Page 18 - WTP Vol. IX #6

Anatomy (continued from preceding page)
way—a hot September had softened the asphalt— leading to cracks, potholes, and the need for annual repairs. Every summer thereafter Dad had to coat the blacktop with sealer, which only made it slicker in the rain and impossible in winter, when he left the Chevy to the elements up on the cul-de-sac.
Dad would wait for dry weather to do the chore, spill- ing the oily substance in puddles and brushing it with a stiff push broom before it could run in long rivulets down to the carport. One summer I announced that I wanted to hep. I don’t remember, because I was only two or three, but apparently I screamed until Dad relented. Minutes later I was covered in blacktop sealer—from my red hair (Old Man Kelsey called it har) to my little white Keds—while Mom, supervising from the shade of the carport, swore to Dad that he was spoiling their son.
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When Mom said to Dad it’s a jungle out there, she meant it literally, as I did that NO EXIT sign. This included the acre of woods beneath our acre of grass, which pitched sharply to the very edge of the bluff above Morning Glory Gulch. Raspberry brambles ex- tended their hairy arms from the perimeter of these woods right into our back yard, re-rooting once they became heavy enough to bend to the ground. Dad
was forever hacking them back with a sickle, which made me cry. I loved those raspberries on my Corn- flakes. But nothing could kill them, or other creepers that emerged from the woods, threatening to swallow our house like the jungle swallowed the boat in The African Queen, Mom’s favorite film.
The whole of the Piedmont is subtropical, which was jungle enough for Mom. Our corner of it was dark and dense—rife with sumac, swamp maples, and in- destructible locusts. There were strange, water-filled reeds as well, like giant green peashooters. I called them noodles, and when I grew brave enough to venture beyond the raspberry bushes I used to whack them with a stick, soaking myself with noodle juice
in the process. The noodles grew just a step or two beyond the raspberry thickets, and whacking them came with a cost—I’d return through the brambles scratched and bleeding.
Vines made our “jungle” virtually impassable. A leafy something called kudzu slipped in everywhere, wrapping around whatever got in its way. Howard the Mailman said they called it kudzu ’cuz there was nothin’ you could do about it. Introduced from Japan in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition (which Mom’ great-grandmother had attended), it was intended as an ornamental crop to shade porch-
es and carports. The Civilian Conservation Corps and southern farmers even planted it to reduce soil ero- sion. But the stuff ran amok, blanketing the ground and smothering the native vegetation like the inva- sive scourge that it was.
Then there was the sort of vines Tarzan swung on. Hanging from sturdy branches, they coiled around tree trunks until they finally adhered to the bark. Mom feared that I’d fall prey to the wildlife in the dense shadows where they draped, where black- snakes and copperheads were as common as bob- cats. There were spooky owls as well, and swift hawks, sentinel crows, and exotic species like the pileated woodpecker—a large black-and-white, Woody Woodpecker sort of creature, with a sharp red crest on its pointed head. Pileated woodpeckers perched high in the sumac bushes to feast on their triangular clusters of red berries. The first time I saw one I mistook it for a parrot, like the ones in the bird book Mom gave me one Christmas.
But I recognized the turkey buzzards right away. They circled high overhead, riding the rising ther- mals, searching for carcasses along the roadways and in the cleared fields where Old Man Kelsey shot pig. The bats were more elusive. Dad pointed them out
to me as they flopped along the forest line at dusk, a time of day Mom hated. She was forever pointing at the shiny eyes staring out from the wall of vegetation at the bottom of our yard. A power station stood on the black horizon. When lit by the moon, it seemed a thing from outer space.
“Your mother would nurse you out here on the car- port,” Dad said. “But she was afraid the bats would swoop down and drain your blood. I said it would hep you sleep.”
The first time I was brave enough to hack a path through the woods with Dad’s sickle—from the bot- tom of our yard all the way to the top of the bluff—I learned why they call this place Morning Glory Gulch. Ultimately, it’s because of an earthquake. Virginia is hardly the San Andreas Fault, but the area has a history of seismic activity dating back to before the United States even existed. In 1774 a strong earthquake shook Richmond, Fredericksburg, and points south, all the way into North Carolina. The
U.S. Geological Survey reported that some buildings around the Commonwealth were rocked off their foundations, and the quake “terrified the inhabitants greatly.” Several strong quakes occurred throughout the nineteenth century. In 1897, the Commonwealth of Virginia experienced an event that started to the west of here, in Giles County, with tremors felt from
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