I flung away the crawfish and grabbed the sides of the boat. “What? No way!”
“Easy now son. That was...”
My head felt heavy.
“Backhoe?! What? You mean...”
“I said easy, Skid. That was a long time ago.”
“You... you mean I came that close to lookin’ like Broadway and Squash? Oh God!”
He stopped rowin’, and the boat – that was goin’ in a straight line – started wobblin’. He just looked at me and frowned and leant his head like a dog who just heard a tea kettle.
“Is dat what you’re gettin’ from all dat I’m sayin’ to you, son? Dat’s your concern? Jeesus Saviour! Cos I ain’t got the taam witchoo taday.”
The boat was really wobblin’ now. I was wishin’ he would stop lookin’ at me like that. He sighed and narrowed his eyes and started rowin’ again.
“So anyway, I told Alrick not to go to San Tainos by himself, but he did again and again, and by and by things changed. Backhoe found out and wanted to hang him by the toenails. But your pops, he was in love. So when things got rough and he married Valerie and came to America, Backhoe went down to the island for Pauline. Now, that was just to make Valerie feel bad, cos that Pauline was like a young Miss San Tainos at the time – yeah – beauty-pageant winner and all. And by the way, I know you mighta heard stuff from his own mouth, but don’t be thinkin’ that man Tracey is prejudicialist. He’s not. Bitter is what he is. And he’s been so for a long time. He taught his sons to harass y’all, so y’all would just pack up and head on outta the swamp and make it easier for him, cos he still got feelin’s for your... for Valerie. But... look what happened. It’s all karma.”
All that time in my head, I’m still back in the Sixties with Moms and Backhoe. Imagine... Skid Benet. Daaamn.
Pa kept goin’. “Anyway, where was I? Yeah, late Sixties. After a while, Backhoe called up Alrick and reopened his offer, sayin’ that the gas and oil was deeper down – and he wanted to get it like we all agreed. Of course, at the time, Alrick was just tryin’ to settle in with his new wife, plus he knew under all that calmness Backhoe hated the fact that he took away the love of his life. But Backhoe said: ‘Look, business is business, no sweat, I’m happy. And I hear that you’re the man for the job.’ What he meant was that somebody over in Alabama told him they found oil underground by usin’ divinations.”
He didn’t wait for me to ask.
“Divinations is when people use magic to find out somethin’ that science cain’t. It’s all over the Old Testament, kid. Ask your Harry T friend. Anyway, in this case, Backhoe knew about Valerie’s conjurin’ powers and wanted Alrick to get her to find out where the oil was under the land. See now, he had to be cautious, cos the place was in a mess and people were talkin’ about it. So that’s when Alrick came and told your momma that they should invest in a piece of swampland and the city would catch up later on.”
“So, he didn’t have a vision?”
“Course he had a vision, cos when Valerie found out the trick and refused to help with the divinations, he prob’ly wanted to believe something good would happen evenchually. Like the city would actually come into the swamps. That was his Plan B if there was really no oil or gas. ’Twas on his mind day an’ night. Plus, he had to get your mother here for a long enough time, in order for her to feel the energy of the place and conjure up where exactly the minerals were located. So he told her the vision. And she is a spirichual person, so she gave it a shot. And ol’ Alrick, he was a sneaky one: he went ahead and got your momma pregnant, so that apartment idea she had wouldn’t look so good any more. But when your mother came into the swamps, like I said, she found religion and refused to do any more spells ’cept for protection. And Alrick, he flipped a wig when she wouldn’t do it, and he went and did some reckless magic himself, I tell ya. Started planting seals and conjurin’ spells all over the place. Been doin’ it for years. Now, with the subsidence year after year and all the gravel and marl we dump on this land from time to time, he can’t find those seals anywhere. That land we live on is a magic minefield, you heah me? Don’t you play with magic if you ain’t ready for the constiquences! And that’s why I say the wind’s a-changin’, son. Earth balances herself. At first I thought that as soon as Backhoe and Alrick realized there was nothin’ in this swamp, then they’d just relax and I’d kick back with my old lady and enjoy the view right here. But greed is a ghost! I love this place, but this swamp is haunted by greed. And it’s heavy with spells. Hundreds of powerful seals are buried in the earth right heah, and all that power is about to balance this place out. Those poor, misguided boys dyin’ is just the beginnin’ o’ sorrows. Now, I never told you this when you came to me and said y’all think your pops was conjurin’ against y’all, but he was prob’ly desperate and just tryin’ his best to scare your mother off the land, cos he cain’t imagine what all those seals he planted are about to do. But of course, that goat-blood letter, it backfired and he hurt his own self.”
Now, after that bottle-spell incident I knew I shouldn’t ask this, but I couldn’t help myself, especially since I remembered Pops in the darkness diggin’ at the dirt with his bare hands that night.
“Plantin’ seals, Pa?”
“Have you been lissenin’? Now, don’t you go trying nothin’. There are enough spells goin’ on as it is. That’s why I gave that whiskey bottle back to your mother. That’s it.”
Pause. And I just sat there and looked at him and looked down and played with the clambering crawfish and looked up again and sighed and looked away. That old guy looked at me out the wrinkly corner of his eye till he couldn’t help himself. I gave him ten seconds more, and by the time I’d gotten to six on the countdown in my head, he rolled his eyes and went on.
“Dammit – awright! But just for your edjufication: the seals are from grimoires, son. Ancient spell books. There are seals... symbols that people bury in da earth – and if theah are minerals or riches or oil or gas or wha’eva, then it’s s’pose to bring it right up. Seen it maself with ma own two peepers! But most people use good magic for greed. Then they say the Great Spirit turned her back on them. But it’s them who give up on their good selves.”
It was sunset almost, and the high tide had snuck up on us and was lop-loppin’ against the boat and makin’ it unsteady. The autumn breezes tunnelled into my ears, so I missed most of what Pa said after that. Then when we were rowin’ back to the house through the trees, a big lazy cloud bank came stretchin’ sideways from over the Gulf all the way across to the swamp – and it looked like a giant heap, hundreds of feet high. The sun was right behind it, so it gave it this gold lining at the top that looked like a big ol’ mirage of a mountain.
Now, Pa Campbell, he thought I didn’t notice, but as he rowed back through the cypresses with the water now higher up on the trunks, I could hear him whisperin’: “Hey Bigfoot – hi Old Sarah.” And I looked around and realized he was talkin’ to the damn trees. Well, I wasn’t so emotional about trees ’cept for my conference room, so I was snickerin’ and playin’ with the crawfish, until I looked up and saw that as we came through the trees, the duckweed, that green carpetlooking thing on top of the water in the swamp, it just kinda closed back up and made the surface look so solid you felt you could prob’ly hop out of the boat and run on top of it and jump over those water hyacinths with the purple-and-gold Mardi-Gras-coloured flowers – and walk on water all the way up to that big cloud mountain that wasn’t really there. And that’s when I told myself that I really believed in Pops’ dream. And now that I knew the whole back story, it was eye-opening, like wakin’ up with conjunctivitis until Moms rescues you with some saline.
To tell the truth, I didn’t even care if my pops still believed his vision or if it was somethin’ to get Valerie Beaumont into the swamps. I just had the same premonition – and Frico had the power, even though the boy had taken a really bad turn.
Pa Campbell brought the pirogue around to the landin’ at the front of ou
r house, and we used a plastic shovel to scoop the crawfish into an ice cooler. It wasn’t even crawfish season, so the shells were hard and noisy. I did most of the shovellin’, cos suddenly Pa started shiverin’ like he was cold. He sat down at the edge of our landin’ and then, when I could no longer see his face except for the flickerin’ white in his eyes, he said to me like it was a benediction:
“You are also from San Tainos – at least a part of you. Know what that word ‘Taino’ means, son? It means ‘good people’. But it also means you got ancestors that was on this side of the world for thousands of years before ol’ Columbus came pokin’ his sword all over the place. Soon as he came, I believe deep down they knew it was never gonna be the same. You’ve got ancestors inside of you that saw his face as close as I’m sittin’ ’cross from you. And that means theah’s a part of you that should sense it when the wind changes. But you don’t pay attention, Skid, so I gotta tell ya. And tell those brothers of yours too. Start askin’ your mauda to tell you who the hell y’all are, you heah me? I mean, just the odder day y’all were knee-high to a grasshopper, but y’all grown up now... it’s time. Lord knows it’s time. You don’t know who you are, and it’s a shame.”
What he was sayin’ was pretty cool and deep and scary, but I was more happy about him agreein’ to let me help him with the crawfishin’ and such. So I was about to ask him ’bout a salary package when Moms, she heard the talk and came around the side of the house past the new well and water tank. She stepped over the PVC pipe, leant on the rake in her hand and called out to Pa askin’ him how I did out on the bayou.
“Boy’s a nachural,” he called back. “Gathered a whole pile for you guys too. And if you don’t mind I’d like to borrow his help ag’in come next weekend.”
“As long as you be tellin’ him only about fishin’, that’s all right.”
“Oh yeah,” he said, avoidin’ her eyes and gruntin’ as he picked up the cooler. He walked past her towards his house. “Matter of fact, I was tellin’ him that to read and write and speak good is a spell in itself. I told him to study that grammar and those mathematics and cast a spell on the world that way.”
And I just wished that old man hadn’t said a word about all that. Valerie Beaumont is no fool.
Twelve
Backhoe Benet moved out of the swamp in a hurry. That was before Christmas, right after he came there one last time with some guys in one of those new GMC trucks. He went inside his house and came back out with the dried-up sunflowers and threw them out into the yard. Then he took down the curtains himself and dropped them on the floor and just stood there lookin’ out over the train tracks and past the sinkhole. He went for Medusa and put her in the passenger seat of the GMC and drove away. The guys took sledgehammers and a tractor and demolished the house, which was wood and glass anyway. A flatbed came and scraped up the junk and they all left with it.
When they were drivin’ out, the wind picked up and you could smell dead leaves and damp earth. That winter was bitter cold. How cold? So cold I wore all those acid-wash, denim hand-me-down jackets without feelin’ bad about it. How cold? We hardly got snow so far South, but that winter there was a seven-minute snow flurry and we needed serious heatin’. So Tony, he got nerdy and built us a heater out of a wood stove, steel sheets and some bricks Pops left behind. I think Pops helped him by calling through on the CB, but I couldn’t be sure. For one thing Valerie Beaumont was turnin’ that thing off more regularly. Pops’ voice would come over on the frequency. He’d say, “Break, break, Lady T-Rex,” and she’d say, “Oh, gimme a break indeed.” Well, I guess Pops was out of the hospital and was tryin’ to follow up on that note he sent to Moms.
Yeah, he sent her a note. See, when Pa Campbell brought that whiskey bottle back to Moms that night, the old fella didn’t even know he was being my pops’ little postman. Cos that Pops is real sneaky. He used the rolled-up photo to hide a note that he wrote to Moms. So when she broke that bottle that night and said she was gonna put back her photo where it came from, she found some paper rolled up real neat inside the photo. We all got a hold of it and read it one night while she was sleepin’. And it was a shocker. Her blood pressure went up and the whole place smelt like green tea and garlic for days.
Dearest Valerie,
I’ve done you wrong. I lied to you sixteen years. I am so sorry, but the time has come to speak the truth, because a greater evil is coming. The land we have been living on, that you and our children still occupy, is not ours. Our land titles are lies. The money we put together sixteen years ago did not purchase a piece of the wetlands. It was invested in Benet’s attempts to find oil or gas. I only wanted to make a better life for our children and I went ahead and did foolish things.
Benet is never satisfied. He still wants money. And now he also wants blood. The land you are living on belongs to him only. I am afraid he is ready to do something desperate. Please let us make arrangements to relocate as soon as possible.
I love and care for you,
Alrick
Well, my mother, she read it and bawled. Then she stomped outside in the night with a storm lantern and a shovel and buried the PVC pipe. For seven days we held hands around the table when she prayed for courage. And like I told you, that makes me scared as hell. Moms started goin’ and sittin’ with Ma and Pa Campbell on their porch for hours. When we watched them, we’d just see them noddin’ and pointin’ and gesticulatin’, but I couldn’t for the life of me make out what those ol’ people were sayin’.
Nineteen Eighty-six. Well, the changes were happenin’ fast. Pa Campbell gave us a beat-up pirogue and Moms’, well, she was learnin’ to shoot.
One day I heard her around the back with Pa Campbell churnin’ out bullets from the old .270 rifle, and I said, “Yeah, that’s my momma.” By spring we were catchin’ bass and panfish and crawfish out on the bayou instead of standin’ on the banks and wishin’ we could. Valerie Beaumont said it was about time we got our feet wet. We didn’t mind, even though Tony had to learn to keep quiet out on the water and Doug had to park his dainty white tennis shoes and Frico had to lay down his paintin’ sometimes and grab a trap or fishin’ pole. I had to learn to stop tryin’ to tell all of them what to do like I knew it all just because I went out crawfishin’ with Pa Campbell a few times.
Now, us learnin’ to live off the land couldn’t have come at a better time. Some people in the city were shuttin’ down shop and those who worked for them were headin’ out to Dallas and Atlanta to find jobs. We came home from school every day and practised our fishin’ and packed shrimp and craw-fish. Pa showed us how to scoop silt from the bayou floor and pour it into the garden, at the root of whatever greens he was growin’. Man, that mud stunk to highest heaven.
“Aww. Smell dat? Dat right theah is rich nutrishun for dose greens right theah! You know, I heard the Mayans or dose Aztecs I think, yeah, they use to do dat. Pour the swamp floor or river bed on all dat corn and cassava. They had to grow things fas’, cos... they had people to feed!”
One day in the middle of our enterprisin’ and history lesson, Belly rode into L-Island and just up and said he’d be leavin’ after summer to continue middle school in Atlanta. Tall Horse sent for him – God knows I don’t know my uncle-in-law’s real name – and there was no time for debatin’: it was just time to move. It was a weird time, cos almost on cue here comes Marlon the Fading Child Star with the same story. He was leavin’ for some place in New York called Rochester, cos he would be closer to big auditions and more opportunities for TV commercials. Well, Frico took a break from paintin’ critters and he sketched a design for a costume that Marlon could do his auditions in, and Marlon’s grandma, she got to sewin’ it for him, even though his grades didn’t budge upwards. Now, even though it wasn’t a magic suit or nothin’ (Frico drew it with his right hand), I was a little surprised at how easy it was for other people to get this guy to draw stuff – so I just felt mad that week.
I was mad at my pops too. That letter only showed
that Alrick Beaumont was a coward who couldn’t come into the swamps and man up and tell Moms to her face about the whole thing. Even though, with her new shooting skills, maybe he really shouldn’t. Apart from that, that letter mentioned nothin’ about all them seals he buried in the earth – hundreds prob’ly. Then again, maybe she knew, and that’s why we were holdin’ hands around the table all the time. Now, I’ll tell you who wasn’t a coward: Frico Beaumont. One school mornin’, he was brushin’ his teeth, and since I was thinkin’ about the suit he just up and drew for ol’ Marls, I just stepped into the bathroom and stood behind him and glared at the guy in the mirror.
“I got somethin’ for you to do for me, Frico.”
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