Artists in their own words: Caleb Johnson

Author of Treeborne, Caleb Johnson, who will be reading at Turkey and the Wolf on Tuesday, June 19 (photo by: Irina Zhorov)

Who: Caleb Johnson

What: Author

Where: From Alabama, living in Philadelphia, and ready to get back down to the south

Q: What is something you might be hiding from yourself?

CJ: I hide from myself that I’m getting older. If someone asks my age, or if there’s a situation where I have to confront my age, I feel like I’m frozen in my senior year of college–or a couple of years after when I had this really amazing time of being carefree, hanging out with musicians, and doing whatever I wanted–and if I don’t stop and become really aware of where I actually am in life and how old I am, I think of myself being in my early twenties.

I always feel when I’m doing something like staying out late or doing some type of travel that when I was younger I would move right through. Then I have to confront that I’m older than I think I am.

Q: Who do you have a memory of that involves a tree?

CJ: My grandmama. We used to go to a national forest that was close to where we grew up. Weekends were often reserved for going to that natural forest having picnics and hiking around, and there was a tree that was split near the base. There are legends around why the tree is split in a way that makes it look like a field goal post, and you can sit on the field goal post part of it. That was always a place we would go–we’d hike out to it and spend time there.

The myth or the legend that our parents always told us kids was that the Native Americans used the tree as a marker. I’m not sure there’s much historical accuracy in those stories [laughing].

When I was writing Treeborne, the land that Janie Treeborne–the main character–spends so much time on as a kid and the woods where they find her grandma’s body are fictionalized versions of my grandmama’s land and the woods that I spent so much time in growing up. I was constantly outdoors, and Arley–where I’m from in Alabama–is really rural, so there wasn’t much else to do.

Those woods are really the place where I became a storyteller. I would see things and find a piece of tin that had been blown by a storm or some animal bones or the strange way a rock was shaped. I would usually be by myself in the woods, and I wondered how those objects got there, or why they looked like that. I would make up stories about how they did, and when I got back to the house where everyone who didn’t want to traipse through the hot woods were, I would make up these stories about my hikes. I was always encouraged to do that, and I grew up with a grandmama and great-grandmama that would tell these magical, often supernatural stories. It was encouraged in me from a young age that telling stories was an admirable thing to do.

Q: When do you feel like time becomes apparent?

CJ: When I go back home to Arley. I live in Philadelphia now, and I’ve been living outside the south since 2011; which, I always joke that living outside the south for me is dog years because one year really feels like seven years gone. When I go home–and I go home as much as I can–I’ll see that my younger sister has grown up, my folks age, my grandmama now has dementia, and there’s even this change with seeing someone’s house being torn down or the road being newly paved. I’m very aware, then, of how long I’ve been gone and what I’ve missed.

It can be really jarring for sure, and the way I deal with that change is writing [laughing]. The passage of time and change was on my mind when writing the book and is a big theme in the novel that the characters have to confront. Some of them turn their backs on the ideas and others have to reckon with these ideas.

Q: Where did you write Treeborne?

CJ: I started writing it when I moved to Wyoming for graduate school. I had a two-bedroom apartment, but I was living by myself. I used one room as my office, and it had a big window and great light, and I had two-and-a-half great years of that.

When I graduated, I became an early-morning janitor on the campus where I’d just earned my graduate degree. I had just met my now finacé, who was working at the public radio station, and we weren’t moving yet, and I was still trying to finish the novel, so it was a great job for scheduling and giving me the headspace needed for the writing. I actually wrote a good chunk of the book in a closet–about a 3X8 closet where a water heater was.

I would get to work around 4 AM, and I’d grab the janitor cart. No one was in the building that early, so I would sprint around and do the minimal work required to make it look like I had done my job. Throughout the rest of my shift, I would move the janitor cart to different locations, I would put up the ‘wet floor’ sign to make it look like I had worked,  and I’d take the vacuum cleaner apart so I’d always have an excuse to be in the closet. In the closet, I had my laptop on the water heater and would work until my supervisor would come to the door. I’d have just enough time to close the laptop and create an excuse as to what I was working on in the closet. I wrote a large chunk of the book that way [laughing].

For years I tried to find jobs where I had the headspace needed to write. Now, with the novel published, my priorities are a little different.  

Q: What is something that you feel is purely Alabama?

CJ: Chilton County peaches. Georgia and South Carolina get a lot of the love for their peaches, and they’re good peaches, but I feel like Chilton County in central Alabama grows the best peaches anywhere. They’re big, juicy, sweet, and colorful.

That place mixed with my home of Arley helped blend together to create Elberta, the fictional town in Treeborne. Peaches have become an Alabama thing. If you are driving through Alabama, you’re going to stop by one of the stands and pick up some Chilton County peaches. It’s interesting because the mythology around peaches, with them actually being these foreign fruits that we aren’t supposed to have here, doesn’t matter and isn’t often discussed. Those are the best peaches, and damn, now I can’t wait to get some.

Caleb Johnson will be reading from and discussing Treeborne with novelist Katy Simpson Smith at Turkey and the Wolf (739 Jackson Avenue) on Tuesday, June 19. There will be complimentary pulled pork sandwiches and peach pie for as long as they last. The reading begins at 6:00 PM, and for more information about the book and Caleb, you can check out his website.