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David Sheffield
- University Press of Mississippi
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83 DavidSheffield David Sheffield began his screenwriting career as a writer for Saturday Night Live, where he contributed many of Eddie Murphy’s most memorable sketches, including “Buckwheat,” “Gumby,” “Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood,” and “James Brown’s Celebrity Hot Tub Party.” His movie credits—all shared with long-time writing partner Barry Blaustein— include Coming to America, Boomerang, and The Nutty Professor. I t was Africa hot in Jones County, Mississippi, the day the moving van rolled in from Los Angeles. Heat shimmered above the blacktop road, coaxing up little tar bubbles that crackled and popped under the wheels of the truck. The driver, who had packed up our house in the Hollywood Hills, climbed down from the cab, took a look around at the weedy yard and rusting tin roof of our temporary digs and said, “Man, you made a move.” We had come home to rural Mississippi after twenty-five years in big-city Los Angeles to build ourselves a modest horse farm. All we wanted was a little peace and quiet.What we got instead was the Mayhews . Cynthia and I paid them a call the day we drove out to scout our land. We parked the car in the scattershot shade of a big water oak in the Mayhews’front yard and warily approached the house,a homebuilt shotgun affair. A pack of rapacious curs sprang out from under the porch, barking their fool heads off. 84 david sheffield Soon the Mayhews appeared, gunning their four-wheelers out of a canebrake, their twin machines spitting and growling as they came, automatic rifles strapped across the handlebars. Herbert Mayhew led the way, his corpulent mass tottering unsteadily on the four-wheeler. His wife, Bootsy, followed close behind, powering up the gravel drive, cotton housedress flapping in the breeze, a John Deere cap covering most of her brittle grey hair. We explained who we were and that we had bought the adjoining two hundred acres from Cynthia’s cousins with plans to clear twenty acres or so for our horse farm. The Mayhews were polite but chary, telling us all kinds of blood-curdling tales designed to scare us off our land. “They’s coyotes in there big as German shepherds,” said Bootsy. “Them thangs will kill you.” Her old eyes glittered at the thought of Cynthia and me being ripped to shreds. “And rattlers? Hoo! You never seen the like of buzz-tails. Deadly, just deadly.” Bootsy wrapped her bony arms around her shoulders and shivered for emphasis. All we needed was a cauldron and a couple of witchy sisters and we could have staged a backwoods production of Macbeth. Bootsy had the toil and trouble thing down. Speaking of trouble, their grandson Jason had a patch of clover planted in the yard behind his ramshackle trailer. When deer wandered up to graze, the young sportsman aimed a high-powered rifle out of his kitchen window and cut loose. It was enough to make Ted Nugent shake his head in disgust. It soon became clear that the Mayhews were using our land as a private hunting preserve, what Herbert called “keeping an eye on the place.”We told them we were going in there to scout around. “If y’all git lost, shoot three times and we’ll come runnin’,” said Herbert . I confessed we didn’t have a gun. Herbert and Bootsy couldn’t imagine such a thing. They regarded us with gentle pity, as though we were sure to be found later, faces gnawed beyond recognition. We set out, wielding a couple of dull Chinese-made machetes from an army surplus store. One thing the Mayhews had not exaggerated was the forbidding nature of the terrain. We groped along dwindling [44.200.141.122] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:41 GMT) david sheffield 85 game trails through piney woods so choked with brush, so boobytrapped with thorny vines we could barely make headway. Finally, we blundered onto an old logging road that led us into the deeper woods along turgid Tiger Creek where bald cypress, turkey pines, red gum, and cottonwoods grew tall and the clay ground gave way to soggy mulch. There stood the sagging remains of a camouflage shooting stand which overlooked a pile of shucked corn, and up in a tree, a large aluminum pan light powered by a couple of truck batteries.A perfect setup for illegally potshotting deer at night. Clearly this kind of...