Flappers & Fiction

At Stephenson, two hundred and sixty miles from Memphis, a passenger collapses with yellow fever. Armed men at the station threaten to shoot anyone who lands the dying man. The passengers abandon him in an empty car and the train flies on. This is not the whole story. It is merely how the narrator arrives, eventually, at a mountain church where a lean preacher scolds him for taking notes during a sermon about a dead woman’s cooking.