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The
Yazoo
Blues
A novel by
John Pritchard
NewSouth Books
Montgomery | Louisville
Also by John Pritchard
Junior Ray
NewSouth Books
105 South Court Street
Montgomery, AL 36104
Copyright 2008 by John Pritchard. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by NewSouth Books, a division of NewSouth, Inc., Montgomery, Alabama.
ISBN: 978-1-58838-217-7
eBook ISBN: 978-1-60306-123-0
LCCN: 2008023749
Visit www.newsouthbooks.com.
To my beloved child,
my son, John Hayes Pritchard III
Most Mississippians like to think of themselves as the last of the semi-rugged individualists. Some of them may be. But the majority are bred to the bone with conformity and anti-intellectualism. They like to think they are “rebels,” but they grow up in and are nurtured by an authoritarian society in which there have not been very many rebels at all since the earth’s very first Scotch-Irish, Adam and Eve. Indeed, the young men—and women—of my time would not have thought it strange in the least to say “Yassuh” to a fence post.
— Owen G. Brainsong (deceased), Superintendent,
Mhoon County Consolidated Schools,
St. Leo, Mississippi
Isapuntak laua. [Choctaw/Chickasaw]: “There are many mosquitoes.”
— Byington’s Dictionary of the Choctaw Language,
Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 46
See also Chickasaw: an Analytical Dictionary,
by Pamela Munro and Catherine Willmond
Contents
Facilitator’s Prefatory Remarks
God invented Cusswords — Bible Books — First & Second Befukatheez — The List of Saint Pisstofus — Majorettes and Mallards — A Cussin CD — Mad Owens — Litter-ture — The Hot-Tamale Nigga — Pelicans — Okra Winfrey
Junior Ray Reflects on the True Nature of Time — He and Voyd Deal with a Nekkid Fat Man — And a Large Snake — Slab Town— Mr. Reitoff
The Yellow Dog — Moon Lake — Sno-Cone —The Yazoo Pass Expedition — A Historian Is Born
Love — Anguilla Benoit — Lt. Commander Watson Smith — Lt. Colonel James Wilson — Peyote is Considered — Old Colonel Duncan Benoit’s Experience with a Drug — Smith’s Disease — Anguilla Boards the Chillicothe — A Hardwood Jungle — Junior Ray’s Hot’n’Tots
The R’nclads Enter the Pass — Chiwiddywee — Tea & the Commodore’s Quivering Lips — “All is Swamp!” — The Rebs Drop In — A Severed Head on The Beaudollar — The Gold Goes Overboard — The Road to Hell — Mr. Foster Gets a Blow Job
Rebel Horsemen Ride on Top of the Water and Fly across the Tallahatchie — There Is No Shoreline — Smith’s Condition Is Debated — Mr. Brainsong & The Band Sissy — Irish Travellers
More on the Commodore’s Sickness — More about Pay-Otey — “Big Mound it is!” — “Them po’ sumbiches from up North” — Colonel Benoit’s Bicycle Blimp — A Word About Niggas — Sherman’s Memwar — Taterbug Café — Hippies
The Paymaster’s Gunboat — Nostalgie de la Boue — Mad Owens — Diving for Gold — Voyd’s Big Ass Idea —Things Work Out — The Magic Pussy Cabaret & Club — Mad’s Poems — More Love — The Illusion Is Shattered — Another Blow on the Job — Break Up — “Sireen”
A Survey — Mysterious Hot-Tamales — The Sportsmen’s League — Lapdance — Little Petunia! — Dyna Flo Sins — Mad Fails at Love — Horn Island — The Importance of Sand — Mad’s Letter — Trip-Dik, Pussy for Men & The Clit-Mit
Gene LaFoote the Parrot — A Matter of Law Enforcement Protocol — And a Missed Opportunity — Back to the Pass — Wild Hog Supper
Blue Invaders and the Casinos — Water — A Submarine Connection? — German POWs — Softening of the Brain — Rear-ass Admiral Porter is Not Fat — The Pigtail Bandit — The Value of High Water — Leland Shaw — Junior Ray’s “Nine-Step Fukkin Fish Soup”
The Romans Was Wrong — The Truth Is Unimaginable — The Ease of Research — Miss Sadie Hamlin — Them Planters Is Dying Out — Chinamens — History vs. Philosophy — Sex, the Magic Pussy, & the Law
Facilitator’s Prefatory Remarks
My name is McKinney Lake. To clear up any ambiguity about the sound of it, I am a female, and I am just a bit younger than Junior Ray. Further, in the spirit of full disclosure, I must warn the reader that something may now have begun that was never intended by the publishers of Junior Ray Loveblood’s first interview, which was conducted by Mr. Brainsong’s nephew. That interview, which became the controversial book, Junior Ray, was—so I am told—meant mainly to gather information about our peculiar part of the nation and to provide background and substance for young Mr. Brainsong’s philological and anthropological contributions to his peculiar corner in the field of Southern culture, by locating, examining, and organizing the “notes” of Leland Shaw and by paying attention to Junior Ray’s extended account of their acquisition.
The project was a success, and that should have been the end of it. But, as a result of the attention the work received on publication, Junior Ray decided he had more to say and became almost immediately fired up to “talk another