One Mississippi

by Mark Childress

Overview

"There is nothing small about Childress's fine novel. It's big in all the ways that matter - big in daring, big in insight, and big-hearted. Really, really big-hearted." -New Orleans Times-Picayune

This exuberantly acclaimed novel by the author of the bestselling Crazy in Alabama tells an uproarious and moving story about family, best friends, first love, and surviving the scariest years of your life.

You need only one best friend, Daniel Musgrove figures, to make it through high school alive. After his family moves to Mississippi just before his junior year, Daniel finds fellow outsider Tim Cousins. The two become inseparable, sharing a fascination with ridicule, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, and Arnita Beecham, the most bewitching girl at Minor High. But soon things go terribly wrong. The friends commit a small crime that grows larger and larger, and threatens to engulf the whole town. Arnita, the first black prom queen in the history of the school, is injured and wakes up a different person. And Daniel, Tim, and their families are swept up in a shocking chain of events.

"Wise, riveting, hilarious, painful, gentle, and ferocious, One Mississippi is a wonderful read." -Anne Lamott

"A Tilt-a-Whirl that flings the reader from comedy to calamity. . . . Childress is a fabulist in the manner of John Irving." -Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"By turns rollicking and troubling, as provocative as it is droll, One Mississippi is about as easy to resist as a riptide. This critic's advice is to go with its powerful flow." -Raleigh News&Observer

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316015356
Publisher:	Little, Brown & Company
Publication date:	09/19/2007
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	322,319
File size:	877 KB

About the Author

Mark Childress was born in Monroeville, Alabama. He is the author of five previous novels and three books for children. He has lived in Ohio, Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, California, Costa Rica, and currently lives in New York City.

Read an Excerpt

One Mississippi

A Novel

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By Mark Childress

LITTLE, BROWN

Copyright © 2006 Mark Childress
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-316-01211-4

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Chapter One

"You feel anything?" "Nope."

"Maybe you're supposed to hold it in longer." It was summer in Indiana, the week before I turned sixteen. All afternoon my friends and I had been on our bikes, following the mosquito truck through the streets, breathing the sweet-smelling clouds of DDT because we'd heard it would get you high.

One glimpse of Dad's steel-blue Oldsmobile Delta 88 in our driveway on a Thursday was enough to bring all the fun screeching to a halt. I waved the boys to go on without me.

My father was a good man- I can say that now, after all these years and everything that happened-but on a day-to-day basis, he was about as fun as Hitler. Dimly I remembered a time when he picked us up in his arms, hugged us, played with us like any other dad. As we got older, though, he turned against us. He had to be hard, he said, to keep us from turning out soft.

His name was Lee Ray Musgrove. He came from a poor Alabama family of Musgroves who went all the way broke in the Depression. Dad never got over how poor they used to be. The Depression always loomed over our family like a dark thundercloud, a certain promise of doom just beyond the horizon.

Every Monday at four a.m. Dad would arise to eat his lonely bowl of Wheat Chex, check hislist of sales calls, and head out to keep that thundercloud at bay for one more week. Monday to Friday he was a traveling salesman, the jolliest most hardworking devoted salesman in the history of TriDex, District Salesmanager of the Year three years in a row, a good smile, a nice word for everybody. All week he saved up his anger, all the slights and disappointments and frustrations of a salesman's life, and on Friday nights he brought it all home to us.

But now he was home on a Thursday. This was different. At our house, different was never good.

I managed to stow my bike in the garage without making a sound. The back door squealed and gave me away. His growl from the family room: "Get in here. Where have you been?"

When Dad used that voice, he didn't want an answer. I crept into the room. The whole family was gathered around the TV but the set was turned off. This must be some really bad news.

I eased myself down between Bud and Janie on the sofa. They all looked so somber I thought someone must have died.

"All present and accounted for," Dad said. "Okay, here's the big announcement. I got a transfer. We're moving again."

I tingled all over, as if my body had gone to sleep for an instant. A transfer. TriDex transferred its salesmen every year or two, to keep them on their toes. Indiana was our sixth transfer in ten years. TriDex did not know or care that this was my favorite of all the places we had lived. Lately I'd been hoping we might get to stay here. I loved Indiana. I had lots of friends. It was flat, you could ride your bike everywhere. In the winter it froze hard and snowed a lot, so you could stay inside and watch TV all the time.

I waded into the rising silence: "Moving where?" "Mississippi," said Dad, "and I don't want any lip out of you." "Aw now, Lee, don't say it that way." Mom interposed herself between Dad by the sliding glass door and us on the sofa. "Y'all, this is big news for Daddy - for all of us, really. You know how bad I been wanting to get closer to Granny and Jacko ... and you know how I hate the winters up here."

That was true. Mom was a flower of the South. Her feet had been cold since the first time Dad moved her away from Alabama.

"Are you nuts?" Bud said. "We can't move now, Mom. I just made varsity." Bud was a wrestler. Dad was proud of the fact that Bud wrestled so hard he puked after every match.

"Aw now, Bud, come on, it's a better territory for Daddy," said Mom, "and anyway we haven't got a choice, so let's just go on and be happy about it."

"You all can go, I don't care, I'm staying," said Bud. "I'm a senior this fall, Mom, we can't move to - where did you say? Mississippi? That's the dumbest thing I ever heard!"

Bud took my breath away saying things like that, things that would have got me backhanded and sent to my room. Dad darkened and loomed in his corner, but stayed silent. Bud looked like Dad, and Dad respected him for that.

"Okay Bud, you stay here," Mom said with a desperate smile. "Who's gonna cook your supper and wash your dirty clothes?" "If Buddy's staying I wanna stay," Janie said.

"Nobody's staying," said Mom. "We know how to move, we've done it plenty of times. The movers will be here Monday morning bright and early to start packing."

Bud got up and slammed down the hall to his room BANG! "I'll be dog," said my father. "I'll be god dog, that boy ..." "Now Lee," Mom said, "don't start."

"Start what? Don't you start." "I told you they'll need some time, honey. Of course they're not gonna be happy at first - having to go off from all their little friends." She turned anxious eyes on Janie and me. "I promise, you'll like it down there. You'll make new friends. Daddy's found us a beautiful house in the country. The schools are supposed to be great."

I mustered up a sneer. "Yeah, I bet. Mississippi?" I'd never been there, but I knew all about it from the evening news. Mississippi was last in everything you could measure. There was nothing down there but redneck sheriffs and protesting Negroes and civil rights workers buried in earthen dams.

"There's nothing wrong with Mississippi," Mom said. "It's nice and warm, for one thing, and at least the people will understand me when I talk."

"What if we don't want to go?" I said. "Why do we have to?" "Daddy's got a new territory." She fingered a sheaf of honey-gold hair from her eyes. "A smaller territory, so he won't have to be gone so much." She turned smiling, but Dad's eyes were narrowed down, fixed on me, waiting for one word that would give him the right to come over there and strangle me.

"Mississippi is the Magnolia State," Janie read from the World Book. "The capital is Jackson. The products are cotton, lumber, poultry, and cattle."

"Good, Janie," said Mom. "I told you those books would come in handy."

Mom was trying to sell this as a big promotion for Dad, but I knew better. I was almost sixteen, I knew everything. I read their mail, I went through their filing cabinet. I read the life insurance policy and thrilled at how rich we kids would be if they died. Many nights I had heard my father god-dogging the name of Larry Semple, his district manager. I knew that a smaller territory in Mississippi had to be a comedown from a three-state sales district based in Indiana. I knew just where to stick in the knife. "Why does he have a smaller territory?"

A subterranean vibration from Dad's side of the room, a trembling of air.

Janie preened for the invisible camera that always followed her around. "Well, I'm glad we're moving," she announced. "I hate this place too, Mama. It's cold. And I want to live closer to Granny."

"Attagirl," Mom said. "The power of positive thinking." I coughed the word "suck-up" into my hand. "Mom! He called me a suck-up!" "I did not. I coughed. Can't a person even cough?"

On Monday we watched the movers load our things onto a giant orange tractor-trailer from Allied Van Lines. On Tuesday we set out down the brand-new interstate highway toward our future. We drove all day, into the late afternoon. South of Memphis we hit a bump that banged my cheek against the glass. The four-lane highway had become a broken two-lane. A sign said

WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI

The land flattened out and got wide. At first glance it looked like Indiana again: green flat fields running off to the horizon, fence lines and grain elevators in the blue distance. But instead of neat Midwestern farmhouses I saw tarpaper shacks, poor black folks on the porches: skinny kids in rags, stooped old men in straw hats. Occasionally a mansion peeked out of a huge grove of oaks - a Greek temple with columns, white and impressively hidden.

Mom said, "Can you imagine living in a house like that? I would feel just like Scarlett."

"Mama," said Janie, "that girl hasn't got on a shirt." "Don't stare, Jane. People can't help it if they're not as well off as us."

"Hmp." My father scratched his neck. "Anybody's willing to work can get along these days. Not like we had it in the Depression." "They let her just run around without a shirt?" Janie threw herself against the seat to watch the girl receding in the rear window. "She's as old as me."

"Well, it's hot down here, honey," said Mom. "I'm sure she has a nice shirt she wears all the time."

In our air-conditioned car we were almost chilly, but beyond the glass you could see waves of heat rising up from the road and the fields. Even flashing by at sixty-five miles an hour, you could see sweat on people's faces.

"Oh heavenly days," Mom said, "it's so good to be home. Let's just open up and see how she feels." She cranked down her window. In an instant, every ounce of cool air was sucked out and replaced with this blast of summer air - a hot, wet slap in the face. We hollered and moaned until Mom rolled the window back up.

She grinned. "Hot! Just like I like it." Now that we were back in the South, Mom's accent had kicked in - the thickest sweetest south-Alabama accent you ever heard. Just lack I lack it!

"I am never going outside again - never," said Bud. "This house better have dang good air-conditioning."

"Oh, you'll be seeing plenty of outside," Dad assured him. "You boys got a world of grass to cut."

"It's a country place, y'all," Mom said. "It's out from town, so it's got all the peace and quiet you'd ever want, and a great big old yard. I can't wait to put in some azaleas. They'll be blooming when Indiana is still up to their eyeballs in snow."

"Nobody knows if the stupid school even has a wrestling team," Bud said.

"I'm sure if they don't, they have something just as good," said Mom. "They practically invented football down here." "I hate football," said Bud.

"Don't let anybody down here hear you say that," Dad said. "I mean it, Bud."

"Mommy, I'm hungry," said Janie. "Well you weren't twenty minutes ago, when we had lunch." Mom rattled the Kroger sack. "What you want, honey? Peanut butter, or there's still one ham and cheese."

"Peanut butter but take off the crust." "The crust is the best part," said Dad.

Dad was not just saying this to make Janie eat the crust. This was the thing about Dad: not only was the crust good enough for Dad, he considered it the best part. He liked the neck of the chicken on Sunday. He liked leftover corn pone with cracklins, served cold, with turnip greens, for breakfast. He liked food that tasted like when he was poor.

He squinted into the distance at the long line of cars backed up in our lane - a traffic jam in the middle of nowhere, stretching around the next curve. "Would you look at this?" He blew out a sigh as if all these cars had stopped way out here just to get on his nerves. He folded his hands behind his neck, cracked his shoulder joints. "Come on, people," he said, drumming his fingers on the wheel. "We got miles to go."

We idled behind an old station wagon from Kentucky, overflowing with kids who stuck out their tongues at us and smeared their dirty feet on the windows. You could just smell the misery rolling off that car. The parents were shrunk down in the front seat, ignoring everything to the best of their ability.

"Thank God we had just the three," said Dad. Mom smiled. "Amen to that." "You guys," Bud said. "Thanks a lot."

"Take a look at that car, boy," said Dad. "That right there is as good an argument for birth control as you'll ever see." "Lee."

Janie said, "What's birth control?" "Now see what you started?"

"It's a way of making sure you don't take on more than you can handle." Dad laid his hand on the horn to join the chorus. Across a flat field I saw a column of black smoke rising behind a wall of pines. "Hey Dad, something's burning."

He looked where I was pointing. "You know you may be right, it's a durn house afire, and all these people are just rubbernecking." He pounded the horn. "Get a move on! Didn't you ever see a fire before?" The guy with all the children honked too, and waved his fist out the window.

That was something large and on fire, sending up rolling clouds of black smoke and flashes of flame. The people in front of us began three-point-turning their cars, driving past us. Mom said, "Everybody's going the other way."

Dad coasted forward one car length. "It would take you twice as long, time you went around." He fiddled with the radio, settling on an old flat-voiced man giving a farm report.

"Your soybeans is headed up again, and your cotton holding steady as she goes," the man said. "All you boys out spraying today, this report is brought to you by the good people of TriDex Chemical, We Know What Bugs You."

My father said, "Hey hey!" and turned up the volume. "Listen to that. Just got here and already talking about us on the radio."

"That's a good sign," said Mom. "It's like a welcome. I tell you, Lee, this is all going to work out for the best."

More people were giving up, turning around, heading the other way.

We crept around the bend. Now we could see it was not a house burning but something in the road, hidden by the rise just ahead. State trooper cars flashed blue lights. Troopers in wide-brimmed hats waved traffic off the highway.

"Heck of an accident," Dad said. "Must be a tanker truck, way it's burning."

"That's cool," said Bud. "It's not 'cool,' Bud," Mom said. "Someone might be hurt." "No, but I mean look at it burn," Bud said. "Don't get too close, Daddy. I don't want to see any burned people."

"Don't worry, Janie. Neither do I." Now we could see it was a tractor-trailer jackknifed, sprawled on its side across both lanes. A crowd of firemen and state troopers stood at a healthy distance, watching the fire- a huge orange toy, broken and burning, pouring fire from the cab and the split-open trailer.

Two men in gray uniforms stood off to one side. One of them bent over with his hands on his knees, as if he was about to throw up. It took me a moment to think, Hey I know that guy, and to flash a picture of where I'd seen him: yesterday, closing the doors of the Allied Van Lines truck at our house in Indiana.

"Hey Dad," I said, "that's the guy who put our stuff on the truck." "What?"

"That guy, there! Isn't he the guy from Allied?" And then it dawned on me why our driver was standing there with those state troopers beside the burning wreck. The wreck was his truck. Our truck.

Dad steered the Oldsmobile onto the grassy bank. He switched off the engine, rolled down his window, folded his hands on the wheel. Hot acrid air filled the car. We heard the popping and crackling, the rifle-shot of aerosol cans exploding, a deep monstrous underneath sound, like a beast sucking air.

Janie said, "Why did we stop?" "You idiot!" I cried. "Don't you get it? That's our stuff!" "What do you mean our stuff."

"Children." I shiver to remember the silvery calm of Mom's voice. "I don't want to hear another word."

A trooper came bowlegging down the hill toward us. "Folks," he said, "I'm gone have to ask you-all to just move on along."

My father's neck turned very red, as if he'd been sunburned suddenly. I could not see his face, but the sight of it was enough to back the trooper up a step.

"Come on now," he said. "Y'all had your look, let's move on along now."

My father did not speak. He just stared at the man. "Sir? Maybe you didn't hear what I said."

My mother leaned across the seat. "Officer, that truck is from Allied Van Lines, isn't it?" "Why, yes ma'am, it is."

"Well see, I'm Peggy Musgrove, and this is my husband Lee? And the thing is, I do believe those are our belongings on that truck."

"Hm." The man's face didn't change. "Y'all movin' down this way?"

"Yes, sir, we were," Mom said, in a voice that probably sounded chipper to him, but seemed to me one note short of a scream. "Well, I hate to be the one to tell you, ma'am, but I don't think you're gone be able to save too much out of that." He indicated the conflagration with a little wave of his hand, as if maybe we hadn't noticed it. "Could you ask your husband to come up here and talk to us a minute?"

"I don't think he is able, right now," Mom said. "Would it be all right if I came in his place?"

Bud opened his door. "I'll go with you, Mom." "Me too," I said.

"Bud, you come. Daniel, you and Janie stay here with Daddy." She glanced at her hair in the mirror and got out, smoothing her skirt. I had often seen our mother rise to one occasion or the other, but I've never seen her rise as she rose that afternoon. She marched with Bud up among all those troopers and stood answering their questions as if she had practiced for just such an occasion.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from One Mississippi by Mark Childress Copyright © 2006 by Mark Childress. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

When his father is relocated from Indiana to Minor, Miss., in 1973, 16-year-old Daniel Musgrove finds himself a classic fish out of water. At Minor High, the Midwestern teenager finds a kindred spirit in wiseacre Tim Cousins, whose motto is "Everything is funny all the time." The two indulge their love of Sonny and Cher, get recruited by a local Baptist church to perform in an amateur musical called Christ! and endure the bullying of football star Red Martin. When, on prom night, the boys accidentally run over Arnita Beecham, a beautiful, popular black girl, the boys flee, letting Red take the fall. Arnita wakes from her coma believing she's white and promptly falls for Daniel-which makes Tim extremely jealous and puts their coverup at risk. Childress's comic tone and well-written adolescent confusion make his late shift into darker territory jarring, and readers might not follow him all the way to his violent destination. (July) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Childress's (Crazy in Alabama) absorbing and offbeat novel follows events in the life of young Daniel Musgrove as his family relocates to rural Mississippi. Daniel begins his junior year in high school, a stranger in a strange land, but quickly befriends a local alienated youth named Tim Cousins. The two boys share some typical and funny high school experiences. But there is a darker side, starting with a strange accident after the prom involving the homecoming queen, and even though they are not really at fault, they implicate themselves by saying nothing when the school bully is blamed. Tim is comfortable with their silence, but Daniel feels guilty. Although the boys remain friends, Daniel comes to suspect that something is seriously abnormal about his friend. The book climaxes in a Columbine-like scene wherein Tim goes berserk with rifles in the school and Daniel attempts to act heroically but is not enough of a hero to save his two closest friends. Serious issues of race, identity, and loyalty are raised, and tragic and violent events occur, but the author retains a surprisingly light touch in this highly engaging read. Recommended for popular fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/06.]-Jim Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Adult/High School-Just as Daniel Musgrove is about to enter 11th grade in the early '70s, his father moves the family from Indiana to rural Mississippi. A few months later, Daniel's older brother, and best friend, joins the Army, and Daniel finds a new best friend, Tim. Both boys are bright, witty, and living with secret demons. Chief among Daniel's is his father, a bully and a coward. When Tim and Daniel double date for the junior prom, the teens have an accident on the way home and cause the prom queen to fall off her bike and hit her head. Childress's inspection of race relations-among schoolmates, adults, and lovers-builds from this point: the prom queen of the newly integrated high school is black, but the injury leaves her believing that she is white. The boys hang the accident on a bullying football player, but the girl's mother knows Daniel was involved and uses that knowledge to gain power over him. Tim's secret begins to erupt during the summer, although Daniel, preoccupied with his obligations to and feelings for the prom queen, misses warning signs. Childress doesn't twist the plot so much as he unravels its threads with realistic deliberation, diverting attention from Tim by spotlighting Mr. Musgrove's literal home destruction, then swinging the focus back in time to catch Tim in his last furious act. Authenticity demands some brutal scenes and rough language, and a loaded interlude with Cher Bono. This is Daniel's story, so many of the minor characters are one-dimensional, just as they would be in his perception.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Racism, teenage lust and the burdens of friendship complicate a young man's life in the Deep South of 1973. When his salesman father is transferred to a small town in Mississippi, Daniel Musgrove knows, with his Indiana accent, that he will have to fight hard to fit in. He lucks out his first day of high school when he meets Tim Cousins, a lanky, sardonic classmate. The two become inseparable and even take a pair of sisters to the junior prom, where controversy ensues when school beauty Arnita, who is black, is voted prom queen. Later that night, Tim and Daniel see her riding her bike home in an agitated state, and she is accidentally struck by Tim's car. The two panic and flee the scene, stopping to call an ambulance for the unconscious girl. Arnita survives, but has no memory of being hit and for some reason believes herself to be a white girl named Linda, with tragicomic results. Feeling guilty, Daniel starts helping out around her parents' home and spending time with the confused, but undeniably lovely, girl. Nature takes its course and he falls for her, while trying to keep his role in her accident a secret. Their interracial romance is met with predictable disapproval and causes a rift between Daniel and Tim, who tries to come between the lovers. What happens next is a violent culmination of frustrated desire and revenge, implicating both boys. Childress (Crazy in Alabama, 1993, etc.) creates a believably flawed hero in Daniel, a basically good kid capable of cowardly and selfish acts, but goes too far in the shocking final scenes. Tim's transformation from witty outsider into a black-clad high-school avenger feels jarring next to the kitschy southern nostalgia trip that makes upmuch of the story. A coming-of-age tale whose shift in tone impairs its flow.

Kirkus Reviews