Note: Copyright Graeme Smith, the owner of this site.

Prologue

I’m not sayin’ Momma was a witch. I’m just not sure I can say she wasn’t. Or that I care. See—I never knew my daddy. Momma told me she didn’t neither. Said he weren’t nobody at all. Said she got what she needed from him to make me, an’ she left him sleepin’, a smile on his face and an empty pocket where his wallet used to be. “Details, boy. Know what you gotta do, and how to do it. You won’t always know why. But that ain’t no excuse for stayin’ in bed. Big pictures—they’s for hangin’ on walls an’ never lookin’ at.” That was Momma.

When Momma went through the sixties, the sixties never really knew what hit ‘em. If you could smoke it, jab it, swallow it or rub it on, she did it. Growin’ up, there was always stuff round the house. Except tobacco. Momma didn’t give a damn if I tried any of the rest of it—but she caught me with a cigarette once. She whupped me good. “That stuff’ she said “That stuff—it tastes sweet. But it ties you up, boy. Ropes of tar—they ties you up, and they chokes you. There’s folks like that too—an’ them as aint folks at all. They’ll show you white sugar an’ roses. Roses? They got thorns. Sugar? You ever see sugar get too much cookin’ boy? Those folks, an’ those not folks too, they’ll tie you up in ropes of tar just as bad. Yeah, there’s other things. I done most all of ‘em. You take too much, they kill you. You don’t choose to stop, you kills your own self, even if’n you keep breathin’.” Then she whupped me again. Only time she ever did, and I remembered. An’ I never smoked no cigarette not ever gain. See, Momma never did a damn thing weren’t real important, nor said it neither, ‘specially when it looked like it weren’t nothin’ at all.

After Momma had finished showin’ the sixties what for, she rattled round ‘til she ended up back where she came from. Those Creedence boys didn’t have nothin’ on her. She said she was born on the Bayou before there was a Bayou to be born on. I’d had some schoolin’ then, so I felt kinda smart-ass. Told her she’d have to be four hundred years and more old for that, and she sure was lookin’ good on it if she was. She just raised an eyebrow, and said “So?” Then she smiled. Me, I expected another whuppin’.

I didn’t get one.

It was Momma as first called me ‘Sephir’. Said it meant ‘dark knowledge’. I wasn’t quite so smart-ass by then, and asked her why. She said that was a damn good question. Never answered it, mind. Then one day, she gave me somethin’. A kaleidoscope. I spent days turnin’ it and twistin’ it. Then one day, there it was. Damned if I can remember it, but it was there. Just a pattern, but so pretty, so bright… about as damn perfect as a thing could be. I went to mom, holdin’ it real careful, and showed her. She looked at it, and looked at me. She said “What if I told you all those little coloured bits of glass weren’t glass? What if I told you they was diamonds and rubies and emeralds and such? You could break it open, and find out how it works, and you’d have all them stones right in your hand. You’d be rich as rich.” Then she waited. I looked at the pattern again, and I looked at Momma. Right then, I knew the thing weren’t full of no bits of glass. I just shook my head. So she looked at it again—the pattern. And she said “Well, it sure is pretty, right? So how about you get some glue, an’ you fix it? You glue the end, so it never turns again? Then you’d always be able to look at it, just like it is, right?” So I looked at the kaleidoscope. Looked at the pattern. It was just so damn perfect. But I knew mom. An’ like I said. I ain’t saying she was a witch—but folks as said she wasn’t tended to end up ‘gator meat. An’ Momma often said there weren’t no number more magic than three, and Momma, she’d spoken twice. So I waited some more. And Momma got a look in her eye, like I’d done somethin’ real smart. And she said “Or I could just give it back to you. And you could turn it and turn it, but you’d never see this pattern ever again. An’ you’d never be rich. But every turn would be some new one.” And then she waited, and it was three times she’d spoken, and I knew she weren’t goin’ to speak again. So I looked at that kaleidoscope, and I looked at Momma. And I didn’t put the thing to my eye, but I reached out and took hold of her hands, real gentle like. And I twisted the end of the damn thing. I kept lookin’ at her as I twisted it, and twisted—all the little beads of probably-not-glass shifting and rattling. And the rattles, they got louder and louder, ‘til they weren’t rattles no more, and the sound of a hundred hundred bees was in the air, though there wasn’t a bee I could see in the shack.

And I put the kaleidoscope to my eye, and I kept on twistin’, all the little beads falling and dancing—and I kept on twisting. Right then, I knew I’d never see that pattern, that perfect looking thing, ever again. And I knew, like Momma said, I’d never have what was inside. Never know how it worked. And I knew I wasn’t twisting the barrel to bring it back—I knew the patterns the beads made was just them takin’ a breath while they thought of some new one. And that that was right. That was how it was.

Momma—she smiled again. It weren’t glad, and it weren’t sad. It was just—there. And she said “So.” Just that. “So.”

Where we was, what wasn’t ‘gators was trees. Momma used to say, you knew a tree, it’d make you a friend. You knew a gator, it’d make you lunch. But that wasn’t it. Because just about every tree where Momma was, it had a beehive. They’d buzz all the day, and they’d buzz all the night. I asked her about the bees, like the gators and the trees. She just did her eyebrow thing, and said what she always said. “Good question, boy.”

My fifteenth birthday, Momma gave it to me. My first sax. I asked her what the heck I was supposed to do with it, and she said “Damned if I know, boy. It’s yours. You figure it out.” We was Cajun, and there ain’t no sax in Zydeco. But Momma had an old wind up player, and some Leadbelly. I was sold. I’d sit there with my sax, and I’d blow. The bees would buzz—and they’d buzz louder. I figured they liked it, Momma said they was tryin’ to drown me out. She was kiddin’. Actually, she probably wasn’t—them bees sure knew their flats from their sharps. Momma got me some music classes in town with Mr Joe-Bob, who taught it in the school I never went to. So I knew my notes an’ sheet, but my sax somehow didn’t believe me, however much I tried. I’d blow and I’d blow, and that sax sounded more like a dyin’ cat than Hank Crawford. But I kept blowin’. Well. ‘Til now.

It was a bright day, the day Momma left me. A bright day, and a dark one. That’s how it was round Momma. Nothin’ was just one thing or the other. She called me from where I was out blowin’, and she said “Boy, it’s time. You’re leavin’.” I didn’t know what the heck she was talking about. I told her I wasn’t going anywhere. She said “It ain’t like that. It’s me that ain’t goin’. It’s just how it is.” Then she got serious. Real serious. “They’s comin’, boy. An’ you ain’t ready yet, but that don’t matter none. ‘Cos you cain’t hide no more.” I asked her what she meant, but she just did the eyebrow thing. “Good question.” She said. Then she said the other thing. Her voice was real soft. Real soft, and kinda wistful. “Hey boy” she said. “Hey, boy. Can you hear the bees?” I looked out of the window, because for the first time, I couldn’t. Not a bee was buzzing. Not a one. I looked back at Momma—and I could tell she’d already said the last thing she was ever goin’ to say to me.

I put her in the ground. The bees—they was gone. But I put her under the biggest tree, where the biggest hive still was. It felt right. Then I took off. Just me, my sax—and a lot of nights killing cats. Until…

Until tonight.

But tonight—tonight won’t make no sense. Not yet, an’ maybe not ever. But tonight didn’t get to be tonight without a whole mess of yesterdays—an I sure made a mess of most of ‘em. So maybe we shouldn’t be here, at least not yet. Maybe we should take us a little trip first.

Welcome to my yesterdays.