi asked if this was a thing that happened often, her father laying hands on her, and she simply replied ‘he’s been like that since momma died.’ That night when her father showed up, he actually punched the man. Regardless, her father dragged her off, and it resulted in the most heartbreaking picture of ‘Pack’s Branch’ and the final one — her small frame being dragged along by her father, anger in every line of his powerful frame, while she looked back in fear as her arm was twisted in an angle that made him furious every time he saw it in the subsequent years. He left town the next night, as he feared getting in trouble with the law for breaking her father’s nose. He kept the cat, named ‘Ziggy’ by Cassie, who accompanied him on his journey through the American West following a traveling sales crew for a year and a half to document their lives selling magazine subscriptions for his fourth photobook ‘Drummers of the West’.