Dewey always said Hell was here on earth. The life we live today. As a child I mocked him. Rolled my eyes and called him a footwasher. But as I grew older I began to understand why some people need to believe life can’t get any worse. Even if it means somewhere someday it gets better.
“It’s the end days boys! The end days! This here aint nothin’ but a plague cast ‘pon the earth to let us know time’s a comin’.”
Their screams had filled the air for weeks, since they first began to crawl from the earth by the thousands. The hellish noise would last throughout the summer.
“Like my mamaw always said. If she had to do it over again she wouldn’t have no kids. No sir. Us younguns aint got no business bein’ here. Not with the end of time comin’.”
Dewey said it. We believed it. Every pastor in the mountains had been going on about it for years. Brother Blue didn’t do a song and dance, but he didn’t deny it either. “When it’s time,” he said “we wont be here.”
But we were.
It was the year of the cicada. To the evangelicals who populated the mountains, the locusts had come.
Ernest Payne, found in the Tug River near Iaeger, had been missing since Wednesday last and is supposed to have been murdered.
Toler Tribune, July 21, 1946
Continued…
Last night after I realized it WAS Stephen sitting in my hall I locked myself in my bedroom and didn’t come out. He beat on the door and I kept thinking How did he find me and thought about crawling out the window. I didn’t and when Bella came home three hours later she explained in a very matronly tone that Stephen and she are dating. “I hope it isn’t weird for you. I was going to tell you…”
“What??!?”
It’s my mother’s fault. My mother leads this really bizarre life where twilight zone things happen to her and anyone who gets near her. Here’s what happened in June.
Stephen was in America and phoned my house to say maybe we could meet up and have a drink only I wasn’t home - my mother was. I don’t know why she told him this, or why he called in the first place, but anyway she told him I was moving to England and would be living in Manchester and he says “I’m back in The North (of England) too” and she asked him if he’d stop in and check on me when I got here because she was worried and all. Then she gave him the address of the house I had just agreed to lease and she never told me ANY of this.
So last month Stephen drops by to see if I’d got here yet and to borrow money. He met Bella who told him I wouldn’t be here for another three weeks and they sort of hit it off and now he’s gonna be sleeping down the hall from me on Wednesdays. He looks like a weasel.
I told Earl all this, by the way, and she doesn’t believe me. I told Peter and he’s furious. And that’s the only good thing about the whole situation. I think Peter is jealous - despite his hot date with The Strudel (the nickname I’ve given his ridiculously accented man-height Dutch girlfriend) tonight he’s managed to phone me up four times to bite and moan. I kinda like it.
24 August 1998
Continued…
Holy. Freakin. ****. OK. Right. Here’s how I got here. Two months ago I answered an anonymous “Houseshare by University” ad I’d taken from an online accommodations bulletin. I’d never met the poster - Bella - before in my life. Never heard of her. Never knew a thing about her. It was all totally random. Computer generated - random. I moved here a week ago. I know two people in this town. This city. Eliza, who’s from Germany and Peter who doesn’t actually live here but pops in on weekends.
I came out of my bedroom this afternoon and some moppy-headed guy was sitting in the hall. I had to stop for a second because he looked so much like Stephen, this skinny English boy I dated back in Bluefield last year. The one who thought he was a Beatle and had the hair to prove it. Uck. So I went downstairs, messed around in the kitchen some, fought back the automatic gag reflex that pops up whenever I think of his name and then thanked the Good Lord I’d never have to see him again. Ever. He was in Australia.
I just came back to my room. He’s not in Australia. He’s in my hall.
Bella is dating my ex.
23 August 1998
Continued…
I saw Peter yesterday and it was all very boring. I don’t know what I expected. He apologized for everything and said he’s glad we’ve been able to move on from that and remain friends. He values me that way. Whatever. What he should have said was this:
I’ll mess around with you when I’m getting ready to leave the country - but not when I’m gonna be living just an hour away and you can stalk me and things.
I mean, it’s not like I’m looking for a relationship or anything. Seriously. Who needs that. I just want him to spend the nights with me because that’s when I get homesick.
He told me about this Dutch model he’s late in love with - behind the back of his long suffering girlfriend. His long suffering girlfriend is this really rich chic who lives in London. I’ve never met her but I did meet two girls he cheated on her with. One from Canada who liked to take photos of herself looking through trees ala Jack Nicholson in The Shining; and one from Brazil who always went on about how many men wanted her and how Peter was lucky to have her. He didn’t keep her long.
23 August 1998
Continued…
I tend to lose touch with friends when they move away. I don’t correspond well and I’m always caught up in too much drama to worry about anyone else. I know. It’s selfish. I’m working on it.
Peter and I have been friends for a while. A short while…just over a year. But it’s remarkable because he spent the year being a little globe trotter while I spent it in boondocks USA. Not anymore. He’s back in England…for now…and so am I.
I haven’t seen him in nine months but somehow we’ve managed to stay friends. He thinks I’m funny. And when it was four a.m. for him and he’d had too much scotch it was usually still a decent hour for me back in America. So he called and I liked it because, you know, international dialage is cool.
Anyway, we had a thing two months in. A year and nine weeks ago to be precise. I don’t usually count like that, like a girl. But he’s one of the reasons I chose Manchester over London. And he’s on his way over.
My ears are starting to ring. I thought I was over that.
22 August 1998
(Footnote: Peter = this guy. )
Continued…
I went to the Job Center=Unemployment Office this morning because Eliza told me I should. They told me I’m not allowed to work and I said “What about Tony Blair and New Labour!” They said “What about him?” and that I should leave.
I’ve done my homework. I know I’m legally entitled to part time work during course time - full time work outside course time. Doesn’t matter that I’m not part of the European Union. It’s some new thing. Starting last month or something American students can work here. I got the memo. Apparently the Job Center didn’t.
I’m going to have to go to the library and print out THE LAW and bring it back to them with my passport. Bella said “Bureaucracy! It’s not just the French”.
I have no idea what she meant.
21 August 1998
Continued…