Over My Dead Body

Chapter 2

I passed through Diboll at around 3:00 pm. There wasn't much to see of the town that straddles US 59, and no reason to stop. Thirty minutes later, I entered the outskirts of Lufkin. The county seat of Angelina County, with a population of around 35,000, it's a cross between a small cow town and a tiny city. I didn't remember it from the road trips when I was a kid, but had read about it in the news earlier in February when debris from the Space Shuttle Columbia fell in and around it after the vessel exploded shortly after reentering the Earth's atmosphere. Now, four months after the disaster, there wasn't a person outside the town who remembered its name.

U.S. 59 intersected with U.S. 69 near the center of town. I made the right turn onto 69, keeping well within the speed limit as I passed modern buildings owned by the oil well equipment industry towering over frame buildings with false fronts that made them look like sets from a western movie, and then, as if someone had drawn a line in the dirt, exited the town at the southeast and was back in East Texas farm country.

I was pretty sure that there was a more direct route from Diboll to Poseyville, but had no desire to end up driving around the back country looking for it, even if driving to Lufkin and doubling back did add a half hour to my trip.

It was approaching 5:00 when I saw the white metal sign affixed to a rusting metal pole, 'WELCOME TO POSEYVILLE, Pop. 1,160.'

Just past the sign, I pulled onto the shoulder and, with the engine still running, fished Winston's directions from my shirt pocket. He'd given some convoluted directions on how to find his place from the entrance to town, which Heather had translated from my chicken scratch to neatly typed lines of text.

The road leading to Winston's house was the second turn to the left past the city limit sign. According to what he'd told me, it was Shelby Street, but there was no sign at the second street I came to, causing me some doubt, but I turned left and took that unmarked street anyway. In the little town I grew up in, the town council never appropriated a budget for street signs in the 'colored' section of town, using the justification that everyone who lived there knew the streets already, and those who didn't live there didn't need to know. I operated under the assumption that Poseyville was pretty much the same. If the pot-holed condition of the street over which I drove was any indication, I'd made the right assumption.

Thick stands of pine, oak, persimmon, and hickory trees lined both sides of the two-lane blacktop for the first mile, and then gave way to small- to medium-sized fields with lush crops of corn and other crops surrounded by barbed wire fences, or irregular yards with one-story wood frame houses, some prosperous looking and neatly painted, some with tin roofs and unpainted walls bleached by the sun. Prosperous or not, they all had assorted pickups and old-model cars parked in the front yards. A few had small barns or storage buildings behind the main house. Barefooted children, their dark skin glistening with sweat, stopped their play in one front yard as I drove past, their big eyes and swiveling heads tracking me as I passed. In another yard, a bent old lady sat on a porch in a rocking chair. She stopped rocking, and sat forward in the chair, staring hard at me.

I recognized their reactions. There was a stranger—me—in their midst. Phones would be ringing from one end of the road to the other, and people would be talking over back fences and from front porches, trying to figure out just who the hell the guy in the Alamo rental car was. The fact that it was a silver Toyota 4-Runner was scandalous enough here in Ford truck country, but it was brand new and being driven by a black man who wasn't wearing overalls and/or a Stetson would have the rumor mill buzzing at full pitch. I had no doubt that Cousin Winston would know of my arrival long before I arrived at his house.

And, I wasn't wrong.

Winston Jones' farm was hard to miss. For starters, as he'd told me on the phone, his 500 acres was the biggest black-owned farm in Coquilla County, and the third largest in the Poseyville area. And, just in case that wasn't enough information to help you find it, the sign that arched across the big gate at the road up to his house had the words, 'Arcadia Acres, Winston Jones, proprietor' in big black letters. I turned right, passed under the arch, and in a cloud of red dust, made my way to my cousin's front yard.

The house was two floors, and the white walls looked like they'd been freshly painted. A screened-in porch ran across the front. The sandy driveway did a loop around a circular bed of roses with a small evergreen tree in the center. Behind the house and to the right was a large metal building that I recognized as a dairy barn, and to the left four long low buildings that I knew to be chicken houses. Behind these structures and stretching toward the horizon were neatly planted fields, green with whatever crops were growing.

A new looking red Ford F150 double cab pickup sat in the left arc of the loop. I pulled the Toyota in behind it, turned off the engine, and sat there for a few seconds, listening to the ticking sounds from under the hood.

When the ticking stopped, I stepped out and faced the wide door in the screen covering the porch. I could see a large shadow moving behind the screen. The screen door, set in the center of the porch, was higher and wider than your normal door, and when it swung open, I could see why. Winston Jones was as tall and wide as I remembered.

Nearly seven feet tall, with shoulders spanning three feet, a massive chest and a rounded belly that despite its hugeness didn't sag, shirtless and wearing overalls with one shoulder strap hanging down over his massive biceps, my cousin, Winston Jones, looked like a large statue carved from dark wood. His face was a jumble of angles and curves, with prominent cheeks and wide-set brown eyes that seemed to be forever smiling. His head was completely shaved and shone like a brown, bowling ball. Fleshy lips turned up in a smile as he came down the steps to greet me. The steps sagged and groaned in protest as he stepped on them.

A huge, brown, work-hardened hand was thrust in my direction.

"Well, if it ain't my long lost cousin, Little Al," he said in the booming voice I remembered that used to scare the crap out of me as a kid.