Our car snaked steadily through the cotton fields, its progress being watched only by a solitary red winged blackbird with sharp eyes and hunched shoulders. The spiteful old man of the sky, reigning from his telephone wire throne. The fat delta sun sunk heavily into the trees, too lazy to even glow bright enough to hurt your eyes when you looked straight into it. Naturally, I stared for too long.

“Where do you think B.B. King lives?” I ask, passing an oversized billboard of him in Indianola.
“Probably Paris.” My sister squints at the horizon.
We drive on.
I recall the earlier events of the day, the funeral, the casseroles, the blistering heat at the graveside. Men in black suits, sweat rolling down their necks and collecting on shoulder blades. Half the time I couldn’t tell if people were wiping tears or mopping sweat off of their flushed faces.

The hills.
Through the window I see an epic battle of nature. The kudzu, growing so fast that it’s all but visible to the naked eye. Entire trees, telephone wires, homes have been consumed. Skeletons of trees covered in the green are like monsters, faceless ghosts. One free branch becomes an arm above water, grasping for a savior but finding none. The psycho killer takes its prey---a fog falls suddenly over the fields.

I didn’t really know her, it turns out. I thought I did but I was wrong. And that makes me sadder than anything else.

The great oak shakes from fear and wind. Quiet. Soft. The tendrils gently encurl a twig, a leaf, an acorn. Hush, it whispers. The tree moans once, and then is no more. Even the wind stops in reverence and mourning. The sky sighs, the sun sets, and clouds take hands and blanket the empty canvas.