November Purple Rain
" “Even white folks are talking about the hurt” " Every so often, I like to go out into the back roads to take my neighbors’ temperature—or maybe their blood pressure. It rained all Saturday morning from the last vestiges of Hurricane Isaias. Tennessee is where the monster came to die, and its last exhalations were subdued, but the Gulf sent us up a steady, soaking kind of rain we hadn’t seen in months. I drove to the farmers’ market anyway, it being Oktoberfest, but the usual yard sales and traffic tie-ups from slow-moving gawkers were all rained out. Only the usual Saturday farmers market was in the gravel lot beside the Amish store, with fewer vendors than normal and a scarce few customers, mostly antique-hunting retirees in rain gear. I was waiting out the downpour under the roof when Dale came in, shaking water off a cap that had once been red. He is a hay and cattle man in his sixties with two trucks, a long trailer, and a skid steer, and I knew him slightly from othe...
