Milton Jackson

That particular day it was about an old buzzard from Mississippi named Milton Jackson (long since gone to that great caucus room in the sky), but Gwendy’s found it useful ever since: “Save your biggest smiles for the shitheads, and don’t take your eyes off theirs.

Gwendy recalls Patsy’s advice after the old Mississippi politician Milton Jackson insulted her; the passage says he is now dead.

She clenches her jaw and looks up from the open folder. Milton Jackson, longtime representative of the state of Mississippi, is seventy years old, looks ninety, and is the spitting image of what a buzzard would look like if it fluttered down from a telephone wire and slipped on a Men’s Wearhouse suit.

The elderly Mississippi representative mocks Gwendy about forgetting her homework.