I
give a talk in a community center in Memphis which goes well — an attentive
older audience — but they haven’t come to buy my books, even prettily signed
ones. After the talk is finished, they want to tell me about themselves, their
ancestors, and their family histories. So I listen. Then, catch a bus south, to
Mobile, Alabama.
A
man sits beside me in the station, one of those tall, slender, livewires with a
full black handlebar mustache and wild grin. He’s one of the funniest people
I’ve ever met, but the comments and one-liners come so quickly, I don’t have
time to remember a word. He’s a quick magic person, the sort you meet rarely in
life: no ready-made jokes for him, no reworked stories, just another way of seeing
things, seeing them quickly, and knowing how to manipulate irony. What does he
do for a living? He’s a coal miner.
I
must have stared with astonishment as the old mining images race through my
head, mining communities described as “open cesspits” where, “after the
covering of trees was ripped out, mud slid down the hills in torrents, covered
tents, and smothered the men inside.” In those places, there was no good water
to be had; lice were combed away with bowie knives; to fight rats, wild cats
and snakes were kept in the tents during the day. Some mineworkers were uneducated
slum dwellers from the east, people who had only known deprivation and filth. Unwilling
to adopt sanitary measures, preparing food in the open but refusing to use
privies, they contaminated their water supplies and created the perfect
environment for cholera. People died like flies, and unburied bodies were left in
the open air for scavengers to eat.
Of
course, this clever man’s life is far from my horror tales. In the mining town
where he lives, he, his buddies, and their wives have a great time. Every
Friday and Saturday night they get together, create floorshows and theatrical
performances, eat, drink, and are merry. Those wretched old stories are just… wretched
old stories. With a jaunty step and cheery goodbye wave, he travels on homeward.
Heading
south, the bus is crowded. A few seats away, a vast woman sits with two
children, a baby who never stops crying, and a boy who plays endlessly with an
obnoxious bleeping game: as Sartre said, “hell is other people.” Ignoring both
tots, mom reads, Low Carb Success: How to lose weight and keep it off. She
remains seated at every stop: calorie burning is not part of the plan.
There
is beautiful countryside in this part of the world, but a bus isn’t going to
leave the main road and go exploring, so we pass the usual: lots for sale, cookie-cutter suburban sprawl with enticing names — Magnolia Homes, Forest Green Parkway,
Woodland Terrace — but hardly a tree in sight much less a copse. There’s other
housing out there, too: shanties. Many aren’t connected to the public sewage
system, nor are there septic tanks. Instead, PVC piping carries waste several
yards away, dumps it into ditches or onto waste ground. No surprise that
outbreaks of E. Coli are common, and that many people are still hookworm
infested.
Much
of this poverty is due to “heirs’ property” the land purchased or deeded after
the American Civil War. Informally inherited without a title or will, after
several generations, it is difficult to determine who the legal owners are, who
has paid their share of taxes, who has helped maintain the land. Sometimes, the
heirs don’t even know each other. Without a clear titles, there is no
possibility of obtaining grants, improvement loans, or disaster relief funding.
Heirs’ property is the leading cause of substandard living conditions among African
Americans, Native Americans, and the Mexican American colonias in the states of Arkansas, Mississippi,
Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, and
Louisiana.
Surrounded by a lot for sale, a
modern consumer palace, and a fast-food emporium is a large tent with a big
sign: With God All Things Are Possible. That’s certainly good news for some,
and particularly for Mary Scott.
I
met Scotty many years ago when she lived around the corner from me in a small
California town. The mother of too many grubby but well-behaved children, she had
been widowed once, and a more recent ex was serving endless time for first-degree
murder (“it wasn’t his fault, really”). She was a small, lean woman with long,
slightly chewed-looking naturally white-blond hair and very pale blue eyes. She
wasn’t beautiful — she looked a little too backwoods and bony for that — but
her smile was warm, and she was kindly.
Scotty
passed her days sitting out on the front steps of her slapped-together shack
(similar to the dump I was then living in) making lovely necklaces from the
glass pearls of old rosaries she found in charity shops. She wasn’t committing
any sort of heresy by using sacred material in this way, she said. On the
contrary: the beads had a magic power and would bring protection and happiness
to those who bought and wore them.
Several
times a day, a big motorcycle passed, a Harley. On it, sat a black leather-clad
handsome rider with a thick black beard and long black hair tied by a bandana
(people didn’t fool around with sissy stuff like helmets back then.) He would smile,
and wave; she would wave, smile in a certain secret way, and just keep on
stringing those pretty glass pearls. She was weaving a spell, she said. Those
beads would eventually net her Don, the delicious motorcycle man: at the
moment, he had an “old lady” tucked away somewhere.
After
a while, Don began slowing slightly as he passed. Then, he took to stopping at
the weedy curb. Scotty would sashay down the cracked walkway, go talk to him,
her hips arched sweetly, her eyes knowing. And, when he drove off again, she’d
come back to the front steps, sit, smile in that secret way, and string those
magical beads.
I
moved away and lost contact with Scotty. But one day, as I was walking along a
street in a nearby town, a tall dark, handsome well-groomed man in an expensive
dark suit approached me. Didn’t I recognize him? It was Don, the former
motorcycle man. He and Scotty were married, now. Why not come back home with
him, say hello to her. They were just about to go off traveling.
I
followed him to a vast new house, gaudy and pretentious, in an excellent
neighborhood — a world away from that former shack of hers. The greatest shock
was seeing Scotty. She was dressed in a long flowing white robe and had
transformed herself into a radiant beauty with flowing golden hair and a beatific
smile. So beatific, I swear I could see a halo hanging prettily over her head.
Surrounding her were the angelic-looking offspring.
Yes,
she and Don had done well, Scotty said. The Virgin Mary had come to her in a
vision, had told her she had a calling. Now, with Don as her manager, she was
constantly on the road, preaching the word to thousands who packed into huge prayer
tents all across the country. Not only was she a blazing success, Don assured
me, they were also pulling in an enormous amount of money. Well done, Scotty,
wherever you are.
In
Mobile, the bus station is quite a distance from downtown. Which direction
should I take to get there? Once again, the three young ladies behind the
counter come up trumps: “Oh, you can’t walk there. It’s at least a couple of
hours away.”
“Really?”
I try not to feel discouraged. “Is it a nice city?”
They
look at each other and shrug. I could be talking about the center of
Vladivostok, as far as they’re concerned.
“What’s
of particular interest in Mobile?”
More
shrugs.
“But
there’s a nice mall a little further out,” calls a woman from the back. “Tell
her how she can walk there.”
Since
I’ve already had this same conversation back in Thunder Bay, I now know the
world is divided up into two sorts of people: Mall People, and Other People.
In
the end, I set out anyway, and discover it’s only a twenty-minute walk. One
that takes me past once-glorious mansions, formerly set in verdant countryside,
and now falling to bits between used car lots, fried chicken outlets, and watery
suburbia with reassuring names: Casa Marina, Cool Waters. And in town, overshadowed
by tall skyscrapers and the usual tedious high glass office blocks, is the
usual preserved-for-tourism historic center. But there are also so many
remarkable Victorian houses, my imagination reels with story possibilities. Can
I just climb in a window, please? Take a peek? Pretty please? Come live with
you for a while?
Back
at the bus station, I think about going to Tallahassee. “What’s it like?” I
ask.
All around, there are
only shrugs. No one seems to have been there. Then one man pipes up: “Long time
since I seen it. Lots of beaches, just beaches, that’s all you can see. Must
have changed since then, though. Bet it has.”
Since
Tallahassee is inland, I’m sure his conclusion must be right, and I decide to head
for Panama City instead.
and on my story podcast at https://soundcloud.com/j-arlene-culiner
