As I come to the top of a high hill the bike slows and stops itself in a patch of bright sunlight that soon fades away. A shadow washes over me. Clouds have come to block the sun and there is no warmth. I am shivering from the cold, yes, but shivering as well from a feeling of dread that suddenly has fallen down upon me. Call me a coward, but fear once more has its hands around my throat. I am at last, completely and utterly, in the South, in a southern state of mind, and fear of this evil place grips me still. I know what the South was once; I do not know what the South has become.
Nor can I tell which comes first, this fear or the anger that goes along with it, but there they are, side by side, and they never quite go away. Nor perhaps can they ever, for once you have experienced racism from the receiving end and have been made aware, once you have felt its sting, thought about the pain of it, the stupidity and the senselessness, brooded about it and obsessed about it, once you have known the shame and the degradation of racism, this fear and this anger both come alive, and they cannot be gotten rid of. Not easily. Nor ever completely.
Yes, I know what has been and I am angry.
I do not know what will come and I am afraid.
I stop to rest, to take a deep breath and to look down across the valley that spreads out before me. The hill I am on falls away abruptly and then flattens out before beginning the gentle undulations that recede like an endless sea rolling to the horizon and beyond. Like the sea these hills seem eternal and unmoving, yet they are alive with ceaseless motion and music. Their shapes and their colors change with the shifting sun, with the coming and the going of light and shadow. The wind blows and the tall grass dances. The pines and the oak trees sway. And if you stand perfectly still holding your breath until silence surrounds you, you can hear the quiet whooshing of their leaves brushing together. The sound sails on the breeze and over the hills, caressing my ears and soothing my thoughts.
My gaze drifts lazily up one faraway hill and down the next until sight can see no more, but can only imagine what might lie over the last hill I can see, and the next one after that, and still the next.
The sunlight comes and goes. Clouds move with the wind, and shadows slide slowly across the landscape like a caravan of spirits creeping through the valley, following along after the creek that winds through a crease in the terrain. My mind follows after them, over these hills, along this valley, back in time. Suddenly I find myself nostalgic for a time I never knew, a time long ago when life was simpler and a man could change his life, change his luck, change even the way the world presented itself to his eye and to his mind; all these things simply by heading for the darkness of the unknown and setting out to see what lay on the other side of the hills.
As my mind begins to wander, my eye is snared by the brusque movement of horses that a moment ago were grazing placidly. Now they are galloping joyfully to music only they can hear, stopping suddenly and rearing, snorting, grazing again, oblivious to me, to my fears and to my angers, oblivious to the world. All in the valley below seems as peaceful and as perfect as God intended it to be and seems untouched, except for the fences, by the hand of man. I cannot help but wonder, the same as George Custer couldn’t help but wonder in the predawn as his gaze drifted lazily across a western plain: How must it all have been before we came and impured not just the land, but the spirit of the land, when all was future and all was perfect with nothing but possibility?
The sun was just coming up and mist still hovered over the land. An encampment of Native Americans in the valley below was waking to the new day. Smoke was rising from their lodge fires. The dogs were barking the morning into day. Even Custer had to behold and wonder. The Seventh Cavalry was preparing to attack, ready and more than willing to slaughter the old men, the women, the children, even the dogs. And Custer paused. “What was the(ir) world like,” he asked himself, “before we became part of it?”
What indeed?
When Custer looked out across the plain all he could see was raw wilderness. The future and all its ripe promise. A Native American regarding the same view at the same time would not have seen the same thing. He would have been looking not so much and certainly not only at the future, but at the past as well. His history was there, the story of his people hidden in the tall grass and buried in the hills. The things that explained who he was lay in that prairie, in those forests, lay in the fields and in the mountains, in the streams and in all those things that were being stolen away from him. And as he looked out across his own valleys and plains, must he not have wondered what had happened? Must he not have said to himself in his native tongue, “Something has gone horribly wrong. This is not the way the world is supposed to be.”
It is impossible to imagine what he felt, but not so hard at all to imagine that he felt it, for I find myself thinking the same thing: that something has gone horribly wrong, that the world is not supposed to be like this. No one, not man, not woman, not the tiniest child, ought to be afraid in his own home. And yet here I am, home at last and very much afraid.
Yes, this is my land. Here in this southern soil, my people were known. Long before I was a glimmer in my father’s eye or a worry in my mother’s womb, my roots were planted, fertilized by the living, perhaps the suffering, and the dying of my ancestors. Here in these hills my ancestors walked and toiled. They breathed this air, and tilled these fields. They lived and died to become these hills, these trees, this land. They became these things so that I might be. And their voices whisper in my ears.
I owe them this journey, if only to smell this soil and breathe this air and see these trees, if only to remember them and what they endured for my sake. This land is home to me, bought and paid for with the sweat, anguish, and joy of those who went before me and willed it to me. This air is familiar to me. This land is familiar to me. I could recognize the smells of this land, the sounds and the tastes of this place, with my eyes closed, for in my dreams I have visited this place a thousand times. This place haunts my nights and owns my reverie, created my childhood and the stories my father has told. I have not been here before, except in lightest passing, but indeed I have been here before. I may not stand where my ancestors stood, nor tread the same patches of earth that they once trod, but they were here, somewhere here. I can feel their presence.
And somewhere here there is proof that they truly existed. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, a miracle almost, if as I traveled this land I stumbled across concrete evidence of some long-ago ancestor of mine, some great-great-grandfather who perhaps had been—no, surely had been—a slave?
A thousand waves of fear and excitement surge over me.
This land is mine. I have come to reclaim it. My roots are here. This land is me. Fear or no fear, I cannot distance myself from these hills, from this soil, these smells, this past. Nor should I want to. I am these hills.
The wind grew stronger and howled for a moment and then settled down. The clouds swirled, formed new shapes. Quite suddenly the weather turned serene, and a warm peaceful wind drifted over the land. The sun found a large gap in the clouds and peeped through. The day began to warm. The warmth wrapped round me. A sense of quiet elation settled upon me and enveloped me like a cloak draped over my shoulders. A hand soothed my back and my arms. Sounds like voices whispered soft syllables in my ear. The words I could not make out, but the earth was talking to me—the earth or the past or some great ghosts hovering over the landscape and wandering in this valley. And their voices murmured, urging me on. It was of course only the wind whispering over the grass.
I was in the South. I was home at last.
I took a deep breath. And then I took another, and then another and another, each one like the Magi, bearing a different gift. The South was happy to have me home and showered me with the gentle scent of pine from the trees on the faraway hills, with the strong equine smells of sweat and manure, with the rich smells of earth and grass, and enveloping it all, holding it all together in the precious package it was, the soft sweet smell of moist tobacc
o.
The clouds formed a new face then, without hair or nose or chin, but only mouth and eyes. The mouth smiled briefly, then stretched long and emotionless before shifting once more and falling passively into the billows below. The eyes, though, were unmoving. They did not blink or flinch. For the longest time they hovered there like the eyes of angels, just waiting and watching, always watching, until finally I looked away. A hawk had soared on rising thermals and crossed the path of my staring. I followed its gliding, its swooping and its sudden dive until it had flown out of sight. When I looked back to the clouds, the sun had risen fully above them, warm and bright, erasing all from the sky but the blue and the haze. The eyes had disappeared.
I was ready to travel. But which way now—which way to go?
When a writer first puts pen to paper, he has before him the paralyzing problem of infinite possibilities. But once the first word is written, the writer loses his will and it is the story which dictates. The writer becomes merely the medium through whom the poetry passes. The muse sits on his shoulder and directs him with whispers.
Likewise the wanderer. The spirit that persuades him sits on his shoulder and directs him too with whispers, with soft nudges, warm winds and rumors. The traveler merely goes where he is told.
The road before me was all mine, I thought, and I could follow any route I chose. But really I had no choice. There was only one path, only one right road. Everything that had already happened, everything yet to happen, were pebbles laid down to guide the way into the labyrinth and then out again. This journey had been preordained.
I hadn’t pulled the bike very far off the road when I stopped to take my rest. I nudged the bike back on the road again. Coming over the hill and aiming straight for me with all the rumble of an earthquake was a gigantic rebel flag painted on the front of a huge semitrailer barreling so fast along the curves in the road that the truck seemed out of control. My mind said to get out of the way, but my body sat paralyzed on the bike for what seemed an eternity.
My gaze locked on the flag, the square red field crisscrossed with a great blue X bordered in white. Inside the X, thirteen white stars. The battle flag of the Confederacy. But much more than that to me. Symbol of racism, symbol of hate, a symbol that caused to rise in me all the rage I had ever felt and that splintered the fragile peace I had made with the South.
I hated this driver.
Perhaps this is what it is to be black in America, maybe to be black in any world of white men. To be black is to always be reminded that you are a stranger in your native land. To be black is to be surrounded by those who would remind you. To be black is having to be ever vigilant, never completely at ease.
I got off the bike and put one foot on the road. I wanted to startle the driver, not so much that he would swerve across the center line and possibly plow into anyone who might be coming round the bend, but I wanted to give him a scare. I wanted him to sit up and take notice of the crazy man in the middle of the road. I dared him to hit me.
The truck screamed. Its horn blared. The lumbering monster lurched and clattered as it passed. The driver made an angry face. I thought I heard him yell obscenities.
I put my helmet back on, my gloves and my jacket. I got back on the bike, started it up and gave chase. I wanted to catch the driver and challenge him. I wanted to know—and of course I knew—why he had that flag painted on the front of his truck. I wanted to fight him, hurt him, kick his truck and puncture his tires. I wanted to make him pay.
But it had taken me too long to get the bike in gear and going. By the time I was in pursuit, he was long gone. The road was too windy and unfamiliar for me to do much over eighty, and that truck must have been doing eighty-five. But for twelve hot minutes I sped after him. Then I slowed down and laughed at myself.
What would I do if I caught up with him? Scream at him? Bite his ankle while he beat me over the head with a tire iron?
This being the South he probably carried a pistol in the cab of his truck.
Hmmm. Perhaps I had taken so long with the helmet and the gloves for a reason.
Yeah, call me a coward.
I gave up the chase at the top of a rise that looked down on a small town in Kentucky called London. A tangle of roads came together in the junction below. Maybe the driver of that truck was down there somewhere waiting for me in the confusion of roads and traffic and fast-food burger joints. Maybe he was waiting for me a little farther on. I slowed.
The road I was on widened into a four-lane expressway, crossed Interstate 75, and then slipped back into a two-lane road winding into the mountains one hour to the east. The Daniel Boone Expressway crossed nearby going into the mountains as well, but it was superhighway all the way to somewhere and probably a toll road to boot, the route for travelers in a hurry. I definitely was not in a hurry. I didn’t even know the name of the somewhere I was going. Like that song Sylvester the Cat is always singing in the cartoons: You never know where you’re going till you get there.
No, this was not a journey about going anywhere in particular, nor about keeping time. It was perhaps more about losing time, about blurring it, contracting it and elongating it, erasing it. What a miracle if we could somehow erase time, retrace our steps to where we went wrong, start all over again.
If we could do that, I would come back one of these days to the rise in this road. No, farther back to when the truck with the rebel flag painted on it came racing over the hill and spoiled my morning. I would go back to the dawn, back to the lake, and start this day once more. I would not look up when I heard the truck coming this time. I would not allow him to harm the peace. I would get back on my bike after he had passed and I would come to this very spot. I would sift through the tangle until I found the road, the one that goes south before it goes east, the one that runs down through Corbin and Barbourville, Pineville and Harlan, up into the mountains and then down the other side. After that, who knows?
After that, who cares?
VIII
Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill!… You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you?… I’m the reason why it’s no go. Why things are what they are.
—William Golding
There is hardly any wind. Clouds have gathered around the tops of mountains and settled in great gray clusters that do not move. Somewhere, not too far away, it is probably raining. But here the sun shines bright. The air is mild. I ride slowly and with the visor up so the smells can enter my helmet and surround me. But even with my sunglasses on and the air so calm, still the wind stings my eyes and brings them to tears.
Through my tears the world is softened as if seen through gauze. Reflections are ringed in halos, colors muted, edges fuzzy. Everything is bathed in mist as if it is the world and not I that has been crying.
It feels as if it will rain today. Moisture crowds the air. A certain stillness hangs over the landscape. An almost gloom permeates the tranquillity. There is a sadness in the air and not only because of what has been, though that is surely heartbreak, but a sadness too about what might have been. Melancholy wraps around all manner of memories, even fond ones, but always the saddest is this kind of reminiscing, this thinking backward and forward at the same time. We had such potential, but we failed each other. We failed ourselves. It is the smell of failure that hovers in the air.
If I had my choice I would travel this land without memory.
If I had any choice at all I would not look back; I would not look forward. I would live the journey of my life only in the moment, in this here and in this now, unencumbered by the past. I would respond to the world and to its people by what they do and think and say, and not by preformed feelings.
If I had my choice I would see this world through the eyes of a stranger. A stranger’s eyes are so much clearer.
If I had my choice I would pick my route solely by the scents on breezes and I would ride carefree along these old roads forever. It is freedom I seek. Plain, simple and glorious. Freedom from, cert
ainly, from time and from place, but as well freedom to, freedom to go, to do, freedom to be.
But there is no such thing as real freedom, especially no freedom for a black man, chained as we are, in other people’s eyes and in our own, to the past. In the blackness of my mind everything has significance. Every incident is viewed as if through a prism, the light refracted, the hidden meanings dissected. Every man’s motive becomes suspect. Every word must be weighed. I must be forever on my guard.
Perhaps in the years since hope, nothing has really changed. Perhaps nothing ever will. Perhaps race will always determine the roads we travel.
I pretend I have strength, I pretend I have choice, but long ago the choices were made for me. The road has been decided. I am an addict and I cannot choose.
My bike feels heavy, sluggish and unresponsive. It fights my control, no longer reads my thoughts. I am no longer completely at ease. It is as if I carry an inexperienced passenger who does not lean when I lean, who is nervous and tries to guide the bike.
I wanted nothing more than to take to the road and see new places, to scratch this itch of mine and see what lies beyond the next bend. This was the old addiction, not so much to travel as simply to move, in the hope that in smelling its earth and breathing its air, tasting its flavor and meeting its people, I might find the soul of this land and touch it—never once imagining that I might find and touch my own black soul.
South of Haunted Dreams Page 10
