The Yazoo Blues. John Pritchard
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Mississippi, and then went south to intersect with the tracks of the Southern RR at Moorhead, came to be known as the Yellow Dog Railroad. My dad was from out of town, so that may lend some extra credibility to what he told me. Add to the pot the old story about W. C. Handy listening to a man at the train station in Tutwiler, Mississippi, singing about going to “where the Southern cross the Dog,” which W. C. handily turned into “The Yellow Dog Blues.”
[3] pronounced “Ahdis”
[4] One authority claims 4,000, others 4,500, 5,000, and yet another that there were 6,000 army personnel and does not mention how many men the navy employed on the expedition. Junior Ray’s penchant for excess attracted him to the higher number. And, yes, it is true that Junior Ray has a “z-rocks” to prove what he wishes to exist; it is also true his “z-rockses” reflect the imperfection of serious scholars and the nature of history in general. Junior Ray has said: “These fukkin sumbiches who wrote those books can’t say the same thing twice, and it ain’t even Bible times. I’mo do what I was advised by a cheap-ass bottle of scotch whiskey I bought once. Them bottle-labels all say ‘By appointment to his fukkin majesty the king or the queen or the kiss-my-foot, but the bottle I bought said, on that little wavy thing down at the bottom of the official coat-of-fukkin-arms: ‘You be the judge.’”
[5] Twenty-three may be a more accurate number. Studying his “z-rockses,” I have found only two figures for the number of army transports, 12 and 13, which, when added to the naval portion of the operation, would come out about 23, excluding the two coal barges.
[6] Library of Congress: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Chapter XXXVI, Series I— Volume 24, Part I: “Naval Forces on Western Waters” (January 1–May 17, 1863), 270–273. The report is written by Jas. P. Foster.
[7] Yalobusha River, fr. Choctaw Yaloba/frog + Ushi/child = tadpole.
[8] Shelby Foote, Civil War, a Narrative, Vintage Books edition, 1986, p. 205: “ . . . the men aboard the transports and gunboats slapped at mosquitoes and practiced their marksmanship on alligators . . . ”
Love — Anguilla Benoit — Lt. Commander Watson Smith — Lt. Colonel James Wilson — Peyote is Considered — Old Colonel Duncan Benoit’s Experience with a Drug — Smith’s Disease — Anguilla Boards the Chillicothe — A Hardwood Jungle — Junior Ray’s Hot’n’Tots
The fact is there was one more historian besides that feller in Meffis that Ottis could have put faith in. And it was Mr. Brainsong. He had done retired from bein’ the school superintendent by the time Voyd and me met up with Ottis on the bridge over the Pass at Moon Lake, but he was still doin’ just fine, dependin’ on how you looked at it . . . considerin’ one or two things . . . that had happened to him, then.
As you may remember, he was the one who confirmed to Miss Florence that me and Voyd had in fukkin fact done found a German submarine outchonda across the levee, near Hawk Lake. So, I always liked the hell out of him. First, because I just fukkin did; second, because I just fukkin did, and, third, because he seemed to like me and didn’t hold it against me that I was a rough-ass redneck sumbich. He even liked Voyd, and that made him pretty gotdam exceptional, if you want to know the truth. He treated Voyd like he was a human being, which is an honor that little piss-ant never deserved.
One thing, though, about Mr. Brainsong I never understood was he was always talkin’ about “waitin’ for Guhdoh.” He said there was two guys once that was supposed to meet up with a fellow named Guhdoh, but he never showed up. I said, hell, I’da just gone out after the sumbich, but Mr. Brainsong said it wouldna been no use because there wuddn no such coksukka in the first place, and then I was really confused because I couldn figure why anybody would want to wait around for him. But that’s the kinda of stuff people with a lot of education think about. Personally, I can’t see why they’d pay good money to go learn about some muthafukka that don’t exist—much less wait around for his ass—unless of course they was some kind of a preacher.
Mr. Brainsong was gettin’ way on up in years. So it was fortunate I got to talk to him about the stuff I had learned from Ottis about the Pass, but I don’t know why he didn’t just move out of town a long time ago. Looks to me like he coulda been happier, although I did talk with him before, well, before I couldn no more, and I have to say that, in the end, I think I mighta known him better than anybody else.
Anyway, fuk that. The point is Mr. Brainsong also knew all about the Yazoo Pass Expedition. I think he knew more about the real details of it than any coksukka, present company excepted. Hell, he was the first person I thought of after I had been listenin’ to Ottis. Ottis said he wouldn have nothin’ to do with Mr. Brainsong, but then Ottis was a narrow muthafukka who never cut nobody-who-didn’t-go-to-his-church no slack a-tall. Him and that bunch was so strict they’da made Jesus wash up, cut his hair, and go to Ole Miss before they’da let him in. And if they’da found out he was a Jew, well, sir, it’da been all over! You know them Baptists, scared all their boys is gon’ marry a Ko-rean and that ever’ coksukkin lillo thing is gon’ lead to dancin’.
And it does, too. Fukkum. Plus, you know they always turned up their noses at the Holy Rollers.
Other’n all that, Ottis is okay, and even though he didn’t care for Mr. Brainsong, I was high on both of em, because Ottis’s hard feelings toward Mr. Brainsong really didn’t have nothing to do with what I had become so interested in, namely, history—and the Yazoo Pass Expedition. It was like pussy: I could not stop thinkin’ about it. But that’s what it takes if you want to become a historian.
Now, apart from how un-gotdam-believable it all musta looked, the thing that caught my attention the most, concernin’ the Yankees’ Yazoo Pass Expedition, was what the fuk happened to Lieutenant-Commander Watson Smith, who was the head of the navy’s end of the operation. Accordin’ to Ottis, nobody seems real clear about what was actually wrong with him. It coulda been anything from syph’lus to the flu—and I tend to want to go with syph’lus—although Mr. Brainsong had what he called an interesting theory, which made sense to me, even if it didn’t to the fukkin experts. Plus, I know Ottis didn’t think much of it, even if he did like to listen to me tell about it.
Mr. Brainsong said it was just plain ol’ love, in a manner of speakin’, that fukked up the Commander and kilt him. He believed Smith was in love, but the girl he was in love with (if in fukkin fact he was), Anguilla Benoit,[1] who had close relatives in Mexico, was a spy.
She was the youngest daughter of old Colonel Benoit, whose sister was married to some kind of half-French Mexican millionaire back then, and so Anguilla had spent a good deal of time down in Mexico with her auntee in a place called Guanacevi. And she, accordin’ to Mr. Brainsong, mojoed Watson Smith’s ass in an unusual way. As you know, Mr. Brainsong was a student of unusual shit, so I expect there is a lot to it—even though later I come to realize Smith was too sick in another way to be in love with Anguilla or anybody else.
Anyhow, Lieutenant-Commander Watson Smith was sort of the darlin’ of the Yankee admiral, Rear-ass Admiral Porter. And when Grant decided to put on this fukked up backdoor maneuver to get in behind Vicksburg, or to the side of it, anyway, Admiral Porter selected Watson Smith, who he had a lot of respect for as a sailor, to be the head of the thirty-two-boat flotilla.[2]
This was a big fukkin mistake.