Richard Grant pilots his dustbowl-gray pickup down Bee Lake Road, a faded blacktop buffered by flat Delta farmland and its namesake serpentine oxbow, a swampy memory left by the Yazoo River after it changed course years ago.
Grant grew silent a few miles back, somewhere around Yazoo City. Moving away from Pluto, Miss., the setting of his bestselling memoir, “Dispatches From Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta,” was as difficult for him as living here was joyous. Since selling the house in April 2015, he’s been back only twice.
Originally published as the cover story in The ‘Sip, Fall 2016
Re-published by Mississippi Today on December 3, 2016
Photo by Melanie Thortis Photography
jimbeaugez.com 