“I’m tellin’ you, that man’s gotta be straight up bat shit crazy!” They all were leaving a convenience store, pulses still racing from their trip to Voodoo Village, a crazed little cul-de-sac in South Memphis. “Why else would you live like that? Crosses and statues and candles all over the place!”

They gathered around his car, each fiddling with their respective post-fright snacks.

She’d gone for the sorbet, and dug at it with one of those awkward, Popsicle stick spoons.

“No, I don’t think it’s like that.” It was the first time she’d spoken since they’d all sprinted out of Voodoo Village. “I don’t think it’s like that at all.”

She ate a bit of it, cooling her in the summer heat.

“You saw that place. You saw how those people live. None of use would last a day in that life. And so, ok, what if because of that life one day something in you breaks, breaks so bad you see God in the burning wick of a candle?

“Does that make you crazy? Or does it make you incredibly lucky because you got to see God.

“I think I would like to be that lucky.”

Memphis Note
Voodoo Village, one of the most haunted places in Memphis, or at least that’s what the urban legends would have you believe. In reality, it was an impoverished stretch of back-road known as Boxtown that’s been shoved aside and forgotten by the rest of the city. The name came from a fenced in compound at the end of the street decorated a rather eccentric manner, but really, which one of us isn’t eccentric in our own way?

Connie couldn’t watch, it was too much for her. She knew it was rude, but she turned her back on them when they came for her, waving her hand, motioning for them to go ahead and start.

Turned away, she heard them pick up the plates and start to eat. She glanced anxiously around the room, looking every where but at the judges. Cold, mean eyes stared back at her. The other contestants knew her double chocolate banana raspberry truffle nut bars were the best thing going. One of the contestants made a threatening gesture at Connie.

Panic rose in her throat. Had she ever walked away from her station? God only knows what those other women might’ve done to her precious batter when she wasn’t looking. They were like pit vipers, only worse. Pit vipers didn’t poison their own, and she knew the other contestants sure as hell would if it meant a better shot at that first place ribbon.

The sounds of chewing ceased, and she could hear the scratch of pens on score cards. She turned around, the judges nodded and she looked down. They’d eaten all of the bars. The ribbon was as good as hers.

Memphis Note
Every year at the Mid-South Fair, there are a myriad of cooking contests. Some constrain the cooks by only letting them use specific ingredients, some are open to anything. I’ve always wondered how cutthroat they got.

They called all of the first, second and third graders into the hall and made us stand in lines. Outside, it was black as night and the storm winds buffeted the cheap plastic panes in the windows. The teachers were using their very quiet, very stern voices, the ones that scared us even more than their yelling voices.

When we were all arranged and heads had been counted, we marched down the hall, out through a breezeway that was a cacophony from my nightmares, and into the old red brick and tile middle school.

Safely inside, we lined up again. This time against lockers taller than we were. I was at one end of my line. Being both the tallest and having a last name that started with a W, I was used to this sort of thing.

But, as they told us to kneel down, with our hands crossed over the back of our heads, facing the lockers, I wasn’t used to the eighth graders that lined up next to me.

Or the teenage girl, bigger than I in every way, crying and sweating. The liquid pooling on the floor under her head. This was all new to me.

Memphis Note
This one is straight biographical. The school in question is Holy Rosary, where I attended for first through eighth grade. For a while, I was petrified of storms. I’m fine with them now, even enjoy them. Especially the wind beforehand.