Day And Night In The Hot South

Day And Night In The Hot South              
                
     Late afternoon finds me and my beloved on a walk by the banks of the muddy Mississippi where I hunted the 19th-century ghosts. There, old glass bottles washed to shore along with rusty square nails from a time long before me. I scavenged for glass whiskey flasks and broken glass once filled with medicine with nostalgic eyes.  
     She says, “Did you hook up with me, a black girl, to fulfill MLK’s dream?”      
     “Only to let freedom ring for us two dreamers.”      
     “I needed to hear that you fell in love with me for us not because you stood on the mountaintop and saw the Promised Land.”      
      I ask Valerie, “Would you consider marrying a descendant of slave owners?”      
     She laughs and says, “My ancestors were slaves. When we tie the knot the tables will be turned. I’ll have you wrapped around my finger.”      
     So we climb the river bluffs to remember our birthplace. Feathery indigo clouds are suspended over old man river’s curve into the horizon. Tendrils of misty droplets hang in milky fronds curling toward the ground. A snowy fleece of cirrus with patches of teal sky looms overhead.       
     Kudzu climbs over the box factory ruins where my great grandfather toiled in the heart of the roaring twenties whose wealth passed him by like a locomotive headed somewhere else when a nickel bought a movie and Confederate veterans still gathered at the diner. The smokestack still points like a steeple up at the heavens where the laborers have emigrated and where I too will go, but with that prospect far from my boyish heart.      
     Dad’s stories of his papa are replayed in my mind like an old LP with scratches but still sonorous and resonate. Here the smoke weighed heavy in the Natchez dusk where it was blown like an old man’s last breath from the box factory stack. The sooty cough of the workers sounded like a cigarette lung blues when the bluebird sang for love on the slopes of the Mississippi River bluff with the dusk deepening into ochre shades of sorrow until the whistle blew its old refrain for the shadowy tribes of tribulation to go home to meat and potatoes and wives who grasped at splinters of faith for better days ahead.      
     Green shrubbery blankets the sunken bluffs below our perch. A riverboat horn bleats through the quiet evening. A cardinal swoops out of foliage below arcing gracefully back into the thicket.      
     Valerie sits on a foliage matted bench by my side. We have passed through our high school years like this, finding silent moments to ease each other.      
     Her sigh is deep as the impending night. Our closeness is second nature. Shared dreams of future happiness are whispered amongst dusk sounds where our golden eternity is imagined in this sanctuary of peace beyond the reach of urban hustle.      
     Leaves rustle in the warm breeze and saffron sunset clouds glow angelically. Her hand is warm in my palm like a tiny sparrow with her delicate and reassuring touch. The goodness of the earth is felt deeply in this encounter with her.      
     We blaze into autumn by wandering an antebellum home property in midst of a Hollywood film production past the Civil War movie set. Replicas of scorched homes rise in blackened desolation. Her roots go back to slavery but for this afternoon she is Scarlett O’Hara to my Rhett Butler. “Oh Rhett, marry me and take me away from here.”      
     “Scarlett, take my hand and I will lead you north where we’ll open an asylum for southern belles down on their luck. Eventually, we’ll find you a housekeeping job where you can start your life again.”      
     “Rhett, how could you? My hands are much too delicate for mopping and scrubbing. The soap will leave my skin rough and unladylike. Surely you don’t wish such a fate upon sweet little me?”      
     “Well, then my love you can be an usher at the theater. That way you get to see the shows for free. Once we graduate from junior college we’re headed deep into the southland but of Chicago where cornbread and collards find a plate on the table for parishioners from a delta of the mind where Mississippi sharecroppers gather on city streets where the only cotton fields are snow drifts and where harmonica harmonies tell the story we left behind.”      
     “It sounds just like home, Rhett.”      
     “It will be Scarlett, just instead of the Dollar General up there they have Bloomingdale’s where      
you can get all dolled up like a high society lady.”      
     “But do they have a big woman to act as my surrogate Mama and cook me up a mess of collards when I get the homesick blues?”      
     “Sure do. She will also make you a plate of beans and rice seasoned with Tabasco sauce imported from Louisiana.”      
     Valerie says, “But my real Mom would be heartbroken. Your Dad would be too.”      
     Valerie says, “I guess we’re really engaged now?”      
     I say, “That stands to reason.”      
     She says, “Are you poking fun at me?”      
     “Heavens no. I was just stating the obvious.”      
     She replies, “You are poking fun at me!”      
     “No, I could never do that to my wife.”      
     “Oh, I love it when you call me your wife. Please keep saying it. I need to hear it.”      
     “I could say it all day and night.”      
     “I’ll hold you to it.”       
     “Say since we’re engaged, let’s keep our kisses just between the two of us” I propose.      
     “Kisses are like pennies. To fill my piggy bank of kisses before I’m eighty I must diversify.”      
     I reply, “Now you’re the one kidding me.”      
     “But naw, we’ll make up for the exclusivity by sharing lots of kisses, just you and me,” she says.    
     “We’ll spend our kisses like dollars collected to fill the coffers of memory.”    
     She says “Where will we go from here?”    
     I reply, “Let’s make this spray-painted plywood imitation of the charred reality of the war our bed tonight.”    
     Valerie says, “We should go home. It’s dark.”    
     I say, “Let’s stay a while. The ghosts will visit before long.”      
     “I said I want to go home.”    
     I reply, “Are you sure?”    
     She breathes deep. “My parents will wonder where I am. I didn’t tell them I was coming here with you.”    
     I say, “Ok then we’ll go back. But navigating the      
terrain here will be tricky at night.”    
    She says, “Oh my God. You brought me out here after dark because you wanted to sleep with me. You tricked me!”    
     “I was flying blind. I never had such intentions.      
I just wanted to show you this place. I promise not to take advantage of you. We can sleep here together. Look, there is an old fashioned four poster bed. It was protected from the rain by a roof.”      
     She says, “The mattress is bare but that works for me. Let me try out. Boopsie boo, it has a nice bounce. We’ll be sleeping on a trampoline. It must have been used for a love scene. I always wanted to play such a part as an actress.”    
     “I won’t touch you.”    
     She says, “I trust you, Bobby. We’ve known each other since elementary school. I know you are a good man. Do you mind if I undress for our night? I need to feel the breeze.  I won’t be able to sleep in the heat otherwise.”    
     “I don’t mind. I think I’ll do the same. This place is abandoned. The movie company just left it here for people like us to play out our fantasies. But let’s keep our underwear on.”    
     “Bobby I’m beginning to feel more comfortable with being here with you. In fact, I like it. It feels romantic. Let’s strip and feel the wind.”      
     We slip out of our clothes and cuddle. Valerie says, “You know Bobby, let’s do what lovers do in the dark.”    
     I say, “Yes let’s play like husband and wife.” She slinks out of her panties. I slip out of my fruit of the looms.    
     I say, “Hey I don’t have any condoms.”    
     She says, “Let me paint you. My burgundy shade will look as pretty around your nipples as it does on my lips.”    
     “I will wear your rouge circles proudly as my engagement rings.”    
     “Well then, you must let me apply my lip gloss to your kisser for me to bear my soon to be married status on my aureole.”    
     “Who will see them?”    
     “Well, the girls at the gym locker room.”    
     “Since you’re not a lesbian that is a moot point.”    
    “Well, the girls might tell their men.”    
    “That wouldn’t surprise me at all. Touché.”    
     She lays me down on the mattress with my buns slippery from sweat. Then she hovers above me. Her glossy lip kiss starts off gently but turns into the velvet fury of midnight crossing into the moon’s shadow.    
     “My body feels like soup with the wontons jiggling when you tongue my broth.”    
     She says, “Your dumplings are in good hands with me. I will take the utmost care in decorating them.”    
     She trails an autumnal blaze of lip sync raspberries to be raked by her lips into a collage of kisses upon the Easter of my skin. She is like a graffiti gal on the loose whose spray can is her lipstick. Her crimson moon lipstick is a sign of her oracular melody whose tarot smile beams the luster of a rainbow.
     Her hands grow rough like a man’s from her new job shelling pecans. My hands are stained black from molasses at the sugar mill. Her deepening dialect is fresh from the earth.