The View from Delphi by Jonathan Odell

Author:Jonathan Odell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: M P Publishing Limited
Published: 2005-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

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A hundred miles north, the man’s headlights washed across the road sign: WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI, THE HOSPITALITY STATE. When he read it, he got the distinct feeling it didn’t mean him, so he slowed the old Caddy to five miles below the speed limit. He’d heard too many stories about the kind of welcoming committees Mississippi convened for colored folks visiting from the North. Last year the papers couldn’t say enough about that boy from Chicago they found at the bottom of one of those unpronounceable rivers of theirs. Sent that god-awful-looking corpse back up to his poor momma. They put him out on display like some kind of war hero. Thousands of people snaked by that casket to get a look at what Mississippi white people could do when they got it in their minds to welcome you properly.

And Jesus, the stories those Mississippi boys in Joliet told about home-sweet-home. No wonder they ended up robbing and stealing. Life spent bent over double in a cotton field, yassuhing and nawsuhing every white man that could knot a noose—such a life was bound to short-change a fella when it comes to making sound business decisions. Of course himself, his crime was the result of an understandable miscalculation. Cutting a man for drawing five of a kind out of a deck he himself had stacked. He figured if the brother could magically come up with an extra ace, he shouldn’t have trouble producing a new ear. The law thought different.

Daylight shifted ever so slowly across the Mississippi landscape, carried on the back of a thick, ghostly mist. This was creepier even than the inky darkness that it replaced. As the shapes of trees emerged from the mist, he peered through the vaporous air to see if there were really ropes hanging from every limb.

Nope, he thought, if it wasn’t for Rezel, you sure wouldn’t catch my ass in this backwoods hell of a hole. But a deal was a deal. Anyway, Mississippi was on the way to the Big Easy, a town made for an expert gamesman like himself. In New Orleans, they never stopped dealing and the dice never stopped rolling. The best thing, nobody knew his face or his con. Be like taking candy from babies.

On top of anteing up a C-note, Rezel told him he could keep the car and the only thing he asked was to drop off a message to some girl he used to know. Must still be sweet on her after all these years. Acted like it was the most important letter he ever wrote. Didn’t even have an address. Drew out a map to some hick town called Delphi and said to begin asking about her there. “But stay away from that sheriff,” he told him. “Don’t let him catch you.”

The man had laughed. “What you think I am? Stupid? Might as well tell me to not slam my dick in the door.”

Whether or not Rezel

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