I feel like I’m getting sick. The cotton’s been picked but the stalks ain’t been cut. They stick up from the cold mud, jagged.
Mama has diabetes. Sister’s got a rare form of arthritis in her fingers. Aunt Nell has cataracts, she’s always reminding us how one day she won’t be able to see. So I’m making us a big pot of ginger soup to eat tonight. Something to build our immunity. I was not raised this way. I never saw anyone cook with ginger until my suite mate showed me how to use it in college, how to grate it into a mush.
I figure if anywhere has ginger root it’s gonna be the Super Walmart in Roanoke Rapids, forty-five mins away, across the county line, across the Roanoke River.
Normally I’d call up my kin and ask if there’s anything they need from Roanoke Rapids. And normally Aunt Nell would say, “Oh I’ll ride with you. I need to go look at Belk’s.” But it’s cold and clear out. The sun is shining. And for once in my life I want to be alone, hurling in a car through the big big fields and big big sky. Going to get my ginger.
Here’s everything I see along the way:
My neighbor’s house where they found a pack of puppies tied up together out back around a tree.
Dr. Stanley’s office. He’s ninety-seven and still seeing people. He smokes right there in front of you, telling you to say ahhh, walks with a cane, and has this sweet fuzzy mutt dog that follows him everywhere. He likes carpentry, built his own casket. Aunt Nell says it’s sitting there in his living room.
There’s Charles Timberlake’s. After Daddy died I took my car there to get an oil change and he wouldn’t let me pay for it. He rotated my tires too. One time he drove his wrecker all the way out to Lewiston to pick up my old car when the transmission went out. He was a pallbearer in Grandaddy’s funeral.
The old bank is the new town hall. The old town hall is now nothing. It’s just sitting there, rotting.
Miss Burgwyn’s house. She was my English teacher in school. She never learned how to drive because when she was little she was in a horrible car accident, like to died. So I picked Miss Burgwyn up every morning of high school. But she’s really overweight, so it always took a minute for her to get down in my little car. She comes from old Southern money. One of her kin was called the “Boy Colonel” of the Civil War because he won’t but sixteen or something. He died at Gettysburg.
The Odoms’ house. They are house painters. They’ve got three girls. One was best friends with my sister. She was the first one to get pregnant. Then the oldest sister, who was a grade ahead of me, got pregnant. Then the youngest girl got pregnant. They have romantic names: Tabathia, Rhianon, and Kristen. All the girls live at home with their mama and daddy. They won best yard of the year award. And it is pretty.
Dr. Stanley’s house. Where his casket’s already made and sitting in his living room.
Some of my cousin’s corn.
Randy Taylor’s cotton, needs to be picked. Don’t see any turkeys in the fields.
Urahaw Swamp Bridge.
Arrowhead Trailer Park. Last shooting in there was real bad. The man walked right in, middle of the night, and shot the mama and daddy in front of the children and then the children had to run from trailer to trailer, knocking on the doors to see who would open up. Out there in the wet and cold, tore all to pieces like that—they did get the man who did it though. Then Miss Pat, whose old daddy owns Arrowhead, started taking those children to her church—Lasker Baptist. Those kids were the stars of the Vacation Bible School.
Lassiter’s Septic Tank. The owner, Melvin Britt, married the Lassiter girl and inherited the business. He goes to the Amish country every year. Pulls a trailer behind his truck and brings back Amish cookies and cakes and pies and stuff and gives them to everybody. He brought Daddy back some BBQ seasoning. And Daddy never used it ’cause it was too special. Anyways, Melvin Britt had a stroke not too long ago.
The old rotten house where that poor Collier man lived. He had a girlfriend too. One night they was high on drugs in the backyard and he accidently ran her over in his truck somehow. She was real tall.
Tee-tot’s there outside the Post Office. She’s real short but not like a midget. She’s always thumbing for rides into Woodland. Aunt Nell said that one time one of the Timberlake boys picked her up.
Potecasi Baptist Church.
The old schoolhouse they turned into Pine Forest Nursing Home. My daddy stayed there before he died.
Right beside it, Randy Taylor’s house.
More cotton.
Then woods and woods on both sides.
My cousin Mike’s house. His wife was the youth director at church. She invited all the youth over to her house one night to watch The Passion of the Christ. We had popcorn and everything. They always had pit bulls too. At first I was a little scared of them. How they rubbed on you without warning or asking, with so much force. One of my lil girl cousins got bit in the face by one of them dogs. But she ended up alright, just got a scar from her lip to her chin.
My cousin Mike’s cow pastures. There’s a baby calf outside the fence. Jesus Lord how the shock musta went through its little body when it jumped through the wires. I try to look for it in my rearview after I pass it but can’t find it. It’s probably already wild in the woods.
Then there’s the house where Annie Mae Wood used to live. She’s in a nursing home now after her neighbor boys tried to kill her. They came over to help her take clothes off the line and then decided to beat her to death. Threw her in the boot of her own car. Poured gasoline all over everything but was too scared to light the match. They won’t but thirteen, fourteen.
More woods and woods.
Here’s another house. Don’t know who it belonged to. The whole side porch is rotting into the ground.
The yellow double-wide that’s always got the bright fake flowers from Dollar Tree placed in planters round the porch just so.
Sad looking horses in a small round rink, no one riding them.
The path they found old man Daughtry down when he killed himself. Did it after they told him he had stomach cancer. He was an old bachelor. Probably a virgin. But sweet as he could be. He owned an antique shop, sold old farming tools. After he died they put a picture up of him in the Grapevine.
Fallow fields.
Boone’s Cotton Gin. They’re the big farming family over here in Jackson.
There’s the funeral home where I helped my grandaddy pick out his casket. He wanted to be buried in his Dickies, so that’s what we did. He had a beautiful singing voice. He liked that song “Make The World Go Away” by Eddy Arnold. He was drafted to Korea. Repaired Air Force bombers in Sidi Slimane. When the local lawyer’s son asked me to the winter formal, Grandaddy drove us to Raleigh and got me a white rabbit fur coat to wear. I still have it.
But that funeral home is under new ownership now. The guy who used to own it was hugely overweight and cut a few gospel tracks in Nashville. He sang at all the revivals and funerals. People showed up just to hear him sing even if they didn’t know who died. Aunt Nell owns all his tapes. He died a couple months ago. Then his greatest rival, Sykes Funeral Home, bought everything.
Sykes did my daddy’s funeral.
The county courthouse from before the Civil War. The county seat was renamed Jackson for Andrew Jackson. Folks were real big fans of him around here. Our history teacher, Mr. Witt, told us that the country people were so happy when he got elected that they went up to Washington the day of the inauguration and parked their wagons all over the White House lawn. He said they were inside partying and hanging from the chandeliers. Mr. Witt said if he could ever go back in time, he’d want to go to that inauguration party to see the folks hanging off the White House chandeliers. He lives down the block from here with his great-aunt. He’s never been married and plays the organ at the Episcopal church.
The library where that librarian used to date Mister Greg. Mister Greg used to work with my daddy. When his two boys were just babies, his wife left him to go be with another woman, her best friend. And that woman had two sons too. And those women just left their husbands and boys behind. I don’t even know where they ended up. Somebody said Florida. Mister Greg started drinking so bad then. I’ve never not seen him drunk. When a woman is pretty he calls her a “Lah-ha-mercy.” (Lord have mercy.) He called me and Sister “Lah-ha-mercies.” Won’t until I got grown that I understood what he meant. I wonder if he called the librarian that too. She probably didn’t like that. She’s so kind. We all wanted things to work out between them but they just didn’t. That librarian is the only woman Mr. Greg dated after his wife left him.
There’s a non hazardous coal ash = jobs banner hanging from the old gas station marquee. The man who wants to bring the coal ash plant says he’s gonna make the county rich. He was raised in a county as poor as ours, not too far from here, just as rural with plenty space for something new. But he’d rather kill us than his kin.
Last year the biggest newspaper in the state said the death rate in my county is higher than the birth rate. It’s true.
But bless this Dollar General. It opened after the Piggly Wiggly closed. Without it, folks around here wouldn’t have anywhere to go for groceries. They’d have to drive thirty mins. Imagine the folks without cars or those with failing transmissions. Imagine my Aunt Nell, who can’t see.
Then the same old house way back off the road and the same old man I’ve seen many a time dragging his trash can up to the highway. Creep-creeping along. Where are his children?
Another house sitting in the middle of a field, rotting into the ground, branches busting through windows.
A young buck’s been hit. They get crazy this time of year when they’re rutting, run out in front of anything to get a doe.
Fields and fields: fallow, cotton, and corn.
The historic road marker for Henry K. Burgywn, “The Boy Colonel” of the Civil War. He was born near here somewhere. Didn’t even have a hair on his chin when he died.
A house I remember from when I was little. Aunt Nell took me with her to visit an old friend. That woman had lots of wild cats in her yard. Twenty or some. I spent the whole afternoon trying to catch one. I think her name was Paulette. I think Paulette is a good name. I think the apostle Paul was a good person. “I rejoice in my suffering,” he said.
When I get to Weldon I pass the dentist’s office back off the road in the trailer from the 1970s. Hal Edwards was a boy at my school. He was from Weldon. He’d always reach out and show us these long teeth, say he dug them up from behind that trailer.
A sign where a long dirt path meets the highway, hand-painted out in big bold letters, just says: hair.
Another funeral home—this one’s named Rose’s.
Grant Park Laundromat.
Then the river. The Roanoke River. All the big rock fish swimming underneath me as I drive across the bridge. Swimming back into dark spots, hiding under logs and old branches. Daddy was a fisherman. Sometimes I pretend he’s a fish now, whipping through the rapids.
The car I’m following has two bigass stickers on the rear window. in memory of. Beauty portraits. A couple. Someone’s sweet mama and daddy. The kind of folks who believe in hugs and God and hard work and sacrifice—who survived through innovation.
I’ve crossed the river.
There’s the Evangelistic Church of Deliverance.
There’s the Fried’s Department Store. They was one of the only Jewish families around here. Now they’re dead and gone and whoever owns the building now lives inside.
I’m passing under the Weldon to Wilmington Railroad. When it was built in 1840 it was the longest railroad in the world. Now it’s falling apart.
The Town and Country Market, where Hal Edwards said you could get goat meat.
All of downtown Weldon: shops, hotel rooms, doctors’ offices, now all just abandoned with busted windows.
Then a series of billboards:
A pit bull tied to a tree.
Big bold letters, all caps. i’m cold bring me inside.
Bill’s Appliances.
INFLUENCE OTHERS BY MAKING A LIVING, MAKING A LIFE. West Fraser Timber Mill.
A woman looking like a Victoria Secret angel holding a little lap dog, her wings huge and dramatic. BE AN ANIMAL ANGEL.
STOP LIVING IN PAIN.
The same pit bull dog again, chained outside in the cold. PLEASE BRING ME INSIDE.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS. Braiding, Waxing, Threading, Church Hair, Up-dos.
GOD IS THE SAME YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND FOREVER.
That pit bull again, still tied to the tree. PLEASE.
Everything that means something comes in threes. Death and The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Now I’m in Roanoke Rapids. You call the people over here River Rats. They’re all real into softball and baseball. Come from millworker stock. But the mills’s been closed forever now.
Fraizer’s, where everybody raves about the hamburger steak with gravy. Lori Coggins always told us her mama and daddy had their first date there. None of my kin has ever eaten there in our lives.
Whitley’s BBQ Buffet ain’t worth no count. They cook their pigs with gas. Makes the meat chewy. Daddy taught me that.
Days Inn.
Econo Lodge.
Waffle House.
A hotel getting torn down.
I drive under I-95. The other day over here the law found a fella with stolen guns and enough fentanyl to kill everyone in Halifax County. That’s what the paper said anyway. He had coke, weed, and 40K too. Said the guns had been stolen from Rocky Mount and Greenville.
Another Waffle House.
An Exxon gas station attached to a Dairy Queen.
Ruby Tuesday’s.
China Garden.
The Cracker Barrel where Sister worked when she dated a River Rat. He had big money. His family farm was out there near Virginia, right on the line.
Zaxby’s.
Popeyes.
Kidney Dialysis Center.
ABC Store.
Don Juan’s.
The takeout hibachi grill Sister used to love to eat at until the doctor told her she couldn’t have MSG.
The CiCi’s pizza where me and my boy cousins ate one time when we had to come over here to get lumber at Home Depot to build a big rainforest tree for the Amazon-themed Vacation Bible School. We all tried the mac and cheese pizza.
Verizon Wireless.
A tanning salon.
Firestone.
Taco Bell.
KFC.
Hardee’s.
An Applebee’s where my friends from college took me drinking the night before Daddy’s funeral. I don’t remember much from that time. I just know I didn’t cry. I made sure to paint my fingernails.
The Logan’s where they give you buckets of peanuts to crack open and eat and you throw all the shells on the floor. We ate there one time for Uncle Ricky’s birthday and Uncle Jed took out his new expensive teeth and rolled them in a napkin and put them in his cap on top of his head. And we all laughed and Aunt Nell said, “Well Jed don’t you need your teeth to eat?” And he said, “I sure as hell ain’t gonna ruin ’em! They cost me an arm and a leg. I can smack just fine!” Then he smacked his mouth like a fish.
Harley-Davidson.
Texas Roadhouse.
Texas Steakhouse.
Hallmark.
Dollar Tree.
Cato’s.
Belk’s.
Tractor Supply.
Then the Super Walmart parking lot.
A car drives by me slowly, humming, windows down, two men inside.
On the way inside:
Two more men walking out together. One is old and the other is middle aged. The only thing in their cart is three bags of dog food. The biggest ones you can buy.
An overweight woman in a motorized scooter. And another.
Inside, the elderly woman, smiling, highlighting people’s receipts, talking on her bluetooth, “Yes, I know. I know.”
Hunters.
Pastors.
Farmers.
Mechanics.
Matriarchs.
Babies getting toted.
Folks who can snaps, who can’t pay for headstones.
Innovators.
Tax payers.
Pallbearers.
Historians.
Artists.
Believers.
Survivors.
I don’t see anybody I know.
I go take a shit and while I’m sitting there, The Beatles come on and it’s my favorite Beatles song. AHHH LOOK AT ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE. How many other people in this Super Walmart in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina are hearing this song and thinking the same thing? I’m feeling sick again.
There’s an old man sitting on a bench outside the bathroom. He’s yelling laughing at another old woman checking out. They’re both yelling laughing about church. If I wanted to join in with them talking about counting our blessings I could. But what about the cellos of “Eleanor Rigby?” Doesn’t matter here.
I’ll grate the ginger root. I’ll grate so much of it.
There’s a man pushing a cart filled with frozen pizzas and white powdered sugar donuts.
A woman with a baby and boxes of Apple Jacks, Pine Sol, and toilet paper.
Mini cupcakes piled on top of each other like a castle. Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry icing, confetti sprinkles. Daddy would have wanted me to bring him home some. But he’s ashes now. Dead. Dead. Dead.
Apples, lemons, limes.
Garlic and onions.
A wall of lettuce and green things.
And my God, the ginger. A whole pile. Big pieces, little stubby pieces, fat pieces, long skinny-like-a-pool-noodle pieces. All I could ever want.
I’m so happy I take a picture of the pile. And I take my time with it, all the time in the world deciding which pieces I want.
I call Mama and Sister and Aunt Nell to see if they need anything over here before I head home. Aunt Nell asks me to get her a pack of mini Almond Joys. “And you be careful coming home, watch out for deer,” she says. “The young bucks are rutting now, fighting for does.”
I walk around, holding the ginger in my hands like some relic, some cure. But in the end I know nothing will save us. On the way home, I pass everything again and it turns night.
I grate the ginger as soon as I can. The soup turns out real good. Here at the table, I watch the tops of Mama and Sisters heads as they spoon the soup into their mouths. And Aunt Nell lifts her bowl like a cup. 
Ashleigh Bryant Phillips is from Woodland, North Carolina, and is the author of Sleepovers (Hub City Press, 2020). Her stories have appeared in The Paris Review and The Oxford American.
Illustration: Karly Hartzman.
