The Waking (35 page)

No.

You know it’s true. Why else would you have been trying to kill yourself slowly with liquid sunshine?

I wasn’t … I haven’t been trying to kill myself.

Could have fooled me, but what do I know? I only know you better than you know yourself. Scared, aren’t you?

I’m not afraid.

Then let me out for a while, let me run the show. I’ll take us places, believe you me, that are the stuff of dreams.

No!

I jerk myself up off the step and don’t stop to catch my breath or what’s left of my sanity until I get to 17
^th
Street and find Bahama Wings & Soul Food. My mouth had been watering for some country-fried steak, cornbread, and greens, but when I get there, I’m not hungry anymore. I should be, but I’m not. I’m thirstier than anything else. I’ll just get a big cup of Coke and rest a little.

I hear a distant train horn and remember that I have to catch a train. I run to the spot near 14
^th
Street where Red and I had gotten off, hoping a train will come along before the storm brewing overhead breaks into a million pieces. Huge, bulbous, black rain clouds roll over me like waves while I try to look cool sitting on the slight rise near a railroad track. It isn’t easy. Lots of folks drive by on the street in front of me, most breezing on by, but several folks waiting to turn left onto 14
^th
give me hard looks.

I wait until there aren’t any cars and cross the tracks to the other side, where I get a panoramic view of, well, not much. Backs of folks’ yards, a few dull buildings, a few trees. The clouds are interesting in all their rolling fury, though I’m sure to get drenched. I could use a bath, and my clothes could stand a good washing, so maybe a storm won’t be so bad. I pick at the weeds around me, leaning back every now and then to look for a train.

Nothing.

Then it rains, first in sprinkles, then in drops as big as my knuckles. The wind picks up, and by the time a train rolls by, I’m soaked to the bone. I step up the embankment to check out the train’s markings and see “Norfolk Southern” on the locomotive. Not my train. It rumbles by while thunder rumbles overhead. Four trains and several hours later, an L&N train creaks by so slowly I could probably outrun it if I wasn’t so drenched and shivering. I catch the ladder leading up into a silver tanker car and huddle in a little cut near the coupling, locking my legs around a little railing.

We creak along until we run out of buildings then pick up speed and head straight into the thick of a nasty lightning storm. I wonder if lightning could hit a moving metal train car during the storm.

You sure know how to pick ‘em.

Who asked you?

The wind whips rain into my face, and I spend most of the next hour with my head in my lap, my hands tucked under my legs. I drowse every now and then, jerking awake whenever the car shudders violently from side to side. In a way, I’m glad I didn’t eat. I’d probably be throwing up from motion sickness.

When the rain finally subsides and the clouds part a little revealing the stars, I relax and look at a peaceful land, so quiet, so full of promise and hope. Flat farmlands, rough cotton patches, pine thickets, greens and browns everywhere, signs of life, signs of growth, the smell of the soil, the smell of freshly watered grass. And if I could capture this feeling, this electric feeling, and bottle it, I’d be an instant billionaire overnight.

No, you wouldn’t. You’d still be just as poor cuz there’s probably a law against bottling electricity.

No. I’d still be poor because I’d give it away.

“
America …” I say to the wind. “America is America late at night after a thunderstorm in Alabama.”

I drowse off and on through most of the journey, tense and alert as we creep through Montgomery, dead to the world as we move past Montgomery. I wake to another storm brewing with the blackest clouds I’ve ever seen. They’re like mashed potatoes with too much gravy. My stomach growls. And I could use a couple
pounds
of mashed potatoes with too much gravy right about now.

Then the wind and rain pick up so fiercely that I have to hold onto anything my slick hands can grasp so I don’t fall off, some gusts so strong I’m blown back against the car gasping for air. The morning air is green with flying leaves, and the rain distorts my view so much I’m not sure where the earth ends and the sky begins. And somehow, I have to look through all this mess to find the Mobile River.

It can’t be done. I can barely see the car in front of me. Are we moving through a hurricane, or is a hurricane moving through us? I’d jump off just to be safe, but I may end up in the water, maybe hundreds of feet below, and I didn’t go jumping off a bridge in Pittsburgh to end up drowned off a bridge in Alabama.

Luckily, the train slows considerably as we approach what I hope is Mobile. I can make out a bridge looming in the distance, but just barely. I’m supposed to get off before … or is it after that bridge? I can’t remember, and the wind howling all around me isn’t helping me think. I’m getting off the first chance I get where I can see the ground.

I latch my feet on the little rail and lean out as far as I can to the right of the train, looking down mostly at marsh and mud while wind and rain give my hair a thorough cleansing. At least it will be a soft landing, and what’s a little more mud on me? I move my notepads and pens to my front pockets, lace my boots as tightly as I can, and crouch and crawl to the edge of the little platform, feeling around for the ladder. It’s not there. Wait. I caught the train on the other side, didn’t I? Either that or my arms have gotten shorter. I reach around again and feel the ladder with the tips of my fingers. How did I ever get to this little platform? Oh yeah, I had to swing in feet-first. Just when I can’t decide what to do next, the train slows even more until it comes to a complete stop.

Next stop, Mobile, Alabama.

I’m here?

Appears so.

I step off the platform onto the rail, peeking around the car in both directions. I can’t see much further than a few cars in either direction, but I know we haven’t come to the bridge yet. The train just stopped way out in the middle of nowhere, in a swamp, during a major storm? Maybe there’s too much water on the tracks or the train yard’s full or something. I leap off the rail and slide down an embankment into an overgrown puddle, which has become a long flowing stream of brown water. I lift my boots from the muck and step onto some soft, thick, dark green grass.

“
Welcome to Mobile,” I say, and as I turn toward the bridge, the train starts up again. I feel goose bumps, and not just because I’m completely soaked. It’s like the train stopped here especially for me. I’ll have to write the train company to thank it for such fine service.

I walk parallel to the tracks and get glimpses every now and then of the raging Mobile River, a regular cauldron of brown and green water, as I slip and fall often. The wind whips me back and forth like a rag doll sometimes, and though I fall, at least the landing is soft. I have to lean forward just to keep my balance, and in half an hour, I can’t tell the difference between my blue denim shirt and my tan pants. I am simply one blob of greenish-brown getting closer to a bridge.

Once at the bridge, I turn west and walk along the soggy shoulder of a four-lane highway, waves of water peeling off it as cars and trucks swim by, many with their flashers on. It should be mid-morning by now, but it’s so dark I run into a sign. Looking up, I see the number thirteen. There’s that number again. I hold onto that sign as another gust whips water up from the road into my face. I’m on Highway 13, good old lucky Highway 13. In the midst of all this chaos, I smile, shaking the rain out of my hair like a dog. Somewhere out there is Africatown. Somewhere out there are all the stories Auntie June told me.

I pull around the sign and keep trudging until I hear a horn beeping behind me. I turn, shielding my eyes from the stinging rain, and see an old busted and rusted pickup truck. I slosh through the headlight beams to the driver’s side.

An old black man with few teeth and less hair rolls down the window. “Need a lift?”

“
Sure.”

“
Get in.”

I tramp around to the passenger side and have to heave the door open. I get in and have to shut it several times before it catches. “Thank you. Uh, I’m Emmanuel.”

“
Nice to meet you, Emmanuel. I’m Tex.”

“
You from Texas?”

Tex shakes his head. “No.”

Nice nickname.

You’re telling me.

“
So where you headed?” Tex asks.

I feel the spring digging into my behind and rest my hands on the cracked dashboard to give myself some relief. “Africatown.”

Tex chuckles. “You in it.”

“
Huh?”

“
You
in
Africatown, ‘course you’d never find ‘Africatown’ on any map, even though they named the bridge back there the Africatown USA Bridge. Jes’ about everythin’ off to the right from Plateau to Prichard is considered Africatown. About twelve thousand folks live there.”

“
That many?”

“
You live in a place a hundred and forty years, there’s bound to be children.”

He pulls back out onto 13, and I watch the waves shoot off beside us, the windshield wipers barely moving enough water for me to see more than ten feet in front of us. “Some weather, huh?”

“
Yeah.” I’m here. I’m actually here, and there are twelve
thousand
potential relatives of mine somewhere out in that rain.

“
An’ this is jes’ a tropical storm. But what you doin’ out in it like that?”

Getting a bath. “Just came down from Birmingham on the L and N,” I say, trying to sound cocky.

“
You rode a
train
in this weather?”

“
Yes sir.”

“
You’re either crazy or a determined man, then.”

He’s crazy. He hears voices.

Just yours. Where are the others?

What others? Maybe I’m a ventriloquist.

Right.

I smile. “I guess I’m a little crazy
and
determined.”

“
Been travelin’ long?”

All my life. “Yeah. About a month or so. I’m from Pittsburgh.”

“
You on a pilgrimage or somethin’?”

A pilgrimage. That’s what I’ve been on. “You could call it that.”

“
I seen my share of pilgrims, I have. Like when that
Roots
book come out. Lots of folks swarmin’ down here, you know, jes’ lookin’ to find. But that was over twenty years ago. Don’t see many pilgrims today. Where can I drop you?”

“
I’m not sure.” I try to remember some of the stories Auntie June told me. “I’m related to Kazula Lewis.”

“
You mean
Cudjo
Lewis, don’t you?” Tex asks.

“
I’m not sure. Auntie June told me his name was Kazula.”

“
That was his African name all right. He was the last full-blooded African to come to America.”

The last one? “And he had a sister named Abassa.”

Tex smiles. “Haven’t heard that name in a good while. You’ll be wantin’ to see the church then.”

“
The church?”

“
The Union Baptist. It’s just down this road a ways. Used to be called the First Union Baptist, but now it’s called the Second Union Baptist cuz of the new building.”

“
What’s at the church?”

“
You’ll see.”

The truck crashes through the water on Highway 13, the spray often too much for the wipers. Tex eventually turns into a swampy parking lot covered with water, the wind blowing waves against the steps to a little church. “We here,” he says, squinting. “Don’t know if they got power or not. Lost power durin’ the night most places around here. Sit tight.”

Tex splashes up to the only doors I can see and goes in while lightning flashes and the wind rocks the truck. During one intense flash, I clearly see a face staring back at me from a little brick monument outside the church, the bust of someone familiar. It’s a man’s face, a rugged face. When Tex motions for me to follow, I push the door with my feet and drop into water up to the top of my boots. I have to use my entire body weight to close the door, and before I walk in, I take a longer look at the bust. That has to be Kazula. He has Mama’s high cheekbones and eyes, her triangle nose and long ears. And his moustache, goatee, and bushy eyebrows could be mine.

Tex takes me to a door down the hall from the darkened foyer, the only light coming from several candles on a table. “Got someone who’d like to meet you,” Tex says, and he moves me into an office where a man wearing colorful, African-looking clothing sits behind a desk, a single candle the only light.

The man doesn’t rise, doesn’t speak, and doesn’t move, merely staring up at me with something like a smile on his blue-black lips. “There is a resemblance, Tex,” he says. He motions me to a chair. “Please, sit, sit.”