She dusted off her jeans and pulled some slack before sitting down on her suitcase. The heat dug  into her brown skin ; she felt her throat closing up on her again. Boy,  did she ever hate having to go home to drama. Marie didn’t feel like this, she had enough of her own problems.

 Marie was just south of Clarksdale.  She had come quite a way from New Orleans and  she was dogged tired.  If only she could get to Memphis  before sunset, then she could make things right . Marie was feeling the heat now; she was exhausted from fatigue and needed some place to rest.  She felt the River city calling her home. A longing for familiar territory formed into a knot and caught her breath.   Who knows, she might just have to knock that bastard out because this girl was going home.

Her step-father was on Marie’s shit list. The entire time that Marie had been in the Parish; that asshole had been beating up on her mother. If her cousin hadn’t made a slip one night on the phone; Marie would have never known. Well, all hell was about to break loose, when Marie got to town. She might not be very big but she had her cute little pistol and that is all she needed. Well, a pistol , her gris gris and Marie would have that sucker begging for mercy. She smiled and tapped her suitcase. Her mind raced with thoughts of retribution as  a sand tornado spun up the highway whipping past her. Her dreads flopped around her smiling face and out in to the breeze. Marie’s lips moved in a silent chant. She wished she could be the wind. The wind had no worries and the wind was always free. Dropping her head, she shook her dreads and exhaled deeply. Marie continued to chant her prayer toward the ground as the tears came. A dark drop then another painted the dry dusty soil with Marie’s pain.

It was something between those moving lips which caused the wind to still and the sun retreat behind the singular cloud which hovered overhead. Marie moved her hands in a soft wafting rhythm then pushed them down as if lifting herself from some thick sludge. Her eyes opened and she focused on a broken bottle to the right of her converse sneaker. She tapped her foot. The sound of her shoe dropping onto the dusty earth pounded like a drum in her ear. It was working. In the distance, Marie heard it. The torment of his voice was unmistakable and the last twang of his guitar sent her heart into a nervous rythm. Marie stood and bit her quivering lip. Sweat covered her body; she gripped the mojo bag in her hand so tight her knuckles turned white. Her conjure burned her blood with a power that no one understood; regardless, Marie was scared…oh she knew the legends.

By the little black suitcase lay a phonebook; guess the poor girl thought she needed to take it from the cafe back aways. Marie didn’t need no phonebook, neither did she need a thing now. Marie was everything she wanted to be–free. Free from the oppressions of her humble home in the big easy, free from her family drama she so vehematly thought she had to take care of with her 45 and most of all–Marie was free from her flesh. No more did she have to deal with all those treatments for the sickle cell. Nobody knew she wanted so badly  to be free of all her troubles. She wanted to be free as the wind. How she loved the wind when it blew past her face. She often wished to be the wind–always moving, changing and then making its way back into the heavens. She took his hand and he brought it to his lips with a kiss. Marie smiled and dropped just one more tear for good measure.

The little black suitcase flopped over onto its side. In the distance a phantom hand plucked a string and another sand tornado whipped past the crossroads and dissipated beyond.