After a just-right, late May rain gave my father’s young cotton crop a much-needed soaking, halting fieldwork on his Mississippi Delta farm, my boyhood best friend and mentor, Jaybird, offered to take my cousin Hunter and me fishing.
The night before, we boys pitched a tent in Jaybird’s yard, knowing the old black man, a master storyteller, would entertain us with breathtaking tales as we sat around the campfire.
I couldn’t help envying Hunter. Only fifteen, he was an athletic Adonis, well over six-feet tall, with what the girls called “come hither” cobalt blue eyes, perfect teeth that he often flashed in a devil-may-care smile, and thick, raven-black, curly hair.