Isaac took his grandfather’s buckboard, hitched Glory to it, and rode to Calhoun City at the end of the day. He had to buy the tin to cover the beams on his roof. He was so near finished with his house it was frightening. Soon he would see Jennie again and try to recover those splendid days, weeks, months he had wasted. That is, if she would have him.             He unloaded the wagon in the dark and trudged to the porch, tired and hungry, though he was sick of his own cooking. He had yet to purchase a wood cook stove for the kitchen, but there were a lot of things that would have to come later. When there was money enough to pay.             Shreds of moss moved ghostlike through the giant oaks, casting night shadows across the porch not unlike any other evening. It was quiet. Again. The lonesome call of a whippoorwill disturbed the otherwise peaceful setting. When she...

We made the drive to Calhoun County in my brother's "big truck"! I love that truck. It serves as transportation, a drive-in picnic extravaganza device at one of three fast-food restaurants in the small Mississippi town of Bruce, and a proverbial roller coaster ride when my brother brakes for George's Chicken in New Albany. We knew the snow was coming, but it wouldn't have mattered. We would likely have gone anyway, for my brother's truck would have pulled every hill and bottomed out every hollow in Calhoun. It was a windy day. Mike and Gloria are our family genealogists, and they know where all our forebears are buried in these hills of Calhoun County. They also know old home sites, specifically of our grandmother, Mama Smith, where she lived with her family in Sarepta before she and Papa married. That's a great story for later with lots of pictures and memories. I had wanted to be here for the homecoming and burial of Clayton Hell...

Veterans Day, 2010 This article was written by my brother, Mike Bennett, editor of the Legionnaire , Post and Unit 72 of the American Legion, New Albany, Mississippi. This is a poignant—even uncanny—story about yet another American war hero... very special to our family for several generations. October 12, 2010 No. LXVI MISSING NO MORE! My wife, Gloria, and I are genealogy buffs and thus far have amassed 5,876 names into our family history beginning before the American Revolution and all the way up to the present. There are many of our family members who served our country during the course of history. We listed one such name several years ago from the lineage of my grandmother, Vallie Georgia Clark Smith. Her sister, Lillie Roane Clark Hellums and her husband had nine children, one of which was a son named Judge Clayton Hellums, who is my second cousin.   On October 9, 1944, Clayton gave his life for his country while fighting the Germans in the Forest de Parroy,...

Isaac Payne rode with the last of his company to Appomattox on April 10 with no inkling of what to expect. He waited outside the perimeter. Enlisted men were not allowed to be present on the streets of the Courthouse area. Only commanding officers. Isaac was emaciated, just like all the other southern patriots who leaned hard against the white picket fence that surrounded the township. Tired, empty, and disheartened, they waited to know the end of the story. One man could scarcely be identified from the next. They all looked the same. Withered and wasted. Isaac dismounted and patted Glory. She was his only earthly possession besides his weapons. His only connection to home. He gripped the bridle and pressed his face to her thin neck, unconsciously rubbing his hand over her protruding bones. If he looked up in the distance he might see his father and brother riding the dusty road to Appomattox to join him, but how could that be? They were dead. The thought of their absence and ...

He loved how the sweet gums, tall and straight, caught the morning sun, painting the landscape crimson and yellow, the seed balls swinging festively on every twig,  and how the dew  glimmered on the first light, and the rays slashed across the porch of a morning.  Soon the green would vanish except for the cedars and the pines and the magnolias. That was not unsettling to Isaac, for it would then be possible for him to see through the canebrake to the creek beyond. The blue skies over Slate Springs would stay the same and the dew would continue to glisten like gold and silver on the dried leaves and pine needles. And if winter allowed an inch of snow to fall, his world would sparkle like slithers of diamonds. Every season had its splendid advantage and from front porch or back or from the myriad panes on every side or even from the dogtrot he would sit and bask in the blessings of each, calling them by name—winter, spring, summer and best of all—autumn. From Isaac's Hou...

Isaac slalomed through the bustling crowd. He pulled his scarf tight around his neck and adjusted his hat. It was cold, the wind blowing off the Mississippi River chilling him to the bone. He passed boutique shops with ladies' clothing displayed in the windows in fine fashion, cafes filled to overflowing, the aroma of hot coffee and pastries lingering on the cold air. And butcher shops with Christmas turkeys and chickens and ducks and an occasional goose, clean-plucked and hanging naked in the windows. Isaac couldn't help but laugh. When his mother wanted chickens for supper, he just went to the barnyard and called two or three up with a handful of corn and wrung their necks on the spot. If it was turkey she wanted, Jonathan could always bring one in from the woods, shot through with his squirrel rifle, never disturbing the meat.

--> T oday, July 13, 2010, my brother  received the Malcolm Hickey Award  for Lifetime Achievement in the  American Legion. My sister, Grace, arranged for all the local family  to surprise him at the presentation. Some of us were too far away to attend.  I wrote him this letter. _____________________________________________ Dear Mike, You have been our hero for so many years,  in both war and peace. You not only served our  country well, but you have continued serving  the veterans as a constant reminder to all of us  that freedom is not free. It costs somebody  something whether it is a mother her son,  a father his sanity as he waits by the television  or radio to hear word from the battlefield.  Distorted or not, it’s something to cling to.   A maybe. A perhaps. Or that daily trek to  the paper box to see for himself a bit of a map  so he can say, “Here,...