Two Homes in Two Worlds

 

Kimber
“Growin’ up we didn’t vacation per ser.  You know . . . you didn’t go to Disneyland or anything like that.  We’d all pile in the car and drive ten hours out to Shreveport.
“And we’d get there and doggone it was so humid comin’ from West Texas.”

This Side of Natchitoches

Yeah, this side of Natchitoches
Gettin’ by pretty well
Sure ‘nough this side of Natchitoches
Gettin’ by least far as I can tell

Some folks here
This side of Natchitoches
Been around since the flood
Mind their business
Rarely do act up
Cane River runs in their blood

Come from
Down the Notchy Trace
Out where the cypress stand
True believers marchin’ with the Saints
On their way to Glory Land

Ann
“The highlight was when Audrey came home.  Then everybody came to Granny’s.  (‘Yep’)”

PART II

TWO HOMES IN TWO WORLDS

Shuletta wakes me up when we get there.
2615 Murray Street, Shreveport, Louisiana.  Far cry from High Plains desert.
Hot and steamy.  Back of my T-shirt’s soaking wet.  I open my eyes to a little clapboard house under a canopy of forest green.
Granny’s rockin’ on the screened in porch, toothless smile.  Aunt Ora Belle and Aunt Christine . . . full of hugs and kisses.   And look over there.  Penny the notched eared cat is climbing that big elm tree.

Country Song

Hey big city
With skyscrapers tall
Has it crossed your mind?
Have you givin’ thought at all?

That there might be something missing
Behind those concrete walls
Have you ever heard
A country song?

Jan, Ann and Robert Alan
“Well Chris really had this ol’ uh . . . Siamese Cat . . . and uh . . .”
“Her name was Penny.”
“Granny never liked that cat.”
“Had the ear.”
“She’d walk by and . . . and that ol’ cat would walk by Granny and Granny would be . . . grab it and twist its tail and . . . and my . . . my kids just went crazy.
“And Granny would start that silent . . .”
“Little belly laugh.  That little belly just shook.”
“She . . . she was so pleased she made kids laugh.”

Homegrown

All my southern kin . . . everybody’s come to see me.
I’ve got more aunts, uncles and cousins.  And as they come and go Ola Mae is keeping dinner hot on the stove.

Rick
“Of course, dinner in the south is lunch.  That was really the big meal. There’s always a bunch of good stuff there . . . and uh.
“It was a lot of fun seein’ all the family and hearin’ all the stories . . .”

Kimber
“And it was just non-stop goin’ down to Natchitoches . . . and.  And just goin’ doin’ a lot of sittin’ around listenin’ to people talk.  And . . . and whenever your Mom and my Grandmother and Aunt Florence . . . those sisters would get together . . . Good grief they could tell stories and . . .”

Charlotte
“You know when . . . when people were still alive . . . the family was still alive, and we were going over a lot it wouldn’t be an hour after I was over there that I would start talking like this.
“And they can make so many syllables out of every word . . . “

Country Song

Well, if you truly listen
You’ll hear those hollers ring
Or a prairie song
That you might want to sing

 

Snapshot

Provencal, Louisiana

Mr. Bill
“We have uh . . . several varieties of pine trees.  We have the Loblolly.  We . . . we have the Slash.  And we have the Short Leaf Pine.   And then we have the Longleaf Pine.
“The Longleaf Pine is a beautiful tree.  All of ‘em are beautiful.  But the Longleaf Pine is real pretty.”

I don’t know how we got everybody into the car.
We’re on our way to the old place near Provencal.  Aunt Orie, Christine . . . Mom and Shuletta . . . twin cousins Jan and Jannie.  They’re talkin’ and carryin’ on.  And I’m ridin’ shotgun.
I’ve never been in the country.  Tall pines, thick on either side of the road, it’s a whole new world . . . a whole new world for a kid from the flatlands.

Jan
“Well bayou . . . Bayou Blue was uh . . . just oh . . . probably less that a mile from where Granny and Grandpa lived.  And you’d walk up to the road and walk down the road that way . . . until somebody knew . . . that . . . that tree is where you turn off.”

Audrey Ellen
“My mother would uh . . . take us out into the woods.  And we knew every shrub . . .
“Yeah.”
“And every tree.  And we’d gather hickory nuts and walnuts . . . black walnuts . . . and wild plums and wild sloes . . . and . . . just everything.  We could’ve lived off the land.”
“Yeah.”
“And we mostly did.”
“Did . . . yeah . . .”

Country Song

Well, I could go on and on
Talkin’ ‘bout the home folk
‘Bout dust bowls and freight trains
And a life you’ve never known

But in this world we’re livin’
That don’t know right from wrong
You’ll find comfort
In a country song

There’s always comfort
In a country song

Audrey Ellen
“Do you remember the Cape Jessamine bushes . . . (yeah) . . . by each side of the gate?
“They grew way out like this.  I can still see ‘em.
“Yeah, me too.  Me, too . . . smell ‘em.”

Country Guitar Blues
(Instrumental)

Vowells Mill

Early Days

The old place at Vowells Mill is built on blocks with a crawl space underneath.  There’s a railing each side of the steps that leads to the front porch and a dog run through the center of the house.
Outside it’s a lot like Uncle Jesse’s cabin.

Jannie and Audrey Ellen
“And I know one year when we went down there’s this swing down at the other end of the house in front . . . not in front of Granny and Grandpa’s bedroom . . . but down at the other end of the porch.  And it was covered . . . it was just a solid wall of honeysuckle.”
“And it smelled so good.”
“It did.  And the next time we went down the honeysuckle was all gone and the swings up at the other end.”

To hear ‘em talk the family . . . aunts, uncles . . . cousins . . . they’re bringing back memories to show me where they all grew up.  The smell of sweet bay out front is still there by a grove of trees.  That chinaberry . . . well, it’s way overgrown and the garden’s run down . . . picket fence collapsed and saggin.’
The porch is in good repair though.  And the swing still works where Granny used to sprinkle sand.

Audrey Ellen
“Well, it was pretty common in the South . . . in my part of the South.  They had plain plank floors that they scrubbed with a . . . a cornhusk broom.
“And uh . . . after it dried, well they . . . take the clean river sand or . . . or creek sand in our neighborhood uh . . . that the overflow in the spring had left upon the banks of the creeks.
“And they’d scatter it in uh . . . uh . . . patterns on the floor.  Maybe stars and moon or flowers . . . or whatever.”

Cross the Rubicon

Cross the Rubicon
Take the unexpected path
Where done is done
Die is cast
No turnin’ back

Change of direction
Must go where that river flows
Through the great abyss
Beyond distance
Far from the shore

The Passageway

Five years old I don’t know what to do first.
Can’t sit still.  I head for the crawl space.  Mom drags me back.  I start up that chinaberry tree . . . she tells me to get down.
Then I sneak off through the dog run.
It’s quiet behind the house.
The woods tall and still are spooky.  Shuletta following close behind is holding a finger to her lips pointing to the tree line.  There’s a rider . . .  Gray jacket . . . Johnny Reb perched on a swayback mule coming from the forest. He’s a young man.  But he looks old with tired eyes and long beard.
Lifting his head, he spits a wad of tobacco to the ground.  Then the mule stops, refuses to budge, and turns our direction.  I’ve seen him before.  Seen him time and again in a picture on Granny’s nightstand.

The Pride of Grand Ecore

A big brass band was playing
When the train rolled into town
Outside the station
A crowd had gathered round

High above the angels
Counted up the score
To welcome back
The Pride of Grand Ecore

Through the howling wilderness
Twenty thousand strong
Crossed at Double Bridges
Come to right a wrong

Mansfield give ‘em Waterloo
Turned tail burned those bridges down
Johnny log jammed Red River
Run ‘em aground

Damned that ol’ Red River
Run the Yanks around

Charlotte, Robert Alan and Jake
“And this the first . . . the first entry here is 1846.  Thomas Jefferson Byrd, Vowells Mill, Natchitoches, Louisiana, 1846
“Well, he must have fought at Antietam, then.”
“He probably did.”
“Yeah, he did . . . right age.”

Audrey Ellen
“But he’d always ride a mule when he came to see us.
“Brown mule.
“And he’d have to chase us down to get to kiss us.  And we didn’t like that.  He had all that beard and that long white beard.  And it smelled like coffee and tobacco.  The coffee of course was in his beard.  You couldn’t wash it all out.
“He was an old man.  He was always an old man.”

“That’s Great Grandad,” Shuletta says.
Me, I see a familiar twinkle in his eye as Thomas Jefferson Byrd . . . a ghost gives the mule a kick.

Skyway

You might say it’s wasted time
Tryin’ to catch up with what’s left behind
How can you tell though
From the outside lookin’ in?
Less you know where you been?

Desert City’s far as I could go
Said my goodbyes to the desert floor below
Board a prop jetliner
Hidin’ in the clouds
Lost not to be found out

Shuletta taps my shoulder to point again and follow . . .
This time in the direction where the ghosts of Thomas Jefferson Byrd and his mule clip-clop back through the dog run.
Everything is different now.
House is fixed up, chinaberry well-trimmed, picket fence straight and sturdy . . . garden well kept . . . there’s a wall of honeysuckle at the end of the porch.  Here, all my Louisiana kin now young in their prime are perfectly still.
Frozen in place.  They’re gettin’ their picture made.

Hear My Doorbell Ring
(Instrumental)

The Photograph

Wherever I turn the scenery has faded from color to shades of yellow and brown.  Same old timey look as the family picture on Granny’s dresser.
They’re all gathered round Grandad and Granny.  My aunts and uncles oldest to youngest lined in a row.  Cousins scrunched in front.
Camera clicks.  Now they come to life loosening their Sunday clothes.

Audrey Ellen
“On Sunday we went to Church and Sunday School.  And everybody would want to come home with us.
“So, uh . . . we’d bring all this mob of people home and we’d have fried chicken and beans and potatoes cooked in a big iron pot.  And uh . . . corn cut off the cob where it’s creamy.  And oh, butter and milk and uh . . . cornbread and biscuits and just everything.
“I usually . . . if I were lucky, I got to eat at the third table.  Otherwise, it was the fourth and that’s the reason I like the chicken wing.
“That’s all that was left.”

Ann
“We saw Uncle George and Gracie.  And she had cooked lunch for us.  And I kid you not that woman had cooked creamed corn, peas, cornbread, steak . . . I mean I have never in my life seen so much food.  And it was good.”
“I’m sure the steak was fried.”
“Yeah.  Everything was fried.”

I hear ‘em talkin’ but their lips don’t move.  Just familiar voices floatin’ in the air pokin’ fun like they always do.

Kimber
“They weren’t entirely appropriate for a little girl.  And a lot of times my Mom would try to send me out of the room.  And your Mom would bring me back in.  For ‘Lady Talk’ . . . I . . . I just wanted to hear ‘Lady Talk’ ‘cause they would tell the stories about growin’ up in Vowells Mil . . . and . . .
“All the . . . all the crazy things they did as . . . as kids.  Cotton pickin’ days . . .
“About Aunt Eula being a . . . a ‘Belle of the Hoers.’  She was the ‘Belle of the Hoers.’  Cause they were hoeing the cotton field.  Not for anything uh . . . other reason.
“But . . . I’m sure Aunt Florence gave her that name ‘cause she gave everybody a name.”

Charlotte
“And she called Jake a Cracklin’ because he was from West Texas . . . can’t think but . . . but there were just a lot of nicknames.
“But Aunt Florence was the one in the family who just liked to needle people.  But she did it playfully and . . . you know . . . she was a joy.”

Diggin’

That’s Aunt Florence.  Just a young thing squabblin’ with Eulah Dell in the garden.  Twin cousins Jan and Jannie . . . they’re just scrappy kids both talking, saying the same thing at the same time.
And there.  There’s Grandad in his prime.  Felt hat . . . spark in his eye . . . totin’ a shovel.  Young man with him is Paw Paw.  Got rifle in hand . . . suspenders snapped tight.  Jo Jo the hound is sniffin’ the trail.
And close behind there’s cousins Tood and Kenny Ray ‘bout same age as me now.  Just little whips taggin’ along.  They all headin’ for the woods.

Jannie and Jan
“They always called it diggin.’  They’d . . . they’d.”
“We’re gonna go diggin.’
“That’s exactly what they said.”
“They’d load up in the car on a Sunday afternoon after you know . . . hmm . . . after we’d eaten lunch and everything.  And they’d say, ‘OK.’  And everybody would get there and . . . we’d you know . . . watch me all march by with shovels and everything and we’d say, ‘Where they goin?’”
“They’re gonna to go diggin.’”
“They gonna to go diggin.’  That’s all we ever knew.”

Flop-Eared Mule Schottische
(Instrumental)

Something Shiny

We’re deep in the forest.
Looking for where they went Shuletta and me come upon a pile of railroad ties arranged in a neat stack.  Close by, two young men.
One is Paw Paw . . . hat sloped to one side.  They’re driving a mule team plowing through the woods.

Kenny Ray
“My Dad was working with a construction crew building a railroad in . . . a railroad spur . . . into an old turpentine mill down in that ‘Kisatchie Natural Forest.’
“And of course they were building up the grade for the railway using teams and slips . . . slips that would dig under that dirt and then that dirt was dumped there at the . . . building up the grade for that railway.
“Well, my Dad was waiting and he said there was something real shiny laying there on top of a rock when the man in front of him made his . . . his run . . .”

Western Town

Halcyon skies
Fade to dim
From the heights of canyon rim
Watchmen quietly turn their gaze

Cross the plain
Flags unfurl
Call forth forgotten world
To field where promise broken reigns

Down below the underground
Lockstep with newly crowned
Dare walk the streets of Western Town

Kenny Ray
“It turned out to be a little metal plate.  It looked like it was made of brass and . . . and lead.  And it had ancient Hebrew writing all over it, and of course inside the Hebrew writing it had uh . . . quite a bit of hieroglyphics . . . a story in pictures really.”

Western Town

Within the dark
Of underbrush
To ‘No Man’s Land’ entrust
Cryptic stones wait to reveal

Down below the underground
Lockstep with newly crowned
Dare walk the streets of Western Town

Locust Hill

Humidity is alive.  Steam from the ground cookin’ the air.
Paw Paw and that other fellow are wrestling over that shiny plate.  Both are covered in sweat.  Even that mule team got their tongues hanging to ground.
Not too far off though up the hill the long shadow of autumn slants through the woods.  Gentle breeze cools the air . . . yellow leaves fallin.’
Once again Shuletta gives me a nudge.  There, by a creek another young man . . . it’s Grandad . . . got them big ears.  He’s counting footsteps.  Got a rock and a crumpled paper in his hand.  Looks like a map.

Jan
“Uh . . . one of ‘em . . . he had . . . he had found.   He was goin’ along what he said was the old creek bed . . . you know the creek bed had moved.  And here’s where the creek was.
“But he found what he said was the old creek bed.  And he was just walkin’ along kickin’ rocks.  And he just accidently just kicked over a rock that had something under it that . . . arrow or something I’d forgotten what it was.”

Devil’s Backbone

Now, there’s seven wonders
Seven seas
Seven continents
That makes three

Tell you something
‘Tween you and me
Where there’s seven treasures
Buried six feet deep

On the backbone
The Devil’s Backbone

Gonna need a map
And some good luck
Find that hand-carved lady
On a cypress stump

Tree trunk

Kenny Ray
“My Grandfather had obtained quite a few copies of the old maps regarding this buried treasure.  And he became interested in the old tales about a fabulous treasure.
“And uh . . . this just kinda spurred the interest of my Grandfather and . . . and my Dad both when this plate was found.  And as they worked in this same area, my Dad began to find other clues to the treasure.”

Phantoms

Air is cool and crisp where a young Grandad paces the ground.
I hear footsteps crunch dry leaves as he walks off into a gather of fireflies.  Fading between shadows he disappears where now there is a rustle from the underbrush.
I squeeze Shuletta’s hand.
Two figures . . . shimmering figments of two men crawl from a cave then cover the entrance with pine straw.
They have the look of characters from a western movie.  One is a grisly frontiersman wearing buckskin and a beaver hat.  And the other, looking out of place in the forest he’s all dressed up for Sunday Church.
I want to shrink away.  Then Shuletta points toward the one all dressed up.  He’s wearing the frock of a clergyman.  Got a pistol in his belt scribblin’ something onto a parchment counting footsteps as they vanish into the fade.

Bill
“The Waybills said, ‘When you . . . when you find the entrance to my cave . . . No, when you find the uh . . . the Seventh Room . . . pull The Ring.’”

“Where have you been?
“Shuletta!”

Hand Spanked

Back at the Old Place . . . everything in Vowells Mill is as it was where the chinaberry tree is overgrown . . . garden run down . . . and where my aunts, uncles and cousins are fit to be tied.
Mom’s got her fingernails dug into my wrist . . . makin’ little red, crescent moons.  She always does that whenever I misbehave.  Everyone is frantic, looking for me.

INTERLUDE

Cross the Rubicon

Cross the Rubicon
Take the unexpected path
Where done is done
Die is cast
No turnin’ back

Change of direction
Must go where that river flows
Through the great abyss
Beyond distance
Far from the shore

Passage on the fly
Supernatural apparition
Prophecy advised
Not so fast
Hazard all or none

Brink of confusion
Countdown to final days
Behind the mist
No one left
Nothing here to explain

Time to dry your eyes
Back to mile zero
Cut you down to size
Catch you by surprise

Cross the Rubicon
Take the unexpected path
Where done is done
Die is cast
No turnin’ back