"You never know what's going to happen." -Frank, Old Sheldon Church

“Wid da Massah lookin’ doone on oonuh.” -Man at the food mart in Yemassee, SC
“NO TRESPASSING: Violators will be SHOT, Survivors will be SHOT AGAIN.” Every fifty feet or so, the bright orange signs glared out from the swampy woods. Part of me was tempted to travel down one of the sandy lanes to see who would put up such a hostile sign. The better part of me decided tonight was not the night to get shot. But where to sleep? The Old Sheldon Church Road was becoming an increasingly darker tunnel under the live oak and cypress trees arcing overhead.
A brown sign appeared: “Historical Marker, ½ mile ahead.” Saved! Just like the man had said at the gas station 6 miles back-- someone was looking out for me.
It was the ruins of the Old Sheldon Church, built in the 1700s, burned by the British, rebuilt, torched again by Sherman. Brick arches and columns remained, crumbling under enormous old trees dripping Spanish moss and ferns. Eighteenth century gravestones dotted the solemn park. In the reverent evening dusk, it felt appropriate to hush my steps.
But I still camped there. Slept right in the nave. When I woke early the next morning, clouds floated above me through the lightening, pale blue sky, a fluid Michelangelo without the pointing hands of man or God.

“Hold it right there.” –Frank, Old Sheldon Church
I heard the lawnmower, looked up, and saw a man kneeling with a camera. The ruins caretaker was here to mow the grass, and someone was trying to take photos in the morning light. I jumped up and started packing my bike, thinking again how badly I needed to get to a shower and a laundromat.
The photographer came over to chat. I noticed his cameras- very nice, very classic. Both used 120 film, and one had a top viewfinder. I asked him about his job. He said he used to do a lot of work for expensive resorts, a lot of photos of beautiful people in beautiful places. He also freelanced for magazines. Today he was on assignment for an article on southern food stops between Savannah and Charleston. He took some more photos then paused. “Here,” he said. “Stay there.” He backed up, looked down, and clicked the shutter. “You can smile for this one,” he said, and snapped a few more.
“It’s too bad you aren’t eating,” he told me while he worked. Apparently this shot already had a caption picked out: “Old Sheldon Church- a great place for a picnic.” I told him I’d just had breakfast. “Damn!” he swore. “What’d you have?” He took a light meter reading, and I tried not to think about that shower. “A protein breakfast drink.” He laughed. “I don’t think that’s really the Travel and Leisure crowd’s style. Maybe some lox and capers.” I offered to eat my remaining strawberries, but apparently those were also too provincial.
We finished the photo shoot, and Frank gave me his card. He said he was headed up in a helicopter after this, then down to St. Kitt’s, but “Email me and I’ll send you these,” he told me. The article is supposed to come out in the next couple months, so who knows-- check out the June issue of Travel and Leisure.

"Do a good deed daily." -Boy Scout motto
"You camping at Givhan's Ferry?" I look up from the white line. An older guy on a motorcycle has pulled alongside me. He asks me about my trip, catches me looking over my shoulder. "Don't worry, I'm watchin' my mirrors." Anytime a car comes, he speeds up, waves them by, then putts along until I catch up again.
"Ah'm a hillbilly myself," Tom tells me, "grew up in southwestern Virginia." His dad was a professor at Virginia Tech who taught "anything in business" and had his office in the same building where the shootings happened. Tom shudders.
"Look," he says, "about 10 miles down the road there's a real good barbecue place. I'll take you there if you want. I even got an extra helmet." His cheek creases into a long dimple when he smiles.
Tom is waiting at my campsite when I return from the shower house. His helmet's off, and his gray hair sticks out from his head at odd angles. He plunks down a big plastic Juicy Juice jug. "Some ice water if you want. If you don't mind it tastin' a little like cherry." There are two more frozen jugs in the back of his bike. "You know how some people have phobias? I have a phobia of runnin' outta ice." Tom says he carries ice water with him everywhere he goes, even in winter. He credits his years as a Boy Scout for involving him in the outdoors and giving him two mottos to live by: "Be Prepared," and "Do A Good Deed Daily."
Tom hands me a gray helmet with silver flames. "This here's the Cadillac of sports rides," he says when I climb on the back. It's a silver and maroon Gold City Honda. He got it at Christmas, and it's all paid for. So is his house, and his car, and his other two motorcycles. He pops a jawbreaker in his mouth and turns the ignition. "I despise those loud Harleys," he tells me.
Zipping along through the golden hour light, I feel almost giddy. Tom talks. He tells me about his job as a pressure cleaner salesman, the Edisto River, carving a cabinet door out of a big old cypress tree, the factory plant we pass. He's lived in this area for almost 30 years. "You'll like Duke's," he says. "It's a real local place."
There's a line for the buffet when we walk in and folks sitting at every long, family-style table. It's Friday night. Tom explains what some of the food items are- "That's hash, the brains and the head of the pig"- and piles my plate with fried corn balls and hushpuppies (fried cornbread). He himself doesn't eat much. He hunches his shoulders over his plate and tells me about the many different times he's stopped to help folks in distress. "I don't care what race you are, man, woman, whatever," he says. But if he gives a man a lift, Tom always tells him two things: "Look, I'm not gay or nothin'. I'm not tryin' to pick you up," and "If you in any way make me feel threatened, things are gonna go bad real quick. I've got two guns in here closer than you are." Tom's owned guns since he was a boy, but he's never once trained one on a person. And he hasn't always stopped to help. He passes on by if he's outnumbered, or it's late at night, or if it just doesn't feel right. "Trust yer gut," he says, "cuz 99% of thuh time it's right."
Driving back to the campground, it's nearly dark. The stars are coming out, but the breeze is still warm enough for a tank top. Tom looks back, then kicks it up to 65mph, briefly, just for fun. "I tell you what," he laughs, "I love going down a road where I don't know what's around the next bend."
The mailboxes look like deer in the twilight and he slows it back down. Tom was 10 in the passenger seat when his mother hit a pedestrian running across the highway on a dare. He saw the kid flip up into the sky and disappear above the roof before he fell with a thud behind them. When Tom ran over to him, the kid's back was still "all white," the skin peeled back. Then he saw the blood begin seeping out.
Hazard headlights appear around a curve. A thin black man, stoop shouldered in a red t-shirt, shuffles toward the road and jangles his keys from his outstretched arm. His red pick-up flashes behind him. He's run out of gas. We take the plastic jug and promise to bring it back full from the station down the road. Along the way, Tom points out two stores, telling me that the owners work with guns strapped to their hips. "Just like how people put their pants on, they put on their guns.” He shrugs. "I guess it makes ‘em feel safer."
We deliver the gas, and Tom refuses the man's money. As we pull away, he turns his head and tells me over his shoulder, "That's how you rescue someone."

"Holy mackerel, it's a globular cluster!"
They seem like nice, friendly folks, Tom had told me. You should walk over and check it out. In an open field at Givhan’s Ferry State Park, the Low Country Stargazers have set up their telescopes.
I walk over. About 15 people hover in the dark around the hefty, cylindrical scopes. They look like military guns, just as Tom had said. Red lights glow from the attached GPS units.
Within a few minutes I’ve worked my way into a small group, and Chris is folding down a small chair for me. “Want to see something cool?” he asks me. I lean forward and cover my left eye. A small yellow-green dot glows in the center of the viewpiece. I look closer. It seems to become rounder, 3-dimensional, and rings emerge. It’s Saturn, 70 light minutes in the past. Every time you look into a telescope you’re looking backwards. The closest planetary body is the sun, and it takes 8 minutes for its light to reach us here on Earth. “Basically if the sun goes out,” Jim quipps, “you have 8 minutes to sing, dance, and eat pizza before you call it a night.”
Neither Chris, Carol, Jim, or Ed offers a detailed explanation for why each has spent thousands of dollars and logged countless late nights stargazing. It seems readily understandable to them. They looked through a telescope at some point and were hooked.
Chris punches in new coordinates and the telescope swings slowly to the side, mechanically whirring in the nighttime quiet. This time it focuses on “The Whirlpool Galaxies.” I watch the brighter, older galaxy suck in its neighbor.
I tell them I don’t want to keep them from their gazing. “The stars’ll be there tomorrow night,” they insist. Usually it’s a possum that wanders through, Jim jokes, but a long distance biker who biked up from New Orleans? That’s entertainment. Jim and Carol laugh about their 20-mile rides, and Jim resolves to go home and pedal between the kitchen and the living room, trying not to hit the cat. For two hours we talk about biking and the South’s lack of stress over the economy and bad drivers and the Hercules constellation. Despite a momentary flash of headlights, I never see what anyone looks like. We're just voices sparking the darkness-- "like a firefly," Jim says.
We discuss maps, and they inform me that you can now get on Google and look at a street corner in Nebraska and see which restaurant you want to eat at. No need to go there or phone. It’s a smaller world every generation, Jim says, and his hands close down in concentric circles.
We pause to gaze at “The Ghost of Jupiter,” a planetary nebula. They tell me you can see Hubble images of the nebula online, beautiful images, far better than what I’m seeing right now. I swat at the mosquitoes biting my ankles. Pretty soon everyone will just be sitting at home, Jim says, “Your world through an iPhone.”

At the crossroads of 41 and 51. –Rhems, SC
"Good morning, Miss Katherine!" A woman paying for her gas calls over to the lunch counter and waves. Ms. Katherine waves back, then continues her conversation about sausage biscuits with a black woman in a rust colored skirt and matching hat.
It’s Sunday morning at the H&S Mingo Shop. Four gas pumps keep busy outside, a kerosene pump waits in the shade. A black GMC pick up with “Lil’ Rebel,” printed across the top of its windshield is parked near the door. Someone’s tucked a turkey feather under its wiper blade. Inside the store, a cricket cage chirps beneath hooks and lures, and a green lottery stand sits at the end of the convenience food aisle. At the other end, Ms. Katherine fries bacon behind a long, L-shaped counter. Above her head, an old Pepsi sign advertises egg sandwiches for $1.59, BLTs, HLTs, fish dinners, fried chicken. Styrofoam carryout containers are stacked near bags of hamburger buns.
Ms. Katherine scrapes the scrambled eggs, one hand at the small of her back. Her white hair is rolled into neat rows running back into a bun of curls under her hair net. It stands out against her dark skin. “What you havin’ for dinner?” she throws the question across her shoulder. Three generations of camo-clad hunters face her at the counter. They sit in a line, father, son, grandson, elbows on the counter, shoulders hunched. They’re drinking Yoohoo! and waiting for breakfast. “Supposedly turkey,” the middle one answers. He has the same nose as his father and his son. The bacon sizzles and Ms. Katherine flips it.
A man in a royal blue t-shirt and ball cap slides onto a wooden stool at the far end of the counter. His face is sunburned and his accent thick. “Miss Katherine, you shoulda had thuh day off, too!” he exclaims. She mutters about tomorrow’s schedule. There’s a “Help Wanted” sign on the front door. “I’m tired eatin’ my cookin’,” she admits. “Ya know what ya got tuh do, donchya?” the blue shirt man tells her. “Ya gotta tell yer man tuh get back there an’ cook.” Ms. Katherine laments that her husband cooks but doesn’t clean. “I go back in there, I wanna see my kitchen clean.” She sets down the man’s breakfast. “I can’t eat no sunnyside up eggs," she tells him. “Why not?” he asks. She eyes the plate. “Cuz they’re lookin’ at ya smilin’.”
Ms. Katherine asks him about his kids. He says he’s thinking about bringing his babies home some of her chicken. “What ‘bout your wife?” she asks. He wasn’t planning on it. She leans toward him, emphasizing her words. “Well, I hope an’ pray you get in thuh house.” She pulls back and taps the counter. “You take your hat off, throw it in,” she advises, “and if she throw it back out, you in trouble.”
A black family walks in the door, and she turns. “Good mornin’,” she greets the two girls who have wandered over to the fried chicken case. They look slightly uncomfortable, like strangers. She looks down at them over the top of her glasses, her pen poised to write down their order. They mumble a response, then walk away. Ms. Katherine purses her lips. She pulls off her glasses, holds them up to the light and squints, wipes them on her apron. Pinned to the top is a name card: “Hello, my name is…” Underneath she’s handwritten in spidery script, “Katherine, Thanks for shopping with us.”
More folks walk in-- a tall black man in a navy pinstripe suit, an older white man in a blue bow tie. Outside, the sun is already heating up the pavement. A red Chevy pick up with “Shut Up and Drive” on its windshield pulls up and parks. “Brown-eyed Girl” plays a moment longer on the stereo before a woman with short blond hair and a tattoo on each calf gets out. She pulls up the window with one hand while she cranks the handle. Shots pop in the woods across the highway. A man walks toward the shade, cradling a puppy and murmuring to it like a baby. “Watch ‘em, an’ I’ll go getcher drink,” his wife calls out. She heads into the store.