El Jardinero
My foot tapped to the rhythmic creaks of the ceiling fans as though to some strange, transic song. Like the tick of a grandfather’s clock, the “click, click, squeak... click, click, squeak” of the fans begged attention during the mid-day doldrums, loud it was, as the pulsing blood echos loud in my head at night when insulated by a down pillow. We natives know that the Mississippi heat exposes the drawl of time, tuning it to the ear, just as the drawl of Mississippi’s dialect is tuned to the ear, they being essentially the same, the measures of each played to the sleepy beats of a Delta Summer. The fans themselves were beautiful, antique, ornate with silver and brass pipings. Their Irish Green canopies sported elegant, golden script too small to make out from below. A single motor hung between them, it’s red, serpentine belt tying them all together. Their spade shaped paddles of rattan were woven like the saw-grass baskets of the black women along the South Biloxi beaches. The pad...