mick parsons

A Sketch of Gravine, Ohio, Along the River

They probably wouldn’t have noticed anything was wrong if it hadn’t been for the milk cow. The two older ladies had driven down from Portsmouth along US 52 to hunt cheap antiques and quaint tea houses on their way to spend two nights at the rebranded casino near the detention center in Cincinnati. The state route rolls straight through the middle of town, and they were going along at five miles below at the posted speed limit. Mrs. Heddie O’Connell, who was taking a break from driving to answer a text from her son, noticed a cow at the corner of Main and Market Streets, chewing on a bootlace. The bootlace was still attached to a boot, and the boot was still on the foot of what looked like a man’s leg, ripped off below the knee.

Then she and her friend Mrs. Jane Kurtz noticed the number of farm and domesticated animals wandering around. Chickens and cows and pigs. A few goats. A pack of five or seven dogs feasting on what might have been the rest of the booted leg’s body. That dismembered corpse would later be identified as the local animal control officer, Jimmy Grimm.

Pin Hook (population 1,789 according to the most recent census) was about 20 miles north on SR 133, and it was the only place listed on a road sign that sounded like it might have a police department. When the ladies arrived at the police department desk, they weren’t exactly calm; Mrs. Kurtz wasn’t sure she wasn’t about to have a heart attack. It didn’t help that they were met by auxiliary deputy Jasper Culvert, who brought the inexperience of his high school equivalency and ten academy hours to bear on every situation that crossed him. He was not yet 20 years old. He wasn’t allowed to carry a firearm and mostly watched the phone and went on coffee runs in between posting short videos about how he was the best cop since Dirty Harry. (He’d never actually seen a Dirty Harry movie. They were too old to interest him.)

The women’s fever pitch explanation of what they’d seen 20 miles south was in the process of being dismissed by Auxiliary Deputy Culvert, who was annoyed at being interrupted in the process of explaining in a fresh Tik Tok video why his extremely high kill score on Red Redemption 2 was further proof that his skills as a police officer were severely underestimated. It was at this precise moment that Police Chief Delmar Cole came back from eating lunch at home. Chief Cole was a decorated veteran of both Gulf Wars and a respected deacon at the 1st Baptist Church of Pin Hook. He immediately took the women in hand, sending Culvert on a coffee run.

After making sure that Mrs. Kurtz was in fact not having a heart attack, he listened to hers and Mrs. O’Connell’s story about seeing a cow eating a dead man’s bootlace in Gravine. Then he placed a call to the animal control department in Gravine. When he got no answer, he phoned Gravine’s police chief, Duane Mourney. Then he decided to drive to Gravine, after putting in a call to Pastor Brian Whitt at the 1st Baptist Church and leaving the two women in the care of a much humbled auxiliary deputy.

Cole took a turn through Gravine before going to the village hall, which also doubled as its police station. He found the cow and the leg, but the cow had lost interest in the bootlace. He saw the evidence of a body attacked by a pack of dogs. He also saw a few coyotes wandering around, along with various farm animals and cats. He also saw more bodies. They all looked like they had simply dropped in the middle of what they were doing. People slumped over in cars, at the gas station, splayed out in front of the post office. He drove by the Gravine Disciples of Christ Church and found two teenagers, a boy and a girl no older than 16 or 17 years old, in the backseat of an old Pontiac with their jeans around their knees, dead. He drove by the old power plant along the river that had been shut down two years ago and was slated for demolition. Then he drove to the village hall, where he found a pack of dogs gnawing on what was left of the clerk, the police chief, and Mayor Cheryl Tennyson.

It was at this point that Delmar called in the state police.

It took more than a week to round up all of the animals. A wider search of the farms in the immediate area of town found more bodies, all of which appeared to have fallen exactly where the people had been at the precise moment they died. The deaths did not extend more than seven miles out of town, but within that seven mile circle on the Ohio side of the river, no one was found alive. The Kentucky State Police were contacted, but no one on the Kentucky side of the river had died except for one old man: Mr. Ed Mcintyre, 98 years old, had passed in his sleep after a long illness more
than a month before.

The most recent census of Gravine recorded 557 souls. The number of people living within the seven mile added an additional 75 souls to the count. The investigation of the incident took longer than it probably should have because 556 bodies were found in town and no additional bodies were found within the seven mile radius. There was an early theory that the missing person had something to do with the deaths, but since no evidence of such a person was ever found, the unidentifiable resident was chalked up to a statistical error. Chief Delmar Cole never spoke of the incident outside of official proceedings and reports. Auxiliary Deputy Jasper Culvert eventually completed his courses at the police academy and became a full deputy; but he still wasn’t encouraged to carry a sidearm and mainly watched the phones and went on coffee runs when he wasn’t sitting in a dead speed trap near US 52.

Mick Parsons is the author and publisher of the forthcoming poetry collection, The Call Sign is Jonah (March 2026). He is also the author of the poetry collections, A Treatise on Unseen Stars (2025), Growl & Mud (2024) 92 Tanka, (2021, Basement Books.) and the limited run chapbook God’s Tired Plumbers (2020). His publishing imprint is Basement Books.

His work has also been published in a variety of journals, most recently in Rust Belt Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Spread: The Monthly Journal of Poetry, and Ohio: The Body Politic - Anthology of the River Roots Poets He's organized open mics and reading series in the Midwest and the Appalachians, and used to run One-Legged Cow Press. He's been a steamboat fireman, a teacher, a journalist, a dishwasher, and worked in factories and warehouses all over the Ohio Valley. His favorite color is blue.