Red [antikvár]

Bend, Mississippi 1984No place in the world smelled quite like the Mississippi Delta in July. Overripe, like fruit left too long in the sun. Pungent, like a drunk's breath at the edge of a whiskey binge. Like sweat.And it smelled of dirt. Sometimes so dry it coated the mouth and throat, but most times so wet it permeated everything, even the skin. Becky Lynn Lee lifted her hair off the back of her neck, sticky with a combination of perspiration and dust from the unpaved road. Most folks around Bend didn't think much about the smell of things, but she did. She fantasized about a place scented of exotic flowers and rare perfumes, a beautiful world populated by people wearing fine, silky fabrics and welcoming smiles.She knew that place existed; she'd seen it in the magazines she poured over whenever she could, the ones the women at Opal's snickered at her interest in, the ones her father raged at her about.None of that mattered. She had promised herself that someday, somehow, she would live in that world.Becky Lynn picked her way across the railroad tracks used not only to ship rice, cotton 'and soybeans out of Bend, but to divide the good side of town from the bad, the respectable folk from the poor white trash.