“Pops was in Kansas City then?”
“Yes, for a few years, when he was married to another woman. Remember, I told you about hen Actually, I don’t think they were really married. They lived together and she told people they were married. I never liked her. “
“What was her name?”
“I called her Aunt Sally. She was a terrible housekeeper, very sloppy. She left her clothes lying around everywhere, always had dirty dishes piled in the sink. My father liked her because she was pretty and well-read, Sally liked to talk about politics, literature, art. She wasn’t stupid, I’ll say that for her. She was a chain-smoker. The ashtrays in that house were always overflowing with butts and dead matches.”
“It’s hot here.”
“It can get very hot in Kansas City, Roy, especially in the summer. We used to sit out on the porch at three and four o’clock in the morning, drinking lemonade with shaved ice, when we couldn’t sleep because of the heat.”
“What did Pops do in Kansas City?”
“He was a hat salesman. He traveled all over the Midwest. Traveling salesmen were still called ‘drummers back then. It’s where the phrase “drumming up business’ comes from. Or maybe the word ‘drummer’ came from the saying, I’m not sure. I think Pops had a girlfriend in every town in his territory, or most of them. That’s what caused the breakup with Aunt Sally.”.
“Pops still wears a hat when he’s outside.”
“Yes, baby, a homburg, that’s his favorite. Pops always was a sharp dresser.”
“What happened to her?”
“Who? Sally?”
“Yeah.”
“You know, I have no idea where she is now, and I doubt that Pops does, either. She stayed in Kansas City for a while after my father moved back to Chicago, then he stopped talking about her. Sally was a blonde with plenty of pep. I bet she found herself a guy and cut Pops off cold. It’s strange how sometimes people can be such a large part of your life and then suddenly they’re gone. I didn’t miss her or those long, hot train trips.”
“She wasn’t nice to you, huh?”
“Sally wasn’t bad to me. I guess I didn’t want to like her because I was so close to Nanny, and I felt if I allowed myself to really like Sally then I would be disloyal to my mother. I’m sure most kids have the same conflict.”
“If Dad got a new wife, would you want me to hate her?”
“Not at all, baby, of course not. You’d make up your own mind about her. It would depend on how she treated you.”
“Even if she was nice and I loved her, I wouldn’t love her the same as I love you. Mom. I'm sure I wouldn’t,”
“Roy look at that airplane landing! It’s coming in so low. The Kansas City airport is in the middle of the city. Planes fly in right over the houses,”
“I’d be scared one would crash on us if we lived in a house here. You know, Mom, I don’t think I like Kansas City so far,”
Concertina Locomotion
SOMETIMES IT SEEMS LIKE things go very fast, and sometimes they go slower than an inchworm.”
“Yes, honey, strange the way time moves, isn’t it? I can’t believe I’m not twenty or twenty-one or -two anymore. Years get lost, they fly by and you can’t remember them. This is when you get older, of course, I’m sure that now you can remember almost exactly when everything happened.”
“I like watching snakes crawl, the way their bodies fold and bend and curl up like a lasso, then straighten out.”
“Time works sort of like that, in concertina locomotion.”
“Is that attain?”
“No, Roy, it’s the way some creatures move, especially tree snakes. They kind of coil and partially uncoil and this motion propels them. I read about it in a nature magazine. You know how a concertina or accordion takes in and lets out air when it’s being played? Well, this type of snake looks like that.”
“Snakes can see where they’re going, can’t they?”
“Sure, and they use their tongues as sensors.”
“The car’s headlights are kind of our sensors.”
“I also read that blind people use hand gestures when they talk, the same as people who can see. Isn’t that interesting? It has something to do with the way human beings think.”
“I think Texas goes on forever.”
“We just take it a little bit at a time,”
“Like concertina locomotion.”
“Yes, baby. As soon as we’re east of Houston we’ll get a whiff of the bayou. You’ll know when we’re there with your eyes closed/’
Imagine
ROY, DO YOU REMEMBER the name of that man in Havana who used to give you a silver dollar whenever he saw you?”
“Sure, Winky. He had two tattoos of a naked girl on his arm.”
“Winky Nervo, that’s right. It was driving me nuts not being able to remember his name, Winky was in a dream I had last night. What do you mean, he had two tattoos of a naked girl? The same girl?”
“I think so. On one side of the muscle part of his right arm he had the front of the girl and on the underneath was the back of hen She had her hands on her hips the same way in both of the tattoos. I liked Winky a lot. He used to give silver dollars to all the kids.”
“For some reason, Winky was in my dream. He was talking to a black woman outside of a restaurant or a bar or a nightclub somewhere, maybe in Havana, though it could have been Mexico City. There was a red and yellow sign flashing on and off behind them. The woman’s dress was bright blue, and Winky stood very close to hen Under her, almost. You know how little Winky was, and the woman was very black and much taller. She leaned over him like a coconut palm. I liked Winky, too. Your dad said he was a terrible gambler, threw everything he had away on craps and the horses.”
“Why don’t we ever see Winky anymore, Mom?”
“Oh, baby, Winky’s someplace nobody can find him. He owed a pile of dough to some wrong guys and couldn’t pay it back.”
“Maybe he’s in the old country. Winky always said how when he got set he would go back to the old country and not do anything but eat and drink and forget.”
“Honey, Winky’s in a country even older than the one he was talking about.”
“Maybe he was showing the woman his tattoos. Winky could make the girl’s titties jump when he made a muscle.”
“Remind me to call your dad tonight when we get to Tampa. You haven’t spoken to him for a while.”
“Not since my birthday. Mom?”
“Yes, Roy?”
“Winky always had lots of silver dollars in his pockets.”
“That doesn’t mean he had money, baby. Not real money, anyway.”
“Does Dad have real money?”
“He might not have it, but he knows how to find it and where to get it, and that’s almost as good. There’s a big difference between your father and a man like Winky Nervo. Don’t worry about your dad.”
“I won’t.”
“Winky wasn’t sharp, Roy. He didn’t think ahead.”
“It’s important huh? To think ahead.”
“Baby, you can’t imagine.”
The Geography of Heaven
DO YOU REALIZE, ROY, that Cairo, Illinois, where we are now, is actually closer to the state of Mississippi than it is to Chicago?”
“I know we’re next to the Mississippi River.”
“That’s right. We were on the Mississippi in St. Louis, Missouri, and now Cairo. From here it flows down to Memphis. What state is Memphis in, baby?”
“Tennessee.”
“Good. Then it goes to Greenville—”
“Mississippi.”
“Then to New Orleans—”
“Louisiana.”
“Before flowing into—”
“The Gulf of Mexico.”
“Great, Roy! You really know your geography.”
“I think this is the best way to learn it, Mom, by traveling all over. The places are real, then, instead of just dots and names on a map.”
&
nbsp; “You should show me your maps, Roy, the ones you made up. I’d like to see them.”
“I draw maps of real places too. Mom, not just imaginary ones. When we stop, I’ll make a map of all the places we’ve been. Where are we going to stay tonight?”
“I thought we’d see if we could get to A Little Bit O’Heaven, in Kentucky. Remember, they have all those little cottages named after different flowers?”
“Oh, yeah. We stayed in the Rose Cottage because that’s Nanny’s name.”
“There certainly isn’t much color in the sky today, is there? It’s just grey with tiny specks of black in it.”
“It might snow, huh?”
“I think it’s more likely to rain, honey. It’s not cold enough to snow. “
“Mom, if you had a choice between freezing to death or burning up, which one would you choose?”
“I’d take freezing, definitely, because once your body is numb all over, you can’t feel anything. You die, sure, but it’s better than feeling your flesh melt off the bones. How about you?”
“I like being in hot weather a lot more than cold weather, but I guess you’re right. I saw in a movie where a guy who was lost in the wilderness made a blanket of snow for himself and survived until the rescuers came because his body stayed warm under the snow,”
“I didn’t know about that, Roy. Let’s remember it, just in case we get stranded sometime in the mountains in a blizzard.”
“You were right, Mom, here comes the rain. All the tiny black spots in the sky were raindrops ready to fall. I never saw rain that looked so black before. It’s like being bombed by billions of ants.”
“Yes, baby, it is strange, isn’t it? Roll up your window all the way. I hope we can make it to A Little Bit O’ Heaven before it gets too bad,”
“Mom, is there a religion of geography?”
“Not really, unless you consider the ones where people worship places they believe an extraordinary event occurred.”
“Probably something important to someone happened just about everywhere, and some people made more of a big deal about it than others.”
“Yes, baby, you’ve got it right,”
Man and Fate
VICKSBURG IS REALLY A SAD PLACE, Mom, I’ve never seen so many graves,”
“It’s spooky here, baby, I agree* It breaks my heart to think about all the young boys, many not too much older than you, who’re buried here. You know, Roy, some people would think we’re crazy, driving around like this in a cemetery in Mississippi in the rain. I can’t help but imagine the lives these boys might have had if there hadn’t been a War Between the States. A civil war is the worst kind of war. It’s been almost one hundred years since this one ended, and the South still hasn’t recovered.”
“Soldiers from the North are buried here, too, Mom. Hundreds of ‘em.”
“How can a place be so dreary and beautiful at the same time?”
“I’ll bet there are ghosts here who come out and fight the war all over again every night.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me, baby. Somebody could make a terrific movie of ghosts or even corpses rising from their graves and not fighting but talking with one another peacefully about how horribly wrong it was to have a war in the first place.”
“That wouldn’t be so exciting, Mom, not if they were just talking. It would be cool to see the corpses, though.”
“The only real reasons people go to war anymore are religion and money, and often it’s a combination of the two. In the Civil War, cheap labor in the form of slaves was the main issue. In World War II, Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats for Germany’s economic problems, which were a result of World War L He had to go to war to get Germany out of debt. Do you understand any of this, Roy?”
“Not everything. I know that sometimes people want the land that other people are on.”
“That has to do with money. One piece of land might be better than another to grow crops on, or there’s oil or gas or diamonds and gold or other valuable minerals in it. And as far as religion is concerned, everybody should be left alone and leave others alone to worship as they please.”
“Why don’t they?”
“Most do, Roy, but some people get carried away. They believe their way should be the only way. It’s when people think they’ve got an exclusive on being right that the world goes ape.”
“I once heard Dad say to a guy, ‘If I had to get a job done right and I had to choose between you and an ape to do it, I’d take the ape.’“
“I’ve had enough of Vicksburg, baby. How about you?”
Where Osceola Lives
MOM, DID YOU KNOW that the Seminoles are the only Indian tribe that never gave up? They hid out here in the Everglades and the soldiers couldn’t defeat them.”
“I know that the Glades was much larger then, so the Indians had more room to move around and evade the army.”
“The Seminoles weren’t really a regular tribe, either. They were made up of renegades and survivors of several different tribes who banded together for a last stand in what they called the Terrible Place. Their leader was Osceola, whose real name was Billy Powell, and he was mostly a white man.”
“If I’m not mistaken, Roy, the road to Miami that we’re on now was originally a Micosukee Indian trail. Imagine how difficult it must have been to build the highway here,”
“Really dangerous, too. There’s alligators and panthers and water moccasins all around. The Seminoles somehow survived everything, even swamp fevers that killed dozens of soldiers.”
“In the movie Key Largo, there are two Seminole brothers who’ve escaped from jail and the cops are looking for them. Even though he’s seen them passing in a canoe, the hotel owner doesn’t tell the cops because he likes the brothers and believes they were treated unfairly. Later, just before a hurricane is about to hit, the Seminole brothers and other Indians come to the hotel for shelter, as they’d always done during a big storm, but a gangster who’s taken over the hotel refuses to let them in.”
“What happens to them?”
“They huddle together on the porch of the hotel and ride it out. The Seminole brothers survive/’
“Remember Johnny Sugarland, my favorite alligator wrestler at the reptile farm up in St. Augustine?”
“Sure, baby. The boy with three fingers on one hand and the thumb missing on the other. “
“He’s a Seminole. Johnny told me about Osceola, so I got a book about him from the school library. Nobody except the Seminoles knows where Osceola’s body is buried. Some of them say that Osceola is still alive and hunting with an eagle, an owl, and a one-eyed dog as old as he is way back in a part of the Terrible Place that no white man has ever seen.”
“Crazy Horse, the Sioux warrior, is another Indian whose burial place is kept secret. Supposedly, no white man knows where his grave is, either.”
“I’d go into the swamp with Johnny, if he’d take me. It would be great to see where Osceola lives.”
“I’m sure he’s dead now, Roy. For the Seminoles, it’s Osceola’s spirit that’s still alive.”
“I think I like the Everglades more than any other place I’ve been.”
“Why is that, baby?”
“It’s got the most hiding places of anywhere. If you don’t get eaten by a gator or a snake, or get swallowed up in quicksand or die of a fever, you could disappear from everyone for as long as you wanted."
“Roy, there’s a reason the Indians called this the Terrible Place.”
“I know, Mom, but I think I'd be okay, as long as I remembered the way out,”
The Crime of Pass Christian
YOU KNOW, MOM, the best time for me is when we’re moving in the can I like it when we’re between the places we’re coming from and going to.”
“Don’t you miss your friends, or sleeping in your own bed?”
“Sometimes. But right now we’re not in New Orleans yet and it’s kind of great that nobody else knows exactly where we are. Where are we, anyway
?”
“Comin’ up on Pass Christian, honey. Remember once we stayed in a house here for a week when your dad had business in Biloxi? An old two-story house with a big screened-in porch that wrapped all around the second floor.”
“It’s where i trapped a big brown scorpion under a glass and left it there overnight. In the morning the glass was still upside down but the scorpion was gone. You let it go when I was asleep, didn’t you, Mom?”
“No, baby, I told you I didn’t. I don’t know how it got out. And your dad was away that night in New Orleans. It was a real mystery.”
“I like that we don’t know what happened. Maybe there’s a ghost living in the house who picked up the glass, or somehow the scorpion did it with his poison tail”
“This part of the Gulf Coast always seems haunted to me. If the scorpion had gotten out by itself, the glass would have fallen over, or at least moved. As I recall, it was in exactly the same place the next morning when we looked.”
“What kind of ghost do you think lives in that house?”
“Oh, probably the old lady who lived there all of her life. Someone told me she was almost a hundred years old when she died. She never married, and lived alone after her parents passed away.”
“What was her name?”
“Baby, I don’t remember. Mabel something, I think. There was a story about a kidnapping involving the woman. I can’t recall exactly what happened, but she had been kidnapped when she was a child and held for ransom. The family was quite wealthy. It was a famous case.”
“Did the police catch the kidnappers?”
“I guess so. Oh, wait, Roy, here’s the sharp curve in the highway I hate, I always forget when it’s coming up.”
“You’re a great driver, Mom. I always feel safe in the car with you.”
“You shouldn’t ever worry when we’re driving, baby. Now, look, the road stays pretty straight from here on. Yes, the men who kidnapped Mabel Wildrose—that was the family’s name, Wildrose— were caught and sent to prison.”
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