EUDORA, THE COUNTY SEAT, is located in an odd corner of southern Mississippi, sixty miles east of the Big Muddy and fifteen miles north of the Louisiana state line.
My father, the Honorable Everett J. Corbett, may have been the most important judge in town, but the only truly famous citizen in Eudora was my mother, Louellen Corbett. They called her “the Poetess of Dixie.” She wrote sweet, simple, sentimental verses in such noted periodicals as Woburn’s Weekly Companion and the Beacon-Light that captured the hearts of southern ladies. She wrote poems about everything dear to the southern heart—paddle wheelers on the Mississippi, moonlight on the magnolias, the lonely nobility of the aging Confederate widow.
But that one particular day in Eudora…
I am a boy of seven, an only child. I’m downtown with my mother on a summer afternoon.
Downtown consisted of the Purina feed and seed store, the First Bank, a few shops around the courthouse square, the Slide Inn Café, specializing in fresh seafood from the Gulf, and the Ben Franklin five-and-dime—about which my mother was fond of saying, “They sell everything you need and nothing you really want.”
July was wide-open summer in south Mississippi, featuring a sun that rose early and stayed at the top of the sky all afternoon. The air near the Gulf is so humid at all times of year that you have to put your shoes near the stove at night to keep them from turning white with mildew.
I was wearing short pants, but Mama was “dressed for town”—a lacy flowing dress that swept the ground, a sky blue shawl with dark blue fringe, and her ever-present wide-brimmed straw hat. A boy always thinks of his mother as pretty, but on that afternoon, I remember, she seemed to be shining.
Our chore that day was to pick up eighteen yards of blue velvet Mama had ordered from Sam Jenkins’ Mercantile for new dining room curtains.
“Mornin’, Sam.”
“Why, good morning, Miz Corbett,” he said. “Don’t you look nice today.”
“Thank you.”
For Mama, that was mighty few words to utter. I turned to look at her, but she seemed all right.
Sam Jenkins stood there peering at her too. “Is there something I can help you with, Miz Corbett?”
“Yeah,” she said, “Sham. Oh. Excuse me.”
Something was wrong. Why was my mother slurring her words?
“Did you come to pick up that fabric, Miz Corbett?” said Sam. Instead of answering, Mama squinted hard and rubbed the front of her head.
“Miz Corbett? You all right?”
Silence from my mother. Only a puzzled gaze.
Then that slurred, weak voice again.
“When doesh shoe… when…”
“Miz Corbett, have you been… have you been drinking?”
Mama shook her head slowly and kept rubbing her forehead. I felt the blood flush through my body.
“Don’t be shilly. I sh… I… don’t…”
I spoke very quietly. “Mama, what’s wrong with you?”
“Ben, you better take your mama home now. Looks like she may have had a little touch o’ the grape.” He forced a laugh.
“My mama never drinks. She must be sick.”
“I’m afraid she is, son. Whiskey sick.”
Suddenly my mother’s knees buckled. She drooped over to one side and then fell to the floor with a heavy thud.
Sam Jenkins turned to the back of his store. “Henry, come up here! I got a lady passed out drunk on the floor.”