The Last Girls (50 page)

But here I met Jerry Rusher, a musician, twelve years younger than I am. Jerry has a big smile and a long ponytail and a way of grinning at you with his eyes. The first time this happened I thought, Well I
know
him! which turned out to be true, even though our backgrounds could not be more different. Jerry grew up dirt poor. He was a heroin addict for seven years, in prison for five. Now we live in a mobile home on his sister's land, out near Columbia. He and his sister are getting a band together with some young boys. They all want to play with Jerry because he's a legend. Sometimes I sing high harmony with them. But mostly I cook and take care of his sister's kids, twin boys with dimples, age ten. They're a handful. My parents and my brother will have nothing to do with me. They drove all the way out here to say this, and would not even get out of the car or speak to Jerry. They're waiting for me to “come to my senses” and “come back home.” Don't hold your breath! I say. I say, I am the fugitive now.

I have a garden out here by the road where it gets lots of sun. I'm growing lettuce, beans, tomatoes, yellow squash, and zucchini. These zucchini are taking over! I'm going to make zucchini bread later today, I cut the recipe out of the
Tennessean
.

Not much is known of
Susan Alexis Hill,
though her photographs can be found in major exhibits throughout the United States. Born in Atlanta, she'd never been out of the South until she went to Maine with her young husband, visiting Castine where she fell in love with the light and with an older man, a photographer, who took her under his wing. She stayed. Theirs was an austere life which she got a taste
for, staying on after his death, teaching sometimes, traveling often, traveling light. She never thinks about the past. But only last month when she was in Texas, photographing along the Brazos near Waco, there was something about the afternoon light, about the way it fell through the vines, and a bend in the river that reminded her of the Mississippi, and of their trip down the river years ago.

Acknowledgments

F
IRST I WANT TO THANK
the women with whom I shared the real Mississippi River raft trip in 1966—my Hollins College classmates Allison Ames, Nancy Beckham, Anne Boyce, Virginia Clark, Vicki Derby, Margaret Hanes, Kathy Hershey, Lee Harrison, Anne Jones, Anne MacKinney, Alice Meriwether, Mary Poe, Ann Megaro, Mimzie Speiden, and Tricia Neild—as well as Captain Gordon Cooper, and our “cabin boys” Robert “Rosebob” Whitton and Jimmy Middleton. What a time we had! Although a few traces of our actual experience may be found here and there in the pages of this novel, it's truly fiction—the events described are imaginary, and the characters are fictitious and not intended to represent specific living persons. But the idea of river journey as metaphor for the course of women's lives has intrigued me for years.

I'd also like to thank noted writer and lecturer Dennis Brown for his informative, lively, and thought-provoking talks on board the
Mississippi Queen,
as well as all the staff and employees of the Delta Queen Steamboat Company.

For great lines, insights, or inspiration: Stella Connell, Bland Simpson, Annie Dillard, Doris Betts, Roy Blount, Steven Burke, Jackie Seay Sergi, Nancy Demorest, Lucinda MacKethan, Joshua Seay, Buffy Morgan, Hal Crowther, Karren Pell, and Dorothy Hill. For their support during the writing of this book: Paul Ferguson and my fellow “Good Ol' Girls,” Jill McCorkle, Matraca Berg, and Marshall Chapman; and Debbie Raines and all the Grundy High School students who worked with me on our oral history book project.

Thanks to Dan and Carol Mayfield for putting me up in Memphis; to Clyde Edgerton for his helicopter expertise; to Dr. Michael Ferguson, my medical consultant; to Callie Warner, whose iron furniture, artwork, and scultpture have found their way into these pages; to Virginia Bullman and Lanelle Davis, whose giant concrete women are likewise here described; and to Anne Weaver, who made a handsome contribution to the Heart Fund so she could be a character.

Special thanks to my wonderful agent, Liz Darhansoff, a saint, who believed in me and in this book; to Nancy Demorest and Hal Crowther for their invaluable feedback; to my editor, Shannon Ravenel, for her good humor, extraordinary insight, common sense, and literary sensibility; and to Mona Sinquefield for her patience, skill, and help with research and manuscript preparation.

A S
HANNON
R
AVENEL
B
OOK

Published by

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Post Office Box 2225

Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of

Workman Publishing

225 Varick Street

New York, New York 10014

© 2002 by Lee Smith. All rights reserved.

Lyrics from “Bad Moon Rising,” by John Fogerty, courtesy of Fantasy, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Copyright © 1969 Jondora Music (BMI). Copyright renewed.

A portion of this novel was first published in a slightly different form in
Novello: Ten Years of Great American Writing,
edited by Amy Rogers, Robert Inman, and Frye Gaillard. Published by Novello Festival Press in 2000.

This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.

The Library of Congress cataloged a previous edition of this work as follows:

Smith, Lee, 1944–

The last girls : a novel / by Lee Smith.

   p. cm.

“A Shannon Ravenel book.”

ISBN 1-56512-363-8

1. Women college graduates—Fiction. 2. Mississippi River—Fiction. 3. Female friendship—Fiction. 4. Southern States—Fiction. 5. Class reunions—Fiction. 6. River boats—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3569.M5376 L38 2002

813'.54—dc21

2002018671

E-book ISBN 978-1-56512-875-0

A
LSO BY
L
EE
S
MITH

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