Ann Joslin Williams is a fine storyteller
My dear Maggie had been sick a long time and I had been hanging around the house taking care of her, and it was driving her crazy, so she told me that for her sake I needed to go out and carouse a little, because I apparently just wasn't myself if I didn't (though if I am remembering it right, it had been a long time since she was overly fond of me being myself). I hadn't been there since old Al died, and the kid renamed the tavern into Al's Place, as though there was something wrong with a tavern and something special about a place. But I felt adventurous and brought my cornet along, like I use to do when I was younger. There was this little guy singing and telling stories by the name of Bill Morrissey, and he sees my cornet and wants to know if I want to play, and he does this tune called "Live Free or Die" to a fine swing accompaniment on my part, and then does this honey of a tune called "Small Town" and I quiet it down on that one, and after the show he comes over to my table and sits down with this elf looking young lady he introduces as Annie, and my thoughts concerning this young woman made me feel guilty for the rest of the week, but that is just how I met her.
So I hear through the grapevine that she is back on the east cost and has published a fine set of linked short stories she calls "A Woman in the Woods," and if that isn't good enough, not more than a week after I finish reading them, and can barely contain how proud I am of my little elf woman, she is going to give a reading a ways away in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and by hook or by crook I say to myself I am going to get up to see her.
So last Wednesday comes along and I am thinking I am going to have to do a cab or something at a cost I can ill afford, and my grandson the programmer comes in after a long session of work and fun and fun and work, and crashes on my couch the very afternoon of Ann's gig. Now the last time I rode someone's automobile without a license or permission was back in '30 at the age of fifeteen and a half to go see some great jazz players playing a college dance up in Amherst, and knowing I had to get there I considered the fact that this automobile not currently being in use was some sort of providence speaking to me, and borrowed it for the occasion. It turned out that Bix was too ill to make it, but I did hear a young Benny Goodman, Muggsey Spanier, and Eddie Condon, amongst others, play one hell of a night of music that made it well worth my time in the reformatory for wayward boys. But to make a long story short, last Wednesday evening I borrowed my grandson's keys and left him a note telling him I will be back around ten or so if I am not arrested in the meantime.
I tell you hearing Ann tell her story of the "Woman in the Woods" was well worth the hell to pay my poor Margaret has been giving me since that night. She intertwines this childhood tale that her parents took turns adding to, of a deer woman, with this old woman the brother in the story meets in the woods with his dog, just before it starts snowing and getting dark. It's magical and I don't want to give anything away so I will leave it at that.
It was a wonderful turn out for her telling at the River Run bookstore, which is itself a wonderful place on Congress Street. And we got a chance to say a few words to each other. I also ran into a fine performer by the name of Cormac McCarthy that I met pretty much the same way I met the Morrissey fellah and about the same time. He says he has this new CD he calls "Curious Things" and I have ordered it and will tell you all about it in a few days.
Well it all made my Margaret beside herself, but I told her that I felt twenty years younger and if I did it a few more times I'd be out living her. Her response was not if she killed me first, but she was only kidding. It's a banker's humor you know.
Anyway, you can get Ann's book at the following link, you won't regret it:
http://www.ewu.edu/ewupress/fiction/
womanwoods.htm
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