Return To Redemption
by Eric Grizzle

I have returned to finally put an end to this. It is eerie to come back to the place where it all started. As the scenery changed, I began to remember. The delicate hills flattened out and slowly became marshland. It's all coming back, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I know that they want me. They have always wanted me but now I am the last one remaining. I can feel the longing like a siren's call. It will be final.

The drive back to Louisiana was like being the lead car in a funeral procession and knowing that you are in the back, lying in the oaken casket. Static played on the radio, occasionally catching snippets of talk shows and sports radio. I think that I cried once. It was more a feeling of sorrow than it was a realization that my death was inevitable.

I drove most of the way at night, watching the yellow lines spread out before me and vanishing into the darkness like a game I used to play when I was younger. Night Driver, I think it was. In the game, you had to be careful to stay in between the lines or you would crash. I chuckled at the thought of crashing. That would be too swift and neat. No, the voices cry. "You belong at home with ussss....."

My life fell apart long ago but I won't go into too many details. I believe that some people have bad luck occasionally and then some people are just born into it, to live their whole life as a cruel joke to some god's twisted amusement. In the famous Greek tragedy, Oedipus the King would fall under this category. Nothing he did could thwart the curse the gods had laid down before his birth. Also, I believe that some people deserve to have bad luck because of certain circumstances. Because of my father, I am surely one of these.

We grew up in the small southern Louisiana town of Ludlow. There were five of us, my two parents and two older brothers and myself. Ancestors on my father's side had helped to found Ludlow in its earlier days. It was a small,
sloppy bayou town perched on the edge of the swamp. Little had changed since the town's beginnings. Father loved the town but I always had been afraid of it. Ludlow appeared to be decaying and the swamp always carried the mildewed stench of death, like a constant reminder to what lay outside the city's boundaries.

Slowly, as I drove toward the nearly forgotten town of my childhood, I continued to uncover more details of my life that had been suppressed. The death of Mr. Jefferson. The lightning-charred tree. The skinned animals. The sound of screams. A gulf storm blew in from the south and tattooed the night in purple luminescence as the memories persisted. Rain began to fall, delicately at first, then lashing the windshield with the fury of nature as the Cajun state line neared.

Jeremiah Wilson was a cruel man. He raised us in a strict authoritarian way. He preached that decent white folks needed to have good, god-fearing Christian values and morals. Father wasn't one to spare the rod and spoil the
child either. One night, I heard some yelling and screaming coming from the barn out back near the swamp. It was late but the sound was awful. I rushed out to see if something had happened to my father or brothers. A squeamish feeling in my stomach began as I neared. I remember my father's angry voice and another voice pleading and crying. Standing on my toes, I peered into a dirt-caked window to see my oldest brother, Jeffery, with his hand tied to a chopping block. Father towered over him, threatening, holding a bloodied hatchet.

"You disgrace our family, boy!" he growled, fury in his eyes.

"I love her, father."

"You will never see her again! Do you understand me? My son is not going to be with no nigger! A nigger slut. It is ungodly. An abomination. Let this be a lesson, boy." Then, father brought the hatchet down on Jeffrey's outstretched hand, biting deeply into the flesh, bone and wood. I gasped and he screamed. Then, father looked right at me in the window and I ran as fast as I could back toward the house. Climbing back into bed with muddy feet, I covered my head and sobbed, fearful that father would punish me in the same way.

The next morning, I didn't see Jeffrey. Father said that Jeff was chopping wood last night when he slipped and cut three fingers off. He said that he was sure it was an accident and would never happen again. He winked at me and grinned. Two weekends later, Mr. Jefferson's daughter, Shanee Jefferson was found floating in the swamp near the old, charred tree. People said that she was pregnant.

I turned off onto the small, muddy road that led down to Ludlow. The Jeep Cherokee seemed to drive itself, passing skeletal trees and low lying land engulfed with fetid water in the early morning hours. Broken down and dirty homesteads with junk cars and rusted swing sets lined both sides of the road the closer I came. Faces stared from behind dirty windows of these houses. People came onto their porches to watch my return. Like a collective
consciousness, the watched as one. No joy, hatred, curiosity... just blank stares.

The house was barely recognizable anymore. It leaned to the back like a Picasso, daring to fall directly into the swamp, which had consumed most of the backyard now. The barn had burned down some time ago after we moved away. The Cherokee shuddered to a stop in the weed-choked driveway and I stepped out. A crowd had gathered across the street, townspeople with black faces and blank white eyes, watching their sacrificial offering. It was nearly time to bury the hatchet.

It is nighttime and I can hear the bullfrogs and crickets in the swamp outside. It's soothing in a way, like a lullaby that wants to put me asleep. They are outside now. I can feel their presence. I don't need to look.

After Shanee Jefferson was found, Mr. Jefferson began to point fingers. He blamed Jeffrey for Shanee's death. Actually, he blamed the whole Wilson family as having part in the murder of his daughter. The county examiner determined the cause of death to be drowning but couldn't find any evidence of foul play. The case was closed but Mr. Jefferson continued to blame us.

One night, my father woke me late and told me to get dressed. We were going hunting. Underneath the buzz of mosquitoes, we jumped into my father's old Chevy and we drove the three blocks down from the Jefferson homestead. I
didn't know what he planned to do, but I didn't like it.

"Stay here, boy. We are going to teach ol' man Jefferson a lesson as well as the rest of the niggers in this town. This is my town. My ancestors founded this place, and we'll not go without a war."

A few minutes later, I saw Mr. Jefferson being brought towards the truck. He was tied up and gagged. Father placed the old man in the back of the pickup truck and then drove to the gnarled, lightning-charred tree on the southwest
side of town. He backed the truck up and got out.

"Mr. Jefferson," he began. "This is for your kind and your slut of a daughter. We are good people in this town. We are good people." He stood Mr. Jefferson up and placed a noose around the old man's neck. He tossed the remaining rope
across a large, scarred branch and tied the other end to the bumper of the Chevy. Pure, unaltered hatred was in the old man's eyes.

"John," my father yelled. "Scoot over and when I say go, you drive forward slowly. Don't disappoint me, son." I always did what I was told. After all, I had seen what happened to Jeffrey.

"May this be the beginning of the end, Mr. Jefferson. Go, boy!"

The truck nosed forward as I pressed on the gas. Tears stung my eyes. I was afraid. I saw Mr. Jefferson lose his purchase on the bed of the truck, then he rose into the air, hanging, thrashing about. All around us, the swamp was
alive, buzzing, hissing, whispering. The death scent of the swamp filled my nostrils. I hated this place.

It took several minutes for the life to be choked out of the old man. Afterwards, father dragged the body behind the pickup with the rope until we reached the town hall. There, he was left as an example- a town spectacle. My father warned me to never mention the incident, and I never have until now. Even my wife and daughter, who drowned while pinned upside down on the bottom of a river in a freak car accident, never knew this part of my childhood. In my dreams they would come to me, dripping wet, blue lips and lidless black eyes crying, "why did you do this to us? why john/daddy? why?"

The morning after Mr. Jefferson's death, there were all kinds of skinned animals- skunks, possums, raccoons, birds, dogs- left all over our property. There were symbols and letters painted in blood on the house, barn and even the truck. For the first time in my life, I saw fear in my father's eyes. Last night had become the beginning of the end- the end of the Wilson family and descendants. Only I remain.

I just heard the swamp grow quiet. The bayou never sleeps. I believe that even the scurry of rodents underneath the house have quieted. Have you ever tasted fear? Everything has gone a metallic shade and taste. Is that footsteps I hear outside? I thought that I was ready to meet death gracefully. Outside, I am certain now, that I hear the hurried whispers of the gatherers. There is almost a rhythmic chant underneath the whispers.

"....he hasssss returned... he hassss returned.... he hassss returned..."

Sorrow and shame overwhelms me again. I can now hear the footsteps, the squishy sounds approaching closer. The window is fogging over by unseen breath. I shall finally end this. Death will not be graceful nor will it be swift.

©Eric Grizzle