“Where Even the Sun Cannot
Find Its Way”[1]
(Back Home, and Back Again)[2]
Daniel Uncapher | Essays
A man has just robbed the bank[3] with a sawed-off shotgun,[4] crouching into a field of beans[5] and firing like mad[6] at the big police captain,[7] a man big enough to swallow a whale.[8]
Bang—bang!
Bang—bang—bang! Bang—bang![9]
They shot back and forth and all around like purposeless nothings.[10] It was quieter than you would have expected.[11] A bird took a long step backward and looked fearfully around.[12] A plane buzzed from nowhere.[13]
And the robber made off,[14] escaping on foot to a swamp[15] where the snakes were. And the water got so deep that the snakes were swimming[16] under the feet of naked[17] boys, playing their own games in their own corners[18]—nasty little boys (turpissimi pueri,[19] as they say in
[1] Minie Herbert, Willie the Waif (1917)
[2] Elizabeth Frazer, “Unconscious Americans” from The Saturday Evening Post, Vol. 198 (1926)
[3] James William Gilbart, The Logic of Banking (1865)
[4] Max Brand, The Long, Long Trail: A Western Story (1923)
[5] James White, History of England, from the Earliest Times to the Year Eighteen Hundred and Fifty-Eight (1861)
[6] John Ormsby, Autumn Rambles in North Africa (1864)
[7] Edward Weitzel, “Thrilling Rescue from Real Life” from Moving Picture World and View Photographer, Vol. 38 (1918)
[8] The Index, Vol. 2 (1882)
[9] Vladimir Korolenko [trans. Marian Fell], “The Day of Atonement” from Makar’s Dream and Other Stories (1916)
[10] G. Peyton Wertenbaker, “The Man from the Atom” from Amazing Stories, Vol. 1 (1926)
[11] “Besieged in Kimberley” from Harper’s Weekly, Vol. 44 (1900)
[12] “Her Mailed Knight: A Half-True Tale” from Andrews’ American Queen, Vol. 30 (1893)
[13] Leonard H. Nason, “The Luger” from Adventure, Vol. 43 (1923)
[14] Thomas Frost, The Corsican Brothers: or, The Fatal Duel (1852)
[15] Elliot G. Storke and L. P. Brockett, A Complete History of the Great American Rebellion, Vol. 2 (1865)
[16] “A Pawnee Star Myth” from The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 7 (1894)
[17] Robert Wallace, Farming Industries of Cape Colony (1896)
[18] “Recreations in Poor-law Schools” from The Charity Organisation Review, Vol. 10 (1902)
[19] Andrew Lang, Oxford (1922)
Rome),[1] rolling in the mud and rubbing against[2] one another until they have consumed the proverbial salt,[3] “swallowed the proverbial poker.”[4] Do you see what they’re doing now? They’re shoving[5] their fingers where women do not entertain[6] to shove, with shoulder,[7] until they disappear entirely[8]—hidden like flowers in mountain defiles,[9] blooming like two lovely buds that grow together.[10]
And how the flowers grow![11] Southern growth, soft fiber, green color[12] in purple shade.[13] Flowers with great stems and large, heart-shaped foliage,[14] bamboo hanging in exquisite curves, with wheels of delicate green[15]twisting like snakes and dragons in the dancing light[16] of the filtered sun.[17] Zinnias grow 8 feet tall,[18]perpetually fluttered over by butterflies as big as peacocks[19] and spiders as big as geese.[20] The trees are so thick that I can get no view of the surrounding country,[21] the forest one big individual[22] thing, one great Antichristian power,[23]
[1] Robert Charles Jenkins, What do the Popes Say on their Alleged Infallibility? (1870)
[2] “Kalahari Desert” from The Encyclopedia Americana (1903)
[3] Aristotle [trans. J. E. C. Welldon], The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle (1902)
[4] Theo Gift, Pretty Miss Bellew: A Tale of Home Life (1875)
[5] Walter Karig, “Hungry” Crawford, Legionnaire (1929)
[6] Eva Adam, “Folks who Eat with Their Fingers Where Women Do Not Entertain” from T.P.’s and Cassell’s Weekly, Vol. 2 (1924)
[7] Titus Lucretius Carus, [trans. William Ellery Leonard] On the Nature of Things (1924)
[8] “The Home Garden” from The Country Gentleman, Vol. 86 (1921)
[9] Rev. G. D. Watson, “A Wonderful Text” from The Advocate of Christian Holiness (1877)
[10] “A Sketch” from The Album, and Ladies’ Weekly Gazette, Vol. 1 (1826)
[11] Chandler B. Beach, The Student’s Manual: Outlines for Study and Classified Questions in Nature (1909)
[12] R. E. Jones, “I Have It!” from Brooms, Brushes & Handles, Vol. 19 (1916)
[13] William Wordsworth, “Juvenile Pieces: An Evening Walk” from The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth (1836)
[14] Frederic William Stack, “In Praise of the Lily” from The Magazine Flowers, Vol. 1 (1912)
[15] Marianne North, Early Days and Home Life (1892)
[16] Mrs. Hugh Fraser, The Custom of the Country: Tales of New Japan (1899)
[17] Charles De Kay, “An Arab?” from Hesperus: And Other Poems (1880)
[18] Alfred Carl Hottes, The Book of Annuals (1928)
[19] Karle Wilson Baker, The Garden of the Plynck (1920)
[20] Edward C. W. Grey, St. Giles of the Lepers (1905)
[21] John M’Douall Stuart, “Diary: Exploration from Adelaide across the Continent of Australia, 1861-2” from The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, Vol. 33 (1863)
[22] “Chickrassia tabularis” from Records of the Botanical Survey of India, Vol. 10 (1924)
[23] Thomas M’Crie, The Truth of God Against the Papacy (1851)
hiding everything that comes in its track beneath its sable folds.[1] I tell you the forest is like a mortuary house for all its pretty flowers and trees.[2] Sometimes it smothers the very content for whose expression it was devised,[3]too thick to even raise a gun[4] to your own brow[5] without working up a little emotion on the subject.[6] And you stand there with the degrading feeling that you feel all swimmy and are going to cry,[7] and you don’t want to die[8]without at least uttering a cry of complaint, without taking some measure to demand justice.[9] And what is more unjust than to desire to have your sins forgiven you?[10]
This, then, was the condition of things in North Mississippi[11] the last time I went home.[12]
[1] “Upper Lake Township” from History of Napa and Lake Counties (1881)
[2] Alice Corkran, Margery Merton’s Childhood (1888)
[3] George John Blewett, The Study of Nature and the Vision of God (1907)
[4] “Grouse on the Pocono” from Forest and Stream, Vol. 23 (1889)
[5] Julia Pardoe, The Life of Marie de Medicis, Queen of France, Consort of Henri IV, and Regent of the Kingdom under Louis XIII (1890)
[6] Marie Flora B. Leighton, Husband and Wife (1888)
[7] Edward Herbert Cooper, The Monk Wins (1900)
[8] Eden Phillpotts, Told at ‘The Plume’ (1921)
[9] United States Senate, “Temporary Occupation of Yucatan” from Proceedings and Debates of the United States Senate (1848)
[10] St. Ambrose, “Concerning Repentance” from A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church (1896)
[11] “Davis v. Mississippi Cent. R. Co.” from Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court, Book 23 (1907)
[12] Thomas Bayly Howell, Cobbett’s Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings (1812)
[13] James Ballantyne Hannay, “Fig. 23” from Sex Symbolism in Religion (1874)
I hate going home.[1] The place has no friends left on earth.[2] I only go home occasionally now,[3] to answer calls for weddings or funerals[4]—the latter more than the former[5] as time does its work.[6]
Going home is like all other human events—a mingled tissue of joy and grief.[7] I feel all this grieving is caused by that mischievous sprite we call love.[8] I think it must be something like the feeling an aeronaut has when his balloon bursts and, looking down, he sees below him the old home farm where he used to live—I mean the feeling he’d have just before he flattened out in that same old clay barnyard.[9] Have you ever been down the Mississippi?[10] Why, it is like a hell in the heart.[11] A heavy flame, gleamed from a dying lamp[12] in an overgrown patch of wet grass on the edge of a swamp[13] like a beer bottle[14] filled with piss[15] (and drunk just a little, without comments or refusals).[16] I hate the South.[17] The place is seriously corrupted.[18] It is riddled with shot and is now but a mere wreck,[19] a whirlpool of misfortune and failure[20] where we sink in deep at every
[1] Annie Thomas, Blotted out (1877)
[2] John Western, “Perpetual Care in Modern Cemetery” from Modern Cemetery, Vol. 31 (1920)
[3] Humfrey Jordan, Patchwork Comedy (1913)
[4] Burris Jenkins, The Protestant: A Scrap-book for Insurgents (1918)
[5] “The Mutual Relations of Scripture and Moral Philosophy” from The Baptist Record, Vol. 1 (1848)
[6] “Antique Art, Its Restoration and the Work of To-day” from Building News, Vol. 33 (1878)
[7] Elizabeth Bruce Elton-Smith, “Going Home” from The East India Sketch-Book (1832)
[8] Lizzie G. Condon, “Oh! Bother This Aching” from Killeeny of Lough Corrib and Miscellaneous Poems (1872)
[9] Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons (1922)
[10] United States Congress House Committee on Appropriations, “War Department Appropriation Bill, 1925” from Hearings (1924)
[11] “An Extract From Owen’s ‘Communion With God’” from The Gospel Standard: or, Feeble Christian’s Support, Vol. 17 (1851)
[12] “Miscellaneous Poems: Rosalie” from The British Poets of the Nineteenth Century (1828)
[13] Arthur Kent Chignell, An Outpost in Papau (1911)
[14] Chris Martin Sampson, A Practice of Physiotherapy (1926)
[15] John Kitto, A Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature, Vol. 1 (1865)
[16] Robert Hugh Benson, Initiation (1914)
[17] “Doc. 39: Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign” from The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events (1868)
[18] Charles Portales Golightly, Correspondence Illustrative of the Actual State of Oxford (1842)
[19] “Doc. 98: The Capture of Jackson” from The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events (1864)
[20] The Kansas City Editor, “’Willingness’ a Success Winner” from Among Ourselves, Vol. 4 (1907)
step[1] into the red mud of those tame and disfigured hills that we dignify with the name of mountains[2](represented by Buncombe Mountain in southern Marshall, and Thacker Mountain in southern Lafayette).[3]
Mississippi seems to fall into three principal divisions:[4] the dead, the dying, and the wounded, lying upon each other,[5] all piled up and ready to be lighted.[6] The hills sink beneath the sandy soil and reappear[7] as mobile homes and pressed-wood products,[8] rotting in place, tarpaulins ripped up, hatches open to wet weather, doors and side-scuttles open.[9] The house I live in, The Cedars,[10] has no cedar trees near it. Rot[11] and wind took their places[12] a hundred years ago.[13] Roaches swarm out of the crack-plastered walls,[14] deer break their necks[15] on the windshields of automobiles,[16] snakes wait until sundown to die after they are beheaded.[17] It’s the kind of place where a man might be done to death and rot for[18] decades before he[19] realizes what has happened to him.[20]
[1] Number Two, “A Winter’s Day” from Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic News, Vol. 72 (1909)
[2] William Cabell Bruce, John Randolph of Roanoke, 1773-1833 (1922)
[3] E. N. Lowe, Mississippi State Geological Survey, Bulletin No. 12: Mississippi: It’s Geology, Geography, Soils and Mineral Resources (1915)
[4] David White, Shorter Contributions to General Ecology, 1917 (1918)
[5] Jean Martheilhe [trans. James Willington], The Memoirs of a Protestant (1765)
[6] “Review: Life of Lord Jeffrey” from Littell’s Living Age, Vol. 33 (1852)
[7] William Wilson Hunter, The Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. 4 (1885)
[8] California, “Evelyn Mullen, et al., vs. Armstrong World Industries, Inc.,” from California Court of Appeals (1st Appellate District) (1987)
[9] “Astra,” “Care and Maintenance of Laid-Up Ships” from The Log, Vol. 19 (1932)
[10] Alfred Dawson, The Life of Henry Dawson, Landscape Painter, 1811-1878 (1891)
[11] Andrew MacNairn Soule and Edna Henry Lee Turpin, Agriculture: Its Fundamental Principles (1907)
[12] Albert Bushnell Hart and Ezliabeth Stevens, The Romance of the Civil War (1903)
[13] John Macmillan Brown, The Riddle of the Pacific (1925)
[14] Charles Anthony Robinson, “Extern: How the Babies of the Slums Are Brought into the World” from The Century, Vol. 115 (1928)
[15] “Discussions of Mr. Bean’s Paper” from Parks & Recreation, Vol. 6 (1922)
[16] George A. Young, “Who Is to Blame IF Sales Fall Off?” from Printers’ Ink, Vol. 128 (1924)
[17] Orlie M. Clem, “The Application of the Project Technique to a Course in General Science” from Journal of Educational Method, Vol. 6 (1926)
[18] Fred M. White, “The Romance of the Secret Service Fund” from Pearson’s Magazine, Vol. 10 (1900)
[19] John Pease Fry, The Advent of Quakerism (1908)
[20] “Review of Henry James’ ‘Disengaged’” from The Theatre, Vol. 9 (1909)
No, I don’t like going[1] home, no matter how much I[2] love my sister and my mother.[3] The bodies are too much.[4]
And they don’t like me, either.[6] Not in Water Valley,[7] a town of some four thousand people.[8] I stick out like a sore thumb[9] in this little podunk place.[10] I cannot help but wonder what[11] they think when they see me, alone,[12]standing at the corner of Wood Street[13] and Main with a brown and sugared doughnut held in either chubby fist,[14]reciting poetry to myself.[15] Am I drunk? Am I dreaming? Is my brain softening?[16] What must my mother think[17]when I come home at four in the morning,[18] just like my father used to do,[19] dripping with the green moisture of pestilence?[20] Why are all the men[21] in her life so different to themselves, whose lives have
[1] Helen Morton, Helen Morton’s Trial (1862)
[2] Leona Dalrymple, Fool’s Hill (1922)
[3] Charles Henry Platt, “Mothers and Brothers” from Sermons (1872)
[4] Herbert Osborn, “Additions to the List of Hemiptera of Iowa, with Descriptions of New Species” from Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science (1898)
[5] James Ballantyne Hannay, “Fig. 23” from Sex Symbolism in Religion (1874)
[6] Maurice Hewlett, Mrs. Lancelot: A Comedy of Assumptions (1912)
[7] “Delay of Express Company in Delivering Check” from The Banking Law Journal, Vol. 12 (1895)
[8] “Then and Now in Sanarate” from The Missionary Review of the World, Vol. 42 (1919)
[9] Garret Smith, “The Joke at ‘Upset J’” from Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 194 (1928)
[10] “From a Home Builder to Her Chum” from House & Garden, Vol. 42 (1922)
[11] Grace Townsend, The Speaker’s Companion: or, Popular Reciter (1895)
[12] “The Manager” from The Parlour Magazine, Vol. 2 (1851)
[13] William Harrison Ainsworth, The Goldsmith’s Wife: A Tale (1875)
[14] “The Unbroken Heart” from The New Education, Vol. 10 (1897)
[15] Nina Rhoades, Silver Linings (1903)
[16] Nugent Robinson, “Mr. Joffins’ Latch-key: A Farce, in One Act” from The New York Drama: A Choice Selection of Tragedies, Comedies, and Farces, Etc., Vol. 1(1876)
[17] “The Stone Cross” from The Ladies, Companion (1863)
[18] Philip Gibbs, Heirs Apparent (1924)
[19] Edward Geisler Herbert, Newaera: A Socialist Romance, with a Chapter on Vaccination (1910)
[20] “The Traffic and the Trafficker” from The British Friend, Vol. 12 (1854)
[21] George Rapall Noyes, A New Translation of the Hebrew Prophets (1837)
always been so comfortable and so horribly commonplace?[1] That poor woman—her husband dead, and[2] her son, an artist![3]I mean it’s really an education to spend an evening[4] with the good folks of the country,[5] the very people whom we call the philistines. Culture says: “Consider these people, then—their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice.[6] Respect them their feelings, their ideas, their wishes.[7] They are intelligent in their way, and, however oddly come by, are interesting.”[8] I say to hell with that.[9] What does the culture[10] know about what goes on in the soil[11] in the dark corners of Christian lands,[12] where people act like fighting drunks,[13] hate in their hearts against each other, and enlarged upon the enormity of suffering?[14] What do city people know about the real happiness of[15]laying in the mud and water, wounded in seven places?[16] What do they know about real howling?[17] We howl because the drug did not have the desired effect.[18] We howl because we have to pay.[19] There is no progress here. We give
[1] “Karuna,” “Wild Craven’s Daughter: An Australian Novel” from The Australian Journal: A Family Newspaper of Literature and Science, Vol. 21 (1885)
[2] “A Thankful Thanksgiving Day” from Railway Carmen’s Journal, Vol. 15 (1910)
[3] Henrik Ibsen [trans. R. Farquharson Sharp], Ghosts: A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts (1882)
[4] “Husbands are Really Annoying” from The New Yorker, Vol. 3 (1927)
[5] “The Fall of the Doubs” from The Parlour Magazine (1851)
[6] Mr. Arnold, “Culture and its Enemies” from The Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 16 (1867)
[7] Daingerfield Brookes, “Cutting Down Waste with Employee Co-operation” from The Office Manager, Vol. 1 (1925)
[8] E. S. Martin, “This Busy World” from Harper’s Weekly, Vol. 44 (1900)
[9] “Proceedings of the Sixth Biennial Conference of the International Union of Steam and Operating Engineers” from The International Operating Engineer, Vol. 34 (1918)
[10] Rev. John Barclay, The Elements of Natural and Experimental Philosophy, Etc. (1826)
[11] Prof. P. H. Rolfs, “President’s Annual Address” from Annual Meeting of the Florida State Horticultural Society (1907)
[12] John Morrison, The Fathers and Founders of the London Missionary Society (1844)
[13] New York, “The People of the State of New York against Thomas J. Higgins” from New York Court of Appeals
[14] H. Milnor Klapp, “A Wolf Story” from Sartain’s Union, Vol. 11 (1852)
[15] “Just Old Rag Rugs” from Good Housekeeping, Vol. 67 (1918)
[16] United States Senate, “Correspondence of the Late Commissioners in China” from Message of the President of the United States (1858)
[17] Sylvia Brockway, 1920, “The Grey Kitten” from The Vassar Miscellany Monthly, Vol. 5 (1919)
[18] S. P. McConnell, “A Plea for Registered Pharmacists” from The Journal of the Arkansas Medical Society, Vol. 4 (1908)
[19] “Notes and Queries: Organized (Group) Medicine” from The Medical Summary, Vol. 43 (1920)
ourselves up to the passive enjoyment of that already existing.[1] Progress is impossible when its path is made narrow by prejudice and blocked by provincialism.[2] Sometimes you draw blood.[3] Sometimes you say things that show you have a pretty mean little mind[4] because sometimes you have to be the bad guy,[5] because otherwise the bad guy[6] is someone much worse.[7] And the worst thing one can do is to show that it has hurt.[8]
I have dreamed bad dreams of[9] being bad in the South.[10] Badder than I ever thought it was, or could be.[11] I have often dreamed of myself as back there[12] with a gun in my hand and with my face all scratched and swollen to distortion,[13] fighting my father, and my old father, and all that went before[14]—and losing, just as[15] bad as my father himself[16] famously lost,[17] going out like an idiot after coming in like a thief.[18]Life is such a dark place, after all,[19] and the South knows best what this word represents,[20] what it means to be surrounded on every side by tremendous heathen forces, forces
[1] Mary Parker Follett, The New State (1920)
[2] “Intellectual Stimulus Needed in Community Building” from American Lumberman (1913)
[3] United States Supreme Court, “Raisler Heating Company against William J. Taylor Company” from Supreme Court (1935)
[4] Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons (1920)
[5] United States Congress House Select Committee on Aging, Retirement Age Policies and Housing for the Elderly in Cleveland, Ohio: Hearings (1977)
[6] United States Congress Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Securing Our Ports Against Terror; Technology, Resources, and Homeland Defense: Hearings (2003)
[7] Gaston Leroux [trans. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos]], The Phantom of the Opera (1911)
[8] “Efficiency” from The Victorian Railways Magazine, Vol. 2 (1924)
[9] Robert Stewart Sutliffe, Seventy-first New York in the World War (1922)
[10] “Report on the Weather of the Season 1928” from The Beekeepers’ Gazette, Vol. 28 (1927)
[11] Lehman Johnson, “Letter to the Editor” from The Christian Century, Vol. 43 (1926)
[12] Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit (1857)
[13] Henry Howard Harper, A Journey in Southeastern Mexico (1910)
[14] Lady Gregory, “Kincora” from Irish Folk-History Plays, Vol. 1 (1912)
[15] “Auction and Chain Stores Wreck Egg Prices” from The Cooperative Poultryman, Vol. 2 (1923)
[16] Isabella Stoddart, William Montgomery: or, The Young Artist (1829)
[17] Henry Gréville [trans. Alexina Loranger-Donovan], Wayward Dosia (1890)
[18] Arthur Comte de Gobineau, Typhaines Abbey: A Tale of the Twelfth Century (1869)
[19] Douglas Fairbanks, Laugh and Live (1917)
[20] Helmuth Graf von Moltke, “In the ‘Customs Parliament’” from Essays, Speeches, and Memoirs of Field-Marshal Count Helmuth (1893)
that reach back through centuries[1]—forces of desire, of their weary and somnolent bodies, their spent phantasies and arid souls[2] forcing their way through brambles and brushwood,[3] guided only by the pale moonlight of memory.[4]
Yes, that’s what I remember:[6] the timeless night, when the evil thing we dare not confess to the day comes forth like a ghost of light.[7]
When some people think of the[8] South they think of the South in connection with heat,[9] flooded with a yellow light and[10] the glare of the brilliant sun in your eyes, and the dead past all about.[11] But the South is not[12] day; it is night. That is to say, what is called night in the[13] day, but by night is restless, crying almost without ceasing,[14] rising and drowning us like muskrats[15] in the Yockna Bottom[16] with our tongues stuck to our palates,[17] purple like an unplucked plum.[18]
[1] Benton Baker, “The Largest Conference in Methodism” from The Christian Advocate, Vol. 95 (1920)
[2] Matilde Serao, After the Pardon (1909)
[3] Pierce Egan, Edward the Black Prince: or, A Tale of the Feudal Times (1870)
[4] William Blair-Imrie, Incidents of My Irish Campaign (1874)
[5] James Ballantyne Hannay, “Fig. 23” from Sex Symbolism in Religion (1874)
[6] John Wycliffe, Against the Tide (1924)
[7] Norman Gregor Guthrie, “The Lady in Lilac” from Flower and Flame: Poems (1924)
[8] The Bulwark: or, Reformation Journal (1859)
[9] “How Dairying Would Enrich the South” from Manufacturers Record, Vol. 89 (1926)
[10] Robert W. Chambers, The King in Yellow (1895)
[11] Thomas Cook, Over the Seven Seas with Thos. Cook and Son (1921)
[12] “Doc. 12: A Disunionist Answered: Letters of J. L. Orr and Amos Kendall” from The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, Vol. 2 (1862)
[13] Lamartine, Travels in the East (1839)
[14] Dawson Williams, Medical Diseases of Infancy and Childhood (1900)
[15] S. M. Bowman, Sherman and His Campaigns: A Military Biography (1865)
[16] “Mississippi Central Railroad” from The War of the Rebellion (1886)
[17] Justin Brenan, The Foreigner’s English Conjugator (1831)
[18] Elizabeth Stoddard, “Last Days” from An American Anthology, 1787-1900 (1900)
The South is purple.[1] Yes, purple and blue.[2] Not the yellow of the incandescent lamp, but[3] a purple so rich that even the violet of the wayside bank is dim in comparison,[4] so close as to exclude any person outside from seeing what passed within.[5] It turns our hearts too strongly to the treasures of earth;[6] unable to breathe but to be stifled,[7]choked up on the inside and leaky,[8] filling our eyes with tears and making our hearts palpitate with emotion.[9] Our flesh becomes the flesh[10]—thick, with an oblong hole in each end[11] into which the night is divided,[12] massaging the mucous membrane with a pledget of cotton[13] to stop the leaking at the joints.[14] And this flesh is flesh indeed, this blood is blood indeed, even the flesh and blood of the seed,[15] that draws itself up, and stretches itself out again.[16]Swallow up what is mortal so that death disappears,[17] and suck what is useful from it;[18] whatever is left is easily pushed out with a rake into the yard for the cattle.[19]
[1] Berthold Laufer, The Diamond: A Study in Chinese and Hellenistic Folk-lore (1915)
[2] Edward Verrall Lucas, “Over Bemerton’s” from The Outlook, Vol. 92 (1909)
[3] Charles Proteus Steinmetz, “Transformation of Electric Power Into Light” from Electrical Review, Vol. 49 (1906)
[4] “In the Garden” from Country Life, Vol. 21 (1907)
[5] A Full Report of the Trial of Her Majesty Caroline Amelia Elizabeth, Queen of England (1820)
[6] James Brewster, Lectures Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount (1809)
[7] Emanuel Swedenborg, A New Translation of Some Part of Swedenborg’s Theological Works (1858)
[8] Donald R. MacBain, “What You Want to Know: Lubricator Troubles” from Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen’s Magazine, Vol. 31 (1901)
[9] “Workmen Wanted” from The Masonic Review, Vol. 67 (1887)
[10] William Dell, The Crucified and Quickened Christian (1652)
[11] “Papers for Reference” from The Artizan: A Monthly Journal of the Operative Arts, Vol. 4 (1846)
[12] William Dalton, The War Tiger: or, Adventures and Wonderful Fortunes of the Young Sea Chief and his Lad Chow: A Tale of the Conquest of China (1884)
[13] Dr. Rice, “Different Clinical Conditions in Atrophic Rhinitis and Their Treatment” from The Post-Graduate, Vol. 13 (1898)
[14] “Ship” from The Popular Encyclopedia (1841)
[15] William Hodgson, An Examination of the Memoirs and Writings of Joseph John Gurney (1856)
[16] Walter Henry Medhurst, A Dictionary of the Hok-këèn Dialect of the Chinese Language (1832)
[17] “The Power of Eternal Life” from The Girdle of Truth, Vol. 1 (1856)
[18] Isocrates [trans. Joshua Dinsdale], The Orations and Epistles of Isocrates (1752)
[19] “Useful Recipes: Coughing Horses—Cause and Cure” from The Maryland Farmer, Vol. 2 (1864)
This night is known to me,[1] myself a night-bird,[2] as my father knew it,[3] darkness in his breast.[4] I hold it in my hand, and lo! the Southern night is over me,[5] taking hold of me and steadying me along.[6] Run-on night,[7]unyielding night,[8] purple night below the starry clusters bright[9]—stuffed like an old saddle[10] in the piney woods, where the primeval solitude is broken only by the scattered turpentine men,[11] dripping their unwholesome dew upon the still more moistened floor[12]—drowning us in the milk of human virility.[13]
A still and breathless night[14]—Mississippi night—the night[15] in which Water Valley is situated,[16] up to its knees in the dark.[17]
I love the South. But I distrust what I love,[19] and I cannot stay here any longer with these broken dreams.[20] This is the darndest country to[21] hold close to your heart.[22] We are as dumb as
[1] John Cecil Stagg, Chevy Chase: or, The Battle on the Border (1870)
[2] “The Arrest” from The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. 5 (1839)
[3] Earl Frederick Sleigh Roberts, Forty-one Years in India: From Subaltern to Commander-in-chief (1897)
[4] “Petőfi’s John the Hero” from The Saturday Review, Vol. 62 (1886)
[5] Wellesley Prelude, “A Spray of Jessamine” from The Chronicle-Argonaut, Vol. 1 (1890)
[6] “Incidents and Reflections—No. 266: Dreams and Visions” from The Friend: A Religious and Literary Journal, Vol. 65 (1892)
[7] “Classifieds” from Railway and Engineering Review, Vol. 38 (1898)
[8] John Bascom, Aesthetics: or, The Science of Beauty (1871)
[9] Alfred Tennyson, “The Lady of Shalott” from The Poetical Works of Alfred Tennyson (1872)
[10] Cornelius Mathews, “The Motley Book” from The Various Writings of C. M. (1863)
[11] Stephen Powers, “The Sheep Industry in the South” from Wool Markets and Sheep, Vol. 7 (1897)
[12] Catherine E. Cary, Memoirs of Miss C. E. Cary, Written by Herself (1825)
[13] Norman Rosten, “Face on the Daguerreotype (for Walt Whitman)” from The Michigan Alumnus (1980)
[14] George Darley, The Labours of Idleness (1826)
[15] “A Mississippi Night” from Harpers Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, Vol. 13 (1869)
[16] “Hughes v. State” from Southern Reporter, Vol. 29 (1901)
[17] Joaquin Miller, The Fair Woman (1876)
[18] James Ballantyne Hannay, “Fig. 23” from Sex Symbolism in Religion (1874)
[19] Robert Smythe Hichens, The Call of the Blood (1918)
[20] Marie Van Vorst, Mary Moreland: A Novel (1915)
[21] “News From Our Boys Now in the Service of the United States” from Pacific Service Magazine, Vol. 10 (1918)
[22] Ruby Lamont, The Soul’s Language (1925)
tombstones without inscriptions.[1] We know even less than our fathers,[2] and they were as dumb as oysters.[3]
Why must it be so? And why especially in our days?[4] Why do animals hunt amicably in company, and quarrel immediately the pursuit is over?[5] What does God have flowers in the sea for?[6] What kind of a place was Sodom, and[7] how did such a place come here,[8] where the magnolias lift their dark towers of shining greenery,[9] the snakes slipping in and out of the fern-roots,[10] the dogs barking in the wretched homes they guard?[11] Sodden land, where the mud sticks to the wheels, these barrows laden with sand?[12]
The mud is up to our knees; in a couple of days I shall be back[13] West, and I will never[14] come back here as long as I live.[15]
But before I leave I am going to treat myself to a last visit to “The Hoe,”[17] waiting for me in her boudoir,[18]cock in her hands.[19]
[1] J. T. Bagby, “Character Builders” from The Epworth Era, Vol. 28 (1921)
[2] John George Hilzinger, The Skystone: A Romance of Prehistory Arizona (1899)
[3] Laura Martin Rose, The Ku Klux Klan: or, Invisible Empire (1914)
[4] F. L. Steinmeyer, The Miracles of Our Lord in Relation to Modern Criticism (1874)
[5] Robert Kemp Philp, The Reason Why: Natural History (1860)
[6] Burtie Corey, Burtie Corey, the Fisher Boy: or, A Wise Son Maketh a Glad Father (1867)
[7] Abraham Worsnop, Scripture Questions (1855)
[8] John Strange Winter, A Name to Conjure With: A Novel (1899)
[9] Hezekiah Butterworth, Zigzag Journeys on The Mississippi: From Chicago to the Islands of the Discovery (1892)
[10] Mrs. R. O’Reilly, “Out of the World” from Frank Leslie’s Sunday Magazine, Vol. 9 (1881)
[11] Frederick William Robinson, Woodleigh, Vol. 3 (1859)
[12] Jean Martin, Captivity and Escape (1918)
[13] Napoleon I, The Corsican: A Diary of Napoleon’s Life in His Own Words (1910)
[14] Laura Coates Reed, West and East: An Algerian Romance (1892)
[15] Corinne Lowe, “Counter Encounters: On the Trail of the Bargain” from The Saturday Evening Post (1911)
[16] James Ballantyne Hannay, “Fig. 23” from Sex Symbolism in Religion (1874)
[17] George A. Warren, “A Federal Employee in Europe” from The Federal Employee, Vol. 11 (1926)
[18] Charles Rowcroft, Fanny, the Little Milliner: or, The Rich and the Poor (1846)
[19] James F. Kearns, “Santhaie” from The Gospel Missionary, Vol. 10 (1860)
That’s what she calls herself, anyway. She[1] isn’t, really, but she[2] likes me to call her so,[3] to call her Queen,[4] “Hoe of Hoes”[5]—so I do as she tells me. Then I kneel down before[6] swallowing all her children[7] and she tells me not to go,[8] and I come like a kid crawling downstairs for its first Christmas tree[9] and she licks up every drop,[10]begging me not to leave,[11] but then we come to the socks and I pull up my trousers.[12] Then I run across the[13] creek back home (“crick” if you give the word the true pronunciation),[14] wondering why I always manage to hurt my best friends, and why the moon is silver.[15]But I do not go home,[16] where my mother is lying with her pale face resting upon the white pillows[17] and a cat in each corner.[18] Morning is hours on its way;[19] I have hours yet.[20] “Because it is night, Dion is walking.”[21] There are all manner of walks, vineyards, green lanes, cornfields, and pastures full of hay[22] in which to meet without inconveniencing ourselves and our
[1] E. Phillips Oppenheim, The Mischief-Makers (1913)
[2] Maurice Baring, Overlooked (1922)
[3] Augusta Chambers, Lalage: A Novel (1875)
[4] Richard Brome, “The Queen” from Five New Playes (1869)
[5] Alfred Mudge, Memorials (1868)
[6] William Allen Hallock, Memoir of Harlan Page: or the Power of Prayer and Personal Effort for the Souls of Individuals (1835)
[7] “The Popularity of Criticism: with a Note on Prof. Saintsbury’s ‘History of Criticism’” from The Fortnightly Review, Vol. 76 (1901)
[8] Fyodor Dostoyevsky [trans. Constance Garnett], The Insulted and Injured (1923)
[9] Elwood F. Pierce, “Slow Freight South” from Everybody’s, Vol. 55 (1926)
[10] “Ideas and Experiences of Our Readers” from Country Life, Vol. 15 (1909)
[11] “Account of a Revival in the Department of Lot-et-Garonne, in France” from The Christian Treasury, Vol. 3 (1848)
[12] Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, With Zola in England: A Story of Exile (1899)
[13] “In the Realm of the Retail Merchant” from The Black Diamond, Vol. 65 (1920)
[14] Eugene Wood, “Going Fishing” from Collier’s Once a Week, Vol. 41 (1908)
[15] Rosaline Orme Masson, Leslie Farquhar (1902)
[16] Great Britain, Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire Into the Existing State of the Corporation of the City of London (1854)
[17] Nathan Kussy, The Abyss (1916)
[18] Leona Hawk, “Wants to Join R. T.” from Prairie Farmer, Vol. 83 (1911)
[19] Rockwell Kent, Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska (1920)
[20] Thomas Holcroft, Anna St. Ives (1792)
[21] Diogenes Laertius [trans. C. D. Yonge], “Xeno” from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (1853)
[22] John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens (1892)
atmosphere too much[1]—and I intend to see them.[2] So I walk for hours and hours, and get nothing but the blisters on both heels,[3] and I meet other men like myself.[4]
I once met a boy at The Cedars[5] with a penis—as well as with hands and feet[6]—nearly twice as big as mine;[7] I hardly knew what to do or say, so I just sat down, and milked away.[8] I once got my foot[9] sucked on by a force too strong for me to resist,[10] dripping like Horatius after his justly celebrate passage of the Tiber, wetter than Leander crawling out of the Hellespont.[11] I once joined an old friend—an Episcopalian[12]—in a parking lot with the doors open and ignition on,[13] giving him what is implied in God’s giving him[14]—and some of the devil, too.[15] Where, I pray, did they learn this stuff?[16] Certainly not from me. I[17] never went to church[18] camp, did I?[19]
[1] Commonwealth Shipping Committee, Report of the Commonwealth Shipping Committee, Vol. 25 (1921)
[2] Hamlin Garland, The Tyranny of the Dead (1915)
[3] Barry Pain, Humorous Stories (1930)
[4] Proceedings of the Annual Session of the Iowa State Education Association (1927)
[5] Henry Harris Jessup, The Children of the East (1874)
[6] Carl Gustav Jung [trans. Beatrice M. Hinkle], Psychology of the Unconscious (1921)
[7] Thomas Beevor, “Article XXXV: On the Mangel-Wurzel, or Scarcity Root” from Letters and Papers on Agriculture, Plating, &c., Selected from the Correspondence of the Bath and West and Southern Counties Society (1792)
[8] “Betsy Lee: A Fo’c’s’le Yarn” from Every Saturday (1873)
[9] Daniel Defoe, The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719)
[10] P. G. Wodehouse, Meet Mr. Mulliner (1928)
[11] Robert J. Burdette, “Ancestry and Boyhood” from Robert J. Burdette: His Message (1922)
[12] George Bolam, Wild Life in Wales (1913)
[13] U. S. Supreme Court, “Myles Harper vs. The People of the State of Illinois” from Records and Briefs of the United States Supreme Court (1832)
[14] John Flavel, “An Alphabetical Table for the First Volume” from The Whole Works of the Rev. Mr. John Flavel, Vol. 6 (1799)
[15] Henry Milton Walker, The Heart of Things (1906)
[16] Dr. J. Wallis, “Of the Explication” from Considerations on the Explications of the Doctrine of the Trinity (1693)
[17] Ellen Pickering, The Grumbler: A Novel (1846)
[18] Jonathan Crowther, The Life of Thomas Coke (1815)
[19] Laura Lee Hope, Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue and Their Shetland Pony (1918)
And then the sun may be said to arise,[1] and I to fly with the bed[2] back into the night of my past[3] where everything is equally possible and impossible,[4] the people equally dear to God—equally exposed as creatures[5]—holding equally to human accountability.[6]
Outside the city, near Valley Creek,[8] the chase is over before it has well begun.[9] They catch the criminal red-handed and[10] shoot him where he stands, as easy as could be,[11] just like Bang! Bang! Bang!,[12] while the boys drop in the shade[13] of the kudzu climbing on a line fence[14] to watch like a pair of spectacles,[15] their pants at the knees,[16] their hands pumping on all the time.[17]And no one else is interested in or affected by the result.[18] We thrive in it, amazingly, to the chagrin of better men born elsewhere.[19] The city moves on with titanic stride.[20] A housewife
[1] Matthew Henry, An Exposition of the Old and New Testament, Vol. 4 (1838)
[2] John S. Purcell, “Saved By A ‘Pampero’” from The Wide World Magazine, Vol. 16 (1906)
[3] Talvi, The Exiles: A Tale (1853)
[4] Leo Shestov [trans. S. S. Koteliansky], All Things are Possible (1920)
[5] “Remarks on the Rev. Latham Wainewright’s “Observations,” &c” from The Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine, Vol. 42 (1819)
[6] Roswell Dwight Hitchcock, Eternal Atonement (1888)
[7] James Ballantyne Hannay, “Fig. 23” from Sex Symbolism in Religion (1874)
[8] United States Census Office, Census Reports: Tenth Census (1887)
[9] Percy James Brebner, The Brown Mask (1911)
[10] “Pro Patria: The South African Problem” from The Fortnightly, Vol. 34 (1883)
[11] George Manville Fenn, Bunyip Land: The Story of a Wild Journey in New Guinea (1885)
[12] New York Court of Appeals, “Nicholas F. P. Moore for People—Cross” from New York Court of Appeals: Records and Briefs (1923)
[13] P. M. Silloway, “An Outing with the Boys” from The Nidologist, Vol. 4 (1896)
[14] “A Few More Remarks About Kudzu” from Moore’s Rural New-Yorker, Vol. 80 (1921)
[15] John Bull, The Laughing Philosopher (1825)
[16] Lester Bodine, Off the Face of the Earth: A Story of Possibilities (1894)
[17] “What Killed Him?” from Hall’s Journal of Health, Vol. 7 (1860)
[18] “Fraud and Undue Influence” from Current Law, Vol. 9 (1908)
[19] Tom Bevan, Sea-Dogs All! A Tale of Forest and Sea (1911)
[20] George Mains” from “The Church and the City” from Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review, Vol. 76 (1894)
picks up a[1] shovel and cuts[2] off the head off a snake and it wriggles and twists in the liveliest and most indignant manner.[3] A dog steals a big rag doll that is left by a child in a corner of a park. A baby has been left there previously;[4] babies love to hide under the planks.[5]
The moon takes its light from the sun.[6] The magnetic pole shifts its position.[7] Flies are buzzing and boring against the windowpanes of the house[8] like little birds, their flesh being tender and sweet,[9] and the air is alive with the hum of what is, and is not, happening—what is to happen in the near future—and what may or may not happen after that.[10] Time is as wind, and as waves are we,[11] our backs broken, rolling away the stone.[12] Worms burn not long[13] on the hot pavement of Main Street and into the hot[14] night of dying embers and ghostly shadows, of mournful memories and broken hopes[15] where the rain is light,[16] lighting up what to many is a path of fear and mystery[17]—and the ants eat up all the flesh,[18] leaving nothing but the shell and the chaff.[19]
[1] New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin (1880)
[2] Raymond Edward Priestley, Antarctic Adventure: Scott’s Northern Party (1915)
[3] M. P., “Snakes Dying at Sunset” from Notes and Queries (1895)
[4] “Mutual Film Corporation: Toodles, Tom and Troubles” from Moving Picture World and View Photographer, Vol. 26 (1915)
[5] Winifred Baker, “Baby Terrapins” from Amateur Aquarist & Reptilian Review, Vol. 2 (1924)
[6] Sir Thomas Little Heath, Pioneers of Progress (1920)
[7] “Among Our Contemporaries” from The United Service, Vol. 6 (1891)
[8] John Matter, Three Farms (1913)
[9] G. A. Henty, Under Drake’s Flag: A Tale of the Spanish Main (1883)
[10] “Poona” from The Pioneer Mail, Vol. 46 (1919)
[11] Frank Jenners Wilstach, “Swinburne” from A Dictionary of Similes (1917)
[12] G. C. (a Lover of Peace and Truth), Scotland’s Present Circumstances (1718)
[13] Herman Melville, Mardi: and a Voyage Thither (1864)
[14] Ruth Comfort Mitchell, A White Stone (1924)
[15] James Lane Allen, “Night Shadows in Poe’s Poetry” from Our Continent (1884)
[16] Albert Galloway Keller and Avard Longley Bishop, Commercial and Industrial Geography (1912)
[17] Elizabeth Towne, “Comments: You and Your Forces: or, The Constitution of Man” from The Nautilus: A Magazine of New Thought, Vol. 9 (1907)
[18] “The Captain’s Story: or, Adventures in Jamaica Thirty Years Ago” from The Leisure Hour, No. 402 (1859)
[19] “The Grain-Aphis” from Annual Report of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories (U.S.) (1877)
And we lean over and look suddenly down into the[1] sidewalk and wonder how anything so exquisite and perfect in its way was ever put together, or how, being completed, it remains so,[2] so persistent in its occurrence, and yet so utterly untenable in fact;[3]—and then we kick it[4] out of the way and move on.[5]
[1] J. E. Panton, “Far From the Beaten Track: Life in a Cottage” from Good Words, Vol. 25 (1884)
[2] “What it Costs to Dress a Lady” from Round Table, Vol. 1 (1863)
[3] Aldo Leopold, “Natural Reproduction of Forests” from Parks & Recreation, Vol. 8 (1924)
[4] Bill Tarrant, “Gun Dogs: The Master’s Hand” From Field & Stream, Vol. 98 (1994)
[5] “The ‘Principles’ of Lord Derby’s Administration” from The Examiner (1852)