15 Miles Till Texas

Mansfield, LA

When I pass a tractor-trailer bed covered with a new brown tarp inside a heavily fenced field that has steel eight inch spikes welded to the gate in Mad Max fashion to keep vehicles from crashing through, I am still through the fence in seconds. I know this puts me at risk with a landowner that will have little sense of humor if I'm caught inside. My last bottle of drinking water ran out last night so my choices are gleen, or walk on and pray. Towns have only been names on road signs that squint in the sun. Everything squints here. I passed two baptist churches and a firehouse yesterday. Their water was turned off. Nobody home. The temperture on my shirt reads 110 degrees. The new brown tarp over curds of old cotton in the trailer bed is a blessing. Last night's rain is ten inches deep caught in the center, tree shade cool, and perfectly clear except for the few insects that got too zealous for a drink. My five water bottles are out of my pack in a breath. Off comes my shirt to soak. My face losses it layering of salt, and I feel like the spider that waited two days for the fly to finally arrives. There are no doors to knock on. There have been no creeks that pushed anything but the dirtiest water. I am perfectly alone, and breathe through my nose to save water without thinking about it. Noone stops to ask about the world on my back. Outside of logging trucks, few cars pass at all. I am walking an abandoned movie set. Even knowing where I am walking to...I am lost to hours of insect shrills and moving toward the next water stop under a lonely tree without fire ants.
When kindness does come it is not a trinket glinting in the sun. A large John Deere tractor has left its cutting in a field, and has driven to the fence that separates us before I notice it. The farmer climbs down to hand me a bottle of the coldest water. He talks as soon as the door is open not realizing that it takes a few minutes for me to focus on words after two days with only my inner voice moving about in my cook pot of a head. We talk about the weather because the farmer and I now roast on the same stove. We talk about our skin under the sun. We talk about the egrets that follow his tractor by the hundreds to hunt out the frogs, mice, snakes, and insects suddenly homeless. Too soon he is back in his air-conditioned green and yellow heading to his field of white egrets and grass rows with the insects singing sink deeper into my head, and I take in the last of the ice water.
At an old store that I was not sure really existed, (for there was nothing before it in a day's walking, and I saw nothing in wait beyond) I quickly give my sketch when asked as if I am taking off my hat. Although the store is temperture controled it will be a few minutes before I feel it as my body releases the rays that it has stored in invisible blankets. What follows can be best described as stone soup. I buy a few cans of beans and a piece of salami. In a minute garden fresh tomatoes are brought to me, cookies, bread, two bottles of water, and some money folded for my pocket, and a Snickers bar. As I eat what has become my one meal a day I listen to the words coming from the front of the store to my lone table near the back. It is very depressed here finacially. Really, there is nothing to rub against except old railroad tracks, history, and hope. People have wander out of their hot shacks to buy a bottle, or see who the road offered up. With the new interstate 49 taking away the blood from old Rt. 1 , not much unpredictable follows this road anymore. Mostly I just listen to people being. Someone shushes another for balking out my last name out loud. "WhiteCrow?" The clerk talks about World War III just around the corner, as he asks what party I support. When I tell him I am ignorant, and work on just supporting myself. The line on his face becomes a smile. "That's about the wisest thing I think a man in your position could have said." Another unseen face pleas his case for a cold bottle today with payment in a few days.
The clerk warms up to me slowly as if he finally believes I am whom I say I am, also knowing that it is too hot to pretend walking down this road form Dante's nightmare. Although I know I'll sound cowardly or worse--"Your not from around here are you", I explain how I lower my clothes into the creeks with my poles when I need to wet them or rinse out some of the road grime. The clerk studies my face slowly. "Man up this road ride tear. He raises pigs. Had maybe fifee. Well dis old black man was sure that people were comin in and stealan his large pigs one by one. He had a pen sad up down by dat river. Well day's all got ta thinking, and talking until they ga with sum guns and went down dat river. They came out with four big gators. the biggest was fourteen foot and wait 786 pounds. Naw! You best stay ow of dem rivers."
Twenty miles back people looked at me as if the heat had gotten to me when I showed concern about wading into river water I couldn't see through. "Those gators wont bother a soul." I have to remember that alot of today's generation live in front of the television all over America, and in a synthetic air conditioned world, even down here, some people don't know their back yard. They don't know anything about these waters or what goes bump in the night. I have watched eyes five inches apart move down brown water toward the my shirt smacking the evening water.