James Sallis - Cypress Grove

Skip James, Cypress Grove Blues

I HEARD THE JEEP a half mile off. It came up around the lake, and when it hit the bend, birds took flight. They boiled up out of the trees, straight up, then, as though heavy wind had caught them, veered abruptly, all at once, sharp right. Most of those trees had been standing forty or fifty years. Most of the birds had been around less than a year and wouldnt be around much longer. I was somewhere in between.

I watched the Jeep as it emerged from trees and the driver dropped into third for the glide down that long incline to the cabin. Afternoon light on the lake turned it to tinfoil. Not much sound. High-in-the-throat hum of the well-maintained engine. From time to time the rustle of dry leaves as wind struck them and they tried to ring like bells there on the trees.

He pulled up a few yards distant, under the pecan tree. Shells on its yield so hard you had to stomp them to get to half a spoonful of meat. I swore that squirrels left them lined up under tires for cracking and sat alongside waiting. He got out of the Jeep and stood beside it. Wearing gray work clothes from Sears, old-fashioned wide-top Wellingtons and what looked to be an expensive hat, though one that would have been more at home further south and west. He stood leaning back against the drivers door with arms crossed, looking around. Folks around here dont move fast. They grow up respecting other folks homes, their land and privacy, whatever lines have been drawn, some of them invisible. Respecting the history of the place, too. They sidle up, as they say; ease into things. Maybe thats why I was here.

Good afternoon, he said, final syllable turned up slightly in such a way that his utterance might be taken as observation, greeting, query.

They all are.

He nodded. There is that. Even the worst of them, here in Gods country.... Not interrupting anything, I hope.

I shook my head.

Good. Thats good. He pushed himself off the door, turned to reach inside, came out with a paper sack. Looks to be room for the both of us up there on that porch.

I waved him aboard. Settling into the other chair, like my own a straightback kitchen chair gone rickety and braced with crisscrosses of sisal twine, he passed across the sack.

Brought this.

I skinned paper back to a bottle of Wild Turkey.

Talk to Nathan, by some chance?

My visitor nodded. He said, as the two of us hadnt met before, it might be a good idea to bring along a little something. Grease the wheels.

Nathand lived in a cabin up here for sixty years or more. Step on his land, whoever you were, youd get greeted with a volley of buckshot; thats what everyone said. But not long after I moved in, Nathan started turning up with a bottle every few weeks and wed sit out here on the porch or, coolish days, inside by the fire, passing the bottle wordlessly back and forth till it was gone.

I went in to get glasses. Poured us both tall soldiers and handed his across. He held it up to the light, sipped, sighed.

Been meaning to get up this way and say hello, he said. Things keep shouldering in, though. I figured it could wait. Not like either of us was going anywhere.

That was it for some time. We sat watching squirrels climb trees and leap between them. Id nailed an old rusted pan onto the pecan tree and kept it filled with pecans for them. From time to time one or the other of us reached out to pour a freshener. Nothing much else moved. Up here youre never far away from knowing that times an illusion, a lie.