“We’re the new Mississippi,” says Jane Blades, who works in social services. Rural America is going ghetto. Because the high school no longer offers a foreign language, the kids who attend Paris R-II High do not qualify for admission to any of the state universities. In the doctor’s office, an old classmate tells me that there are no longer cheerleaders at the school. “Now how can you build spirit without cheerleaders?” she asks me, crestfallen.
“It’s the never knowing,” goes a song I like that plays on the radio here, “that keeps us going.” In Paris, religion is the great comfort. The most popular verb here is “pray.” People gather together to lift their requests for the survival of sick children, the vanquishing of tumors, the securing of loans. At church recently, I have heard a special prayer for a dying child, offered up by his father, a tenderhearted rodeo clown. WE PRAY WITH OUR BOOTS ON, says a sign advertising the Cowboy Church on the side of a pickup. Global Prayer Warriors are called forth on the Internet in times of trouble.
When I look at our town from the top of the hill at night, I think of all the people waking up, facing the day, their problems, imagine their voices, their prayers for themselves, their children, the neighbors and friends they have known for years rising up with hope into the lightening sky.
There is far too much illness in this county, including a large incidence of cancer, blamed on pesticides used during the 1950s and ’60s. Illnesses are a constant topic and housewives chat in the aisles of the grocery store about the merits of various chemo procedures. Gossip about the state of the neighbor’s marriage has been replaced by intense discussion of his vital organs. A law firm called Tolbert, Beadle, and Musgrave advertises on TV constantly, courting victims of mesothelioma on Channels 8 and 13. Cancers wipe out whole families or parts of them.
A friend of mine who grew up near Middle Grove can list all the people who lived near his family’s farm who have battled the disease. His father died of it. His sister died of it. He has fought it himself for almost twenty years. “A good day,” his mother told me, “is when everyone is alive.”
On streets in towns around here, old houses tumble, drawing meth cookers who start fires at night. Helicopters filled with state police look for dealers who hide in trailer homes and campers in the woods. In Columbia, where the elderly, including Betty, go to the doctor or for tests at the med center, MS-13—a deadly gang that drifted north after Katrina—is being held responsible for a series of “senseless shootings” and is said to be involved in drug trafficking, robbery, murder, prostitution, and arms trafficking. On the streets of this once peaceful university town, it is possible to acquire military-style ammunition that can pierce a policeman’s protective vest. There are rumors of young women inducted into white slavery against their will. The husband of my mother’s friend Betsy was approached by a youthful prostitute in the parking lot of Red Lobster. “We were there for Crabfest,” Betsy said.
“That brings them out,” I replied.
There is frequent mention of depression and bipolar conditions. “It used to be hysterectomies and then there was mastectomies,” Evie Cullers says. “Now it is always something up in the head.”
This is not a locale whose residents are waiting desperately for the latest version of the iPhone. This is a place where the Second Coming would be much preferred to tomorrow’s sunrise, the world of the Dollar Store, the Big Cup, the carbohydrate, and the cinnamon roll—a region of old families, now faded, living in trailer homes, divorcing and having illegitimate children. But there is also kindness, such kindness, the casserole on the doorstep from someone who does not expect to be acknowledged, the wet morning flowers in the mailbox.
And then there is my mother, one of the last truly fashionable women in Monroe County, even now. She fusses over the catalogs, always determined to find the perfect blouse. People still remark to me on her outfits, her style. Our friend Linda Lechliter says that when her mother died, she could find no one in Paris who would even take her dresses, which didn’t fit Linda herself. You can’t get the women here into anything but jeans, Linda claimed. “And these were nice dresses,” Linda said, “beautiful dresses. And not a soul in this town to wear them.”