Reviving Larry Brown

My husband and I have long been fans of Mississippi writer Larry Brown. We were saddened to learn in the fall of 2004 about his sudden death of a heart attack while he was still in his early fifties. Therefore, we were both quite interested in reading his unfinished last novel entitled A Miracle of Catfish. We just recently ordered it from Amazon since we knew we had an upcoming trip to the Mississippi Delta and hills ourselves and wanted to check the novel out for its authenticity. We were not disappointed.

Brown had no formal training as a writer and served for a number of years as a captain in the Oxford, Mississippi, fire department. Yet he was always "spot on" in his characterization of the Mississippi character and dialect. The novel featured three main characters, a little boy named Jimmy, his daddy, and an old man named Cortez. Cortez is the one who establishes a catfish pond on his land and gets to know Jimmy quite by accident. Since most novels educate as they entertain, we read of each step of the catfish adventure--the preparation of the area, the buying of the small fish to place into the pond, and the feeding of the fish by night. We also read anxiously when Cortez' tractor overturns into the pond, intertwining him, until Jimmy saves him by calling 911 and brings Cortez a rubber tube to breathe through until help can arrive. We follow the description throughout of Jimmy's uncaring red neck dad who impregnates a girlfriend, takes away Jimmy's favorite toy, his go cart, and gets arrested for carrying open beer in his car in a dry county.

On Friday, August 10, my husband and I headed toward Mississippi on a blistery 106 degree day to spend the night with our friends, Beverly and James, on their farm in the Mississippi Delta. We were both interested the next morning when James offered to take us out to his new catfish ponds and show us the operation. We had already heard the night before about the phone possibly ringing in the night if the fish needed more oxygen. We watched as James filled his truck with catfish food and drove around the pond with it shooting out into the pond. In some areas, the fish ate the food greedily, but in some they seemed uncaring. We met three children, all related to James, who live nearby. One was William who was going into fourth grade this school year. He had been riding his four wheeler back in the spring with the other children on another when the two small vehicles collided. William was knocked breathless to the ground. His sister Susanna, a little older than William, had viewed a CPR demonstration in school that year and knew immediately what to do: she pounded on his chest until he began breathing again. He suffered several injuries including a concussion and a bruised spleen, yet he lived because of his sister's quick response.

Driving home the next afternoon, we were startled to see a black revved up pickup truck pull out of a side road in front of our car. Since the highway was four lane at that point, there was no danger, but both my husband and I looked at the driver as we passed. He had curly black hair and a scruffy black beard and was not wearing a shirt. "Jimmy's dad," we both thought as we looked at one another, convinced that writer Larry Brown had indeed been revived again.