I Have Hope In Weeds

By Bill Coolidge

The sun is engulfed by the sweaty green water oaks. The water moves from west to east, steady, rising along the riverbank. When it rains, the quiet tides of the Pamlico Sound reach back to Greenville, sinking beneath the fresh water coming off the hilly terrain of the Piedmont, creating brackish water.

I’m standing on a dock next to the Tar River. She becomes the Pamlico 20 miles downstream and then widens into a mouth several miles across becoming the Pamlico Sound. This edge where fresh and salt water intermingle stays ambiguous until the sound reaches the inlets of the Atlantic Ocean.

The water is tranquil today, small fish and minnows are swimming around the piers. Three years ago this river rampaged, leapt the banks, flooded houses, apartments, and streets. The rains continued, the water stayed, covering the airport, parks, industrial buildings, farms. One village was swept away. Crabs and other crustaceans who dwelt on the bottom of the Pamlico Sound were overcome by fresh water. Cows, horses, pigs, cats, and dogs floated away, a jetsam of death covered the land. Hurricane Floyd.

When I ask neighbors where they were when the floods came, the youngsters get excited and speak rapidly about friends’ losses, the electricity out, school delayed. The older ones eyes’ make a half-circle upward and then turn away from my vision. A vacating, a time when no god was present.

There are houses up the street from where I stand that are still boarded up, plywood for windows, foundations and crawl spaces washed clean. Weeds are making this an urban wilderness. No families will return. The city will bulldoze a nearby apartment complex next week.

Where do the memories of the flood reside? We had a big rain last week, water flowed up into my back yard. "Flood dogs" in my neighborhood (lost then adopted after the flood) stayed inside, crawled under beds. I’ve talked to several people who lost their homes. Do their thoughts return to a special memory, a living room, a bedroom, or kitchen? Could there be any fond memories? Or just ones of pain and loss?

I have hope in weeds. Yesterday I walked the hard packed clay roads along this river, noticing a slatted wood screen door, singularly hinged, on a faded yellow clapboard house. Feral cats crept along the cinderblock foundation. Life returning to the wild.

I once purchased an abandoned farm. Ten years after repair and restoration it looked good. I let some outbuildings collapse, jacked up the old barn, put in electricity and dug a well for the farmhouse, mowed the lawn, put in a pasture for the goats, bounded the honeysuckle. The old farm had a millhouse, long fallen in. The millrace had river birch growing. The mill pond dried up. Nobody had lived there for over 30 years.

After those ten years of hard work, on a hot summer day, a long line of cars and pick-up trucks slowly gravitated down my driveway, not stirring up the dust. Careful like. An older guy, Texas hat on, cowboy boots, dark blue pants, white shirt with a string tie, got out, his hand swiftly passing across his forehead, wiping away some sweat. He stepped forward while I leaned on a hoe.

"I’m Chester Brooks," his left hand spreading backward and pointing. "We’re having a family reunion across the river and we heard you had fixed up the old family place. My parents lived and died here back in the 1950s. We came back to see what has been made of it. We heard someone had moved in, but oh my." He took out a white handkerchief and caressed his forehead, delicately dabbing his reddened eyelids.

When I had purchased this farm, thirty years ago there had been two fires. One took down the old mill. The second consumed the kitchen, separated from the farmhouse. Only the chimneys were left. It must have been the second fire that took Mr. Brook’s parents off this piece of land, creating the long vacancy.

Along the Tar River, the weeds returned first, greening the pale clay. The nailed plywood on windows turned gray. Morning glories climbed the faded yellow house as if springing from a deep sleep with a smart summer rise.

What is it the weeds are announcing? The storm is over? Forgotten? Not hardly. Just a simple message probably. The earth first harbors and tucks in, waits, then secretes in little spasms, fingerlings of hope. Not a return to what once was, for all that has been washed away. It is a sense of becoming. First come the weeds, then the wildflowers, the honeysuckle, the morning glories, the blackberries, and the pine. Like painting a canvas, nature gradually fills in the details.