We skirted the plantation burial ground, and a dismal place it looked; the cattle trampling over it in every direction, except where Mr. K had had an enclosure put round the graves of two white men who had worked on the estate. They were strangers, and of course utterly indifferent to the people here; but by virtue of their white skins, their resting place was protected from the hoofs of the cattle, while the parents and children, wives, husbands, brothers and sisters of the poor slaves, sleeping beside them, might see the graves of those they loved trampled upon and browsed over, desecrated and defiled, from morning till night. There is something intolerably cruel in this disdainful denial of a common humanity pursuing these wretches even when they are hid beneath the earth.
Today, the chattel system is gone, Butler’s plantation with it, but the rice-field levees and cemetery, I’ve heard, remain as witness.
12
Turn Left at the Fan Belt
ON OUR LAST MORNING aboard the Trotter, a small pod of bottle-nose dolphins broke the water ahead of her bow to lead us toward the wide and choppy St. Marys River bringing down the tannic waters of the great Okefenokee Swamp thirty-three miles west. Not far south lay Fernandina Beach, Florida; for us not the sandy strand of vacation cabins and condos but the old commercial and industrial section that had partly recast itself to accommodate tourism. As if to welcome the boat, a dozen pelicans perched atop pilings, their prodigious beaks resting on their breasts, their eyes alert to our approach. If you cross a heron with a goose, you get a pelican, a bird ungainly in all it does (notably backward crash dives for fish) until it takes up its low and lovely flights just above the waves, its big wings creating a cushion of air substantial enough to support its bulk.
The boat tied up at the city dock just down the Amelia River from one of the pulp mills. Under a dismal sky, we went topside, saluted farewell to our doughty little tub, disembarked, stashed our bags, and began walking down Centre Street with its refurbished shop-fronts and a capably restored courthouse. We made our way toward Route A1A — the old snowbird highway — which begins or ends there. The breeze was out of a quarter that brought with it from a kraft-paper factory an effluvium not really nostril-plugging but a bouquet making it seem, under the dark sky, we were walking inside a damp grocery sack.
A woman had told Q that locals liked breakfast at an eatery in an old filling-station still pumping gas but with its grease pit turned into a café. We followed the alphabetized, tree street names south until we saw a station with parked cars and a sign for gasoline but nothing for food, so I asked a couple of pert gaffers sitting outside the station — as is the Southern custom — if we’d found T-Ray’s Burger Station. “You’re there,” one said, the other adding, “Turn left at the fan belt.”
In what was formerly a double-bay garage, under a picture of an inexpertly painted hamburger captioned with time-bleached letters — STOP IN AND KETCHUP — we took a rickety table with chairs out of somebody’s 1946 kitchen, and ordered up eggs, french toast, and grits. Next to us sat a young couple, hands linked, praying long over tomato omelets and toast but eating faster than canines, then bolting for the door so she could fire up a cigarette, inhale rapidly, puff her cheeks almost maniacally before exhaling smokelessly. She’d gotten all of it, and, after a few drags, she appeared to settle down as if calmed by the hand of her Lord. If you’ve witnessed modern anesthetics delivered, then you’ve seen her performance. It seemed to me their earlier, celestially directed gratitude “for what we are about to receive” might have been more honestly spoken over the tobacco than over the tomato omelet.
T-Ray’s father stopped by the table to ask how our food was — it was good and honest and reasonable — and I asked about his forty years of business along A1A. He spoke of old north-coast Florida, the shrimp boats, the menhaden fleet. “We used to have a trolley,” he said, pointing outside to the intersection of A1A and Beech Street. “It ran right past there and on to the beach. That’s why the street’s named that.” (Someday I’m going to encourage Q to write a history of America as it gets reported in cafés and taverns and churches, versions that shape local understandings. A woman the other day had told me Queen Isabella had Christopher Columbus executed for torturing Indians: she got the torture right, but as for his demise, he died wealthy in his own bed.)
South of Fernandina Beach, the Waterway is another kind of voyage, I hear, a route of so many excavated stretches it’s popularly called “The Ditch,” a place that reveals the nature of contemporary Florida and its daily throng of arrivals; once there, one in twenty new residents will operate a watercraft of some sort. Use of the ICW in the state is heavy enough to warrant a special agency to oversee it with specific regulations. Instead of rivers and sounds and creeks and marshes, there are concrete seawalls backed by even bigger walls of tall buildings blocking the Atlantic. It’s for that place — the last miles called the Gold Coast — most Intracoastal boaters are bound.
Still, I confess, had I come upon a vessel of any sort going farther south, I’d have signed up for much the same reason I’ll go once into a Bible Factory Outlet store, which happens to be the same reason the bear went over the mountain.
I won’t argue that the local promoters who’ve dubbed Route A1A the “Paradise Highway” are no longer correct, most areas now more verified than otherwise, but I will say, to each his own heaven — or fresh hell. Sometimes it’s a choice between a congestion of vehicles or flying teeth, city black rats or marsh rice-rats, spartina or sports bars, gunkholes or eighteen-hole golf courses. Youse pays your money and takes your choice.
My choice, my Happy Isles, was three-thousand leagues of ragged and sometimes submerged coastal plain, a country sometimes called Low, a tidal world of blackwater rivers, muddied creeks, rank flats; a soggy, stormbound border cursed in at least one place to keep whites from ever making a dollar off the land, a widely unverified area of brackish water where terra firma is more the exception than a given, a spongy maze of runnels and gutters that defy roads and concrete foundations; a slender realm of fluvial and marine emergence where the controlling, inceptive sea usually lies beyond, unseen although eternally there as the intricate isles are not. To travel such a forever temporary continental-edge is to enter a few leagues of a kingdom come, a land of quoz rich in native booty.
Valedictories
An Infinity of Sundry Forms
In a day to come, world weary, people will no longer regard Creation as entitled to admiration and reverence. The unexcelled All, which is goodness and the greatest of what has been, what is, and what shall be, will slip into danger of perishing, for then people will consider Creation a burden, and they will no longer revere the Whole of the Mystery — this incomparable work, this glorious construction made from an infinity of sundry forms, each part an instrument of the Cosmos which without bias pours forth favor on each of its works from whence is assembled entireties in harmonious diversity. Within every one of them exists everything worthy of veneration, praise, and love. And in that grimness to come, then darkness will be preferred to light, and people will think it better to vanquish than to seek harmony, and they will turn their eyes away from Creation, and the generous-of-heart will be thought fools, the intolerant rational, the destructive brave, and the self-serving clever. And all that attaches to the indefinable soul of Creation will be scorned and reckoned nonsense.
—The Asclepius of Hermes Trismegistus
Third Century A.D.
(Free translation by WLH-M)
FROM THE NEW QUOZINARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
(WITH ILLUSTRATIVE QUOZTATIONS)
Quoz (kwoz), n. Anything, anywhere, living or otherwise, connecting a human to existence and bringing an individual into the cosmos and integrating one with the immemorial, thereby making each life belong to creation, and so preventing the divorce of the one from the all which brought it into being.
• The Ancient Abyssinian Book of Quests: “Seek thee therefore the quoz of thy life that thou mayest find abundance surpas
sing understanding.”
• The Gospel According to the Cosmic Travailleur: “Unto you is given potential according to the measure of the gift of curiosity through which you shall find strength. Wherefore the Cosmic Travailleur saith, Be ye alert that quoz, like stardust from which it ariseth, come unto you and grace your days.”
• A Natural History of Invisibilities: “Upon the pintle of a quoz do our lives pivot.”
• Navigating the Gulfs of Heaven: “A quoz is a snubbing post to hold fast the smallest coracle in the severest gale.”
• Field Guide to the Third Planet: “Pull the cotter pin of a quoz, and watch plenitude slip away like a lost propeller in deep waters.”
• The Nodgort Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy: “In a human spiritual anatomy, as in existence itself, quoz are ligatures conjoining the heart to the brain.”
THE NEW QUOZICON ONE-QUARTER-THOUSAND QUOZO-NEOLOGISMS
FIRST EDITION
quozabaly
quozability
quozable
quozage
quozagonize
quozaic
quozal
quozality
quozamic
quozanalia
quozancholia
quozancy
quozarama
quozarchy
quozardic
quozarkable
quozastic
quozataneous
quozathesia
quozation
quozbibber
quozbiquitous
quozbitionist
quozbolic
quozbolism
quozbotic
quozbrasive
quozcentric
quozception
quozciple
quozculiar
quozcumbent
quozcurism
quozdantic
quozdatic
quozdelity
quozdemity
quozdom
quozdratic
quozdulgence
quozdurate
quozebration
quozedly
quozegory
quozelous
quozemia
quozemic
quozemplate
quozendary
quozendence
quozendental
quozenious
quozennium
quozentical
quozentient
quozenuity
quozeration
quozerdotal
quozery
quozescent
quozeteer
quozeum
quozevation
quozevision
quozevotion
quozfibber
quozfliction
quozformation
quozfuddle
quozfully
quozgestic
quozhound
quoziastic
quozibilate
quozibly
quozicable
quozicant
quozication
quozicide
quozicize
quozicord
quozicular
quozicum
quoziety
quozificial
quoziform
quozify
quozigence
quozigentsia
quozigraph
quoziland
quozilation
quozilential
quozilient
quozilious
quozilize
quozillance
quozillion
quoziloquence
quozilusion
quozily
quozimate
quozimatic
quoziment
quozimony
quozimythical
quozinarian
quozinary
quozinate
quozinct
quozineer
quozing
quozinity
quozinize
quoziosity
quoziotic
quozipatetic
quozipation
quoziptal
quozisect
quozism
quozistence
quozistible
quozitality
quozitant
quozitary
quozite
quozitecture
quozitical
quozition
quozitis
quozitism
quozitive
quozitration
quozitudinous
quoziture
quozity
quozlery
quozless
quozlet
quozlibrium
quozlicity
quozlingual
quozliterate
quozlitic
quozlivion
quozmania
quozmanship
quozmantic
quozmatic
quozmic
quozmire
quozmonious
quozmute
quoznalysis
quoznify
quozniscient
quoznoiter
quoznonymous
quozocracy
quozodical
quozoficient
quozographic
quozoholic
quozoid
quozolary
quozolate
quozologer
quozologic
quozologist
quozology
quozolonious
quozolution
quozomancy
quozomation
quozomental
quozometer
quozomics
quozompense
quozonaire
quozonasm
quozonastic
quozonomy
quozontal
quozopedia
quozophile
quozophobe
quozopolis
quozopoly
quozordinate
quozorial
quozorious
quozorium
quozory
quozosive
quozosopher
quozosophy
quozosphere
quozotic
quozotive
quozotypical
quozparate
quozpeccable
quozpendent
quozphonic
quozpiration
quozplex
quozplicable
quozpondent
quozpostolic
quozquence
quozquibbler
quozquisition
quozrogate
quozscape
quozsensate
quozship
quozsome
quozsplendent
quoztalgia
quoztarian
quoztation
quozterious
quozterity
quozterminate
quozterpolate
quozticulous
quoztificate
quoztility
quoztiquity
quoztiste
quoztival
quoztraction
quoztributor
quoztronic
quoztropic
quoztrusive
quozuberance
quozumbent
quozvangelist
quozvermental
quozversary
quozversation
quozversible
quozvert
quozvocate
quozways
quozymoron
quozynthesis
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In addition to those people mentioned in the text, I want to thank Geoff Shandler, Karen Landry, Junie Dahn, Karen Andrews, Michael Pietsch, Terry Adams, Keith Hayes, Denise LaCongo, and Mary Tondorf-Dick at Little, Brown and Company. Also designer Laura Lindgren and indexer Ruth Cross. Across America, I’m indebted to:
Jess Abney
Margaret Abney
William Abney
Judy Agrelius
Ed Ailor
Susan Ailor
Kelly Archer
Stephen Archer
Steven Archer
Bill Atkins
Pam Bagnall
Brad Belk
Sarah Bishop
Carolyn and Darwin Britt
Julie K. Brown
Larry Brown
Matthew J. Brown
Philip A. Brown
Sandra Brown
T. Rob Brown
Roger Brunelle
Marjorie Bull
Bill Caldwell
Norman Caron
Paul Cary
Schery Case
Andy Collins
June DeWeese
Joel Dicentes
Stephen Easton
Stephen Edington
Norma Elliott
Maggie Engen
Shellie Bell Finfrock
Marlene Fry
Tim Gallagher
Andy Gardner
Tim Gay
Steve Green
Ron Hall
Deborah Harmon
Sheridan Harvey
Hilary Holladay
William Iseminger
Trebbe Johnson
T. R. Kidder
Pat Lesser
Barbara Luczkowski
Maurice Manring
Mike Mansur
Bruce McMillan
Scott Meeker
John Meffert
Galen Moyer
Patrick Muckleroy
Stanley Nelson
Bob Poepsel
Philip Rivet
Greg Robinson
Jim Ross
David Schenker
Ernie Seckinger
Bill Shansey
Joel Silver
Leslie Simpson
Jennifer Smith
Dora St. Martin
Mike Stair
Saundra Taylor
William A. Thomas
James Wallace
Doris Wardlow
Kip Welborn
Steve Weldon
Karen Witt
George Wylder