This is my FaceBook post for the Ides of March 2022. I had been on my way to Emory University in Atlanta to research a play I am writing about Stanley Edgar Hyman’s summer ‘65 visit to Andalusia Farm with his wife. He was to research a book he’d been commissioned by the University of Minnesota Press to write about the recently deceased Flannery O’Connor. His wife was none other than the tarot-reading master of horror, Shirley Jackson–and she drove. In retrospect, my play’s premise amounts to a foreshadowing of the events to follow. At the time, however, the perilous and macabre character of my journey to Georgia darkly filtered my view of my quest. So much so that I had considered cutting my trip short after my visit to Andalusia Farm the next day. I had seen that it was supposed to rain the entire day I was in Milledgeville and figured I would visit early enough to start driving home afterward.
The docent-led tour was pleasant enough, but I had hoped to have more time to actually spend in the rooms without being yammered at. I was relieved when it was over. Being allowed to toddle the grounds to my heart’s content without a tour guide definitely suited me better. I could see that the clouds were dirty gray and burgeoning. A few drops spattered on my umbrella as I made my way around the house and towards the farm outbuildings, and my biggest thought was that I was glad to be leaving soon. Then, I looked up to actually see where I was headed–and stopped cold. As I did, this shaft of hot golden sunlight pierced through the oppressive clouds and pushed them apart until gorgeous patches of Montana-blue sky spread out above me.
Gleaming before me stood a slightly off-kilter barn with a massive, yawning, megalodon’s maw of a hayloft. A bone-deep recognition struck through me as soon as I saw it: That was Hulga’s hayloft. With equal parts reverence and reluctance, I approached the hayloft and began to document the building…and spent a few more hours documenting the rest of the farm. With every photo I took, I became increasingly aware that I was actually SEEING what Flannery O’Connor’s fictional world looked like. The Ur-type of every homestead building for every farm she ever wrote about was all around me, strewn about like a haphazard temple complex: farmhouse, horse barn, milking shed, foreboding woods, peaceful pond, servants’ quarters, equipment barn, and bluffs overlooking fields that can seem fruitful or blighted defending on the light. It dawned on me that I would never again read O'Connor’s stories the same way I had been–especially “Good Country People.”
And that gorgeous light held. It would continue to hold for my entire visit to Milledgeville, which included a visit to her church and a visit to her grave. The outdoor Jesus statue at the church was badly mutilated. Instead of fixing it, they posted an excerpt by St. Teresa of Avila about how "Christ has no body but yours. No hands, no feet on this Earth but yours." That creates a very nice effect, I think. The Blessed Virgin Mary was in fine shape, fortunately, with live flowers on her altar and everything. I concluded my visit with a trip to pay my respects at Flannery O’Connor’s gravesite. I had forgotten flowers, so I left her a gel ink pen in my favorite color: peacock blue. As I began walking away from Flannery’s grave, I resolved to finish my research trip. Then the sound of thunder boomed faintly in the distance and the skies darkened. The first drops of what would become a very heavy rain began to fall just as I pulled away from the graveyard and began the drive back to my Air BnB.
(In fact, I ended up very quickly finding exactly what I was looking for during my next visit to the Hester archive–it confirmed what I had thought and revealed a few new possibilities as well.)
It's been a VERY Flannery O'Connor trip so far, let me tell you. I spent two incredibly productive days in the archive, and I hit Milledgeville tomorrow. However, the drive down here was hellish and exhausting and kind of had all the horror and shock of an O'Connor story. I'm still not sure what to make of it. Barring the marvelous, miraculous, amazing, or just plain awesome happening to perk me the heck up sometime tomorrow, I might leave early even though I *really* need a vacation.
It started all the way back in Oklahoma. En route to Dallas from the pet sitter's house in Drumright, Google Maps shunted me away from highways and onto these two-lane state highway roads…and through two of Oklahoma’s historic sundown towns. I had to stop at one for gas and let me just tell you, my enby/pansexual bumper sticker driving self was lucky to get out of there rather than be chased out by a gaggle of those monstrous Ford F150s driven by actual kkklansmen. All to save me the 20 minutes it would have taken to route me toward a proper interstate with exits and gas stations. Christ was that a tense and nerve-wracking 4 hours to the Texas border. I am definitely re-acquainting myself with using paper maps in the near future. The pucker factor for that drive was about 10+ and my back was sore when I got to my brother’s. Then, Thursday night, freak weather rolled in for Friday daytime that forced me to delay my trip till Saturday.
That is why I was still around to force my typical Wilkerson man of a brother to go to the E/R at 11pm on account of the pre-heart attack chest pains he was planning to ignore to death. After we got there, all I could do in that E/R was hand-hold and pray for my brother not to die. He shook off a coronary for the next three hours...and won. But in the middle of that, my pet-sitter messages me that my animals are giving her an anxiety attack and that she needs to ask a friend to watch one of them. While I am in the E/R tryna focus on supporting my brother. I agreed and then stopped the conversation-- I just couldn’t continue it while my brother was fighting for his life. Thankfully, he was cleared and released later that morning. So I went ahead and traveled on to Jackson. My animals are okay and things have worked out after all, but wow did I not need to deal with that while also holding on to my brother for dear life.
On the way to Jackson, I witnessed the most hideous and traumatic highway accident I could ever imagine, and I am having trouble sleeping because of it. It happened on Highway 20 just east of Shreveport. A whole pack of 8 stupid SUVs and trucks was knotted together behind and beside a horse trailer. The trailer was crowded all the way over to the far left of 4 lanes. I watched in horror as the gate of the horse trailer flung open. Fifty feet in front of me to my left. I immediately laid on the horn so people might pay attention. Then I slowed down and switched lanes. The Charger behind the trailer didn’t do that. Neither did anybody else. I mean, nobody even thought to even speed up and break the pack so people COULD move. Or slow the hell down and change lanes. Nope. They all just kept speed and refused to move at all–fully intending to just plow through that little thing because they could survive.
For about a minute that poor little horse struggled to stay in the trailer. She was a pony, maybe 5 feet tall. All I could do was scream and beg God to not let this happen. God was busy, I guess, because after about a minute of struggle, she fell out. Then she was repeatedly battered by every one of those stupid, selfish, groupthink pack drivers as she cut across all four lanes of traffic before collapsing on the other side of the highway. The last one hit her chest-high; it was a goddamn dually Ford F150 cruising by in the fourth lane, knowing he could just blow right over her with no damage. So he did. It was the most horrific thing I have ever witnessed. Because I had been driving on a highway of craven idiots, I really had no choice but to keep my eyes open the whole time as it happened. No matter how much I really just wanted to look away.
I didn’t consciously choose what came next. All I can tell you is that before I knew it, I was pulling over–driven by some inner conviction that absolutely nothing and no one deserves to die like that. I guess I just decided that like hell was that poor thing dying alone on the roadside if I could help it. Not after a harrowing and agonizing ordeal like that. If I could do absolutely nothing else, I could at least be there. So I pulled over and went back to her. As I walked, the most ridiculous line of thought set upon me: “Are you there, Epona? It’s me, Doc. If you’re there–please please please take this pony somewhere nice because she sure does deserve it.”
My feet tripped over each other as I stumbled back to her as quickly as humanly possible. The pony was dark chocolate brown with patches of coffee slathered like camo across her upper chest and hindquarters. Her luxurious, glossy mane was a dark ruddy brown. A few comet-shaped white spots scattered across her, like stars hurled from the heavens that landed on her and liked it there. I did know that there had been a rodeo in East Texas that day, and I surmised this is where she had come from. As I neared, I saw she had been in good, exercised, healthy condition; recently shod, too. By the time I got to her, she was spasmodically and violently heaving. As I crouched near her head, a violent tsunami of blood gushed and gurgled out of her mouth and snout. It did not stop. At all. It just kept going the whole time I sat there. Stroking her neck and murmuring as calmly as I could muster, I waited. There was this strong sense of terror, agony, desperate confusion…and a mighty desire to live. She really, really wanted to live. There was just no way that was going to happen, and I knew it…that’s when I just finally broke down bawling.
It took 20 minutes for 911 to answer. Meanwhile, I would periodically abandon my post to try and flag a decent person down. To be honest, north Louisiana is gun territory, and I was really hoping someone would pull over and be willing to put this poor creature out of its misery. No such luck. A good woman named Jennifer did pull over. She asked if I was okay and then joined me at the neck of the doomed rodeo pony. Together, we murmured and patted and stroked that pony’s neck. Jennifer told me other horses had somehow escaped their trailers along that same highway for the past 30 miles. I remembered noticing horses being rounded up off the highway, but I never could have imagined that something like this was the reason. I now wonder if it might have been some sort of insurance scam. All I can really think is that if this wasn’t one of the most awful of all possible freak accidents, then I sincerely hope that whoever is responsible for what happened to that sweet girl pays dearly for it.
After forever, the Sheriff finally showed up. I wanted to stay there while they put her down, but they wouldn’t let me. Cops in the South won’t put down horses in front of a “lady.” It dawned on me that the longer I stayed, the longer this pony would suffer. With Jennifer’s urging, I abandoned my post and beat feet out of there as fast as possible. She did the same. Knowing a swift exit was the kindest thing I could do is probably what made me calm, alert, bright, and remarkably fine to drive, so I did. I did not stop. I did not look back. The route to Jackson was otherwise uneventful.
I’d almost forgotten about what happened until later on in my hotel room. I noticed that the clerk had looked at me funny when I checked in. He’d asked me if anything was wrong, and before I could even think of anything to say, the words “I dealt with an awful road accident earlier” flew out of my mouth. “Oh,” he said as he handed me the paper to sign. His expression had changed and he seemed relieved for some reason. Whatever, right? The slog to get my crap out of my car and into my room took a while. I passed a few other guests in the hall. They looked at me with concern as well. I was too tired to be worried about what other people thought after the day I had, and their responses irked me. I passed into my room and stashed my stuff as quickly as I could. As I was taking the luggage cart out of my room, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Stopped me cold. I had forgotten that at one point, the horse had vented a fine arterial mist. The breeze had blown some of it back onto my face, arms, chest, and knees. THAT was what everyone had been noticing. It washed off or me easily enough, but there is still blood spatter on the outfit I was wearing.
For once, though, I feel grateful for my tendency to overpack. I really hope something neat happens tomorrow, if for no other reasons than I need it and I’m not sure I’m ready to drive back just yet even if I end up feeling ready to leave early.
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