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“An old coot usedta live ’round here. A soothsayer, I reckon you might call him. He got religion after his little girl died. Shame about that.”
“The daughter or the religion,” Jericho muttered, and Alma nudged him quiet with her elbow.
“Golly Moses, the two of you!” she hissed.
“Mr. John Hendrix spent forty nights in the woods and came out with all manner of visions about this land.”
Goosepimples rose on Ling’s arms. “What kind of visions?”
“He said there’d be a town built on Black Oak Ridge with a heap of factories and whatnot, all to fight a great war.”
“We’ve already had a great war,” Jericho said bitterly. “Wasn’t that enough?”
“He said whatever was built in those factories would make the earth shake with a terrible noise. Don’t know what to make of it, but folks around here seem to believe he was a true prophet.”
Ling couldn’t help but think about Jake Marlowe.
“Say, y’all heard about this Voice of Tomorrow?” Babe asked.
“What’s that? Is it a new kind of radio?” Eloise said.
“No. Somebody’s been leaving these poems and stories all around and mailing them to the Daily News back in New York. Whoever it is calls themselves the Voice of Tomorrow.”
“Roses are red, violets are blue, I sent my love to the Daily Neeews,” Sally Mae said, cracking herself and Sadie up.
“Not like that. These are serious poems. About hauntings and ghosts and America. Oh, and somebody called the King of Crows.”
“The what?” Jericho said, choking slightly on his sandwich. Ling elbowed him.
“The King of Crows.”
“Who’s that? He got a territory band?” Lupe asked.
“Do I look like I know?” Babe said. “Anyhow. It’s got folks pretty riled up. It’s got ’em talking about how things are in this country. And how they should be. About darn time, you ask me.”
“Memphis?” Ling whispered to Jericho.
Jericho nodded. “Memphis.”
OPPORTUNITY
New York City
The letter, addressed to T. S. Woodhouse, the Daily News, had no return address, but Woody had come to know that handwriting by now. Eagerly, he sliced open the top of the envelope and tugged out the poem inside. The Voice of Tomorrow had sent him another one.
He checked the postmark—Greenville, Mississippi. Wasn’t that where the flood was? Woody hid the envelope under a stack of racing forms at the back of his drawer. He put the letter to one side and started typing.
Exclusive to The Daily News
by T. S. Woodhouse
Another poetic missive has arrived from the mysterious town crier named the Voice of Tomorrow. Many have wondered, Who is this unknown everyman delving into the state of the nation and into the heart of America’s eternal struggle: Who, exactly, gets to be called an American? Is it America only for a select bunch of swells whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower or the Maine? (And weren’t those same folks fleeing from persecution themselves? I ask you.) What about the Iroquois or the Chippewa, who were here first? As long as we’re asking, shouldn’t they have first say in the matter?
Well, the Voice of Tomorrow seems to say, if that’s the case, you’re gonna have a mighty small America, in size, in stature, and in that most American of concepts—heart. If the Constitution put down by our Founding Fathers is to be believed and all people are created equal, why is it that one hundred fifty years later, our mysterious scribe seems to say, we still haven’t made good on that promise? Now, some folks call the Voice of Tomorrow a radical. Well, then, so were the fellows who dumped tea in Boston Harbor. For that matter, so were the same folks who gave us that Constitution the politicians li
ke to beat their gums defending when it’s convenient for them and chip away at when it’s not.
Another reporter named Charlie slapped the morning edition of the paper, open to Woody’s column, down onto Woody’s desk beside his agitating Underwood. “Woody, how come you keep publishing these radical poems?”
