No Daughter of the South Read Online Free PDF

never achieve sexual satisfaction, even after her marriage. My Sunday School teacher told me the Pope was the anti-Christ.
    At any rate, while I read enough to know the Klan did still exist, I’d never seen or heard any evidence of it around Port Mullet. I knew there were people who used racial slurs, but Momma said they were just tacky, like folks that kept old cars and plumbing fixtures in their front yards. My daddy made it clear, in his dinner table conversations with my brothers, that he didn’t have any patience with folks who wasted time running negroes down. “Just shows that they don’t think too highly of their own selves,” he’d say. “Folks who are worried about their own position on the totem pole, they’re the ones that have to make sure somebody else is lower than they are. Besides, some of those negro boys are mighty fine football players.”
    So, to make a long story short, I didn’t know any black people around Port Mullet. My first problem was finding someone who had known Elijah Wilson.
    It wasn’t likely that my own family would be much help. I was pretty certain they would consider the whole thing just another one of my crazy ideas. I decided I would start off by talking to Forrest Miller, the father of my childhood friend, Susan. The Millers were an old family, had lived in Port Mullet for a long time. Mr. Miller had owned some groves and a citrus packing plant when I was a girl. He’d employed some black and Mexican men to work in his groves. Then, when the building boom started, he’d moved right into real estate development. He knew a lot of people, and was well-respected. Maybe he could give me some ideas about where to start.
    I’d call him Mr. Miller, of course. There are those little things, indications that the South is still another part of the world. One of them is that a grown woman never calls her childhood friends’ parents by their first names. When I’m fifty years old, I’d still be calling him Mr. Miller.
    The plane landed and taxied to the terminal. I looked out the window at the clear blue sky, and the palm trees, the bright green shrubs and lush lawns. I shivered. Nothing could be as clean and easy as this place looked. I was sure of that.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter Three
     
    My brother Seth met me at the baggage claim. Six foot four inches, muscular, blue eyes and blond hair, wearing a pale aqua sleeveless t-shirt and raspberry sweat shorts with expensive-looking high-topped athletic shoes. Only thing was, I was the one who looked out of place. I like to think that I haven’t forgotten a thing about life there, but, the truth is, I can never remember just how hot it really is, and how no one wears dark colors. I was the alien, sweating in my boots and black leather jacket.
    He hugged me and insisted on carrying my bag. I tried to guess what sort of vehicle he would be driving. He usually alternated between low-slung sports cars and jacked-up, oversize pick-up trucks, complete with gun racks and bumper stickers.
    It was a sports car, lean and red. I pushed my seat back as far as it would go to accommodate my long legs. It’s a good thing nobody else was with us, because we were practically in the back seat. I could see how a year driving a car like that would make him long for a truck as big as a house.
    He turned on the radio and ran one hand through his short blond hair. I noticed he had pierced one ear. Now I knew for sure that earrings for men were completely mainstream.
    “So, what’s up, Sis?”
    We glided across the causeway. Palm trees swayed and the water sparkled. Ski boats bounced across the surface of the bay.
    “Usual, Bro. What’s up with you?”
    “Don’t give me that. You’re down here. There’s no wedding, no funeral. It isn’t even Christmas. What gives?”
    The dazzling sunlight hurt my eyes. The open horizon, the space, the