DEVIL GOT RELIGION, PART 2

TO THE VALLEY BELOW - DAY THREE
It was Sunday for some reason.
We drove slowly through the old part of Elk City, where the brick buildings neatly crowd the sides of the streets. It was so desolate and quiet and unreal. Mainly, it was unreal, because Alex and I had been here once this year already-- and how real can it possibly be that you'd be back in Elk City within a few months of each other-- or ever, for that matter?
Well, I'll let you in on a little secret about that particular town.
If you drive down Main Street, you'll come across an empty parking lot, and if you ever needed a sign from God-- if you've ever needed to see "the light" or have a revelation-- well, you might just get it.
Still there, gleaming in all its glory, was the huge-ass Jesus mural just as we had left it last winter. I remembered being in that parking lot, standing under grey skies with my mouth unable to close and the blood circulation being cut from my fingers because it was so cold. And now the sun was bright and the sunscreen lotion was dripping from our faces-- but the mural stood unaltered. Same Jesus, looking like he just stepped out of a TV show from the '70s; same little baby in his hands, laughing with a mouth that belongs in a museum of modern art.
This is the gateway to religion. This is "Glory Hallelujah" country. This is where the "My Boss is Jesus Christ" billboards start, the Bible key chains, and the radio preachers. It's where you seem to be traveling into past decades, where innocence and wheat fields go hand in hand with adultery and corn whiskey. This is where you start saying things like "Lordy!" instead of "fuck". Some of us like to go all out and start saying things such as "Lord have mercy!", "Jesus Lord!", "Lord Almighty!" and so on and so forth. And I won't name any names here.
Pass the Elk City mural and you'll soon be swearing like a preacher on the pulpit.
12:11PM
Pig Out Palace-- with restaurant titles like these, isn't it obvious that we're going down slow?
The skies in Oklahoma clearly belong in a children's school play. Tufts of perfectly placed cotton on a bright blue acrylic background. Well, I guess the sky has to be like that to match the red barns. Why beat around the bush? It's corny out here, but kitsch in nature is never anything but awe-strikingly beautiful. It's only once you start making musicals about a place that it makes you cringe. If you're going to replicate Oklahoma, you'd better do it with The Grapes of Wrath.
We'd been on 40 East for three days now, and I for one was wanting pretty badly to get out of the car and run through a sun-drenched field-- in slow motion, of course.
7:14PM - WELCOME TO ARKANSAS
Alex bought one of those white-trash lighters that have a half-naked guy on it, wearing ripped up jeans.
1:10AM - MISSISSIPPI STATE LINE
Sugar never was so sweet. It was now day four.
8:30AM
I do believe this was the earliest we ever got up in a motel room, but it had to be done. This was Mississippi, and there's nothing like waking up in the Delta for the first time in your life.
Alex collected the breakfast bagels and coffee, Beth was doing Yoga, and I was just about paralyzed with the anticipation of seeing the land where the blues began. I guess if you woke up one morning and knew you were going to fall in love that day, you'd feel just about the same.
Outside, the humidity hung heavy in the air, and the breeze smelled sweet and warm. We drove over a small country road with an overcast, yellow sky above us, just aching to let loose. The road was awkwardly patched up, and flooded on either side by deep green. Whole trees were smothered by vines, creating strange landscapes that looked like science fiction.
"One of these nights, you're sure gonna love me right / And I'll come and I'm gonna be your baby / All the rest of my life,..."
COAHOMA
It seemed to be election time. The roadsides were cluttered with little colorful signs, demanding you vote for a whole array of bizarre governmental positions.
"Re-elect Scotty Meredith - Coroner", "Elect Alfonzo Buford - Constable Northern District", "Elect Ed Seals - Coahoma County Superintendent of Education", "Re-elect Rybolt - Constable", "Please elect Carolyn Parham - Tax Assessor Collector".
"If you can't keep your baby, we can." - Billboard.
Past the election signs and a few abandoned houses, we came through a little town, where you knew the devil waits at the crossroads at midnight. It was in the air and the faces of the kids, sitting together by an old gas station. They'd seen him a hundred times or more, you could tell by the way their eyes follow you down the road. The oxygen was charged with electricity, and the sun was hanging straight down from overhead. We rolled slowly through the one street, and as tempted as we were to jump out, we were equally as tempted not to.
HIGHWAY 61 - "LORD, THE LONGEST HIGHWAY I KNOW."
It started to rain; the sky began to shift colors. Suddenly, there was an old shack by the side of the road with nothing for miles around. There was a dilapidated porch, bent out of shape, with the wood boards rotting around the edges. An old screen door was hiding a black interior-- it was hard to tell whether the door was open or not, or if someone even lived there. We were fighting hard with our curiosity. Somehow it seemed impossible that this place was inhabited. But there was some kind of respect and reverence that didn't let us touch the doorknob.
The corrugated metal roof slanted over the porch, supported by thin poles with a string attached from one pole to the other. The windows were of different shapes and frameworks. The walls were once turquoise, but now only faint traces of blue stains remained on the wood. There was a single torn up chair decomposing quietly in the cozy Mississippi weather.
I don't know if I've ever seen something so goddamn romantic before. You couldn't help but hear the crackling of old records and Charley Patton's sweet and grainy voice: "I ain't got nobody to feel and care for me / I'll get a woman, you get a man,.." making you want to roll your eyes into the back of your head.
The road was glazed from the rain. Beth was somewhere up ahead, crouching by the side of the road with her film camera, and Alex's reflection trailed behind her on the drenched street as she walked toward her.
"When the train come along, Lord, when the train come along, Lord / Gonna meet her at the station, when the train come along."
CLARKSDALE
We found a small restaurant with handmade signs and a front door that was hard to find. A girl behind the counter took our order with a careful smile. Her hairnet, strange proportions, and expression made her look content and pleased with life in a slow kind of way. The universe obviously belonged entirely to her. Alex asked to take her picture; her smile flared up as she nodded with a shrug, as though she really didn't give a shit. She was actually from Chicago. Beth discreetly held the microphone in her direction while she raveled her up in as much conversation as was possible. That's how it usually went. I'd watch from a distance, so as not to intimidate. Or in this case, I was staring at the TV in the corner where they were announcing that the new Harry Potter book was going to hit bookstores midnight on Friday. Images of little kids in huge Harry Potter glasses and wizard hats, waving wands crowded the screen. Rational, grown up, intellectuals were giving opinions on new chapters as though discussing atomic science. Literary critics and agents gave speeches in which they handled the plot with gold-plated pliers. All of these visuals seemed at a sad loss in Mississippi.
"You made me weep and you made me moan."
The way we made our way around the Delta was that we pulled the atlas out on the restaurant table and randomly searched for all the names I'd heard of. It was one of the greatest things I'd ever done. Recalling names from songs, from the Alan Lomax book, and from record covers and circling them on the map. Places like Como, which I only knew about because we'd been listening to a Fred MacDowell album in the car, titled Mississippi Delta Spirituals by the Hunter's Chapel Singers of Como, Mississippi.
5:35PM - COMO
Once we got to the old water tower, we followed a large ball of smoke, because we thought someone's yard was burning down. When we finally tracked down the smoke, it was only a family burning their trash. But this is how we ended up,.. deep in a sleepy residential area that we might have never found otherwise. Little houses lined the street, and kids went around the place in gangs of at least five. It wasn't hard to come across people here-- they were all leaning in their doorways or sitting on their porches, ready for us to come up to them, which we did.
The girls had huge eyes and little brothers on their hips. One of them had a smile that could splatter you against the wall. It was the most carefree, open expression I might ever have seen. You knew that nothing could throw her. She had confidence like a monster and no ego. The baby she held was mid-howl, and her other brother was grinning like a little fox. Her mother came out laughing, and the father walked by and flexed his muscles for us.
The teenage boys we encountered on the streets and on their bicycles had the same smiles that little kids had, but they knew how to tilt their heads slowly and call out, "Hey, ladies!" with more than a whole lifetime in their eyes.
When we got back in the car that night I blacked-out almost immediately. I happen to go unconscious when I'm in a car's backseat. The movements makes me feel exhausted and cozy and hypnotized,.. my head just drops back, and I'm gone. Anyway, we had just passed the Mississippi state line back to Arkansas, and I'd already decided to move to Mississippi-- there really wasn't anything left to do now but fall asleep.
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