Fall in Memphis is not a season. It is a brief, bloody war between hot and cold, where the chief casualty is the sinus health of everyone in the city.

Such was the case for one James Cooper, a middle-aged man that was trying his best to keep his yard free of the constant downpour of leaves. Mucus ooze flowed freely from his nose, drying into his mustache, as he wrestled with the rake and yard bags.

“This is what I get for living in a place with so many dad-burned trees.” He grumbled to himself.

He’d already piled up several waist-high mounds of leaves around the yard when he noticed the orange tabby cat stalking along the white picket fence at the edge of his yard.

It yowled, taunting him.

James Cooper narrowed his eyes. “Best not, if you know what’s good for ya’.”

But it was too late, the cat was an orange blur around the yard, leaping and pouncing and burrowing into the leaf piles. The piles exploded, the leaves drifting across the yard, back to where they came from.

Looking out across his yard, there was little James Cooper could do, except sniffle.

Memphis Note
Fall really is a war in Memphis. Hot days take over for a few days at a time, only to be pushed back by cold ones that are in turn replaced by more hot ones. Temperatures change thirty, somtimes forty degrees in a twenty four hour period. You’re lucky if you make it out with only a mild cold.

The portrait photograph over the fireplace glowered down at her, and she chased a handful of pills with a swallow of scotch.

“Shut up, old man.”

The picture did nothing, unmoved by her protestations.

“I told you to shut up!” She screamed at it, hurling her glass and the unflinching visage of her father. It shattered against the plexiglass covering the photograph. This was not her first such outburst.

Collapsing to the floor, she started to whimper.

“I did what you wanted, I got revenge on them for what they did to Joe. I got his seat. You said that was enough!” She doubled over, howling, scraping her nails along the wooden floor, leaving rough claw marks in the wood.

The portrait above the fireplace remained silent.

“Twenty votes was enough!” Growling, angry, she thrust her head up, fire burned in her eyes. “I’m a state senator now! You can’t talk to me like that. I won’t be bullied by you anymore!”

She furrowed her brown and cocked her head to the side, like she was having trouble hearing something. “What? What did you say? You’re getting quiet. Why can’t you speak up?”

The antipsychotics were starting to kick in.

Memphis Note
This may or may not have been inspired by our local state senator from a rather large family that is heavily involved in Memphis politics and her rather public separations from reality and love of a good drink. May or may not be, mind you.

The house was tiny, unremarkable, in a neighborhood that a woman of her worth would not normally be seen in. Children chased after her car as she pulled up, their mothers watching suspiciously from the porches of the other shotgun houses.

She steeled her nerves before walking up to the front door of the house and knocking.

The door opened, just a crack. “Yes?” A pair of dark eyes peered over a chain latch.

“I…I”m here for tea.” That was the code she was told to give. The door closed in her face, the chain rattled, then swung open again to let her in.

Inside, intricate arabesque patterning covered the walls of the room, twisting and turning into itself. When she blinked, she swore the pattern moved, like it was alive.

“Hello.” Said a girl standing before her, barely on the cusp of womanhood, yet with a child hanging off her hip. “Twenty dollars. Now”

She put the cash into the girl’s hand, who promptly shoved it down her shirt.

“Ghede Loa rides Mama.” The girls said opening the door to another room. “Drugs in tea bring her back. You have ‘til then to speak wit’ your dead.”

Memphis Note
In the same way it was at the crossroads of white and black culture to create rock and roll, Memphis is also at the crossroads of African and European religions. Voodoo and belief in the supernatural permeates the region, and there are dozens, if not hundreds, of small churches with their own specific takes on spirituality and ritual.

From his bedroom window, Nathan Bedford Forrest could prop himself up on his daybed and see the Mississippi River. But, the diabetes had all but ruined his vision. The river, the trees and the sky all blended together into one smear of grey.

The door to his bedroom creaked opened, and he called out, asking who was there.

“Me, father.”

“Ah, son. Come closer, so I can see you.” Nathan waved his hands, urging his son closer.

When he came into focus, Nathan looked upon him with melancholy.

“I can’t feel my toes and I piss myself whenever I sleep. I am not long for this world. You have been my greatest success. Before I pass, I must to warn you against my greatest failure.”

Nathan struggled, pushing himself more upright.

“If you let your passions inflame you, they will burn away any reason from your head. For too many years, I was like Odysseus, tricked into become a prisoner of passion by Calypso. Men died and I allowed more hate to flow into the world.”

He grasped his son’s arm, as firmly as he could.

“Never let your passions give rise to other’s misery. Don’t join me in Hell.”

Memphis Note
Nathan Bedford Forrest was a slave trader that became one of the Confederate Army’s most successful commanders. With no formal military training, Forrest revolutionized the ways calvary were used in war. But, he was also a ruthless killer, charged with the massacare of hundreds during a battle at Fort Pillow. After the war, he would make a home in Memphis, but, with the slave trade gone, he had to start over again. Disenfranchised in the post-war South, he was recruited by the Klu Klux Klan, joining and leading them until their methods became too violent for even him. Toward the end of his life, Forrest recanted his pro-slavery views, and instead adopted a vision of harmony between the races. To this day, he remains a controversial figure.

They’d left him to die.

Just like he’d asked. None of them were showing signs of the fever, but if they’d stayed…then…he couldn’t have that on his conscious. Not his girls, not because of him.

That was four days, maybe a week ago. He’d lost all concept of time. Sleep and waking were blurred into one long fever dream.

In one dream he was a boy again, back on his parent’s farm, running through the tall green glass, the sun beating down on him. Then he fell, the sun burning him as he tumbled.

When he awoke, the fire still burned in his head, threatening to turn his brain to slag. The bed was wet. He could not tell if it was from his sweat or his urine.

His eyes closed and he was back in the war, the heat sweltering, the humidity choking, all around him the roar of cannon and rifle, and the screams of dying men.

I did not die that horror, he thought to himself as he marched forward into the fray. Nor will I die in this one.

The next time he stirred, his fever was broken.

He would see his family again.

Memphis Note
The last time the Yellow Fever came to Memphis was the worst. Within a week, half the city’s population had fled, hoping to get away from the sickness. Family members who were ill were left behind, some with a caregiver, some not. But the fever only kills half of the people it infects, meaning some of those left to die would survive the epidemic.