On the Gulf

Front Matter

On the Gulf also by elizabeth spencer Novels Fire in the Morning This Crooked Way The Voice at the Back Door The Light in the Piazza Knights & Dragons No Place for an Angel The Snare The Salt Line The Night Travellers Short Story Collections Ship Island and Other Stories The Stories of Elizabeth Spencer Jack of Diamonds and Other Stories Marilee The Light in the Piazza and Other Italian Tales The Southern Woman Nonfiction Landscapes of the Heart Drama For Lease or Sale ON THE GULF University Press of Mississippi Jackson Elizabeth Spencer www.upress.state.ms.us The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Copyright © 1991 by the University Press of Mississippi Stories copyright © by Elizabeth Spencer “On the Gulf,” “Mr. McMillan,” “Go South in the Winter,” and “Ship Island” are reprinted from The Stories of Elizabeth Spencer, Doubleday, 1981. “The Legacy” was first published by Mud Puppy Press, Chapel Hill, 1988. First paperback edition published by UPM in 2012 All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Spencer, Elizabeth, 1921– On the gulf / Elizabeth Spencer. — 1st paperback ed. p. cm. — (Banner books.) isbn 978-1-61703-684-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) — isbn 978-1-61703-685-9 (ebook) 1. Women—Fiction. 2. Gulf Coast (U.S.)—Fiction. I. Title. PS3537.P4454A6 2013 813’.54—dc23 2012011629 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available TO THOMASINA With many golden memories of that place and the happy hours passed there. For a beginning let yourself be drawn like debris to all the great bodies of water: I will be there asking you to help lift up a hand of water and reach into a time we dream to change. —james seay, from Water Tables ...