Kentucky Juju; A Flashback

Day Eight of Thirty Days of Writing

Kat Fossell
Jul 22, 2017 · 5 min read
Photo by Kat Fosell

I push the cigarette butt into my grandfather’s old pot-shaped ashtray so as to begin again.

How far can you bend without breaking? A good question I have yet to answer. Every time I bend, thinking my spine will split, I come out of it, another new person born into the world. If you want to be a king, be a bridge. A line from long ago plays in my head. Just another way of saying, if you want to be a king, be a servant. After our return from Kentucky, after the group departs, I am stuck in this sentiment.

The last night was a rally for the ages. Seventeen people tired from the heat and alcohol and any number of other low class drugs. Naturally, it was decided that we should go out on the town — one last adventure to be had. I wanted a good stretch of the legs, so I opted to walk the three miles to the bar, Lucy and whiskey flowing freely through me. We’d picked a bar named Nowhere, and so began the long road to Nowhere. A black cat followed me for a while, carefully stepping over each crack in the sidewalk. My companion tread along beside me as well. “Can we keep the cat?” I asked gleefully, just to get a response. “If the cat follows us all the way to Nowhere, we can keep it.”

“And name it Nowhere!” We both exclaimed at the same time. We laughed at the frivolity of each leaf we passed, cast in a darker hue for their nighttime operandi.

I had a bad feeling about everyone going out. If I were a watchdog, my ears would have been perked. Louisville and St. Louis had a lot in common, but Louisville was the older brother, the street-wise one. We began the part of the walk that ran parallel to a graveyard, at Lexington and Kentucky streets.

I thought of my last visit to this wonky city, when I’d stayed up all night on the back porch of a third-story attic space in the Gonzo house, talking to a girl who’d told me of her grandmother’s secret magical powers. “She’d ring a chime, and call out, and all these ravens would come, all at the same time to the back railin’ of the porch,” she’d whispered reverently, “you know, like in that movie…Birds.”

Muhammed Ali had just died and his funeral was in town. Lots of dignitaries, presidents, and kings. B had invited me to take pictures for a story he wanted to write. It was a good excuse to see one another. Everyone in town. Everyone wanting or invited to speak at the funeral. There were tickets…The closest we got was seeing the procession pass by the KFC Yum Center, and through the streets, on its way to a final resting place. A fighter getting some rest at last.

I remember staring at B’s friend with my lips hanging open for all the hours in between late and early. I would be surprised if I’d said three words. She kept going and going, “Your town and mine, they share a history. A dirty no good goddamned bloodshed kinda history. You look up the Spirit of Saint Louis and Nazis sometime, you’ll see what I mean. It’s why I left home, with just my backpack on me. Just my backpack. I went walking, sprintin’ outta there.” She’d made as if she was pulling at the straps of her backpack, and kicked her legs up and down from her slouched position in the plaid lawn chair. “Like I was Dorothy or some shit. Took my backpack and got out of there. Then I found myself in this graveyard one night, with a strand of my grandmother’s hair. I was layin’ on top a grave, and the spirits were calling to me and I was ‘fraid they were gunna carry me off. I couldn’t get up. So I lay there all night, twistin’ that long piecea hair ‘round my fingers, sayin’ Hail Mary’s and tryin’ to remember the other prayers I don’t believe in. Gram used to say we all believers when we see hell.” I kept wanting to hug her and she kept showing me the spot on her left thigh where the guy she was hooking up with kept biting her. The mark was big and looked kind of like a rose wilting. The color hurt my eyes. “He works in a shop, welds things. Made me a bowl the other day, then I lost it. He made me this too.” She held up a glass bead with a tornado of color captured in it strung on a black string. “I can get you one if you want.” It split the light onto the floorboards covered in ash. I shook my head no.

She and I had spent that morning taking swigs from a plastic pint of whiskey and chain smoking. I did it just to stay awake, and to keep the heat at bay. There was something to the trick of bourbon water, but only if you got the ratio right. Otherwise, I liked to keep it neat. B was inside, probably masturbating in the shower, or on the lower bunk where I eventually fell asleep after watching the church-goers in their large hats hustle out of the front doors and fenced-in yards of the old city houses. I couldn’t seem to go unconscious that night. It had been a problem that had been mounting since the miscarriage. I was UP all the time.

“Do you miss your baby?” B asked me as I lay, hot and tired, my right pointer finger tracing the sun’s fractals as they moved against the wall, broken by the glass ball hanging in the window that faced east. There was a phoenix spray-painted on the wall opposite the windows that looked like it could have doubled as a bomb going off. I nodded. A large tear rolled down my left cheek. B plucked it off as if it were a lightning bug and wiped it on his shirt. We nestled into one another, laughing low little soft laughs full of pain and the joy of still being alive despite it. I’d been on the road a long time at that point, all by myself.

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Kat Fossell

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doesn’t believe in short bio’s

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