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Here’s the down south story we didn’t tell you: sixteen hours in and Jack can’t feel her feet but we never stop. Our uncle asleep at the wheel and we that closer to death with each mile. Turned around again and again, before GPS, we learned North Carolina is a long state: tobacco taller than us, the fields and fields of it, no washing it out of our clothes, the air so wet and thick of it, choking us.
Jack won’t fly. Full grown with a dead granddaddy and still she won’t fly, she tells us I-95 has always been the way back home so we gun it. Straight through, no stopping, sixteen hours and Jack doesn’t care how bad we need to pee, she says, Hold it. Sixteen hours till we saw the palmetto trees and smelled the paper mill and knew Savage Road was in sight.
Georgie ’n’ em got Grandaddy laid out in the front room like a piece of furniture and ushers fanning the top of Grandmama’s head. We couldn’t find our place in the business of departing: hams out the oven, lemon cake iced, organ tuned, tea made, napkins folded, the children’s black patent leather shoes set out for the dirt road come morning.
Here’s the down south story we didn’t tell you: Leroy barking at us from the grill because when did everybody stop eating pork and why he got separate meat and when all the women become Nefertiti bangles and headwraps and all us named like Muslims. Our cousins who couldn’t make it because he died on the wrong Friday, wadn’t payday, and our cousins who did and their many children tearing up the front yard. Our decision to sneak into the woods with red cups, black and milds, Jim Beam, a blue lighter plucked from the card table, and Toya’s gold cap kept in her change purse. The pot of greens we brought out with us and the mosquitoes keeping company like we wasn’t down in the swamps to bury our dead.
Our cousins know the dark and the heat, but we haven’t been home in so long. Our back sweating and this old bra sticky so more and more from the red cup. Our cousin say, Lemme top it off for youse, so we oblige and when he said pull, we pulled and when he said blow, we blew smoke over our shoulder and then into his open mouth, giggling. Our cousin say, You know they found him in the bed, right? And we nod cuz sleep don’t come easy no how. He say, Just like that. And our cousin clap when he say that and we think of Grandaddy setting his glasses down on the nightstand one last time. Our cousin say, You missed me? And we smile cuz his hand is on our hip and it’s hot out and he smell good and it’s the darkest Charleston has ever been. The dead of night is forgiving when you’re kin. Grandaddy gone and we sitting up in the woods with brown liquor, necking, our cousin hard on our thigh. Toya say, Keep watch for them copperheads, but copperheads ain’t never kill nobody—we got our eyes trained for gators.
We think we can still outrun ’em.
Who threw that rock at the gator?
Don’t know Where Toya?
Ya’ll there?
We here.
Gator comin, boy, run
Don’t see no gator, cuh Well, Gator see us, nigga
Runnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
so we run
fast
cuz gator made for water but children born for land.