July Junket

We live on the Gregorian calendar to keep the equinoxes lining up, but July comes from the Julian calendar, named for Julius Caesar. It doesn't mean anything particularly interesting. Thanks, Caesar.

We saw calves play fighting and a donkey descend the hill veiled in fireflies, the moon rise over the mountain and a field that had been flooded, planted over with tomatoes. We saw a championship wrestling belt hanging off of a garbage truck. We saw a man who’s shirt read:

GOD DONT MAKE NO MISTAKES

The summer has been long and close, it was a generous God that broke the heat a few weeks ago, right when it seemed worse than the ice storm in the months we have already passed and forgotten about, the house dark with the shades pulled and the cedar trees leaning, trying to keep the house cool, the dog days of summer, Wilbur and Sandii moving between the floor and the couch and the slick red floor of the studio, Wompus too cold as a feline and often seen laying out on the porch and sometimes outside on the warm bricks.

He said, oh yeah you know his daughter Mary was dating one of the Christmases. ‘Oh you mean like the Christmas Flying Service?’ (A crop duster company down south of us) And he said yes. She was dating one of them and I told her, you know, you’ll have to be Mary Christmas the rest of your life.

Something about the hot dusty streets of downtown Clarksdale, all the farm trucks parked for lunch, and the empty turnrows under a yellow sun and the bluegreen of soy, yellowgreen of cotton, the corn eight feet or taller and turning papergold as harvest approaches, we have been waiting to walk at 7:30 or later, knowing the day is still long before us,

One evening driving to Itta Bena right around 6:15 pm, knowing the hour drive will pass and the sun will still be in the sky, shining on the railroad tracks, kids playing in the baseball field echoing through the cypress, across Roebuck Lake.

You can’t see very far where the corn is up, but north south east and west have become friends and sometimes I see the ghosts of houses that used to be on this road, some mornings marbles shine in the yard where they were not the day before,

We woke up to the sound of dogs barking down the road, I can usually tell the neighbor’s dog’s barks apart by now, Bear and Ziggy, Otto, and our own. Recently, Bear has been running the fields finding some female friends, and one of them will sometimes sit in the neighbor’s yard and bark at us, black with a star on her chest and white toes, like a pit and lab mix.

This morning there was a new bark, I thought maybe it was that same new-dog. Walking out to the shack for coffee, I love so much to sit in the light of the sunflowers and hibiscus, and to see the birds and listen to the world in the shade of the porch in the early morning with a book, more pleasant to read in the shade near the sunshine for some reason, than in the dark air-conditioned house.

Walking up to the shack I heard more barking and saw puppies leaving our yard - walking out to the road I couldn’t help but laugh at the eternity of it, the problem, one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight??? Eight - plus a new mom dog and her friend the black dog, and Bear.

I can’t remember how it came up, but we were walking down some humid street of Alexandria, Virginia, old town and near the Potomac, as jungle or worse as it feels at home, and it seems like some dog was happy to see us, though it did not know us. Dogs usually love anyone they meet, without question. And humans usually love any dog they meet, without question. And I said, I always forget what dogma means. I said, what if God sent us dogs because the ark and the flood, the dove and the rainbow, because of Sodom and Gomorrah, the salt - didn’t teach us anything. And then He sent his son, and had him die for us, and we kept on being humans. Maybe He sent dogs to be a good and solid and daily reminder of His love, constant, instantaneous, free. To friends, to family, to strangers. A dog crouches down and smiles and wags his tail and crawls toward you in love. He is grateful for the smallest attention, he always seeks it, he is grateful for the smallest bit of food, of time. His love continues steadfast and unchallenged, and unchallengeable, unless he is challenged with violence or starvation, and even then, he will redeem, forgive, with time, the humans that have done it to him. And he said, God backwards is Dog. Thinking this morning maybe they are angels made up for earth, puppies just new angels learning how to be dogs. Dogs salivating and Gods salvation, man.

So this pure band of puppies and their mother and two other dogs were barking at us like they were about to swarm, really attack. We walked out on the road to look at them, and they moved at us, barking. And sure enough, they crouched with their bellies to the warming summer pavement and came towards us, wagging their tails hopefully, carefully. Before long, we were indeed swarmed with licking and jumping and wagging tails, trying to follow us back home.

He looked at one and said, oh you’re part beagle. And I looked at one and named lab, pit, shepherd, hound. The smallest greyblack one slinked off last when we shooed them home, but all of them seemed like they deserved a safe and healthy world, same as everyone, and they have no choice but to be molded by the world they rely upon, are raised in, same as everyone.

Zeppo died this month, one morning trying to get to town for an appointment, the rooster crowing and crowing from within the coop, the chickens cackling, the door to the yard long-open and still they stayed up. I gasped to see her there on the coop floor, she was probably six or even seven, maybe older, I wonder if the lightning storm that was fierce and long overnight worried her to death, what do chickens know about thunder? She lived so long i think because of how much she moved, death had a hard time finding her.

She died when the flowers were all in bloom, marigolds and sunflowers and the zinnias, roses, many and plenty, her grave fitting her life, beloved and near the fig tree, one little purple fig for me, one for the ants, in the afternoons I go to share blueberries and apples with the chickens and look for her first, running like a tyrannosaurus rex across the yard.

I had to chase the rooster and hens out of the coop, like they didn’t know what to do next without her.

The garden is on the way out, we planted new peppers and squash, zucchini, and some hopeful cantaloupe. Soon again we will be in the yard planting greens, he’s nervous about buying a new tiller after the last one broke and he took it all the way apart, too broken to be fixed at the machine shop down the road. I see them on the weekends at the shop getting the boat ready for the river. May we all live well in work that challenges us, teaches us, and lets us enjoy our world when we aren’t working.

Itta Bena is still down the road and I’m waiting to get in Roebuck Lake. I’ve been doing research for this article, and it’s given me the opportunity to talk to people from the little town, back when it was like Mayberry. The people I talk to are usually as interested in me as I am in them, one man asking about where I grew up and I told him about moving to the Delta, about how everyone pointed out that I talk too fast. He said, that’s because we listen slow out here.

We rode out to Moon Lake on an invitation, out to Kathryn’s that is back open, it wasn’t anything like I had read about, but I had already forgotten what I had read by the time I got there. It’s a little place that is forever opening and closing and for sale and open again. It was jam packed with summer life, full tables of young folks and old folks, raucous loud, a musician in the corner playing away, anyway. We rode back through Coahoma, dogs chasing his tires, the sun was giant and yellow and reflected in the silverdark stillness of Moon Lake, really a vision, too dazzling to point out, i didn’t ask them to stop to take a photo and no one remarked about it. I was sitting in the back of the truck and they started talking about lightning bugs. Some evenings I get bugged when folks start in on used to be because it doesn’t look like there’s any chance for it to be like that again; there used to be so many more lightning bugs. My mood softened when he said, one time we were out at the levee and filled his car up with lightning bugs and rode into town with them blinking the whole way.

He was talking about a man he never liked very much and remembered how the man had sent him a graduation card after high school, inside he had written ‘grow up.’ It was good advice.

We rode down to Howden and watched a garfish tail drift soft in the water, reading about it, folks make rope lures, unwinding nylon rope that gets caught in their teeth, hard to use a hook because it only catches on the soft corners of their mouths, not in the bone of their beaks with many teeth.

The world is small in the summertime, when you can’t see the horizon anymore for the cornfields. But something about the Delta demands driving and the road is always calling. The long highway down south to Greenwood and Itta Bena sometimes feels more like open arms, especially in the dazzling heat of summer when the trees and fields are so very verdant.

Night falls and feels like the hot road on barefeet. Some days the heat is so close I take a nap not because I want to, but because I am so tired so beat. Sleep just comes up.

She sent peaches, which some mornings I would eat over the sink, sweet and rich. We ate cantaloupes with salt many mornings, cold from the fridge, something satisfying about the melon just falling off of the vine. You could see the ripe cantaloupe from a distance, practically glowing with color, the orange inside radiating to the out. Some animals shared in our abundance and I was glad to share. Later, he brought shiny cherries and we shared across the table, later, breakfast, too, snacks. Summer fruit feeling like wealth in our little happy home.

Posting flyers at the Shacks I asked her if there were any figs on the big old tree out front, she said she didn’t know but she hoped so, she loves figs so much. Most trees were taken back by the long freeze, my precious baby LSU Gold fig dead from the root up, never had a chance. I searched all of the tree at the shacks, found six fat figs and gave her three, the men from Sweden two.

I think one of the duties of the artist is to fill up sketchbooks without being concerned with the work being good or bad, only to continually move forward and to continue drawing life out of the air like plants do,

We grew moon and stars melons, they got big and fat and speckled, but never seemed to be all the way red with ripeness, I grew them for the chickens and they cleaned the melons down to the rind. The garden wilting with the heat and the cucumbers slouching, the sunflowers with their heads bent while the birds hang carefully pulling seeds. The winter melon patch returned again without prompting, any melons we missed rotted and fell in, planting seeds for another season. The miracle of the garden never fails to amaze me, and trying to save tomato seeds for next year I am amazed that I ever bought seedlings, and maybe more amazed that I keep buying seeds every year.

Thinking last night about how I paid 3$ last year for a packet of 25 marigold seeds. And thinking about how I’ve got all these marigolds in the yard now and it’s probably one marigold bloom holds twenty five seeds alone. Everybody’s got to make a living. But to have gone along thirty years and for so many never failing to buy plants, then to buy seeds every year, when they are in the cucumber and in the cantaloupe and tomato and soon the basil, and it’s free. The zinnias in the yard this year are all from last year’s zinnias, even after I gave so many seeds away.

This morning she traded okra for Pontotoc peaches, and just like that we are wealthy again. She smiled while she was leaving saying, thats the thing about okra, it just keeps giving!

They asked the snake handler if it was the devil’s work or God’s work that he got bit. He said, it’s the devils work and it’s God’s will.

We went out and walked this soft turnrow with the woods on one side and a field of soybeans on the other, warm green blue reflecting the sky, like a real gentle ocean. Back in the car to ride home, a thunderstorm was gathering in the south and the thunder and lightning in the distance, always south of us, didn’t follow us home.

Spent the last day of July gathering zinnia seeds into used plastic containers, seems better than throwing them away, feels like you did something with a peanut canister full of seeds for next year in so many minutes.

He likes to water the garden because he can feel the plants smiling at him.

It’s so easy to take everything for granted, the good and the bad. Grateful for the years of slow and steady change that brought me here, still far from perfect but without wanting, to be like the winter melon that shows up every year, without being planted. To grow generously like the cucumber, and brightly like the zinnias. The summer seems so short now, though it is long from over, the sunflowers played out and looking like matchsticks, a few tomatoes taken by hornworm, the morning glories and purslane taking over, we saw persimmons this morning out on the bayou, a banana spider, he said the ironweed doesn’t usually bloom this early, the corn down our road ready to be harvested, the cracks in the ground softened over with more rain than we have seen in the past three or four summers, though it still is not much.

Next, sweet potatoes and whatever may happen to the new pepper plants and seedlings. Winter melon, bitter melon, then the greens will go in, the new season in the garden perpetual, hoping the lessons from the summer garden have stuck for next year,

Meanwhile the fish are jumping and the hummingbirds are chasing each other away from the tithonia,

what are we doing in heaven today?

Hello! Hello! My little show Steadfast to the Land is up at William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak through (corrected) August 30th!

https://rowanoak.com/

Very thankful to be a part of this show curated by everyone’s hero Ann Madden. The opening is August 14th from 5 - 7 pm at the Gail Keenan Art Center in Pass Christian, and the show will be up through September 11th. If you are on the coast, please stop by and check it out - more information can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/GailKeenanArtCenter/

Many thanks for stopping by The Orleans Gallery for White Linen Night! It’s a joy to get to show among so many kind, skilled, and enthusiastic artists. Cayman and crew has really brought together a wonderful group of people and i am so grateful to be in that number. If you’re in the city, they’re at 603 Julia Street. But in the meantime they’re always up on instagram with the latest piece.

https://orleansgallery.com/

Also! A wave of gratitude to everyone who made it to The Clarksdale Summer Spectacle! I knew the community was good but i was truly overwhelmed; still am. Thank you, thank you. We definitely copied (with permission) Erin Austen Abbott’s One Night Stand at the Ole Miss Motel which is coming up October 24th.