Point and Shoot, FL (YU)—Scrib was writing a book called The Volcanoes of Wakulla County, by analogy with The Bridges of Madison County.
Think of Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep in the movie.
Scrib threw a
field book and a trowel in a musette bag, threw the bag in the family car, an
Oldsmobile Cutlass station wagon, and drove over to
Well, Scrib’s car might or might not start. And it would be more accurate to think of Chris Cooper and Meryl Streep in Adaptation. With his pot belly and his missing teeth.
Scrib actually wrestled an alligator at Fackahatchee Strand when Brenda was looking for a white orchid in the swamp.
Or, no, he saw a bee-tree. From the boardwalk.
John Bennett used to call Scrib Albino Grizzly. Or Griz, for short.
Think of the Berserkers, or Wearers of the Bear Shirt, invincible in battle.
Or the Seminole Indian chief, Osceola, the Crier of the Black Drink, or Asi Yaholo.
Osceola was a war chief, not a hereditary chief. He was haole, or fearless. Recklessly valorous. He charged straight ahead, regardless of the danger.
The
George Bush’s grandfather stole Geronimo’s bones, for the Skull and Bones, at Yale.
All spies went to
Scrib had a
professor at Tulane, Robert Wauchope, who “carried a radio into
He wrote a book called Lost Tribes and Sunken Continents.
Nancy Marie White
wrote a book called Grit-Tempered: Early Women Archaeologists in the
Southeastern United States.
Scrib thought Scrib Online would be like a cross between Lost Tribes and Grit-Tempered. It would appeal to Old Southeast Hands and
parents of girls who want to be archeologists, or squat in the bushes and spy
on monkeys.
Who doesn’t want to do that?
Grit-Tempered
has a picture of the long-nosed god dancing, with a war club in one hand and an
enemy head in the other, and the dancer has tits.
Well, the society was matrilineal. The dancer could very well have been a woman.
Women were warriors.
Amazons cut off their right breast to
shoot a bow and arrow better. Unless
they were left-handed. Then they cut off
their left breast.
Griz carried a field book and trowel into
Williams Fish Camp.
No, Williams Fish Camp was in
But he dug on the Wakulla National
Wildlife Refuge, in St. Marks.
The Firetower site.
He set a book there. THE SOLID GOLD PECKERWOOD.
He set a screenplay there. Goodbye
to Archeology.
In Goodbye
to Archeology, he was digging at the Old Capitol in Tallahassee and he took
a break, in the cafeteria, of the New Capitol, and Governor Bob Graham was in
the building, in the cafeteria, shaking hands with state workers, in polyester
pants, short-sleeve shirts and neckties, pants suits for the ladies, and he
turned, with his hand out, and Griz looked at him like he must be daft, and the
governor froze.
Who was this hulking sluggard, blacking
out the sun. In his overalls, chore
coat, long johns, sweaters, muddy boots.
A security man with yellow shooting
glasses and a wire in his ear nudged Governor Graham and he bobbled off,
nodding and bowing like the glass bird that pecks water out of a water glass.
Griz was not shot. He made no sudden moves.
He stood perfectly still, like a bird dog,
hypnotized by a rattlesnake.
You could smell the pheromones, the male
testosterone, in the air, like static, clear-air turbulence, poison and earwax,
scabs of a lasting pox.
Gov. Graham is headliner at booksALIVE
tomorrow.
I wonder if I’ll see him there.
I wonder if he remembers me.
I look the same.
Albino Grizzly indeed.
Black Jack.
Author of black novels, black
memoirs. Black how-to guides.
You are asking the wrong question,
sir. Or the right question of the wrong
person.