The Daily Novel

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I got the hell out of Tupelo. I drove day and night, stopping only for pee breaks and lunches on the run, all the way from Tupelo, Mississippi, to New York, New York. I carried with me a dream of freedom and fame and fortune, and voices from the past chased after me, nipping at [...]

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Wanda’s picture was on the front page of the Daily Journal the next morning. It was a murky picture. She was lying on the ground. Dead. How could she be dead? This had to be some kind of horrible dream. The article said that she had been killed in an attempted rape. It had happened [...]

All of my life I’ve been running away. I ran away from Man when he needed me. I ran away when Johnny Lewis tried to love me, because that was not the kind of love I wanted, and I couldn’t tell him that. I ran from Tupelo over and over, but no matter where I [...]

Red Warner’s Journal
I’m a has-been hero, and I’ve got the clippings to prove it. What I wish more than anything else is that I could just be a simple fisherman down here on the bayous and purge myself of memory. Memory’s a son of a bitch.
My earliest memories are all about war, a house-of-mirrors collage [...]

Mary Walker Bayou
Mary Walker Bayou crawls through the mosquito beds of the Mississippi coast, bending around little towns with exotic names like Escatawpa and Gautier and Pascagoula. It flows into the Pascagoula River, which is vomited out into the Mississippi Sound with the outgoing tide and is sucked back into its own gullet when the [...]

Chapter 16
A mild southerly wind lifted Cathy’s dress as she waited for the bus. In her previous jobs, waitressing, she always hated working Saturdays, but she found herself happy to be going to the shop, no matter the day of the week.     Granted, Charlie became more persistent every day in his clumsy attempts to [...]

1982
I first heard about it on the morning news. I was in bed at home in my Garden District Apartment. Jimmy was beginning to wake up and nuzzling against me, purring the way he does in the morning. I had my cigarettes and a cup of coffee. With chicory (practically a requirement for living in [...]

Marybelle called the newspaper office and asked for J.P. He picked up the phone. “J.P. Hollingsworth speaking. May I help you?”
“Oh God, I hope so,” she blurted. “This is Marybelle.”
Either he didn’t catch the desperation in her voice or he decided it best to make light of it. He said, “Ah yes, Marybelle. Marybelle of [...]

Labor Day Weekend
The day dawned and—swoosh—all over the great old house, doors opened and people darted to their various chores and preparations: Travis skipping down the stairs with a drum roll on the banister and a giddy song gushing from his throat, Cassie and Marybelle chattering loudly as they dressed to dash to the Esquire, [...]

New Beginnings
After the war, Chuck Warner came home to a wife who had only a short time before been a vivacious and exciting young coed, but who had taken on the look and personality of what she had consciously become: a housewife. She wore her hair in a sensible way and dressed in a sensible [...]