share what we got. You like kudzu?
______________________________
Finegan is seated at a picnic bench, talking to several adults either
seated on the bench or on the ground in front of Finegan. They are all
telling tales. Joey is kicking a ball around on the ground with some
other boys his age in the background. In the foreground a woman is
preparing a picnic table, clearing dishes that have been washed and
dried from the last meal away and handing them to a girl to set them
aside on a rack.
Four men walk up with a kudzu tuber in a sling, one man on each corner
of the sling. An immense 100-pound kudzu tuber conglomeration is in the
middle of the sling, roots sticking out in every direction. The men
heave it onto the empty picnic table, while the woman and girl bring
buckets of water from the shore to slosh over the tuber mass, scrubbing
any dirt away with brushes. A man comes with a machete knife and begins
to hack at the tubers, breaking the mass into potato sized chunks.
Periodically they step back and let the woman and girl collect the
chunks in their hands and walk to the boiling pot, tossing the chunks
in.
The Kudzu King says,
. . Been our salvation. Like taters. And the
leaves too. That’s fer supper. Kind’a plain but
steady. I still miss biscuits ‘n gravy. Dream
on that.
129
A dairy cow is lead past on her way to being milked. The Kudzu King
says,
. . About ate all them cows. . . Ate everything
in sight. But BillyBob took a stand when they
came for his prize bull. Said they’d have ta
take him first. Good thing too. We still got
milk for the kids.
The Kudzu King flashes Finegan a grin.
BillyBob lived like a king on stud fees too,
fer awhile. Had saved the last damn bull.
Them cows pasture in the kudzu patch too.
Finegan asks,
No downside, eh?
The Kudzu King responds.
Um . . A patch of this stuff can be home to
snakes and vermin. Can’t see ‘um. I’ll show you
after breakfast. We’ll go on patrol.
Joey comes up with a plate filled with what looks like mashed potatoes
and a glass of milk for Finegan, while the girl helping with breakfast
brings the same for the Kudzu King. While the Kudzu King is stuffing
his face, Finegan poses another burning curiosity question, waving his
fork in the direction of the crushed car piles.
How’d you come to be living up high. I mean . .
you didn’t drive ‘em up there.
The Kudzu King looks up through his eyebrows and swallows, pausing in
his ravenous eating, waving his fork in that direction too as he
explains.
We saw the waters a’risin. An the kudzu eating
the trees. Them cranes still had some gas in
130
‘em, so we lifted the hulks waitin to be
crushed.
Returning to his mashed potatoes again, he gives a final wave of his
fork and a glance toward the car piles.
We got the air. And the snakes don’t bother us
cause the vermin don’t live there. Nothing to
eat.
The Kudzu King swings his fork toward the woods behind them.
They like the woods. The rats eat the bugs and
the snakes eat the rats and bugs don’t live on
metal.
The Kudzu King shakes his head while he returns to stuffing his mouth.
That’s where we’d be, if’en it twern’t for the
car piles. Hell of a place. I’ll show you right
after breakfast here.
______________________________
The Kudzu King and several other men are ready for patrol. They are
carrying knives, machetes, an ax, a boomerang, and a length of chain –
any weapons they can find. One of the men has a large empty net thrown
over his shoulder. Another carries a couple shovels. And yet another
carries the sling used to bring the kudzu tubers to the breakfast
table. Finegan walks up armed with the houseboat club. She asks,
Are we going to war?
The Kudzu King says,
That about says it.
An outdoor school is being conducted behind the men. The schoolmarm has
a chalkboard to the side and is writing words down, having the children
recite the words and discuss their meaning. Joey is sitting among the
children who range in age from 3 to 15. The schoolmarm has written
“sympathy” on the board. All the children say “sympathy” in unison. He
asks,
Who can tell me what this means?
The schoolmarm nods at one of the older children. The student says,
It means feeling what the other person feels.
The schoolmarm says,
Very good! Sympathy has a similar sound to
another word, which is . .
One of the younger children leaps up with the answer, hand in the air.
Empathy!
The schoolmarm writes the word “empathy” on the board and under this
the word “pathos”.
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Excellent! They both have the same root –
pathy, sympathy, empathy, or from the Greek
word pathos. Pathos is pity or suffering. See
how we can often figure out what a word means
by knowing a common root?
The patrol is marching off toward the kudzu forest, the sound of
singing insects drowning out the sounds of the classroom. The group of
men on patrol are walking along a well-worn path through the kudzu
forest. On either side are towering kudzu covered trees, which stand
like spires as the branches of the trees have rotted, only the trunk
remaining. They come to the area where the kudzu root and the greenery
the root system supports have been harvested. A large open area of
sandy red clay soil the size of a suburban back yard has holes and
piles of dirt where the digging recently occurred.
The Kudzu King cautiously approaches the side of this open area, ax in
hand. The rest of the group hangs back, but appears to be at the ready.
The Kudzu King grabs a vine where it comes out of the ground and hacks
at it, stepping backward toward the group, dragging the severed vine
with him. A bird flies out of the kudzu patch, startling some of the
men, who are tense. The man with the net spreads the net open while