Mark DeMoss

M a r k  D e M o s s

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Grapeland

We’re in the backseat, my brother and me, on our way to Grapeland.  It’s spring and the windows are full open, and we’re riding a 1989 Chevy Caprice Wagon, with a backseat as big as the divide between the northbound and the southbound lanes.  The highway is like a river and we’re singing. 

Goin’ to Grapeland, Grapeland.

He’s nine and I’m six, and he still joins in when my dad sticks the CD in the player and Paul Simon starts singing with us.

Goin’ to Grapeland, Grapeland.

I ask if we’ll see Paul Simon at the family reunion and my brother laughs.  I love Paul Simon.  Why wouldn’t he be there?  This year, my brother hasn’t learned the meaning of “ludicrous” and so can’t use it as a sledgehammer to my affection.  My misconceptions are endearing.  This year, everything is as perfect as second grade. 

Poor boys and Pilgrims with families, and we are goin’ to Grapeland.

Next year, my brother will explain in unconcealed disdain that he was saying Graceland, not Grapeland, you moron, and that’s why he’s not at this crummy cemetery with all these dead people, and old women wearing white and putting flowers on every grave in the place. 

Next year I’ll begin to suspect that in a true road trip you never reach your destination at all, if you even know where it is.  I’ll realize, as if awake for the first time, that Grapeland is a sign that says “GAS”, and beneath it, “QUILTS”, and beneath that, “GUNS AND AMMO.”  Grapeland is only where the car turns off the highway.  Our true destination is farther away, a churchyard and a cemetery in the middle of a pasture at the end of a dusty road. 

The song says that we will all be received, but I’ll start to wonder what he meant.  How can we be received when we never even arrive?