Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 01:21:00 -0400
From: Sequoyah <sequoyah@charter.net>
Subject: Moon Watching Twelve

MOON WATCHING

Chapter Twelve

Warning!

The usual warning applies: This story contains erotic events involving
alternative sexualities. Do not read the contents if such will offend you.
If accessing this site causes you to break local laws (village, town, city,
county, province, state, or country, etc.), please leave now or accept the
consequences, should there be any.

By reading or downloading this file you implicitly declare that you accept
total responsibility for your actions in regard to material intended for
mature, responsible members of society capable of making decisions about
the content of documents they wish to read. You are accessing this site of
your own free volition. You have been warned!

Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either
are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and
any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments,
events or locales is entirely coincidental and/or used fictionally.

Copyright Notice Reminder

This story is copyright by the author and the author retains all rights.
Expressly prohibited is the posting of the story to any sites not approved
by the author or charging for the story in any manner. Single copies may be
downloaded and printed for personal use provided the story remains
unchanged.

Website

Check out the new website created by Awesome Dude for Sequoyah's stories:
sequoyahsplace.com

Comments to sequoyah@charter.net


Chapter Twelve

The next morning we discovered the motel had free breakfast and we took
advantage of it. Janice was hostess and since we had kinda overslept, we
were the only guests so she came and sat at a table with us. When we
finished eating, she asked if we'd be coming back through Hattiesburg. She
asked us, but she was looking at Keith.

"Yeah, if we can locate Mrs. Blanco and find LaTasha's grave," Keith
replied. I assumed he had told Janice all about our quest.

"Give me a call as soon as you know and I'll get you set up with a
room. Good luck."

We hit the road again at 9:00. The trip to Carriere should take about an
hour and a half at most. I started out as driver and shortly after we left
the motel, my cell phone rang.

"Oh boy," Keith said. "We're in deep doo-doo now. You've got to answer and
I bet it's your mom."

While I pulled in to the emergency lane, Derrick answered the phone. "Well,
hello, Mrs. McCarter...Yeah, we're having a great time...yeah, I think I
can find him."

Derrick handed me the phone and I took a deep breath and said, "Hello,
Mom. Everything ok?'

"Better than ok. Your dad and I managed to get the rest of the week off and
thought we'd drive on up to North Carolina. How's that?"

"Well, that great, Mom. When are you leaving?"

"10:00, 10:30, I'd guess.

"So we'll see you Friday at 2:00, 2:30 latest. That's great."

"Not Friday, Son. Your dad took the car to get the oil changed and we'll
leave as soon as he gets back. It's what? 9:30 now. He should be back by
10:00, 10:30. I suspect we'll start as soon as he gets back, eat lunch in
Gainesville and be at the house 3:00 at the latest, I think."

"Uh, that's great Mom. But, Mom, we're not exactly at the house right now."

"Well, that's fine. We won't be there until mid-afternoon. When do you
expect to get back?"

"Maybe late tomorrow, tomorrow night," I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

"What are you doing? Where are you?" Mom asked, and added kinda slow like,
"I'm not fooled, kid."

"You know I-59?" I asked.

"Can't recall it," Mom said. "Guess you need to educate me."

"Well, it runs from Chattanooga to, I think, New Orleans."

"Annnd?" Mom asked, a bit of a threat in her voice.

"Well, right now, we are in the emergency lane-nothing wrong, just so I can
use the phone-somewhere between Hattiesburg and Carriere, Mississippi."

"Tom, what, may I ask, is going on?"

"Well, Mom, it's a long story."

"Tom, I have time."

I told Mom the whole story. When I finished she was silent for a long
time. "Mom, you still there?" I asked.

"I'm not really sure, Tom. I'm not really sure. I need some time to
think. I'll call you back after I talk with your father. I'll talk to you
later."

"Bye, Mom. Enjoy North Carolina," I said and switched off the phone, handed
it to Derrick, started the car and pulled back on to the interstate.

"Well?" Keith asked.

"Well, what? Did you expect me to lie to Mom?"

"Nah, I knew better, but I thought you'd try to fudge things a little
bit. Actually, Derrick, you need to know your boyfriend and his parents are
kinda weird. The parents essentially treat old Tom as an adult, almost, and
equal to them, almost. But then there have been times when they have had to
pull rank on their baby."

"He spoiled?" Derrick asked as he leaned over and blew into my ear.

"Actually, of course, he is. He has never wanted anything he didn't get,
never been told no, always allowed to fuck around. Yeah, he has been
allowed to do just about anything he wanted unless it really endangered him
or someone else, then he was hauled in right quick. Otherwise, he was
allowed to sink or swim. He was always told, "Get yourself in, get yourself
out. Right Tom?"

I had never thought of it quite that way, but when I did..."Keith's right,"
I answered.

"Yeah, like he wanted a car and his dad got him this piece of junk. He told
me he was gay and I told him to get lost and his dad took him to North
Carolina to sort things out and his mom forced me to go to North Carolina
so he could make up to me. No problem with his being gay, but he had to
deal with the hurt it caused." Keith was speaking without any indication he
was kidding and I didn't think he was.

"The kid's spoiled by having really great parents who were so thrilled at
finally getting a kid, they could have spoiled him rotten, but really, this
car is kinda a metaphor...."

"Ho, ho, ho, now we are going to use the honors English language defense,"
I laughed.

Keith laughed and said, "Yeah. Derrick, you saw this car when his parents
gave it to old Tom. They do things like that all the time. They gave him a
way to get what he wanted rather than giving him what he wanted. Capeesh?

"Capeesh," Derrick laughed. "Guess he had to find one thing he wanted
himself though," and blew in my ear again.

After we had been driving for forty-five minutes, I noticed Keith had
gotten very quiet. I mean he hadn't been chattering before, but he really
got quiet. Minutes later Derrick said "Exit 10 coming up, Tom. That's our
exit. Carriere's right ahead."

Well, what would you expect a town of seven hundred souls in the
Mississippi Delta to be? Yeah, well, that's what it was. I had thought I'd
go to the police station and ask about Miss Daisy Blanco, but there was no
police station. There was a school, but it being summer, it was
empty. There was a general store with gas pumps outside in the middle of
what I guess was town. I pulled up in front of it and went inside. Several
elderly men were sitting around a cold pot belly stove-the same place they
would sit in winter, I suspect, playing checkers.

"Can I help you, young man?" a middle aged woman with gray hair asked as
she came from a back room.

"I hope so, Ma'am," I responded. "I really need to locate Miss Daisy
Blanco."

"Colored?"

"Yes, Ma'am, and I was told she lived in Black Bottom."

"You have business with her?" one of the checker players asked.

"Well, kinda sir. What I really need is to know where her granddaughter is
buried."

"Why're you interested in a grave?" another checker player asked.

"Well, Sir, her boyfriend didn't get to go to her funeral and say goodbye
and all that and it's causing him some real problems."

"She had a white boy?" the first checker player asked.

"No sir," I answered and said no more. The men went back to playing
checkers and I turned back to the woman.

"She was the girl that was raped and killed herself?" she asked.

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Well, her mother brought her back, but I'm not sure where she got buried,
being a suicide and all. Miss Daisy died back just before Christmas and
she's the only one of them Blanco colored left around here. I guess you are
out of luck. Drive far to get here?"

"From North Carolina."

"That's far. Sorry we can't help." She turned and walked back into the back
room.

I was satisfied I had just been brushed off and that probably anyone of the
people in the store could have told me where LaTasha was buried, but would
not. Unwelcome outside interference in their lives. Rural Mississippi was
good at protecting itself from outsiders.

I went back to the car and just said I got no help from anyone. "Maybe if
we just drive around a bit we can find someone who will help. I think it'll
have to be a black person."

We drove around town just a bit until we had a general idea of the white
side of town and the fact that it was closed to us. We, literally, crossed
the tracks and drove along a narrow dirt road toward some rundown
houses. It had to be black bottom, not that we saw people, but it was
rundown and the road dirt. Yeah, it was the "housing" provided by massa.

About the middle of the cluster of houses was a small church with an excuse
for a playground beside it. Several young kids, all under ten, I'm sure,
were playing in the dirt. I pulled up close to the church and Keith and
Derrick got out and walked to the playground and started talking to the
kids. The kids were shy, but from where I was in the car, I could see they
were warming up to the two young men. After talking with the kids for a few
minutes the two came back to the car and got in.

"Of course we couldn't ask directly about LaTasha," Keith said, "but we did
find out how to locate the preacher. Maybe he can help us out. We need to
go back and get on US 11 and head south to Ozona. The preacher works in a
tractor place there."

Half an our later we were in Ozona-which was probably smaller than
Carriere, but I wouldn't swear to it. Finding a tractor place was easy
since there were so few businesses and houses in Ozona.

We decided it might be best for Keith to ask about the preacher. The kids
didn't know his name-they kept telling Derrick and Keith his name was
Reverend.

The two got out and walked toward the tractor place where two black men
were standing, apparently talking about a piece of farm equipment they were
leaning on. Both stood up as the two approached and after they all shook
hands and talked a few minutes, Keith turned toward me and motioned for me
to come over.

When I reached the four, Keith said, "Reverends, my friend Tom
McCarter. Tom, Reverend Micheaux and Reverend Micheaux. They are brothers.

"It's a pleasure," I replied as I shook hands with the two men. About forty
or forty-five I guess, both were wearing John Deere work uniforms with
"Micheaux Farm Equipment" stitched over one shirt pocket. The other pocket
had their name stitched over it, one read Matthew Micheaux and the other
Luke Micheaux.

"Their brothers Mark and John are out working on equipment in the field."

"Fellows, why don't we go inside where its cool and have a coke?" Matthew
asked, speaking in a soft accent which was definitely not from Georgia or
Carolina!

When we were seated in the large office, showroom and parts department
lobby, Keith said, "Reverends..."

"Call us Matthew and Luke, everybody does," Luke said. "Kids, elderly
ladies and people at church are the only ones who call us Reverend."

"Are Mark and John preachers too?" Keith asked.

Both brothers laughed heartily and Matthew said, "Sorry, but the two run a
juke joint between here and Carriere. They get the sinners on Saturday
night and we get them Sunday. But what can we do for you three fine
fellows?"

"Well, we are looking for Miss Daisy Blanco, but the folks at the general
store in Carriere told me she was dead," I answered.

"You only got that much because you were white," Luke said. "To the folks
in that store, there are four kinds of people in the world, "us, our
colored, them and other colored."

"But they told you right," Matthew said. "I funeralized her a couple weeks
before Christmas. Real sad. None of her children bothered to come."

"Well, you still might be able to help us," Keith said. "We wanted to find
her so we could find a grave." Keith then told the brothers why he was
looking for LaTasha's grave. "Know that may sound weird, but I think maybe
if I could talk to her at her grave then I could get on with my life."

I noticed the two brother exchanging glances as Keith told his story and
was sure they knew something about the situation.

"Keith, we need to get our other two brothers together with you," Matthew
said. "See, when my church, Carriere Church of God in Christ, learned
LaTasha had committed suicide, they absolutely refused to allow her to be
buried in their cemetery. Since their's is the only cemetery in Carriere
where African-Americans are buried, that upset Miss Daisy no end. I was
sorry for her, but there was nothing I could do about it. So I called
Luke."

"To make a long story short," Luke said, "my church, the Ozona Church of
God in Christ, was equally as opposed to allowing her to be buried in the
cemetery here. All the time, of course, Miss Daisy's heart was being torn
out. Her daughter, LaTasha's mother, was telling her how terrible churches
were and how Miss Daisy had worked her fingers to the bone for the church
in Carriere and they wouldn't bury her granddaughter--which was true."

"Mark and John got wind of what was going on and let us know right away
that the people at the juke joint were a lot more compassionate than the
self-righteous church people. They went to Miss Daisy and told her they
would take care of her granddaughter," Matthew said.

"And they did. I don't know where the girl is buried because when Matthew
and I offered to say words over her, Miss Daisy said, 'No, thank you. You
take care of them church people. See if you can keep them out of hell. I'm
sure somebody can say some words."

Matthew added, "And that's all we really know. I did hear by the grapevine
that there was a fair group at the burial which took place in an old
cemetery somewhere back in the bayou. A singer from the juke joint sang and
our brothers did the sermon..."

"Which I was told was better than either one of us could have done," Luke
said, and I was sure he wasn't joking.

"You fellows just wait here a minute and I'll see where Mark and John are
and when they'll be back," Matthew said as he got up and headed back to his
private office.

The weather outside was deadly-temperature was over a hundred and and the
humidity was close to a hundred. The inside of the building was thankfully
air-conditioned and we three relaxed at having made some definite progress
at finding LaTasha's grave.

We were just relaxing, chatting with Luke when my cell phone rang. Derrick
had said, "You better keep your phone handy since your mom is going to call
back. If you don't answer you'll really be in hot water."

"If you want some privacy, go into my office," Luke said, pointing to the
office beside the one where Matthew was on the phone.

"Thanks," I said as I flipped the phone open and walked toward the office.

"Tom, it's your father..."

Not good. When Dad referred to himself as my father, it was usually not
good news. "Yes, Dad," I answered.

"Your mother told me some fantastic tale about your being in
Mississippi. Do you have any idea what may have caused her to dream up such
a thing?"

"Well, I guess she got the idea because that's what I told her. I'm in
Mississippi."

"Just exactly where are you in Mississippi?"

"I am in the office of Mr. Luke Micheaux at Micheaux Farm Equipment Company
in Ozona Mississippi."

"Tom, this conversation is getting stranger all the time. Maybe I best just
let you tell your own tale."

I reminded Dad of how concerned Derrick and I had been about Keith and how
Keith had suggested he thought he might be able to get on with his life if
he could say goodbye to LaTasha. I also told him I thought that if I had
asked about us going, I would have been told no. "Both Keith and I told
Derrick if you or Mom said no, that would end it, so we decided not to
ask."

Dad questioned me about our driving, about whether or not we had gotten any
sleep and finally he asked what we had learned about LaTasha's burial.

I told him how we had located someone who would probably take us to the
grave. When I did, he said in spite of the fact that we still had to deal
with our taking an unapproved trip, he did think we had done a good job of
detective work.

"When do you plan to be back in North Carolina?" he asked.

"If all goes well, we'll spend the night in Hattiesburg again and be home
tomorrow--late."

"Well, be careful and take your time. We'll talk when you get here."

We said goodbye and I folded the phone.

When I reached the lounge area where the crew were sitting, Matthew had not
returned.

"In real hot water?" Keith asked.

"Remember the time we ditched school and Dad called me on the cell?
Remember that conversation? This one was like it. I think he's really proud
of us for trying to help you out and ready to kill us for just taking off."
Keith nodded.

"Mark and John are on their way," Matthew said, joining the group. "They
were just finishing up that job at the Audubon Plantation when I
called. They were really interested in talking with you fellows."

We sat, talking, killing time. We asked questions about rural southern
Mississippi and they asked about North Carolina. It took awhile to get them
straightened out about where we actually lived. When we had the North
Carolina-Georgia connection straight, Derrick said, "And I'll not try to
tell you anything about how I fit in since I came from Baltimore less than
a year ago!" The brothers laughed.

It was half an hour before a big GMC diesel dually with a Micheaux Farm
Equipment logo on the door pulled into the front of the business. When Mark
and John got out of the truck they could have passed for twins of Matthew
and Luke.

"Ever try to swap places with your brothers?" Derrick asked.

The two brothers laughed. "Plenty of times when we were at school," Luke
said. "Mark and John have threatened to take over our pulpits some
Sunday. Would be a wonder to witness."

The two late comers walked into the lounge where we were all sitting. It
was obvious they had been out in the heat and humidity, working. Not only
were their originally neat, pressed uniforms sweat stained, but dusty and
dirty as well.

Introductions were made all around and as soon as that was done, Mark said,
"We need to shower and get on fresh uniforms. As soon as we do that, how
about we take you fellows to lunch. It's that time, little after."

"Sounds good," Matthew said.

"Not you, dumbass," John said. "But I guess you can tag along."

"Watch your language around these young men," Luke said.

"They've heard worse," John responded with a laugh.

As soon as the two were cleaned up, we all went to Sooky's Place, a small
café behind a feed and seed store. I expected the only customers to be
black, but there were about as many whites as blacks. Sooky was, however,
very black and very large.

"Well, if it's not the Micheaux sinners and the Bible boys," she said as we
walked in. "And who be this you towing in?"

John introduced us and told Sooky why we were in Mississippi. When he did,
she made it very clear she thought the juke joint people had been better
than the sanctimonious Christians of Carriere and Ozona. Luke said under
his breath to Matthew, "Think I know Sunday's sermon," as John led us to a
table.

The food was plentiful, good and hot-spicy hot. Some of it was completely
new to me-crawfish for one. And we all ate entirely too much. When we
finished, Sooky refilled our tea glasses and sat down at the table with us
since the lunch hour was just about over.

"Sooky sang at LaTasha's burial," Mark said.

"Beautifully," John added.

"Look, you be awfully young to be dealing with rape and suicide. Told that
poor girl was gang-raped. Raped myself when I was sixteen by someone I
knew. That was bad enough, but that poor girl." Sooky shook her head, then
said, "Privileged to sing at her burying. Let me let out some of the anger
I be holding in for years."

Later John told us Sooky had been seeing a white boy. "She should have
known nothing would come of it and when she asked him what about the
future, he got angry and raped her. He got off, of course."

After lunch, we went back to the tractor dealership and Mark and John asked
if we thought we could stand a ride in a pickup and we laughed. Keith had
to tell them about his truck and they got a kick out of an African-American
redneck. The dually was a crew cab, so the three of us and the two brothers
got in. Matthew asked about his and Luke going along and I saw a real spark
of fire in John's eye when he said no.

We rode along the highway for maybe five miles, then turned onto a dirt
road. It looked as if its only function was to get into the fields on each
side.

"I hope you don't think we were being nasty when we told our brothers they
couldn't come with us," Mark said. "When their congregations refused to let
LaTasha be buried with their saints, Matthew and Luke should have stood
their ground. They are all for loving your neighbor and that sort of thing,
but it has to be the right neighbors."

"Actually, we get along fine so long as we don't let church interfere,"
John said. "It's really kinda silly, but it goes back to before we were
born. Daddy was a preacher too and when the voter registration drives came
to Pearl River county, he was all peace and love and don't rock the
boat. Mama was at the head of the march. How they ever managed to get
together, I don't know, but they did and somehow or other, Matthew and Luke
followed in Daddy's footsteps and Mark and I followed Mama's."

"It seldom matters, but when something like a poor girl who has been raped
and couldn't take life anymore escapes, sanctimonious old ladies and men
without backbone step in and decide she's too contaminated to be buried in
their holy ground-well, it really pisses me off."

"The undertaker gave her mother twenty-four hours to find a place to put
her. Mark and I had been kinda looking after Miss Daisy since all her kids
had left her high and dry. She was at her wit's end when her daughter said
she was finished and told the undertaker just to put LaTasha any place he
could and left town. Miss Daisy called me."

"We went to her place and when she told us what she was up against, we told
her we would take care of everything. We got the undertaker to release the
body to us-it was his ass if he let anyone know we had taken it-we got a
group of our friends together and we took LaTasha to an old cemetery where
some good people--slaves mostly--had been buried years and years ago. We
thought they'd welcome a fresh face and they did."

The dirt road had long since disappeared and we were driving into the
bayou. We finally stopped and the two brothers led us to a grave beneath a
huge old oak. There were stones about, marking old graves. In the midst of
the old graves was a new one, LaTasha's.

We all stood around the grave, silent, for several minutes, then Mark and
John turned and walked back toward the truck. Derrick and I, arm in arm,
followed. When we reached the truck, I said, "Mark, John, you'll never know
who much this means to us and especially to Keith. I was afraid he might
take the suicide escape after LaTasha died." We then talked quietly about
LaTasha. All they knew about her was what little Miss Daisy was able to
tell them. We talked about her-how she had been a wonderful young woman
living in hell. "But a hell we didn't know about. She never said anything
about it," I said.

"When we brought her here, every single one of us felt like she had thanked
us," Mark said. "It was weeks before John mentioned it to me and after we
both had the same feeling, we talked to the others and they all felt the
same way."

"Yeah and we still talk about it sometimes," John said. "Like Sooky,
everyone of us had something in our past that held us back, made us
unhappy, seemed to keep our life from being what it should be. And after
the funeral, every single one of us had experienced something, like Sooky
saying she had turned loose old anger."

"Ok, that sounds ok but what John is not telling you, every single person
who was beside that grave when we had finally seen LaTasha had a decent
burial has had a conversation with LaTasha. I guess it was like a dream,
but I was not asleep. It was kind of a vision, yet LaTasha and I were as
alive as any of us standing here. It was real."

I guess I wanted to believe the two brothers, but this was a little much. I
was charging it up to some influence of southern Mississippi voodoo when
Derrick asked, "You saw her?"

"Yeah, I did," Mark said. He then started talking about how LaTasha looked,
how alive she was and how beautiful. At first he could have been describing
any pretty young African-American, then he got specific. He had to have
seen LaTasha or a photo to have been that accurate in his description. I
had a sudden thought and asked if she was wearing any jewelry.

"She was. She had a ring on her left middle finger, a silver ring with a
vine engraved around it."

I didn't know what to say. Keith had given LaTasha a silver ring with an
ivy vine engraved around it after College Park had fancy signs marking the
historical district as "Ivy City". He told her it was to mark her as his
"College Park girl."

When Keith came back, John asked if he was ready to go and he said, "Yes, I
am ready to get on with my life." It was only when we were on our way back
to Hattiesburg that I noticed he was wearing a silver ring on his left
little finger, a silver ring with ivy engraved around it.