Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey Read online

  • “Sluts are good enough to make a sloven’s porridge” (old proverb).

  • “Such wicked sluts cannot be too severely punished” (Fielding).

  • “Our little girl Susan is a most admirable slut” (Pepys).

  Q said to her friend, “I have a feeling those twerps didn’t mean this last definition.”

  Her capability to listen so intently to one of my stories may cause her to ask, well after the story is finished, “Did you say somebody tried to shoot you down like a dirty dog?” This happens because, while I’m getting a tale down its road, she takes a turn bending off in a promising way but not on the route of my narrative. I’ve learned to watch her face for indications her mind is heading for Texas when the story is on its way to Tennessee.

  I’ll mention now, in all of our miles over neglected and strange routes, she never once has complained of even the most twisted of intimidating roads. If she gets uneasy at one of my route decisions, she expresses it only with silence and a certain slant to her lower lip. But her nether lip can also betoken an odd idea or a different track coming on, sometimes resulting in a new route, including her idea of going to Arkansas to follow the Ouachita River.

  In 1849, J. Quinn Thornton published a guide to westward emigration called Oregon and California in 1848. He said of the people setting out for the Far West that “some were activated by a mere love of change; more by a spirit of enterprise and adventure; and a few, I believe, knew not exactly why they were thus upon the road.” If you will grant the writing of books as an enterprise, then of the other reasons J. Quinn enumerates, I could be convicted on all counts. But for me it is that last reason which underlies all the others, for to go out not quite knowing why is the very reason for going out at all, and to discover the why is the most promising and potentially fulfilling of outcomes. I’m speaking about a quest for quoz, of which I’ll say more as we go along, but until then, you might want to see Quoz as a realm filled with itself as a cosmos is with all that’s there, not just suns and planets and comets but dust and gas, darkness and light, and all we don’t know, and only a fraction of what we can imagine.

  I’ve spent so many years rambling alone and not knowing exactly the reason, I now believe the answer to why we “were thus upon the road” lies in both the why and the how I became a writer in the first place: to break those long silent miles, I must stop and hunt stories and only later set down my gatherings in order to release them one day to wander on their own. A few years ago, a friend traveling in Nepal was lying on a pallet in a dormitory; atop a small shelf he saw a book dust-jacket and my face watching him. He said to me later, “You’ve traveled where you’ve never been.” To write is to have a reason for hoboing through one’s life and sometimes through those of others, whether or not you’ve met them. It’s for this reason you will find me now and again addressing you, the good reader. What the deuce, I might see you someday at that bookshop in Oshkosh or maybe we’ve already met at that lunch counter in Yazoo City.

  These days, when Q and I take off down some two-lane where I begin to wander into a tale about that very road in another time, my recital is not just to pass uneventful miles; even more it’s my try at recollecting and reclaiming what once occurred. After all, for each of us, at our finale — if we’re lucky — we end up with only memory. As long as it lasts, memory — upon which love is utterly dependent — is the lone, truly portable outcome of our days. It’s a snare for the transitory happenings that have been our life. Everything you will remember in your last days probably will come from encounters on your own roads to quoz. When one’s past can no longer be summoned forth (even if elided and distorted as it must be through our frailties in perfect recall), that’s the day we become a former person, a cypher with the rim rubbed out.

  My first book ends with this fragment from a Navajo wind chant: “Remember what you have seen, because everything forgotten returns to the circling winds.” Through those ancient words, and the others preceding them, Q first knew me and thereby set in motion our path to that supper conversation about the seventeenth letter of the alphabet.

  As best I can figure it, my job is to go out and get stories and to pass them along as far as they can carry themselves. You can see what I’m saying: A search for quoz gives me a reason to get out of bed and step into the shower and wake up and once again take up a quest. That some particular quoz I find might one day later find you is not a requisite to my travels, but it surely is nice.

  So then, quizzical reader, you who are yourself an infinity of quoz bound temporarily as one, it is now you whom I seek in hopes you’re ready for the quest and ready with a second question: Quo vadis?

  2

  Mrs. Weatherford’s Story

  ON THE SECOND DAY of spring 2004, Q and I headed for the Ouachita Mountains, she at the wheel. I told her this story soon after we crossed the border of northern Arkansas not far from a road that triggered my recollection. I spoke of Mrs. Weatherford — as I’ll call her here — and a tale she passed on to me some years earlier.

  Traveling alone, I met her aboard the steamboat Delta Queen on a voyage down the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Orleans. By chance I got seated next to her at the supper table the first evening. Despite her age — barely shy of eighty — she was attractive, slender, and quick, and she was a widow. Although she had little formal education, Mrs. Weatherford was a reader and articulate and happy to let her two companions — rich ladies, as was she now — do most of the talking, yakking really. In their fifties, her friends were overweight, mirthful women from Houston whose husbands gladly set them up in expensive sun-deck cabins for long boat-trips. The two companions talked often about money but not in dollars. Rather, their terms were the chattel of a well-heeled suburban life: “Why, the ring he gave that girl!” or “That man has never known a mortgage!” or “The First Lady said my gown was to die for!” And so on. The pair fell silent only when Mrs. Weatherford told a story from a time none of us had seen; although she never spoke of money or the life attached to it, despite being wealthier than her shipmates.

  After each supper, I would follow Mrs. Weatherford and her friends to a quiet deck near their cabins where they would pour a nightcap. Then was the time she would pull up a story. My dedicated attention must have been encouragement because she kept telling things the other two had never heard. Mrs. Weatherford’s clear recollections made me wish her a relative or a neighbor, someone I could drop in on just to listen to what were really prose georgics from an era seemingly more distant than her years would allow. When she had finished a story, told in her soft Ozark cadence, I’d ask questions — the first night just to keep the others silent for a while longer but afterward to learn more details. She was pleased when I wrote some of them into my shirt-pocket memo book.

  One evening we were sitting topside with our various nightcaps — mine was two fingers of a Kentucky straight Bourbon distilled not far to the east of where the boat was just then. We were watching a kind of alpenglow on the horizon behind a dark mass of big cottonwoods having the silhouette of low mountains. I said the sunset must be radiating all across Arkansas, and Mrs. Weatherford straightened in her chair as she did when something stirred her memory.

  The version I set down now is from my notes:

  “None of you know I grew up in north Arkansas,” she said. “The western side, in the hills. It was mostly rocks, soil no thicker than worn-out muslin. Everything, except our chickens, we had to get out of a creek-bottom field so small Poppa could plow it with a mule in a day. The hills were good for firewood and some walnuts and a squirrel or two. We didn’t eat coon. Usually, dessert was a half-dozen verses from the Bible. King James Version.”

  She paused and picked up my tumbler of whiskey and held it up against the dusky western sky to make the liquor gleam in a deepened hue. She put the glass down again and said, “My mother would call that ‘the color of sin.’ To her it was ‘the distillation of damnation.’” (Mrs. Weatherford, for her part, took an occa
sional vodka, neat.) She said, “Poppa made a clear, corn whiskey that would burn the gallstones out of your uncle’s brother.”

  “You’re talking moonshine?” one of her friends asked.

  “White lightning, bottled-in-the-barn booze. Ozark nose paint. Field whiskey. By whatever name you want, Momma knew it as sin, and she knew it was only a question of time before the Lord was going to settle up with Poppa. Now, at her insistence, he would read the evening Bible verses to us, but he could just as well have been reading the labels on a feed sack, and when it came to his still, there wasn’t anyone — man or woman or wife — going to argue him out of that. And the Sunday-school teacher didn’t help because he was known to accept on the q.t. a quart every holiday, including his birthday. He drank in his cellar and never showed himself until he’d finished it all and slept it off. The congregation said his wife was usually down there with him. And sometimes, so we heard, they’d get ‘plumb nekkid.’ Otherwise, he was vociferous against alcohol, and Momma accepted him because she thought his words might work on somebody. He liked to say, ‘I have known the jeopardous sin of liquor,’ as if those days were past.

  “And of course Momma knew that without the money from Poppa’s still, she’d be hard-pressed to set the table three times a day for four of us. I’m talking now of the early thirties. Even our church dresses had mendings over the mendings. Poppa wasn’t above nipping into some of his finishings but never in front of us children. Even on a cold night, if he had a couple of nips, he’d stay down in the shed where the works were, curled up near the fire. He called it ‘the works.’ I think he drank mostly because of our poverty. He was ashamed of not providing more for us.”

  Mrs. Weatherford, once she had our attention, would take long pauses, holding them like a concert master just to the right moment, then she’d follow on with her memory as if it were a score she knew well but hadn’t conducted in years.

  Nodding toward the sunset, she said, “Over there, it’s almost like the northern lights. They call them the northern lights because they don’t shine in the South, or at least not very often down this way. In northwest Arkansas they hadn’t shone ever as far as anyone back then could recall. Nobody had any idea what they were.

  “Well” — and here she took her first long pause — “they did shine one night, and they did it with a glory as if they were making up for all those years of dark skies. One evening Momma came out of the kitchen onto the porch to sit a spell before bed. My older sister, Maylene, and I were there waiting for her. It was late in the year, and she had her shawl on. She sat there humming a hymn, collecting herself, always wanting to be ready for salvation. She stopped in the middle of her hymn and said, ‘Why, girls, look over in that corner of the sky!’ and she pointed to the north toward a long ridge that sort of shut us in. ‘The Atgoods’ barn must be on fire!’ It was well past sundown, but the sky was rosy like dusk, except that bright sky was in the north. We went round the house to the front to see better, and there it was — the whole north was a pale curve of light rising from the tree line. We stood and watched it until we were certain it was truly getting brighter. Momma went to the window to holler up Poppa to come outside. He stepped out on the front stoop in his union suit he slept in when the weather cooled.

  “By now there were rays like searchlights shooting up. Then the bottom part started turning orange and flickering just like fire. Poppa said, ‘That ain’t the Atgoods’,’ and Momma said, ‘Oh dear Jesus!’ I thought this was all good fun until I saw her face. She was alarmed. Alarmed bad. And I looked at Poppa. It was the same expression when he saw Maylene fall off the mule.

  “I’m vowing to you the sky was like the old picture-show curtain in Fort Smith. I mean the sky was moving the way folds in the curtain swung when it got pulled open or closed. We just stood there watching until lower down the sky started getting even brighter, and rays seemed to kind of clump up and form into a big, flickering crown just like a king would wear.

  “At the sight of that, Momma stepped back so sharply she banged her head against the house and didn’t even know it. She said, ‘It’s here! It’s here! It’s happening tonight! This is the night!’ And she grabbed me and Maylene and started pulling us toward the house. ‘What’s here?’ Maylene said. ‘What’s happening tonight, Momma?’ ‘The Lord, child! The Lord! The Lord’s a-coming!’

  “Now, she was a practical woman, more clearheaded under pressure than Poppa who was still standing there in his droopy union suit and his mouth hanging open. I was starting to cry. Maylene said, ‘Should we get under the bed?’ ‘No, child! You don’t hide from the Lord! You girls go inside and put on your church dresses and lay out straight on the bed! And I mean straight.’ She shoved us toward the house, then called out like an afterthought, ‘And wash your feet!’

  “We did it fast, but we didn’t get in bed. We went to the window. Now the sky had flashes coming up from below like gigantic flames. Momma had hold of Poppa’s arm and was shaking it and talking fast. All I heard was ‘And, Cloyd, I mean now!’

  “The whole sky seemed to be on fire. Momma saw us in the window and yelled, ‘Get into bed and get R-E-A-D-Y! Ready! The Gates of Hades have been opened, girls!’ She and Poppa disappeared around the back and headed down into the hollow toward where the still was. But we didn’t get into bed — we went to the back porch and hid in the shadows. There were terrible sounds, Momma shouting, something smashing into wood and metal, glass breaking, and every so often a shower of sparks rose up. That went on for maybe twenty minutes, and then we smelled smoke, and then we saw a glow in the treetops down in the hollow. Maylene said, ‘Poppa’s burning the works.’

  “It didn’t take long. We saw Momma coming toward the house. We ran back to the bed and got ourselves all laid out like we’d been told. She came to the door and looked in on us. I said, ‘I’m scared, Momma.’ She stepped into the room and stood over us. ‘This is Judgment Day, girls. If you’ve done right, you’ll be ascending. Graves all over the county are opening. The Arising has begun! The Glory has come!’ and she left the room. Then Maylene started crying. She was afraid Resurrection zombies were going to come forth and reach through the window and carry us off to damnation.

  “Then Poppa came back. He wasn’t scared anymore. We heard him say to Momma — his voice was so weary, so defeated — ‘It’s gone. Every last quart of it. Gone.’ And Momma said, ‘Our need for money is gone too, Cloyd. This is all dross now. Wash yourself and come in and pray with us.’

  “Momma called us into the front room and told us to get down on our knees. Maylene said, ‘Are we going to die now?’ And Momma said, ‘Girls, I can’t tell you. I’ve never been through one of these before.’

  “Poppa came in with his church shirt on. I don’t know whether his face was red from the fire or from crying. Momma commenced praying, pointing out how we little ones were too young to have much sin attached to us. Then she took up Poppa’s cause, a more complicated one, given the liquor and his occasional cussing. I don’t remember much of it because I was watching the window. The sky had faded, but there was still enough light to see Jesus when he appeared to call us Home. After a while we went back to bed to wait, and the next thing I remember is the window was white with light and Maylene was asleep, her mouth open. I poked her to see if her soul had ascended yet. ‘Quit it!’ she said. Apparently it hadn’t.

  “It was dawn. I got up. My Sunday dress was a muss of wrinkles. I went down to the hollow to where the works had been. It was just a heap of ashes and some twisted and scorched metal and broken glass everwhere.

  “Everbody was up when I got back. Poppa was at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. He wouldn’t talk. Momma said, ‘We’ll just go about our affairs until the Lord or one of his angels comes for us. But first, get down on your knees.’ And she went to praying again, pointing out the innocence of children, making specific comment about her responsibility for the time in the schoolyard when the elastic in my underpants broke and let them fall to
the ground. Then she called on Poppa to ask forgiveness, but he just kept his head on the table. So she tried to intercede for his ‘Sin in the Hollow,’ emphasizing that the liquor he made was to provide for his family and, besides, he’d now renounced ‘Distilled Damnation’ by destroying the ‘Machinery of the Devil’ and pouring the ‘Liquid Hellfire’ into the ground. At that, Poppa raised his head as if to say something, but only a little moan came out, and he just put his weary head back down.

  “Momma went on, working her way into her sins — leaving a few out, like judgmentalism — but before she could finish, we heard the sound of some old flivver come sputtering up toward the house. Maylene ran to the front porch and said, ‘Is Jesus coming for us in a Ford car?’ I went to the window and peeked from behind the curtain. I told them I didn’t think it was Jesus unless Jesus wore baggy seersucker pants and a slouch hat.

  “We were all frozen. Even Poppa had his head up. There was a rap at the door that might as well have been a rifle shot, we all jumped so. Nobody moved. I’d never seen Momma so fixed. There was another rapping, and a voice said, ‘Hey in there! Lampkin!’ Poppa, maybe figuring he had nothing more to lose, slowly went to the door. ‘Lampkin!’ the voice called again. Like a summons.

  “Poppa opened the door, opened it real cautious. The voice spoke again, too low for us to understand, and Poppa turned to us inside and said, ‘Tain’t Jesus. It’s a feller from Ioway.’ Aware that it might be Jesus in disguise to test her charity, Momma ordered Poppa to let him in. The stranger stepped in, removed his hat, and turned it nervously in his hands. Nobody said a word. We were waiting for him to tell us how to proceed to Heaven, or perhaps Hades, in Poppa’s case. The man just twiddled his hat. Maylene whispered to me Jesus hadn’t shined his shoes. Finally, to break the silence, he said, ‘That was some show in the sky last night.’