Joy and Death in Converse, Louisiana

It’s hard to separate a dying place from the memories that haunt it; whenever I make the long drive out to the charred grasses, frothing ponds, and old family farm in Converse, Louisiana, I am reminded of a thriving community that I was never able to fully participate in. I am thankful I know those hot Louisiana roads, even if most of what I do is examine clues that hint at a more vibrant past. 
Ten minutes from our farmhouse, a dusty old man sits stone-like in his straw chair underneath a red hot sun. He guards his front-yard crops from… from whatever. From time. A human scarecrow, we called him. Scarecrow-man did his hunchback-duty every day I can remember, until one day he disappeared. Crumbled into smiling ash. 
Past the church behind that old man’s house, scattered homes of all kinds hide. All of them are small trailers with different accentual charms. Some sit tidy and proud; others flaunt front-yard trash, abandoned carpentry projects, and howling skeletal pets. 
A mile further away from the church, you can see the hulking, maroon, homemade monster truck that slouches beneath two eighteen-wheelers and a bright yellow tractor. 
Past the monster truck, take a right onto Midway road, a road once full of life and family, or left to the family cemetery. The first house on Midway Road is Uncle C.B. and Aunt Bobby’s. Their backyard boasts two gleaming ponds, countless chained and howling dogs, prairies of horses, barns full of cats, cattle, and piles of waste. Uncle C.B. died three months ago; we found him floating silently in the 25-acre lake behind our house; he fell victim to an accidental drowning. 
A stone’s throw from C.B.’s house is something even older, what we call the yellow house. Grandmother’s house. Well, she was really my great grandmother, but we called her Grandmother anyway. She grew up in severe poverty; she raised my father’s mother in another house, one with no electricity. That house was the blackhouse, but only a deep well covered in leaves remains. They drew water from that well and kept warm with a real roaring fire and read by the light of an oil-lit lamp. 
That newer yellow house was a sign of my great grandmother having ‘made it.’ Grandmother saw the rot and the laziness that comes when people don’t want better for themselves. When they don’t want an education, don’t want to speak properly. She was determined to do better for herself and for her children; she was the first in a long line of my Louisiana-kin to attend college. She made sure her kids did the same. Grandmother died of a blood clot at our farm, not her yellow house. But that yellow home, the one she and her husband built themselves, sits rotting and vine-covered all the same. 
Third down the row of houses leading up to ours lived Aunt Mac and Uncle Charlie; they both could always be found lounging in rustic recliners in the cramped living room of their tiny blue trailer. I don’t know how they ended up there in that house, on that road. Aunt Mac would sheepishly gift my twin sister and me a doll from her massive collection every time we’d visit. But nobody watches over those thousands of cloth bodies anymore. Aunt Mac died about nine years ago. Her husband followed shortly after. The home is soon to meet them. 
An old Datsun 280z collapses on itself. Its owner, their only son, killed himself while his parents traveled in the RV that sits alone in the backyard. A lawnmower hopes to be started just one more time. The roof does its best to protect those dolls, but it too is soaked to the bone with rainwater. 
Aunt Mac was a steady-going Christian, a country stereotype, typical in her southern manners and kind heart. She was an old soul, a slow-speaking woman with a selflessness common to the area. Bella and I never left empty-handed; she always would insist that we leave with a plush “friend.” Dolls were her passion, and it brought her joy to share them with us whenever we stopped by.  
When I find the courage to revisit that now-rotting trailer, the musty air feels foreign. A fog of nostalgia, of a family gone, of longing for times past, and of actual fungal growth kicks up with every step. Those same doll-eyes that once breathed warmth now gawk from every angle. The place could be a horror set; dozens of shelves on various levels hang on the walls, all of them stuffed with dolls. New dolls, old dolls. Licensed dolls. Dolls of presidents. The rot and caving-in walls and dark scare me, but not enough to overpower the memory of generosity and loving southern drawl that same home once poured out.  
What was once an anchor, just a blue trailer, is now gasping for relief and sits in rot. Who is telling Aunt Mac’s story? Or the house’s story? Its stories live on, if just within pages and within the hearts of those dead. If only here. I’ve only been an ancillary part of the stories that take place in Converse, Louisiana, but I know that I will protect those tales with all I have.