A Susurrating Curse

From the Pearly Gates Archive ~ No. 4

The wind in Pearly Gates was, after all, its own  year round, susurrating curse. 

In the summer, equatorial air surged up from the Tropic of Cancer and would combine with ninety-five degree heat and ninety percent humidity: sun, salt water, sand, and frequent gale force winds, abraded the land and one’s emotions to the bleeding point. In the winter, when the great blue northers rumbled down from the arctic, the southerlies would be humbled, if only momentarily, as the razor-sharp currents of the polar jet stream carved up any lingering warmth with a confessional, scalpel-like keenness. 

Like boxers, one a knockout artist, the other a counter puncher, these north and south combatants sparred winter long, until spring returned and the southerlies attained dominance once again. It was the wind that bore the contagion of salt from the sea, turning every metal thing exposed to it to rust. And it was the wind that gathered its forces up in the warmth of the summertime Gulf of Mexico and spun round in a mysterious danse macabre — until drunk and dizzy from the effort, it transmogrified into a demonic force, making its way erratically to shore, building up more and more strength as it smashed into the coastline with the impact of a score of Hiroshima atom bombs — devouring everything in its path. 

From the time of Pearly Gates’ founding to the day it was abandoned, many such storms had plowed through the heart of this region, after which interest in rebuilding battered communities to match some standard of former glory would decline in direct proportion to the energy Mother Nature had summoned to wipe them off the map. The repeated failure to gain mastery over these vagaries of climate and fate tended to breed a rare eccentricity into local populations. It was as if the process of command and control, as their efforts failed to protect them, was somehow turned inward and dumped jabbering and wild-eyed into a darkened corner of this region’s genetic code, there to infect the generations to follow—all without anyone realizing what was going on. 

And that is why so many of Pearly Gates’ inhabitants fell prey to manipulations of reality and suspensions of disbelief and to seeing sights never before seen. And why The Pearly Gates Camera Club and The Search for Ruth Mission played such central roles in the shaping of the township’s relationship to the outside world.