Where the Sunflowers Grow
By
Rebecca Anna Coleman

-9-
Eden, Mississippi

I don't recall how long I must have peddled that old, rusting, relic of a bike down that long stretch of concrete highway. I had no way of telling time either because the battery of the piece of shit wrist watch I brought from K-Mart died the moment I left the fish-house. I just know that everything seemed to pass in a blur. I thought I should be getting closer to the bright lights of Benton, but it seemed in my rush to get away from Sarah Elizabeth and Mary Grace, I took a left instead of a right. I found this out when I finally passed a green sign that read. “Eden”.

As soon as I read that sign I'd knew I'd gone and fucked up. Eden was eleven miles from Benton. I paused and leaned over the handle bars of my bike and hung my head low. My chest heaved up and down as I felt beads of sweat roll down my blistered face. I guess at that moment in time the most logical thing I could do would be to keep on moving. I was sure I could find a phone or something there and I could use that phone to call my mom and dad, who must have noticed by now that I'd not returned from work.

Maybe they had already called the police or sheriff's office out of Yazoo City. Maybe they had already formed a search party. Or given the ungentlemanly way I'd unloaded on my two cousins back at the fish-house a lynch mop. My money was on the lynch mop.

Eden was a small village that was located in the heart of the rural Yazoo County. The population was around four hundred and was just fifteen miles from the Yazoo County-Holmes County line. According to my father who considered himself to be something of a local historian. The village was incorporated on February 24, 1890 when the Yazoo-Delta Valley Railroad was extended from Benton to Eden to act as a shipping point for cotton grown in the surrounding farms. A Cotton Gin was built and opened a few months after the railroad came to town.

This led to a major population boom in the area as people flocked to railroad workers. A small general store was opened, followed by a post office in 1891.. followed by the opening of a hardware store and several other stores. And finally the last development was in 1930 when the Delta Telephone Company connected the modest town hall and general store with Benton and then Yazoo City.

The town was also famous or should I say infamous for one thing, and this scared the ever loving fuck out me. In 1888, two years before the collection of already existing small shops, houses and churches got together and chartered the village. An African-American man by the name of Frank Guise was shot and killed by a white man on the wooden steps of his sharecropper shack for the crime of allegedly insulting a white person.

I mean wow, I wondered what they would do to me if one of the local good-ole boys ever found out that I'd been researching transgenderism. A few nights ago I stayed up past my bedtime to watch a documentary on Channel 6 out of Jackson that was the local PBS channel. The documentary focused on the killing of Emmett Till.

And while Eden, Mississippi might not be Money, Mississippi it was too close to call. And while it might be 2004 in places in Benton, Jackson, Ridgeland, Canton, Clinton, Yazoo City, Greenwood, Greenville, Vicksburg, Pearl, and all along the coast and in other big cities. In places like Eden the march of time had stopped in 1955.

Yes in places like Eden, Money, Midnight, Sharbrough's Landing, Liverpool, Midway, and countless other smaller settlements where the population was barely above five hundred the steady march of time had been frozen in 1955. Here the mighty and feared shadow of the Ku Klux Klan still held power. Sure their power and influence was retreating in the face of  the steady march of progression. But there were still enough of them around and they still held enough influence to control the local politics of these backwater villages and hamlets. 

And sure enough they could make my life a living hell. Even though I was white and a protestant. Oh how twisted it was that the same men who as young teenagers had gone off to the fight the armies of Imperial Japan and free the world from the terror of Nazi Germany, who had seen the horrors of war and the inhumanity of the  holocaust had returned to the united states as conquering hero's only to in a few short months put on the white, hooded sheets of the Ku Klux Klan and take up the battle-cry of “White Power”. And repeat the same cycle of oppression and terrorism that many of their childhood friends had given their lives to stop. 

All of these thoughts swirled around me as I hung my head down and leaned on the handle-bars for support. I forced myself to take a deep breath. Anyway you look at it, I was screwed. I did not have the energy to bike the eleven miles back to Benton. And like I'd said before, I'm sure at this point mom and dad had either formed a search party, called out the hounds, or given the way I'd unloaded at the fish-house a lynching party. Either way it seemed I had only one logical choice ahead of me, keep biking toward Eden proper and then hope to find a telephone or something. I mean what did I have to lose besides maybe my life? And was my life even worth keeping at this point?

The first rays of the morning sun had just appeared over the horizon when I first spotted the faint hints of civilization. The first true sign that I was entering Eden proper was a handsome brick church . The sign in front of the church proclaimed the church to be “Zion Holy Spring MB Church.” Under it a smaller sign told me that services were only held every “First, Second, and Fifth” Sunday.

Then I passed a dozen or so wooden farmhouses, many of the old, weather beaten farmhouses had an old oak tree out in the front yard and hanging from the thick branches of the oak were cords of braided, brown rope at the end of the rope an old tire had been tied. The classic tire swing. Old Fords sat out in front of these houses.

The houses became closer together the further I traveled. At last I came to a cross-road. Here at the intersection of two old country roads I found what I was looking for: the heart of Eden. On one side of the road there was an old BP Gas Station that looked like it was about to fall in. The gas pumps looked rusted and the old concrete parking lot was filled with trash. A stray, orange and yellow tom-cat paced slowly across the parking lot, I could see it was holding a dead rat in its mouth. It looked feral and pissed off. Like it had no problem rendering flesh from bone if you dared try to reach down and pet it or if you dared tried to take the dead mouse from its mouth. 

Beside the BP gas station there was an old laundromat, inside the lights flickered on and off. And the smell of soap filled the air. An old black man dressed in rags was sitting out in front. He was holding a brown bag in one hand and from time to time he would take a swing from whatever the brown bag was holding and then he'd holler out across the lot.

Beside the laundromat there was an old, auto repair shop that looked like it had seen better days. Four or five old ford trucks were parked out front and the light inside the shop flickered on and off and the strong smell of burned oil filled the air around it. A few old men with a few tuffs of white hair tinkered around the trucks. I could hear many of them muttering under their breath. None seemed to pay the old blackman any mind.

Across from the old BP station there was an old, brick building that looked like it had seen better days. The white letters attached to the front wall spelled out the words “Eden, Ms.” followed by “Post Office.” In front was a old, rusting flagpole that showed a tattered American fag above and a even more tattered state flag flying under it. It was clear nobody paid the flag code any mind.

Beside the post office one would find another building, the building looked old and tired, a fading sign above the front door read “Super-Value Charity Shop”. I could already smell the month balls. Beside that was a converted house a simple wooden sign in front the house read. “Ms. Cotton Beauty Salon” And as if to highlight the racial tensions of this small southern town somebody had taken time to write “White Women Only”.

Across the way one would find an old storage unit, a collection of sheds. Another small building that looked like a shed. A sign next to the shed read. “Eden's House of VHS rentals!” Beside that one would find a square brick building, the sign next to that read “Ms. Bee's Steak House” below that somebody had written. “Best Steaks in the Delta” and below that “White People Only”. Across from Ms. Bee’s Steakhouse one could spot a carwash. Wild cattails seemed to grow around the thing and the area around it looked and smelled like a man-made swamp.  Beside the carwash there was another gas station. The pumps in front of it looked slightly newer than the ones found in the old BP. A faded blue sign out front proclaimed it to be “Bradshaw’s Gas, Fried Chicken and BBQ.” 

Now, I hope people see I was not joking when I said that the flow of time had stopped here in 1955. Sure there was more here than I thought it should ever be considering the population was around four hundred souls. I felt a shadow pass over me, that I was going to die here in this God forsaken hell-hole.

Finally I found what I was looking for, just as I was about to leave the heart of Eden I came to the last faint remains of civilization. A few hundred yards from the cross-road section one would find a simple, wooden United Methodist Church with a simple wooden cross out in front. Across from it one would find a simple looking house but the sign out in front said. “Eden Cafe”. And judging from the amount of cars in the old gravel parking lot it was open for business.

End of Chapter Nine