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Chapter four River of the Demonic: The Brazos This “displaced” ghost haunts the new dwelling. It remains the rightful heir in the spot that we occupy in his . . . place (de Certeau 1988, 345). In 2005 the last Fort Bend County acreage available to developers was sold. The Texas Department of Corrections sold most of its county land. Masterplanned suburban developments will soon be built, and the Brazos River bridge on U.S. Highway 59 is being expanded. The old Brazos Bottoms will decorate the new communities. The towering trees and dramatic drop down the steep banks of the river will be an exotic attraction to prospective homeowners . The vines and small trees provide a layer of green over the red dirt bordering the Brazos. Michel de Certeau explains that we may attempt to displace old ghosts with our new dwellings, but they never really go away.1 The slaves, prisoners, and sharecroppers that worked the plantations bordering the Brazos are the historical heirs of this place. Those who named the Brazos River Brazos de Dios may have been thinking that the powerful arms of God would bring prosperity to those who settled near its embankment. The fecundity of the land had no rivals.2 It could be compared to the Fertile Crescent or the richness of the land bordering the Nile. The fertility of what came to be called the Brazos Bottoms created unlimited wealth for those fortunate enough to negotiate land titles. However, there is an unfortunate paradox created by this place of bounty. The fertility of the land spilled over into the fertility of the planters/slaveowners. They produced generations of the mixed-blood children that decades later faced unspeakable violence from their own blood-kin. The hopeful Arms of God reversed itself into a space of the demonic. The water of the river would be a dark red if it could show all the blood spilled on its banks these past two hundred years. During the antebellum era it was known to be the worst place to 86 chapter four be a slave.3 In the early twentieth century people called it the hell hole of the Brazos.4 The incongruity continues in the idealistic mythology proliferated through local narratives of a wild Eden where hard-working migrants from the eastern United States fought with nature and built an empire. Phantoms in the Water Approaching the city of Kendleton on United States Highway 59 over a bridge about twelve miles southwest of Rosenberg in Fort Bend County, there is a white sign announcing Turkey Creek. In the spring of 2005, as I traveled past the sign on my way to a funeral in South Texas, I remembered a story told to me by a woman named Marjorie Adams. Driving seventy miles per hour on Hwy 59, a freeway between Houston and the city of Victoria, I looked quickly below the bridge, catching a glimpse of a gully; there was no water. Mrs. Adams had impressed upon me the importance of the site. However, the significance of her narrative did not become immediate until I actually saw the words “Turkey Creek” spelled out on the sign. I’m reminded that written words entering our field of vision imitate the presence of reality. The text that announces the location of Turkey Creek “neither preserves nor restores an initial content, as this is forever lost (forgotten).”5 Yet, it provides a clue to the past. Since death is on my mind as I travel to the funeral of my relative, I think of the deaths associated with the creek. I wonder if I will ever know the real story. Regardless of my postmodern sensibilities, I am seduced by the need to prove that something really happened. Marjorie Adams described an event that involved at least a hundred individuals; numerous people were killed. It was a bloody confrontation between the blacks in Kendleton and the county sheriff’s deputies. She gave me an approximate date, and I searched through old newspaper microfilms but found nothing about Turkey Creek. How could something so big just disappear? Cognizant of the variability of narratives, I realize it is possible that the Turkey Creek event never happened. The necessity (and lack) of archival documents makes the tale a fantasy in my mind or that of Marjorie Adams. However , the mere existence of the narrative is significant. Marjorie Adams is an impressive woman. She is tall and attractive, with snowy white hair and...

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