ZEPH’S HOUSE

They called me Zeph my whole life. Zephaniah on the one document that matters and nowhere else.

I drove a truck for near fifty years, every interstate and most of the roads that don’t have numbers. You learn a thing, doing that. People will tell a stranger what they’d never tell a soul who has to see them again on Sunday. So they told me. Over coffee that had been on the burner since noon. In the cab, waiting out a whiteout. Standing in a dooryard in some county I couldn’t find twice if I tried.

I kept a notebook. Then a box of them. I didn’t believe most of it, back then. But I had the miles, so when one stuck with me, I’d go back. Find the lake. The barn. The stretch of road. And often enough, the thing that shouldn’t have been true was just, sitting there. Waiting to be believed.

I don’t drive anymore. My knees are gone and so are most of the people who told me these. But the stories don’t go anywhere, and it doesn’t feel right to let them die in a box.

So pull the door shut behind you, and I’ll tell you one the way it was told to me. Some of them are true. Some are true-ish. One or two aren’t finished.

A new tale every week. Some stories are older than memory.