Rick Hall Fiction

I was sitting in the living room looking out the picture window that dominates the front wall when I heard a commotion coming from the outside. It was the sound of metal being scraped against rock and it shot chills up my spine the same way chalk does when it squeals as it is raked across the chalkboard. I shuttered as I tried to shake off the iciness that was strangling my insides and after three attempts, I was successful.

The sound was coming from the north and was a mile or so from the house. I sat there listening as the noise grew louder and louder. “So, the snow plow is out and about at this time of morning,” I thought to myself as I looked at my watch. It read six-thirty-eight.

Within a minute or two, it sounded as though the whole house was quivering from the vibrations created by that metal blade being pushed over the asphalt. I watched as the truck passed by the house. I could see the sparks dance in the air as the plough passed by my parents’ front window. I was saddened as I saw the virginal white snow that covered the ground like a loving mother warming her child become soiled by the muddy brown slush that was being spat from the blade attached to the front of the salt truck.

I had been planning on gathering up some snow so that I could give Kieran his first taste of snow cream and I had assumed that the best place to gather up the icy mix we’d need would be the driveway, but now, that idea had been destroyed. Even though the snow in the drive was deeper than the rest of the yard, it had now become contaminated by the filth that had been regurgitated from the cutting edge of that black and white state truck.

As the vehicle made its way up the tiny hill that started just past my parent’s house, it passed under an overhead light and I could see it spitting out marble sized chunks of salt. “Well, that’s that,” I croaked hoarsely as I thought about the slushy delight my son and I would make later on that day.

I sat there lost in thought for the next thirty minutes or so. I remembered a time when I was not much older than my boy. I was staying with my grandmother when a big snow had hit that morning. Granny was a tiny wisp of woman that still possessed a full head a of jet black hair when she passed away at the age of eighty-eight. Granny had sent one of my aunts out in the snow to gather up as much of that fluffy white ice as she could. My aunt was given a large mixing bowl and a measuring cup. She was instructed to scoop up the top layers of the snow only and she was to do this until she had filled the metallic bowl to the brim.

Within a few minutes, my aunt had returned. Grandma met her at the front door. She allowed my aunt to enter the house, but instructed her to leave the wash pan on one of the chairs sitting on the front porch. Granny was carrying a smaller bowl that contained a large open can of sweet cream, two cups of sugar, a bottle of vanilla extract, an egg and a tin of Hershey’s cocoa.

I watched as she poured the content of her bowl into the washbasin. Once she emptied all her stuff in to the metal basin, she began to stir it with a large wooden spoon. She stroked it about twenty to twenty-five times before she stopped to look at it. Satisfied with the way it looked, she then scooped up a large amount and plopped it into her mouth. I could see her smile as she tucked the smaller bowl and its contents under her left arm. Then she grabbed the larger bowl and made her way to the front door. My aunt was waiting for her and opened the door as granny approached.

“One of the best batches I ever made,” stated grandma as she entered the house.

“How much do you think we have?” asked my aunt.

“Enough for every one of us to have two bowls at least,” replied granny.

I smiled as I wondered if my child would enjoy his first bite of snow cream as much as I enjoyed mine. Nearly forty years later, I still remembered the taste of that first nibble. It tasted like chocolate ice cream but it crunched in my mouth. I’d never had ice cream that “talked to you,” as my granny, explained. Ice cream only melted in my mouth, but this stuff actually sounded when I bit into it.

I sat there waiting for the plow to return. I grew up less than two miles from the county line. Therefore, I knew that the truck’s return trip by the house would be only a few minutes away.

I looked at the clock and noticed that it was almost seven o’clock in the morning. I then looked at my cell phone to see if I had service available. As expected, I didn’t. The mountains of Eastern Kentucky can and will play havoc with a cell phone’s reception. They’ll be coming into work within the hour, I though to myself. I’ll wait and call then.

I picked up the remote control and flipped on the television to see what was playing. I surfed through the channels for a few minutes before settling on ESPN-2. I started watching the college basketball scores roll by on the underscore. I began focusing on the full tube when I saw people celebrating the defeat of the Duke Blue Devils at the hands of the West Virginia Mountaineers. As I was watching this highlight, I heard that familiar scraping sound coming in the distance.

“It’s about time,” I whispered as I looked at the clock and noticed that nearly forty minutes had passed since he had made his initial run by the house. I began to ponder what had caused him to take as long as he did. I came up with four theories. The first and least likely was that he got stuck when he tried to turn at the county line, but given the fact that there was a service station less than a hundred yards across the line, he could have turned there with ease. My second theory was that he stopped to make a bathroom break and given that, the service station was open twenty-four–seven that was a good possibility. The other two were that he was taking a coffee break or goofing off.

I listened as that grating sound got louder and louder. Again, it seemed as though the whole house began to quake as that big monstrosity passed. The scraping sound was echoing off the hills and that only added to the noise level. As it passed, I was shocked that he hadn’t awakened the entire house.

I clicked off the television and waited in silence for a few minutes before I switched it back on. I was half expecting to hear somebody else stir, but after a few minutes of silence, I pushed the power switch on the remote control and then muted the television so as not to disturb those sleeping.

I began channel surfing again but stopped when the door to the bedroom located next to the living room began to swing open. I looked up to see who it was and noticed my six-year-old son Kieran exiting the room. He was rubbing his eyes and his brown hair was sticking straight up in the back. He looked like Alfalfa from the Our Gang series.

“Good morning seepy head,” I said as he walked towards me. He didn’t speak a word but held his hands out in front of himself, which meant that he wanted me to pick him up and take him into my arms.

I obliged and then slowly walked over to close the door. “We don’t want to wake momma,” I whispered as I pulled the door together as quietly as I could.

He snuggled in closely to me as I took my place in the Easy Chair. I began to gently stroke his back. This was a ritual that he had pursued most of his life. I would hold him in my lap with my left hand and scratch his back with my right. I’d do this until my right arm got tired and then I’d switch. This routine would continue until he got tired or hungry or both.

I rubbed on his back for about ten minutes before he spoke. I was about to change hands when he took my face in his right hand and said, “I’m hungry.”

“Don’t you need to go potty?”

“No, hungry.”

“What would you like to have; cereal, eggs, pancakes, waffles or toast?”

“Eggies if they’re runny. And, some biscuits. And, some sausage. And, some juice.”

“Is that all? Don’t you want any caviar or perhaps some truffles?”

“I don’t know what those are. I’ve never had them before.”

I began laughing. Unsure of what I was laughing about, he gave me an odd look and asked, “Are you okay, dad?”

“I was only teasing with you. We don’t serve caviar and truffles at this house. That’s why it was a joke.”

He gave me that odd look again. He took a couple of seconds to reflect on what I had just said and then he came back with his own attempt at a joke. “Can I have some pachycephalosaurus or stegosaurus for breakfast?” Once he said that he began to cackle as though he had just made the funniest comment in the history of mankind.

“Get it?” he asked. “Stegosaurus for breakfast.”

I began to laugh but not at his comment, but rather at his actions. As I began to laugh, this only added to his merriment and he began to clap his hands in his excitement. “Stegosaurus,” he repeated and began to cackle even louder.

“We don’t have any dinosaur, but we do have everything else,” I said.

“I guess that’ll do.” He tried to fake disappointment, but that big gap-tooth grin of his belied his actions.

“How come you know so much about dinosaurs?” I asked as we made our way to the kitchen.

“I just do. I like dinos.”

“That much is obvious. How do you say that one again? Pachy-o-saurus?”

He sounded frustrated as he corrected me. “Pachycephalosaurus, it’s the dinosaur with the helmet like head and it uses its head as a weapon against carnivores; that means meat-eater.”

“I know what carnivore means.”

“But, you don’t know what a pachycephalosaurus is.”

“You know it’s hard on a middle-aged man when he’s outsmarted by a six-year-old. Even if he is as cute as you.”

He smiled and I nearly choked as I thought about how lucky I was to have such a wonderful child for a son. I winked at him and his smile got even bigger.

As we walked to the kitchen, I turned on the light and opened up the refrigerator. As I was rambling through the frig, I came across a couple of things I hadn’t seen in over a decade. The eggs were in the old-fashioned cardboard box instead of the Styrofoam style box. “Colliers eggs,” I said as I grabbed them and placed them on the deep freeze located beside the Frigidaire. I rubbed my son’s head and then began to look for a couple of more items I knew my mother stocked. As I looked in the bottom of the refrigerator, I found what I was looking for; Cranehill and Combs Biscuits and Fischer’s Bologna.

“Triple C and Fischer’s,” I said as I put them on the deep freeze. Those three items had been a staple of my breakfasts since childhood. My mother bought no other brands. She’d go without before she’d buy anything else.

Colliers Eggs was a local company that was owned and operated by relatives on my dad’s side. They were organically grown because the members of that family were all devout environmentalists and were eco-friendly even before it was sheik to be so. Their eggs cost a little more but they had a better texture and a richer taste than other brands.

Fischer’s Bologna was known throughout the tri-state area. They outsold even mighty Oscar Mayer in our section of Kentucky. Nearly every house in that area of Appalachia kept that familiar green and white package in the cold cut drawer of their refrigerators.

Lastly, there was Cranehill and Combs Biscuits or “C and C” to their customers. The company was headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina and had been started in the late thirties by two former University of North Carolina basketball players. The Tar Heel influence on the two was obvious to anyone who purchased their products. The biscuits were wrapped in a canister painted “Carolina Blue.” Even their web site had enough Tar Heel references to make any non-Carolina fan nauseated.

I turned on the oven to let it warm up as I began to search for a couple of frying pans and something in which I could bake the biscuits. The pans were easy to find, but I couldn’t find the large square pan my mother used to bake biscuits. She’d had it since I was Kieran’s age and I knew it had to be around there some where. I was about to give up on it when my child found it.

“Dad, why does granny leave pans in the oven? You told me that was dangerous.”

“It is,” I said as I grabbed a dishtowel and used it to remove three different pans from her oven. I put the first one in the sink and run water over it. It barked out a hiss as the initial drops of water splashed against it. The other two would also hiss as they hit the water.

Over the next twenty minutes, I fried each one of us two eggs and a piece of bologna. Kieran, like his dad, enjoys his eggs over easy and runny. I had to refry his because I broke one and he absolutely refuses to eat the egg when that happens. As I was finishing up the bologna, he looked at me.

“Aren’t we going to have any gravy? I’d like to have some, wouldn’t you?”

“Not really, I hate gravy.”

“But, I like it.”

“But I don’t know how to make it, especially, in a cast iron skillet.”

“Can I have some jelly then?” he asked.

“Of course, you can. Grape?”

“Yep, grapesee. It’s my favorite.”

Once we finished eating, I put up the dishes and began to run some hot water into the left hand side of the two-bowled sink. As the basin was being filled, I looked at my son and smiled.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked and then shot me his patented adorable grin.

“If you’re thinking that we can go out and play in the snow and make a snow man and snow angels, then I am thinking what you’re thinking.”

“That’s not what I was thinking. I was thinking about playing with the dinos, but I like your idea better.”

“We can still play with the dinos. We won’t be going out for another couple of hours or so.”

“Good.” He smiled at me and began to run into the living room.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To get the dinos.”

“Slow her down or you’ll wake granny and momma.”

“I forgot.”

“You run along and get the toys and I’ll finish the dishes. Once I’m finished, we’ll play all you want.”

He grinned, nodded his head, turned and ran into the living room ignoring everything I had just told him about waking the others.

We spent the next two hours playing with his dinosaurs. His favorite game was meat-eaters verse plant-eaters. He called the plant eaters gloop-duh-gloooooooooes, because that was the sound he made when he pretended they were walking in herds. He always has to be the meat-eaters, which means his animals eat mine. It never fails to amaze me that no matter what game he plays, he has to win. Not even I was that competitive as a child.

Two hours later, at about ten o’clock, my wife came dragging through the living room. “Hello,” she called as she made her way to the bathroom.

“We’re in here,” replied Kieran.

“How long you two been up?”

“Couple of hours,” I said.

“Momma, we’re going to go outside and make a snowman and snow angels.” My child was smiling and his eyes positively beamed as he looked first to his mother and then to me.

My wife smiled back at him. “That’s nice. When are you going to do it?”

Kieran shrugged his shoulders and then looked at me shocked that he hadn’t thought of that already. “When are we going to do it?”

“As soon as granny wakes up and tells me how to make snow cream,” I replied.

“Yummy,” shouted Kieran even though he had never had snow cream in his life. “I love snow cream.”

“Really?” I asked. “Do you even know what it is?”

“No, but I know that I like it.” We all three laughed.

When mom awoke, Kieran asked her were we could find a large tub so that we could make some snow cream. She gave us an old washbasin and told us to scoop only the top few layer of snow because they were the freshest and least likely to contain grass or dirt. She also gave us and old water dipper to use to scoop up the snow.

I put on my winter clothes; telling Kieran that he could come out when I was finished clearing a path. He didn’t like it, but he obeyed all the same. Over the next thirty minutes, I cleared off the sidewalk and made a path to the mailbox what time the two women were dressing Kieran. By the time I finished, my son was so bundled up he looked like a midget Sumo wrestler wearing a cheap blue tent.

“Do you have enough layers on him?” I asked. “How’s he supposed to move?”

“I don’t want him to get cold,” snapped my wife. It was obvious that she wasn’t happy with my question.

“I’m more worried about him being able to breath underneath all that.”

My wife frowned at me. “If he gets sick the road is too dangerous for us to be getting out on it. We’d never get to the ER in time.”

“Yeah, I can see us taking him in for a heatstroke in the middle of the worst blizzard we’ve had in fifty years.”

She didn’t say a thing, but the look she gave me sent chills racing down my spine. I couldn’t help but think that were she able to harness the heat in her stare, she could melt all this snow off the ground in eight seconds flat.

Not wanting to push anymore of her buttons, I grabbed Kieran’s hand. “Let’s go before daddy gets into anymore trouble.”

“Too late,” snapped my wife.

My son grabbed my hand and began to drag me towards the snow. “Don’t fight dad, play.”

We spent the next two hours playing in the snow. During that time, the two of us made an eight-foot tall snowman and at least a dozen snow angels. My brother Alex and his two boys, Edward and Tanner, joined us as did another nephew, Jody.

My brother and I took an old box used for carrying four six-packs of soda and used it to pat out bricks. Once we had enough of them, we began to make an igloo like we did when we were children. With all six of us working together, we were able to build it in about an hour. We hung and old nylon curtain in front of the door to keep out the wind. We went inside and the boys were amazed at how warm it was on the inside. About the time, we crawled out of the igloo, mom called us into her house for hot chocolate.

“You boys cold?” asked mom as we entered the house.

“Freezing,” Alex replied.

Mom hugged him and his two sons as well as Jody. An honor I noticed that she hadn’t bestowed upon anyone in my family and we had been there over three days. “I made you fellas some hot cocoa. I know how much you like it. Well, everybody but Randy, and God help me, he’s always been my problem child.”

“Don’t pick on my daddy,” shouted Kieran.

“Don’t sass me,” returned my mother harshly. “You’re just like your father.”

Before I could respond, my wonderful child diffused the entire situation with his response. “Thanks granny. I want to be like my dada.”

My mother’s eyes began to knit as she thought of a response. When she was unable to come up with an appropriate one, she let it go; at least she did for the moment.

“Didn’t Unc say we could make snow cream?” Edward asked.

“Sure did,” Tanner replied.

“Unc ain’t the boss in my house,” interrupted my mother. Everyone could hear the venom in her voice. “I’m the boss here and what I say goes. I’ll decide when we make it.”

I stood there lost as to why she went through this sudden change. Only a few hours ago I thought she and I were on the verge of a break through, but now she had completed a hundred and eighty degree turn. Earlier this morning, she had been tender and kind to me; a side I hadn’t seen from her in years. Now, she was treating me like the proverbial redheaded stepchild. This was the mother I had known all my life. It was at this exact moment that I realized any hope I had been harboring for reconciliation between she and I was nothing but a childish fantasy.

My throat tightened up and my heart began to race as I realized this was her way of telling me that it was time for me to go. Even though I understood what she was trying to do, I still wanted to take this opportunity to try and put our past behind us. After all, I thought, if we can’t do it now, then we’d never be able to do it.

Unsure of how to proceed at this junction, I did what I always did in such situations involving my mother. I tried to appease her. “Nobody said anything any different.”

“They don’t have to!” She shot back.

“Did I say or do something that angered you?” I knew it wouldn’t work, but I was hoping to try and ease her anger.

“No, you didn’t.” She was now hissing at me. “I just don’t like people trying to run my house. I hate it when someone tries to tell me how to run my own place. As if,” she paused. “I’m an old broken down fool.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” I rebutted. “If it came across that way, then I apologize for it.”

“You’ve been that way all your life. You’ve been nothing but trouble since the day you were born. My daddy told me that I’d regret having you, but I was foolish enough to believe otherwise!”

“Mom,” shouted my brother. “That’s enough! Randy didn’t mean it the way you took it and you know it.”

“You stay out of this,” she snapped. “He knows what he said.”

I held up my hands and struggled not to respond in kind. “Okay, you win. Give us a few minutes to pack our stuff and we’ll go back home. We’ll be out of your hair as soon as possible.”

“You can’t get out in weather like this. You’ll be killed and kill the boy and Jennifer as well. Is that what you want?”

“No, but it is the hand I’ve been dealt.”

“Go on then. You’ll get no pity from me. I’ve raise five kids and you’re a bigger fool than the other four combined and you’re going to raise that child to be the same way.”

That arrow had hit the mark and it took all the strength I could muster not to let her have it. As I shook to keep from saying something, I knew I’d regret, I shrugged my shoulders and smiled out of indignation. I wanted to fight back, but decided to take the high road. “I’m leaving. I’d appreciate you leaving my family out of this.”

I had to bite my lip to keep from saying something retaliatory, but realized that it would only add fuel to the fire already burning. Once when I was in my early twenties, I retaliated against her. Over twenty years later, she still held a grudge against me for that. I was not about to make the same mistake twice.

She didn’t speak to me the rest of the time I was there. My brother on the other hand begged me not to go. He offered to let us stay at his house. When I refused his invitation, he pleaded with mom to stop me. When she refused, he snapped at her and then stomped out of her house without even taking the time to put on his coat.

“Come on boys,” he called as he exited the back door. “We’re not staying here and let grandma act like a fool.”

Once the boys left, my mother looked at my wife and said, “See what he caused.”

My wife started to say something but I stopped her. My mother was notorious for holding a grudge. Any slight, even tiny ones, was to be taken to the grave. I didn’t want her on some future day taking her anger for my wife out on my children.

It took us less than fifteen minutes to pack. Kieran cried the whole time. He wanted to stay and eat snow cream and couldn’t understand why we couldn’t stay and spend more time at his grandma’s place. I tried to explain to him that we weren’t welcome anymore, but his mind couldn’t wrap around what I was trying to tell him.

Eight hours later, the Jeep pulled into our driveway. The trip had been slow and arduous and we hadn’t eaten since that morning. Once we brought in the luggage, my wife made her way straight to the refrigerator. She began to make sandwiches as I listened to the voice messages left on the machine. There were twelve: five were from friends at work wanting to know if they could do any; four was from our church; two were telemarketers; and the last was from my mother.

“Randy, this is your mother. If you want to apologize for what you did this morning, I’m perfectly willing to listen. But, I know how you are. You’re an ungrateful child that has been nothing but trouble since the day you were born. I really don’t expect your call.”

My wife began to fume. “One of these days I’m going to let her have it and she’ll regret that she ever got to know me. I’d love to snatch her by the hair of the head and shake her until she’s gets some sense.”

“She’s still my mother,” I interjected. “Remember the fifth commandment.”

“I don’t think you should honor anyone that treats you the way she does.”

“She’s still my…”

“Mother!” spat my wife.

In one of those albums, I found an old picture of my favorite great uncle, Charles, and me. It was from early October, nineteen eighty-seven and it was one of the oddest days I’d ever experienced. I had just finished training in electronic intelligence and had received orders to Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe in Hawaii. I was excited about going because I was looking forward to seeing all those beautiful women in skimpy bikinis, but I was also dreading it because I would be a thirteen hour plane ride from home. Should an emergency happen, I’d never make it home in time to say goodbye to someone I loved.

I took ten days leave between graduating from my Marine Occupational Specialty School (MOS) and reporting to Camp Pendleton in San Diego from which I would be flown to Honolulu. During the time that I was home, I got a call from Uncle Charlie one evening. He asked me what I was doing the next day and I told him that I hadn’t planned on doing a thing. He then asked me if he could spend some time with me because he wanted to discuss something very important with me. Knowing that my uncle wasn’t the theatrical type, I agreed and he stated that he’d pick me up at nine o’clock sharp the next morning.

I was up and ready to go by eight-thirty; Charlie was the type that took pride in being on time regardless of the situation. Sure enough, he pulled into my parent’s driveway at exactly nine o’clock. I was standing by the gate of the fence when he arrived.

As his black four-wheel-drive pickup slowed to a stop, he rolled down the window and asked, “You ready to get started?”

“Always,” I replied.

He looked at me with his big brown soulful eyes and took a couple of seconds before he spoke. He was the type that always thought before he began speaking. I never knew him to waste words. They were always straight to the point and easily understood. Even though he was short and squat in size, his way of speaking demanded attention and gave one the impression that he was much bigger than he really was.

“You might want to change into some shorts and some hiking boots,” he said. “We’re going to Collier Rock and those pants and boat shoes won’t make it.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Be back in a minute. You mind the wait?”

“Not really, but make it snappy.”

I heard him laugh as I turned and ran up the steps. Within a couple of minutes, I had returned wearing a pair of long shorts and was sporting a set of jungle combat boots.

“That’s better,” he stated as I hopped into the vehicle.

“What are we going to do up there?” I asked as he pulled out of the driveway. I was hoping to coax out of him what ever it was he was wanted to tell me, but knew that wasn’t going to happen. My uncle was a thoughtful and deliberate man. He’d tell me in his own time.

“Picnic,” was his response. “I hope you like it. After that, we can talk.”

“Cool, I haven’t had a good picnic since before I joined the Corps.”

“I packed a cooler and put it in the tool box in the back there. It’s some sandwich stuff, potato salad, chips, pop and some cakes and pies that I bought at the market this morning. Hope you’re hungry?”

“Sounds good,” I replied. “I’m not hungry right now, but I betcha after spending a few hours climbing around those rocks I’ll be starving.”

He smiled and nodded his head. “That’s what I was hoping.”

Collier Rock is a gigantic rock formation that stands atop a mountain where three Eastern Kentucky valleys meet to form the headwaters of half a dozen creeks that cut through those various vales. The rock stands at least seven stories high and is the size of a football field. It is so large and out of place that it looks like a marker space aliens had setup as a directional guide many thousands of years ago. The early pioneers had used it as a point for piloting. It can be seen for a couple dozen miles and it stands out like a large mole on an otherwise perfect face.

It took us less than half an hour to reach the formation. The last four miles were a primitive dirt road that had been built by a mining company some forty years earlier. Several large gullies and ruts had formed in the road as the result of decades of heavy storms and infrequent repairs. The road had a large locked gate that prevented vehicles from traveling on it and only a handful of people had access to the keys to that gate. Charlie knew one of the men that had such a key and the man had loaned it to my uncle.

It took us nearly as long to travel the dirt path as it did to travel the county road leading to the gate. We bounced and flopped all over his F150 pickup as we made our way up to the formation. By the time we reached our destination, I felt as though I had gone ten rounds with Larry Holmes.

“Here we are,” he said as his truck rolled to a stop. “Did you like the ride up here?”

“It was almost as much fun as a root canal.”

We both laughed, but not at my joke. Our laughter was due to the sense of relief we were both experiencing. Even though we both wanted to see the rocks, the trip up here had been so harrowing that I, at least, was wondering if the outing would be worth the beating I took to get here.

We spent the next three hours exploring the area. He showed me a small ditch about eighteen inches deep and about eight feet wide. It seemed to go on forever. He explained that buffalo once used this trace to come to a salt lick located in these mountains. He told me that the Indians had come from as far south as North Carolina and as far north as Michigan to hunt the buffalo that gathered at that spot every year. He believed that at least ten different tribes had visited that area over the last ten thousand years.

Other things he showed me were pits and bare spots where archeological digs had taken place. He also showed me a metal stake that had been driven into solid rock by a federal government surveying team. President Garfield’s first official act was to order a survey of Eastern Kentucky. Garfield had served here during the Civil War and had produced the first Union victory of the war in a little spot near Prestonsburg. For that, the colonel was promoted to the rank of General and became a national hero. He would ride his celebrity to the United State Presidency.

Once we arrived back to the rock formation, Charlie looked at me a grinned. “You want to see something totally amazing?”

“No,” I lied trying to contain my excitement.

“Good, follow me.” He motioned for me to follow with his hand.

“Where are we going?”

“To a small cave located almost in the center of those rocks, I think you’ll get a kick out of what they hold.”

“You mean there’s a cave in those rocks?”

“Yes, you didn’t know?”

“No.”

He smiled. “Few people do.”

We snaked our way around a series of trees, up a set of large boulders, down another and had to crawl along the base of the formation until we came to a small opening that seemed to have been bored directly into the sandstone monstrosity. I had never noticed it before, but when we came within ten feet of it I could see it. It looked like a tiny cavity in a large granite tooth.

“Is this it?” I asked as we neared the cave.

“Uh huh, it’s been here since time immemorial. Come on in, there’s something you’ve got to see.”

I looked around to ensure there were no snakes in the area and then followed him to the mouth of the cave. Once inside of the opening, I was shocked by the shear size of the cavern. It must have been sixty feet long by forty feet wide and at least twenty feet high. It looked to be the size of a small country church sanctuary.

“Holy moly,” I said as the enormity of the hidden grotto hit me like a slap to the face.

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

I looked at him and he was grinning like the proverbial cat that had just eaten the canary.

“And how? How come I’ve never seen this before?”

“You have to know where to look for it. If you didn’t know where it was, you could look for this cave for months and never find it.”

“I can believe that.” I shook my head amazed that this had been here all this time and I’d never seen it.

“I know. I’ve yet to see a person that wasn’t awed by this cave the first time they saw it.”

“Count me into that group.”

“Have you ever heard of a guy they called ‘Groundhog’ Abisha Johnson?”

“No.”

“He’s your great grandfather’s grandfather. He refused to join either side during the Civil War. It’s said that he refused to take up arms against the Union, but at least two, maybe three, of his cousins had joined the Confederacy and he refused to take up arms against family. Therefore, he hid in this cave for three years in order to keep from being forced to take up arms against something or someone he loved.

“Rumor has it that one time at least sixty Union soldiers were sent up here to flush him out of these mountains. They thought he was spying for the south, but he wasn’t. He simply wanted to be left alone. Those soldiers wandered around these hills for over five weeks and they never even got a sniff of him.

“They gave up the chase only after he spared the lives of a small group of soldiers. As I heard it, one warm summer night a band of soldiers camped within fifty yards of this cave. He waited until they all went to sleep before he made his move. Now, the rest of this is only rumor, but it does make a fine story. It’s rumored that he slipped out of his cave and then overpowered the man on guard. From there, it’s said that he took every one of the men’s rifles and knives or swords. I’ve heard the numbers range from as little as twelve men to as high as fifty, but I assume twelve is the most likely number. Anyway, when those men woke up and found that their weapons were missing, they hightailed it off the mountain and reported directly to General Garfield. He was, as expected, furious over the matter, but he never sent another man to look for Abisha. ‘Old Bishie’ was still living in this cave when word came of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

“I did my dissertation at Columbia on the history of this place. I was able to prove that some of the soot in this cave is over eight thousand years old.” He grinned. “It appears that this secret place has been a secret for a very long time.”

“That’s right; I’d forgot that you were an Ivy Leaguer.”

Uncle Charlie and his older brother, Jonathan, had been orphaned when they were aged eight and ten. Their father and been trying to organize the local miners to form a union, but the coal company had other plans. The company had paid a group of toughs to teach Charlie’s dad a lesson. They did this by burning down his house with him and his wife still in it. The boys had been sent to an uncle’s house to stay until things cooled off or else they would have died as well.

Three of the four men accused would later be sentenced to life in prison for their crimes. The fourth would be killed by an angry mob before going to trial. The deaths of Charlie’s parents and the burning of their house were the last straws that broke the camel’s back. Within three months of their deaths, the entire town was unionized.

“Yes, I guess I have been fortunate, in a way, but I’d change if it I could. I’d trade all my success if I could have had my family back. Mom and dad are gone, Jon is gone, my wife’s gone and we never had a child. When I go… ”

Tears began to form in his eyes and he tried to change the subject. I had him pause because I thought this was what he was intending to tell me. I understood that this picnic had some significance to it, but didn’t at this time know what it would be.

“Go on,” I said. “I mean, if you want to?”

“My story isn’t worth telling.”

He tried to wave me off, but I refused.

“I want to hear it. If you’ll tell it, that is?”

“Not much to tell, but if you want to hear it, I’ll tell you.”

“Please.”

“You know that my folks were originally from Pike County, but they moved to here when my father got a job with the mining company. Jon was about four or five and I was around two or three when they crossed the mountain and settled in with family in one of those company houses.

“Daddy had gotten a job with the company a week prior to us moving. He worked hard and within two years was a foreman for them. He was a very skilled man; well read and highly intelligent. He would’ve made a manager had he been given the chance, but as it was he…”

Charlie stopped and took in a deep breath and held it before he let it out.

“We don’t have to go any further,” I suggested. I could sense his increasing uneasiness.

“No, somebody needs to hear this and I believe you are the perfect person to ensure this story gets told. I trust that when you tell it, you’ll get the facts straight.”

“Thank you,” I said.

He nodded letting me know he appreciated my acknowledgement of the importance of this story.

“Over the years, daddy became disillusioned with the coal operators. They treated their employees like slaves. They worked them like brutes and then paid them in script.”

He looked at me and asked, “Do you know what script is?”

“It’s kinda like currency issued by the camps, but was only useable in their stores and such.”

“Exactly.” He nodded his approval. “You know your history well, but then I made sure of that, didn’t I?

“Script could only be used at the stores located within the camp, and, of course, the coal company owned these stores. Now, I’ll admit that most of the camp managers and executives were honest men, but some would raise prices sky high because they knew their workers could go no where else and use that script.

“Daddy hated the way the workers were treated. As long as they were productive little worker drones, the camp treated them well and provided them with a good living. But let someone get hurt or sick so that he couldn’t work, they’d toss that man and his family out of the camp, no questions asked. They were extremely cruel to sick or injured employees. If a man couldn’t work and dig the coal, then they had no use for him and he could go to Hades for all they cared.

“The worst was when a man died. Their cruelty knew no end for those men. If a man was killed in the mines, his wife and children had until the end of the month to do one of two things. They either had to move out or else find another man to move in with them so that he could dig the coal that powered America’s industries.

“Two to three week courtships were very common in the camps. If a man died on the fifth day of the month, his wife had until the thirtieth to get remarried or else she and her brood were tossed out on the street without one ounce of pity being shown to them. I remember one of our neighbors lost her husband on the twenty-eighth day of the month and the company moved her out before she even had the chance to bury the man. I also heard of, but never met, a woman that had survived six husbands in the camp.”

“I thought these coal camps were supposed to be models of efficiency and tranquility?” I assumed that I had made a valid point until he countered.

“So were slave plantations and Nazi death camps.”

He shot me a look that let me know that I was only the student and he was the teacher. It told me that I had much to learn.

“Any way, daddy began to believe that the only hope the workers had was to organize and demand their rights. He met a man that was trying to organize a union among the coalfields of Kentucky and West Virginia. He taught daddy how to rally support and what to say to the men. Within a couple of months, daddy was the local leader of the efforts to form a union.

“Let me tell you something. Those company leaders were no dummies; not by a long shot, no sir. They had imported Greeks, Italians and other Eastern Europeans into these mountains to work the camps. They also brought Black share croppers from Alabama and Mississippi to work as well. Most of the workers were local boys, but there were large factions of the other groups as well.

“The company bosses controlled all these groups by playing them against each other. They paid the Europeans and Negroes less than they did the mountain folks. They let this be known and blamed it on local custom. They also played upon the religions of the groups as well. The Blacks and, we, hillbillies were mostly Baptists and Methodist, but the foreigners were either Catholic or Orthodox with a few Jews thrown in as well. The bosses would play the religions off against each other. Their theory was that were they to keep the various factions fighting amongst themselves; they’d never unite against the company. It worked too, or it did, until daddy came along.

“Daddy was trusted by everyone and he was able to unite all the factions. He promised them all a fair and equal wage. This went a long way to winning over the outsiders. He won the rest over by promising them eight-hour workdays. Before, it had been ten to twelve hour shifts and even longer if necessary.

“He began getting death treats and he became concerned. The bosses were men that you didn’t want to fool with because they had money and power. Once the threats came, he sent Jon and me to live with my mother’s brother, Ralph. He was a cruel and evil man. I’ll bet he split Hell wide open when he died. Daddy tried to get Mommy to go with us, but she refused. Five days after we went to live with Uncle Ralph, the men hired by the coal bosses murdered Mommy and Daddy.

“Their deaths would prove to be the catalysts that lead to the men unionizing. His death jolted the factions in to action and had the reverse affect that the company wanted. They thought his death would scare the men, but it only stiffened their resolve and as a result, that mine and a couple dozen more around these parts became unionized within five months of their deaths.

“I know daddy did great things for this area, but given the choice, I’d rather have seen him not get mixed up in it all because Jon and I suffered greatly over the next few years. Ralph and his wife, Henrietta, were the most vile and vicious people I’ve ever known. They treated us like animals instead of family.”

He looked at me and hesitated before he recomposed himself.

“Do you know that they gave us a block of coal for Christmas that year? They laughed when we took them out of our stockings. I’ll never forget the look of sheer delight on their faces as they watched us. I hated them for that and swore I’d never be like that. It bothered Jon even more than it bothered me. He’d be affected by their cruelty the rest of his life

“At fourteen, he ran away and lied about his age to get a job in the coal mines. Once he got one, he came and got me. We camped in a tent for six months while he worked. He told the company that he was eighteen and he was able to get by with it because he was over six feet tall and broad shouldered. I also tried to get a job, but no one believed that I was eighteen.

“He’d been working there about six months when the husband of one of Jon’s old teachers saw him. That man just happened to be a teacher himself and had brought in a group of students that day to tour the mine. When the man recognized Jon, he informed the foreman that he had a minor working for him. They called my brother over and confronted him right there on the spot. He tried to deny it, but couldn’t. He then explained our situation, but they still let him go.

“The teacher, Charles Curry was his name, felt so badly about how things turned out that he invited Jon and me to live with him and his wife, Eva Faye. They had only one requirement and that was that we finish our education. Having no other choice, we agreed.

“Ralph never sent us to school. We hadn’t had a formal education in four years. Therefore, when we started to school, we were reading several grade levels below where we should’ve been. Charles and Eva went to work on us right away. They would force us to do home work for hours each night and during summer vacation. I hated it, but it was much better than living with Ralph so I tolerated it.

“I didn’t understand why they worked us so hard until I hit college. Once there, I was grateful to them for what they had done for me. It took me two years to catch up with my class, but the time I started to high school I was the second best student at the school; only Jon was better.

“When Jon graduated, he received a full scholarship to Transylvania College in Lexington. He studied there and finished valedictorian of his senior class. From there, he went on to law school at Vanderbilt. Once he graduated there, he got a job with one of the largest law firms in Louisville. He’d make partner before he was thirty-five. When he passed away a few years ago, his personal fortune was over forty million dollars.

“Since he died a bachelor, he had his estate divided into four shares. I got a quarter, as did the Curry family. The other half was divided up equally between Transylvania University and an orphanage located in Louisville. Jon had been the chairmen of the board for that orphanage for over twenty, but he never told anyone about it. But, that was Jon for you. He was full of surprises.”

“Why didn’t he marry?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Some of his enemies and assorted other low lives suggested that he was gay, but I don’t believe that. It’s hard for me to picture him as being a homosexual. He was such a man’s man that I just can’t justify those two concepts in my mind. My theory is that he feared having a family because he was afraid that he’d turn out like Ralph. That was his biggest fear. Even in death, that man haunted Jon.”

“He did well for himself, it sounds like to me.” I added this in a vain attempt to cheer up my uncle. “But then, you didn’t do so bad yourself.”

“Yeah, I too got a scholarship to Transylvania where I majored in history. After that I pursued a master’s degree at UK and then went on to Columbia to get my doctorate. The first job I got after returning from New York was as an instructor at Ohio University. I was a Bobcat for three years before I got a job at Transy. I taught there for over ten years, but decided to leave and take a position as a full professor at Morehead State University. They had a program that specialized in the history of Eastern Kentucky and Appalachia. I desperately wanted to be a part of that. I taught there for over thirty years and published ten books on the history of the Ohio Valley.”

“To have had such a bad start in life, you two did okay for yourselves.” I looked him straight in the eyes, blew out a breath and continued. “I hope to do as well as you two.”

“You will. I know it.”

“If this is why you brought me up here, I thank you. I’m deeply grateful to you for sharing that with me.”

He laughed. “I didn’t bring you up here for that. I have something else planned for you. Let’s go get that cooler and have ourselves a picnic. Whadda say about that?”

We walked over to his truck and he gave me the key to the tool box located at the front of the payload. He had me take out the large metallic cooler and a small ammo box that he had placed in there that morning.

We spent the next few minutes packing those things to the top of the stone formation. The view from the top of those rocks was breathtaking. The leaves were turning and they formed a collage of colors resembling one of my grandmother’s patchwork quilts. It seemed as though the hills rolled on forever. I felt as though I could stretch out my arms and the wind would pick me up and fly me across the sky and then land me safely back on the rock.

We stopped for a minute to catch our breaths. Once I put down the cooler, my uncle began pointing things out to me.

“Let me show you something,” he said. As we stared out in the distance, he spoke. “If we assume that straight ahead is twelve o’clock, then West Virginia is between the ten o’clock and eleven positions. Ohio is straight this way.” He pointed directly to our left to indicate where it was. “Straight ahead is Virginia and that farthest mountain located in the three o’clock position is Tennessee.”

He then tugged my arm and pulled me in close. “Can you see that mountain at the very edge of the horizon at the one o’clock position?”

I stared at it for a while before I spoke. “I can see an outline in the mist, but can’t be sure of it. Why’d you ask? Where is that?”

“I’ve been told that’s North Carolina, but have a hard time believing it. I’d say it’s a Tennessee or Virginia mountain, but can’t believe it is North Kakalaki.” He loved calling it Kakalaki. It was the hillbilly in him. “It’s too far if you ask me. I’ve studied maps and they don’t back up that assumption. Nope, it’s Tennessee if I’m not mistaken and I’m sure I’m not.”

“I’ll have to take your word on that,” I said. “I don’t know a thing about that type of stuff.”

“That’s okay, you’re young and you’ll learn. Hungry?”

“Starved, you ready to eat?”

“Sure am.”

We spent the next thirty minute or so devouring turkey sandwiches, potato salad, Ruffles potato chips and drinking soda. He had brought along a small garbage bag and made sure we cleaned up after ourselves. He believed in “leaving nature in as good as a shape as you found her.” As a matter of fact, that was one of his favorite sayings. He loved and respected our beloved mountains and wanted to take care of them.

Once we finished and had cleaned up after ourselves, he looked at me and smiled. “Can we get to the real reason I brought you up here?”

A rush of nervousness flooded my body and I hesitated before I spoke. I was thinking to myself that this must be a big deal for him if he was going to these lengths to make a grand production of it.

“I guess,” I mumbled not really believing it.

“Great,” he said as he opened up the olive green ammo can he had been packing since we removed it from the truck. “Have you been curious about what I’ve got in this box?”

“I don’t think I’ve given it much thought,” I responded. “I thought it was a first aid kit or something like that.”

“That’s a good way to look at it.” He chuckled. “I guess it is a first aid kit, but for the spirit and not the body.”

He reached in the can and pulled out a small brown bag. It was the kind you get when you purchase bulk candy at a farmer’s market. He handed it to me.

“Open it,” he said and I could see the pride burning in his eyes.

I moved slowly as though I were treating the paper wrapper like a poisonous snake. Each movement I made was exaggerated and drawn out and this only added to his excitement. Once I unrolled the bag, I took the bottom of it in my right hand and held it up to let the contents drop into my left.

As they slid out, I noticed that the bag contained three small brown cardboard boxes. They were each two inches long by two inches wide and about an inch deep. I picked one up and looked at it. As I scanned it, I noticed that printed on each box in white letters were the words “Burma Shave.”

“Is this soap?” I asked not sure of what I was supposed to do with it.

“It’s not just soap, that’s shaving soap. Do you understand what it means?”

I sat there in stunned silence before I looked at him. As my eyes met his, I could see excitement and fear burning in his, but was unsure how I was supposed to react. Out of desperation, I pretended to be thrilled with his gift.

“Sure I do. This is awesome. This is the perfect gift and I am grateful to you for it. Thanks!”

He saw through my attempt at deception and smiled. “Do you understand the significance of this gift?”

“No,” I admitted.

He smiled and said, “Good, I was hoping for that. Put one of them up to your nose and smell it. Now tell me, how does it smell?”

“Clean.”

“Good, now you’re getting it. Clean in the correct response. I want you to repeat this statement. Will you do that for me?”

I nodded my head.

“Repeat after me, ‘kin meets kind and knows.’”

“Kin meets kind and knows. What does that mean?”

He smiled. “I’m getting to that. You noticed that I gave you three boxes instead of one. Do you know why?”

“No.”

“Each one has a purpose. You are to keep one and pass the other two on to someone else. When I was in college, one of my professors took me out to lunch and he gave me three wash clothes. When I asked him what was the meaning behind them, he told me what I am about to tell you.

“The reason I gave you the shaving soap is to illustrate that your past can be scraped – he told me mine could be washed – away and you can change the pattern of your life.

“We are here today because I see a rare spark in you and I believe that you have the potential to be a great man and that’s why I brought you up here. I want you to realize the special gift that God has given you.”

I was both shocked and pleased to hear him say that. He was a man that I have idolized since childhood and now here he was telling me that I had the potential to be like him. Even though I was thrilled by his statement, part of me doubted his words. After all, I’d been told all my life that I was worthless and would never amount to much.

“What makes you think I have such potential? No one else does.”

The grin that swept across his face was that of a teacher that had just asked a critical question and had a student to respond with the correct answer.

“Kin meets kind and knows.”

“I don’t mean to doubt you, but we are talking about me, aren’t we?”

“Yes, and I believe I have chosen well. Do you know why I have given you three kegs instead of one?”

“No,” I responded being convinced that had to be the correct answer.

“I’ve given you three so that you may continue to perpetuate the tradition. When my professor at Columbia gave me my three wash clothes he told me that one was for me and the other two were to be given away to two others so that the cycle would continue.

“You are my second and last give away. I gave my first one away over twenty years ago to a student of mine from Gallipolis, Ohio. He’s now a cardiologist and the last time I heard from him, he’d given away one of his already.

“You’re my second and last one, so, you’ll have to keep the tradition…”

“B-b-but why me?” I stammered as I set there stunned by the enormity of the burden he was putting on me.

“Kin meets kind and knows,” was his response.

“Forgive me, but I think you’ve made a mistake. Don’t you remember that I was in special reading classes until I hit the seventh grade? My family calls me an educated fool and a dreamer. You’ve made a mistake!”

“Yet, you possess and genius level IQ and most importantly, a desire to be a success and you just completed Officer Training with the Marine Corps; not a small feat in itself. Besides, I believe you have a desire burning deep inside of you. That’s what has carried you during those tough times and that’s what will continue to carry you in the future.”

I was shocked to hear him say that. I had told no one about my dreams. I was afraid to because my family was such that were I to tell them I wanted to make a name for myself, they’d say that I was “getting above my raisings” and then do everything they could to “bring me down a notch or two.”

“How did you know? I’ve tried to hide that?”

“Kin meets kind…”

“And knows,” I interrupted in a voice crackling as I fought to maintain my composure.

“Now you get the picture. To complete this cycle, you only have to do three things. Number one, accept my gift; number two, promise to live your life in an honorable and worthy manner, because the rest will take care of itself over time; and three, promise to pass this legacy on to two more people. Will you do that for me?”

“Yes,” I said and I wrapped the three boxes back up into the bag and then clutched them to my heart for all I was worth.

“I’ve charged you with an awesome responsibility. I’ve known tens of thousands of people in my life and you are only the second person I felt worthy enough to be let in on this little secret. I am confident that you will carry on this tradition, because, regardless, of what you now think, you are a good man and have the makings of a great one.”

“Th-th-thank you,” I mumbled as I fought back the tears that began to flow out of me. I felt ashamed that he was seeing this timid and emotional side of me. I never liked to show emotion. I considered it a weakness. I was a Marine Corps Officer and an all around tough guy. I must have looked like a babbling idiot as I began to tremble as the sheer enormity of it all hit me like a Mack truck.

“My obligation is complete,” whispered my uncle as he too fought to overcome his own emotions. “I know that I will leave the chain a bit stronger than it was when I joined it.

“We are never to talk of this again. As far as I’m concerned, this didn’t happen. This conversation never took place. Do you understand?” He looked at me expectantly.

“Kin meets kind and knows,” I choked out a whisper.

One of the pictures I came across brought back the most wonderful memory I have as a child. I was twelve years old and was playing Little League Baseball. We had sixteen teams and four divisions in our league. The divisions were originally named. They were the North, South, East and West divisions. Our division was the South Division and it consisted of four teams. They were the Senators, the Yankees, the Athletics and the Reds, which just happened to be my team.

The Senators were the best team and they were the shiftiest. They were the type that would do anything to win. Most of the players on that team were related and their coach and manager were brothers. They owned our division for about four years. Once it was discovered that the brothers routinely played thirteen and fourteen year-olds during games, they were banned and things began to tighten up among the teams.

My memory is from when we were in the semi-finals of the league championship. The winning team would be going to Ashland for the regional championship and who knew after that. We went into the tournament as the third ranked team and had made quick work of the Cubs and Indians. We were now facing the Yankees. They were the second best team in the league and they had beaten us two out of the three times we had played that summer. It was the bottom of the sixth and last inning and we were down six to four. I had only one athletic skill as a child, I could knock the socks off a baseball and as a result, I lead the league in batting average and on base percentage. I was the clean up batter for my team.

There were runners on first and third when I came up to bat. We had one out when I stepped up to the plate.

“Hey batter-batter, hey batter,” chattered the other team as I tapped my bat against home plate.

“You ready,” asked the umpire.

“Yep, I’m taking this one deep,” I bragged. This angered the pitcher because he threw one right at my head, but I ducked out of the way.

“Ball one,” shouted the ump. He then looked at the Yankee’s coach and pointed. “If he throws another one like that, I’m tossing him and I’ll file a complaint against you and your team at the board.”

“Lighten up. It was an accident,” said their coach even though everyone knew he was lying.

“Test me,” was the ump’s only reply.

“Lighten up Alan,” shouted the Yankee’s manager, the coach’s brother-in-law.

The next pitch was high and outside and I took it for a second ball. I was getting angry at this point, because I wanted to hit the gaming winning homerun, but they weren’t cooperating with my fantasy.

The third pitch was at my feet and another ball. I was now sitting on a count of three balls and no strikes. I looked down at my coach and he tipped his cap with his right hand. This was our signal to take the pitch. I thought about it for less than a second. I didn’t care what they coach said, I was going to swing at the next pitch. I was right because the next pitch was right down the middle. As I watched the ball come hurdling towards me, I could see the red thread just as plain as day. I took a deep breath, raised my left leg up and planted it just before I began to pull with my left arm and push with my right. I heard the crack of the ball just before I got half way through my swing.

The events of the next few seconds are as fresh in my mind as the day they happened. The ball shot from my bat like a round from a rifle. It whizzed past the first baseman before he even had a chance to open his glove. Dust bounced off the back of the infield as the ball hit the ground and kept on rolling towards right field. It was running parallel with the right field line. Gerry, the kid on third saw the ball hit the ground and he took off for home.

“Yippee,” I shouted as I dropped the bat and began to run towards first base. As I neared the base, my coaching began shouting, “Go, go, go,” as he waved his hands to motion me to keep going. As I neared second, I heard someone yelling, “Stop Randy, stop.” I jumped up into the air and slid into second base. As I hit the plate, I looked towards home and watched my cousin Timmy cross the plate on the run.

I then proceeded to call time out so that I could dust myself off. As I was wiping the dirt off my bottom, I heard by dad say, “Yeah, that’s my boy. You hear that? That’s my boy!” I then looked towards the stands and saw both of my parents standing and clapping. My older sister, Veronica, was so excited she was jumping up and down like a chimpanzee in a zoo.

I don’t remember what happened for the next few seconds because I was lost in that moment. That was the first, last, and only time I’ve ever seen my parents proud of me. I mean they were truly proud of me. I knew in no uncertain circumstances that they were pleased with me. They were and mother still is the type that is willing to point out your faults twenty-four, seven, three-sixty-five, but will not highlight your virtues. Therefore, seeing them brag on me was the most wonderful experience of my childhood. With the exceptions of my wife telling me she loved me on our wedding night and the instant I saw my child for the first time, I’ve never experienced the pleasure I experienced as I stood there on second base basking in the rapture of the moment.

I came to my senses only when the Yankee’s second baseman walked over to me and said, “Good hit.”

“Thanks, I got lucky.”

“Still was a good shot.”

“That’s my son,” yelled my mother. I tipped my hat to that side of the stands to show them that I appreciated their support.

The next guy up to bat was Jeremy Landon. He was small and not apt to hit it far, but all he had to do lay the ball on the ground or put a fly ball into anywhere but left field. He obliged my desires. He popped one into shallow right field and it dropped just past the first baseman’s head. Once it hit the ground, I tagged up and ran as hard as I could to third base. I made it rather easily. I started to head home but my third base coach stopped me.

“We’ll let the next man bring you home,” said Coach Collier.

Our sixth batter was my cousin Rodney. He normally batted first due to his quickness, but the coach had put him in at sixth that day. I don’t know why the coach did that, but he felt that was the best possible place for the fastest kid in the league.

As Rodney approached the plate, the Yankee’s third baseman, a kid with a reputation for being a bully at his school, walked passed me and mumbled something that I couldn’t understand.

“What’d you say?” I politely asked.

“You’re a bunch of whiny punks,” he replied.

“But we’re going to beat you guys.” I could hear the smugness in my reply. “Then we’ll see who does the whining.”

“You’ll be, because I’ll break you down with a bat before I lose to a piece of…”

“Watch your mouth!”

“You gonna make me?”

Before I could reply, I heard the crack from Rodney’s bat. It was a pop up to shallow center field. The outfielder ran in and caught it. He held the ball up to show that he had it. That was all I needed. I tagged the base and began to run towards home plate. I assumed that I’d be able to get to the plate before the outfielder was able to get the ball to the catcher.

As I began to head towards the base, the third baseman stepped in front of me. I ran him over, but also stumbled and fell. As I struggled to get to my feet, he grabbed my left leg and wouldn’t let go of it. Without even thinking about it, I kicked him as hard as I could in the chest with my right leg. He screamed but let go of my leg. I rolled out of the way and came up on my feet.

The smart thing would have been to go back to third and let the coaches argue over the third baseman’s interference. That would’ve been the smart thing, but I wasn’t thinking. I began to run towards home as hard as I could. As I neared the plate, I could see a grin on their catcher’s face. He was planted in place and waiting on me.

I knew that he had the ball, but I was not going to be denied. When I was about four feet from him, I leaped straight at him. As I took off into the air, I lowered my right shoulder and struck him in the stomach like a linebacker using his full weight to bring down a running back.

The instant I hit him he swung up and struck me across the face with his mitt. My teeth rattled and my helmet flew off from the brunt force of his tag. As he struck me, I heard a loud swoosh escape from his lungs. I remember tumbling over him and landing with a thud against the ground.

“He’s out,” cried the home plate umpire.

The slap from the ump’s call caused much more pain than did the actual hit from the catcher’s mitt. I felt like crying as I sat there realizing I had let my team down. I slapped the ground in disgust. It felt like the world had come to an end.

“Wait,” shouted my coach as he came running from somewhere near third base. “The catcher dropped the ball.”

My heart went from breaking to joyful adulation in less than a second.

“No I didn’t,” screamed the catcher.

“Do you have the ball?” asked Alan, the home plate umpire.

“Yes, I do,” barked the opposing player.

“Let’s see it,” demanded the ump, but the boy couldn’t produce it.

I heard Rodney shouting, “It’s over here. It’s over here. There it is.”

As Rodney was shouting, I was looking around for the base. I wanted to ensure that I tagged the plate just in case. It took a couple of seconds to realize that I was sitting on top of it. I sat there grinning like a dirty faced cat caught red-handed in the fish bowl.

The ump and both coaches walked to where a ball lay on the ground. The ump looked at the hind catcher and asked, “Do you have the ball?”

The boy tried to speak but couldn’t. He tried a second time and failed as well.

“Since you don’t have the ball,” said the ump, “I have to change my call. Safe! Game over! Reds win!”

That was the only time I ever felt like a hero and it was awesome. I don’t know how I kept from blowing apart as the sheer thrill of it all exploded from within me. I still get chills thinking about it. My team ran out and carried me off the field. My coach bought me a soda and rubbed my head to show his appreciation for what I did. Even though my mother wanted me to wash my face, I refused. The newspaper was there to take our pictures and I wanted the whole county to see me like that. I wanted them to know that I had given my all and had the face to prove it. That dirt was a badge of honor for me and I would’ve worn it for another month had mom let me, but she made me bath the instant I got home.

My dad bragged about it all the way home and into the evening. He would buy twenty copies of that newspaper and give them to his biggest customers. It was truly the greatest day of my life and it happened when I was only twelve. It was the only time I ever felt like I truly belonged. It was the only instant that I ever felt loved and it came with a condition. I had to win in order to receive it. This was a lesson my young mind fathomed very well and I’d spend my life trying to recreate that magic.

I was barely twenty years old when my best friend’s dad died. Howard had been like a second father to me. He was everything my dad was not. He was friendly, boisterous and loved practical jokes. Unlike my father, who spoke only when necessary, Howard would talk to the Devil himself, or he would if Lucifer would talk back to him. Although a tiny man, he loved to eat with pinto beans, fried chicken, tomatoes and cornbread being his favorite meal. He also had that Irish Catholic tendency to drink too much on an occasion.

He spent forty to fifty hours a week for thirty plus years in the coal mines. He was a union representative and rose to the rank of foreman with Wheelwright Coke and Coal. He smoked and expected to die from Black Lung before the age of sixty-five. He was half-right. He died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-two.

His last words to me were frighteningly prophetic now that I look back on them. One late October Sunday, I had stopped in for supper prior to going back to college. The Sullivan family always had great meals after church and I was hoping to get to eat a piece of lemon pie before I went back and to get one to go as well. I left after the dishes had been washed and put away. As I was leaving, Howard looked at me and asked, “You need any money?”

“Nope, I’ve got plenty.”

“A man can never have enough money or friends…”

“Or women,” I interrupted. That was his favorite saying and I’d heard it so often, I got in the habit of finishing it for him.

He slapped me on the shoulder and laughed. “At least, I raised this one right.”

“Still trying to figure out where you went wrong?”

He began to laugh a second time. Every family has to have a black sheep. You might as well be this one’s.”

“Should I be insulted or flattered by that statement?”

“Both!” Again, he slapped me on the shoulders.

“Are you coming home next weekend or are you going to visit that little flat-bellied girl?”

“Howard,” shouted Jessica, his wife, a tiny dark-haired woman whose personality was the complimentary opposite of her husband’s. “Don’t talk dirty in front of the children!”

“Them kids know what I mean and it ain’t dirty. Besides them kids has done forgot more than I’ll ever know.”

I laughed and gave him a wink. “What’s going on next week?”

“It’s daddy’s birthday and we’re throwing him a party. You know how his parties go.” Howard gave me an exaggerated look with that last statement. They’s apt to be strippers and everything. Who knows about daddy?”

“Can I bring a friend?”

“Is it that little flat belly?”

“Maybe.”

“Bring her. The place could use some class.” He thought about it and then grinned. “I’d better change that. How much class could a girl that likes you have?”

I smiled and patted him on the shoulder and then gave Jessica a bear hug. “Thanks for the pie.” I then waved goodbye to everyone and went to grab the doorknob.

As I went to exit, Howard blew out a puff of air said something I’ll never forget. “I’ll see you next week and if not then, I’ll see you in Heaven.” I laughed it off, but never forgot it. We’d bury him exactly a week from that day.

I got the call the following Thursday saying he’d died in his sleep. He’d had a massive heart attack. The doctor speculated that he went peacefully and never even knew what hit him.

I was lying on my bunk in my dorm room when my roommate entered. We were going to lunch, when the phone rang. Initially, I was going to let it ring and let whomever it was call back later, but he was expecting a call from his parents. “Pick it up,” he said. “That might be important.”

Not wanting to argue with him, I rolled over and picked up the receiver. “Hello,” I said.

“Randy, is that you?” It was my mother.

I instinctively knew that were she was calling at this time of the day something had be wrong. “Mom, is that you?”

“Yes baby, it’s me.”

“Is something wrong? Why are you calling?”

“It’s Howard…”

“What about him? Is he all right?” My heart skipped a beat and then began to race. A sense of dread seemed to fill the air. I closed my eyes waiting for the inevitable news that I knew was coming.

“Dead,” was all she managed to get out before she began crying. Howard was not only my best friend’s father; he was also a cousin on my mother’s side. He and mom had grown up together and had been close all of their lives. His father was my mother’s godfather and my maternal granddad was his. He was more than my best friend’s dad he was family and to those of us with Irish Catholic ancestry, family means everything.

“When? How? Are you sure?” I was so confused from the shock of it all; I didn’t know what to say or even ask at that point.

“His heart.” She tried to say more, but her words broke off and she began to wail into the earpiece of my telephone.

I don’t remember when, but somewhere during that conversation, one of us hung up the telephone. It must have been her, because I seem to recall myself shouting, “Hello, hello,” in the mouthpiece of the telephone.

“What’s the matter?” It was my roommate.

“My best friend’s dad just died.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” The concern in his voice was genuine.

“I need to pack my things and at least one suit,” I said there staring at the wall as he packed my clothes and put them into a suitcase for me. The whole time he was packing my things for me, I sat there oblivious as to what was taking place. Once he finished he spoke.

“Is there anything else?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? I can’t think straight. Give me a minute.” I sat back down on my bed and tried to gather my thoughts, but they didn’t come to me, nor would they until I got home.

I spent the better part of the next three days with my best friend and his family. Prior to that day, I had never really experienced death. I had seen people die and had relatives to pass, but it had never hit that close to home before. The only way to describe the pain I experienced during that period would be to say that it was like having your complete insides ripped out and then put through a meat grinder while still attached to you.

I had never felt such rage, pain and hatred in my life. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. I wanted to make everyone I knew feel as miserable and frightened as I did. I wanted to grab someone and shake him until he explained to me why such a good man had to go when there were other, more deserving, lowlifes running around that would probably live forever. Somewhere inside of me, I was demanding that God show himself and prove to me that He was this loving compassionate Being because I wasn’t buying that argument, nor would I for decades to come.

The day before the funeral, I got a call from my best friend. As was our custom, I stayed up late the night before so I was still in bed when he called. This custom was common for both the Irish and Scottish Highlander sides of my family. Staying up with the dead was something my family had done for countless generations.

My mom knocked on my door and then stuck her head into my room. “Randy, you’ve got a phone call. It’s Tim.”

“Coming.”

I got up out of bed, put on some trousers and walked into the living room. Mom handed me the telephone and said, “I’ve got breakfast cooking.” I shook my head in acknowledgement as I grabbed the receiver.

“Hello.”

“Randy, it’s me. What are you doing this morning?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“Come over to the house. We’re doing something and need your help.”

“When? What is it?”

“Be here by nine and wear some clothes you don’t care to get dirty and some work boots. And, if you have some work gloves, bring them as well.

“Daddy wanted you to be a part of this. Will you be there?”

“Okay,” I said not having an inkling as to what he was talking about. Once we finished talking, I called for my mother. “Mom, what time is it?”

“Seven-thirty. Come in and eat something before you get ready. Apparently, my mother knew what Tim’s call was about, but she never mentioned it.

I arrived at the Sullivan’s house shortly before nine and noticed a dingy white work truck in their driveway. The truck belonged to one of Howard’s brothers, Joseph. Joe was an electrician and owned the F-250 pickup with a toolbox bed attached to it. The tailgate was down and I noticed several shovels, picks, mattocks and an axe lying in the floor bed of the truck. Tim, two of his three brothers, and several other men were milling around the porch and front yard. Most were drinking coffee and they all seemed to be waiting on something.

As I got out of the car, Franklin, Tim’s oldest brother, shouted, “Randy, pull your car around back and park it back there.”

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“We’re waiting on Uncle Jim,” returned Frankie.

James Sullivan was Howard’s older brother. He was the oldest of the twelve children and the first of seven sons. He possessed the dark skin, green eyes and dark hair for which his family was known. Even though he looked like his six brothers, his personality was different. His brothers all had high intellects with the youngest, Tim’s, being off the chart. Jim’s was only average. He also hated manual labor were the others looked on it as a badge of honor. He had won a football scholarship to a small college. He then parlayed that into a banking career and was now a very wealthy man. Along with that, he also held at least three political offices during his life with state senator being his highest achievement.

The summer following Howard’s death, James and I had dinner together. For some unknown reason, he poured his heart out to me. The one secret he told about himself that shocked me was that he always felt like a second-class citizen when he compared himself to his brothers. He had achieved great things because that’s what he felt he had to do in order to fit in with his family. When I asked why he’d shared these feelings with me, he looked at me, winked and said, “When kin meets kind it knows.” Two years later, he would be killed in an automobile accident. A couple years later, I would learn what he meant when he quoted me that odd parable.

I looked at Franklin and asked, “Why, what’s so important that we can’t do it without James?”

“The eldest son and brother have to be present.” Franklin was going to say more but was interrupted by his brother and my best friend.

“And a priest,” interrupted Tim. The good thing about this family is that we’ve got lots of priests. There’s only two kinds of men in this family; the celibate and the unfaithful.”

Before someone could say anything else, Senator James Sullivan turned into the driveway. As he was pulling his car behind the house, Joe shouted, “I got twenty bucks that says that he has no work boots or if he does they’re brand new.”

“Does that mean you only have one twenty dollar bill or twenty dollars per challenge?”

“Sure, this ain’t no challenge; this is highway robbery. Now drop you’re money before he gets out of that car.”

“I’m in,” echoed as a dozen voices answered the challenge.

“Drop your money or better yet, give it to Frankie, Tim and Randy. They’ll keep tabs. I spent the next few seconds collecting various combinations of twenty dollars. By the time the three of us had finished, we had collected two hundred eighty dollars between us.

The next few seconds seemed like an eternity as we all stood there waiting for the senator to get close enough so that we could get a look at his shoes. As he rounded the corner of the house, James was stomping his feet and cursing like a drunken sailor on a twenty-four hour pass.

“What’s the matter big brother?” asked Joe as he fought to keep from bursting out with laughter.

“These darned boots are as uncomfortable as they can be.” The crowd seemed to inhale as one.

“You never wear new boots to this type of thing.”

“I wasn’t going to wear my cowboy boots. They cost over twelve hundred dollars. So…”

“So you had to buy yourself a new pair.” Joe interrupted because he was not going to let himself be robbed of the pleasure that winning the bet was bringing him. Sure, he had lost a beloved brother. He had also lost more than that because Howard was his best friend as well. But, there was something deep within him; something that came from the Celtic blood that flowed in his veins that forced him to seek a challenge and to take a risk even when it may seem inappropriate. It was his way of showing his appreciation of being alive. It would take me years to understand this, but once I did, it made me appreciate all the much more that side of my family.

“Frankie, you boys got my money?”

“Yep,” responded Franklin.

“You, Tim, Ray, and Randy each keep twenty dollars and give the rest to me. How much did I win?”

“Two hundred dollars after our cut.”

“I’d say that’s not a bad day’s wages, wouldn’t you?”

“Without a doubt,” said Franklin as he handed two of his three brothers and me twenty dollars each. He then took out two tens for himself and started to hand the rest to his uncle. He pulled the money back at the last moment, looked his uncle Joe in the eye and asked, “How did you know he’d have on new boots?”

Joe snatched the money and fanned it in front of everyone. He then pulled out another twenty and stuffed it in Franklin’s shirt pocket. “Frankie, you, Tim, Ray, and that half-breed, Randy…”

“Hey,” I protested.

“Don’t worry about it Randy, you’re still family, but it does gall me that your mother didn’t raise you Catholic and chose to raise you children in one of them Saturday go to church cults. I can’t understand her abandoning her faith like that. I’m glad you took up with Tim so Howard and Jessica could see that you got a proper Catholic upbringing. I can see the influence Jessi’s had on you. God’s looking out for you.”

“It doesn’t feel that way to me.”

“That doesn’t make it any less true,” responded Joe.

The thing that upset me was his comment about God caring for me because I had never felt as though was God looking out for me. I felt more as if He was looking out to get me. My parents had left their original religions of Catholicism and Southern Baptist and began following the teachings of a group of Sabbath worshipers. The religion they chose to follow was not one of a loving God, but one of a vengeful God that took pleasure in your misery. He operated out of fear and intimidation rather than love.

“Anyway, back to my lesson,” said Joe. “Frankie wanted to know how I knew Jimmy was going to show up in new boots. That was simple, so simple in fact; I’m surprised the rest of you hadn’t figured it out. Therefore, I feel as though I stole your money, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give it back to you idiots.”

There was laughter at that last statement. They were good Irish Catholics and a bet was a bet to them. Win lose or draw, if you made a bet you dealt with the consequences be they good, bad or indifferent.

“The truth of the matter is that Jimmy has forgotten his roots.”

“What do you mean by that?” James was angry but it was a controlled muffled kind of anger. It seemed to me that he was angry because either he didn’t know what else to be or because he felt, he had to be in order to save face. His anger seemed more contrived that real.

“You’re proving my point for me,” Said Joe. Were you to say that to me, I’d knock you out or at least into next week, but not you. You’ve become so much of a politician you just about have to poll your constituency to see if you should be mad at your little brother even when I’ve gone out of my way to not only insult but to rub your nose in it.”

“I don’t have to stand here and listen to this,” shouted James.

“But you won’t retaliate like a man,” cajoled Joseph.

“Were dad here he’d…

“He’d slap me if I said it about him and he’d agree with me about you.” Before Joe could say another word, Jimmy punched him in the mouth. I remember thinking Joe’s gonna kill him. Joe was not only an electrician he was also a former Army Ranger and third degree black belt in Karate and at thirty-five, he was still chiseled like a professional body builder. He was extremely proportioned and the object of many a women’s eyes. Although he had hundreds of willing applicants, he had not as of yet found a lasting relationship let alone a bride.

As I stood there watching in horror, Joe reached up and wiped way with his thumb the blood that had pooled at he rightmost corner of his lips. He then did something totally unexpected. He slung the blood on ground and then hugged his brother.

“Welcome back big brother. I see you haven’t completely forgotten your roots.”

“I would never forget my family. They mean everything to me.” James was protesting loudly and vigorously, but no one was paying attention to him. They were all looking at Joe.

“Take it easy big brother. You know you’ve got quite a temper on you.”

“I’m Irish Catholic and…

“Damned proud of it!” echoed the rest of the crowd.

“Tim,” called Joe. “Have you seen your namesake?”

“No,” responded my best friend, “but he’s supposed to be here. I told him we were meeting at our house and then going to the gravesite from here.”

“Timothy, my dear nephew, my brother, your namesake, had to become a priest because he’s too scatterbrained to do anything else, except maybe politics.”

James harrumphed but said nothing.

“I’m willing to bet my winnings plus twenty dollars each that he’s waiting for us at the cemetery.

“I’ll take some of that action,” responded James. “I don’t think our brother, the good Father Timothy James Sullivan, has the sense to find the cemetery on his own.”

“I’ll take your bet since you called it,” injected Joe. “But I rescinded the other bets before you guys call. My older brother has a point about my younger brother. That idiot is probably lost somewhere in the next county.”

“Why do you call him an idiot?” asked one of their cousins, a man that I didn’t know. “I heard that he was supposed to be real smart.”

“He’s smart,” said Joe. He’s too smart. He’s so smart they can’t even measure his IQ, but he don’t have walking around sense. Tim is so smart he can talk to you about any thing you want to talk about. If you want to talk to him about Chinese astro-physics, he can talk to you about it and probably do it in Mandarin Chinese. And, don’t ever play chess with him. A good game lasts about five minutes. I taught him how to play and beat him on his first game, but no one has beaten him since. My claim to fame in the family is that I beat him in a chess game.

“The idiot part comes to mind with everyday things. If Tim were here and were you to ask him to get you a shovel out of the back of my truck, it would take him an hour or more to do that. He couldn’t just walk over to the truck, grab a shovel, and bring it back. No, he’d have to calculate the physics it’d take to walk over there and then walk back. Once he got there, he’d then have to feel out the balance and buoyancy of each shovel and once he picked just the right shovel, he’d then have to plot his course back to you. By the time he got back here with the shovel you wouldn’t need it any more.”

“Why’s that?” It was the same guy that had spoken earlier.

“His mind don’t function like ours. When he was a child, mom and dad took him to see a psychiatrist. Richard Taylor, Tim’s psychiatrist, thought he’d hit the mother load when he met the boy. Some of Doc Taylor’s colleagues wanted to take him and raise him in a special school, but mom and dad wouldn’t hear of it. They spent three years of their lives worrying that the government was going to come in a kidnap their baby. Strange thing about it all was that we thought the kid was retarded. He never spoke a word until he was about three or three and a half, but he was reading before he was four. His first words were not ‘mom mom and dad dad’ but an actual sentence. I think mom says his first words were, ‘Mother, may I have some milk?’ He actually said, ‘May I.’”

“You’re lying,” said one of the others.

“No, he’s not,” input James. “Mother swears to it and Joe’s telling you the truth about his reading. The kid could read within a couple of months of talking. By the time he was eight, he spoke three languages.”

“Greek, Latin and English wasn’t it?” asked Joe.

“Yep,” replied James. “He speaks eight or ten or maybe even more and two of them Aramaic and Latin are dead languages. Let’s see,” James began to rub the side of his head as he tried to think, “I know he speaks English, Italian, Spanish, German, French, and Polish. Can you think of any others Joe?”

“Not right off hand, but I’m willing to bet he knows others.”

“You must be joking.” It was the Doubting Thomas of the group. “I know the boy is smart, but what makes you think he knows all those languages?”

“Simple,” replied Joe. “He’s been to Germany, Mexico, Montreal and the Vatican. That takes care of German, Spanish, French and Italian, plus the Pope is Polish so that takes care of that. Latin, Greek and Aramaic are the languages of the Bible so that takes care of them. If he knows any other languages, it’s because he had a weekend to spare and decided to learn a new one.”

“Hogwash,” shouted the Doubting Thomas.

“Believe what you want. It’s no sweat off of my brow.” With that, Joe shrugged his shoulders. He looked at his watch and said, “Whether my baby brother shows up or not we’d better get going. Load up everybody. The caretakers of the cemetery said we could take only one vehicle up on the hill where the grave will be located. I’ll let Jimmy take as many of you up as he can. Me and the boys will walk up behind you. I want to leave someone down by the road to flag that knuckleheaded brother of mine down when he finally passes by.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” I said.

“Why’s that?” asked James.

“I believe I seem him coming.”

“Are you sure?”

“He’s the only person I know with a car that color of yellow.”

“Good point,” injected Joe. “We’d still better load up. We’ll be fewer targets in our vehicles. If you guys don’t believe me, then stand there and take your chances, but remember, I’m not responsible for any accidents caused by Timmy.”

The men made a mad rush for the three trucks that had been set aside to carry them to the cemetery. I was the second person to hop in the back of Joe’s truck. I had ridden with Tim before and thus knew that Joe was not exaggerating about his brother’s inability to navigate a vehicle. By the time the last man was loaded into Joe’s truck, a bright canary yellow Ford LTD attempted to pull into the drive. I say attempted because it took Father Timothy two tries before he made it and when he did make it he pulled in at a forty-five degree angle thus blocking everyone else from getting out of the drive. Joe cautiously exited his truck and motioned for Tim to pull his vehicle up and into the middle of the yard. It didn’t look pretty and it probably hurt the grass but at least he didn’t mow down a fence post as he usually did.

A tall lanky man with thick glasses got out of his car and waved to everyone. “Am I late?” he asked.

“You’re a priest,” replied Joe. “You can never be late.”

Tim nodded his agreement and started to climb into the truck.

“Forgetting something?” asked Joe.

Father Tim didn’t even respond. He slapped himself on his forehead and walked over to his car, opened the door, reached and grabbed his gear. “We can’t do this without the right accoutrements.” He then made his way back to the truck. He was smiling like the proverbial cat in front of the empty birdcage. As he neared, he opened the door to truck. I started to tell him that he had left his car door standing wide open, but thought about it for a second and let it go at that.

As we started backing out of the driveway, Tim looked at me and winked. “I’m glad I got his name and not his brain.” We both laughed and I shook my head in agreement.

About five minutes later we arrived at the foot of the hill on which the cemetery set. We were the last of the three trucks to arrive. The other two had parked just off to the right of a road that snaked its way up the hill and to the various plots. Once we came to a stop, Joe opened the slide rear window on his truck.

“You young fellas hop out and make room for a geezer. Everybody laughed. “Frankie,” called Joe. “Make sure Jimmy gets in back and sit him near the tailgate. It’ll do his pompous ego some good sitting with the rest of us working stiffs.”

Franklin smiled and he looked just like Jimmy. “Aren’t you ever gonna say something nice about Uncle Jimmy?”

“Of course,” snapped Joe. “He’s just gotta die first.” Except for James, we all laughed.

Franklin, Tim, Ray, and I were the last four reach the site because we were forced to carry equipment up the quarter mile trail. We were told that this was to be an exercise in character building. The truth was that we were the youngest and the others were too lazy to do any of the carrying. By the end of the day, we would also have done most of the work as well.

As we were walking up the path, I began to look at the three of them. I had known these boys all my life and spent half my time at their house, but I had never looked at them with a critical eye before. During that fifteen minute walk up that steep hill, I assessed all three of them in addition to their little brother, Keith, and sister, Linda.

Franklin was the oldest. He was two years older than Tim and I. He had dark brown curly hair, green eyes and a stocky build. He was born with a quick whit and his Uncle Joe’s charm. Women were drawn to him like moths to a flame but he was even more deadly because he was a love them and leave them type of guy.

Tim, on the other hand, was born the golden boy. He was born with golden hair, green eyes and his family’s olive skin. He loved to laugh and liked nothing better than to enjoying a good meal with a few beers while being surrounded by family and friends. He had a quiet shyness about him that drove women crazy. Like all the men in his family, he could drive a woman wild with desire by simply smiling.

Ray, who was a year younger than Tim and I, was the grand accumulation of the men in his family. Although most of the men of the Sullivan family were considered good looking, Ray was the undeniable king of the ladies. He was the cat’s meow when it came to women. He had hair that was neither light brown nor golden blond, but somewhere in between. He had the green eyes and dark skin of the Sullivan’s, but his face seemed to be perfectly balanced. He also possessed a shyness and childlike innocence about him. These characteristics made him irresistible to women.

Linda had grown up a chubby girl, but by the time she had graduated high school, she had her pick of the boys. She was the picture of her mother. She had jet black hair, dark skin and brown eyes. She was a testament to the Cherokee blood pumping in her veins. Her looks lent an exotic air to her and that made her all the more appealing. The fact that she was built better than a nuclear battleship and carried within her a kind heart and sharp whit nearly drove the boy’s crazy with desire.

Keith, the youngest, was still a boy when his father passed. He favored Tim but had his father’s laid back attitude. His personality was such that nothing shook him even as a child.

By the time we arrived, Joe and Father Tim had the men in a circle. They seemed to be waiting for something. As I was pondering the meaning of this, Father Tim called to us. “Hurry up boys. We’ve already got a space reserved for each of you.”

James raised his hand to indicate where we were supposed to be.

We made our way over to where we were supposed to stand. Once we were in our designated spot, someone handed each of us a plastic cup containing what I thought was wine. Once we had our drink, Father Tim nodded and James returned the gesture. The rest of us began to bow our heads and Father Tim began to speak.

“We are gathered here to celebrate the life of one of our own, my brother, Howard. The time we spend here must be one of happiness and not sorrow. We honor our loved one by celebrating all that was good and wonderful about him. Now clasp hands.”

We put down our cups and obeyed.

“Gentleman, we now begin a ritual that has been in our family for generations. It dates back hundreds maybe even thousands of years. There are only two rules to the ritual. The first being that everything you say about Howard Trevor Sullivan must be true and it must be funny or a bit insulting without being too harsh. This is a celebration of life and as such, it must be funny and lighthearted. Since I was Howard’s brother and his priest, I’ll go first. We will then begin to my left and move around until everyone of you has said something about the honored guest.

“Howard was my older brother and the biggest jerk I’ve ever known. He’d rather aggravate you as breath. He once sewed the legs of my trousers together so that I showed up for my first mass fifteen minutes late. He denied it of course, but later had to admit it. God bless him.”

The men repeated the blessing.

Over the next half hour or so, each of us got our turn to toast the man. We were only allowed to take a drink at two junctions. We were allowed to take a drink only after James, the oldest brother still alive had spoken, and when Franklin, the oldest son, had spoken. Most of the stories were hilarious. By the time it was over with, my stomach ached from all the laughter.

When it came my time, I told the story about Howard getting his hand caught in and then releasing a mousetrap onto his fingers. When I came to the punch line, they roared from laughter.

“Only Howie could do something like that,” shouted Joe and this only added to the humor of it all.

We took one more drink at the end of the ritual. Father Tim then blessed us and begged the Blessed Virgin to look out for his brother. His prayer was short and to the point. He ended it with all of us repeating a Hail Mary.

Once the prayer was finished, James took over from Tim. He directed the men to put up the booze and to get ready to work. They did but only after a bit of grumbling about the ritual being over too soon. James put on a pair of glove, grabbed a pick, walked over to where the grave was to be dug and he struck it to the ground. He continued to do this for a couple of minutes. He had torn up a great deal of the ground when Joe called for him.

“You’d better stop,” said Joe. “We don’t want to have to bury another Sullivan boy.

“I’m all right,” protested James.

“And I’m President, Reagan.” Joe gently shoved his brother to the side and began to dig. After a few stroke of the pick, he asked for a shovel and then began to scoop out the dirt and grass. He did this a couple of more times and then passed the instruments on to Franklin who repeated the sequence before passing it to Tim, who passed it to Ray, who passed it to me.

Over the next few hours, we each took shifts at using the pick, mattock or shovel. We had a man from the funeral home there to ensure that we were doing things properly. He stood off to the side and read the paper only stopping every now and then to ensure we were progressing along as planned.

A couple hours into the digging, Joe called Tim and me over to talk with him. He took the rest of his winnings from this morning and gave it to Tim. “Last night, I called the Pic Pac and ordered some food. I want you two to take my truck and go pick it up.”

“What did you get Uncle Joe?” asked Tim.

“Forty pieces of chicken, some potato salad, cold slaw, rolls, and two meat and cheese trays. I don’t know how much it will cost, but that should cover it. Also, I want you to get four cases of pop: two Pepsi, one Diet Pepsi and a Sprite. Moreover, gets some paper plates, spoons, forks, knives and such. Oh yeah, we’ll need a couple of roles of paper towels.

“Is that all?” I spoke before Tim could.

“If you boys want a dessert, then get whatever you like. Get back here soon or this bunch’ll riot.” We both smiled and nodded our heads together. Half an hour later, we returned with the food and called for the men to eat. Within twenty minutes, they were finished and Tim and I were picking up the garbage. By two o’clock, we were finished. Father Tim blessed the men and sent them on their way.

I felt privileged to be a part of the ceremony even though I wasn’t a close family member. When I asked Joe about it, he told me that Howard loved me like a son and that he wanted me to be involved. I cried when I heard that. It moved me to know that this man loved me that much. Joe, the burly man’s man, hugged me. Once my tears began to subside, he said something I’ll never forget because it sealed my love for this family forever.

“Howard chose well when he chose to call you son. You’ve made a wonderful addition to the family. I’m proud to call you nephew.”

There it was. I had ceased to become more than just a friend. Due to some odd ingrained twist of our Celtic heritage, I had become a member of a family and was thus entitled to all rights, privileges, burdens and obligations associated with it. To this day, that has been the greatest honor ever bestowed upon me because it was earned through love rather than physical strength or force of will.

The first memory to come to mind was one that took place when I was getting ready to enter the second grade. It’s hard for me to relive it because I cannot do it without tears filling my eyes. Try as I might, every time I relive it, I cannot get the outcome to change.

“You expect me to believe that?” she asked as she stood there with her hands on her hips while a thin four foot long hickory limb that resembled a rapier dangled from under her arm. “Well, do you?” The anger in her voice echoed throughout the tiny living room and she began to tap her right foot out of anger or impatience. With her left hand, she reached up wiped away the strand of dark hair that had fallen in front of her eyes. As I looked at her eyes, I could see the anger and hatred seething from deep within her soul.

“I haven’t got all day!” Her voice began to crescendo like an approaching storm as the anger that was welling in her began to detonate.

“What’s the use?” I answered with a question. “If God Himself told you the truth you wouldn’t believe it.”

“How dare you bring God into to this?” She was silent only for a second before she exploded with the force of an erupting volcano. Without saying a word another, she began to flail on me with the small but frightening stick she carried. Instead of hitting me across the bottom, which was protected by a pair of red shorts and white underwear, she began to wail upon my bare legs.

The pain to my naked flesh was excruciating. It felt as though her switch ripped tiny specks of flesh with each blow. I instinctively put my right hand behind me hoping to decrease the severity of the strikes falling upon my naked legs. That was a mistake. All it did was create another area of agony upon my body. We danced around the room as she held my left arm and pivoted with me as I ran around in circles trying in vain to flee the source of my affliction.

“Cry, damn you, cry!” She shouted this as she wailed upon me.

I refused to comply with her request. To cry meant defeat, which would mean that I had lost this battle of wills and even though I was barely seven years old, I was not about to let her win this one. The only weapon I had in this war was stubbornness and I was not about to surrender that to her. After all, I was in the right and she was in the wrong. Why should I allow her to win? To surrender would mean that all the agony I was experiencing would be for nothing and I needed a win even if it were a Pyrrhic victory. Although I was but a child, I understood the ramification of this contest. Sure, she’d extract her pound of flesh, but I’d still win this battle even if it was only taking place within the recesses of my mind.

“Cry and I’ll stop,” she shouted. “If not, I’ll cut the blood out of you and then pour alcohol on the wounds.” Even though I was screaming on the inside due to the gut-wrenching horror that was being inflicted upon my body, I remained silent because my mind was secure in the fact that I was winning this struggle. I took solace in the thought, “I’m winning.”

After a second series of severe blows rained down on me like a south Pacific typhoon, she stopped. Using all her strength, she pulled me to her and leaned over me so that her face was mere inches above mine. She was so close I could smell the coffee on her breath. “Are you going to cry now or do I need to give you some more tea?”

I didn’t say a word. I wanted to scream in deviance but I knew that would cost me dearly and at this point I was all but broken. A few more licks and I’d surrender to her demands.

How many lashes had she given me? I honestly didn’t know. It may have been sixteen or it might have been sixty. I couldn’t say for sure. The one thing I do remember was that she was winded. Her breath was coming in short and shallow spurts; the kind a sprinter makes at the end of a run. I knew she couldn’t keep this up for very much longer, therefore, I smiled defiantly. This cost me several more stripes across the legs but they had started to become numb by this time. These last few doses of “sugar,” as it was called produced no further ill affects upon my body.

Once she finished administering the proper dosage to me, she shoved me out of the way and told me to get out of there or she’d whip me again. I didn’t need a second warning because I was out of there in a flash. I ran out the door, made my through the backyard and across the tiny creek that ran behind our house. I ran as fast as I could to a small hide-a-way in the hills behind our house. There I slid in to a tiny crevice that I used to shield me from the rest of the world.

Once there and thus secure in the knowledge that no one could see me, I began to cry. It started slowly, at first, but I was whimpering like a baby within a couple of minutes. Once the tears began to flow the feelings in my legs returned and I had to get up off my bottom and sit on my knees while leaning forward on my elbows. I must have looked like a devoutly religious cleric, as I stayed there prostrated on my knees and hunkered over to where I was facing the mountain that ran parallel to the creek behind our house.

I kept my sanity only by repeating over and over again the lyrics to the song, Town of El Paso. The strange thing about that song is that over thirty-five years later a feeling of melancholy comes over me whenever I hear it. When that song begins to play, I smile because I’m thankful for the gift of hope given to me by a complete and total stranger but I also wince from the flash of pain that accompanies that frightful memory.

Sometime later on that day, I came back to my senses. How long I laid there in the fetal position crying like a brokenhearted child, I can’t say for sure. It must have been at least a couple of hours because the second I became cognizant of my surroundings I noticed that evening was closing in and we were a long way from it when I had sought out my secret place of refuge.

The sting from my beating was gone but had been replaced by dozens of whelps that were tender to the touch. The moss that I sat on soothed the pain so I decided to sit there just a bit longer. Occasionally I’d move and dirt or grit would rake across one of my stripes and I’d wince from pain. Except for those infrequent reminders, my body had already forgotten about the pain, but my mind hadn’t nor would it ever forget.

For the next half hour or so, I began to question what had happened. Why had she done this? Why wouldn’t she believe me? She stated that I was a sneak and a liar and that she couldn’t stand either one of those. Her statement shocked me. I was telling the truth. Couldn’t she see that? Why would God not show her the truth? If He loved me so much, why wouldn’t He make her see the truth as it really was and not as twisted by someone else?

Someone had broken her favorite lamp and she blamed it on me. I denied it of course, but she refused to believe me. The memory of her words still cut into me like a jagged knife.

“If you didn’t do it, then who did, ghosts? No, not ghosts, rats? Yes, that’s it. Rats did it!” The sarcasm in her voice dripped like poison dangling from a scorpion’s stinger.

I tried to tell her but she refused to listen. The obvious answer was that my younger brother and her favorite child perpetrated the deed. He denied doing it even though he was the guilty party. His denial was all she needed to know. If “Lil’ Brother” said he didn’t do it, then he didn’t do it. Since the only others in the house were my infant sister and me, that left only one other person to blame. That person was me. Despite my denials and my pleadings with mother to listen, I still got punished for something I didn’t do. Were this an isolated incident, it would not have stayed with me but it was not just an isolated incident. It was a daily fact of life for me during my childhood. Though I hated it, God had relegated me to the position of a modern day whipping boy.

I became angry over this injustice and I wanted to strike out at someone and make them feel as miserable as I felt. I couldn’t strike out at my family because I loved them; therefore, I struck out at the only logical person left, God. Why would He allow such cruelty? If He hated me that much, I’d be honor bound to return the favor.

Not all events in my life as a child were so traumatic. I do have some wonderful memories of my childhood days in Appalachia. My favorite recollection took place during the Christmas Holiday of my first year in school. That year Santa, also known as mother, got me the two greatest gifts I have ever received. The first was a Marx toy soldier playset based upon the Battle of Iwo Jima. I loved that thing with all my heart. It would go on to be my second favorite toy of all time. My favorite childhood toy was the second gift I received that year. It also was from Marx and it was a playset, but it didn’t involve toy soldiers. It contained pioneers. It was the Fort Boonesborough toy set. To this day, Marx toys are still my favorite. I love their “Best of the West” and “Valiant Knight” action figures. I still collect them and seeing one on display even now takes my breath. I guess I’ll always love them.

It was nearly dark when I finally made it back to the house. The rest of the family had eaten supper and mom was waiting on dad to get home from work. My father was a supervisor for a large construction company. At that time, he made great money but worked long hours. We were put in the bed by 8:30 and he didn’t get home to around 8:45. We got up around seven, which happened to be the same time he was usually heading out the door. This was a daily occurrence and as a result, my father was never around except for certain special occasions such as Christmas, Easter, funerals and weddings.

As a child, my father was a complete and total mystery to me. He was a combination of Albert Einstein, Superman and James Bond as far as I was concerned. I never got to know him that well so I began to make up fantasies about him. My father wasn’t an ordinary boss for a construction company. He was a crime fighting, spy-busting hero that saved the world at least a dozen times before I started to school.

Thanks to my fantasies, I considered myself the luckiest kid alive. Since my real dad was cold, distant and aloof, my fantasy father was just the opposite. Even though he had managed to save the world on a daily basis, he still found the time to take me hunting and fishing. Even though my real father never played with me, my fantasy dad taught me how to throw a curve ball that not even the mighty Johnny Bench could touch. He also taught me to play basketball so well that the University of Kentucky Wildcats wanted me as their top player, but I loved the Marshall University Thundering Herd and wanted to play football for them. The Marshall fantasy became even more real to me after I learned about the team that was killed in a plane crash when I was a very small child.

The problem with my fantasies and out-and-out lies is that I not only told them but also began to believe them myself. I got into fights with my friends because I refused to admit to the lies I told them about the exploits of my father. I knew I was lying, but lying was all I had; therefore, I used it for all that it was worth. I wanted a Ward Cleaver father figure so badly I thought that if I lied enough those falsehoods would eventually come true. Unfortunately, they never did!

As a child, I was chubby and awkward. I was a slow runner and a poor athlete. I was the kid you had to take on your team and not one of those you wanted to pick. I loved competition and was thrilled when I got picked but was usually relegated to certain tasks. I hiked the ball in football. I brought the ball in when playing basketball and lastly, I batted last and played either hind catcher or right field in baseball. If we played tag, I was one of those people you wanted to be it because there were few kids that I could out run.

I was clumsy and shy as a child. The only place that I felt like I belonged was in the fantasy worlds I created. In them, I was everything. I was the war hero that single handedly stopped the Russians, the Nazi’s and the gorillas from the Planet of the Apes movies from taking over the earth. I was Captain Kirk, Flash Gordon, Daniel Boone and James West all rolled into one person. Although I was an outcast in the real world, I was everything in mine. I would run to this world when things got to heavy for me and that seemed to be a daily experience for me. I was the loner and the backward child, but I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be appreciated and to feel like I was loved. I wanted to feel that love and not just to assume it existed.

That is why I gave one hundred percent to everything I did. In my mind, I told myself that were I to be great at something, then my parents would love me; they’d have to love me. Were I the smartest kid in the class, then they’d love me. Were I the best baseball player on the team, then they’d love me. Were I the best actor in the school play, then they’d love me. I tried several activities, but none of them got me the attention I so desperately craved from my parents.

In many ways, I had wonderful parents, especially my mom. Most kids would have killed to have the family I had as a child. I assume I was loved and I cannot emphasize that enough even if only to myself, but I felt like an outsider looking in through a window. Thanks to my recessive genes of blond hair and light eyes, I looked nothing like my siblings. Given that fact, I felt like an intruder in my own family.

Don’t get me wrong, they were wonderful but they were still different from me. It wasn’t just the looks that made them different. It was their dreams, hopes, attitudes, desires and wants that separated them from me or me from them depending on how you want to look at it. They were happy with the status quo, but I was constantly beating my head against the wall in their world. They were satisfied with their station in life. I wanted nothing more than to excel. I wanted to prove to the all world and especially myself that I was worthy of the life I had been given and one day, hopefully very soon, that will happen.

I grew up thinking I was unloved and second best. My one and only fantasy was to fit in, to be a part of something and to be loved. I believe that I was loved, but I felt as though I was loved only as a condition. I wanted unconditional love. I wanted, if only once, to be put in first place. It never came, or at least it hasn’t come as of yet.

The moss on which I was sitting was soft and when I finally cried myself out, I began to look at my surrounding and that’s when I noticed that at least a couple of hours had passed. Dad would be getting home soon. I wanted to head over to the house but figured I’d probably wind up getting another whipping for something I hadn’t done if I went back too soon. Still, I was getting hungry and it was past supper time, so I decided to get back to the house so that I could get in bed before I got into any more trouble.

I stood up and began wiping the dirt and moss off my legs and arms. The whelps where the limb had broken the skin hurt like the dickens each time I raked dirt across them. I winced every time that happened, but I forced myself to continue. Were I to drag dirt into the house, she’d give me some more “tea” and I was not in the mood to carry another whipping.

I made my way across the creek and cautiously crept towards the house. I wanted to see what kind of mood she was in before I went inside. Were she angry or grumbling about something, then I wanted to avoid her at all costs. Were she in good spirits, then I’d go in, eat as quickly as I could and then get out of her way as soon as possible.

It’s weird what fear will make us do. As a child, I was petrified of mealtime. As a result, I’d eat my meals as fast as I could so that I could excuse myself and thus get away from the table so that I could lessen my chances of doing something to incur the wrath of one of my parents.

One of the dinner table memories that still haunts me took place when I was only five years-old. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was my sister, Veronica’s birthday and we were having dinner. Mom was serving steak with gravy and mashed potatoes. I was reaching for seconds on the gravy when I accidentally knocked over a glass of milk. What happened next still frightens me to this day.

My mother began screaming at me. “You clumsy ox, don’t you have any better sense than that? My daddy always said I’d regret ever having you! Mark my words, you’ll be dead or in prison by the time, you’re eighteen! I must have done something truly horrible for God to curse me by giving me something like you to raise.”

With that, she picked up the glass and splashed what was left of the milk onto my face. “Maybe that will help you to remember that milk ain’t cheap and we can’t afford to be wasting it.”

It sure did. I panic to this day whenever my own child accidentally spills milk. I laugh it off and say, “Could’ve happened to anybody.” I usually tremble when I clean up the liquid. While fixing the mess, I hear a voice screaming, “You clumsy ox. You’re absolutely hopeless. God have mercy on something like you.” The odd thing about it is that voice in my mind is screaming at me and thankfully not my beloved child.

As I climbed onto the porch, I peered into the window that looks in on the kitchen. Mom was stirring a skillet of ground hamburger meat with a wooden spoon. I scanned the room and noticed two yellow Old El Paso boxes sitting open on the counter. Tacos, I thought as I saw the boxes. We were having my favorite meal in the world for supper. I was so excited that I forgot my caution and entered the house without judging her mood.

“There’s my baby,” she said as I entered the house. “Where on earth have you been?”

“Are we having tacos for dinner?” I asked excitedly.

“They’re you favorite. I know you like them.”

“I sure do.” I was about to say something when I remember that she had laid out a couple of chickens to fry earlier. “I thought you we were going to have fried chicken.”

My intent was to get clarification from her. That was my intent, but my actions set her off and she reacted thusly.

“This is the thanks I get? I work my hind end off slaving away for you and even go out of my way to make a special meal for you and are you grateful for it? No, you’re not! Why? I’ll tell you why. You’re the most ungrateful God forsaken excuse of a child that ever lived. Can’t I do something nice for you without having you questioning my intentions?”

Her words hurt worse than the whipping she had given me earlier. My stomach convulsed and I nearly bent over as my system tried to brace itself for the beating that I thought was coming. The odd thing was that she didn’t hit me. She began to berate me instead. At first, her words were sharp but not ferocious, but as she got into it, her words became more and more spiteful and hate-filled.

“I’m sorry momma; I wasn’t trying to hurt you…”

“Son, you’ve been nothing but a pain to me since the day you were born. I’ve tried to be a good mother to you, but you won’t let me. All you care about is you! Everything is about you! It’s always you, you, you!

“God must have really hated me to have given me a son like you. Sometimes when I go to bed at night, I pray that He’ll remove this curse from me. My only regret is that I’m not like other mothers I know. Why can’t I just walk off and leave you to root hog or die. I don’t deserve you. I regret that you ever saw the light of day.”

“So, do I.”

She slapped me with an open hand and my jaw popped like a shotgun blast. “How dare you talk to me like that?”

She slapped me several more times before I was able to get out the door and away from her. As I jumped off the porch and began running around the house, she shouted, “Don’t you run from me you son of a …” I never heard the rest of it.

Later, as darkness was starting to fall, she found me sitting on a rock near the creek that ran by our house.

“There’s my boy,” she shouted. “Where have you been? Momma’s been looking for you.”

Alarmed by her words, I looked up from the creek and saw her holding a tray in one had and a sixteen-ounce returnable Pepsi bottle in the other.

“I brought my boy some supper. Hungry?”

Too afraid to talk, I nodded my head in the affirmative.

“Come on up here and eat. I’ve got you three tacos and a bottle of pop with slushy ice in it. I know how much you like slushy ice. You want it?”

I smiled because I was afraid if didn’t I might set her off again. “Leave it there and I’ll be up to get it in a second,” I said mostly out of fear.

“I can’t hug you from up here. Now come on up and give momma a hug. I’ve got your dad’s supper cooking and don’t have time to waste.

I climbed the bank and made my way over to where she was standing. As I neared her, she handed me the soda. I reached out and cautiously took it.

“Go ahead and have a drink. I know how much you like it.”

As I started to put the bottle to my lips, my mother grabbed me and pulled me into her with her free hand. This frightened me so badly that I panicked and accidentally dropped my Pepsi. The bottle shattered into a million pieces.

“Can’t you do nothing right!” she screamed as glass shot every which way. “You’re hopeless! If I get cut, I’ll wear you out for it and don’t come to me if you get cut. I won’t fix it.”

She looked at me with hatred burning in her eyes and then she gave me an evil smile that sent shivers of terror up my spine. “If that’s the way you want it, then that’s the way you’ll get it,” she said as she tossed the contents of the tray into the creek.

As I spent hours going over those albums, my mind kept coming back to one thought; God. How could a being that I don’t believe exists have such control over my family? Dozens of my relatives relied upon, revered and even feared this creature, but I never understood why. To them, everything was God’s will be it good or bad, but I failed to see this omnipresent creature in every event of modern life. I guess that has been the primary question that has burned in my mind since childhood. Is there a God and what is he, she or it really like?

The undeniable existence of God is a concept that nearly all of my family grew up believing. I was taught about such a being from the earliest part of my childhood. My family believes deeply in an almighty creator that watches over all of mankind. I should rephrase that last statement. I should say that they believe in a being that stands with His right arm in the cocked position while looking down on man. He’s there staring down from His perch and waiting with baited breath for someone to do something that will send Him into a raging frenzy and thus justify the terror that He will rain down on them.

The thing that frightened me the most about Him is the unfairness of His judgment. He is arbitrary in His dealings with mankind. I’ve heard my family lament the evil He poured on them for one very tiny little mistake while at the same time He allowed the vilest of creatures to prosper. I’ve had example after example of His unfairness pointed out to me by my dearly beloved mother and her family.

If God were as fair as we were taught, why then would my neighbor who is a known adulterer win the lottery and a dear friend’s father that never smoked a cigarette in his entire life suddenly come down with lung cancer? If God were truly fair, then why would my family constantly be under His thumb? If He were truly fair, then why is it that my family, who were truly faithful and nearly holy, punished when others who committed heinous crimes, were given a pass on their sins? These and many other inconsistencies were observed by me on a daily basis as I saw my family lamenting their ill fortunes at the hands of an unfair but powerful God.

The God my family taught me about is a being that enjoys nothing better than stirring up trouble and then watching mankind try to correct His interference. If you doubt me, then explain away World Wars I and II; African poverty and starvation; AIDS and other such plagues that He has allowed to ravish mankind. Why would He allow cruelty to take place on a global scale if he were truly a kind and loving Being? Oh sure, He heals someone on an occasion or two just to show that He’s not totally hard-hearted, but most of the time He stands from his perch and watches and waits. He seems to delight in torturing those that are trying to follow Him. His other pleasure seems to be winking at the sins of those that laugh at Him and ridicule His existence. It’s almost as if He wants to force those that worship Him to live through their own private purgatory here on Earth. That way they can enjoy the benefits He has to offer once they are dead. The evil on the other hand get to delight in the riches of this life before they are punished for their sins.

I was taught about a God that would erase a lifetime of good work for one little mistake. It is as though the old adage, “One oh crap destroys a million atta boys.” We view God as this creature that is waiting for you to make that one little slip that will destroy all the good you have accomplished or ever will accomplish. A person can devote his entire life to God; he can live in poverty and feed the poor; he can heal the sick and comfort the dying; he can lead thousands of souls to God, but let him slip up just once and he’s a goner. He can have practiced fifty years of sin free living and say one little curse word while angry and all he’s done is for naught. That man or woman is Hell bound on the Purgatory Express and there’s nothing he can do about.

That’s been my impression of God since I was a baby. He’s to be feared, respected and viewed from afar, but He’s not to be loved and trusted. Like the ultimate Mafia Dom, He has the power to control life or death, comfort or discomfort, poverty or riches, health or sickness and a host of other competitive outcomes. He is the ultimate arbitrator of man’s fate and He can be as fickle as a preteen girl that has just discovered that she likes the idea of having a boyfriend.

Given these beliefs, is it any wonder that we feared and distanced ourselves from this Being? As with a steaming caldron of explosive material, we are unlikely to be hurt by God if we just keep our distance from Him. Sure, there has to be benefits from Him or else why would so many people choose to follow Him? However, I believe that the benefits, such as they are, do not outweigh the potential costs associated with them. This is especially true when you realize that there is a greater possibility of the disaster befalling you than the benefits hitting you.

These are the beliefs that I was taught as a child. These are the intrinsic values that my family carried with them and thus passed on to their children. These are the concepts that we accepted without question. These are the moral blocks upon which were built our fragile lives. These were the bricks which if pulled would collapse upon our heads everything on which we built our beliefs. It is the collapse of these values that created within me a sense of loss that was so overpowering it nearly destroyed everything I held dear to me up to and including my very life. If you can understand this, then you can understand the struggles that I have gone through during my four plus decades upon this planet so “lovingly” created by God.

________________________________________________________________________

My earliest memory involving God was when I was child of three maybe four. I was lying in bed with my older sister, Veronica, and my younger brother, Alex. My father was away due to work and it was just mom and the four of us kids at home. My uncle was visiting and mother had put the three youngest of us in bed less than half an hour before hand. I was stirring restlessly at the foot of the bed and my sister, who was a couple of years older than me, was playing with my two-year-old brother. They were under a sheet and they were laughing about something. As I looked to see what was so funny, I heard what sounded like a firecracker popping and I saw the sheet light up for a split second.

As soon as the lightning flashed, I heard my little brother scream in agony. A guttural roar from my sister instantly followed his scream. They continued to shriek as if Satan himself was trying to grab a hold of them in order to drag them down to the depths of Hell itself. I remember being terrified by their cries and I began to fear for my very existence.

Within seconds, my mother and her younger brother were at the door. They rushed in and he flipped on the overhead lights. The rest of what took place happened too fast for my childish mind to comprehend and even today, I still have trouble making sense of it all. My mom rushed to the bed and ripped back the sheets. There was a smallish black ring on the white covering and a rancid odor in the air. I don’t know why, but I remember that incident in full Technicolor nearly forty years later, but I do.

The one scene that is still burned in my mind and probably always will be is that of my brother. I can close my eyes and see him and see everything in exact detail. He was wearing a white T-shirt stained with black soot and pair of light blue plastic panties that engulfed his diaper. His hair was sticking straight up in the back, but seemed to be singed on left side of his head; just above his ear. He was sitting up in bed holding his tiny black stained hands to his eyes. The thing that I remember the most was his screaming. He was screaming as if he’d been set upon by a pack of hungry wolves.

I can still see my beloved mother crying and beseeching God’s help for her youngest, at that time, child. She cried, begged, pleaded, and howled to God. She prayed that He would intervene on her behalf and heal my angelic baby brother. She was still calling to God when she and my uncle left the house to take the baby to the emergency room. Veronica and I were left in Karen’s, my oldest sister, charge. She was only about eight at the time.

I barely remember the rest of that night. I know that he was rushed to the hospital and that he suffered gunpowder burns to the face and eyes. I also know that the doctors stated that had the gun not contained blanks he would have been killed, but I personally don’t remember that and have had to relive it through second-hand accounts from other people. The only other event I remember about that night is that it is the first memory I have of me of seeing my brother wearing glasses. They were black Clark Kent glasses and they seemed to engulf his elfin face. I remember seeing them and thinking that they were much too big for him. Although I am still confused by that night, I’ve always kept burning in the back of my mind the memory of how God failed my mother when she needed him the most.

Once a person hits his forties, he begins to look over his life with a critical eye. What would he do differently? What would he not change and most of all, what would he do to prevent the unnecessary and pain and suffering he has inflicted upon those he loves? Even if this pain was unintentional, he still regrets it due to the fact it was acted upon those whom he cherishes.

As a man now in his middle ages and as I look upon my life, I see many such incidents that I have created or even encouraged during my tenure here upon this island we call Earth. Were I given a chance, I’d do many things differently, but only if I knew they’d bring me to the same place in life in which I now stand. Sometimes I wonder if that was what God meant to happen. Are these incidents just random acts or parts of some super plan He cooked up from the beginning of time? Though I have lived through many traumatic and caustic events during my life, I have also seen my share of pure unadulterated joy during that same period. Which one is the true destiny of mankind and which one is the result of our own stupidity is a question I can’t answer, but there has to be a solution to life. Of that, I am as sure as sure can be.

I don’t know, perhaps that is what life is about. Perhaps we are nothing but mindless caged rats unwittingly locked in a psychological maze to be studied by an alien species or some being more advanced than we are. Perhaps God set life into motion during some comic epiphany He had while crafting His creation. Whatever the case, somewhere out there some being is looking upon us and laughing his head off as he observes the absolute stupidity of this creature known as man.

My second memory of my childhood is of me eating chocolates in a small shotgun house in which we lived. My dad had been hurt and money had gotten a little tight at this time. The house was located just off the highway at the foot of a small hill that was surrounded by half dozen of the interconnected mountains which are all too common in Appalachia. I was maybe four years old. I devoured the whole box of them, but left two for my older sisters to share. Even from an early age, my mother taught us to share what we had. She was so effective in her teaching that even at that tender age I had an inkling of what was right and wrong.

I remember seeing my mother’s face go pale and she began to freak out when she saw me with the candy. “I left the girls some,” I told her. Her answer was a jumbled mass of questions and confusing ramblings. She kept asking me how much I had eaten and I kept telling her that I had left some for my sisters. I can still see the panic in her eyes. She began to stick her fingers down my throat and tried to force me to regurgitate the food I had just eaten. After four vain attempts, she managed create a surge from deep within me. I felt my stomach convulse as its contents emptied out via my mouth and nose.

After the third convulsion, my stomach was completely empty. My mother tried to get me to try one more time, but I couldn’t. She then hugged me and began to wipe the putrid remains from both of our faces and bodies. She then ran her fingers through my hair and said, “I think you need a bath.” I wanted to answer but was too busy crying to speak.

An hour later, we had both bathed and she was heating some milk on the stove for me. She gave me a glass of the warm comfort and put me to bed. I slept soundly that night, but my body didn’t. The chocolate I ate had not been Hershey’s or Mars but Ex-Lax. Because of that night, my mother had to burn one of the beds we owned and could ill afford to lose. It also took three baths before she was finally able to pronounce me clean of the contents of my bowels. One of the odd things to happen from that event was that I developed a disliking for chocolate that continues to this day.

The weird thing about that incident is that my mom saw it as a blessing, but I don’t remember it that way. All I can recall is the pain from the scrub brush used during the baths and the burning of a foul smelling bed the next day. It’s strange that two people can see that same event and one is grateful for it and the other horrified by it. Don’t ask me to explain it to you, because, as I see it, such are the actions of this being we call God.

One last memory from my early childhood stands out in my mind. My father was a manager for a large construction company and as a result, my family moved a great deal. By the time I was in the first grade, I had lived in five states. They included Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. I don’t remember living in some of them, but do have vague memories from others. We were living in a trailer park in Illinois or Indiana when I was about five years old. My parents paid me a dollar a week allowance so long as I did my chores. My favorite one was vacuuming the place. My mom taught me how to do it and I took to it like a duck to water. I used to hide my money in empty cans of frozen Donald Duck orange juice concentrate, which would be, scattered them throughout the house. I was a miserly child so I hid my cans in every nook and cranny I could find. Mom would find a total of twenty-eight cans when we moved. I had managed to save thirty-six dollars in those cans. The following summer I would start my first bank account.

Prior to moving, I took three dollars or eight and a half percent of my net worth and donated to the local Methodist church in order to help feed poor children. My child’s mind thought that I had made a magnanimous gesture, but no one stood up and patted me on the back. They did dedicate a pew to one of the rich members of our congregation. They did this because he gave thousands to help the poor. I had given money I couldn’t afford to lose, but he had given a way mere pocket change. It didn’t seem right to me that such a man would be celebrated and I wouldn’t even be mentioned by the pastor, but such were the actions of God. Who could understand His arbitrary ways?

I became angry and refused to partake of the Lord’s Supper, but my two sisters did. I can still recall my mother’s reaction when she heard that my siblings had partaken of the ritual. Since we were raised Baptist, mother viewed the partaking of the Lord’s Supper at a Methodist service as an unforgivable sin. This was especially true since the girls had not been properly baptized by submersion at the hands of a “Hell Fire” preacher.

Mom flipped her lid over my sisters’ actions. She began to pray and beg God’s forgiveness. In her panic, she stated that my beloved sisters were going to Hell and due to their participation in the ritual; they were damned to Hell for all eternity. I was shocked that this so-called loving Being was ready and willing to throw my wonderful and beautiful sisters into Hell so that they’d burn forever and for what; their only crime was the eating of an unsalted cracker and the drinking of some grape juice. If God was going to punish them forever for eating and drinking, such items, then who needed Him?

This was the God that I was taught about as a child. I was not told about a loving God that cared enough to sacrifice His own son in order to save humanity from its own wretchedness. I learned about a Being that demanded fear and respect at all costs. He stood up in Heaven and watched all the evil that was taking place and He did nothing to stop it. If He would do nothing to stop evil, then, by default, wasn’t He perhaps a little vile Himself?

These were the images that were emblazoned in my mind as a child. Sure God could have stopped evil at any time He so chose, but He refused to do so. He sits back and smiles as wars ravaged the planet, as children died by the millions in Africa, South America and Asia. He could have prevented such monsters as Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot and Stalin. He could have stopped World Wars I and II. He could have prevented the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He could stop zealous suicide bombers and other fanatics bent on evil.

He could in one fell swoop show all of us that He exists and that He cares for us, but no such demonstrations have been forth coming. He could have illustrated His love and existence in billions of way, but as far as I could see, one has yet to come forth or at least it has yet to come forth during my lifetime. If He did exist and He honestly loved us, wouldn’t He some how show us that He was real? I love many people and I demonstrate my love to them all the time. Be it a hug, a kiss, a telephone call or even an e-mail, I demonstrate my love to them in thousands of ways each and every year.

We have yet to see or perceive one tiny little demonstration from Him. How is a person supposed to believe when he sees absolutely nothing to illustrate God’s existence? One demonstration would be enough to convince most people. Is that too much to ask for from the Creator of the universe? One prevented war; one strong miracle would convince most of us, but I would have settled for much less. A tree levitating would do it. A talking dog would do it. He could have stopped the torment I suffered as a child. That for sure would have done it for me, but alas, that miracle of miracles never came. Therefore, I suffered and prayed in silence and hoped for a phenomenon that never came. Just the thought of those unanswered prayers still haunt me decades later. All I know about God was that when I needed Him the most, He was on vacation.

Going home is a tough event for me. I wish I could describe it. The emotions are so raw and close to the surface that I’m afraid, they’re going to erupt at any moment. I look forward to returning to my childhood home with a sense of dread and hope. Dreading each trip because I know the inevitable outcome is always the same. That outcome is that I’ll leave with the same feelings of lost opportunity and disappointment as I came with. The hope comes from that secret bit of optimism that burns inside us all. It’s that little voice that tells us that this time things are going to resolve themselves. This time they’ll get fixed.

Nevertheless, how can you fix forty plus years of life? What magic ointment is there that can heal that mountain of pain and anger we all carry deep within us? Were there such as salve, I’d pay top dollar for it and I’d order a truckload of it. I’d distribute it to every single solitary person I know. “Take this,” I’d say. “It’s good for what ails ya.” As Far as I know, science hasn’t perfected a pain ointment for the soul. That’s too bad. I’ll bet my life there’s a huge demand for it.

I grew up in a wonderful place and by all accounts, I had a wonderful family. I had the traditional mom, dad, and siblings nuclear family that is at the heart of our society. My dad was a great provider and my mom a wonderful and loving mother, not to mention a fine cook. We attended church and were involved in social activities. Although we didn’t have such a fence, we were the typical white picket fence family that Norman Rockwell painted so wonderfully.

Most of my friends were jealous of my life. They wanted to be like me, but I wanted to be anything but me. I would have easily changed my life for theirs and felt as though I had cheated them. It wasn’t that my life was so bad. It was that I didn’t fit in with the family and everyone knew it. I was the dreamer in a family of pragmatists. I wanted to conquer worlds, planets and demons of all sorts, but they were perfectly satisfied with their nine-to-five lives and wanted nothing more than that from life.

“Don’t raise your head too high or it’ll get knocked off,” I was told all my life. Another favorite was, “Don’t get your hopes up.” I never could understand that. What good are low hopes? Why shouldn’t I raise my head? These and other questions have haunted me since birth or maybe even the womb. It’s hard to tell at this stage in my life.

I had been running these thoughts through my head since I got the call about dad three days earlier. I was hoping that given the circumstances things would be different this trip home, but they weren’t. I wanted to return to the safety and security of my new home, but the weather had taken a turn for the worse and I was afraid to chance it. Had I been alone, I would have risked the weather to get back, but I had two other souls to think about. In addition, I had to give special consideration to Jennifer because was seven months pregnant. She was willing, but I wasn’t.

We decided to spend the night at my parents’ house rather than chancing the weather. That night after supper, my mother brought out a couple dozen photo albums and we began to look at them. I don’t understand why I like it, but I love looking at those old pictures. No matter how often I look at them, I am always surprised when I go through them.
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I remember one time in college while visiting my grandmother I was looking at some pictures when I came across a photo of an incredibly beautiful woman. She looked like a movie goddess from the golden age of Hollywood. She had her lightened hair curled and wore a mint green dress that ended at the knees. The calf supporting that dress was shapely and well defined. The dress was tailored so that it revealed a well-proportioned woman.

“Who is this?” I asked.

My grandmother’s sister, Erma, and her husband, Charles, also happened to be visiting that day and it had been her idea to bring out the old photos.

“Who’s who?” asked Erma. She was a thin woman whose face had wrinkled and aged prematurely due to her habit of smoking five packs of cigarettes a day.

“Who’s this?” I asked as I turned the photo around so that she could see it.

“Why?” There was a cautious tone in her voice but I didn’t know why. I was thinking it might have been a rival from her youth.

“She’s beautiful. Look at her. I bet she had dozens of men running after her when she was dating.”

My aunt looked at her sister and smiled. My grandmother’s blue eyes sparkled as she returned the gesture with a wink.

“What?” I was confused by their reaction.

“Upon my word and honor, have you ever heard the beat? Any man that can talk to a woman like you should’ve a dozen girlfriends fighting over his attentions.” My aunt put a withered hand to her mouth and blew me a kiss.

I was confused by it all until my grandmother spoke.

“It’s her.” She motioned towards her sister with her thumb.

“You?” I didn’t intend to be rude but they all could hear the surprise in my voice.

“Does that surprise you?” asked my aunt.

“Yes,” I snorted before I thought about it.

“Why?”

“I didn’t mean it that way!” I wanted to crawl under the floor and die from embarrassment.

“Then what did ya mean?” She wasn’t angry but she still was going to press her advantage. I think she enjoyed watching me squirm.

“I thought it was a picture of some movie star, you know like. I didn’t know it was you. I though it was Veronica Lake or somebody like that.”

Without saying a word, she ran over and hugged me.

“I think you’ve made her day,” my grandmother said as she fought to keep from laughing.

“That child’s made my year,” piped my aunt.

My uncle Charlie, a Columbia educated history professor at Morehead State University, harrumphed and shook his head. “I hope you’re happy, Randy. I won’t be able to live with her for a week or more.”

“Hush,” whispered my aunt as she waved her husband off with a flick of her wrist. “Can’t you see the boy’s got some sense about him?”

“And good taste,” injected my grandmother.

“Have mercy on us all,” croaked my uncle and then he began to laugh. “Randy, if you want it, Ermie will be happy to autograph that picture for you.”

“Hush your foolishness,” replied Erma and she began to laugh. Within seconds, all of us had joined in with her.

We spent from lunch until supper looking at those albums. When grandma and Erma began cooking, we took them into the kitchen with us. Those albums contained close to a thousand pictures. They chronicled our life as a family. They contained pictures of my parent’s wedding, which was presided over by a great-grandfather on my dad’s side.

They contained photographs of my parents on their honeymoon in Daytona Beach, Florida. It was weird seeing my dad in shorts. All my life he’d worn trousers even when we went to Florida or South Carolina on vacation. He would make an excuse as to why he couldn’t go to the beach and spend the rest of the day either reading or going to the flea markets, not once do I remember seeing him in anything but long pants. I don’t even remember seeing him in blue jeans; it was always chinos or dress slacks.

Other things I saw in those albums were the usual things. They included Christmas pictures; photos of the family on vacation or at reunions; class pictures of family members and each one of us grand kids had a single page with our kindergarten through senior year pictures on them.

The one odd thing about my mother’s family that gives me the willies is the fact that they take pictures of people in coffins. Every album on her side of the family that I ever looked at contained at least one photograph of somebody dead and in a casket. Maybe, that’s a Scots-Irish thing, I don’t know for sure, but it’s creepy all the same. I once asked my grandmother why she took such snapshots and she stated that she wanted to remember the loved one in death as well as life. I still get chills when I see those pictures.

I walked through those albums for several hours. Memories I didn’t know I possessed came flashing back in my mind as I viewed those snapshots. One of my favorites was a picture of my brother and me holding a birthday cake. We were ten days short of being two years apart. This particular photo was taken when I was six and he was four. We had on what had to be the ugliest pair of bell-bottom pants that were ever made. They were white with red V-shaped stripes on them. They looked like candy canes that had survived a nuclear explosion. In that picture, we are standing there holding each side of the cake and smiling as though we’re having the greatest time in the world.

The reason that memory is of great importance to me was because it was the first demonstration of kindness that I can remember. We were in our yard playing games and enjoying ourselves when my mother noticed a child staring at us from across the street. He was watching us play. He was visiting some family for the day and had not been invited to our party but that didn’t stop him from watching. When my mother noticed him, she crossed the street and took him by the hand. She then brought him over to our house and promptly fed him cake, ice cream and punch. I remember the look in his eyes when she gave him that cake. It was pure joy and love.

To this day, I have yet to see my mother do something that made me as proud of her as I was on that occasion. Maybe it was the newness of that emotion or could’ve been a sugar overdose combined with the joy I was having, but for some unknown reason, that image is still the benchmark with which I measure compassion.
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“Aren’t you going to bed?” It was my mother and she was standing next to the chair in which I was sitting. I was so lost in thought that I hadn’t heard her enter the room

“In a minute.”

“You know what time it is?”

“Midnight, maybe twelve-thirty?”

“It’s almost four in the morning. I saw the light shining from under my door and thought one of you might be sick or something?”

“No, I’m reliving my childhood?”

“And?” I could hear both the caution and hope in her voice.

“I’ll bet I’ve relived a thousand memories over the last few hours. Many of them I had forgotten.”

“That’s why I keep those albums close at hand. I find that there are times when I love nothing better than reliving the past.”

“What about bad memories?”

“You’ve got to take them along with the good. It’s my opinion that they have done more for or to me than the good memories.”

“I can relate to that.” I wasn’t sure if I really meant that, but as I begin to think about it, I saw that she was speaking the truth. Some of the most profound incidents in my life and some of the greatest growth spurts I had as a person came about as the result of a tragedy.

Mom reached down and touched one of the albums. She sighed ever so slightly and then began to speak. “When I was a little girl, my grandpa, Franklin, told me something that I’ve never forgot. He looked at me and said, ‘little lady, as you grow up you’ll remember the good times for a long time, but you’ll remember the hard times even longer.’

“I’m not exactly sure what he meant by that, but I agree with the statement. I’ve had some wonderful experiences that I can’t remember…”

“Such as,” I interrupted.

“Such as the birth of my children. But, I’ve had some things, cruel things, acted on me and nearly sixty years later I haven’t forgot them.”

She began to tear up and I wanted to say something to make her feel better, but didn’t know what to say. I reached out my right hand and began to stroke her face. She smiled at me, but I could still see the pain in her face. Her face contorted in grief as I watched a single tear slowly meander down her right cheek. I took my thumb and wiped it away. She then reached up, grasped my hand between hers, kissed the back of mine and then let go.

She patted me on the shoulder and made her way back to the master bedroom. “You need to get some sleep. It’ll be daylight pretty soon and you’ve got a long haul in front of you.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Just,” she paused before she finished, “try and get some sleep.”

“How about you?” I asked. “You gonna be all right?”

“I’ll live.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

That’s the response you’re going to get. Good night.”

“G’night momma.”

After she left, I began to reflect upon my own life. Childhood memories flooded my thoughts. I spent the rest of the night trying to quantify, for lack of a better term, my memories. I started out with several types and categories but eventually began to group them together. In the end, I found that all my memories had three things in common.

The three things I remember most about childhood are the stories about my family and their history; church – it was always lumbering in the background- and the music. It seems as though all my memories involve those three things. My family was the anchor to which everything else was attached. The music was always playing in the background in my memories. Moreover, the church, it seems, as though it lorded over all we did. Like some Nazi Gestapo agent, it seemed as though the church was always lurching in the background and hidden by the shadows. It was constantly looking for you to slip up just so it could get its jollies by zapping you. That was also the way I viewed God. That one little “oh no” would in a split second destroy ten thousand “atta boys.”

When asked about my heritage, I tell people that I am a mixed breed. One side of my family is made up of alcoholics and the other side of drunkards. Their politics are Budweiser and Jack Daniels, and the only things that they can agree upon are that the University of Kentucky Wildcats is the greatest college basketball program of all time and Adolph Rupp should’ve run for president, “God rest his soul.”

The second ingredient to my family is music. We have two distinct divisions in my family. About half are devoutly religious and the other half are as wild as they come. People move in and out of these groups throughout their lives. One of my uncles is a Holy Ghost preacher, but ten years ago, he was the biggest drunk and drug user around. When asked why he changed he stated, “I found what I was looking for so I didn’t need to go any further down the path I was on.” His brother, on the other hand, had grown up in the church and had been a member all his life. At forty-five, he left his wife and children and moved in with the village tramp. He quit church and began drinking and taking drugs. Over the last three years, he had been in and out of rehab several times. He seems to have lost that for which he was looking.

The only thing these two groups have in common is their love for music. Even the biggest of drunks in my family loves the old Irish traditional gospels. I’ve had cousins to play music professionally and one uncle that was a studio musician for a major record label in Nashville. Music is the ingredient that intertwines the hearts of my family. I have an uncle whom I’ve never seen sober, but he bawls like a baby every time he hears the song Amazing Grace, especially when sung by a baritone.

The final ingredient to my culture is the church. Some people could argue that politics is the fourth item and I would agree with them to an extent, but I’ve seen cousins that are die hard Democrats sit next to cousins that are Lincoln Republicans and not a harsh word pass between. Therefore, I personally rule out politics as a key ingredient although that is a valid point.

Religion permeates everything about the culture. There are several varieties within the family. There is Holiness, Baptists, Methodist, Catholics, and various Pentecostal split offs. Depending on your religious preference, the church either dominates everything about your life or else offers only guidelines by which to live. Some churches are so oppressive their members look like they eat nothing but sour pickles. Others are so liberal they do everything but swap wives among the members. The key to fitting in is to find a church and settle into it. Once there, the rest is easy. You just start bashing all other churches hoping to bring their members into your fold. This constant struggle between the groups makes for lively debate at family reunions.

My son was the first one to awaken. When my wife awoke later on that morning I was still in that same chair and he was lying on the floor watching cartoons. During those hours I was by myself, I had ran through my past a dozen times and with each passing I discovered a new memory or vision that I had not thought of before. Somewhere buried within these apparitions was the story of my life. These various images for better or worse came together to form the patchwork quilt that is me. Some time during that period, I spent reflecting on my life I began to write down my memories. I wrote down both good and bad ones because some how, some way my life, dreams, hopes and desires for my family and myself were tied up in a cross-section or perhaps several cross-sections of these images and perhaps others that were still locked deep within my mind.

As I stood there facing the mirror with the barrel of the gun sticking in my mouth and my finger on the trigger, I could taste the bitter saltiness of the weapon as I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The pungent odor of the metal combined with the oily scent of the cleaner/lubricant, swirled around my nose with nauseating frequency. Opening my eyes, I looked at my reflection and knew that I hated myself above all people.

“One flick; one jerk,” I thought. “That’s all I need. One short quick spasm and it would all end. The pain, the doubt and all the hatred and anger could be wiped clean with one short pull of my finger.”

This thought would have been funny to me were the pain not gnawing at my soul like a starving rat allowed to feast. Here I was the toughest guy I had ever known and I was ready to give up and quit like a first grader that had been traumatized by the teasing of the class bully.

I wanted to scream at myself to call myself a coward; to urge myself forward as I stood there staring at eternity and wondering if the comforting numbness I now felt would continue were I man enough to finish the job.

The strange thing about it all was that I didn’t want to end it. I wanted to live, but to do so would continue the curse that my birth had brought upon those that I loved. Why was life so cruel? Why should my existence be a plague upon those that mean the most to me? What kind of cruel God would allow such misery to flow in every direction in which I turned?

I could see no end to my pain and had no way of getting out of it. Were there any other course, I’d take it in a heartbeat. Still, if there was another way out of this dilemma, I couldn’t find it. Slowly, I sucked in breath and looked at the ceiling in the vain hope that God would be standing there staring right at me. That way I could talk to Him and have Him explain this mess of a life to me. I wanted to understand the reasons for my torment and I tried, God knows I tried, to make sense of it all, but could not get my mind to wrap around the reason for it all.

The pain and fear was all I could see and feel. It ate at me and ate at me and I had to rid myself of it. Nothing else mattered; not my family; not my career; not even my hope for the future. My soul was at war with God, He was winning, and I hated Him for that. It was better to spend an eternity in Hell than to bend a knee to a creature that could be as cruel to me as He was being. If He was looking to break me, then He was barking up the wrong tree because I didn’t break, ever.

Where was the love for which He was so famous? Where was the compassion? But, mostly, I wanted to know why He would allow a man to suffer pain so agonizing that the only hope he had was to put a bullet in his head and end the devastating misery I now possessed. No, His existence was a myth, a lie, a fairytale or else He’d be right there with me, but he wasn’t and I hated Him for that. I needed to know that He existed and that He cared for me, but He refused to answer and that fed my rage.

“Please,” I begged. “Show me you exist. Give me one sign that You love me and I’ll follow you. I don’t want to do this, but can’t see a way out of it. All I want is one sign. Surely, you can give me one lousy freaking sign!”

The pain that had brought me to this point pushed and then pushed some more. It was screaming for the nullifying effect that nine millimeter bullet would have on the torturous rage that was ripping my soul apart as easily as a cat’s claws slice through a newspaper. Still, I stood there praying for that one in a billion chance that God would reveal himself to me.

I closed my eyes and tried to make sense of it all as a million images flashed through my mind but only one stuck and that was a memory of my father’s funeral. Why such a thought would enter my mind at a time like this I’ll never know. Still, it was something that I could wrap my mind around and that’s exactly what I needed. Prior to his death, I was content and life made semi-sense to me. Somewhere, between his death and today, something happened to rip my life to shreds and I had to find out what that something was.

I had to know what caused me to get to this point; the point where I had nothing for which I was willing to live. Nobody wants to die and I’ve always considered those that committed suicide to be cowards, but here I was doing everything I professed to hate because it was the only thing that made sense to me. No, I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t think of another way out of this mess.

Therefore, I closed my eyes trying to relive these past few weeks in the vain hope of finding something, anything that would explain how life suddenly got so out of kilter. The starting place just happened to be Dad’s funeral. Not liking that image, I shook that off and tried a second time to come up with the answer. Again, his funeral popped in my mind and stuck there. Perhaps the answer or at least its beginning laid there just waiting for me to discover it or least that’s what I was hoping. Sure, it was a small hope, but that was all I had and the fighter in me was not going to give up that easily. I loosed the grip on my pistol and let my mind float back to that day just a few weeks ago and still so fresh in my mind.
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The funeral was held on a cold blustery February morning. It seemed to me as though nature herself was convulsing in anger at the loss of such a wonderful man. She was flinging her hatred upon all those present and unleashing upon that tiny mountain community everything she held in her winter arsenal. Chunks of snow that vomited out from deep within her bowels nipped at and bit with acidic stings upon the cheeks of those brave or crazy enough to dare and defy her tantrum. She appeared to be demanding additional blood in order to be appeased. This day she would be disappointed because the specter that once was this impish man intervened and prevented her from seeking the revenge she maniacally craved.

The services began at ten in the morning and broke off promptly ninety minutes later. Due to the weather, I arrived late and had to park at a small grocery store located a few hundred yards away from the church. It took several minutes to reach the door. As I entered the church, I passed by a group of men standing out in the cold smoking cigarettes. I felt sorry for those men. How addicted to those things did you have to be in order to stand in weather such as this in order to get a fix. Not wanting to disturb the service, I stood in the back even though I was wearing the black armband to indicate that I was a family member.

I can’t remember the weather ever being this bad before; this type of phenomenon being a rarity in our part of the world. When I entered that church, the sky howled and wailed. It shot out angry gusts of wind that bounced off the walls and rattled the doors and windows of the building. As I stood back there, at the edge of the sanctuary, I began to scan the room. During one of the many songs that preceded the preaching, the floors themselves gave the impression that they were letting out a slight moan or perhaps a low sigh.

“You hear that?” I asked one of the funeral home personnel.

“Yeah, that da…” He stopped, looked embarrassed and paused before speaking again. “Sorry, darned wind’s really kicking up. If it keeps up like this, I’ll never get home.”

His words hit me like a sucker punch to the jaw. I know he hadn’t meant to be cruel, but those words angered me nonetheless.

“Thanks, you’re concern for my father moves me.”

He shot me an angry look, but held his tongue. He nodded out of politeness and then moved away from me and avoided me the rest of the day and I regretted that. I had talked to him a couple of times before and he seemed like a nice guy.

Once during the singing, which in a Free Will Baptist Church can go on forever, I scanned the crowd to see if my Uncle Evan was there and he was. As I looked over the room, I thought I saw the pews shake and quiver. They seemed to be moving in rhythm with the song being song. The woman singing was a retired teacher named Judy Mullins. She had grown up with my mother and they’d been friends since childhood. She possessed the voice of an angel and was often a fixture at local funerals.

Distracted by the singing, I tried to think of something else and all I could recall was a conversation I had with Mrs. Mullins during the wake. She told me that she had sung at over two hundred funerals or wakes the year before. She stated that she had at one time gone for sixty straight days without missing a service. It would have been longer, but she had caught the flu and had to miss three funerals during the week she spent recovering.

After Judy sang, one of the two preachers got up to speak. He was a heavyset man with pale skin and coal black hair. As he approached the podium, he took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth.

“I’ve been asked to be here by the family,” he began. “I’m not feeling too good today…”

“But I’ll preach the best I know how,” I said in unison with him. I knew he was going to say that. Preachers always say that or at least they do when I’m in church. It makes no difference what type of service it is because the first preacher and sometimes the second always start his sermons off with those words. It both amuses and annoys me.

“I’m not here to talk about the dearly departed. He’s either made his peace with the Lord or he ain’t. Nothing I can do about that.” He paused for dramatic effect. “But there is something I can do for you. I can tell you about the sweetest drug you’ll ever take. I can tell you about missing eternal damnation and I can tell you how you can have joy unspeakable.”

He was now starting to get into it. “I can tell you about the Lord, huh!”

“Here we go I,” thought. “He’s starting to end his sentences with ‘huh’. He’s about to get wound up and let’er fly,” I figured. I wasn’t disappointed because his words began to grow in intensity.

I don’t know why it did, but I became angry at the fact that this man was trying to proselytize during my father’s funeral. He should have been speaking words of comfort not trying to win converts.

“Only Gawd can save you, huh! Yes, he’s saved me and he can save you as well, huh! I don’t know whether this brother knew the Lord or not, huh!” He pointed to Dad’s casket as he said that. “But if he didn’t, he’s staring up from the pits Hell at this minute and screamin’ for you to not be as foolish as he’d been.” This time there was no “huh” at the end of the statement.

Various shouts of “amen, tell ’em now” and “preach on, brother” were echoed from the crowd and one elderly lady wearing a blue dress and sporting the traditional Pentecostal bun hairdo stood up and screeched out, “Bless ’em Lord!”

As if that woman’s voice was a cue, the man stopped, twisted his head to the right and took a deep breath. “Death is not the end of thangs; just the opposite. It is the beginning of ‘em. Jesus came to visit Mary and Martha and old Lazarus had been in the grave four days.” He held up that number of fingers to illustrate his point. “But that didn’t stop Gawd from raising him from the dead.”

“No it didn’t,” shouted a man just to my left.

“No it didn’t,” responded the preacher and his voice was soothing like a parent talking to an infant. “No it didn’t. Sickness won’t stop Him either. We all know the story about the man that had to be lowered through the roof so that Jeeez-us could heal him. ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ said the Lard and the man picked up his bed and off he went.”

“Amen,” echoed a chorus of people.

The man smiled because he knew that he had them where he wanted them. He began again with renewed vigor. He continued for about fifteen minutes. The man ran around podium and eventually got right down into the pews shaking hands with one hand and wiping his mouth with the other as he went. His voice would rise into a crescendo and then it would mellow out for a couple minutes. He seemed to be gathering his thoughts during these lulls in his sermon. After his fourth or fifth crescendo, his body, which had been writhing and almost convulsing during his sermon mellowed out. This happened instantaneously almost as if someone had thrown a switch on his mood. His face, which had been a deep rich crimson, began to take on a more natural pinkish color. I’ve always wondered why their heads never blew off the top of their shoulders when they get like that. It can’t be healthy.

The next guy followed the same pattern, except he didn’t state that he was a not feeling well even though he did promise to preach the best he knew how. I don’t remember much about his sermon except that he seemed to be talking about the Lard a great deal. I tried to listen to him, at least in the beginning; I did, but got lost between all the “huhs and Lards.”

About two minutes into the second session, I began to plan our trip home. On a good day, the trip from Beaver to Lawrenceburg was about three to three and a half hours, but on a day like to day, I was looking at an eight to nine hour trip. Would my wife and child be up for such a trip? Would the roads be clear enough to attempt it? A million such questions race through my mind. As I weighed my options, I heard the guys standing next to me whisper, “Amen.” Realizing what that meant, I looked up and noticed the people began standing and some were stretching, while others were milling around as if waiting for someone to speak to them.

“Would you like to go up front with the rest of the family or would you like to see him first?” asked one of the ushers.

“I’d like to see, if possible?”

“I’ll let you go on up.”

“Thanks.”

He nodded for me to go ahead and I waved my reply before I took off towards the front of the tiny but packed country church.

As I passed by my father’s casket, I wanted to touch him, to hug him and tell him that I loved him but I couldn’t. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs so that the world would know the pain I was under going, but I walked passed his body and gently touched his hand before taking my place in the section which had been reserved for the family. I would regret that suppression of my emotions for the rest of my life.

No matter how hard I wanted to release the pain that was about to explode out of me, I fought to keep it held inside of me. My father, who did not like to show emotion, especially sadness, had raised me to do the same. I’d been taught that was a weakness and on this day I had to be strong.

I spoke before I sat. “Good bye, Dad.” Whether I spoke in a whisper or a shout, I can’t remember.

Some images from his service I remember as if the just happened. The one image that haunts me the most was his face. He looked peaceful, almost as if he were asleep. I thought about gently shaking him. Part of me believed that he could be awakened from that long slumber where I to shake him hard enough. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was the lack of sleep or even the fact that I had not at that time comprehended the finality of his death. The whole thing was like some surreal dream or new age mystic movie. I was there and went through the motions, but part of me was somewhere else. Whether that place was here on Earth or in some nether world, I can’t say for sure. All I can tell you is that I was there in body, but not spirit.

“He looks good, don’t he?” It was a woman’s voice that could have come from anywhere for all I knew.

“And plumb peaceful,” came a response.

“He went the way I wanna go,” stated an unknown man. “I wanna go in my sleep just like that.”

I swung around in anger. My face was wearing a mask of hatred and confusion. I wanted to scream at that idiot, but I couldn’t determine who it was. Had I figured out who that was, I’d lit into him because what he said still riles me to this day.

The family was told to stay in the church until the procession had finished passing by the casket. I was both shocked and pleased by the number of people that attended. I expected seventy-five to eighty people, but at least three hundred where there. People that I’d never seen nor heard of came up to me and offered their sympathies. I accepted them and expressed my appreciation to them, but was unable to communicate with them in a personal manner because I had no idea who they were. This happened at least sixty times.

One elderly heavyset balding man walked up to me and said, “Randy, you have my deepest sympathy. You’re father was the most honest man I’ve ever dealt with. Once when my business was struggling he floated me sixty thousand dollars – that’s right, I said sixty thousand dollars – in credit for nearly a year. I intended to pay him back with one check. When I brought him that check, I apologized and thanked him for his help.”

He stopped and took a deep breath. He choked back his tears and struggled within himself. He shook his head and continued. “You know what he did?”

“No,” I interrupted.

The man smiled at me. There was a sparkle from a memory in his eyes. “He told me that he’d take half of the money at that time and then wanted me to pay him the rest in six months. He figured that I might need some cash to float me during a slow period. He was right, you know. I wrote him a thirty thousand dollar check and banked the rest. That money saved my business more than once.”

He pulled me to him, wrapped his huge arms around me, and then pulled me even closer to him. He held me for several seconds. When he let go of me, I noticed that there were tears as big as dimes streaming down his face. “If it weren’t for your daddy, I’d gone broke a dozen times.” The tears became thicker and he began to tremble. “If there’s anything, and I mean anything,” he said with emphasis, “that I can do for you, let me know.”

He tried to hide his tears with his left hand as he reached in his coat pocket with his right. He pulled out a crumpled business card and handed it to me. “Call me. I hear you’re a CPA, that true?”

“Yes.”

“Then do call me. Mine’s about to retire and I don’t like that son-of-a…” He paused for a second. “Sorry. I’m looking for a new accountant. Perhaps we can discuss this at a more appropriate time.” I shook my head in agreement because I didn’t know what else to do, but I still took his card.

As I put it in my wallet, I noticed that it read, “Adolph Fields, President of Fields Energy.” Holy cow, I thought. This is the largest independent coal and gas company in the state. “Thank you,” I said. He didn’t respond because he had already moved towards and had begun hugging my mother.

As I watched him, amble past the casket, I began to curse myself for being a greedy fool. What kind of man thinks about a potential client at a funeral his father’s funeral?

The only other person I remember speaking with that morning was an uncle on my mother’s side. My mother came from a large Irish Catholic family and Evan was the third of twelve children. Mom was the fourth. He had entertained being a priest at one time, but wound up meeting another good Irish Catholic while in college and chose to pursue a life of law and politics instead. He had held numerous offices in his thirty plus year career. He was one of the most powerful men in our region of the state. You held office in my home county only at his pleasure.

He walked over to me, expressed his sympathy, and then as was his nature got straight down to business. He looked me straight in the eyes with those big oversized green eyes of his. “We need to talk about your mother. I’m worried about her.”

“What about it?”

“She’s sixty-four years old. She’s never been on her own before this. She’s always had somebody taking care of her. How’s she going to cope with the loss, of, well, you know? I can’t see her doing on her own. I’m not sure she’s that strong. I don’t want her having to go through this alone.”

“Did you know Adolph Fields is one of daddy’s customers?” Why I asked that, when he was discussing my mother I couldn’t say. Perhaps, I was excited about the potential the man offered, but the most likely reason was that I was trying to get my uncle to change the subject.

“And mine, why?”

“I didn’t know that. That’s funny isn’t it? I mean that I wouldn’t know that one of the most powerful men in the state is a friend of dad’s.”

“What’s that got to do with your mom?” I could hear the frustration in his voice. He was a man used to getting his way in all things and didn’t like my ignoring him like that. At the time, I could have cared less and rudely attempted to give him the brush off. I was too busy wallowing in self-loathing to pay attention to anything he had to say.

“Aren’t you worried about you mother?” he asked. “How’s she going to make it?”

“What do you want me to do? In a few months, she’ll be sixty-five and eligible for Social Security. She’ll manage until then. There’s more than enough in their savings account to cover the funeral and she can live very comfortably off the proceeds from his annuities and retirement plan. What’s the problem?”

“Money’s not the problem. Your dad did well for himself.”

“So, what’s the problem?” I could hear the annoyance in my own voice.

“Can she handle the pressure? She’s never been down this road before.”

“She’ll do fine. Have you forgotten that Karen, Veronica, and Bubby live within a couple hundred yards of her? Loneliness won’t be a problem. Any time she gets scared, she’s got at least three grandsons that live near her. The way she feeds and spoils them, she’ll always have someone to stay with her should she need ’em.”

“Those are good points, but I still worry about her.”

“Duly noted.” I walked away without saying another word.

The next half hour was a blur. I lingered around the casket and shook hands or hugged dozens of people. As the last few mourners walked past the coffin, the funeral director and his employees began to carry out the flowers and plants that had been stationed around the casket.

The number of flowers amazed me. I’d never seen that many in my life. There were hundreds of them and they were beautiful but they had that sickening sweet aroma of death hanging over them. Each one represented someone’s affection and sympathy for my father, but that still didn’t change the way that they smelled. As I thought about it, I had to fight within myself to keep me from vomiting. Normally, the aroma wouldn’t have bothered me, but I had other things on my mind and that added to my nausea. It was devastating to know that all these strangers knew more about my father than did his own flesh and blood.

To take my mind off the flora aroma that permeated the air like a dark foreboding cloud on a hot summer afternoon, I began to re-examine the life of my Dad. I’d never been more proud of him than I was at this moment. I knew that he was a successful businessman with customers from at least six states, but I never understood their loyalty to him until that moment. My father was not just a business associate to these men and women; he was a friend as well.

During the course of the wake and the funeral, I had begun to get a better sense of just whom my father was and I discovered that for the most part, I liked the type of man he had been. In many ways, I wanted to be like him even though I had once taken a vow to be the exact opposite of what he was. It amazes me how rash things spoken in anger have a habit of coming back to haunt us at the most inopportune of times.

For as long as I can remember, there was a fissure between my father and me. He gave me the impression that he was afraid to get to close to me. I always felt like we were dealing with each other at arms length and I hated him for that. All my life I wanted to get close to him. I admired him because his reputation was outstanding, but I never really knew him and now I never would have the chance to know him.

As I thought about him, I smiled and shook my head at my own foolishness and wondered if this was what he meant when he said, as he so often did, “One of these days you’ll understand and then you’ll be ashamed of your actions.” I smiled once more as I wondered if his was the voice of experience speaking, as it will be for me when I have to repeat that statement back to my own child. The more I thought about it the more I realized how unique and wonderful he was.

I have always admired many aspects of my father’s character and personality. Once during a job interview, I pulled out a picture of my father, my then newborn son and myself. I told the interviewer that my goal in life was to be half the man as my father and to rear my son to be twice the man as his grandfather. The woman laughed but appeared uncomfortable with that response. I regretted saying it assuming it to be the height of foolishness, but it worked out for the best because I got the job. A month later as I started my first day at work, she told me that it was the story about my father and son that sold her on my candidacy for the position. She stated that she knew that a person like me would not disappoint her. I didn’t because I made partner within five years.

The drive to the family cemetery was a miserable affair. Snowflakes as big as my thumb dropped on the windshield of my SUV as we made the three-mile trip from the church to the grave site. Billions of these inch-long flecks seemed to dance about as we slowly trekked to Dad’s final resting spot. The twirling of the flakes aggravated me. It was as if they were taunting me. They seemed to laugh and pretend as though they were daring me to join in their merriment when they knew my heart was breaking.

We had not gone half a mile when the procession halted and three men jumped out of the Chevy Suburban that was being used as a hearse. I watched them run ahead of the lead vehicle. As I struggled to see what they were doing, I crooked my head in order to get a better view of their activities and noticed that for the next hundred yards or so the trees seemed awfully close to the road; too close for my liking.

I rolled down my window, stuck my head out and shouted, “What happened?”

“Tree’s in the way,” returned the guy I had snapped at earlier.

I rolled my window back up and looked at my wife who was sitting in the back seat with our son. “A tree’s fallen onto the road,” I said.

“Any wonder,” she questioned. “Look at this weather.” I shook my head as she spoke. She then pointed towards the sky. “Look at those trees. They’re an accident waiting to happen. I thank God that thing didn’t fall on anybody.”

I turned my head in order to see what she was talking about. The trees on both sides of the road were within eight feet of the pavement. They were so laden with snow they were bowing over the road. This gave me the impression we were entering some Nordic snow cave. A campaign sign nailed to a telephone pole that read, “Branham for Magistrate; District 3; Number 1 On The Ballot; Democrat,” marked the entrance of the tree-lined area. For the first fifty yards, the trees were thick and dangled dangerously over that tiny country road. At the end of that stretch of timbers, they were older, taller and reminded me of my grandfather’s long thin arthritic fingers when he curled them into a ball prior to praying.

I took this image in my mind as a good omen. For the briefest of instances, I believed that grandpa was sitting in Heaven and watching over his son’s departure. Earlier I had thought that it was my father’s spirit that was protecting us from this horrendous weather, now I was convinced that it was my granddad. I smiled as I thought about it. For the first time since he had passed, I began to believe that my father was now sitting in Heaven. I took comfort with the knowledge that I now had my very own angel looking out for me. That angel would be my Dad.

Within a few seconds, the men had cleared out the road and we were back on our way. About a mile from the cemetery, we passed the county snowplow. Instead of doing his duty, the man in the truck was sitting by the road drinking coffee and talking on his cell phone. I wanted to honk my disapproval of his actions, but felt that would be inappropriate given the circumstances.

The graveyard was located about three hundred yards from the highway and a graveled road lead right to the main gate of the cemetery. There was more than adequate parking because twenty years beforehand my father had the foresight to purchase the grave site and the over three hundred acres of land that surrounded it. He set apart fourteen square acres of land to be used for parking by the family. When he talked about it, he’d smile and say, “I want the whole blasted county to come to my funeral,” and I think they did.

I was the fourth car in the procession trailing the hearse. I pulled up to where I was about sixty feet from the main entrance. As I got out of the vehicle, the wind hit me like a cold slap to the face causing me to shiver from the pain of the cold. My legs had begun to cramp and I had to rub them in order to get them to move. Reaching into my coat pocket, I pulled out my gloves and slipped them on my hands.

“Stay here,” I told my wife.

She looked at me with those large brown eyes that had caused me to fall in love with her. Her hair was the first thing that attracted me to her. It was dark and sparkled like black diamonds in the sunlight. She was nothing like what I pictured myself falling in love with. She was short, shy and possessed the most wonderful soul I’d ever met. She loved me unconditionally and I couldn’t help but do the same.

“Don’t you want me to go with you?” asked Jennifer.

“No, I want you to stay here with ‘Little Man.’” I pointed towards our six-year-old son. “I don’t want him out in this weather. He’ll get sick.”

“No, I won’t,” responded Kieran.

I looked at him and those beautiful brown eyes he inherited from his mother were beaming at me. “We’ll not chance it.”

“But, I wanna say bye-bye to Papaw.”

I smiled at him and tried to speak, but couldn’t because I was overcome by grief.

“Why’re you crying for?” he asked.

“I’m sad. I won’t see my dad ever again.”

“Won’t you see him in Heaven?” The innocence and wisdom of that question snapped me out of the funk I was experiencing and I began to smile at him.

“Yes. Of course, we will. We’ll all see him again.”

“Then why’re you crying?” My son is one of the very few southerners that actually pronounced the ing in a word as “ing” instead of the traditional “in’.”

“I’m being silly I guess.”

“Being sad isn’t being silly, Dad.” I could hear his attempt at humor and laughed. He smiled and I thought I could see my father in his smile. That grin was the one thing he and I both received from my Dad. All three of us, had a way of smiling when we said something we thought was funny. It is the type of grin most people flash when they are embarrassed. The type bashful children display when they speak in front of others.

“Are you sure you want to go with me?” I asked. He smiled and shook his head to indicate that he did.

“It’s awfully cold.”

“I can take it.”

“Okay, if you insist.”

He unsnapped the harness to his child’s booster seat and crawled over the console and exited out the driver’s side door of the vehicle. As he crawled over my seat, I picked him up and stood him on the ground. I then zipped up the front of his winter coat and put a pair of gloves on his hands.

“Where’s my muffies?” he asked.

“I’ve got ’em,” stated his mother as she handed me a pair of sleek earmuffs.

I put them on his ears and asked, “Are you ready?” He smiled to indicate that he was. I took his right hand in my left and then closed the door to the Jeep Liberty. I left the vehicle running so that it would be warm when we returned. I waited for my wife and the three of us made our way up to the place where Dad would be laid to rest.

I would like to say that the prayer session at the grave site was a beautiful thing to behold but I can’t. As we made our way to the place where my father was to be laid buried, I could hear the crunching of the snow and frozen grass under our feet. It sounded like a thousand kids having a potato chip crunch-off. That’s all I remember about the burial until the preacher said, “Amen.”

Where I was during those fifteen to twenty minutes, I can’t say for sure. Perhaps I experienced some out of body experience that was either so horrid or wonderful my mind rejected it. Perhaps it was something else. I don’t know what happened. All I know is that I went from thinking about the sound of crunching snow to “Amen” in less than two seconds, but everyone around me experienced a quarter hour of frigid weather. I was as numb to the whole experience as my body was to the cold.

I would not have heard the final words of the minister’s prayer had it not been for my son. He was yanking on my arm and that was what brought me back from the surreal world I had entered.

“Dad,” he called as he yanked on my arm.

Snapping out of the dream world, I had entered I shouted, “What?”

“Can I go, I mean, may I go say goodbye to Papaw?”

I didn’t say a word. I bent over and swooped him up into my arms. Once I had a firm grip on him, I began to cover his face with kisses. His cheeks were bright red and cold to the touch but I continued to smother him with affection. Somewhere during this process, I heard him say, “Bye Papaw.” I began to kiss him even harder after he said that.

He pushed away from me and looked into my eyes. “Dad,” he shouted. “You don’t kiss boys in front of people. It’s not polite.”

I didn’t care. At that moment, my heart was breaking and all I wanted to do was to hold and snuggle on the two people I loved the most. I continued kissing on him for the next few seconds and then I moved on to my wife. As I pulled her near me, I could see that she was crying and I felt ashamed that my tears were not falling. In truth, my heart was breaking and I wanted scream in pain, but I couldn’t bring myself to cry because I had been taught that men don’t cry in public. Even though part of me wanted more than anything to rip the scab off my heart and let the pain I was experiencing exorcise itself from my soul, I could not to my ever-loving shame bring myself to shed a tear. Later on, when I was by myself, I’d whimper like a baby, but I couldn’t do it in front of these people. God forgive me, but I couldn’t bring myself to it.