The Vine That Ate the South

by J. D. Wilkes

  Evidently, the city had employed them just to stand up there and impersonate the Ladies Liberty and Justice, plus a couple of founding fathers. Silly as it was, it had to be a tough job holding a pose on a pedestal, sweating in the sun for minimum wage. Their upheld torches and scales wobbled in straining poses of patriotic commitment.

  Daddy pulled the Datsun to a screeching halt, burst out onto the street, and stood there staring at them with his hands in his pockets. It was a concentrated gaze with a wicked smile. To be sure, I followed his line-of-sight to the target: the young female statue standing nearest to us. I watched in horror as the girl’s legs began to buckle, until, finally, she fell four stories to her death. It didn’t take long before Daddy had the other three picked off as well. One by one, the youngsters toppled to their demise, cracking their heads and backs on the sidewalk below. It was right then and there, as horror swelled my senses, I understood that Daddy had indeed found what he was looking for.

  As screaming crowds formed and sirens wailed like wolf packs, Daddy started the car and drove us back home in silence. Silent save for Mama’s Carpenters tape, which played in a loop the entire seven-hour ride.

  Chapter Fourteen

  FATHER OF WATERS

  An abandoned bridge.

  A brief visit paid by a stranger.

  Another tall tale from Carver Canute.

  At a fairly good clip, we pedal along a smooth section of the Old Spur Line. Tobacco flows in umber waves on our left and right. Each furrow fans past my periphery like the flickering frames of a zoetrope. It is getting near noon but the wind is cool and it’s just what I need to keep my mind clear.

  “So how much of their bodies can you still see?” I ask, hoping for the most gruesome answer this liar can muster.

  “Well, the crows had ’em picked clean years ago, but their bones are wrapped up tighter than a banjer string. So they ain’t a-goin’ nowheres. They’re just a-plum hangin’ up there, inter-twung in those branches like a Mississippi Wind Chime! They still got some of their clothes on though, like how them mummies do. They was hoarders, so all their stuff’s gethered up in them trees too.” Pedaling along with no hands, Carver laces his fingers together to illustrate.

  “You know yer there when you see them white-painted tree trunks. It’s supposed to keep the piss-ants away. They was talk of havin’ a tree service come out there to cut the bodies down, but it’s all government property now, so it’s been locked up in paperwork since 1977. The house is all cobbled in on itself. Most of the old newspapers layin’ around got danged ol’ Jimmy Carter on ’em.”

  I imagine the creepy old Carter-era couple, dying in their filth together. I can see the sinister vinework taking hold and spreading out… festooned with the twisted viscera of legend. It’s all quite sad, actually. At least they were together in the end. I should be so lucky.

  Oh Delilah, I think to myself. Why can’t you see he’s a cad? Remember when he groped your sister?

  “Yep. That stuff grows quick.” He pauses. “Hey, what happened to yer weed whacker?”

  I look down to discover an empty scabbard rattling against the fork of my rear wheel.

  “Crap. I must’ve dropped it back at the rock pit. It probably went flying when I hit the ground. Or the tornado ate it.”

  “Don’t worry, I gotcher back. The bridge up here done caught far, so we’re gonna have to wade across the crick and carry our bikes over our heads. You think yer up fer that?”

  THE BRIDGE

  Pressing through a patch of weeping willows, we come out the other side into an awesome green arena. It’s the grand cove of the outer bank of the Bloodyshin Fork of Clarks River, one of several succeeding offshoots of the Tennessee River. I’ve heard that, taken in altogether, the waterways form an aerial view of a devil’s skull. And if I’m right, this part would be the horns.

  The bridge’s decking goes only to a point; any farther and there are too many missing timbers to proceed. The fork waters twinkle between the cracks some sixty feet down. And with every step, the ties shift upon their joists, creaking like the hinges of Hell.

  But there it is. Towering ahead, obscured in a gale of gnats, it’s the old Bayou Bridge. It stands alone, disconnected from the extension where we stand. From this angle its rusty arches seem to rise up like the carrion ribcage of Mother Earth.

  The bridge sulks in the languor of mid-day, weeping openly from rusty rivets. Its steel girders are scorched black by the belched steam of by-gone locomotives. Perhaps good ol’ No. 801, local history’s midnight passenger train, AKA “Whiskey Dick,” left these marks. Whiskey Dick was the train that ferried Prohibition-era bootleggers to and from Kentucky’s secret speakeasies. Bourbon bottles jingled in the luggage racks as drunken cavorters hung out the windows, swinging their mugs to an off-beat ragtime sing-along. Now U.S. highways have replaced the glory days of good ol’ No. 801.

  Upended crossties protrude from the riverbed below. They must have plunged from this height and stuck like giant mumble pegs. “Oh, the stories this bridge could tell.” But the lazy, good-for-nothin’ gal has sadly run her course. We backtrack off the extension and descend the bank.

  From the looks of it, some heavy metal stoners must’ve found this cove back in the ’70s and tore it all to hell. Party animals rocking out to Blue Öyster Cult and Sabbath. They must have incinerated some of those planks with their bonfires. But the graffiti on the concrete abutments bear traces of other, even darker characters.

  KKK

  I picture territorial Klansmen, Satanists, and Kentucky Vampires emerging from a purple fog of psychedelics to leave their markings in graffiti paint and blood. Southern history is, of course, plagued by such sectarian mischief. Night Riders, Loyal Leagues, Rifle Clubs, Red Shirts, and other delta cults, both left and right, forced their will on society long ago. It has always been the case. The hot house of our Southern climate produced many mutant strands of sweaty zealots. The sun fermented their brains that stewed in skulls full of moonshine, fear, and vengeance. But, despite our checkered past, it is interesting to note that the Northern agraria and Pacific Northwest host most White Power activity today.

  Facing the desecration, I observe the way vandals have—to quote the old saying—“made no mark yet left a stain.”

  Because spray paint is everywhere:

  S.R. 1980

  KKK

  3 LEGGED PERVERTS

  HAIL SATEN!

  RODERICK FERRELL

  AC/DC

  S.R. ’77

  TEMPLE OF SET

  ORDER OF COPPERHEAD

  “Like a briiiidge over troubled teens…” I sing.

  These kids formed the loose confederacy of townies that I always tried to avoid, and avoid becoming. They are like the tormentors who kept me indoors for most my childhood. Stoney Kingston and those Trans-Am-driving metalheads who stole my bike to score angel dust. They beat up my friends in the FFA, and once even shot my dog. Poor thing was just trying to be friendly, but Guff Poat, the star quarterback, claimed he was “rabid and attacking him.” It is beyond me why he would think a bunch of cheerleaders at the ballpark would be impressed with him shooting my Irish Setter. But damned if they didn’t love him and his muscles even more.

  Yes, I resent them all, but, strangely, I owe everything to them. I wonder if they lost a year trying to exit the woods… heathens that they were.

  TABITHA

  Out ahead upon dry land, we sense the sound of galloping thunder. The blur of brown fur blows by us at lightning speed.

  “They she goes!” Carver hoops.

  “There who goes?”

  “Li’l Tabitha Holt. Out poundin’ her trail.”

  He pauses to spit.

  “Yep, I figger she’s gittin’ on eleven year now. Skinny as a rail. Still cuttin’ her own dog trails out here. Ridin’ that Great Dane like a pony.”

  “That was a dog?”

  “Yep, she’s even got her own little hand-tooled leather saddle and everything.
I put ’em around 30/35 miles an ire, at least! That’s prob’bly who ya seen back in Carter Mill. Poor thang. She’s got a terrible home life. Just terrible! Her mama’s one of them hoarders too. Even saves her dirty toilet paper. Crap and all.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Yeah. Ain’t no bound’ries in that fambily neither. Her daddy diddled her for years, come to find out. No doors allowed in the house. He just tacked up blankets ’cause he done kicked in all the real doors. Front door too. Mud just tracks right in from the yard, splits up into differnt paths and goes off into all the rooms. No wonder she’s out here cuttin’ her own fresh new path.”

  “So the daddy’s gone now? He go to jail?”

  “Nah. He had a huntin’ accident out cheer once. I believe I already tolt you about that,” Carver winks.

  So there you have it. Carver is a murderer.

  Tabitha and her dog are long gone now. We can barely see them anymore. The sound of galloping paws and snapping branches grows fainter and fainter.

  BAE BAE

  Carver squints, spits, tugs at his business, and goes, “Hey, look at this.”

  “What now?”

  “No, I’m serious. Look at this.” He points to a tree trunk he’s been groping at for the past minute or two.

  In the bark of an aging elm is the word BAE BAE carved in a blocky scrawl.

  “What’s a ‘bae bae’?” I ask.

  “You don’t know who Bae Bae is?!” Carver scoffs. “Bae Bae is a Southern hill spirit that roams through yer dreams. She is tall, dark, and don’t speak. She was this perty little slave back in the olden days. Pre-Civil War. The massa of the plantation knocked her up, so, t’keep it a secret, he went and drownded their lovechild in the crick. Bae Bae was so tore up over it she went slap crazy and throwed herself in the crick too. She died and the massa went on about his bidness.”

  Carver stares off into the past, contemplates his next half truth, and lights up a cigarette for effect.

  “Whelp,” he snaps the Zippo shut. “He started havin’ nightmares and talkin’ in his sleep. ‘Bae Bae… Bae Bae.’ He’d say her name a couple of times. But his wife just so happened to always wake him up right before he said it a third time. And every time he’d wake up they’d both smell somethin’ burnin’, like hair or oil or somethin’. They couldn’t figure it out so they a-went on back to sleep.”

  Carver pauses to let that bit sink in.

  “Okay, so he a-went on back to sleep and started sayin’ ‘Bae Bae’ again. Then he’d say it again. Once-t… twice-t… and on that third time the ghost of Bae Bae appeared with a knife in her hand, standin’ over him like a Boo Hag. Her eyes a-clouded over like a Catahoula hound! Well, Bae Bae, she stobbed that knife so deep into her massa’s heart that his eyes popped clean on outta his head!”

  Carver pauses again for effect, drawing on his cigarette.

  “Well, after the wife nearly went nuts from the whole ordeal, she started puttin’ all the puzzle pieces together. She figured out her husband had knocked up that no good ‘Bae Bae,’ so she tolt the house slaves to go throw his dead, cheatin’ ass into the crick so that he could be with his whore. So they went and tumped him off the Bayou Bridge. And down he went into Davy Jones’ Locker.”

  “Yeah? Yeah?” I mockingly fish for more.

  “Whelp, every midnight on a full moon they say if you come to this bridge and peek down, you kin see the massa’s eyes float to the top to stare you down. Then they say ‘the Eyes of Clarks River are upon you!’”

  The whole time Carver was telling his story, I could clearly see him palming his pocketknife. The blade was dull with the green smear of fresh sap. However, for all of Carver’s faults—lying, drinking, cussing, fighting, trespassing, vandalism, and, well, murder—at least it all leads to a good story.

  Around us, on the bridge’s abutments, train hoppers have left behind some interesting tags to ponder too: Coal Train, Colossus of Roads, Agony Wagon. Their graffitied monikers stir images of mystery and freedom. The rest of the area is decorated with old Tab and Billy Beer cans, pop-tops, two soiled mattresses, stray brassieres dangling from tree limbs, and the waterlogged carcass of a skinned buck. Plastic Walmart bags wave like flags, perhaps marking meth stashes, and squeals echo from a distant puppy mill.

  We continue to walk our bikes down the clay bank, battling weeping willow roots to keep from tripping. At last we are able to wade into the depths of Clarks River.

  “Time to get yer legs wet!” yells Carver.

  Deeply bruised from my fall at the quarry, I struggle to keep my bicycle saddlebags high and dry. So I can’t resist when Carver comes to my aid, hefting not just his but both bikes overhead, hand over fist. It’s a true display of Southern hospitality. Nowise abashed, I appreciate him and tell him so. I’m really starting to get exhausted. Schools of shiners bite at our midsections as we wade on. A water moccasin pokes its nostrils up as it swims by, slick as a ribbon. The cool olive water is refreshing, but I sense there is a shroud over the place. Maybe it’s the lush, vaulted canopy that makes me feel small and vulnerable. Maybe it’s all the snakes in the water too.

  This Bloodyshin Fork reminds me of another foreboding pool of sin, the swimming hole of my youth where outcasts like me weren’t allowed. Teenage bathing beauties and their bronze boyfriends would party, get drunk, and screw. One handsome couple overdosed and fell to their death from an outcropping. Mama told me about it at the breakfast table before school and I couldn’t help but bust out laughing. Like I did when all those jocks got killed in that car wreck. If only it could’ve been Guff Poat or Stoney Kingston. Stoney wasn’t really a jock, but he sure was handy with the ladies. Telling lies and strumming tunes about his adventures in The Deadening, that’s how he wooed Delilah from me. No matter what I did to impress her, he always found a way of improving on it. My jokes, my stories, even my music, all of it improved upon by this talented liar. Came riding up and swooped her up on a stallion one day. Literally, swooped her up off her feet and onto his horse! How cheesy is that? Why, oh why couldn’t it have been him that had his head cut off by an 18-wheeler?

  Those assholes got what they deserved. Call me “Crap Knife,” will they?!

  Once atop the west-side platform, Carver stops for another cigarette while we both drip dry. The forest is still faintly humming like a leaky church organ.

  THE GRID

  I feel like a pioneer out here. A veritable Daniel Boone, forging a trail through the darkness. Or maybe I’m an old homesteader back in the days of “Westward Expansion,” the White Man’s quest for more American land.

  As you may recall from history class, millions of Sooners hit the trail, staking their claim, and, as they did, they rendered straight and true the crooked buffalo trails and footpaths that led them to the Pacific. In the process, they created a sort of grid that divided up this American wilderness.

  New property lines and railroads soon criss-crossed the old aboriginal wilds, creating order out of chaos. And, if you stop and think about it, these crosses are quite the fitting symbol for the conquering force of Christianity. For what is a grid but an infinite expression of interlocking Christian symbols?

  This American Grid reminds me of another great Wonder of the World, the Native American Nazca Lines. Both the grid and the lines are extraordinary examples of man’s ability to carve the land into giant symbols. And both serve as immense ground-displays meant to impress their god(s) upon high. One is rigid and cruciform, the other sinewy and amorphous. But which of the two would the Heavens favor from its LORD’S-eye view?

  Perhaps it was the White Man’s telegraph poles that tipped the scales. Miles and miles of yet more crosses, and their overlapping cables, added insult to pagan injury. The resulting culture clash, as history books record, was not pretty. After shedding much blood, sweat, and sap, both Nature and Native America were sent kicking and screaming into the corner of their new rectilinear confines. It would seem the Heavens had made its decision.

  Ah, but
you ask, aren’t the two of you there to get “off the grid”? Indeed! For look at those crosses now! The barbed wire is all rusty, the railroads are overgrown, and the old telegraph poles trail off in a row of haphazard diagonals. Their arms uphold flaccid, ivy-draped wires, and every other one is betokened with the stamped tin badge of a defunct utility: as worthless as a Confederate coin.

  If I squint, I can imagine rotting pale-faces crucified on every pole, creosote dripping down like blood, their American Dream long exploded in their hearts. No surprise though. Pagan Nature, by Design, will always strike her balance. Even today’s proud infrastructure will one day be like an overgrown lattice, its grid overwhelmed and its symbols of Christendom broken into a cacography of Cherokee runes.

  “They usta give us smoke breaks in junior high,” says Carver. “Bell would ring and we’d all go out there, teachers and the students, a settin’ side by side, just a-lightin’ one off the other. But the dentist says I gotta give it up. I tolt him I been smokin’ since I was eleven year old and I ain’t a-quittin’ now. So to learn him a lesson, right before my last appointment, I ate a whole row of Oreos and didn’t brush my teeth.”

  “Okay.”

  “So he’s over at the sink, warshin’ his hands and he comes over and goes, ‘All right, buddy, let’s see them pearly whites.’ So, fer effect, I open my mouth real slow, mmmmahhhhh. He looks down, jumps back, and goes ‘Holy Shit!’ like this…” Carver bulges out his eyes, starts laughing at his own story, goes Whoo-wee! And then, you guessed it: three… two… one: crotch-tug!