Gris-Gris Daughter [on hold]

Gris-Gris Daughter: chapter five

Mile marker 85 blurred past the open window.  R.C.’s anger still sucked at him like sinking sand.  And instead of being able to stew in peace he had the snobbish Reverend King and the sniveling Scrivener crowding his rage.  And damn if it wasn’t hot.  He thought back to the Coffee Cup Cafe.  He dwelled on each conspiritory glance and whisper.  Mainly he dwelled on the accident from the day before.  He was missing something, and he just knew someone was laughing at his back.  He jabbed at Scrivener, who had quickly fallen asleep after their argument, and pushed his lolling head back over toward King, who was still looking out the window.

He was angry that Sukey got hurt, yes.  Mostly he was angry that it was his mill that had caused it.  He couldn’t understand it.  Bobby and Big John were delimbing and bucking the pines.  He, Joe, Sukey and the Keller brothers had been loading the big, black hickory on the mill.  His mill.  After white men on horseback burned his father’s mill in 1955 they designed and built a portable mill that could be drug to location by a team of mules.  By 1961 R.C. had sold that team of mules for a 1958 Dodge Power Wagon flatbed with a Cummins turbo diesel engine and painted it barn red.  He insisted that the truck was worth every penny just to see the veins pop in his logging rival, Beau Randolph’s, forehead every time it rumbled through town.  With the truck and portable mill, not only could R.C. more easily access and harvest trees further from established mills, but he could use a smaller crew and cut with greater privacy.

His crew was the only all-Negro crew he knew of, and he was certainly the only Negro boss, known as a “Bull in the Woods,” in all of Texas.  The nigger bull they called him.  Shit, he would gore everyone that got in his way.

R.C. remembered that by the time the five of them got the hickory log prepped for the mill the sun had climbed vertical enough to send rays straight down through the canopy in bright shafts.  Then, just as the full circumference of the blade sank into the wood, there was a sudden shudder.  The blade seized, bucking the log just enough to kick Sukey against the edger, pinching his shoulder between the rough log and the blade.  Joe had been running the blade, supposed to have double checked the mill before throwing the lever.  Damn if Joe wasn’t as blind as a bat and too afraid of busting his glasses to wear ‘em to work.  Shit, he had checked it himself.  There hadn’t been any obstructions.  No knots in the wood.

Sukey had almost been knocked unconsious.  They had to bump the motor in reverse in order to heave the log back on the guides.  Then came the blood.  Even without the edger blade engaged, the sharp metal edge had cut a deep gash into the meat of the man’s deltoid.  R.C. had tore a long strip from the hem of his shirt and used it to tie a tourniquet around Sukey’s arm.  It took three of them struggling to fight back the saplings and wild grasses that had invaded the forest floor in order to drag Sukey to the Dodge.

Mile marker 89 and R.C. gripped the steering wheel like he was wringing a turkey’s neck, his white-nuckled fists slipping in opposite directions.  Scrivener chortled in his sleep.  King glanced across at him, but not long enough to constitute any kind of communication.  R.C. cursed the whole situation again, but he couldn’t find a focus for his anger.  He couldn’t put his finger on the sore spot, so he tried to let it go.  “Hell, what brought you to a place like Bethel in the first place, Mr. King.”

“Huh? Oh.”  King stuttered.  “It’s where the Lord called me,” he responded absently.

“No shit? Oh, pardon me, Reverend.  I guess I ain’t accustomed to no church talk.”

King smiled for the first time he’d been in the truck.  “How do you mean?”

“Oh, you know.”  R.C. found himself a little disappointed that King seamed to be warming to the topic.  “The Lord calling and all, but I reckon it’s ‘posed to be figurative.”

“Not at all.”  King sat up in the bench seat.  “It’s supposed to be very real.  Not that I’m all that accustomed to it either, mind you.”

Now it was R.C.’s turn.  “How do you mean?”

“Well.  I think the Lord does talk to us.  Maybe not very often.  Hell,” King started to loosen up, “I only heard him once and I was six sheets…” He stopped, cleared his throat.  “Well, that’s why I’m here anyway.  To the best of my knowledge, I believe he told me.”

R.C. grunted to acknowledge the end of the conversation.  Then on second thought, “Why do you think God told you to come to Bethel then?”

Briefly King looked terrified before finally he shook his head.  “I don’t know.  I don’t.  I wish I knew.”

R.C. clucked his tongue loudly.  “Damn, I’d like to have a few more words with God before heading off on any his fool errands.”  But it was like beating laundry, King folded so quickly and turned back to his window.  The victory so cheep, it failed to bring R.C. pleasure at all.  He tried to think about business, finishing the order he had started the day before, but that brought him back to the mill.  It didn’t make sense.  Why would the head saw buck the way it did?  He had lubed every valve just the day before. It hadn’t been the motor.  It still worked fine.  He felt like a vulture riding the up-drafts looking for kill and finding nothing.  Then he noticed mile-marker 97 whiz by out the window, and the buzzard of his thoughts started to circle and circle.  But this time they lit on the still warm memory of his father’s picked-over carcass found face-down in the ditch just beyond mile marker 97.  He had been trying to avoid it, but it was where his anger always went to feed.