Rootwork: Arthur Flowers, Zora Neale Hurston, and the "literary hoodoo" tradition

This restored connection to the ancestors shows yet again that African traditions strengthen Lucas and Melvira. Armed with healthy individual identities and professions that contribute to their culture, connected to African-derived power in their conjuring and blues playing, and at peace with their ancestors, Lucas and Melvira are equipped with the tools they need to survive disaster when it strikes. And strike it does. Like the devastating Florida hurricane that brings on Tea Cake's death near the end of Hurston's novel, a great Mississippi flood provides the climactic action for Flowers' text. These analogous scenes indicate forcefully that Flowers is Signifyin(g) on Hurston's text, and the different outcomes for the two sets of characters highlight the importance of Lucas's and Melvira's African-based sources of strength.

In Hurston's novel, Janie and Tea Cake ignore hurricane warnings from fleeing animals and native people. Instead of trusting the natural signs that the Native Americans and the Bahamians read, Tea Cake decides (apparently without consulting Janie) that the money's too good to leave. When he finally does choose to leave, he does so over Janie's protestations. After being bitten by a rabid dog, Tea Cake ignores Janie's repeated injunctions to see a doctor about the dog bite, an error in judgment that leads to his tragic death. This sequence of events reveals that, despite the love and joy Tea Cake brings to Janie's life, he and Janie do not, in fact, share an equal partnership. Finally, it suggests that despite his introducing Janie to the mythic, primeval life on the muck, Tea Cake has lost touch with many truths evident in nature.

Lucas and Melvira make none of these mistakes. As they take refuge for the night in an empty barn on the road to Taproot, Melvira sends forth her traveling spirit, and sees "animals of the field and farm, house and woods in communal flight, and she felt the earth trembling in fear." She wakes Lucas with the unadorned announcement, "'River's coming,'" to which Lucas responds by springing into action, despite the fact that he hears nothing but rain. In Lucas's mind, "if Melvira Dupree said the river was coming, then the river was coming." Leaving the barn they see animals running by, "deer and wolf side by side, wild dog and tame," and once Lucas is behind the wheel of their car, "instinctively, he followed the rest of the fleeing animals" (191). The contrast between this flight and that of Tea Cake and Janie is clear: Melvira has unique powers, Lucas trusts them, and they both trust nature to lead the way to safety.

Lucas is just plain luckier than Tea Cake, too, for his flight involves no contest with a rabid dog. As they await rescue on high ground, however, Melvira predicts that Lucas "got a fever coming" (197), and when she decides to seek help from a passing rowboat, he follows her advice in time to save his life. As the novel draws to a close, Lucas notes that" 'A good woman sure do work a man hard,"' but no harder, retorts Melvira," 'than a good man work a woman.' And on that progressive note they walked hand in hand off into the wooded sunset" (211), survivors by virtue of their rootedness in African-based traditions and their equal trust in each other.