Gris-Gris Daughter [on hold]

Gris-Gris Daughter: chapter one

Chapter One

The serpentine arteries of greasy road-patch laced together a dizzying pattern that reminded Joseph King of the only time he had seen dolphins in the wild. They had been pushing 14 knots, weaving and leaping through the frothy crest at the bough of his medium-class troop transport off the coast of Korea during the Spring of 1951. King wrestled with nausea. The mild squeal of the truck tires on the pungent, semi-molten asphalt could be lightly heard over the wind noise and the rattle of the glass side-mirror, loose in its metallic frame. 

Cramped in the Power Wagon cabin with two black men, strangers to him, King could not fend off memories of Korea: The jolting movements, the awkward distance despite the tight quarters, the all-too-thin steel skin separating strangers from the completely alien. He caught a whiff of rubber, sweat and diesel and closed his eyes to keep down the bile. But soon had to open them. The dark, where he had once talked to God, was now home to nothing but doubt. 

King leaned a little further out the window and let the wind rustle his collar, balloon and ripple his cheeks. The air was stifling and old. Tar, pine needles, cedar bark and a humidity that could clog pores combined to create something ancient, something aware of the present but alive with the ghosts - or demons, King thought - of the past. The countryside here in the Piney Woods lacked comfort for King. The woods seemed more tired and wrinkled than the rolling hills and thicketed draws of his youth. Time had slowed down for a deep breath before moving on, and some of the life had been sucked out with the breathing. King feared lingering here would do the same to him. 

Bouncing along Hwy 69, on the way to Lufkin Memorial Hospital, with the windows rolled down didn't make the most conducive environment for conversation, but the driver and owner of the truck felt obliged to try. "Mr. King." 

King lurched back into the cab of the truck turning his head and shoulders toward the driver. Rutherford Charles was a blunt, powerful black man known widely as R.C. King had only known the man for the length of the drive but judged him as a rattler coiled and ready to strike. "Mr., um, Charles?" 

King thought his hesitation registered a brief menacing grin across R.C.'s face, but he wasn't sure. "Call me R.C. The only person around these parts that refuses to do so is our friend, Scrivener here." 

With that, Scrivener, a scarecrow-framed black man, grinned wide showing the gap in his front teeth. "Well, our Mr. Charles here prides hisself as a casual man, but I know better. He's dressed up real proper on the inside all that gruff exterior." 

"Oh shut it, Scriv. Mr. King don't care none what I wear outside or in." Changing the subject, R.C. continued, "What you and Scrivener headed up to Lufkin fo' anyhow?" 

King had to speak across Scrivener who had insisted on offering up the window seat to the new, white reverend in town. "Reverend Randal is confined to bed in the hospice care center at Memorial Hospital." King found himself practically shouting. "Apparently Scrivener's a regular visitor, and I thought I should head up with him today. You know, meet the man whose shoes I'm supposed to fill and all." 

R.C.'s scowl darkened even further. "Dammit, Scriv." He slammed the metal dash with the base of his fist causing King to jump. "I told you not to involve me with one damned thing to do with that man. It's bad enough you feel you gotta' watch that pisspot die. Shit, he ain't gonna' get no respect from me. Not even the gas it takes to bring your sorry ass to visit a dying man's bedside." 

"But Mr. Charles," R.C. snorted at the formality Scrivener assigned to everybody, "He's a man a God." Scrivener straightened his back with the assertion. "I knowd he done all kind of wrong things, but he done right things too. And the Bible says, 'What you do unto the least of these...'" 

"Hell, Scriv. He a damn racist and a hate monger of the worst sort. He never did shit for 'the least,' only his damn self and all the others like him. So keep your dammed Bible verses to yourself." Scrivener rubbed the back of his neck like he'd been working the cotton fields all morning and hummed gently to himself. The gesture must have worked its effect because R.C. quickly continued, "Hell, I'm giving you a ride ain't I? But this the last time." He poked his finger in the air for emphasis. 

Scrivener nodded and grinned. "Thank ya', Mr. Charles. We thank ya' kindly." 

There was a tense silence in the cab. King's right arm tingled from where he had creased it leaning out the window. He hesitated, then despite the discomfort, leaned out the window again. He tried to focus on individual trees along the side of the highway. A mile marker flashed by, but King couldn't make out the number. A vein of sweat carved a path along his forehead and met up with the water being driven from his eyes before being whipped from the exposure of his temple. The wind funneled around the mirror, down into the truck-bed and tumbled over the tailgate to be left still again, right where the air had left off - hanging heavy over the cobalt asphalt. 

Movement. It all had to do with moving forward, progress in the mission, King thought. But was it all an allusion? Would God use him to change anything around him, or was he just moving through life leaving his surroundings unaltered? After his right butt cheek went numb King was forced to shift back into the cab. 

"I apologize, Mr. King." R.C. softened mildly with effort. "I'm sure you ain't no Reverend R. I don't mean no disrespect simply for the fact you takin' his place. But that don't change who he was. He never did nothin' for nobody on the east side of the tracks, and it was 'cause he didn't care. Worse than that, hell, he didn't even see. Us black folk might as well been farm animals, or wandering mongrels for all that man cared. I didn't care none for him while he was living, and I sure as hell ain't gonna' care none now that he's dying." He stiffened again. "And dammit, Scriv, you knowd I told ya'." 

"I know, Mr. Charles." Scrivener shifted in his seat with a glint in his eye. "But think of it as a favor for Reverend King here. He needs to know the man he's replacin'. I could a just hitched a ride, but that would a been terrible inconvenient for the Reverend." 

"Well, you don't have to worry too much about me, Scrivener." 

"Oh, I know, Reverend King. I didn't mean to imply nothin'. I'm just sayin'." 

That seemed to settle it, for there was a long silence in the cab after that. King stared out at the road through the windshield. In most places trees crowded in from both sides, but the longer they drove the more the forests gave way to fields. They passed a rose farm, honky-tonk and country market. 

At mile marker 78 they passed a filling station surrounded by several shacks lining both sides of the road. Dirty, black children sat on stoops and porches, resting from the heat of the summer sun. Through the trees rushing by, King could see a vast field of cotton with a huge manor in the backdrop. The afternoon heat gave no deference to the glistening backs of the workers bent over in the field harvesting the crop. 

He searched for references to understand what he was seeing. He stretched his mind for an anchor, anything to regain control over the new trajectory of his life. It felt like he had gone back in time or traveled to a distant, deep South. But he knew he was only hours from the place of his birth and his upbringing. This was still Texas, and he was still in the country, but these were not his people. He felt the stranger among them. What was the need here, and how could he possibly bring it? Where have you taken me, God? Then with a deep breath he reminded himself, you've only been here three days. Indeed, just two days earlier he had set foot in Bethel, Texas for the first time.