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10: Elvis and Dr. King
- University of North Texas Press
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10 OUT OF JACKSON I took Highway 3 north to Yazoo City. The moon alongside the Yazoo River was only a sliver, and a thick lowland fog made the countryside seem like a Yorkshire moor. Off to my left lay the Delta National Forest and Panther National Wildlife Refuge but all I could see were clumps ofroadside mailboxes and the occasional porch light. I pulled to the side a couple oftimes to check my map. I got on a long stretch of blacktop as the mist cleared, and in the dim moonlight the moor had become an enchanted forest, a verdant kaleidoscope, the kind ofplace in which apparitions might beckon at the end of a silver spoon hanging from a red string. What appeared for me was the back of an old green Ford pickup traveling without any lights and not much speed. I brakedhard, swerving into the passing lane to miss it. Soon I began to see a glow of yellow light to the west, and then I could smell what I'd been watching for miles grow out of the horizon: a big chemical plant along the river, smokestacks coughing out flames like hell's own dragons. Texas to Florida, the rural South has become home to giantbackwoods industrial plants, refining chemicals or sugar or petroleum, turning tim116 ELVIS AND DR. KING - I 17 State highway, rural Mississippi. ber to pulp to paper, making defense parts and plastics. It was the New Plantation Economy. It doesn't buy slaves these days; it pays wages. It substitutes bank loans for chains and it admits whites. Prefers them. Part ofthe illusion. Black or white, though, everybody drinks the water; everybody breathes the air. Everybody gets the cancers. I got to Yazoo City about 10 P.M., plenty tired, but I couldn't find a motel. I don't know why. I drove around a halfhour, which is a long time in Yazoo City; there wasn't much to do but press on towards Greenwood if I wanted make Memphis early the next day. I continued up Highway 49, past farmland and through small towns, blowing off Lorita's warning never to drive late at night or when fatigued, and by that point willing to pass up her other proscription, against staying at an isolated tourist court set amid the woods. I could've camped but it kept raining and I wanted a bed. I passed more flame-lit chemical plants, more night monsters. At Tchula, I pulled into a convenience store for a drink and to use [52.90.40.84] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 18:41 GMT) 1 18 - AMERICAN VOUDOU the phone. It was a very black town, except for the white cop cruising. Across the tracks, the roadway was lined onboth sides with parked cars-older American models. I saw a few black men walking towards a roadhouse. It was a Friday night and I figured there was plenty ofmusic and action. I would've liked to go, but in my jeans and T-shirt I looked too much like a bubba. At a little after midnight, I finally stopped at Winona, where I-55 led to Memphis. Itwas a rotten motel-Ihad to switch rooms because the sheets on my bed hadn't been changed. It took me a long time to fall asleep. Next morning in Batesville I nibbled on a sausage 'n biscuit breakfast next to a table where two local white good 01' boys joked with a black woman who repped for Mary Kay cosmetics. They were telling her about a man who got rid of a Mary Kay saleswoman by telling her he wouldn't let his wife wear "anything but Estelle Lauder." At the table on my other side a black woman was helping her teenage son fill out an employment application for Piggly Wiggly. I left with a plastic cup ofcoffee and got on the big highway, turning my radio to the Mississippi classical music networkthere is one, and it's good. I knew why I wanted to go to Memphis . Two American icons had died there. One had taken a lot from African-American culture; the other had given. I didn't know what, of voudou, I expected to find at Graceland or the Lorraine Motel, but I was pretty sure whatever it was would reveal itself. When I crossed the Tennessee line I stopped at the tourist station for directions. Elvis's memorial was marked clearly enough...