Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high and is said to be the highest mountain in northcentral Mississippi. Its western summit is called the “Y'all Ngaje Ngai,” which translates into “Sixth in the SEC West at 5&1.” Close to the southern summit, whose shadow covers a certain postage stamp of soil known as Yoknapatawpha County, there is the dried and frozen carcass of a cow wrapped in the equally dried and frozen embrace of a man. No one has explained what the cow and the man were doing at that altitude, but given that the deeply satisfied smile on the man's face is inversely proportional to the horrified grimace on the cow's, we need not turn to a novel called The Hamlet to guess….
“Hell fire,” said Flem Snopes. He said it importunately, in an avid outrageous spasmodic burst paradoxical with grief and opportunism, as if death—ubiquitous, unyielding,...
