In Tennessee, along the river, within the limits of the flood plain, the coffins of the dead are known to surface on the flood, rising with the waters like fish eggs, packets of ancestral spawn. The Tennessee at flood is a graverobber, voracious as a vulture in its talent to pick bones. In spring and autumn at the flood along the Tennessee souls rise as fast as griddlecakes only to sink again into the mire farther down the river. Along the Tennessee the dead, like landed gentry, seek high ground—the hills belong to mansions and to mausoleums.
