TRANSIT VISA: Down to the Thresholds

DOWN TO THE THRESHOLDS
Savannah, GA, February, 2012

I haven't talked to the man down the street. His presence on the block is big. It's his music that is our soundtrack now, cascading through all his open house portals. He screams in this way.
My brother doesn't mind the music. My brother says - He's in his pain body - ripping out shrubs, grinding stumps, wheeling all manner of things across his property in his wheelbarrow. My brother talks to him and reports - He's either going to put a shotgun in his mouth and pull the trigger, or listen to REALLY loud music - Sounds reasonable when you only think of these two options.
He's actually bought and moved into the house he grew up in. (Read that sentence again.) Here, only steps away, he tackles the ghosts of his shredded marriage, the wife and kids he left behind, or that left him behind, in Hawaii of all places. He sweats it out, bringing the old brick place back to beginnings. He rips vines from the facade. He un-greens the entire sloping front lawn. He throws open all of the doors and windows, even the dormers in the attic. He takes no pauses as he moves from task to task. He is on the offensive.
I secretly envy the style of his disaster. He's decided to go down to The Crossroads and look the Devil in the eye. Not so that he can become a virtuoso musician, although that may be part of the package of this kind of suffering, but just to stay alive.
But how does he manage to ward off the evil eyes of the mommies on the block, who cluster across the street with their strollers and threaten to call the police?
I assume he is on heavy alternating doses of  speed and sedatives because of the way he moves. Because of the way he sweats. But I don't really know.
I tell my brother - He's on drugs - as if I really do know.
I don't know much, except second hand, about failure on this scale since I am always circling, ringing on the outskirts of blood-ties, a moving target.
I pretend to be what I look like, woman with a purpose riding across his territory on my bike. I allow myself only a glimpse at this speed. I weary myself enough to sleep with TV, Ambien, spurts of exercise and meditation. I re-frame my narrative in the mornings until I have enough courage to get out of bed.
In my odd moments of clarity I try out narratives on him.
I conceive of him ripping up floorboards to find or hide magical figurines between brick pilings on an earthy crawl space under his kitchen floor. I see him at night fixating on one loose spot of old wire that dangles from the corner of the living room ceiling. He stands abruptly on a chair and yanks. He yanks until he has pulled the wire across the length of the line where ceiling and wall meet. He pulls it up and over an archway following the line of the trim. Shards spit up from layers of paint that have hidden the ancient braided cord. He yanks until he has coils of the oddly springing stuff at his feet, like lassos that jump behind him as he moves through his rooms. He doesn't speak. When he finds the cord's final exit from the house he kneels. With his eyes closed he pushes himself through the hole in the wall following the trails worn by the tiny feet he hears at night scampering through interior passageways.

He has hacked his high bamboo back and now there is a visible pass-through, an actual path to his back property. It is a visual invitation. All of his gestures can be seen as invitations, but at a pitch only a counter pitch can detect. The music, the yard work, the open windows and doors, say 'welcome', but also 'beware.' One is stunned by the static generated, like an electric fence surrounding his property.

I feel the pull of him on my old mechanics: Man in desperate circumstances seeks hero-woman he can eventually discard when done. His gestures read come here/go away simultaneously. This is the pitch I've been trained to respond to since birth. It's a DNA match. I'm not so sure I don't send the exact complementary signals out to the world: Hero-woman rambles and needs to fixate on needy man in desperate circumstances who will discard her when done.

But who isn't in desperate circumstances? Woman quietly endures anxiety, doubt, and pain. She is alone, nearly penniless, in her brother's house in a strange city for the holidays. On the balmy 24th of December old Bing Crosby Christmas Carols careen out of the flung windows across the street. A cry for help? Hard to say how ironic the moment was. Their street was deserted, which made the music even more pointed - at something. And if they were the only two people left in the world on this day, why shouldn't she just walk over with a covered dish in her hands, arrive at his door, and say 'I understand?' But the perfect moment passed, as they do.

This is what would happen in the perfect world when I hear Bing's voice and walk across the street with an iced cake covered in tin foil. There's no answer when I ring the front bell. I walk around and take the entrance through the high bamboo. A warm wind rustles the papery leaves. Just then I hear the shot. I don't even throw the pyrex dish to the ground. I run into his clearing and see that his head isn't blown off. I am not afraid, even though he is brandishing a shotgun. He says something like - Jesus Christ! -And I say something like, - I made you a cake - and I hold it forward in my outstretched arms.
Our DNA strands lock. I help him bury the mole he shot. He promises never to do it again. We date slowly at first. I empty mixing bowls of his vomit, and press cold, wet towels to his forehead, while he gets off the speed and sedatives. I hold him while he weeps. He holds me while I weep. We like the same movies and TV shows. His kids come to visit and like me better than their mom. He has old Georgia money. We publish my book, which HBO picks up for a mini-series, although it's mainly about the mole.My brother says, - You guys were meant for each other - and he means it in a good way.

One night he takes his old acoustic guitar out of the case in the attic and his fingers fly, unstoppable, drowning out the warning horn of the oncoming train. Elegba rides on these metal finger tightropes. Elegba flies on these finger-picked notes.

It's not the Devil you meet at the crossroads, but it's patron saint, straight from Nigeria.  Elegba, trickster, jester, sits at the point of transition. He is the center of the crossroads, dwelling exactly at the decision point. He is the owner of all roads, doors, thresholds, all destiny and disorder. He is the time traveller who can speak in tongues, change genders, summon ancestors, and cure sickness. His mediation with the higher worlds makes things happen. He waits for you to meet the consequence of your choice. He is the roll of the dice and the numbers that fall.