that he didn't like. Always before they had travelled along homely, cheerful roads with only the occasional stretch of kudzu vine crawling across trees and banks to suggest wild natural growth. But this was different. There were no billboards, no houses, no gas stations, none of those amenities which had signified civilization. This was a wilderness.
'And what happens if when we do get some place there isn't a motel?' he asked.
'Then we'll have to make do with what there is,' said Baby, 'I told you we were coming to the Deep South and this is where it's at.'
'Where what's at?' said Piper staring down at the black water and thinking of alligators.
'That's what I've come to find out,' said Baby enigmatically and braked the car to a standstill at a cross roads. Piper peered through the windshield at a sign. Its faded letters said BIBLIOPOLIS 15 MILES.
'Looks like your kind of town,' said Baby and turned the car on to the side road. Presently the dark water forest thinned and they came out into an open landscape with lush meadows hazy with heat where cattle grazed in long grass and clumps of trees stood apart. There was something almost English about this scenery, an English parkland gone to seed, luxuriant yet immanent with half-remembered possibilities. Everywhere the distance faded into haze blurring the horizon. Piper, looking across the meadows, felt easier in his mind. There was a sense of domesticity here that was reassuring. Occasionally they passed a wooden shack part-hidden by vegetation and seemingly unoccupied. And finally there was Bibliopolis itself, a small town, almost a hamlet, with a river running sluggishly beside an abandoned quay. Baby drove down to the riverside and stopped. There was no bridge. On the far side an ancient rope ferry provided the only means of crossing.
'Okay, go ring the bell,' said Baby. Piper got out and rang a bell that hung from a post.
'Harder,' said Baby as Piper pulled on the rope. Presently a man appeared on the far shore and the ferry began to move across.
'You wanting something?' said the man when the ferry grounded.
'We're looking for somewhere to stay,' said Baby. The man peered at the licence plate on the Ford and seemed reassured. It read Georgia.
'There ain't no motel in Bibliopolis,' said the man. 'You'd best go back to Selma.'
'There must be somewhere,' said Baby as the man still hesitated.
'Mrs Mathervitie's Tourist Home,' said the man and stepped aside. Baby drove on to the ferry and got out.
'Is this the Alabama river?' she asked. The man shook his head.
'The Ptomaine River, ma'am,' he said and pulled on the rope.
'And that?' asked Baby, pointing to a large dilapidated mansion that was evidently ante-bellum.
That's Pellagra. Nobody lives there now. They all died off.'
Piper sat in the car and stared gloomily at the sluggish river. The trees along its bank were veiled with Spanish moss like widows' weeds and the dilapidated mansion below the town put him in mind of Miss Haversham. But Baby, when she got back into the car and drove off the ferry, was clearly elated by the atmosphere.
'I told you this was where it's at,' she said triumphantly. 'And now for Mrs Mathervitie's Tourist Home.'
They drove down a tree-lined street and stopped outside a house. A signboard said Welcome. Mrs Mathervitie was less effusive. Sitting in the shadow of a porch she watched them get out of the car.
'You folks looking for some place?' she asked, her glasses glinting in the sunset.
'Mrs Mathervitie's Tourist Home,' said Baby.
'Selling or staying? Cos if it's cosmetics I ain't in the market.'
