Prologue ©

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CROWS ACROSS the SUN

Prologue:

This is the summer that everything changed. Some good , some bad. Both poured together in the mixing bowl of life, and stirred by a greater hand than mine. Producing a cake that was both bitter and sweet. And when its put on your plate you accept it and you eat it. There ain't no way around it. Its your plate and your portion . You just do the best you can with it for yourself and your fellowman. I was twelve that year and old enough to have a plate of my own. Knowing in my heart that I was wide open accountable for every bite I took.  The sweet went down real easy but the bitter was hard to swallow.

The river water was dark and deep. The secrets beneath its surface were deeper and darker still. History lay buried beneath the banks. A story stretching back to the Native Americans, river people who built their fires upon the sand.  Warriors who screamed battle cries toward the water. Later  shedding mingled tears of mourning into the muddy river as the New World evolved into a growth of pioneers and settlers.  Invaders who battled their way onto the banks as the River people faded away into a distant memory.

 After the civil war, the waters of the river enticed  northern carpetbaggers to stake claim to the sandy shores. In a further act of northern aggression, they swarmed into the south. Greedy men who established their textile mills along the pristine banks. Large brick mills , with quotas to meet forever changed the slow, sweet song of the south. Shabby villages sprouted and grew into small communities around the factories. And again the river tasted tears, sweat and blood as the mill hands  labored to feed their families. Working  only to find themselves in debt at the company store with lives enslaved to the big boss. It was a new kind of slavery enacted by the men who claimed they fought to end it. 

Prohibition brought speakeasy clubs.  The mill barrons quickly united to build their own illegal bars. They hid them deep in the high grassy lowlands beside the river. Wild nights and bloody fights were routine until prohibition ended and the rich men wandered back into the town. Fueled by greed and an insatiable hunger for power they took whatever they wanted. Supported by perverted judges  who wore  black robes to cover their black hearts and lawyers who became willing and wealthy accomplices. Still the river rolled on  keeping secrets and filling its depths with the gritty sins of men.

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The knee high grass waved in the light of the full moon. The blades running in ripples down to the sandy bank of the river.The reptile lay in the grass near the edge of water. Halfway down its body a large bulge distended its stomach.  A bullfrog lay dissolving in the snake's acidic bile. Full but not satisfied the viper raised its head . The moon light reflected in two beady red eyes with elliptical yellow pupils. 

Flicking its forked tongue and tasting the smell of the night  the creature began to slither through the grass. The sun rose and the rooster crowed just as the cotton mouth crawled out of the wet river bottom and into the weedy tobacco field. The viper hid itself in the thick grass entangled around a tobacco stalk. Wrapping its distended, corpulent body around the plant...it grew as still as death and waited.

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