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                               1

The way men salivated after Georgia was like a dog in the presence of a bitch in heat. But, with the way the weather was in those sticky months, everybody in Micanopy was in heat. As soon as you took a step outside, the humidity hit you so hard you couldn’t tell which way was up or which way was down. Go ahead and spend half an hour in the thick of the Alachua Savannah during August, and you’d start to hallucinate. That summer was more brutal than any we had ever experienced in our lifetime, and maybe we all went a little crazy then, like a feverish delusion. Northern Florida’s sweltering air cast a glow on everything outside, illuminating those 1935 midsummer days in my mind forever. Perhaps because it was my last summer there, or because it was when Georgia disappeared. The streets are still lined with giant oaks that shade the sidewalks and house wildlife. The waterways outside our town glistened in the sunlight, holding the joy of the dog days within each glimmer, reflecting the giant mangroves that enclosed it. Payne’s Prairie, cradled above Micanopy, provided a fertile soil that seeped into our town and attracted early settlers. We strolled around with a foul layer of sweat on our skin that sparkled in the sunlight. Wiping it off would do no good, so we wore our well-earned moisture with pride. After having put in eight solid months at school, we’d earned it. Everyone in Micanopy moved like their shoes were filled with molasses during those summer months, ambling against the heat. Even the trees moved in such a way, hardly startled by the light breeze. It seemed as if by the time the coastal Floridian winds made their way to the middle of the state, they slowed to a temperate flow. It was why all of the residents took a vacation then, crops didn’t need tending to, and the fruiting season was over. Or perhaps the God-fearing folks felt some extra taunting from the devil as they molded to their Christian ways. Packing church as the blind minister, white-eyed, red-faced and dripping wet collard, furiously threatened hot hell and damnation. We all thought if anything could get hotter than Micanopy in August, rest be assured, we’d hail Mary come sunrise to sunset.    

 

Alachua County’s estuaries held alligators that loomed with menacing eyes and poked through the mirrored dark surface. In the crystal springs, manatees roamed, ate up the algae, and were known as ‘friendly sea cows’. The shorelines served as a stomping ground for wading birds. Poised white-feathered egrets, great blue heron, and pink-tinged ibis grazed the moist soil for insects as they unearthed themselves. Nocturnal panthers sauntered idly through the glades and lounged on limbs. Red-crowned cranes with ballet-legged chicks broke through dirt pathways, sprinting in-between thickets. At night, native bats that clung to mangroves would emerge from the dense foliage after sunset, creating a thin black blanket over the deep ocean-blue and flamingo pink dusk skies. Butterflies fluttered nearly all year long with downy wings that beat against one’s skin like silken insect wisps.    Classes in our tiny schoolhouse had been dismissed months ago, and the town’s youth were complacent in our boredom. We had already been down to the spring every day after the noon thunderstorms and to the soda fountain over a dozen times. Most of us were finding summer work to earn our fun again, having spent our savings at that point. Micanopy took a hit during the Depression. The majority of Florida felt the disease before the rest of the country. Even though, in my opinion, we were salvaged from the brunt of it and even the aftershock. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 had eradicated a majority of South Florida’s occupants and crippled the rest of the state. During those years, few classmates that attended the school who lived on the outskirts of the town showed up barefoot, infected with hookworms, and flecked with ticks. Their dilapidated states were reflected in gaunt faces. They were bereft of most of the luxuries that we enjoyed in our nest, neglect of electricity, the life of poverty was most brutal for them. Few of the scrub families taught their young from their pine shacks. They lived off the land, too far to travel to the schoolhouse. Fox squirrel soup was served habitually. Quail was a specialty to anyone who captured them. A box of pellets could set someone back more than a shiny set of nickels, so most of the swamp families trapped prey.

 

    Between the houses in our one boulevard town, you could find fig, pecan, and mulberry trees. Vast, sweeping sycamore, magnolia, and a few pomegranates could be spotted. Oranges were the main crop that we exported to the northern states. Lemon, grapefruit, and mandarin were popular but had become scarce during the fruit fly sickness that plagued our groves a few summers back. Each truck had to be checked for infectious insects before leaving the state. You had to have the correct type of soil to grow citrus. Few English settlers who tried to raise the crop north of us in Gainesville didn’t yield many. It took five years for new growth to fruit the right kind of citrus. Mangoes were my favorite. They had to be split open with a knife, avoiding the pit in the middle. Otherwise, biting into them would be a disastrous mess. Orange sticky liquid tormented my hands while lawns became littered with rotting fruit during those months.    The town was originally a Seminole trading post and fort during the Seminole War, an homage to the Seminole Chief Micanope. It was a dull effort at retribution for eradicating the natives of their home. Many don’t know, but Chief Micanope led the Second Seminole War and eventually was sent on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma, where he acquiesced to a deal for the remaining Seminoles and lands for the tribes. It was a time when many tribes refused to agree to any more brokerages with Andrew Jackson. Many Native Americans didn’t trust any sort of treaty after having traversed the treacherous trail. But the chief knew it was better to sign than to remain scorn, even after he had to renounce their land, customs, his family, friends, fellow tribe leaders, and their home.    This very land, an old Spanish Fort, was home to the bloodiest battles during the Seminole Wars. An eponym that I could never truly understand. The central area is positioned near the Seminole chief’s original council, which sat in-between two giant oaks that are now a part of the front yard of a home at the entrance to the town. Everyone took pride in our history, which for us came to fruition when a group of northern settlers came down in the early 1800s along with a select group of runaway slaves. Over a hundred years later, the quarter of a pint city remained small and wrapped in swamp foliage. It was like a separate state from the rest of Florida. We made our own laws to live and abide by. We had one tiny jail with two small rooms. It wasn’t for prisoners, as we didn’t have any and often harbored a drunkard for a night before they were released. 

    I was born Joseph Francis Lightfoot-Jackson, Junior. Although, I rarely used the name Jackson after my daddy passed. I was given the middle name Francis from my ancestors on my mother’s side of the family. It was said that we could trace our family tree back to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a bedtime story that was often told to me. I was named after Francis Lightfoot Lee, consigner of the Declaration of Independence. The Lightfoots hailed from Virginia after they sold off the tobacco plantation they owned before the war between the states. This bit of history brought pride to my family. Unfortunately, family name’s warrant a history that, at times, would be better off left in the dust. Within a family name comes honor, but then there is the institution of dishonor that could be brought, altering its antiquity entirely.

 

    I wasted my summer days playing football or baseball in the neighbor’s yards with Tug Culpepper, who lived on a farm on the outskirts with his parents and younger sister. He was neighbors with Red Harrison, who lived with his father and three younger brothers. Tug and Red were cousins and resembled one another with large heads, flat noses, and were built like athletes. Sidney Jackson and Felix Robinson, who lived in town down the road from me, often joined in. We’d steal fruit from the orchards. We cooled off in the springs, ate pull-candy, and drank Coca-Colas. We thought it was cool to drink our sodas by the newly painted Coca-Cola sign on the side of the Thrasher Warehouse, which sold everything besides beer and coffins.

    “Don’t serve the drunkards. Don’t serve the dead,” Mr. Thrasher protested in a straw hat, with his arms crossed, and expertly spat soaked tobacco into a rusting silver spittoon.

    Summer was the time for slow-moving, relaxation, dances, and our Fourth of July celebration. These days Tug and Red spent their time hunting for quail, raccoon, and duck. I was not fond of the gory sport anymore, so we seemed to be drifting apart. I wasn’t much of a hunter and found myself indulging in more ‘sinister activities’, as Granmama would say.    I spent the late mornings at the diner where the girl, Georgia Levy, worked. I watched as she would bounce around in her pistachio uniform, from table to table. Her wild golden hair hung above her peach-plumped rear that sashayed on a lithe frame. I would join the masses of men who would frequent the establishment if only to have her leer at them with her tiny crooked grin. They’d empty whatever change they had in their pockets. Her true smile only escaped when she was embarrassed or liked the person she was talking to. Besides that, she was pretty stern nowadays. She held a certain quality that at times was as sweet as the innards of a coconut but could be as coarse on the outside. I knew every expression that adorned her tiny face and could tell what she thought almost every moment I was with her. Her winding river blue eyes held the mystery of her imagination, like a child’s, taking in the natural splendors of the world.

    The diner, which never really had a name, if you wanted to, you could call it, ‘The Micanopy Diner,’ was set on the main street, Cholokka Boulevard. The owner, Mr. Nathan Jones, was a cheerful widowed man who came to Florida as a young settler and opened the eatery. He was lanky with a strong nose and round spectacles. Always kempt, he perpetually wore his diner uniform of a plaid, long-sleeved button-down, and khaki slacks. Either on shift or off, the only diversion would be the lack of wearing of an apron.

    The diner served up a delicious Southern breakfast of fried grits, biscuits with gravy, maple ham, home fries, smoked fish hash, corned beef hash, and collard greens. In the afternoon, depending on the day and the crop, you could find chicken fried steak, fried alligator, hush puppies, fried chicken, fried fish, fried quail, anything with grits. My favorite, barbecue, was only available when the meat was bountiful. In addition, there was a selection of desserts like banana pie, key lime pie, and the signature pecan pie. Then there was vanilla, chocolate, or fresh strawberry ice cream bought from the Gainesville ice cream factory. The diner stood next to the Daley Building and was the only restaurant unless you wanted to call Miss Mattie’s small log cabin that served fried frog legs a 'restaurant'.    The Daley building was colonial red brick, square with small white slat windows on the second and third floor and large white window-paned shop windows on the first. It was made up of the doctor’s office, a drugstore with a soda fountain with a motley of candy, and a long marbled countertop. Down the road, you could acquire whatever you needed at the Mott-May general. If they didn’t have what you were in search of, the Thrasher Warehouse did. The diner was pinewood, painted a sky blue, and had a giant cypress in the back that towered over the front. The furry moss hung down like a hairy canopy, sweeping against the front porch. There was a hulking pecan tree on the sidewalk that Mr. Jones, who lived on the second floor of the diner, would incorporate in any dish that he could. Mrs. Lewis’s inn was down the street from the diner. It was skirted by a wide wooden porch with a swollen octagon lip on one side. These buildings served as the meeting grounds for our tiny town. Often the townsfolk would gather on one of the white picket benches or rocking chairs set up along the oak-shaded sidewalk to escape the heat and gab.

 

    The women in town would’ve completely outcast Georgia, but often Mr. Jones set the gabbers straight. Or few would see her working at the diner, and take pity on her. If she weren’t recently able to produce a new dress in time, the tips of her thighs would flutter out, giving the women open ground to let their leisure accusations escape from their lips.

 

 

   “You think she ’tends t’let her long le-egs hang out of that there dress like that?” One aged woman would whisper behind her fan to the other.

    “I don’t know whay she don’ buy herself a new one with that money she makes.”

    A thoughtful woman would step in and say, “Now, yuh know what ever monies she has her mama takes to the bottle. Poor thang had to grow up befo’ she had a chance to be a chile herself. An’ you kno’ if it weren’t for that boy and his granmama, Georgia’d be runnin’ aroun’ in rags with that red-haired string bean.” They’d sneer. 

   “Humph. Don’t Lilly Ann or her Negro feed that child? Her gams ain’t nothin’ but chicken legs.”

    Another woman with wrinkles that displayed her insecurity would chime in, “And she has those Negroes living in her home. It ain’t fittin’ if you ask me. Ain’t fittin’.” Spoot-tiiing. A wet hawk typically shot into a metal tin around this time.“Can you ’magine what that girl goes through every weekend havin’ t’ go out with those men. I bet they eat at that girl’s soul to her bones an’ the flesh ’round ’em.”

    One would rebut, “Ya think those men would buy her a decent meal. What they do with her ’til midnight anyhow?”

 

    By the time the conversation reached this point, either myself, Georgia, or one of her suitors would meander past, corking their gossip. They’d fan themselves, suck their gums, cast a southern smile, and go on about something else. Georgia and I would frequent Mrs. Lewis’s inn most idle evenings. She would supply the town with a good time and some home-distilled corn liquor for those who found the supply at Mott May too expensive. Her hooch burnt your throat like a dehydrated cow’s piss, but a few sips could put you in a good stupor worse than the humidity at high noon.

 

     I had known Georgia since we were children, her being a year my senior and living a block away. We came to find out that our parents had gone back further than when we were born. Mr. Jones hired Georgia when she was thirteen, having her doing odd jobs around the diner for the first few years. My guess is that he took pity on her. You see, her father ended up leaving, walked out the door when she was eight and her mama, Carol Levy, nearly had to be sent to Chattahoochee due to it. That’s what Granmama told me. She forever took to the bottle after that, forcing Georgia to grow up instantaneously. To revisit that summer, we have to go back sometime. It had only been a few years since Georgia snuck into my bedroom and told me what her mama had done to her.

 

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1930

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Five years before.

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Granmama’s house laid on the main road in town, encased by the crystalline springs and rolling

black marsh. I was twelve while Georgia had just turned thirteen, and it was the kind of night in fall that one would leave the window open to catch a cool breeze. I stretched on my stark white sheets that Savannah, our housemaid, had bleached that morning. So, the scent was at its strongest. The air nipped at winter, and lingered long enough in fall that the humidity had dissipated, and carried with it the approaching frost. In Micanopy, nobody locked their front door, let alone a window. Our open field in the back emanated the silence of the night.

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I noticed that a push-pin had fallen from my University of Florida Gator’s poster that hung above my dresser as the side flapped with the breeze that slowly crept into my room. I made a mental note to tell Savannah to find it in the morning and replace it. I had every intention of making UF my home after school. I even kept track of every football player on their roster with the aspiration of being on their team. After the players left college and were drafted to the National Football League, I would track each one by the newspaper, my football magazine subscription, or on the radio the best that I could. Being that we were down south, it wasn’t easy to get some northern or western game coverage.

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The chirrups above the house had ceased since sunset, and the only thing that could be heard was the rhythmic chants of katydids. Besides the staccato of the insects and a light rustling of the palm fronds outside, all was quiet in the night. I took in the scent of the fresh bedding as the wood beneath me tightened, and I sighed at the idea of slumber. I closed my eyes and listened

to the locust’s sonnet, which usually drifted my mind into slumber, but was then spooked by a loud thud that made me flicker my eyes open like the wings of a startled palmetto bug.The scent of gardenia trickled in as an angelic figure entered through my window in front of me. The moonlight illuminated her styled hair with a roosted cream gardenia as she floated in. She had on an ivory, floral ankle-length dress. Her hair darkened a bit as she came closer and was no longer luminous. I noticed the golden hue and recognized the strange apparition. It was a pale, ghost-faced Georgia.

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“What in heaven’s name?” I grumbled through my daze.

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She climbed down from the window ledge with her dirt-stained feet, and I almost warned her to keep them off my clean sheets. But, after another look into her eyes, which appeared red and dewy, I changed my mind. I could tell she had been crying, and I didn’t have the heart to scold her. She positioned herself on the foot of my bed, under the windowsill. I eased against the headboard, with my red-haired calves tucked under the sheets. Georgia balled lithesome limbs, knees to her chest. Stuffed in the daisy-patterned dress fit for a woman with mature breasts and hips, she secured her arms. Hands locked between her calves and thighs. She rested her chin on her knees. Some of her hair was in a loose braid, and a few of her strands poked out like unruly wire. Then she told me what had her locks looking like a tangled bird’s nest.

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“I came home t’ Ol’ Robinson talking to Mama,” she started. “She was bargainin’ t’ sell the chickens.” Her eyes filled with hate. Mr. Hank Robinson was a lonely man, nearing fifty- years, who lived alone outside of town.

 

His wife became ill two summers back, and she now resided in an institution in Chattahoochee. We all called him "Old Robinson" because even though he was older, he appeared to us as ancient because of the way that he shuffled around town. He formed a lump on his back which made it strenuous for him to move his arms very far from his body.

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“Go on,” I urged her as she inhaled and relaxed her bony shoulders.

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“I tol’ him that if my mama sold the chickens, then we’d starve come winter. He said it was my mama who needed the money, and he was willing to give it to her in exchange for somethin’, but we didn’t have much he wanted.”

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We all were aware her mama needed money for her drink and Mr. Robinson most likely knew that she didn’t want to sell the chickens at all. I noticed how the moonlight reflected against her paled hair. The gardenia’s aroma swarmed around us like white-winged insects. Her legs eased, and she was now cross-legged.

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“That was when I asked what else he wanted, an’ he looked at me. At first, Mama tried to protest, then he said he just wanted to take me on a date, that it had been years since his wife left and he had a pretty girl t’ look at. Mama said that he could spend ’til midnight with me. I was jus’ like the chickens -another mouth to feed.” Georgia wiped at her eyes with a cupped hand. “Yuh know how she gets when she has just a little nip of rye in her, vile as a crocodile.”

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I knew this. We all saw how Georgia’s mother, once the kindest, fairest, and most appealing woman in the town, was beat down by drink.

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“Ol’ Robinson laughed an’ said ‘okay’. Mama was taken aback, so she said no funny business.”

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And just like that, Georgia found out what it takes men in college years to learn; how the world worked.

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“I tol’ her, ‘please no, Mama, don’ make me go.’ She took me and dress me in her summa’ dress. It was too loose, so I tol’er the dress don’t fit, but she said I’m ol’ ’nough to go on a date and I’m ol’ ’neuf to wear her dress. She sewn me into it and I can’ even take the thin’ off.”

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She started to tear up and pull at the flowery fabric. She tugged below her waist, where it gave way from the tightness around her bosom, which appeared to be pushed up, making her breasts appear more mature.

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“She said, ‘Now you hear me girl, you goin’ out wit’ Mr. Robinson an’ that here is final.’ She said, ‘yuh won’ even have’ta show him half yo ass.’ Then she roughed up ma hair tight into this here braid.”

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I shuffled down to the foot of the bed and put my arms around her, and she started shaking like a wet dog. I wiped the lipstick off her lips with the back of my hand, a bit rough, but it made her crooked smile give way.

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“Where’d y’all go?” I asked.

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“He jus’ took me to the dina. He tried to make me change my mind sayin’ he had coolin’ fans at his place, but I asked to go to the dina. I tol’ him ‘No sir, Mr. Robinson, Mama hadn’t been able to afford goin’ to the dina in years so it’d be nice’.”

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“Did he touch you?”

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“No. Yes, I dunno. He kissed me... on the lips. Then, he slipped the shoulder off my dress wit’ his sticky fingers. That was all, I don’ undastan’ why he done that, but sure was happy he stopped there. I woulda fought him if he didn’t, I think. He’s so ol’, with that big nose of his and pelican neck. He’s ugly and it wasn’t right. He smells like gasoline up close, tasted like tabacci, and I never been kissed befo’.”

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“Never?”

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“No. I don’ even remember my own daddy kissin’ me.” She peered down at her dress again, fidgeting with the material.

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“Joe, will you kiss me?”

“What? Why? Why you want me ta kiss ya after that ol’ gizzard?”

She teared up again.

“Please, Joe. I don’ wan’ him to be my first kiss. I’d rather it be you.” Her eyes were filled

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with a world of hurt. And for the first time, I couldn’t pinpoint the exact feeling she felt, but looking back now, I know. I kissed her like a twelve-year-old would kiss a girl; filled with freedom, fear, and innocence. A kiss like the summers we spent running through Paine’s Prairie with the fireflies at sunset. A kiss under the moonlight and billions of stars. A kiss like how soothing the glades are on a calm, summer day. A kiss that made her feel like a kid again. Not like a little girl dressed like a grown woman —kissed by a man with longing in his pants. It was my first kiss, too, and I always wanted it to be her. She slept in my bed that night, and I didn’t touch her again, not like that kiss. I held her like you would a sibling or stray pup, and she snuck out before dawn crept in with the crying ripples of wrens. There was a soil smudge where she had rested her feet on my white sheets.