By Leo Johnson

Drayton had been around for nearly two centuries. Nestled into a small valley in the hills of northeast Alabama, it had waxed and waned over the years, burgeoning for a while thanks to the cotton mill and good jobs. Diminishing to nearly nothing when the mill closed and the men from the railroad tore up the tracks that ran through town. That void, where the tracks once were, was a wound. A festering, stinking wound. 

When the jobs disappeared, the pulse of the town left with it. The town square, the heart of the community, was still. Businesses stood empty, windows boarded up. There were no longer festivals or fireworks hosted on the square. Yards went to seed because no one could be bothered to keep them maintained. Houses fell into disrepair with their inhabitants having only the time to focus on their own survival now. Those with the means left Drayton. Those without were stuck in town, withering right along with it. 

Then the kudzu crept in. First on the edge of town, spreading through a disused pasture. It worked its way up the side of houses, covering windows, and plunging rooms into darkness. Telephone lines began to look like leafy spiderwebs ensnaring the town. Before long, it was everywhere. The town was covered in it. The dying town was resurgent with life, just not in a way that anyone wanted.

Those left in Drayton tried to fight back, tried to contain this verdant plague. Weed Eaters and lawnmowers had their gears snarled by the vines. Weed killers had little effect, as any patches that fell to the chemical onslaught were just swallowed up again soon after. One resident, having heard it made good fodder for livestock, set his herd of goats loose on the kudzu. They ate and ate, stripping the vines bare. Full and happy, the goats finished their job. Though it wasn’t the whole town cleared, it was progress. They’d won, the people of Drayton thought. The goats had done it. Until they hadn’t. One by one, they dropped dead in the pasture. Over-eating disease or goat pox or something else. Maybe they couldn’t contain Drayton’s judgment as they’d been forced to. No one was sure what happened. While they pondered, the kudzu kept coming. 

The kudzu claimed more land. Never stopping. The vine that ate the South, they called it. It wouldn’t stop eating. It was greedy, ravenous, all-consuming. There was no containing it. In a last-ditch attempt, they tried to burn it. Fire cleanses completely, after all. But that only seemed to make it worse. The vines spread the flames, touching off fires all over town and bringing further ruin to a town that could ill afford to lose anything else. Despite it all, the kudzu continued to creep. Like a sylvan Vesuvius, it covered Drayton. 

Some people saw it as a punishment. They, or their ancestors before them, had failed in some way. People had done evil in those hills and all over the South. To found Drayton, the original inhabitants had to be done away with. Plaques around the square commemorated one-sided deals and flimsy treaties that tried to legitimize these acts. Those plaques had long since been lost to the vines. Weak men, fragile men, had committed treason so they could feel superior to others. They’d fought to keep people in bondage, purely for the color of their skin and their own greed. Statues lauding them still stood in Drayton. One on the square and one in the town cemetery. Their children and grandchildren had erected those statues and fought to keep those same people chained in new ways. The blood of the enslaved had seeped so deeply into the ground that it turned the very soil red. At least that’s what they feared. 

Some said it was merely the way of things. Things come and go. There’s not a moral component to it. One day, the Sun will explode, but that doesn’t mean the Sun was bad. Everything has to come to an end. Even the town of Drayton. Especially the town of Drayton. Maybe it was Drayton’s time to be buried. Maybe it was the kudzu’s time to flourish?