his wrist, and the line lobbed out into the water about fifty feet. On the end of the line was a spinner bait with stainless steel hooks as sharp as a new razor. The bait fell into the bramble. He thought he’d gotten his lure stuck on a limb, so he began to troll over to the half-submerged treetop using his battery-powered electric motor. He jerked the rod a few more times. He felt the lure give way, and he started cranking the pricey Abu Garcia reel, the fastest model for sale at Downtown Natchez Sporting Goods.
The line went as taut as a steel guitar string, and the rod bent. The fish took the line back toward the bramble. James Luke set the hook with a mighty jerk of the pole, and he was able to fight the big fish, pulling him from the bramble with his arms stressing the pole’s strength. He tugged on the rod with the bull bass on the other end of the line, fighting it, and twice the fish broke the water’s surface as if to spit the bait and treble hooks into James Luke’s eyes. But the barbed hooks held and the gear was strong and the line was kept tight through his determination and unfailing luck. James Luke finally got the big bass to the edge of the boat after about five minutes, and he reached into the brown Mississippi River water and lifted the lunker with his thumb in his mouth, an index finger under the lower jaw.
He gave a successful smile when he held the largemouth bass at eye-level. He removed the hook with a pair of needle-nose pliers and placed the big fish into an ice chest. It weighed more than five pounds, the biggest bass he’d caught in the Mississippi River, not a true monster, but a fine one.
He opened a second chest, ice covering Budweiser cans, a dozen of them. He’d drink all of them by dark. It was ten o’clock in the morning, and he lit a cigarette and embraced his first beer of the morning.
Just a few miles away, North Natchez was a hilly slum out of sight, out of mind, an area practically nonexistent to the gentry and middle classes, a community east of the river’s bluffs where the elites—with their mythic pretense of Mississippi history—wouldn’t have to view it. It was a forlorn landscape of abject poverty. Despite the civil rights movement, nothing much had changed there since Reconstruction. James Luke thrived because of the stringent inequality and contradiction of Natchez and the surrounding areas. No group or individual was equal to the gentry class, to which his wife’s mother was heir. However, James Luke was getting ahead faster than almost any other man in Natchez, a far more rapid ascent than an outsider was allowed to make.
Across the river from Natchez were the small Louisiana farm towns of Vidalia and Ferriday. Ferriday was the loathsome home place of the piano player Jerry Lee Lewis and the preacher Jimmy Swaggart. Mickey Gilley, the country singer, was actually from Natchez, but he had his musical roots in Ferriday. All three were cousins and professional musicians. In 1974, only Jerry Lee Lewis was a household name, though his two cousins were gaining in notoriety. Lewis ran off with his thirteen-year-old cousin and besmirched the disreputable town until he made it big banging on the piano and singing “Great Balls of Fire.”
On both banks of the river, James Luke thrived. His father-in-law made the business go well, and his job with the Corps helped him peddle influence and grease the wheel for lucrative contracts, which gave him steady tax-free cash kickbacks. From concrete work to livestock grazing, there was money to be siphoned off the government and its business partners.
He began making gains as a regional slumlord, buying up shotgun shacks in North Natchez and out in the country. These tarpaper and clapboard houses were mostly located in the black quarters. However, some were in white ghettos, and he’d started the first trailer park of any real size in North Natchez and filled it to capacity with hardly room to park a car between the
The line went as taut as a steel guitar string, and the rod bent. The fish took the line back toward the bramble. James Luke set the hook with a mighty jerk of the pole, and he was able to fight the big fish, pulling him from the bramble with his arms stressing the pole’s strength. He tugged on the rod with the bull bass on the other end of the line, fighting it, and twice the fish broke the water’s surface as if to spit the bait and treble hooks into James Luke’s eyes. But the barbed hooks held and the gear was strong and the line was kept tight through his determination and unfailing luck. James Luke finally got the big bass to the edge of the boat after about five minutes, and he reached into the brown Mississippi River water and lifted the lunker with his thumb in his mouth, an index finger under the lower jaw.
He gave a successful smile when he held the largemouth bass at eye-level. He removed the hook with a pair of needle-nose pliers and placed the big fish into an ice chest. It weighed more than five pounds, the biggest bass he’d caught in the Mississippi River, not a true monster, but a fine one.
He opened a second chest, ice covering Budweiser cans, a dozen of them. He’d drink all of them by dark. It was ten o’clock in the morning, and he lit a cigarette and embraced his first beer of the morning.
Just a few miles away, North Natchez was a hilly slum out of sight, out of mind, an area practically nonexistent to the gentry and middle classes, a community east of the river’s bluffs where the elites—with their mythic pretense of Mississippi history—wouldn’t have to view it. It was a forlorn landscape of abject poverty. Despite the civil rights movement, nothing much had changed there since Reconstruction. James Luke thrived because of the stringent inequality and contradiction of Natchez and the surrounding areas. No group or individual was equal to the gentry class, to which his wife’s mother was heir. However, James Luke was getting ahead faster than almost any other man in Natchez, a far more rapid ascent than an outsider was allowed to make.
Across the river from Natchez were the small Louisiana farm towns of Vidalia and Ferriday. Ferriday was the loathsome home place of the piano player Jerry Lee Lewis and the preacher Jimmy Swaggart. Mickey Gilley, the country singer, was actually from Natchez, but he had his musical roots in Ferriday. All three were cousins and professional musicians. In 1974, only Jerry Lee Lewis was a household name, though his two cousins were gaining in notoriety. Lewis ran off with his thirteen-year-old cousin and besmirched the disreputable town until he made it big banging on the piano and singing “Great Balls of Fire.”
On both banks of the river, James Luke thrived. His father-in-law made the business go well, and his job with the Corps helped him peddle influence and grease the wheel for lucrative contracts, which gave him steady tax-free cash kickbacks. From concrete work to livestock grazing, there was money to be siphoned off the government and its business partners.
He began making gains as a regional slumlord, buying up shotgun shacks in North Natchez and out in the country. These tarpaper and clapboard houses were mostly located in the black quarters. However, some were in white ghettos, and he’d started the first trailer park of any real size in North Natchez and filled it to capacity with hardly room to park a car between the
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