The old, rusty Honda station wagon crossed the bridge and pulled into the Welcome Center parking lot. When it had traveled over the big muddy river, he knew he was home. Home. A place where he hadn’t been in over 10 years. Home. A place that had shaped who he was and how he saw the world. Home. But home wasn’t the same as it used to be. Six weeks ago he had received a letter. That letter had been the siren song that drew him back. It was a letter of death. Of mourning. Of closure. He coasted into the parking space, put the car in park and turned off the ignition. The engine sputtered a couple of times and died.
“We’re home, Porkchop. Welcome to Vicksburg, Mississippi.”
A whine inside the cage responded to the car stopping.
A silver car with California plates was now in Mississippi. Life would never be the same again. And that wasn’t a bad thing.
Jeff Garnett hooked the leash to the terrier’s collar. “Steady, now. I have to go as badly as you do.” Jeff and Porkchop walked toward the Pet Area sign to the left of the Welcome Center. Both felt the breeze blow across the wide river. He watched as a giant barge threaded the two Vicksburg bridges like a thread through the eye of a needle. How many weekends had he and his friends sat out on the bank, drinking beer and watching as the giant boats threaded those bridges? Growing up on the river wasn’t as glorious as Mark Twain had portrayed it. But that didn’t stop them from having a good time.
Vicksburg was a beautiful town so hilly that even General Ulysses Grant couldn’t take it by force. Once called the Gibraltar of the Confederacy, it was a prize that Abraham Lincoln has desperately sought. Control it and you controlled the Mississippi River. Grant tried seven times. And Grant had failed seven times. A long siege resulted in the townspeople eating rats and living in caves. But surrender on that July 4th only came because of starvation. The town had paid dearly. Cannonballs in the walls of the older homes were proof of that. The war had created a toughness that had been passed down through the generations. His great great grandfather had fought in that battle and decided he would stay and become a minister. When Jeff was a child, he said he’d be like the old minister and live in Vicksburg forever. But fate had stepped in as high school drew to a close.
He had received a scholarship to Brown University. While his friends stayed close to home, he headed north to a place where the people talked funny and the winters were cold. Time had a way of fading his ties to his old friends. Small talk replaced the bonds that had held them close for so many years. After a while, he had lost touch with his old hometown. He looked around and looked at the casino. That wasn’t there when he was young. The flashing lights reminded him of L.A.
A older gentleman said, “Howdy.”
Jeff almost ran. The whole time he had lived in Los Angeles no one had spoken to him on the street — no, he thought, one person had. The guy who had robbed him at gunpoint. As Porkchop sniffed around the sign, he nodded and said, “Hello,” back at the man.
“California?” the man noted the front license plate on the Honda.
“Yeah. Coming back home. Used to be a screenwriter out there.”
“Write anything I might have seen?”
Jeff rattled off a few blockbusters. The man seemed fairly impressed.
“Why did you come back here?”
“Family business. And stories. I need good stories.”
Mississippi is the kind of place that challenges your beliefs. Your faith. Your views on race. Your views on politics. Your views of the world. It’s a gumbo of ideas and extremes that provides fertile soil for a writer. Extreme poverty and wealth. Illiteracy and Pulitzer-prize winning authors. Not only was he here to say goodbye to his grandmother (the woman who had raised him). He was here to recharge his career. California had drained all that was interesting out of him.
So now he and Porkchop were back to drink from the water that had once quenched his soul.
Mississippi was a land of storytellers. Faulkner, Walker Alexander, Welty, Morris, Ford, Grisham — he could rattle off their names for an hour. All had shaped him as a writer. Willie Morris could paint pictures with his words, creating a sense of place like none others. When he was a kid he had read the local Jackson paper’s columnists Orley Hood and Rick Cleveland. Both had inspired him to write. He once met Willie Morris when he was in high school. Willie, as he asked to be called, made him feel 10-feet tall. Your life is full of people who push you off into a new direction. Willie had made him want to be a writer. Jeff had read his signed copy of “North Toward Home” 100 times.
Jeff realized life was much like the river in front of them. It started small up North and ended in grand fashion in the South. Along the way there had been interesting points like St. Louis, Memphis, Vicksburg and New Orleans. And when it was over, it dissipated in the Gulf.
Jeff walked over to the fence next to the old man and watched the river flow past with him. The old man patted him on the back and said, “Welcome home, son. There’s nothing quite like it, is there?”
“No, sir.” Jeff smiled to himself. It was good to say “sir” out of respect again.
Jeff put the relieved terrier back in his crate, started up the car and turn north toward town on Washington Street. He headed toward his Grandmother’s house. His house now.
He was home. He was in Vicksburg. He was back in Mississippi. Now it was time to bury an old woman he loved. And it was time to tell some stories. Mississippi stories.
The best stories of all.
