versity, and maybe a good place to touch down. But my mind wasn't completely set. I was open to anything. Lafayette had taught me to trust my impulses, take chances. So even as I drove, I was wondering if maybe I should change plans. At any number of the highway junctions, I considered zipping off on a totally different routeperhaps head farther into western Louisiana near the Texas border, for example, or veer sharply up into the Arkansas flatlands. After all, I could go anywhere. It was a burden more than a liberationthe possibilities of choice, the anxiety about narrowing them to one spot, one town, gave me a light-headed feeling, not unlike vertigo.
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About midday I came upon an unmarked blacktopmost Louisiana roads are poorly markedat a T-junction next to a beer'n bait store. I drove it a few miles into woods and farmland until I thought it might be a waste of time. So I went back to the T-junction. By then, three black laborers, or farm hands, had assembled to drink beer on a pile of boxes back of the bait store. When I asked for directions, one of the men got surly because I couldn't understand his thick local inflection. He was looking for trouble, but I wasn't, and drove on. In a few miles I came to a patchy asphalt highway, also unmarked by directional signs. I followed it northwest until I saw markers indicating that it was about to fork off. One way led towards Jonesboro, Arkansas, and the other to Ruston, Louisiana, which is adjacent to Grambling.
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I was really uncertain which fork to take, but as I downshifted on the approach, a black mechanic standing outside a repair shop walked towards the Ruston side of the shoulder, wiping his hands on a red work cloth. I looked over at him and he was looking directly back at me. He had a mustache. Short hair. Smooth skin and even teeth. He smiled. I turned his way.
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It's hard to know what to make of something like that. A voudou priest would've said I had been guided by Elegba: once to warn me off at the bait stand and again to to lead me through
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