The Countryside
There is something about the Florida countryside that I find a bit unnerving. I went to a party at my husband’s friend’s house. It was out in the country. It took us an hour to get there. They were nice people; I had never met them before. They had a nice house. They had a lot of land out in the middle of nowhere.
The trailers on cement blocks and practically falling down houses we passed to get to their house disturbed me. I wondered were my husband was taking me and if I would survive. Because I’m a black woman, I try to stay out of redneck neighborhoods. I don’t have anything against rednecks. We run in different circles. I leave them alone and they leave me alone.
When we turned down the small dirt trail in the woods that led to the house, I felt unsettled. Maybe I saw “Deliverance” too many times. (Okay, I only say it once but that was once too many for me.) “I’m not going to get killed here, am I?” I asked my husband.
“You’ll be fine,” he responded. To the left of the narrow dirt trail was a chain link fence that hopefully held in their neighbor’s seventeen dogs.
The party was good. The people were friendly. The food was good. There was a bonfire and live music. There was the sound of a chainsaw in the distance that lasted late into the night. Who saws wood in the dark? That sound reminded me not to get too comfortable.
