The Yazoo Blues. John Pritchard

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СКАЧАТЬ and I figured me not sayin’ nothin’ about him usin’ mink meat from the side of what was at the time the town’s sewage ditch was one way he and I could continue to have a workin’ relationship, which, as you know, in law enforcement, is real fukkin important. Plus, I had free hot-tamales anytime I wanted em.

Speakin’ of cookin’, after that first book that I done with young Mr. Brainsong II, it wuddn long before I noticed that books that has recipes in em do pretty well because women seem to go for em. So I decided to th’ow in two or three of my all-time personal favorites,[4] just in case. I had McKinney put the first one of em at the end of this chapter.

      But now, back to the ducks. Fuk wadin’ around in a swamp waitin’ for those little skimmers to decide to fly over on their way to the South Pole or wherever it is nature tells em to go—plus I don’t think very many of em has flew over Mhoon County since the day Voyd pulled out a thing he ordered from a catalog, put it in his mouth, and said he was gon’ show me his “feeding call.”

      Whatever that little sumbich told them ducks they was gon’ have for breakfast must have changed their mind forever about settin’ their formerly unsuspectin’ duck-butts down in Mhoon County. Well, that and the fact it’s been so hot and dry.

      I used to get a kick out of watchin’ nem good-tastin’ little gliders come into the slough on a cold-ass morning, just at first light, when the water was froze over. They couldn tell it was solid, so when they landed on the ice, they’d go “Whump” and skid a few feet. I promise you those little “scofers” actually looked surprised, if you can imagine what a surprised duck might look like when the sumbich discovers things ain’t what they was quacked-up to be. That’s a joke, sumbich. But the ducks slidin’ in like that wuddn. They really did it.

      Even though they ain’t none much no more around St. Leo, ducks is still serious business down here. People have the impression they’s all these rich-ass doctors out there somewhere—mostly in a lot of landowners’ dreams—and the idea is that when these doctors ain’t busy as a coonass eatn crawdads, they’re killin’ ducks.

      It’s like, “Oh, doctor, please he’p my ass!”

      “Sorry, son, you look exactly like a duck to me, Blam.” And then of course the dumb muthafukka’s family gets the bill. That’s another joke.

      Anyway, McKinney loves the you-know-what outta Mad’s poems. Personally, I think poetry is fulla shit—but, I don’t think McKinney is, so if she likes Mad’s poems, then I know there’s something to the sumbiches, because, as I have indicated, McKinney ain’t just any lillo gal—or wuddn, when she was a gal—plus, she lived a long time up the country in New York City at a place called The Barbizon, whatever the fuk that was.

Even though I never saw much need of travelin’ anyplace, I do think it’s good for some people. And I have to admit, I did ’sperience some things when I went down to the GuffaMexico to visit Mad on that datgum island that I wouldna come up on no where else: like water you can’t see across, jellyfish, and stingarees. I would say pelicans, too, but we got them muthafukkas hanging out around the catfish ponds here in the county, along with the gotdam water turkeys.[5] Although, as somebody pointed out, our pelicans up here is white, and down there they’s a good many brown ones. But as far as I’m concerned a fukkin pelican is a pelican; I don’t give a shit what race he is.

      Speakin’ of that, I know there’s a lot of people that call me a racist. Fukkum. I ain’t. I’m just a sumbich that uses the kind of words people don’t like to hear because the words ain’t long and wiggly they way they want em to be. I mean, I don’t have anything especially against most Pekkawoods, Niggas, Greasers, Chinamens, Jews, A-rabs, Eye-fukkin-talians, and them gotdam Cath’lics, nor boy nor girl Queers, neither. Anybody that knows me, knows me damn well and maybe better than I know myself. Yet I do admit I have said some hard things about Planters and Bankers. But, them, and all the rest of those sumbiches I just mentioned—every fukkin one of em—I reckon they can take care of themse’vs without frettin’ over the likes of me. And if they can’t . . . then can’t nothin’ in this world ever help em.

      Okra Winfrey

      Take a pound and a half of fresh—or frozen—okra, whole or cut-up, along with lots of white and/or yellow onions and canned whole tomatoes, which you can mush up as you go along. Add some chopped, tender, white celery shoots from the inside of the stalk, but th’ow away the leaves.

      Dump it all into a big-ass skillet with a little olive oil—not too much because there’s gon’ be a lot of juice from the stuff you’ve already th’owed in there—then cook it for a good while, stirring it around every now and then. Add a lot of garlic. Use the powder.

      Later, after it cooks down, and when you feel like it, add two pounds of fresh, peeled shrimp, and some nice big scallops. You can use frozen crawfish meat. But be sure the crawdads are Americans and not those gotdam Chinese-ass muthafukkas. You can’t tell what them sumbiches might be! Plus, if you want to, you can use chicken, but I wouldn because it’s too fukkin ordinary, and you’ll want to avoid that.

      Mix it all up, and let it simmer on low heat—and even though it duddn take a lot of time to cook shrimp, make sure the shrimp gets down in there and rubs up against the other stuff for at least fifteen minutes, after which, cut the fire down and keep everything simmering, with a top not on all the way (so some of the steam can get out), for a fairly long time, maybe an hour or two—or more—on real low-ass heat. And don’t mess with it.

      Then cut off the stove, unload the whole thing on top of some of that unpolished brown rice from Arkansas, and eat it—with, of course, salt and cayenne or, you know, salt and . . . Crystal Pepper Sauce.

[1] A small town in southeast Mississippi, definitely not in the Delta.

[2] In the Upper Delta, during the 1940s and ’50s, people listened late at night to their radios, and heard an announcer from one of Memphis’s principal stations say something like: “And now from the Skyway Ballroom High Atop Hotel Peabody, we bring you Les Brown and his Band of Renown.”

[3] Mad wrote it out on something else first.

[4] This is one of Junior Ray’s greatest fictions. He has never cooked up anything in his life except in his imagination, and the reader is advised to proceed with caution.

[5] Cormorants.

Chapter 2

      Junior Ray Reflects on the True Nature of Time — He and Voyd Deal with a Nekkid Fat Man — And a Large Snake — Slab Town — Mr. Reitoff

      Personal time?! What the fuk do you mean personal time? All time is personal,” I told that dumb muthafukka. Course, he’s my supervisor, and I ought not to talk to him thatta way, but the silly sumbich went to some kind of management school up the country, in Pennsylvania, I think, and it gave him a fukked-up sense of reality. He believes there are several kinds of time: personal time, company time, sick time, and vacation time. Oh, yeah, and down time. What an ass’ole.

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