A True Story

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Contents

Part I My Journey..................................1Prologue...........................................31 The Secret.......................................72 Serpents in the Bayou............................143 Stranger in Need.................................214 Change...........................................285 Blood in the Pacific.............................376 The Passage of Time..............................48Part II Acts of Mercy..............................557 The Sick and the Frail...........................578 In Prison and Life...............................709 Mysteries and Small Miracles.....................7310 Sharing the Bounty..............................81Part III Blessed Dreams............................8911 The Beginning...................................9112 Appearances.....................................9713 Heaven..........................................10414 Wisdom..........................................111Epilogue: The Voice................................117Testimonial: Speech to Inspire.....................121

Chapter One

An old house has a spirit all its own. Made of trees long since dead and shaped into a new form with saws and hammers, a house contains the essence of the people who have lived in it, given birth in it, laughed and cried in it, gone hungry or feasted in it, and finally died in it. The laughter and the tears of decades find their way into every nook and cranny. During those quiet days when the Mississippi sun beats down on the live oaks and makes the Spanish moss in the bayous seem to sweat, you could almost hear the laughing and the crying of everyone who lived in that house before we did.

At least that's how I felt whenever I gave my childhood home in Selma, Mississippi, more than a second of thought long after I'd left it. As a kid, I didn't go in much for meaningful thinking. In that way, I was like every other kid, I guess. To me, that old house was spooky more than anything else, tucked away as it was in the woods just outside of town. My daddy and momma showed up at that house in a creaky mule-drawn wagon in 1929, when I was just six years old and when the entire nation was revved up to make pots of money on Wall Street and have a grand old time of it any way it could. It seems, though, that the good times forgot Selma and my daddy. The good times from a materialistic standpoint forgot all of us, as it were, except for my two older sisters, Marie and Wilma Lee (or "Dink," as my momma nicknamed her). Both had the good sense, or good fortune, to marry young and not follow my daddy on his excursion south, instead staying put in Summerville, Tennessee. The haunting old homestead sported an outhouse, no indoor plumbing of any kind, a cistern, a wood- burning stove for cooking, and five or six fireplaces for heating. There was no such thing as air-conditioning in those days, so in summertime you sweltered all night long, praying the mosquitoes would stay on the outside of the thin window screens. Yes, I remember long nights listening to whippoorwills and the hum of crickets singing me to sleep. Not a care in the world. We were content to have a roof over our head, food in the garden, and the overalls on our backs.

Moving to that old house in Selma was a big change for us, and not necessarily a change for the better. To this day I will never understand why my daddy decided to leave the comforts of Jackson, Tennessee, where we lived before coming to Mississippi.

We were well off by standards of the day. My daddy had a dog kennel. He trained bird dogs to hunt quail. My daddy was certainly not a veterinarian by trade, but there was no dog ailment he could not remedy with one of his compresses of Lord-knows-what. My momma was from a long line of prominent Hortons in Nashville. She had marble-top furniture, fine linens, and porcelain passed down from her side of the family, and my daddy was apparently able to keep up her lifestyle. Why in the world he picked up my mother, sister, brother, and me and hauled us to the backwoods of Selma, I'll never know.

My daddy was one of thirteen brothers. Old man Fly, my paternal grandfather, would buy land and then those thirteen boys would clear the land by removing the trees and stumps and then turn around and sell it for farm land. That's how my daddy learned how to tackle that overgrown bayou bottom in Selma, which we cleaned up and farmed.

Even though times were hard, we really couldn't complain. Like I said, we had enough to eat and a roof over our heads. As I grew up in that old house, which was up for near a century before we moved in, I had many a fine time playing with my older brother, Robert, who was born in 1921, which made him two years my senior. My sister, Bessie Mae, or "Snook" as my momma nicknamed her, was just ten when we arrived at the house.

Life went on. Daddy took to the fields growing all kinds of plants, including cabbage, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and especially his prized Kentucky Wonder Beans, with Robert at his side. Snook worked the washtub, helped in the garden, and prepared our meals with my mother. Poor girl. She went from city life in Jackson with electricity and some modern conveniences to oil lamps and outhouses. No wonder she married the first traveling salesman who came through, about four years later. I don't blame her one bit ...

Times were difficult but simple in the 1920s, but things got harder after the Great Depression settled over the United States during the 1930s. Selma was hit and hit hard, and lots of people were starving and had no place to live at all. About 1933, when I was ten years old, my daddy got real sick. I don't know if it was cancer, but it sure was bad.

I remember that time like I just lived it yesterday. Momma told me to get on our ole mule, Shorty, and ride to Mr. Lowtower's house and call the doctor. He was the only person who had a telephone for miles and was the man we leased our house and land from. So I jumped on the ole mule barefoot and made my way down to the main road and from there rode two miles on a dirt road to a small community called Stanton. I got myself to Mr. Lowtower's house and explained my daddy's dire condition. Mr. Lowtower agreed to call the health department and see if there was a doctor available. He told me to get back on my mule and to wait at the main road for the doctor, who would be along directly and would need help getting to our house. I did just as I was told and got myself back by mule express and sat on that hot, dusty road and waited and waited and waited.

I'd never seen a car before, not in all my born days, and so when the big, red car with brass headlights pulled up and stopped in front of me it was really something to see. I just stood there gawking at the thing. It had a black top, wheels with red spokes, tires with wide white rings, and curtains with little balls hanging from them. I was so taken up with that car I forgot all about how sick my daddy was.

"Boy, you coming, or ain't ya?" the good doctor bellowed out.

Well, we made the long trip up the dirt road to the house, which took two seconds flat compared to riding Shorty. Man, I didn't want to get out of that car. The doctor told me to wait outside, which I had every intention of doing anyway, as I hadn't touched every inch of that motorized contraption...