Of Cults and Klans

“Just make a place for it on the table,” Aunt Eloise said over her shoulder.

I set the deep-dish blackberry cobbler next to an apple pie, then walked around to the sink to say hello to my aunt.

“What’re you making?”

Aunt Eloise turned her head to me and smiled. “I’d give you a hug, Roland, but my hands are all wet,” she said, still washing the chicken we’d have with dinner.

Mom came into the kitchen, saw the cobbler on the table, looked up toward the ceiling, then at me. A strip of flypaper hung from the light fixture above, dead flies glued in place, others still alive, stuck by just one wing. It was a disgusting thing to see hanging over the food.

Mom picked up the cobbler and set it on a side counter. “What can I do to help, Eloise?” she asked.

Aunt Eloise put the cleaned chicken on a cutting board beside the sink and dried her hands on the apron. “Well, those potatoes are cooled enough to cube, if you want to get started on the potato salad. I’ll cut up this chicken and get it fried.” She took a big knife from the cutlery drawer and started in on the chicken. She had a bowl of corn meal and flour to roll the pieces in.

“Roland, it’s awfully hot in here. Mark’s out back if you want to go outside. We’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”

“Okay. I’ll find something to do.”

“What you can do,” mom said, “is pick more blackberries so I can make another cobbler. Just fill this,” and she picked up a split-wood basket that Aunt Eloise used in the vegetable garden, “and that should be enough.”

“Okay,” I replied.” Deep-dish blackberry cobbler was my favorite dessert, especially with ice cream on top, so I took the basket and went out through the screen door. There were tears and small holes in the screen, which explained the flies in the kitchen.

Mark wasn’t in the back yard, so I started toward the barn; the blackberry patch was back there. A short section of a tree trunk was set on end in the yard, a hatchet stuck in by its tip. There was dried blood on the top of the trump and on the hatchet blade; Aunt Eloise had wrung each chicken’s neck and chopped off the heads on that block, and now they were being cooked for Sunday dinner.

A car came up the lane and parked on the grass near the house; my Uncle Rupert with his wife, Amelia Lee, and their three children got out of the car. Uncle Rupert wore a light blue leisure suit and a tie. I’d never seen him dress that way before. The kids came running around to the back yard, while Uncle Rupert and Aunt Amelia went inside the house. My cousins were a lot younger than me, with Bubba, at seven, being the oldest. The girls went straight for the swing set, and Bubba climbed into the tire hung from a branch on a big sycamore tree.

“Whatcha doin?”

“Going to pick blackberries,” I said and held up the basket.

“Oh. Momma won’t let us go back there. She says we might get trampled by a cow.” Cows did follow paths they’d made through the berry patch, but it was the only way to get to the blackberries.

“Why’s your dad dressed up? Did he finally get religion and start going to church?”

“No,” Bubba said. “We don’t go to that church, anymore.” At “that” church people spoke in tongues, swayed and sometimes fell out in the aisle when the Spirit came over them. Amelia Lee’s family had attended a church near their home in a valley of the Allegheny Mountains, where the men showed their faith by handling poisonous snakes. I guess speaking in tongues was normal to her.

“Daddy dresses up dress up because he’s the preacher and mama said if we wear our play clothes there’s less for her to wash.”

“Your dad’s a preacher?” I asked in disbelief. “Where?”

“He holds the services at our house. Just us and a couple of neighbors so far, but daddy says it takes a while to grow a congregation. and when more people join, we’ll get a real building to gather in.”

“Well- that sounds good.” I couldn’t see Uncle Rupert being a preacher; he was mean to people, especially to kids. He drank beer all day, but never seemed drunk. Or maybe drinking made him mean and I’d never seen him sober?

Still, a mean drunk who doesn’t like kids couldn’t be a preacher. Jesus was never mean, especially to children, and preachers were supposed to be setting his example.

But it was not my place to judge.

“Hey, Bubba, if you see Mark, tell him I am.”

“Okay,” he called out while spinning in the tire swing with his head thrown back.

I walked through deep, green grass under the sycamore trees and into the brightness and heat of the field. The blackberry patch choked the rear part of the pasture. None of Aunt Eloise’s cows were in sight; on hot days, they tended to stay under the trees that grew along the creek, or branch, as my aunt called it.

The blackberries were nearly past bloom and birds had been feasting, but the canes were still loaded with sweet berries. The patch had probably never been cut and the blackberry canes reached high over my head. They’d grown up and over the paths the cows had made, forming shaded tunnels. I walked into the closest opening and the cooler air. I started picking ripe berries, reaching between thorn covered canes and even above my head, until the basket was nearly half filled but mom wanted it full.

I rounded a corner into a different tunnel and came face-to-face with a cow and stopped dead. It stopped, too, and I looked up at her huge brown eyes; I never knew cows were so large. They don’t look big when seen in fields from a distance, but up close, they’re huge.

I stood there, looked up at the cow’s horns and she took a step forward. I moved aside and backed into a small break in the wall of briars. I watched as the massive cow passed, then realized thorns were stuck in my shirt. While getting those free, an awkward calf came along, following its mother.

…

Mark had told me they brought in a bull every year to keep the cows producing milk and said that bulls are kept separate from the cows but didn’t say why. Mark had grown up on the farm, so he knew what he was talking about. Aunt Eloise didn’t have a separate place for a bull, so a farmer who rented some of her fields brought one of his over when needed.

“So, you have a new cow, when the calf grows up?”

Mark shook his head. “Mr. Hansen keeps the calf as payment.”

“And he raises them for milking cows?”

“No, he doesn’t keep milk cows,” Mark said. “He sends them to slaughter as soon as they’re old enough.”

…

I watched that calf trustingly following its mother, neither of them knowing what their future held. I finished filling the basket and went back to the house. Dinner was almost ready, so mom put the berries in the refrigerator and told me not to let her forget them when we left.

“No problem,” I said. Mom made blackberry cobblers mainly because I loved them and was willing to brave some thorns to pick the berries. And since dad loved ice cream, he’d bought mom an electric powered ice cream bucket; I’d never tasted anything better than homemade ice cream, especially on blackberry cobbler, so there was no way I’d forget the berries. Or the encounter with the cow and her calf in the tunnel through that maze of briars.

I told Aunt Eloise I’d seen one of her cows with a calf in the blackberry patch and that I hadn’t realized just how big cows got.

“They are big animals, Roland, and they walk all through those briars. It’s a good thing she saw you or she might’ve trampled right over you. Be careful out there.”

“Yes, Ma'am, I will.”

“Now get washed up, dinner’s ready.”

We ate at the picnic tables in the shade because the kitchen was too hot to eat in, and although flies were a nuisance, it was better than eating inside with a whole strip of dead ones hanging above us.

Adults sat at one table and the kids another. Aunt Eloise, mom and my older sister were constantly going to the kitchen whenever someone needed something; no one left until they’d had plenty to eat.

Other than the flies, it was nice eating outdoors. The tables were in the cool, deep shade of sycamore trees, birds and insects could be heard, with the rising chorus of cicadas drowning out the other sounds. A light breeze kept the air moving. Before we could eat, everyone bowed their heads so Uncle Rupert could give the blessing- something I never thought I’d hear from him. I snuck a few quick glances at Uncle Rupert, wondering how he could stand wearing that suit on such a warm afternoon. As soon as he finished everyone said “Amen” and the plate filling began. I picked a leg and a wing from one of the kills of the day, along with potato salad, boiled corn, green beans, and two of Aunt Eloise’s homemade, buttered, dinner rolls.

After everyone had eaten dinner, mom brought out the cobbler and homemade ice cream for dessert. Everyone had ice cream but since some of the younger kids didn't like the tiny seeds in the berries, dad had brought ice cold watermelons and a saltshaker for each table, then he sliced enough melon for all of us. Mark and I ate the blackberry cobbler topped with homemade ice cream and some of the watermelon, too. Mark told the younger kids that if they swallowed the seeds, a watermelon would grow in their belly, and that started a seed spitting contest, until Aunt Eloise put a stop to it. It was fun while it lasted, though.

We’d used paper plates and cups, so the only dishes to wash were the pots and pans, serving bowls and flatware. Mark and I got the other kids to help gather the plates and cups and put them in the burn barrel, while the women went inside to clean the other dishes.

By late afternoon, and mom was ready to go, so I got the berries and put them in the cooler dad had used for the watermelons. We said goodbye to everyone, thanked Aunt Eloise for inviting us, and then left for the drive home. Once we were in the car, mom said she’d clean the blackberries and make a cobbler later in the week.

“Are you going to make ice cream, too?”

“I don’t have enough rock salt,” she said, “but if your father will buy more, I’ll make a bucket of plain vanilla to go with the cobbler.”

“I’ll get the salt” dad replied. “Do you need anything else? Vanilla extract, maybe?”

“No, I have the vanilla, but I will need another gallon of milk.”

“Good,” dad said with a smile. He felt the same as I did; nothing tastes as good as homemade ice cream.

“So, your uncle’s a preacher now,” mom said. Uncle Rupert was my dad’s uncle, my great-uncle, but they were almost the same age, so we just called him Uncle Rupert.

Dad nodded. “Seems so.”

“Must keep his sheet in the closet on Sundays,” mom said. Dad gave her a sharp look. “Don’t talk about that in front of the kids.”

“It’s okay, dad,” I said. “Mark already told me Uncle Rupert’s a wizard or something. I said I thought that magic was just made up, but he said Uncle Rupert’s not that kind of wizard, that it had something to do with the Klan. Is that the same as the KKK?”

Dad nodded. “KKK means Ku Klux Klan and your uncle is a Grand Wizard, kind of a leader for a chapter of the KKK. Or he was, I don’t keep up a lot with what Rupert does. I don’t think he’s mentally stable, so nothing he does would surprise me.”

“Now he praises the cross Sunday morning that he might have raised and burned the night before,” mom said.

I’d seen pictures of the KKK burning crosses and wearing white robes that hid their faces, but I’d thought all that stuff had happened a long time ago. I couldn’t believe people still did those things.

“Well, Rupert may be a preacher,” dad replied, “but he’s no minister. I guarantee he’s doing it to save on his taxes. Churches don’t pay tax and it only takes three people to make a church, so all the expenses are tax deductible. If his 'congregation' meets at his home, then Rupert can deduct part of his mortgage payments and part of the utilities. And since he holds “services” at his home, I’d be willing to bet that he takes a deduction for the cost of “renting” out his house to the church. It’s a good scam if you’re the kind of person who’d do that sort of thing.”

“Well,” mom said, “Rupert’s definitely that kind of man.”

They didn’t say anything else about Uncle Rupert on the way home. Dad went to help a neighbor with his car and mom had ironing to do to get ready for the week.

But I kept thinking about Uncle Rupert, a mean man, plain and simple, and a leader in the KKK and on Sunday morning he preaches fire and brimstone in the name of the cross he burns in front of houses where black people live.

It made me wonder if the preacher at our church might be hiding something in his closet, too.

~ ~ ~

This was originally posted on Medium.

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