Dear Cousin,

I wanted to fire off a few words to you, now that I’ve set up shop here above the South Carolina state line in North Carolina. Believe it or not, things are not so much different here, north of Rock Hill, north of Charleston, south of New York.

I rented a room, first-off, in what might be called a boarding house, allowing me time to look around for a place where I might avoid meeting rabid Baptists. But just like at home, churches brag and apartments hide.

During my first night there, I sat in the kitchen, which doubles as the living room, with three of my new house-mates. They were having beers each, so I thought I ought to join in, and I did, all upbringing to the contrary. Seemed like the polite thing to do.

About an hour later, my new friend Billy, who was drunk, took a playful swipe at my new friend Ralph, who was drunk, and real big. Well, Ralph was not impressed, and he growled a warning to Billy not to touch him. Billy laughed it off and teased Ralph with another playful swipe, and before I saw enough to know to excuse myself, Ralph had leaped up, tackled Billy, and sat on top of him on the pearly linoleum, screaming, “TOUCH ME AGAIN AND YOU’LL NOT WALK RIGHT FOR  A WHILE, GREASEBALL!!!”

Well, not yet feeling at home, I took a side – the outside. And then I moved out.

I still haven’t yet run into our relatives, who also live somewhere close to Raleigh, but people are people – I’ve met some fine ones and noticed some interesting ones. I imagine (and hope) they’re not blood kin. Beer, like at home, is the big daddy here. Canadian Whiskey must be highly taxed here, or something, as it is not offered in a lot of night spots. There’s a crime of unusual taxes here.

Concerning fashion, Kelly green is numero uno, and madras shirts also. Just like home. The bartenders, like at home, must be waiting to share some private danger, or dangerous privacy, with each customer before they’ll speak as a friend.

Here in Raleigh, Cousin, I don’t feel that rush of stadium fever like we all know from Clemson, even though there are football teams on all sides. Maybe that’s because there are football teams on all sides. Too many rivals too near to home make claiming a champion dangerous, since glory fades week to week. I guess people hate to be wrong. Just like home.

Raleigh is a pretty big place, with an obvious fondness for brick. Just down the street from my large, tanned brick office is a large, tanned brick prison. A big boy. Turns out there are four or five prisons in this big city, and this is the city where Sheriff Andy used to take Opie to see a “moving picture show,” if Opie had been behaving. Remember that? I guess, with all these handy prisons, Sheriff Andy would bring Opie here if Opie had not been behaving also.

Seems like everyone I’ve met here is either in school, teaching school or mocking school. I did, however, meet some nice people who were waiting tables and that, at a restaurant (now get this) inside the local museum.

This museum is not, like we once joked, a tribute to tobacco products. It’s very nice. There is, however, a Jesse Helms wing, in the extreme right wing of the building. Unfortunately, just down the street from the Jesse Helms exhibit is the North Carolina State Veterinary College. And there’s this incredible, nauseating vile stench that wafts over that’s just awful.

Why, it nearly ruins the ambiance of the Vet School.

Cousin, remember all our trips to the hazed-up Blue Ridge Mountains that we used to visit, that seemed to lock Tennessee out of North Carolina? Well, I’m so far removed from that glorious land that we don’t get any snow ski reports on the local weather. We get beach conditions and small craft advisories. Too bad. I guess when big city buildings curl up towards heaven, they forget the heaven that curls up the halcyon mountains. Too bad. Just like home.

The state fair has been here for about a week now, and I went in to walk around it last weekend, on a Sunday night. An amazing amount of people was there, and I mean the entire food chain.

I didn’t ride any of the flipping, spinning, whirling, heaving, undulating, pitching, tossing rides, since I like to taste my food just once. But the best entertainment at the fair was free. Near the back corner of the “midway,” I guess they still call it that, was one of those sad, disappointing ghost mansion deals, where two people get in a car and spend about 2-3 minutes mocking a bunch of poorly-made cloth dummies intended to frighten one to near death. You know the type. Just like at home.

But this one was different. This one had a real person, dressed up in a loose black outfit, with one of those old-man masks on. And this guy was great. He would run in and out of the ride’s various doors, hang off the side of the structure, hide in empty cars and that, run up behind cars with jeering kids and moms and couples (“Aw, that weren’t nothing!!”), and he would scare the wits out of everybody. Eventually, this guy had a huge crowd standing in front of the ride, tensely holding their breath and waiting for his next attack. People were rolling laughing, and actually applauding from time to time.

When I finally managed to break away to walk on, I turned around and screamed. Standing right next to me was the most horrible nightmare I had ever seen, with this big round bowl of wiry hair, pale skin, big black eyes and blood-red lips, dressed in some kind of drizzly blue coveralls over a garish red baggy shirt. Straight from torment this thing was. But no … it was somebody’s mother. Which was even scarier.

Well, speaking of the fair, it has a place in an interesting story that happened just last night. I went to see a movie at about 7:30 and headed home to my new room at about 9:30. I went by this place near my room to grab a couple of hot dogs — they make the best — and a soda. I appreciate a good dog during late-night reading time.

The place is right next door to this black (I guessed) church, and I mean to tell you that those people got their money’s worth, or their souls filled, or whatever the medium of exchange was inside that vibrating hall. The windows to the church were all glazed over so you can’t see in, but the “Rev” rocked the block over a microphone and filled the temple with amplified electric promises of better things to come.

I had placed my order and stood leaning against one of the poles when this guy walked up behind me and spoke to me.

“Uh, ‘scuse me, man.”

“Yeah?”

“I wonder could I get you to order me a sanwich from that man, he woan lemme order nothing, I got the money.”

I turned around and looked into the glassed-in kitchen area. The three or four guys working there were pointing and scowling and one walked quickly out the door.

The guy who had spoken to me had large eyes, depressed but alert, settled over a thick black mustache. Pulled down close on his head was a baseball cap with a blue bill, red top, and a white patch on the front on which was stitched “Even Steven” in cursive.

I have no idea what that means.

As I watched, the guy from the kitchen came out and ran off the man with the hat, getting all up in his face, like some white people will do to black people when there is a bunch of white people around and only one black person. I watched the black guy slump away in his blue nylon windbreaker, watched him walk toward the loud church next door.

Meanwhile, my order came up, I paid, turned, walked next door, walked up the steps and opened the door of the church, where the man in the hat had gone.

The sound was deafening. Right inside the door was the man, backing up again, while a huge black woman in a dress way too small was vehemently shaking her head at him and easing him back out the front door of the church. Behind her was a much smaller black woman with a look of fear and disgust on her face.

“Hey!” I yelled out. The guy turned around, looking pretty surprised. “Come on, man,” I said to him, holding the door open.

He followed me down the steps of the church, and we turned our backs on all that throbbing Christian grace and mercy.

“Come on, let’s find some place for you to eat,” I muttered.

“I don’t understand it,” he complained. We walked to my car. “This one?”

“Yeah, hop in.”

The guys in the kitchen were staring and pointing again, looking at me like a traitor or something.

“Man, I walked up here to get a sanwich and asked the man what was the cheapest sanwich you got, you know? And it was about a quarter more’n I had, so I asked this other man for a quarter an’ he gave me one, but then the man inside turned me out!”

“Forget ’em,” I said.

“I had the money, y’know, an’ he woan lemme order nothin’.”

“Well,” I sighed, “I guess they get a lot of jerks coming in here, bums, lobbyists, Senators and that, you know. I mean, this is the State Capitol.”

“Yeah, I guess so, but I had the money.” He looked at me and stuck out his hand. “William.”

I shook his hand as we rode down the street, and told him my name. The hand belonged to a working man. I pulled into a pancake house. “Let’s eat, William.”

He pointed to the back seat, where I had tossed my hot dogs. “But you already got yours, there.”

“It’ll keep,” I said, parking the car.

“This your car?”

“No, I stole it,” I said, but not out loud.

“Yeah,” I admitted.

“Looks brand new.”

I grinned. “Thanks. Four years old.”

“Naah, yeah?”

“Took me a while to get one, so I have to hold on to it for a while, you know?”

“Looks good, man.”

We walked in and were seated straight away. All around us were young and old people, Orientals, Blacks, Whites and that, and we were as welcome as any. And this place didn’t smell anything like a church.

William ordered a burger and some fries and coffee, which pancake houses brew with a demonic vengeance here. Just like home. I ordered a side of bacon and no coffee, then proceeded to drink William’s. He laughed.

“I thought you ain’t want none,” he grinned.

“So did I.” I asked the waitress for a new cup.

“Did I order too much?” William asked.

“What?”

“Hain’t ordered too much, I hope. Y’know.”

“Eat,” I said, feeling a little uncomfortable, feeling like one of those idiots who go around saying things like ‘Well, some of my best friends are black.’ I tried to shake it off. “So what are you doing here?”

William slumped down a little, settling a little, molding in to his seat. “I’m from Jacksonville. I worked it up this way north, picking potatoes.”

“And you’re heading back to Florida now?”

“Uh huh.”

“How’d you get up here?”

William stuck out his thumb and grinned. William had a cool grin.

“I wouldn’t have thought they grew potatoes in Jacksonville,” I thought aloud.

“No,” William corrected me. “I’m from Jacksonville, but I came up here to work.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

William shrugged and looked around the restaurant.

“Well,” I continued, “I guess you need to get near Fayetteville or somewhere, get near I-95 to head back to Florida, huh?”

William looked back at me. “Huh?”

“I said I guess you need to get closer to I-95, so you’ll maybe have better luck getting south.”

William nodded silently. He looked at me, in me, for a few serious seconds. “Man, I ‘preciate what you did.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been there.”

You know, Cousin, it doesn’t take much to be nice to somebody, does it? Just a little human decency.

“What do you do up here?” William asked.

“I’m a writer,” I lied.

William dished up another grin. “So you just write stuff down on paper an’ there she is, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I got to say thanks again,” William went on. “God will take care of you.”

I kept my opinions to myself.

“I thought,” William ventured, “maybe you ain’t live here, neither.” He nodded his head toward my car in the parking lot. “You got all those big boxes in the back seat.”

I explained briefly to him my situation, still looking for a permanent place and that. William nodded, looked out the window, nodded again.

The food came. Just about 45 seconds later, William looked up at me, wiping off his face.

I smiled. “A little hungry?”

William’s laugh was bells ringing a Christmas. “I told you, man, I was starving!”

Suddenly, I had a thought. “You know, William, the fair is in town here, and they’re from Florida.”

William perked up. “Yeah?”

“Well, I don’t know much more than that,” I stated, “but they are from Florida, and they’ve got their own train and that, and maybe you could, you know…”

“Yeah,” William pondered. “Maybe, some work … maybe they…”

“I don’t know what their schedule is, you know, I don’t know where they’re going from here. I can drive you over there.”

William looked at me, wide-eyed, as though I’d handed him my wallet or something. “You will?”

“Sure.” (And there it came again:  ‘You know, some of my best friends are black.’) “You ready?”

We got up, I paid, we got back in the car. Why did I feel guilty? Or what was it?

We drove through town toward the fairgrounds in silence. The roads were mostly empty, and finally we drove over a hill and saw the lights of the rides. The Fair. Yo.

I don’t care where you are or how old you get, I guess you always feel 10 years old and immortal when you see those lights and smell those smells.

“I can take you to that gate, there, William, but that’s about all I can do, I guess.”

I don’t think William even heard me. He was transfixed, staring at the lights, looking at the train, making who knows what kind of plans in his head under that ‘Even Steven’ cap.

As usual, I drove up the wrong way to the entrance and had to drive right by the fair to turn around.

“You sure you know where you’re going?” William grinned.

“Yeah, I need to turn around.” I made the turn and pulled up in front of Gate 11.

“Well …” I said, looking down. I reached in my shirt pocket for a $20 bill I had put there in the restaurant for this purpose. “You’ll need five bucks to get in,” I said, again confusedly apologetic.

William looked at me and spoke at length about his opinion of me, but he never said a word. He took the bill, looked at it, started to speak, stopped, looked at the bill again. “Whoa. Hain’t seen this much money in a long time.” He extended his hand one last time.

“Well, hang on to it, then,” I fumbled.

Sheesh. Cousin, why did this feel so tough?

We shook hands firmly and William opened the car door. “I don’t know, but sometime, man, maybe I can…”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll see you around, William. Hang in there.”

One more grin from William and I drove away, back to my room to read.

I guess I’ll have to find a new place to get hot dogs now, huh?

Write back soon, for I miss you.

Your Cousin