This story starts in Starkville, Mississippi, in an ordinary lunch café. I’m having meatloaf, I think, when a woman walks through the door—a woman who looks strangely like the bouzouki-wielding, fast-talking Beth Patterson in New Orleans. (Side note: There are no live music clubs in Starkville, Mississippi.) I stare at her, but she doesn’t stare back. She sits down with other meatloaf consumers, and there’s gentle talk that I’m straining to overhear about the weather and domesticated animals....
Josh Paxton. Illustration: papercutle