I believed at the time (and still do) that my father was embarrassed to return to Poscataw, not without success in tow. A fortune would do; in lieu of that, a return of his son. His father had owned that county for thirty years, following in a kind of sheriff monarchy. Johnson Calvert needed to prove he was representative of the bloodline.
At that moment I vowed I would never set foot in Mississippi. I had never heard of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission or thought to link my father to the old blood of heroic men who should never have died. How could I have known that the momentum of my Calvert lineage would drag me down that mighty river, past Memphis and beyond the high banks of Vicksburg and finally, snaking through prehistoric deep delta, to the gulf. The Mississippi River was the rectum of my American Dream.
Rabble Rouser 