Day And Night in the Hot South
A strange scent, like vanilla transports us to an exotic land where birds of paradise warble and the whippoorwill sings a lonely song.
In the muscadine wine dusk, we two souls sit on the patio of the lost colonial King’s Tavern of Natchez where we hang together like Spanish moss on a live oak bough under a Creole moon on the mystic river where we are serenaded by a lonely calliope from a steamboat just as we lovers seek refuge in the magnolia blossoms of our hearts.
There we share the zeitgeist of a forgotten perfume whose sweet aroma is accented by the floral scent of lost promises from our gilded age of love. And fireflies float with their glow reflected in our empty wineglasses as we savor the sweetness of merlot memories. Suffused in the serenity of the oncoming autumn, seasonal thoughts float in my mind like dusky dreams.
We find solace in the softness of touch and her Mona Lisa smile is the sign of an impending kiss. My longing to be anonymous in the aroma of fragrant memories turns into a lonely pigeon ready
to nest in the belfry of her heart.
Late afternoon finds me and my beloved on a walk by the banks of the muddy Mississippi where I hunted the 19th-century ghosts. There, old glass bottles washed to shore along with rusty square nails from a time long before me. I scavenged for glass whiskey flasks and broken glass once filled with medicine with nostalgic eyes.
She says, “Did you hook up with me, a black girl, to fulfill MLK’s dream?”
“Only to let freedom ring for us two dreamers.”
“I needed to hear that you fell in love with me for us not because you stood on the mountaintop and saw the Promised Land.”
So, we climb the river bluffs to remember our birthplace. Feathery indigo clouds are suspended over old man river’s curve into the horizon. Tendrils of misty droplets hang in milky fronds curling toward the ground. A snowy fleece of cirrus
with patches of teal sky looms overhead.
Kudzu climbs over the box factory ruins where my great grandfather toiled in the heart of the roaring twenties whose wealth passed him by like a locomotive headed somewhere else when a nickel bought a movie and Confederate veterans still gathered at the diner. The smokestack still points like a steeple up at the heavens where the laborers have emigrated and where I too will go, but with that prospect far from my boyish heart.
Dad’s stories of his papa are replayed in my mind like an old LP with scratches but still sonorous and resonate. Here the smoke weighed heavy in the Natchez dusk where it was blown like an old man’s last breath from the box factory stack. The sooty cough of the workers sounded like a cigarette lung blues when the bluebird sang for love on the slopes of the Mississippi River bluff with the dusk deepening into ochre shades of sorrow until the whistle blew its old refrain for the shadowy tribes of tribulation to go home to meat and potatoes and wives who grasped at splinters of faith for better days ahead.
Green shrubbery blankets the sunken bluffs below our perch. A riverboat horn bleats through the quiet evening. A cardinal swoops out of foliage below arcing gracefully back into the thicket.
Valerie sits on a foliage matted bench by my side. We have passed through our high school years
like this, finding silent moments to ease each other.
Her sigh is deep as the impending night. Our closeness is second nature. Shared dreams of future happiness are whispered amongst dusk sounds where our golden eternity is imagined in this sanctuary of peace beyond the reach of the urban hustle.
Leaves rustle in the warm breeze and saffron sunset clouds glow angelically. Her hand is warm in my palm like a tiny sparrow with her delicate and reassuring touch. The goodness of the earth is felt deeply in this encounter with her.
We make our way across town to blaze into autumn by wandering an antebellum home property in midst of a Hollywood film production past the Civil War movie set. Replicas of scorched homes rise in blackened desolation.
She says “Where will we go from here?”
I reply, “Let’s make this spray-painted plywood imitation of the charred reality of the war our bed tonight. We can sleep here together. Look, there is an old fashioned four poster bed. It was protected from the rain by a roof.”
She says, “The mattress is bare but that works for me. Let me try out. Boopsie boo, it has a nice bounce. We’ll be sleeping on a trampoline. It must have been used for a love scene. I always wanted to play such a part as an actress.”
“Oh John, marry me and take me away from here.”
“Valerie, take my hand and I will lead you north where we’ll open an asylum for southern belles down on their luck. Eventually, we’ll find you a housekeeping job where you can start your life again.”
“John, how could you? My hands are much too delicate for mopping and scrubbing. The soap will leave my skin rough and unladylike. Surely you don’t wish such a fate upon sweet little me?”
“Well, then my love you can be an usher at the theater. That way you get to see the shows for free. Once we graduate from junior college we’re headed deep into the southland but of Chicago where cornbread and collards find a plate on the table for parishioners from a delta of the mind where Mississippi sharecroppers gather on city streets where the only cotton fields are snow drifts and where harmonica harmonies tell the story we left behind.”
“It sounds just like home, John.”
“It will be Valerie, just instead of the Dollar General up there they have Bloomingdale’s where
you can get all dolled up like a high society lady.”
Valerie says, “I guess we’re really engaged now?”
I say, “That stands to reason.”
She says, “Are you poking fun at me?”
“Heavens no. I was just stating the obvious.”
She replies, “You are poking fun at me!”
“No, I could never do that to my wife.”
“Oh, I love it when you call me your wife. Please keep saying it. I need to hear it.”
“I could say it all day and night.”
“I’ll hold you to it.”
“Say since we’re engaged, let’s keep our kisses just between the two of us” I propose.
“Kisses are like pennies. To fill my piggy bank of kisses before I’m eighty I must diversify.”
I reply, “Now you’re the one kidding me.”
“But naw, we’ll make up for the exclusivity by sharing lots of kisses, just you and me” she says.
“We’ll spend our kisses like dollars collected to fill the coffers of memory.”
Her hands grow rough like a man’s, from her new job shelling pecans. My hands are stained black from molasses at the sugar mill. Her deepening dialect is fresh from the earth.
You’re such an excellent writer, John. There are so many rich lines that flow in this and I love the culture that emanates from it. In my mind I can hear “South City Midnight Lady,” from the Doobie Brothers.
Great story!
Deep gratitude Tim. I very much appreciate your thoughts on this tale of mine. Really made my night. Love that you appreciated the culture emanating here. The scenes are the real place of my boyhood. Love that this reminded you of that song. Thank you so much.
John