Imagine.
The eastern sky was streaked pink and orange when you started walking to Mount Locust. Sunrise dipped into the Mississippi River and set it aflame.
You weren’t there to admire the view, not when you had fifteen miles to cover, weighted down by jangling pockets full of metal and paper.
Your only remaining possessions.
Sundown is twelve hours away, but still you hurry. Away from clangs on the docks. Past mansions erected from the sweat on your back. Through every temptation to buy one experience for your own comfort. Something to warm your loins as your feet navigate 450 miles of gnarled, treacherous backcountry.
You join a wandering pack of guys, unsure whether they’ll turn on your for your money or you or see you to your next stop. That they probably think the same of you is evidenced by every wary glance, each shifting of another gun.
Everyone told you how wet Mississippi was, but you weren’t prepared to walk through a swamp for most of a day. Cypress knees drill into your feet, unseen in the scrim of black water. You don’t want to think about what else lurks there.
A splash. A scream.
Behind you.
Nobody can save a snake-bit man. Still, you wave everyone ahead as you rip away his shirt sleeve and tie off his arm. You’re still groping for the bite when you feel circular steel behind your ear.
“Give me your money.”
You never thought you’d be
forced to kill another man.
As you forge ahead, your boots sink into the spongy swamp bottom, and you wonder how many lives rot there. Trees intertwine their fingers overhead. They block light. Magnify sound. You pick your way to a spit of dry land and hope you’ve found the Trace.
You don’t look back
at the ghosts that
cling through the muck
on your boots.
Pain needles up your legs, but you ignore it and stomp into a clearing. A stand along the Natchez Trace. Smoke from two chimneys. A cooking fire. Somewhere inside Mount Locust, you might still share a bed with another weary traveler.
Maybe you won’t have
to kill him, too.
Mount Locust is one of two remaining stands along the Natchez Trace. Located at milepost 15.5 just north of Natchez, MS, it’s open daily from 9am – 4:30pm. Closed Christmas Day. Admission is free.
***************
No visit to the Natchez Trace
is complete without my books.
Get your copies of To Live Forever: An Afterlife Journey of Meriwether Lewis and Not Without My Father: One Woman’s 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace by heading to my
20 Comments
Story leaves me wanting more. That’s a good sign.
I had fun with this one. Glad you like it.
Pretty exciting. I liked the circular steel behind the ear line.
Thanks. I was proud of that myself.
*sigh* Love this. Just what I needed to read as we head to the cabin this weekend…I’ll be listening for the whispers of the ghosts that have stayed behind.
Nice one Andra!
I hope your trip to the cabin was JUST what you needed, Lori. 🙂
Loved this! Welcome back!
That I wrote this means I need to get back to revising offline. These people are bursting through the seams……
Edge of my seat…that’s where I was
Always love hearing that. 🙂
Excellent writing, Andra. This is why I will continue to read your books.
May I always provide a high level of reading pleasure.
Enjoyed this a lot!
Thanks, Phyllis.
That was beautiful! Love those photos too.
I’m pretty sure one is in the never-to-be-through-final-edits picture book. I’ve looked at that thing so many times now…………
Love this, Andra and I can’t wait for more!
These always come inspired. 🙂 I wish I could write them every day.
This might be my favorite way to experience the Trace through your eyes.
Those bucolic photos certainly don’t give a hint of the darkness of this tale. Swamp water, snake bites and shifty-eyed characters . . . more, please.
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