Landscapes
NEAR OLD SANTA FE
The blast was so big it broke windows in Olive Branch, and it was felt in Cairo and Klondike. That’s what the newspapers said. Some people swear it blew a mule over the hill and clear out of the hollow.
— There were more than a few explosions
up Black Powder Hollow, at the long-gone dynamite plant
in old Fayville, or Santa Fe. Some of them were big,
some of them fatal.
ON THE BEAN RIDGE
It’s the Fourth of July along Bean Ridge Road. Two shirtless men — one black, one white — work on a satellite dish on the side of a mobile home. An indigo bunting darts from the roadway and flits away into the trees. Light filters through the dappled greens as the sun begins to set and turns the sky pink behind a distant bank of cumulus clouds. It’s a national holiday, but Mother Nature is flying her own colors.
BOTTOM LAND
The willows in the bottoms look like they’ve lifted their skirts — immodestly exposing a brown, leafless band, the high-water mark from the last flood. Snowy egrets in great numbers wade in the shallows, searching for trapped fishes and other aquatic delights. And, there, a redwing blackbird gives chase to a red tail hawk.
ALONG THE GRAPEVINE TRAIL
In the morning, mist will lift over ponds and rise from the folds in the forest, and the hills near Tamms will resemble the Great Smoky Mountains. The eastern sky grows pink, and soon the rolls of hay will cast long shadows across the field. The moon, meanwhile, edges toward to other horizon, heeding a different clock than the sun.
AT SUNRISE
At the confluence, the Ohio comes in from the north, the Mississippi from the west. The sun seems to rise at a surprising angle. And you can watch the moon, setting at dawn, sink into the Mississippi River, somewhere upstream.
CAIRO STREETS
Cairo is trying to preserve its rich and sometimes turbulent history even as it wrestles with an uncertain future. At the confluence of yesterday and tomorrow is a today that is a murky blend of crime and poverty, hope and pride.
AFTER DARK IN CAIRO
At night, in Cairo and elsewhere, any church or unoccupied building not guarded by lights or watched by dogs is a target of the unscrupulous strippers of copper and scrap metal. They’ve torn into air-conditioning units and ripped away copper gutters, scavenging the remains of a city and hauling it all off to salvage yards to sell for $2.50 a pound.
WHEN THEY PLAYED BALL
Louise Ogg remembers when the St. Louis Cardinals held spring training in Cairo. It was during World War II, and she was in high school. She was supposed to be, anyway. “The only time I played hooky in my life, I went down to Cotter Field to watch them practice,” she says. “I sat down there on a bench kind of close to the field. I was on one end of the bench, and I was kind of getting oriented and all, and I looked over at the other end of the bench, and there sat Prof Schultz.” One of her teachers. Did she get into trouble? “No!” she says. “I caught him, too! He never said a word.”
CHRIS’S CAFÉ
Inside the men’s room, there’s a different set of mixed messages. Hanging on one wall is a crafty sign with a cute saying about old fishermen and worms that don’t wiggle. A Big Mouth Billy Bass is on another wall. And across from the towel dispenser — which is pasted over with a Bible quote, John 14:6 — is one of the oldest condom machines on the planet promising “out of this world” sensation for just two quarters.
Collected written works | Gary Marx
