Highway 61 heads south across Mississippi deltas. It’s the first of the archetypal American roads that I’ve seen so far with views that are long and agricultural. Many dead racoons decorate the way, another armadillo (sliced open this time), and a large dead deer with a dozen or so turkey vultures sitting around it, pecking and tugging at its flesh.

After several hours I arrive at Natchez, a historically a wealthy town sat up high on a bluff above the Mississippi River, free from floods and mosquitoes. The streets are immaculate and unscathed by the Civil War—the Natchez folks, afraid of having their properties destroyed, didn’t offer any resistance to their arrival—but until 1867 they were populated with stalls selling enslaved human beings.

All the streets are empty and the shops closed: it's a Sunday and this is the bible belt. Rain is just about absent and just about to arrive.

At The Blues and Biscuits bar (the only place open) a man sitting at a nearby table overhears me asking for a beer and recommends a local one. He asks where I’m from then invites me to join his table.

His name is Doug Charbonneau and his wife is away on business (catering on a cruise ship along the Mississippi). He’s soon joined by two friends, a married couple: Valerie and John Bergerton. They buy me dinner. Valerie insists that everyone must always want to look after me. She says there was nothing civil about the Civil War, and that my country loves me and I should love it back.

When we leave dusk is setting. They tell me to go watch the lights on the bridge turn on.

“This is the second octagonal house ever built in this country,” the tour guide tells us at Longwood House, just outside Natchez. That’s what cotton and slaves gets you. Or almost. Before it could be completed the Civil War began... Confederate troops, fearing the Unionists would seize and profit from the owner's crops, burnt them all; the furniture coming up the river never arrived; and all the skilled labourers fled back to the north.

From Natchez I drive south. More straight. More empty. And a dead dog in the lay-by. In New Orleans, a long, hot, and bright walk took me through Louis Armstrong Park and into the French Quarter. Along the way, I passed through Congo Square. Originally an ancient Indian sacred space, Congo Square became the only place in New Orleans where slaves were permitted to perform the music of their homelands. On Sunday afternoons they would congregate and play and from this synthesising, jazz was born.

At the jazz club on Frenchmen Street smoking is permitted indoors. The saxophonist, in between solos, takes drags from a cigarette: an old world experience.

In Arnaudville, I stay at the lakeside home of Kathleen that she built herself. She's 60 years old and strong with deeply indented eyes making her face resemble a skeleton. An Austrian woman is also staying there but she's out now and coming back tonight. I spend a simple evening cooking boudin blanc and okra with tomatoes and eat it on the elevated porch.

That night I get bitten by every mosquito in Louisiana.

The drive into Houston is like a ringroad of hell. Giant trucks muscle me on both sides while kicking up water from the drenched asphalt into the pink and orange glow of dusk. Without the anxiety the scene would be beautiful, like running with buffalos on a stampede through a desert. I pull out at the Museum District where the Rothko Chapel and Cy Twombly gallery are elevators up and out to a totally new sphere.

The night is spent in a motel room that smells of cigarettes just off the ramp from the interstate.