Five Miles to Paradise

6

LeFayettahCounty is Delta farm country. Most of its vast acreage is dedicated to cotton, and reaping the bounty from its fecund soil has been going on for generations. 

But lately, to Heck at least, it seemed his part of America was dying a slow, agonizing death. The population declined every year. Negroes migrated North in search of higher paying jobs. The few remaining white kids didn't seem to like where they lived anymore than the Negroes. They went off to college or simply moved away, leaving the Delta as soon as the opportunity arose, like so many hot coals had been dumped into their britches. The die-hards who remained got grayer and poorer with each passing year. 

But still, Heck wouldn't trade his little piece of paradise for anywhere else in the world. Anyone who has never sat by the side of the road near a cotton field, whose rows seem to go on forever, would never understand what an old timer meant when he said 'the fields talk to you.'

On moonlit nights, the crickets chirp riotous melodies. The land is bathed in a silken sheen of soft silver and shadow. Often, Heck sat by the roadside, listening, waiting. Sooner or later the wind would pick up, its fingers tracing through the endless rows of earth and verdure.

The leaves would brush the soil, scratching against the very dirt that imprisoned them; the cotton balls would twirl and shimmer in the moonlight. The low stalks would dance and twist to an ancient rhythm long forgotten. 

The field was transformed into a dreamy landscape. The ghosts of exhausted laborers rose, singing their work tunes to the endless cycle of chop and hoe, bend and pick, plant and harvest, in sync with the never-ending circle of timeless toil.

Heck was sure he'd heard their voices echo softly under the starry twinkle of an indigo sky. He felt their hopeless resign somewhere within the deepest chasm of his soul, bone-tired weariness baked black beneath the scorching hot, merciless Mississippi sun.

Yet, he loved this flat, unforgiving land.

The Delta was as much a part of him as the air he breathed. He relished its quiet peacefulness, the monotony of its slow-paced life that blended one day into the next in a seamless tapestry of far gone yesterdays and unforeseen tomorrows. 

He was sure his heart would never pale to see majestic panoramas of towering mountain peaks or yearn to commune with the brash tempo and crashing waves of tempestuous seas. He discovered calmness blanketed him when he looked out over the level landscape whose flat planes were broken here and there by trees and the weathered shacks of share croppers. He wondered if his corner of paradise would be shattered if it turned out T-Bone had succumbed to anything other than the countless natural ways men die.