South of Haunted Dreams by Eddy L. Harris

Author:Eddy L. Harris
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466885714
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

XI

Do not wish to be anything but what you are—but be that perfectly.

—Francis de Sales

I settled into the saddle of my bike and rode, taking my time, going slowly for a change. I did not guide the bike. I did not know the way. Nor did I need to. I went where the wind blew me.

From Monument Avenue it is a left turn onto Glenside Drive, and then a right onto Patterson, which is Virginia Highway 6. This is the road that runs from Richmond to Goochland.

At the crest of a hill not very high I stopped the bike and got off. I wanted to lie for a moment in the grass. I wanted to feel its coolness against my back before the sun dried the earth and heated the air. I wanted to watch the cloud formations before the sun cleared them away.

It was going to be a hot day. I took off my jacket and strapped it to the back of the bike. Then I lay back and looked up. Something very magical and reassuring was suddenly in the air. I no longer felt alone.

Overhead the clouds struggled to conspire. A little more moisture in the air, a little less warmth, and they would have swelled together into large thunderheads. But the sun was too strong. The clouds surged upward instead of out, gathered the warm light into their white fleecy folds and then dissipated. Light now flooded the hills. The temperature rose.

In the sudden warmth a hatch of gnats and midges and small moths burst forth in great swarms. They hovered in ever moving clouds, frantic to fulfill their destiny, to survive this short while before death, to mate and lay eggs. For a year they had lain dormant waiting for this moment. Now it was upon them. The air was charged with new life.

Above, a sparrow fluttered by. In its beak it held dried grass and something that looked like a chewing gum wrapper. The sparrow darted into the trees. It had a nest to build.

In the distance, pine trees huddled against the now cloudless horizon. Houses dotted the hills, and kudzu covered the earth. The broad leafy plant filled the gullies along the side of the road. It clung to the bases of trees. It climbed telephone poles and stretched along the power lines that hung over the highway. It grew thick and lush and the air smelled of its growing.

It was like a dream, a very hot day, nothing but the flies moving, no sound but the chirping of distant birds.

From this hill, a hill that Great-Grandfather might have stopped to rest upon before heading to Richmond and then south toward his future—from this hill, all of a sudden the South didn’t look so bad. I relaxed, crossed my legs at the ankle, folded my arms behind my head. I closed my eyes and drifted into a dreamlike state. I didn’t want to sleep. I just wanted to dream. Serenity was overtaking me. I wanted to slide into it gradually, wanted to feel it fully.

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