A Southern Place (2 page)

Chapter 2: 1989

Mojo

Looking back on my hometown, it seems that the time in Nolan was not measured by days or weeks but by the number of eighteen-wheelers that drove through town.

Mojo is what they called me back then; I guess most folks had forgotten my real name was Mary Jane. A fifth generation Mullinax of Dumas County, Georgia, pronounced “Doom Us” to most Georgians. Nolan is the county seat: a triangle of abandoned buildings, junked cars, and kudzu. Barely deserves a dot on the map. They say it’s some of the richest farmland in the world, but I never knew much about the farming. I lived in town, or what was left of it.

Nolan was once a real community, with a red brick courthouse outlined in azaleas, a town square with seven stores, and a real artesian fountain in the center. After the war there were baby boomer houses bought with FHA loans, and soon there were three full time churches. Then came the Flood of ’65.

I was barely five years old, and our whole town was drowned in dirty brown water. The government declared it a natural disaster, but I called it a big adventure. The Flint River, usually just a muddy stream, flooded its banks and filled the streets. Inches of smelly sludge covered the floors of our two-room rental house, and the radio claimed it was rising over an inch an hour. I grabbed the radio and a pillowcase filled with my clothes. Mama put her stuff and the few groceries we had in a cardboard box, and we headed for Uncle Cal’s.

Mama’s brother Calvin was a young man then, in his late twenties and full of life. He had his own house, a sky-blue two-bedroom ranch house that sat on stilts, near the Flint Bridge on the banks of the river. Uncle Calvin had only one arm, but where his other arm
would
have been was a heavy steel hook that could open doors, unclog drains, light cigarettes, roast marshmallows and wind his rod and reel. He’d lost his arm, clear past his elbow, in a peanut picker when he worked the fields for Oakland Plantation. They
paid
for him to get the hook-arm, then gave him money to buy a boat, a new truck, and build his cool house. He didn’t work much now.

Mama and I walked from our house behind the water tower to the Phillips 66 at the edge of town. There was a makeshift ramp where people docked their boats. We waited, holding everything we owned and looking like hobos. Grownups passed around bottles in brown bags, some kind of liquor, I guess. The sun was low in the sky, and a slight breeze stirred a sour, wet smell, like the whole world had mildewed. A loud outboard motor roared up the dock, parting the water like brown foam. It was Uncle Cal.

“Mojo,” he shouted, “get your little Cajun butt in this boat, girl.” Uncle Calvin always called me his little Cajun, even though we had no Cajun blood and were miles from any bayous. I didn’t even know what a Cajun looked like, but I liked the sound of it. His special name for me.

“Calvin, I told you a thousand times.” Mama stepped from the ramp into the boat, cardboard box on her hip like a baby. “That girl ain’t no Cajun. And what took you so damned long?” Mama didn’t like much of anything that Uncle Calvin did.

“Shee-it fire, Sis,” he said. “You’re in the middle of the New Nolan Resort, and you’re about to be put up in the king’s castle.” He set down the brown bag he’d been holding, put out his good hand and helped me into the boat, anchoring himself with the hook against the dash.

“Besides, it’s party time, Sister. Get the stick outta your ass!” He laughed, pretending to pinch her arm with his metal claw.

Mama smiled and reached for the bottle in his hand. She took a hard swig and rolled her eyes, her shoulders dropping as an easy smile settled onto her face. “Have you got any food at your house?” she asked. “Your little ‘Mojo’ can’t live off Jim Beam and Coke. And did you make it fit for a kid to walk around in?”

Uncle Calvin laughed a loud belly laugh. “Shit, Delores, you live in a shingle house the colored folks abandoned, with holes in the floor so you see the red clay underneath, and you’re worried about taking Mojo into
my
house. I swear, you beat all—”

“You
know
what I’m talkin’ ’bout, Cal. My house may not be much, but it’s good enough for me and the kid. She ain’t used to seein’ drunks passed out all over the place. We wash our dishes when we finish eatin’, and we sleep in the damned
bed
. And we don’t have no animals, or whores either, that think our house is theirs, too.”

“Seriously, Sis, Mojo loves Hank and Jerry Lee,” he continued. “And Kawliga’s made rats and snakes a done deal for me. And my house
is
clean. Lighten up, won’t you?”

I squinted out at the thick, muddy water, and over at the line of stores on my left.

No stores were open, but there was so much to see all around me. Random objects floated by: empty tin cans, a large, misshapen cardboard box, a single Converse shoe, a naked plastic doll with no head . . .

“Mojo loves any animal that’ll pay attention to her skinny ass, and Hank and Jerry Lee are fine dogs, kept outside. I can’t believe you can get those dogs up that long staircase, or back down either. And why they keep going back is beyond me.” Mama was shaking her head and letting her dark blonde curls free to wave in the breeze.

“Those ol’ boys love the house, just like they love to hunt. It’s a man’s house, and they know it. You won’t never feel no safer than you do twelve feet above the ground,” my uncle told her.

We rode down Main Street in a boat, but the conversation with Mama and Uncle Cal stayed the same as always. Only when we passed other boats would they stop, and Uncle Cal would grin and salute with his hook. Sometimes I’d wave, but Mama mostly looked the other way.

There were boards nailed over the windows of the bank and the drugstore, but the grocery store windows were broken. A man in a small boat pulled up to the broken glass. He fished out what he could with a long stick. If Mama had been watching, she’d have called him a thief. If Uncle Cal had seen him, he’d have been mad that he didn’t think of it first. I figured they’d both be right.

“Damned foolishness, that’s what that house of yours is,” Mama said. “And a waste of good money you won’t see again. You’re young and spry now, but you won’t always be able to scamper up and down those stairs. And when you finally come to your senses and decide to sell it, who the hell is gonna buy that house? You’ll be stuck there forever. Unable to come down, we’ll have to bring up your food. You’ll just stay shut up, and eat and drink yourself to death. And when you die, the fire department’ll have to get you out. And they’ll tell everybody in town how you was livin’, too.”

Mama had a way of imagining things in the future like they was really gonna happen. Uncle Calvin looked out at the water, rubbing his good arm with his hook and seeming far away and fidgety at the same time. Like he wanted to be somewhere else, maybe even
be
somebody else, but would never want me or mama to know what he was thinking. I tried to help the best I knew how.

“There was a man in a newspaper Mama brought home that was like that,” I added, “’cept he didn’t live in no nice house like you, I don’t think. Anyway, that man, he was really fat, and he couldn’t walk, not even to the bathroom, and one day somebody called a ambulance cause they thought he was havin’ a heart attack—”

“Mojo, that ain’t got a damned thing to do with this, and I done told you I don’t want you looking at them papers,” Mama said.

“You ought not be bringin’ them papers home, no way,” Uncle Calvin told her. “Talk about
me
wastin’ money—” I could see a thin line of sweat forming over his lip, the back of his hair peeking out from his Coker Seed cap and blowing in the breeze.

“I don’t pay nothin’ for ’em, they throw ’em away when the new ones come in. And I take ’em home to cover cracks in the walls—”

“Good God, Delores, Mojo deserves better than this, you two livin’ with cracks in the walls and holes in the floor—”

The sun lowered, a perfect sunset melting away into the clouds on the water. The world around us was winding down, while the voices of Mama and Uncle Cal rose in volume. I wondered if people in other boats could hear us, or if they all were busy living out their own little dramas, just like we were. I tried again to quiet them, to maybe get them on a happier subject.

“And the man, the fat man!” I said. “They couldn’t get him off the couch, cause he was stuck to it. He had laid there—”

“That’s
enough, Mary Jane, right now,” Mama scolded, standing up for no reason and bracing herself on the boat’s dash. When she used my real name, I knew it was time to give it up.

“Give her a break, Sis, she’s just trying to help us all get along.” He reached his hook toward her shoulder, gently easing her back down. “Ain’t that right, Cajun girl?” He smiled. I only nodded.

“How long is this damned water gonna be here, anyway?” Mama sighed.

“Another week, maybe longer, they say.” Uncle Calvin steered around a fallen tree, its branches decorated with rusty cans, unrecognizable bits of garbage, and a large unmistakable pair of ladies’ underwear.

“And are you
sure
that crazy house is safe? I know it’s above the water, but what if the water rots those poles? Will the house fall over or just come crashing down? Oh, God, Cal, we can’t stay in that house—”

“Delores Virginia Mullinax, how can you be so damned smart and so damned ignorant at the same time? I swear, if Mama coulda sent you to college, you could’ve—”

“I know that, Cal, I’m not a damned fool—”

“You got a lousy job at the panty factory and then got yourself knocked up by the great unknown, for all I know. And you stay in that same house you’ve been in like some stupid—”

“That’s not how it happened,” Mama shouted, fighting tears. “At least it didn’t happen in that order. And I’m
not
stupid!” Tears rushed down her cheeks—Mama was mad. She lowered her head so I couldn’t see her face.

“Now, Delores, I didn’t mean nothing by that. I’m sorry, really, don’t cry.” Uncle Calvin backed off, like he always did when any woman cried. It was part of what made him so sweet, and how nobody could stay mad at him for long.

He put his good arm around Mama, though she turned the other way when he touched her. I stared out at the water, still listening to them but trying to look uninterested.

“You
know
I don’t think you’re stupid. Hell, you’re the smartest person I know.”

Mama turned and searched his face. She put one hand on his shoulder, then the other on my knee. Uncle Cal smiled, then opened his mouth and sang. Mama joined in and soon I was singing, too. We all loved Hank Williams’ songs.

“You cold?” she asked me. “You could get something to put over you, another shirt or something, outta your bag. It’s gettin’ cold out over this water.”

“I’m okay,” I said. “Besides, we’re almost there.” I looked out at another boat, filled with what looked like the insides of someone’s house, coming toward us. The driver waved with both hands. Uncle Cal shut down his motor. When the other boat was even with ours, the other driver switched off his engine as well.

“Calvin!” he said. “I’s a hopin’ to run into you. Movin out my mama’s stuff—she’s gone to her sister’s, the water’s over a foot deep in her house already. I got ever thang I could, but it’ll take three or four more trips using just this here boat. Reckon you could hep me out?”

Uncle Cal fingered his chin with the hook, then grinned.

“Arrrrrrr—” he said, lapsing into his Captain Hook impersonation. It was funny; Uncle Cal’s hook was a silver-ish metal contraption that could open and close. It looked more like some sort of a mechanical claw or carpentry implement than the big black hook I pictured a pirate having, however, a hook was what folks called it, and Uncle Cal took full advantage of the idea. “A freebooter to boot? Gotta get me sister and the little landlubber to the house. Meetcha at your mama’s in an hour?”

“Sure,” the man said, smiling and showing crooked teeth in need of cleaning.

“See you then, old man,” said Uncle Cal. He cranked his motor and pushed forward, making new brown waves in the runaway stream. “To pillage, plunder, and hornswaggle, arrrrrr!” he cried out to the world, using his hook to point out our now visible destination.

We were still singing when we reached Uncle Cal’s house. We emptied the boat and went inside, his two big dogs greeting us and vying for our attention. To Mama’s surprise, the house was clean and the refrigerator full. We put our things in Uncle Cal’s bedroom, where the double bed was made up and ready for us. The bedspread was printed with mallard ducks and hunting dogs, and his calico cat slept in a circle like a throw pillow in a catalog ad. The bookcase headboard was filled with cowboy stories, colorful paperbacks of Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey. Burying myself in the soft covers, I closed my eyes as Mama and Uncle Cal sang more Hank Williams’ songs in the next room. In no time I was fast asleep, dreaming of dogs and cowboys and a pirate king, singing happy songs in a castle on stilts.

Despite Mama’s worrying, Uncle Calvin’s house held up fine, and for the next two weeks my world was a cross between normal living and a family vacation on some crazy TV show. Uncle Cal worked a lot; the phone rang constantly with people wanting a delivery service, moving van, or whisky runner. He checked in with us at least once a day, always bringing something he thought we might want, like snacks or the newspaper or just news from the outside. Then the phone would ring and he’d be gone. Mama started calling him “The Water Taxi,” but it seemed like she was really proud of him. For that sweet section of time, it seemed the whole world knew Uncle Calvin was a good guy.

When the water receded, our little house behind the water tower was nowhere to be found, my uncle told us. Mama said he was pulling her leg, and grabbed that cardboard box and started throwing things inside.

“Delores, listen to me, babe,” he said, grabbing her shoulder with his good hand. “Let me take you over there, first, before you start clearing out of your big brother’s crawfish trap.”

“Your ol’ crawfish trap ain’t so bad,” she said. “I won’t never forget how you took us in and looked after us. Mojo’s had the time of her life, thinks she’s been at some high adventure summer camp, or something like that. Hell, even the animals have been pretty good, for animals that live in a house.” She twisted her hair with one hand, a kind of girly gesture I’d never seen her take on before.

“And just
being
here,” she said. “It—well, it’s good sometimes to remember you’ve got family. There’s lots of folks that ain’t got what we do.”

Uncle Cal hugged Mama, looking like he might cry. While still holding her, he pretended to pinch at her behind with his hook. She jumped. Uncle Cal did this kind of thing to everybody—he didn’t mean anything by it, it was just his way, and most folks seemed to be used to it. It was like making fun of his own problems, having a mechanical tool instead of an arm-and-hand
l
ike everybody else, and it made Uncle Cal more
funny
and less
different
.

“Dammit, Cal, just when I’m thinking you might not be a total waste of breath, bones, and britches, then you have to go and act like the sorry piece-a shit you really are.”