Why “Gathering” is going South – Part One

[image error] When I was fifteen my father decided that it was time to fulfill his life long dream of buying a sailboat and living aboard. He said he would do this before he turned fifty, and managed to sign the papers the day before his birthday.

That’s the happy ending (or maybe the  happy beginning).

But before that could happen we had to trek across the United states from Arizona to Florida.

My father was never one to put his foot on the gas pedal and arrive at a destination within a specified time.  He never used a map because he could read the stars, and moss on trees, and the secret code of squirrels cracking nuts. A map would have felt like an obligation.  He liked to find an unused road and find out what was on the end, or beat on the doors of closed country restaurants to see if they would open just for us.  People always opened doors for my father then, and we had a lot of good meals and made many friends that way.

The sailboat odyssey began in a truck with a camper shell, a jerry-rigged air conditioning system of duct tape and plastic tubing, and a carsick dog.

I was in back with the dog.

We made pretty good time across the desert, a blur of dusty hills, thirsty scrub, and mountains etched against a still hot pink sunset.

The dog and I ate a lot of french fries to kill time. I listened to music the whole way. Loud, parent drowning music.  And I scribbled furiously in my notebook, working on the story that would become Lux.

But as soon as we rolled into East Texas and the outer limits of my father’s  territory, time slowed down.  The south is slow, as anyone who has ever lived there knows.  It’s a land of sitting on porches and exchanging stories with the cashier at the grocery store.  Laying in the grass is a perfectly acceptable way to spend time.  Southerners work hard but they relax even harder.  Lazy days are a blood sport in the South, hunted down with expert tracking skills.

As soon as we crossed that invisible barrier the air became heavy, and humid, and slow.

Every time we found a rest stop we would wander the area around it, theoretically walking the dog, but really walking my father.  We found dilapidated houses down dirt roads that were hung with shrouds of moss and occupied only by birds. We lived on road food like pecan logs and drove until the moon cracked open and made half its journey in the opposite direction.

I left the South when I was four, but now, returned, it sang to me in a language that only the blood recognizes, and of course it found its way into my story. A large part of this next book takes place in Alabama, Southeast Texas, and the panhandle of Florida. It is its place of birth as well as mine, but in “Gathering” you meet an eviscerated version, a South once again torn by war and divided loyalties.

So before we get to that, I want you to remember it as I do.

Come with me… see the places that most people never find.

 

[image error]