Finding Mississippi

By Chris Amisano

When Paul Whitmire's religious grandfather dies, he expects to have a quiet return to Bennett, Mississippi, where he was born and raised. He returns along with his partner Silvio to discover that his grandfather was not everything he seemed – and that the family's secrets are far more serious than a gay grandson.

Faced with decisions about their future and the family, Paul and Silvio find themselves maneuvering a delicate web of cover-ups, a family business, and old-South prejudices, not to mention the world of difference between their life in Miami Beach and the prospect of life in Bennett.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350938098

Book preview

Chapter 1

Dorothy Remington Whitmire found her husband Conrad on the bed, a plaid contrast to the century-old patchwork quilt he settled down on right before he died. Dorothy didn’t hear him call out, or fall, or even whimper. He just went. And it was so like him to be quiet about it. He was quiet about everything. She had called the Sheriff right away, who came with his hat in his hand and some dribble-drabble about how sorry he was to hear about Mr. Whitmire’s untimely passing. Now Dorothy sat by the phone trying to find the words for the call she had to make. As she looked out the picture window in the kitchen, she could see the old red Chevy truck that had belonged to her husband. Beyond the truck, she contemplated the kudzu growing rampant up the ravine from the small pond behind the house.

Kudzu grows a foot a day if no one cuts it back, she thought. I’ll have to hire someone to take care of that from now on. Maybe that nice young man who took care of Eunice Roberson’s yard until she passed away. Passed away. Now Dorothy’s own husband had gone that way after sixty years of marriage, and she really didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The old man was…how old was he, she thought. Her last birthday was number late seventy-something, so he had to be at least middle eighty-something.

Of course word of Mr. Whitmire’s passing had already gotten around, as things tend to do in small towns like Bennett. Too bountiful to burn was the town’s slogan, a blatant reminder of the Civil War in the twenty-first century. When General Sherman’s Army marched through Mississippi, they decided not to burn Bennett, and as the South rebuilt itself some enterprising town father came up with the slogan. Most of the antebellum homes in town were testaments to the slogan, surviving the Civil War and living on as the homes of the staid landed-rich of Southern Mississippi or becoming bed and breakfast inns for yuppies who gave up on city life and came from Atlanta, Nashville, and even New York City. Back during the Civil War, when the Union Army began its march toward Bennett, there was plenty of advanced warning because of the unofficial grapevine, a low murmur about major news and minor gossip that continued even to the present time, today carrying word of Conrad Whitmire’s demise.

So the men from Mitchell’s Funeral Home had come, taken Conrad, and doled out quite a bit of Southern sympathy. Now as Dorothy stared at the kudzu, perched on the stool next to the phone, she played with the cord absentmindedly. At least it wasn’t something gruesome like Annabelle Beaumont, who died in 2005 but wasn’t discovered until 2006, Dorothy thought. Then they discovered the old girl with a riding crop in her hand and studded boots on her feet, the biggest news since the Union came through.

Dorothy looked around at her own surroundings, a 1960’s modern and orderly ranch house that she and Conrad designed. In the front, there was a formal living room and dining room combination, then two bedrooms joined by a bath. In the back, from left to right, there was a long family room and large bath – just so. All of this was connected by a hallway and filled with a hodgepodge of antique and just plain old furniture. Such a change from the rest of the houses on Rural Route 7, just blocks outside of the old downtown, houses that were not quite the splendor of the antebellums but yet not the modern efficiency of the Whitmires’.

Dorothy Whitmire, when faced with unpleasantness, had always been good at biting the bullet and getting the bad part over with. But this time it almost seemed like too much. She watched the sun tracing shadows across the floor as the clouds breezed in front of it. When the shadows had changed position slightly, she realized that time had passed and she still hadn’t made the call she needed to make. Dorothy picked up the phone and dialed.

Pauly, baby, is that you? she said, and then launched into the explanation of why she was calling Miami Beach so early.

When that bit of bad news was out of the way, she turned back to her plans. She’d have to arrange a funeral at the Presbyterian Church on Church Street. She and Conrad had bought their plots at the cemetery a few years before, when their only daughter Julia died. The day after Julia was laid to rest, they bought all of the plots around hers, erected a tiny fence, and staked claim to what they hoped would be the burial places of the Whitmires to come. That was also the day they found out about Paul, bright little Paul, the good one of Julia’s kids. Dorothy wasn’t surprised about him - it was just a shock to actually hear it. Conrad, on the other hand, didn’t react too well. They were expecting both grandsons to have wives and babies. Brooks, Paul’s older brother, was a terror as a kid and was pretty much a terror as an adult. He’d brought some girlfriends to Bennett to meet them, but none of those girls stuck around. Of course it had been at least three years since she’d last seen Paul. Why would he want to come when Conrad made such a show of disapproval for his…what did they call that nowadays, Dorothy thought. Lifestyle? It never mattered to her. She was used to people dying, too. All of her family was gone except Paul and Brooks.

Dorothy wandered back to the bedroom she’d shared with Conrad, her quiet husband, the one who seemed to withdraw further each year. Would she have married him if things were different? That’s what people did back then, especially in the South. She’d always wondered about the unspoken social code, the one that pretty much indicated a serious flaw if people weren’t married off by a certain age. So she said yes. Her parents had approved of the match, too. What could be better for a nice Southern girl, even one as young as Dorothy was at the time?

Her family, the Remingtons and the Brassfields, had been around for longer than anyone remembered, founding members of the town, merchants, and farmers. Her mother, Alexandra Brassfield Remington, was such a gentle woman, the kind, matronly mother that everyone needed, born into the privilege of Mississippi upper-class, to the kind of folks who had made money during Reconstruction and continued to make it at the end of the 19th Century. As Dorothy remembered, her mother’s gentleness was the soft cushion in front of a steel spine, forged from years of strict discipline at the hands of a loving but stern nanny. Dorothy’s father, Drummond Remington, took control of the Brassfield family’s business near the turn of the century and tried to diversify it, even dipping into the forbidden world of illegal booze running. When the depression hit, most of the Brassfield cash disappeared and the family entered the life of the new middle class.

Dorothy was never sure if her mother really wanted her to marry Conrad, but how could she go against her father’s good wishes? She’d told her mother that she wanted to go to college or learn a trade, a sly hint at getting out of Bennett. The look in her mother’s eyes on her wedding day told Dorothy that she may have agreed with the desire to get away. But she really didn’t regret marrying Conrad. And Julia and their grandkids needed them, too. She had a good life despite all her troubles.

She took Conrad’s navy blue suit out of the closet, along with a striped shirt and striped tie. He went to church in that suit, every Sunday, silently ushering the collection plate down the aisles. A Sunday without Deacon Whitmire at Bennett Presbyterian was like a day without the creeping kudzu. Now that whole bunch would be coming by to drop off condolence and a casserole, or a cobbler, or a pecan pie. Hopefully the grandsons would come and help her eat all the food that would be piled up.

Dorothy selected a black skirt and white blouse from her own closet, a somber affair for delivering her husband’s burial suit to the funeral home. Life has to go on, she told herself. Her bridge game would be the day after Conrad’s funeral. How she wanted to go but talking to those old clucks about her dead husband was just not an attractive prospect. Business as usual. That was Conrad’s motto, anyway. His hardware store had a sign in front that had that saying on it. Broken sink? Come to Whitmire’s on Walnut, Where It’s Always Business as Usual. What a kick that would have been in the big cities, she thought with a subdued chuckle. We could’ve been Home Depot.

Conrad loved Bennett and its people, loved being the big fish. The big cities were too fast paced for either one of them, though. Conrad was too slow-paced for her. Interesting how lives ended up, she thought. And what about that damned store? Dorothy was the first to admit that she didn’t know a thing about running that place. She didn’t know a monkey wrench from a screwdriver. She took one look in the mirror at her dressing table and began to cry. Damn, she thought. She wasn’t going to do it, but, hell, it felt so good she just kept letting the tears fall. She couldn’t go back to business as usual. Talk about mixed emotions.

After a half hour of crying, Dorothy was able to put herself together and head out the carport door with Conrad’s blue suit. She quietly opened the door, stepped out, and held the door until it softly snapped shut. If she’d let it slam shut, Lucy Prescott would probably be over in a heartbeat. They’d been next-door neighbors for nearly thirty-five years, so Lucy’s good ear was always aware of the Whitmires’ comings and goings.

Dorothy stood in the carport, staring at herself in the window of her old lady white Crown Victoria. She hated that car. It was a barge, and it might as well have leaked gasoline for the gas mileage it got. Her grayish-brown hair was combed simply back, limp as it always had been. The one time she’d gotten a perm Conrad told her she looked like Diana Ross. How he’d worked that out she’d never know, but she didn’t curl her hair after that. Dorothy’s facial features remained sharp, though, part of the Brassfield genes that she proudly carried. She fished around in her purse for a lipstick, hanging Conrad’s suit on the porch light.

Dot! My poor sweetie!

Damn that Lucy Prescott, Dorothy thought. She could hear a trout break wind at twelve feet below with that one good ear. And she calls me Dot. Dorothy stopped fishing for a lipstick and looked up. No Southern airs today.

Morning, Lucy.

Lucy squeezed between the car’s bumper and the back wall of the carport and then nearly broke Dorothy’s neck trying to give her a hug.

I’m just so sorry about Conrad! Lucy said, planting a wet kiss on Dorothy’s cheek.

"How’d he…go? Lucy asked, whispering go" as if it were a foul word.

Quietly. Laid down on the bed for a second and that was it. I found him when I went in to put on my clothes. Sheriff says it probably was a heart attack.

Do you need anything? Lucy asked. Good old Lucy. She really was generous in that annoying way.

No, Lucy, Dorothy answered. I’m fine. I’m going to drop off Conrad’s suit at Mitchell’s. Don’t cook anything on my account.

Well, you hush up, Dot. I’ll make you a casserole you can freeze. Are the boys coming?

I think so.

Good. Nice boys. You need your family.

Boys? They haven’t been boys for twenty years, Dorothy thought.

Dorothy opened the back car door and put the suit on the hanger. She was hoping Lucy would get the message.

Let me know if you need something, hear? Lucy said, putting a hand on Dorothy’s shoulder.

I will, hon.

Lucy squeezed back in front of the car and Dorothy watched her go back to her own house. Lucy had gained twenty pounds and most of it looked like it was in her rear end. No wonder she couldn’t get past the car.

At least I’ve managed to keep a good figure, Dorothy thought. She was still trim, never gaining or losing much weight over the years. She’d not seen the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth start to appear until about ten years earlier, so Dorothy looked like a woman who was ten years younger. Her blue eyes still flashed now and then with the mischievousness of her youth, and her smile was still one of the most genuine in Clay County. She was never a beauty, but certainly a woman who could get someone’s attention.

She turned on the car and put the air on full blast. It was not quite summer yet but already it was getting warm early, the sounds of the buzzing cicadas mixed with the morning fragrance of dirt, freshly mowed grass, and wild honeysuckle. She fumbled around inside her purse again and finally found the lipstick. How strange that little things like the lipstick could make her feel that business really was going on as usual. She sat for another minute, hoping that Lucy wouldn’t come back out to find out why she hadn’t left yet. She was probably watching from her side door, anyway, peering through the curtains. Lucy Prescott was good at that.

Dorothy backed the car slowly out of the driveway and sped off, winding down Rural Route 7 traveling a few miles over the speed limit. The Sheriff wouldn’t stop her today, anyway. The road ran under a large canopy of willow trees, growing out of the hilly red Southern Mississippi clay. When they’d built the road, they cut into the hills to make it level, leaving them exposed like red velvet cake. The willows were thick with Spanish Moss and Dorothy slowed down to get a good look. She could never get enough of the sights of rural Mississippi, a blend of stately old homes, house trailers, and thick green and red foliage. She always wondered if the Union soldiers had stopped to admire the kudzu and Spanish Moss.

Dorothy was nervous, but not because she was burying her husband. The thought of Brooks and Paul being with her again put her ill at ease. It almost seemed to her that this would be the first time her grandsons met their real grandmother. Conrad would no longer be around to serve as the mouthpiece. And there was Paul. He was planning on bringing his…what do they call it now, she thought. Silvio! Is he Italian or Spanish? That should make a big bang on Rural Route 7. Would Brooks show up with a girl? Would Brooks show up at all? Conrad was their grandfather. He may have disagreed with them, but he loved them. At least she thought he’d loved them. And their father, Dorothy thought. I’ll have to tell them all about that.

She wheeled her big car into the circle driveway at Mitchell’s Funeral Home, another good use of one of the town’s antebellum homes. The limo was parked on the side, along with the hearse that collected Conrad earlier. Dorothy parked next to the limo, retrieved the blue suit from the back of the car, and went around to the front of the Funeral Home. She hated this place, the place they brought Julia. Losing a child, no matter at what age, was a horror that she didn’t wish on anyone. Paul had been so distraught about Julia. They had been so close. It all made sense to Dorothy as she opened the front door of the Funeral Home, reverently, just in case there were other mourners inside.

Mrs. Whitmire.

Good Lord, Tom, Dorothy said, stomping her foot and turning toward Tom Mitchell, who had approached her from behind. You nearly scared me to death.

Sorry.

Tom was the third or fourth generation of undertakers in Bennett. Dorothy thought that he’s always tried to be as ghoulish as his father but could never manage it. She remembered little Tommy as a skinny ugly duckling, and he was still a skinny ugly duckling as Bennett’s most renowned funeral director.

Here’s Conrad’s suit. Dorothy handed it over abruptly, but Tom took the suit gently as if he were handling some Deep South relic.

I’m sorry about your loss, Mrs. Whitmire.

Well, thank you, Tom. When did you start calling me Mrs. Whitmire? Just because my husband’s dead doesn’t mean you have to be so formal.

Sorry. Tom loosened up a little, his jaw slacking a bit as his puffed-up chest deflated.

We’ll have the service at the church on Friday, Dorothy said. Can you make the arrangements for me? Dr. Seward already knows. He’s over in Jackson today but he’ll be back tomorrow.

Sure, Tom answered. I really am sorry about Conrad.

I know you are. Thank you, Tom. Give my best to your mama.

Are Paul and Brooks coming?

Paul is coming. Brooks, well, I don’t know.

Before Tom could say anything else, Dorothy turned and headed back out the door. She was sure Lucy Prescott would be waiting for her to drive back up so she could deliver some God-awful casserole that would stay in the freezer for the next five years. She didn’t want to talk to anybody. How do you explain to these people that your grandson is coming for his grandfather’s funeral with another man, she thought. A man with a foreign name. People in this town may have some trouble getting used to that. And how do you explain that you just plain don’t want to talk to anyone about any of it right now? And what about the hardware store? What was she going to do about that?

Dorothy unconsciously drove the car over to Walnut Street and parked in front of the store. She hardly ever went there. Would she be able to run this business? Of course, she could run the business, but could she keep it in business? What if one of these do-it-yourself yuppie craftsmen came in looking for lug nuts or needed help installing a ceiling fan on the veranda? She felt a lump rise in her throat again. Conrad had been that person, the one who helped everybody make their dreams come true. He’d helped people fix plumbing, install lights and fans, even build additions. After the big tornado in ’98, Conrad worked for twenty hours a day, selling hardware, and then going out to people’s houses to help them make repairs. Their own house had been spared any damage, but further away from town people lost roofs and windows, had trees crashing through bedrooms, and water leaking down into walls and floors. When the storm came over, Dorothy and Conrad had finally decided to take cover when the sky turned a murky green and the heavy rain simply stopped. Huddled in the windowless guest bathroom, the two of them listened to the silence and then to the hail hitting the windows and the roof. It was also the first time Dorothy realized they didn’t have much of anything to say to each other anymore. Now sitting in the car in front of the store, Dorothy was crying again before she could get hold of herself. Damn it, she thought. She had no idea what to do next.

Chapter 2

Paul rolled over in bed, unsure of what woke him. Silvio was soundly sleeping next to him, curled up under a blanket even though it was terminally hot outside. Growing up without air conditioning made Silvio cold even in the middle of summer. Paul couldn’t live without cool air, especially in the Florida heat. Then he heard it, the sound of his phone. Why so damned early? His clients knew not to call him this early. He sat up, shaking the sleep from his head as the phone went on playing a ringtone he wished he’d never bought. He couldn’t even make out the caller I.D. Silvio barely stirred as he answered the phone.

Yeah?

When he realized his grandmother was calling from Mississippi, he sat up immediately. Early phone call from Maw Maw, he thought. Who’s dead? As she confirmed what he already thought, Silvio rolled over to stretch, which distracted Paul from his grandmother’s calm description of Conrad’s death. What would the people in Bennett think of him, Paul thought. Let’s see, he’s Colombian, cappuccino-colored, speaks English with a slight accent, and does hair for a living. That’s going to go over like the last drunk at the punch bowl. Paul closed his phone and sat quietly for a moment, his elbows resting on his knees.

What happened? Silvio asked, still reclined in bed comfortably.

My grandfather. He died.

Silvio sat up, obviously alarmed.

What? he asked.

Dead, Paul answered. My grandfather.

And you feel how? Silvio asked, putting his arm over Paul’s shoulder.

I don’t know.

Paul couldn’t remember the last time he talked to his grandfather, or his grandmother for that matter. When his mom died, he told them everything about himself, and then he felt like such a disappointment that he couldn’t face the old man. He was the last hope of continuing the Whitmire line and they couldn’t rely on Brooks. He wasn’t ever