What's This About Waiting for Your Mother to Die?

My mother was one of the last of
the “Steel Magnolias,” born on one of her her father’s two cotton
plantations in the Mississippi Delta and an anachronistic believer in
the white planter culture that reigned for so many years. I, on the
other hand, got kicked out of Ole Miss for leading a march in 1967.

I needed to wait for her to die because Perfect Killer has some unkind
observations about this culture. As much as I disagreed with her views
about the culture and her father (“The Judge” in Perfect Killer) I
loved her too much to break her heart by writing this book while she
was alive. She, the Judge and the history and culture in which they
lived are described in as accurate and contextual way I could muster.
There is no fiction there.

My mother's name was Anabel (born Anabel Bradford) just like the hero's mother in Perfect Killer, and she was buried in the Itta Bena cemetery on just the sort of winter day described. The hero, Bradford Stone, remembers many things that I went through. Although I have taken some liberties with my personal history, I have been as accurate as memory allows with my mother and her father, Judge John Wester Bradford.

I am grateful that the real Bradford Stone allowed me to imbue his character with my own life and memories.

I will no doubt upset many of my living relatives with the straight-forward confrontation of this past. My cousin Billy Bradford still owns Mossy Island Plantation, but has no day-to-day operational involvement. He is an entomologist who still lives in Mississippi. I have tried to look him up, but have been unsuccessful so far in locating him. I am likewise estranged from my other cousins as well. Time, distance, politics, attitudes, all play a role in this, I suppose.

Perfect Killer is the first novel I have ever written in the first
person. I did this because it was the only way I could bring out the
intensity of emotions the book requires. The hero, Bradford Stone, is
largely autobiographical, at least through the character’s adolescence.
Some names have been changed, but very few liberties have been taken.

For similar reasons, this book contains many characters who are real.
The legal “vetting” of this manuscript was lengthy and intense as I
scrambled to obtain legal releases giving formal written permission for
the names to be used.

One of the names that has been changed is that of Al Thomas. The character in Perfect Killer named Al Thomas is a faithful rendition of him including the attempted hanging and cotton gin incidents and the VFW hut experiences, all of which happened. I do owe my life to Al. There is a street named after him in Itta Bena. The street's on the map, but I have been unable to locate it on the ground. There is an irony running around there somewhere.

There are many other ironies as well. The Judge's house is now owned by an African-American man. The house on Mossy Lake which my uncle William (Wish) Bradford and his wife Elodie used to live has been torn down. I vividly remember many wonderful days playing there with cousins Billy, Peggy and Juanita, but especially Billy who gave me my first shotgun, a single-shot .410.

There was a barn there and a country story and a dusty road among the cotton rows punctuated by the ramshackle wood-and-tin shacks surrounded by poor black people that I was taught not to see. I am thankful that teaching was eventually unsuccessful.

One of the newer and nicer houses there is owned by the man who now farms the plantation for my cousin Billy. It also houses a great outdoors outfitter, Mossy Island Outfitters, which I highly recommend, especially to those who'd like to go duck hunting in the area.