Mississippi Burning

The days have lost their gradual movement from cool earth kissing sunrises moving gradually into a batter ready pan by 10am. Now as soon as the sun cracks an egg over the horizon there is a sizzle to be heard. Lynn Wood that owns the Birdman Coffee Shop offered me the guest apartment so I can experience the local music come Friday night at her sister Robin's Magnolia Cafe' next door. My flesh has been making its own prayers requesting a few days of rest and healing while I was legs and poles moving through the heat. The answer to those inner prayers arrived. It is impossible to work on a vehicle while it's running down the road pedal to the floor. Every part of me sighed out load at the offer to rest up before the river crossing of the Mississippi River; a crossing that is said to instantly change people, music, food, and culture. My pack sighs over its own pleasure in a corner of the coffee shop, while I contemplate this wealth of healing days that will be over before I can consider getting lazy. For now Saturday is a river raft three towns away, drifting slowly south.

Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians came to local stage last night. It was a dress rehersal for tonight's opening. In response a personal invitation from the director, and members of the cast, I was warmly recieved as if I walked four thousand miles just to be there. In a real way, I did. I was excited, silently hoping my only shirt was clean enough. I thank myself for buying a Realtree camo pattern shirt with the intention of disappearing into the trees at day's end. The shirt hides stains like a dream. Before I got to my front row seat many hands were in mine with a collection of names and details I tried to jot down in my head somewhere between "Thank you", and, "Hope you enjoy the show." Everyone is extremely polite, humble and wonderfully real.
The Saint Francisville Transitory Threatre blows life into the production that takes place Market Hall, an old red brick and wood building that still has an ancient eye painted high on the second floor wall from its long ago mason days . Having not seen a movie in a very long time, the play carries me along with total rapture. When a cap-gun goes snap, I hear a pistol. When an actor says there is blood, I see iron red everywhere. It is a time before television, before books. In my mind we are sitting around a tall fire full of wellfed flames as a once distant tribe tells me a story that makes my heart race, fall, and applaude....not just because I am supposed to. I want to slam my staff into the dirt over and over again with all the extra energy that is stirring in me.
After the production we talk for a while as props are tweeked, and timing is adjusted for a lamp, or a sound effect. Soon Robbie,Andrew, Adam, James, Jessie(Jess), and myself are walking off into the dark streets of St. Francisville to explore, and offer up our own stories. We decend dark stone stairs into a field overgrown with plants where ballgames were once held. Without a machette, we stand at the bottom of the steps as if we found a gator pond, yet we still wanted to swim. It is so dark that every thing with a sharp edge has been made round--or is stolen till dawn. We grab one another to save falling into holes where steps have broken away, or falling into plants that we are sure will eat us.
Now , streets away, we have climbed to piggy-back a caboose that the town has perserved for tourists up the hill from the famous river. From the roof we tug at stars while discussing lightning bugs in the same breath. We talk about flying, or was it falling? I tell Robbie that if we fall off the back side of the caboose, high above the sloping hillside, we wouldn't hit until Tuesday. Robbie laughs, "I like that. I gotta remember that." I smile invisably in the dark. We can't come up with a pencil stub to record our names written small under the hign roof cap. I hope we remember tonight. Is that it? Is that why people paint their names vibrantly across cinderblock buildings and waiting trains, to be remembered? We are all so desperately alive in this life, or dull in sleep. I understand that hunger to be really alive more than ever have. We nose our feet down the steel rungs of the train car with our hands holding tightly to the rungs above us until we hear our shoes moving gravel under our feet.
We are no longer trying to read names on the side of a train by the light of a cell-phone when we get to the gothic church surrounded by a great welded fence of rusted spears. Inside the fence are countless rows and formations of gravestones we read as we aim for the front of the church. We work the gate latch knowing music should be playing. It is so cliche' that we laugh--dryly. Churches are left open all night around here. In the belly of the great church, Andrew toggles the lamp dimmer switch near the door until the illumination is equal to a box of small candles. We all navigate our bodies speachlessly like moths to the pupit. I could sleep here, I think out loud. In my head I see myself with a good run of drool in a/c delighted slumber as a local cop pushes the beam of his flashlight under my eye-lids. I shake my head, no thanks, and I begin singing a song from Queen out loud. "I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me." In seconds we are all singing. An unseen hand turns up the volume, making the ribs of the great body hum above us. Somebody laughs at me,"See what you started?" Even though it is weak in the gause of light, I smile. I smile because we have moved past my wisps of gray hair to a place we are are all the same age--or ageless. We are all equally hungry and alive. "Easy Come, Easy Go, go, go , go!" The song is illrelivant. We are all opening on stage where we are actors and observers both. There is no time clock, or anyone reaching to know the hour. Eventually James mentions his mother's kitchen, making us all walk like good mice seeking cheese to the side door to begin a maze of movements that will reward us. In a cough from the fish we are all back into the graveyard. Beards of moss breath down on us. A marble life size sculpture of Jesus glows ahead in the starlight from atop a building made of graves. We walk slowly past bright fresh flower vases and names in stone, our stomachs hurry us to the road.
As Robbie drives us all in his mother's carefully detailed S.U.V. He sing's along with a compact disc, rather yelling along to a song about cake and ice cream. The song is catchy. Robbie is a riot as he bobs and dances with just his head and neck, while still staying perfectly in between the lines. The Freshney home is expecting us even though it is near midnight. Mrs. Freshney played the cook in the play. She is still in character. Kitchen island, counters, and the stove are covered with enough flavors to sooth a hungry soul, or six of them. If eating is work, we work hard to the smiling praise of Jame's mother. In a hour or two I will be delivered home to the Birdman with healing hugs from everyone that go spine deep. For now we talk about last years play, the Tempest, and wade deep in a moment of a house smelling of toast, the tart flavor of cranberry juice, and the sound of laughter I try to save.