In the Pines

What’s that way

I was driving home, back to Mississippi. I was hours outside of Conway and unsure exactly where I was. Still in Arkansas though, pretty sure of that. A dirt road to the right beckoned. I mean it, too, as dramatic as that seems: just as if there was someone on the corner waving a sign that said come down this way. Maybe one day I’ll tell you what was down there.

Down that dirt road, Arkansas, Polaroid something or another (2022)

Sometimes I get to thinking about the road and where I might go. There have been bad thunderstorms here in Mississippi for a few days and my power is out. The beautiful oaks and pecans that line our city are notoriously fragile in high winds, just as sure to snap in two as hold up when it gets bad, just like a particularly attractive friend from freshman year. They take the electric lines down with them in their dramatic collapse, ruining things for everybody.

It’s too hot to stay inside and too hot to sit outside, so you just see people driving up and down the roads, trying their best to come to a full stop at the dead street lights, or at least mostly stopping, windows rolled up and phones charging. The parking lots of the WalMart are full, just because folks are walking around inside looking at stuff. The movies are all sold out, even the ones with bad reviews. It doesn’t matter, it’s two hours in the air conditioning, it’s worth a ticket. We are in limbo.

So I start thinking, maybe I can find that dirt road again.

Eudora, Arkansas, Polaroid SX-70

Do y’all know this song, about the devil down in Eudora? I hadn’t heard it until a few years ago. It’s a jam, made even better because you believe that the singer, Tony Joe White, really means it. Like they caught him, Lucifer I mean, he’s in a jail cell, find out what happens next.

Maybe I should roll back through there and try to find some trace of it, a crack in the pavement, something I could get on film. What I mainly remember from going there is how blue the sky was, how hot the pavement.

Somewhere in the desert, Polaroid SX-70 (2019)

This isn’t in Arkansas, but it kind of reminds me of the same feeling. The road is the same everywhere, just what it shows you is different. Even what seems like a wasteland has flowers, even a road in the desert forks. There was no electricity there either, but no houses that miss it. The road there is about what might be over that next mountain, around that curve, will you forget if you keep driving, and at the same time, what if you stopped and looked. What if you stopped.

There was a road I didn’t take, maybe it was in Arizona I think, and it said, danger, wild sheep on road. I haven’t thought about that road in a while, there are so many you might take, but you probably should take the ones with wild sheep warnings. Take them all. The scary ones as well as the pretty ones.

“IN THE PINES” is this week’s installment of GORJUS, an occasional dispatch devoted to art and life in the South, preserved as best I can with instant film.

If you liked what you saw and read, if you maybe felt a twang in your belly while you looked it over, then I am proud of it, and I reckon we would be friends. Consider sending this letter to a pal who is like us. I’m gorjusjxn on Instagram, and you can see more Polaroids at McCartyPolaroids.

A few weeks ago I wrote about my Nana and her brother, that’s what I’m really about, if you haven’t read it I think it is worth your time.