Night Swimming Read online

  Blossom was the pride and joy of our community, and she will always be remembered for the final words she uttered: “I’ll be back, you sons of bitches, and next time I’ll really knock your socks off.” Blossom will be waked at the Germaine Devoe Funeral Home through Monday. Services will be held at Our Lady of Precious Blood Church.

  Wow, Charlotte thought, now, that’s a woman. Beautiful, smart, brave, of average weight, and married....Now, that’s someone I’d like to be. Even if Charlotte were only married for a short time, that counted. Hell, Dennis Hopper and Michelle Phillips were only married for eight days. Charlotte’s thoughts rolled back to Blossom.

  If she left the truck stop now, she could take her time and still get to Louisiana to pay her last respects. Life was too short not to make important stops along the way. This was an important stop. She knew this because she had been given the sign, and it spoke to her in a way that only she could hear. She pulled out her map. Everything was possible. A whole world lay before her, and getting to each far-flung place was as easy as following the long blue highways with her finger.

  CHAPTER 8

  CHARLOTTE FLEW SOUTH like a bird clapping each county behind her. She finally crossed the invisible boundary from Tennessee, and entered the damp, mossy back roads of Mississippi. The air was warmer here. Ash, oak, and gum trees stood like Southern soldiers along the Natchez Trace. Rivers and oxbows and bayous watered the land—so much so, it seemed as if the delta would never have to take another drink.

  It was late when Charlotte pulled into an old motel, lost in time on Moon Lake Road. It took her less than ten minutes to check in and find her way to bed, fatigued as she was from hours of driving and dust.

  She was tired, so tired that she could barely smell the perfume of the crepe myrtle and magnolias rising into the drowsy night air. Every breath drew Charlotte deeper and deeper into sleep, until she was tenderly released into her first dream that had something to do with milk and honey.

  The sun came up over the delta as it had for the past thousand years, except this time Charlotte Clapp was there to greet it. She stood at her window, gazing past the cattails and willows to the tall, lazy cypresses. Their Spanish moss blew out over the brown riverbanks like young girls in hoopskirts. Charlotte looked beyond the banks and saw the dark indomitable Mississippi River exploding forward in the swarming heat. She knew right then and there she had arrived at a place that demanded its due. Clearly, the strict southern gods were out in force. She would never say or even allow herself to think of the word f-u-c-k. But if she were to think it, only for a moment, a moment so quick no one could possibly know that she’d ever conceived such an unspeakable word, then, without a doubt, these would be the “gods not to be fucked with.”

  She looked away from the river and went outside, relieved to see the morning sky shining bright as an amethyst. Spreading her map out like a quilt on her lap, she noticed an old woman in a sleeveless shift sweeping the walk.

  “Excuse me,” Charlotte interrupted. “Could you tell me the fastest way to get to New Orleans from here?”

  The old woman paused, rested on her broom, and considered the question as if she’d been asked if God exists.

  “The fastest way or the most colorful way?”

  “Good question. I say the most colorful way.”

  “Highway sixty-one.”

  “A highway is the most colorful way?” Charlotte asked skeptically.

  “Why, Highway sixty-one ain’t like no other highway. It’s Blues Alley. And Clarksdale is the place to start. Blues men, that’s who traveled it, back in the twenties and thirties. My husband was a blues man, played a mean guitar. It’s how I fell for him. He used that guitar to woo me like a box of chocolates. But he’s been gone now many years.” She became wistful. “Yeah, he played the delta up and down, up and down. If there was a juke joint within a stone’s throw, then you can bet that’s where my Johnny would be. Jumpin’ Johnny Jackson.”

  Charlotte’s curiosity was pedaling at top speed. “What exactly are these juke joints?”

  “Shacks. You’ll find them all along Route sixty-one. You know ’em when you see ’em. Tin roofs, broken porches. But that don’t matter—it’s what’s comin’ out of ’em that matter. And that’s all the music your ears can hold.”

  This appealed to Charlotte’s romantic side, and it was just the sort of experience she was hoping for when she bade her boredom good-bye.

  “I like the sound of this,” Charlotte said. “I don’t really know blues, but I do know a thing or two about feeling blue.”

  “Then you know the blues if you know that, child. Now, don’t get the jukes mixed up with those low-class lounges you’ll see along the road. Best they can offer is clean toilets, and they’re not all that clean, if you ask me. The music is the thing. The music can set your soul free.”

  Set my soul free? There was no longer any question as to where Charlotte was going that day. She was going to find music that would set her soul free.

  Now, a fat white lady in a Jaguar is bound to get some attention in the middle of poor, black rural Mississippi. Clarksdale, Mississippi, to be exact. It was there she pulled over to a farm stand glistening with fruit and vegetables. Several children rushed out to see what Charlotte was all about.

  “Can I help ya, ma’am?” The question came from the old black man coming out of the house with a flock of little girls in tow. They looked like half a dozen brown-eyed Susans.

  Placed perfectly in proper rows along worn wooden benches were boxes of berries and beatroot, okra, and onions. Turnips, tomatoes, and sugarcane stalks. There were sweet peas and sweet pies from just-picked potatoes. There was sun tea and cider and hot pepper jelly, corn bread, and honey still caught in its comb. There were pecans and fruit jams and blueberry butter, all set out like a long Southern Sunday picnic.

  “Weez got possum an’ fish out back, ma’am. Fresh fish. Weez got some bream, crappie, and catfish out back if ya want fish, ma’am.”

  “I think I’ll take two sweet potato pies, a piece of honey, and handful of pecans, please.”

  A pickup truck was hiccupping its way down the long, dusty corridor toward the group. It stopped at the stand as Charlotte collected her pies.

  “Nice car, lady,” the man said as he slipped like an adder out of his pickup. His face was thin, and his eyes were slit so that only the narrowest gleam could escape them. His friend stood behind him, not saying a word.

  “What can I getcha?” the old man asked, leaning over to bring up more bags from under the table.

  “Nothing I want from you, but I’d like to see what’s in that poke of yours.” He was talking to Charlotte now and wielding a long, sharp hunting knife. It took her a moment to figure out what was going on. Suddenly, she got it. She was getting mugged in the middle of a beautiful road in the middle of a beautiful day. The old man told the little kids to get back into the house, and they ran like a rush of rabbits tumbling down their hole. Charlotte opened her purse.

  “Five hundred dollars! Wow, Earle, we hit a goddamn jackpot. We got ourselves a rich lady from... from... where you say you from?”

  “New Hampshire,” Charlotte said softly, barely above a whisper. All she could think of was that she was going to die buying sweet potato pies.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Charlotte.”

  “Well, Charrrrrlotte, what else you got in that fancy car of yours? Why don’t you just open the trunk so we can take a look, like a big girl? Get it, Earle? Big girl?” he laughed. His broken front teeth showed like a junkyard dog’s growling at an intruder.

  Charlotte stared at his mouth. She couldn’t even hear the snorting coming out of it. It filled her screen like a silent bark pushing ever closer toward her face. It was the ugliest face she’d ever seen.

  “Well? I ain’t got all day, lady. Open the fuckin’ trunk!”

  She had stolen two million dollars, and for what? To be robbed on some godforsaken road in Mississippi and to neve
r get to Hollywood? How cruel was this? She contemplated jumping into the driver’s seat even at the risk of getting knifed. What difference would it make now? If they took the money, she’d have nothing to live for anyway. She’d never get to California. She’d never hear Tony Bennett sing. She’d never meet Tom Selleck.

  She walked over to the car, fumbling for her trunk key. She slid it slowly into the lock and opened it. There they were: her four suitcases. Her future. The man with the knife leaned in to lift them out when he was interrupted by the old man behind the fruit stand.

  “Excuse me, boys, but y’all is on my property, and I don’t like these kinda of goin’s-on here...if ya gets my gist.”

  The old man pointed a fat-barreled shotgun at the gut of the man with the knife.

  “It’s been at least a week since I kilt somebody, and I hate to have to end my streak. So why don’t y’all back off, get inta dat truck of yours, and drive on back ta whatever sewer you dun drove out of. I don’t want no problems here, and I don’t wanna ruin my afternoon buryin’ two big cracker boys like yourselves. That takes a heapa lot of energy, an’ I had plans to go fishin’ for some crappie later.” The old man pulled back the hammer.

  The two white boys started to move away from the trunk. The old man’s calm was disconcerting. He was way too quiet—quiet enough to be scared of. Even these backwoods boys could tell that with the least amount of provocation, bang! and it would be over. Where they were all bravado, he was all business.

  “Hey, we don’t want no trouble. We were just havin’ some fun, is all.”

  “Well, get your butts back inta dat truck an’ go have your fun elsewhere. Fun’s over here.”

  They moved cautiously, quickly, sliding into their old beat-up Ford.

  “Hey, wait a second, son.”

  The mean one stopped. The old man grabbed the five hundred dollars out of his hand and gave it back to Charlotte.

  And with that, they were off, eating the same dust they’d kicked up when they arrived. Charlotte was still frozen and hadn’t found her voice yet even to thank the man. All she could think was this must be where all the extras in Deliverance ended up.

  “You okay?” he asked. She jumped.

  “I don’t know what to say. You saved my life.”

  “They wasn’t gonna kill you. They was just after some extra beer money.”

  She couldn’t tell the old man her life was in that car. That all the money she had to live on was stashed in small bills in the trunk.

  “Take this,” she said, handing him the five hundred dollars. He looked at it and shook his head.

  “Dat’s a right lot of money for two sweet potato pies, a bit o’ honey, and a coupla pecans.”

  “It’s the pecans. When they’re out of season, it’s a seller’s market.”

  CHAPTER 9

  IT WAS CLEAR Mississippi was a force to be reckoned with. Charlotte was no longer in the mood to find music that would save her soul or set her soul free or whatever the hell it was, and she wasn’t of a mind to do any more driving. She just wanted to stop somewhere, so she decided to find another place to hang her hat for the night. She’d leave Mississippi with the morning light in time to make it to Blossom’s wake.

  Otis’s Place wasn’t much to look at. It was a small weather-beaten house with a weather-beaten sign that boasted clean rooms, but it was good enough. Charlotte just wanted a roof, a bath, and a bed. She laid her head on the pillow at around eight and fell fast asleep. At about midnight she woke up. She could hear music coming from the porch. Banjo, guitar, mouth harp, fiddle, mandolin. It sounded so perfectly perfect, she couldn’t help but open her window as wide as it would go and lean out to hear some more. Every chord, every note, cried a river. It reached right down into the soil of the land they were playing on. Charlotte was sure that if they played long enough, the flowers would be teased right out of the earth.

  “You sing it, Mazy. You sing it loud, Miss Mazy Watts,” the banjo player yelped. And then Mazy Watts began to sing. One song after another, so absolutely beautiful, Charlotte wondered if she had sold her soul to be able to sing like that. She’d heard such stories about a man who, one hot summer night, sold his soul to the devil to be able to sing the blues. A summer night as hot as this one. Charlotte closed her eyes and inhaled every sweet scent, every sweet sound surrounding her. She’d never heard anything like it, and she simply couldn’t contain herself. She was suddenly clapping and singing from her window like a big-bellied warbler.

  “You sing it, girl,” the fiddle player yelled up to Charlotte.

  And she did, calling to Jesus and polishing those pearly gates with her hands that were waving wildly in the warm midnight air.

  “Praise Jesus!” someone cried.

  And they did: Mazy Watts, Charlotte, and a chorus of others who slowly gathered to the porch that night and sang until the sun came up. Maybe thirty people showed, maybe more, from who knows where, to sing, to praise, to give thanks, to ask for forgiveness, to ask for salvation, to lament, to exalt, to grieve, to accept, to weep, to live, to die, to sing the gospel. It was as if church were open all night under the stars. And for a moment, Charlotte felt okay. Okay about her life and okay about the prospect of dying. Somehow, she thought, dying is what we have to do to complete the circle. The music was telling her so. It had been so many years since Charlotte had experienced the sensation of being held in someone’s arms. But tonight, between the music and the moon and the unaccountable black magic of the Southern air, she was embraced in the spirit of everything that was good in this world. And she felt free.

  Every part of Charlotte felt free by the grace of the great gospel gods: her arms, her legs, her hips, her feet, but especially, most especially, her soul.

  The following afternoon, she woke to the harsh clarity of late light spilling off the walls while the sun sluggishly climbed down the backside of another day. However, one thing was clear, clearest of all, and that was she did not want to die. The music had made the dying seem okay last night, caught in its current and carried to the “shores of milk and honey,” but today was today, and she wanted to live and hear a lifetime of it now. However, time was short, and with only a year she had no time to ruminate about how much time she did not have left. So she hurried off in search of Mazy to say goodbye. There she was, raking the flattened grass in front of her porch as if bent on giving a straight road back its curves.

  “Good-by, Mazy Watts,” Charlotte said, pulling her close, nearly suffocating the poor woman in her full, generous bosom. “I have to tell you, Mazy, I’ve never heard a voice like yours in all my life.”

  “And you, too, sister Charlotte, you got yourself your own beautiful voice.”

  “Thank you, Mazy Watts. Thank you. One night in Mississippi. I saw more in one night than I ever thought I could, because of you.”

  “What’d you see, Charlotte?” Mazy asked as they walked toward Charlotte’s car.

  “I saw...I saw...” Charlotte was trying to put her finger on the feeling. And then it struck her. “...a glimpse of paradise, a passing glimpse, but a glimpse nonetheless.”

  “Ahhhh,” Mazy said, “that can happen in the delta.”

  “You take care, Mazy,” Charlotte said. She wanted to say that she’d be back one day, and that they would meet again, that perhaps if all was right with the world they’d have another incredible evening like the one last night. But Charlotte knew she wouldn’t be back. She knew that life was taking her to other places now. And besides, she knew there could never be another night like that.

  “Bye, Miss Charlotte,” Mazy said.

  “Bye, Miss Mazy.” And Charlotte drove off, looking in her rearview mirror at the closest thing to an angel she’d ever seen.

  The roads leaving town were long and flat. She passed general stores that were hammered up with old tin signs, signs that looked as if they’d been hanging there since 1920: Coca-Cola, Lake Celery, Cold Barq’s Root Beer, White Flyer Laundry Soap, Wood-Coal, and Ice.


  But the thing that struck her the most were the kingdoms of cotton stretching out before her like a field of clouds—white froth spilling over the open fields like cold beer or soda that had been poured too high over the lip of its glass. It fell everywhere along the roads and looked like swatches of Battenberg lace. There were cotton fields in front of Charlotte, in back of her, cotton growing out of old riverbeds and across abandoned plantations. If Mississippi was known to have ghosts, then they were all right here, blowing down Highway 61.

  And then, suddenly, in the middle of nowhere, breaking like a brown god out of the ground, stood a strong, solid oak tree. But this was no ordinary oak tree. The cotton had blown right up into its branches, and it looked as if a hundred hankerchiefs were waving Charlotte good-bye as only proper southern ladies can. She got out to look at the tree. It had to be a hundred degrees, maybe more, and yet this big old oak, which looked as if its bark were blistering from the heat, hung full of snow under the southern sun.

  Charlotte felt certain that this place held a magnetism all its own. It was where time slowed down, where afternoons slouched toward evening, and evenings seemed suspended in the opium shades of sleep.

  Maybe because it was so hot here, or maybe it was something else. Charlotte pondered the notion of time slowing to a crawl, of air so still, the wind dare not exhale a single sigh. So still you could hear the breath of a butterfly a mile down the road. Charlotte only had a year left to live, but if she stayed in Mississippi, maybe, just maybe, she could live forever.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE RIVER HAD BEEN DREDGED, and the Gorham police stood nearby as Charlotte’s car was lifted out of the water, the driver’s door swinging open on its rusted hinges. The entire front had been crushed like a tin can. It dangled from the crane, a final tribute to its sad ending.