Louisiana’s Way Home: Chapters 1–5

We were about to change states, and Granny was still driving as fast as she could, leaning close to the windshield because her eyesight is not very good and she is too vain to wear glasses, and also because she is very short (shorter, almost, than I am) and she has to lean close to reach the gas pedal.

In any case, the sun was bright. It was lighting up the splotches and stains on the windshield and making them look like glow-in-the-dark stars that someone had pasted there as a surprise for me.

“Because the hour of reckoning has arrived,” said Granny in a very serious voice, “and the curse at last must be confronted.”

At this point in my account of what became of me, it is necessary for you to know that Archie is my cat and that Granny has taken him from me before.
Yes, taken! It is truly a tragic tale.

“Provisions have been made,” said Granny.
“What sort of provisions?”

She has never heeded anyone’s commands.

But in the end, it didn’t matter that Granny refused to stop the car, because fate intervened.

If you have not left your home in the middle of the night without even giving it a backward glance; if you have not left your cat and your friends and also a one-eyed dog named Buddy without getting to tell any of them good-bye; if you have not stood on the side of the road in Georgia, somewhere just past the irrevocable state line, and waited for someone to come along and give you a ride, well, then you cannot understand the desperation that was in my heart that day.

If you have not left your home in the middle of the night without even giving it a backward glance; if you have not left your cat and your friends and also a one-eyed dog named Buddy without getting to tell any of them good-bye; if you have not stood on the side of the road in Georgia, somewhere just past the irrevocable state line, and waited for someone to come along and give you a ride, well, then you cannot understand the desperation that was in my heart that day.

Which is exactly why I am writing all of this down.
So that you will understand the desperation—the utter devastation—in my heart.

“Now is not the time,” said Granny. “This conversation is inopportune. I feel extremely unwell. But nonetheless, I am persevering. As should you.”

“Now is not the time,” said Granny. “This conversation is inopportune. I feel extremely unwell. But nonetheless, I am persevering. As should you.”

“Good morning, George LaTrell,” said Granny. “It seems we have miscalculated and run entirely out of gasoline.”

“Could we impose upon you for a ride to the nearest gas station and back again?” said Granny.
“You could impose upon me,” said George LaTrell.

She said it was a scientifically proven fact.
I doubted it very sincerely.

What if I was destined to never again stand in front of those people (and that cat and that dog) and say their names out loud to them?

The chair made a squeaky exasperated noise as it rolled toward me.

Granny always said, “Ask the price exactly as if you intend to pay.”

In some ways, this is a story of woe and confusion, but it is also a story of joy and kindness and free peanuts.

“You can shun me, Louisiana,” she said. “You can turn your face away from me, but it does not change my abiding love for you.”

“You can shun me, Louisiana,” she said. “You can turn your face away from me, but it does not change my abiding love for you.”

“Do not worry,” said Granny. “I am working toward our date with destiny, but I must tell you that I feel somewhat hobbled by my unwellness.”

She said, “Oh, my tooth, my tooth. Oh, it is the curse of my father.”
Which did not make any sense at all.
Because the curse of Granny’s father is not a tooth curse. It is a curse of sundering.

The curse came about because my great-grandfather (the magician) sawed my great-grandmother in half and refused to put her back together again. Onstage. In front of an audience.
This, as you can imagine, had disastrous and far-reaching consequences.

Most people don’t know this, but Pinocchio kills the cricket right in the beginning of the story. Yes, kills him—with a mallet!

Can you imagine being the ghost of a cricket? That has got to be the most insubstantial thing of all.

I did not offer Granny any comfort to speak of.
And what can I say in my defense except that I was very angry and also that I was doing my best under difficult circumstances?

How could a town have a taxidermist in a pink cement building but not have a dentist?

I saw a woman walking her dog down the side of the road, and I felt a pang.
Who was taking care of Archie the cat?

I did this by depressing the brake pedal very carefully and very slowly.

“That is an irrelevant question at this juncture,” I said.

“That is an irrelevant question at this juncture,” I said.

“The situation is dire.”
Granny moaned from the back seat, as if working to prove my point.

Ernest had a very handsome tail. It was burnished apricot in color.

Ernest waved his impressive tail. I rolled up the window.