by J. D. Wilkes
He likes to play up this hillbilly act for comic effect. And though Carver and his brother live in trailers, the truth is they both inherited a trust fund of their folks’ casino money, that old fortune they’d made from ripping back off the greedy White Man. But deep pockets can’t buy you an old soul, and Carver’s got both. So regardless of the money, he’s hilarious to be around, and I’m glad he knows where we’re going, because I sure don’t. I’m as lost as a gander.
While we’re stopped, we grab a quick lunch. Our bicycles come equipped with waterproof panniers to keep our granola bars and cokes handy. I take a swig of orange coke while Carver washes down a power bar with some purple-drank. It’ll do for now, since the highway and all its amenities are but five minutes from our trail.
The Old Spur Line picks back up and onward we press, down its labyrinthine vista. A blackened summer mass looms in the distance. Its torrential columns form slanting bars upon the cornrows.
“Won’t be long before the government makes corn as illegal as marijuana,” Carver surmises. “They’ll tax our bullets and steal our guns before they eventually starve us out. Yep, won’t be long before all our secret pot fields gotta get rotated over to corn. I already know where I’ll grow my corn, and they’ll never find it. I kin guaran-damntee-ya.”
Mimosa leaves turn up their white undersides like sharks’ eyes, opposing the murky backcloth. Greens are always greener before a storm and the air is charged with ions. I can taste each of the little quarks of petrichor in my teeth. A black racer tears off into the underbrush as Carver pops a wheelie.
“It’s gonna come a hard rain!” he shouts.
Truer words were never spoken through falser teeth.
Chapter Fifteen
STONEY KINGSTON
I was having a hard time opening up and making friends after my father’s death. And my mother… well, she meant well. She put me in the Boy Scouts and kept encouraging me to reach out to my sixth grade classmates, make friends and invite them over for a party. Just a little informal mixer. But I knew exactly how it was going to turn out.
Mama was going to slather on her most garish Mary Kay and play hostess (but she wouldn’t think to dress up in anything other than her nicest housecoat). She’d try entertaining us all in the parlor, singing her Methodist hymns top volume and off key, chording the plastic buttons of her fan-driven Magnus keyboard, one of those cheap ’70s toy organs with spindly Sputnik legs. We’d all have to join hands and sing along to “Pow’r in the Blood” or “There is a Fountain Filled With Blood”… not the most appetizing repertoire for our crappy paper plate dinner: those really, really red off-brand hotdogs and diet Big K.
The kids would roll their eyes and make fun of her—and me—and the messy house that smells like mildew and grief, and her selection of cool “rock and roll music” (The Carpenters). Then I’d watch in sad slow motion as she became self-conscious—embarrassed that she even tried to get us to play those baby games like Pin the Tail on the Donkey and Old Maid. She’d bust out crying and run to her bedroom.
Then the kids would start roughhousing and cussing. Making fun of all our stuff, asking where my dad is. I’d have to play tough and make fun of our things too, even though it broke my heart to do so. The Little Debbie pecan pies that Mama left out for us would get squooshed, and I’d stomp on one to play along, though it would feel like I was smashing my mother’s own heart. The whole party would be a disaster.
And that is exactly how it went down. I knew it! But the worst came when they discovered the rusty fillet knife hanging next to our commode. Stoney Kingston was the first to find it. Just my luck. Stoney, that liar I’ve been griping about, was a buff, loud-mouthed hick who wore his manure-caked cowboy boots to school every day. You could hear him coming a mile away as he clomped his kickers down the hallway, walking on his heels, toes pointed in the air, chin out, butt out, and thumbs hooked through his belt loops. I hated his puppet-looking head and stupid gap-tooth grin. He looked like Alfred E. Newman mixed with Howdy Doody. Of all the people to discover my family’s “crap knife.”
Yes, we had a crap knife. Our plumbing was so choked by the web of roots from the nearby Deadening that it was impossible to flush our solid waste without helping it along. We kept the knife hanging there by the toilet paper and, after a flush, Mama would always be sure to shout from across the house, “Did you use the knife?”
When Stoney had to go “number two,” my mother had to come out of her room to demonstrate how he’d need to chop up his stool before flushing. So, after he was done doing his business, he came charging out to the party, shiv in hand, shouting, “Crap Knife! Crap Knife!”
Laughter erupted and soon the term would become my new nickname for life. Yes, I still get called that to this day, even Carver knows it. He doesn’t really ever call me that though, out of respect. He’s a good guy, I wanna believe.
After the party, so shocked was I by my friends’ and my own behavior that I confided in my mother that we had stomped all her little pecan pies to smithereens. I felt terrible and cried for forgiveness. How could I be that easily turned against her sweetness? How could I be that heartless, insecure, and impressionable? I buried my face in her robed bosom and begged for mercy. And in that sweet Southern accent she hushed my tears… but told me how those pies, without this week’s coupons, had actually cost her a small fortune.
Chapter Sixteen
ONE MISSISSIPPI…
TWO MISSISSIPPI…
The storm descends.
New friends are made.
A Dock Boggs tune.
The harrakin front line has caught back up to us. Windswept branches claw the air like a gesticulating fascist, or Adolf Hitler himself, casting wild his spells in the throes of the most diabolical of diatribes.
Folks call lightning storms like these “frog stranglers” since they’re strong enough to drown anything with webbed feet. The looming black hull of its battleship will soon collapse under its own weight and soak us to the bone. There is spider-vein voltage scurrying along its massive bow, and bolts of the stuff ready to crack us in two. We need to find shelter. Now.
High on ozone, we crank along the rail grade with our eyes peeled for a barn, a shed, or a silo. Any port in a storm.
The wind wags the willows as the forest is bled to the color of bone. The warping lens of the atmosphere tweaks the Tint Knob of Nature, bending all wholesome Christian colors out of sight. It’s as if we are cycling through a daguerreotype of destruction. Sepia dust and grit whip through the air and into our eyes.
But in the new electric calm comes the strangest visitor from around the bend: one single red balloon.
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
Bouncing along, the balloon strikes an eye-popping, hard-candy contrast against the bleach of birch. And, oh, how it does my ol’ heart good!
It’s just hopping about, blowing lightly on the wind and dangling a small folded note at the end of a string. I’m about to catch it when five to ten more balloons appear from nowhere, equally as red, equally as lost, and swirling about my feet. As I stoop to scoop them up, we notice still another fifty to one hundred more hanging about eye-level throughout the woods, all of them in the slowest descent.
It’s as if they’re in a stupor, sleepwalking through the calm. We awkwardly maneuver around each one, angling our shoulders left and right, careful not to disturb them. Soon hundreds—no, thousands!—of balloons have joined us, filling the landscape with bulbs of bright crimson. We briefly forget our need for shelter and come to a full halt within the event. They bring an oddly cheery, brief relief from our chaotic day.
“What the hell?” Carver says, finally breaking the silence.
I pick up one to examine the note.
“JUST SAY NO!”
TOPEKA 4H
KANSAS STATE FAIR
“Whoa. That’s five hunnert miles away!” Carver marvels.
“Folks must’ve set ’em loose at the fair and they got sucked up into th
e jet stream. Man, they’ve come a long way.”
The first drops are starting to fall and, buddy, they are fat! Time to move. Our two-man peloton knows no bounds. We gotta find shelter fast or it’s hell-fer-certain. Off we go. Pedaling hard. A distant air raid horn begins its Doppler wail. It sounds like a soprano staked in sacrifice to the Kraken.
We’re really bookin’ it now. Our tires roll like hoopsnakes! Full tilt and pumping down the Old Spur Line.
SILO
“I hear music!” he cries out through the rushing headwinds. As usual, I do my best to keep up.
I hear music too.
Splat. A giant raindrop gets me right in the eye. Then come a dozen or so more pint-sized whoppers to soak me good. We determine that the music (a fiddle?) is coming from a rusted-out old silo on Obert Kessler’s land. A couple of trail bikes are lying in the grass outside by a pile of empty paint cans. Quickly determining that the old-timey music must be coming from someone friendly, we ditch our ten-speeds mid-transit and make a mad dash for the entrance. The bicycles go crashing off on their own.
With a whoosh of wind, rain, and heavy respiration, we spring ourselves upon a young couple inside. They leap back, dropping their musical instruments to their sides, and we apologize immediately. I figure they must be in here “woodshedding.” Well, they were rehearsing, until now.
“Beg yer pardon, y’all!” Carver introduces us, shouting over the deafening din of rain on tin. “We’s just tryin’ to duck out of this gullywarsher!”
“No worries!” says a young cowboy, silhouetted by a gas lamp and tipping his Stetson. “I’m Fang. And this is my wife, Cat!” he points to his bashful blond wife standing all of five feet tall.
“I believe we’ve howdied once before but not really met,” says Carver. “I know yer grand-daddy.”
“Yeah, he lets us play in here. We’re just bonin’ up on a few tunes before our gig tomorrow in town. We come out here so we don’t drive him crazy!”
They seem remarkably at ease given our sudden intrusion.
“Well, don’t let us stop you!” I shout over what must now be golfball-size hailstones.
“All right, then. It’ll be nice to have an audience. Tell us what you think.”
Fang signals to his bride to flip the switch on a certain gizmo over by the door. It’s a bit of Rube Goldberg ingenuity, a clockwork contraption. As it putt-putts to life, it appears to be a mechanical drummer they’ve invented. I stoop and squint to inspect it. The motor of a sewing machine turns a wooden whirligig, which in turn pivots a combat boot that kicks a wash-tub. It all runs off a buried extension cord that leads to the house. Cat cranks up the tempo with a rheostat.
“Maybe you’ll recognize this one! It’s a tune from where I grew up!” The two start in on an old chestnut that I instantly recognize: a sea chantey from the Alabama coast. Fang’s voice, quite pleasant actually, recounts the story of Joe Cain, the daring young fellow who brought Mardi Gras back to the streets of Mobile. The words recount the exploits of his “Order of Myths,” a defiant krewe of funeral-plumed revelers who paraded aboard a coal wagon in the face of occupying forces.
Oh Jooooe, the shipyard’s dried up!
Your suit’s torn and matted
And you’re looking mighty rough!
Sensing a neighborly spirit, I pull out my trusty Cracker Barrel harmonica and jump in. Sure enough, I rightly guessed the key and am allowed to join the jamboree. Fang nods his head upon the chin-rest and belts it out while Cat strums along on her fox-tailed mandolin. She grips a smashed penny for a pick and trills the long, held notes. It’s a glorious acoustic phenomenon as the instruments blend in with the pelting hailstorm, and I am transported to the tin roof patter of my summer long ago with Delilah.
It’s crazy where your mind travels when you get lost in a song. I remember the sound of rain on her tin roof, of that cooling mist that blew in through the window to bathe us in the bed, of how it seemed to activate a tangy bouquet in the house: one of pheromones, coffee stains, and antique furniture varnish. And as we lay there in the serenity, forehead-to-forehead, she would play for me the tunes she was catching in her fillings. And she taught me how to do the same for her. She was a mystic, and I know the symphonies she sent me were not of this world.
Yes, Delilah Vessels, herself, was the sensual summation of all such intangible magic. Heartbreaking whiffs of nostalgia and music… yet somehow wild and hyper-sexually charged at the same time. Great God Almighty! But unfortunately now for the both of us, she is ceding these gifts by courting someone her inferior—planting her flag into the Stone of the King.
The Cajun tune ends with a big collective laugh and some small talk about Fang and Cat’s little farm. I can tell they’re old souls, trying to recreate the better parts of the past. I like them already.
“Y’all three sound good together!” Carver proclaims, slapping his hand on my shoulder. “You sure you ain’t never jammed with this old boy before?” He is flabbergasted that complete strangers can interact with such unspoken ease. One-liners, profanity, and whiskey have always been his social lubricant.
“Nope. Never.”
“Well, hearin’ y’all makes me happy as a dead hog in the sun,” Carver hollers, shaking his head with his hands on his hips. “I mean, how do y’all even do music?”
“How do we do music?” Fang asks. “Well, it’s a funny story actually. Me and my two brothers never dreamt of hittin’ a lick until this one night when it come up rainin’, like how it is now. Lightnin’ struck the house and sent a shiver through the air. A ghost shiver. But it kinda felt good. Ever since then all three of us got into this singin’ and playin’. Ain’t that right, Cat?”
“M-hm.”
“So where are y’all headed out in all this mess?” Fang asks.
“Have you ever heard of the Kudzu House, that place with the bodies up in the trees?” I answer.
“Yep. I’ve been there once. And it is real. But let me just tell you. Don’t go on Old Man Demp’s property. He tried to kill me once.”
“Yeah, take a look at this!” Carver says, showing off the bullet hole in his sleeve. “The old bastard took a pot shot at me just today! So we took a shortcut to cut around his place. Ended up catchin’ some air in the harrakins.”
“Dannnng! Well, that’s good, because lemme tell you,” Fang takes a breath. “If you keep down this here Old Spur Line, there’s a little trestle that belongs to Demp over there. I figured it was still safe. Government land and all. But I figured wrong.”
Above the soft wash of rain, Fang relates his close call with Old Man Demp, a tale that begins with one foot set smack dab where it didn’t belong, where the KEEP OUT signs had been hidden by bracken.
Fang describes the twenty-miles-worth of razor-wire lacing, re-lacing, and looping around Demp’s massive militia compound. Red Confederate and yellow Don’t Tread On Me/ Culpeper flags hung across the rotten wooden walls. Racks of elk horns hanged lynched upon the planks.
“Demp came bustin’ out with his shotgun, goin’, ‘Keep off mah property!’ Then he spit a wad of bloody chaw right in my face. I took a hard kick to the butt, fell, and split my orbital socket on a train rail. And I still can’t get the sound of his throat box out of my head! Thank goodness I was able to hobble back over into the woods where the Klepners live. They patched me right up.”
“You mean that old German couple that lives in the midget house?!” Carver shouts for some reason. “Aw hell, are they still alive?!”
“Yeah, the dwarf couple. ‘Little people,’ I reckon they prefer to be called. Their house is so awesome on the inside. Low ceilings, tiny rooms, itty bitty furniture. Well, Mrs. Klepner, bless her heart, she got out the first aid kit and Dr. Klepner sewed me right up.”
“They saved your life, didn’t they, hon?” Cat chimes in finally.
“They sure did. My head had lost a lot of blood from the fall, but they patched me up, fed me, and told me to steer clear of that whole area. So I haven�
�t dared go back since.”
“Probably fer the best,” says Carver. “Demp ain’t playin’, boy. He’s an ornery sum’mitch.”
“Do you know ‘Danville Girl’?” Fang turns and asks me.
“I can fake it.”
“Y’all go ahead,” blesses Carver. “I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket… no matter how many times lightnin’ struck me. But I kin play the hell out of a stereo.” Carver pauses. “Y’all don’t mind if I smoke, do ya?”
“Knock yourself out,” Fang winks.
The Alabama sawyer peels off his first lick. Sonofabitch I’m taaaaarrrred! the fiddle seems to sing. And we all roll in. And buddy, it’s a barn-burner! Why, you can almost hear good old No. 801 plowing down the rails one last time.
Look up, look down that lonesome road
Hang down your head and cry.
The best of friends sometimes must part,
So why can’t you and I?
LIFT
It’s a good ole jam that rocks on and on. At one point we even achieve what Irish musicians call “Lift.” It’s when the pickers are so musically connected that their chairs seem to lift up and the floor falls away. It’s an ecstasy few achieve, but, from my view, we are hovering here some ten-odd feet in the air. Now we are in the slow carousel motion of a candle-powered Halloween lantern and I can’t get down. And I don’t want to get down! I am honored this sensation has come to me. Below us, the rhythm of the drum contraption sets Carver’s goatboots to cloggin’. “It’s flatfoot dancin’!” he shouts as a ghostfinger of ash bounces an inch off his cigarette. Dust kicks up from his feet and into the shaft of kerosene light, encircling us above. Its auburn flicker casts long devilish shadows across the silo walls, illuminating our floating bodies and dangling boots. There’s a wiccan quality to the whole scene, as fiddle music inside a harvest tower recalls the rites of Salem.
