RE Bunch

The By-Blow Promise Land

-Your future will have real ugly feet and white gleaming teeth.

-Your future is at a crossroads of patience, floating in a flooded ditch.

-Your future will lead you down the risen creek to their promised land. To a home to finally rest.

The rhythm of the windshield wipers matched the pace of Truett’s thoughts. The swiping of the blades from one edge of the windshield to the other, like searching through an encyclopedia. Feverishly searching for some forgotten piece of information that might finally make everything make sense. How could she be so certain?

Rain. It rained because the sun offered no alternative to it. The sun turning its shoulder, refusing to look below. To look down into the flooded basins and brimming swamps. The sun does not care about the consequences of it not being there. The rain fills in the cracks. The rain brings up the creatures and the muck that is better left below. Together they turn indifference to cruelty as the wind starts in.

“True can you help me watch the road? I can’t see the shoulder anymore.” Felix said through a clenched jaw. Felix’s squared jaw was becoming a further sharp edge the harder he ground his teeth. The night sky and storm had been conspiring about creating a color darker than black. The rain washed out the car’s headlights as it fell in a heavy sheet.

“I’m trying to. I don’t really know what more you want me to do.” Truett said stiffening himself in his passenger seat. “Maybe we should pull over to see if this will pass?”

“Stop where? We’re literally below sea-level in the middle of a fucking swamp. Stop so we can get stuck in the mud? Or stop so we can ask an alligator which way is back to the interstate? We can’t even get cell service.”

It rained the entire trip to New Orleans. The two of them arrived late Monday evening. A cool drizzle clinging to their clothes and hair instantly upon opening the car doors. Sending a chill deep into their bones bringing with it a defeated malaise. Too tired to venture out for food, and too late to see anyone before tomorrow’s services. A six-hour trip had warped into a ten-hour excursion. Felix Blevins had agreed to come along due to the location of the funeral and sight-seeing potential. Felix had made them stop at every roadside attraction and bizarre statue. Truett absently snapped photos and flipped between talk and music radio stations. Truett was too distracted by the near future to be present. Truett Fox, at 29 years of age, had found himself the sole surviving member of his birth family. Truett wanted to be at his father’s funeral to close an unknown chapter of his life.

On Tuesday, as Truett rubbed the sleep from his eyes, he listened to the steady falling of the rain on the old French windows of the hotel room. The sky approving with him that today was the perfect day for a funeral. Truett had come to terms long ago that his birth father was too young to care for a baby, especially without his birth mother. His mother, Marie Truett, passed from this earth minutes after he was born. There were complications from the premature homebirth, and the ambulance was just a few seconds too late to do anything for her. Henry Claiborne seemed to never recover from the loss. Withdrawing and burying himself in lost women and pills every night thereafter.

Truett’s adoptive family, the Fox’s, had always been wonderful to him. Wonderful people who encouraged a younger Truett to talk about his feelings of isolation and anger with them. Reminding him that he would always be their son, and they loved him as though he was their own flesh and blood. Truett believed their words, but not always their feelings behind them. He would always feel like a guest or an outsider in the Fox family. They implored Truett to not give up on a relationship with his birth father. A seventeen-year-old is often too short-sighted to see outside themselves unless forced to. Truett did not see the point of digging into a wounded man who had nothing more to offer him. Henry Claiborne’s least selfish act was giving his firstborn up to be raised by strangers, knowing that someone would provide the things he could not. Truett felt childish for holding on to resentment but did not know what kind of closure to expect from this. Maybe finally putting to rest the Claiborne side, would finally make him feel like a Fox.

Members of the Claiborne family seemed to come and go around him all morning. Truett watched from the back of the funeral home the changing sea of eerily familiar faces twisted by grief. He listened to aunts’ whisper stories of their lost brother, and cousin’s chuckle over the last family reunion with Henry. Young children and young adults came and went from the parlor. Every Claiborne seemingly all agreed to ignore the ghost sitting in the back of the room. Truett had not seemed to notice for the most part. His hazel eyes fixed on the black urn on display in the center of the room. Surrounded by wreaths of white flowers, and lilies that offered only pleasant smells.

“Do you know why they’re called Funeral Potatoes? I mean I’ve had them served at other places than at a funeral.” Felix said sitting down next to Truett. He scooted a shrimp around his plate into cocktail sauce.

Truett was unphased by the reemergence of his friend. He was comforted by the fact that Felix felt at home anywhere, and would strike up a conversation with anyone. Felix was as light as air in any situation. Felix always had a story or compliment on the tip of his tongue, where Truett felt like he had swallowed his whole.

“Eh,” Felix paused as he shoveled the cold shellfish into his mouth. “It’s unimportant. These shrimp are amazing! Have you tried the food here?”

“No. I’m not hungry.” Truett cleared the rust from his throat.

“You should eat something. You haven’t eaten since we got in the car yesterday morning.” Felix offered his plate of homemade biscuits, Oyster Rockefeller, iced shrimp, and brisket in gravy toward Truett. “The Claiborne’s have some serious skills in the kitchen. Everything on that table upfront is seriously the best thing I ever ate.”

Truett shrugged and continued to look at the urn at the front of the viewing room. The obsidian wrapping the outside of the urn seemed to swallow the fluorescent lights from above. The room hung with cool humidity as the ceiling fan pushed the damp air in a circle. Above the noise of people breathing, whispering, and sobbing, Truett could hear the rain beating down on the roof of the funeral home.

“Do you think if Henry had any say in the matter, he would have wanted me here?”

“You can’t think like that. Why don’t you go up and say the things you want to say to him? At least say goodbye.”

“I don’t even know what to say.”

“I don’t know either, True. You’ll know what to say when you get there. And even if you don’t, you can still tell him after we leave. I think you’ll feel a little bit better. At least start to make peace with it.” Felix caught Truett’s eyes wandering away from the urn towards the exit out of the viewing room. “There’s still plenty of afternoon left, so we might be able to do something. Your Aunt Birdie said there is a neat bar nearby. She said the best living mystic in all of Louisiana lives above it, and she tends bar during the day. Feeling lucky?”

“The best living mystic tends bar?” Much like the rain, having found no better solution, Truett got up from his chair. His feet tingling as his legs woke up from their uneasy slumber. Truett looked down at Felix who was now using the biscuit as a spoon for the gravy dripping along the edge of his plate. Felix turned up his shoulders at him and motioned him to the front of the room.

It was exactly twenty paces to the urn. His feet were pulled back into the plush dark carpet with each step like walking through thick mud. His brain that was normally buzzing felt deafly quiet. His heart slowed as he stood before the urn. Truett wanted it to break. He would have liked to see his heart shatter into pieces at the sight of his father’s ashes. It was a tired numbness that radiated out of his chest, then down his limbs. His eyes stung for a moment as his ears picked up a conversation off to the side. Two older women standing by a white calla lily, seemingly waiting for their turn to stand before what remains. He mistook sadness for bringing a tear to his eye. It was their sharp floral perfume that stung his eyes while burning his nose.

“Mary Pat said the EMTs found him face down in the toilet. He was puking and passed out.”

“No! No. That’s just awful.”

“John said his face was all bloated. Too gruesome for normal service. He was so broken up about having to cremate his boy. It’s not right.”

“What a damn shame for John and Mary Pat.”

Truett exhaled deeply and was drowned by the image of his own face bloated and waterlogged. In the photos he saw of his father around his age, they looked like brothers. Truett had a bit more red in his brown hair, and his mother’s hazel eyes. Truett had her soft eyes, offset by a shy crooked smile. His father a bit fuller faced with bloodshot brown eyes. Truett’s face twisted as he looked down at his hands. He tuned out the women talking and tried to focus on his own thoughts. He closed his eyes, focusing his breathing to match the tapping rain on the roof.

I’m sorry things couldn’t have been different. If I had died and mom had lived, I wonder if you would still be here? Still whole, and not fractured by whatever holds this world together. In my heart, I don’t think this was escapable for either one of us. It happened the way it was going to I suppose. I want to say I understand the choices you made, but I don’t. I don’t think I’ll ever really understand. I wish I could have known a different you, or had a better relationship. Or maybe I did know who you were. You showed me who you were, and I couldn’t accept it. Something. Both of us always looking for something else to fill the awkward minutes of dead air over the phone. I’ve missed you so much in my life, I can’t imagine not doing that. I’ve been mourning you since I met you. I don’t think I know how to stop doing either. For both of our sakes, I hope there is not a next time. This is enough. I hope it’s easier for you wherever you go.

Truett cleared his throat, as he turned away from the urn. A heavy lightness pulling him back into himself and the carpet. His nose felt raw as he pulled a wadded tissue from his pockets. His eyes more tender than he remembered them being as he wiped at them. He scanned the viewing room briefly, seeing the back of Felix’s head chatting with a thin strawberry-blonde woman. Felix checked back over his shoulder to see Truett heading out of the viewing room.

“Hey, did you know you had a cousin that lives an hour outside of Memphis? She’s cute too,” Felix chuckled as he caught up to Truett heading towards the exit. “I got her number.”

“I’m glad you were able to hit on a family I didn’t know I had. That was the whole point of coming out here. To watch you eat at the world’s grossest Arby’s and to get you laid back home.” Truett’s face flushed with white-hot anger. He clenched his fists and shoved them into his coat pocket looking for the car keys.

“First of all,” Felix brought up his finger as he pushed his other hand into his pants pocket, “in all fairness to that Arby’s, any Arby’s can be the grossest Arby’s. It’s a disgusting magic-eye poster that only gets more horrifying the longer you stare at it. Two, I think you need a beer and some food before you say another word to me. Three, I drove here so I have the keys.”

The jingling of the keys seemed to echo Felix’s jovial mocking. Truett bit down on the inside of his cheek. The wind blew the stagnant smell of mud back into their face. The cold rain sent a chill down their spines as Truett’s stomach gurgled. “Whatever.”

Felix’s hand felt warmer than usual as he squeezed Truett’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about your dad. I know I said it would get easier someday, and I feel so guilty about having said it. I feel like I pushed you off when you wanted to talk about it. I just thought there would always be time for it to work itself out. I’m sorry I was a shitty friend.”

“It’s alright. I thought there was more time too. No one could have known.” Truett slid into the passenger seat, casting his eyes immediately down to the floor. His reflection distorted in the glossy brown of his dress shoes. No one wants to admit it aloud when they see the terminal arch of someone’s life.

“No,” Felix cranked the engine to his maroon Ford Fiesta. It sputtered for a moment before turning over. “No, we could not have. But there’s a lady at a bar who might know what’s going to happen next. Shall we pop in for a po’boy and a palm reading?”

Truett rolled his eyes. “Fine. Fine, but if they card us, I don’t know how you’re going to get in. I mean it’s near impossible for a fourteen-year-old to pass for twenty-one.”

The gnashing wind and turned up radio filled in the silence of the car. As the tires pulled them out of the parking lot, Truett felt some of the tension slip away. Like it was an old couch being abandoned on a curb. Hopefully hauled away by someone else. Felix turned the windshield wipers one notch higher as they sped down the street. Felix sang along to the top 40 songs playing on the station as Truett watched the rain crash in large flat splatters. Truett felt his body relax into a smile listening to Felix’s mostly offkey rendition of Duran Duran.

“The Star Gazer” flickered on the purple neon sign. The bright yellow of the words was screaming out against the dark blue and grey of the building. The rain pelleted the two men as they ran inside from the parked car. The hazy lights buzzed like hornets while casting down jaundice shadows on them. The room smelled heavily of tobacco and stale swamp air. Behind the bar, a black curtain was draped over the mirror backing behind the liquor bottles. The woman standing behind the bar seemed to not notice the men as they shuffled in from the downpour outside. Her face hidden behind a cascade of mahogany curls spilling out from behind a brightly patterned scarf. She was smoking as she stared out the front window, watching the storm roll in.

“It’s really starting to come down. I love watching a good storm, but Marie is truly pissed off with a vindictive streak.” The woman laughed as the two men walked towards the window. Her voice was harshly deep. The dim lighting in the room further concealing her face behind the rolling cloud of smoke.

“Who’s Marie?” Felix asked looking back out to the blanketed street.

“Hurricane Marie,” The woman said waving them over to the bar. Her gold bracelets jangling around her thin wrists. Her fingernails were yellowed and long, stirring the cigarette smoke lingering around her face. Her smile was broad, glinting with gold teeth framed in magenta lipstick. “You two are going to need a to-go cup. I’m shutting it down early today.”

“Hurricane?” Truett looked around the empty bar as the lights flickered. “Why aren’t they blaring sirens or having announcements on the radio?”

“Well it was downgraded to a tropical depression, but that storm has a few tricks left up her sleeve before she goes back out to sea. She’s fixin’ to leave a whole lot of trouble behind before she’s through. ‘Sides, do they where you’re from announce every single drop of rain before it falls, or do they play sirens right before your trailer gets hoisted into the sky? Do not pretend like the people who speak the weather have any real reason over it. Worrying about something you have no control over, never served nobody.”

“I take it you know better than those people do?” Felix stammered. His tongue tripping over his own excited words.

“Felix, please. I think we should get back on the road. It’s really getting bad out there. We can get McDonald’s on the way out of town, or go back to the hotel.” Truett pushed at Felix’s arm. Truett’s eyes caught the older woman’s eyes. Her green eyes ringed with smokey black make-up cut directly into him. His hair stood on end as the corners of her mouth slipped down from a smile.

“Big red, come over here now.” The woman tapped her nails on the peeling green bar top on a seat in front of her. She smashed the cherry on her cigarette into a crystal ashtray. “Your friend was right to stop here for a moment. A drink before I send you out. What would you like?”

Felix pushed Truett toward the bar. His palms lit with electric amusement of the situation unfolding before him. “May I have a water please?”

“There isn’t enough water in here to drown a witch. I know what you’d like better,” She cackled as she turned to her glassware.

Truett brushed his windblown red hair from his eyes, as he watched her back. He heard the clinking of bottled and clattering of ice against metal. As he sat on the soft leather bar stool the warm smell of liquor overcame him. It was sweet like decaying wood but sharply herbaceous. She set down a pale-peach cocktail before him. “An absinthe forward Corpse Reviver is in order for you. Now drink and sit still. Try to be still and not think a word. Just breathe and drink. Drink slow, there isn’t anywhere to go.”

Truett felt the hot breath of Felix over him as he waited impatiently for the magic trick. Truett mostly did what he was told. He coughed as the cold and bitter alcohol passed over his lips. He grimaced as he stared at the drink with an orange peel floating along the surface. He started to feel warm again as he took another sip of the drink. The heavy breathing of Felix in his ear buzzed like a mosquito.

“I see,” Her voice softly resonated on his ears, like a harp cord being plucked slowly. Her emerald eyes met his hazel ones, exploring the darkness of his large pupils. Truett’s pulse quickened as he pulled back in his seat. Her hand was like a vice as she suddenly grabbed his hand. It was ice water rushing up his arm. “Your future will have real ugly feet and white gleaming teeth. It is at a crossroads of patience, floating in a flooded ditch. It will lead you down the risen creek to their promised land. To a home to finally rest.”

Truett felt Felix giddily jump like a schoolgirl behind him. “See? It was totally worth going inside. Do me next!”

A large strike of lightning illuminated the room for a moment from outside. The woman pulled back from Truett with a smirk showing off her gold crowned teeth. She rolled her eyes while digging down her shirt for a lighter. “I don’t need any special skills to see you live like a goat, and will die like one shortly. You boys better get on the road now. You’re going to miss her if you don’t get going soon. This one is on me tonight boys.”

Truett slipped a crooked smile as he watched the air let out from Felix. As another peal of thunder and lightning illuminated the dark sky, Truett abandoned the drink on the bar. He felt his stomach gurgle and his cheeks go flush. Felix waved her off with a put-off sigh before heading back to the door. The rain slapped at them as they ran back to Felix’s car.

“Told you, you were acting bad back there,” Truett pretended to bleat like a goat at his red-faced friend.

“Shut up!” The warmed-up hatchback turned over instantly, as the tires slipped on the muddy streets.

As the storm kicked up more of its devilment, the two men drove unknowingly further into it. Being pushed by flooding and detours deeper into the swamplands of Louisiana. The late afternoon swallowed up into midnight. The rain fell in unending sheets, ripping Spanish moss from the trees and sending it in phlegmy clumps to the ground. Old trees twisted and groaned in the sideways wind. The small car shifted and bounced on the road like a small matchbox-car in the hands of an angry child.

Felix’s carefree nature evaporated as he clenched his hard jaw. His eyes darting from side to side as the light posts and street signs fell away. Gnarled bald cypress trees thrashed violently on the sides of the road, while the tupelo trees creaked and snapped their branches. Truett watched the storm rage, absently from the passenger seat. He was lost in the words of the woman, and the funeral. The rapid squeaking of the windshield blades reminding him that he was trapped with only the illusion of control.

Truett could smell the sweat rolling down Felix’s neck, and felt the fear roil into anger in his friend’s hostile focus on the road.

“Dude, I don’t know where the fuck we are.” Felix hissed. “I haven’t seen a highway sign in hours. I don’t even know if we’re on a county road.”

“Well slow down. Speeding in this isn’t going to get us unlost any faster. I think it’s called a parish and not a county in Louisiana.” Truett’s face flushed crimson as the last word slipped over his lips.

“I don’t give a shit! Can you fucking be useful for once? God Damn!” Felix continued to rant over the static of the radio and roaring wind. The first few lashings landed hard but slipped away from Truett’s ears.

Truett looked back out into the inkwell of a storm. His attention was drawn deep into the side of the road. The water was rising to the shoulders of the gravelly road. In the darkness of the swamp, he saw something white flash in the risen banks before slipping out of sight. It was large like a fallen tree with enormous pieces of mother of pearl covering it. It disappeared with a loud clapping of thunder. Truett shook his tired head. He was not seeing it right, hunger and grief sliding his mind like a kaleidoscope in the darkness of the storm. Truett could not see the road any differently than the water rising above the banks.

The darkness of the storm, and the downpour surrounding their small car. The road took on the appearance of the sky or was it reversed. It was like moving through a void deep in the heart of the storm. A violet crack of electricity lit up the sky, creating an illusion of daylight. Exposing the waterfall roaring down onto the car. Trees being blown away and twisted by the wind, frozen in a second before slipping back into the darkness. The radio static spun in and out with a siren’s warning. Fluctuating the current of the wind making Truett turn a pale green. The sound nauseated Truett as his eyes scanned out into the darkness only to see another momentary flash of pearl white edging closer to their car.

“Oh, Shit!” Felix screamed. Truett heard Felix’s dress shoes slip a moment before thudding down on the brakes. The car slid on the muddy gravel coating the road. The car bucked and swerved, spinning to its side. Truett saw a flash of red then white as his head bounced off the glass of the window. Felix saw something run out from the middle of the darkness to right before his headlights.

Its thin figure hung for a moment in the headlights before the car spun around it. It was willowy, with white cloth stretching off it like Spanish moss. The water beat down on it, trying with all its might to push it back towards the ground. The figure stood tall against it, seemingly unphased. As the car finally came to a stop, the red taillights brought further doubt to their eyes. Felix blinked and closed his eyes. Feeling as though he saw scaled blades protruding under torn skin and stringy black hair. The figure shuttered and twitched as it straightened itself against the wind. It ran so fast out in front of him, he was uncertain of even it being there. The storm and his own mind playing a trick on him.

Truett rubbed his eyes for a moment as he craned his sore neck around. “What is that?”

“I think,” Felix paused as he put his car in park. The rain and wind acted as a veil, blurring the figure into a hazy field of red. “I think it’s a person.”

“Did we? What are they?” Truett found himself stumbling over his thoughts as the seatbelt finally went slack against his shoulder.

Truett’s hands frantically scrambled to unclip himself and rattled the car door. He pushed around for the unlock button, as he continued to look out in the rearview mirror. Truett’s vision sprouted halos out in the darkness as a rush of cold wind shot frozen rain into his face. He opened his mouth to call out, but his voice was lost instantly. The wind carrying off his screams into its own chorus of snapping branches and chilled anger. His shoes cementing into the mud as he tried to push against the wind. His legs feeling frozen and stiff as he shuffled them toward the figure floating in hazy red light.

It moved. It moved with a fluid purpose, unphased and directly towards Truett. It moved faster than Truett thought was possible in the best of times. It had a softness to its agile strides like it was skating on the surface of the rainwater coating the road. Fear gripped at Truett as his body moved on its own. His arms strained to open the back door. The wind catching the door as he forced it open, allowing the figure to slip into the car before fully being seen.

Truett threw himself back into the passenger seat. The wind rocked the car, slamming the door shut on top of his ankle. Truett gasped as the pain woke up his frozen mind. His lungs wheezed and spat up the frozen hell pouring around them. Truett freed his swelling ankle from the vice of the car door. Turn his head, his eyes sinking to the floor of the backseat. Felix’s hands had finally relaxed from around the steering wheel, sending a dull ache up his arm. Felix turned his eyes off the road to the back seat.  

The air in the car took on a sweet earthiness. Like wilted flowers baking in sunlight on a summer day. It was musty from the stagnant swamp mud bubbling and churning up to meet the misery above. As below, so above. Her hair cascaded around her face like wet velvet, her white dress sagging down her rail-thin body. Water rolling down her body, pooling in her lap and on the floor. Her skin was a smooth alabaster marble above her waist. In the water collecting in the carpeting, Truett saw large dark scaly patches of skin mottle her feet and legs. Her toes were long, spreading far apart. The skin between them appearing more like webbing than tight flesh. The nails yellowed and pointed in rough peeling layers.

Felix watched as her long pale blue fingers pushed back her black hair. Periwinkle blue eyes smiled back at him. Large and round like a doll’s eyes, framed in a heart-shaped face. A rosiness returned to her cheeks, complimenting a broad relieved smile. All her teeth perfectly white in a straight row, like military tombstones.

“I can’t believe you saw me out there.” Her voice was like a child’s music box. It tinkled and wound up in charming enchantment and innocence. A voice too high and too sweet to be in the throat of the adult woman in their backseat.

“What were you doing out there? Where’s your car?” Felix felt his heart jump to his throat. Truett saw his friend’s eyes grew dim the longer he looked upon the vision in the back seat. Truett’s face growing paler the longer he looked down upon her raggedly ugly feet.

“I lived out here my entire life and have never seen anything like this before. All the wind and lightning scared my goats. One of my bucks ran out of the stable and into the swamp. I was out there trying to call him back, but then got stranded out there. I don’t see too many people down this road, but I had to take a chance.” Her face blushed as she tried to pull her feet away from Truett’s horrified gaze.

“You’re making her uncomfortable.” Felix shot a dagger over to Truett. “I’m sure your goat will turn up once the storm passes. Need a ride back home?”

“Yes!” A giddy cheer rang out like a silver bell, before dropping down with apology. “Yes, please. It’s not far, just a little ways up. Promise. It’s real easy to get to, all on high ground. Above the levees. I’d be more than appreciative of this kindness of you two gentlemen. It’s so hard to find good men in this world.”

Truett could taste pennies stacking up in his throat from the smell radiating from the backseat. It sat like putrid fish on the back of his tongue. “We’ll drop you off, but I think we should head back.”

“Head back to where?” Felix gestured in the darkness of the deluge rising higher up. It started to sound like a river coursing under the car. “At this rate, where we came from is probably too far underwater. If her house is on high ground, we should wait this out there.”

“It’s just over yonder, I promise it ain’t no trouble at all. God don’t like ugly, and this is some gruesome ugliness falling from the heavens.”

Truett adjusted himself in his seat and looked out the windshield. The darkness of the sky matching the darkness of the ground. The downpour of rain beginning to slip in from the cracks of the car doors and closed windows. The wind howled sending larger tree branches like missiles into the swamp water. The darkness swirling in the heavens, mirroring the rising broken darkness of the earth. His skin felt raw underneath his soaked dress shirt and slacks. Ugly feet, gleaming teeth. “What’s your name?”

“Leticia Le-Rang-Par-Deux,” Her smile only made his stomach grow tighter.

“Felix Blevins and Truett Fox,” Felix spoke for both of them, as he shifted the car from Park to Drive. “Just tell me where to go, and I’ll get us there.”

“Continue straight up the lane. The road’s going to get a little bumpy and slick, but that means you’re heading uphill.” The paleness of her blue eyes glowed with ecstatic delight as the small car rolled slowly forward. “I don’t know about you boys, but I could eat. You boys are in for a real treat when we get back home. Promise, it’ll be worth your while.”