Deep South Read Free Page A

two-lane road slated, when finished, to run from Nashville, Tennessee, to Natchez, Mississippi, had been the brainchild of the Ladies' Garden Clubs in the south. Besides preserving a unique part of the nation's past, the federal government bad believed, building the Trace would pump money, jobs and a paved road into what was then a depressed area. Unlike other scenic parkways, such as the Blue Ridge in Tennessee or the John D.
    Rockefeller Jr. National Parkway in Wyoming, the Trace would not be based on spectacular scenery but would conserve the natural and agricultural history of Mississippi. It would follow and, where possible, preserve the original trail made through the swamps and forest by Kentucks, entrepreneurs out of what would become Kentucky, walking back home after rafting goods down the Mississippi to be sold at the port in Natchez, and by the outlaws who preyed upon them, by Indians trading and warring and finally by soldiers of the Union Army bent on bringing the South to heel.
    This morning no ghost of the violence remained. Mile after mile, the road dipped and turned gracefully through rich fields, grassy meadows, shoulders bright in red clover, daffodils, pink toe-pyc weed and a water-blue flower Anna didn't recognize. Dogwood blossoms winked I I through the spring woods. Purple wisteria, vines covering trees fifty feet high, draped to the ground. Red bud trees added crimson patches.
    Carolina jasmine, yellow falls of blooms, draped over fences and downed timber. And there was no traffic. Not a single car coming or going. The dreamlike quality of the frog-song-filled night was carrying over into the light of day.
    After twelve miles of garden beauty, the road widened briefly into four lanes and Anna saw the sign for Rocky Springs Campground.
    "We're home," she told the animals. The words sounded mocking, though she'd not meant them that way Mississippi was about as far from home as Anna had ever been, if not in miles, then in mind. Anna had no trouble finding her house. Randy Thigpen hadn't been the only one to give directions. Those of the Chief Ranger John Brown Brown, based in Tupelo, Mississippi, one hundred sixty miles north of Anna's district, had provided her with a more accurate map: first left after the campground entrance, first house on the right.
    To Anna's tired mind, it sounded not unlike the directions to Never-Never Land.
    As promised, on the right was the park employee housing, two identical brick structures. Long and low, built in the sixties with windowed fronts, they resembled dwarf school buildings with carports on one end.
    In the carport of house number one was a white patrol vehicle sporting a green stripe. According to John B. Brown, the keys to the car, the house and the ranger station would be atop the left front tire. Rangers the country over were so trusting it was touching. Anna hoped that would never change. That the members of the law enforcement agency boasting the highest average level of education also retained the highest level of faith in their fellows was an indication that things were not as bad as the media would like people to believe.
    Anna parked, emancipated Taco, muttered unheeded promises of succor to the ever-shrieking Piedmont and went to retrieve the keys to her new kingdom.
    Wooden beams, painted barn red, cramped the low-roofed carport.
    Every joist, junction, every crevice where wall met upright or upright met roof, was festooned in ragged gray-white. Spiderwebs, an immodest, immoderate, unseemly number of spiderwebs. Keeping her hands and arms close to her sides lest she inadvertently brush one of her neighbors onto her person, Anna peered into the web-fogged shadows.
    Seven of the nearer webs held visible arachnids. One of these was the size of a half dollar, bigger if one looked with the imagination and not the eyes. Anna had come to terms with tarantulas of the Southwest. She'd made every effort to refrain from annoying them. In turn, they stayed sedately