Peeing On Hot Coals: Drowning the Devil

Chapter 1

The Holy Poltergeist

The old yellow bus, its rusty bumper dragging, kids pressed against the smeared windows, huffed and puffed from the curb in front of the school before I could reach it. Wait! I hollered as loud as I could, and ran panting after it on my skinny legs, blond pigtails flying, until my sides hurt so bad I couldn’t run anymore. But the bus snorted on, stirring up choking black exhaust and whirligigs of dust, even though snotty J. T. stuck his white-coated tongue out at me from the back window and could have told the driver to stop. You’re stupid, J. T! I yelled, hoping he could hear me above the noise of the bus and the wind. Placing my grimy hands on either side of my mouth, I continued to bellow at the retreating bus. J. T, y’all got a big ol’ F on your papers, and it serves you right for making fun of me for being a new second grader. The howling wind blew the words right out of my mouth and across the rough schoolyard all the way to the cracked teeter-totter.

The bus rattled on down the road and was lost from sight. Oh, no, now I would have to find my way home on that long red dirt road by following fence posts buried in sand up to their jagged tops. My knees quivered at the thought of the Devil or an angry God skulking in the scrub, ready to fling me into Hell for filching half a leftover bologna sandwich from Pansy Jean’s red lunch box. Daddy preached about the sin of stealing, so I knew better than to take something that didn’t belong to me, even when my stomach growled with hunger. Mama says everyone is hungry these days, so I should be used to it by now.

I shivered and coughed and hoped I wasn’t coming down with the dust pneumonia like a church member had done. She’d up and died from it. And Daddy talked about how cattle croaked from the dirt that flew across their nostrils and onto the thistles they ate. One time Daddy let me go with him when he helped a farmer whose cow had tipped over and expired from eating too much dirt. I sat in our Model A Ford and watched as Daddy and Mr. Johnson got ready to open up the dead cow and empty the dirt out of her four stomachs. They took sharp butcher knives and cut that poor dead cow from under her stiff brown tail and up over her bloated belly all the way to her neck. And then, phew-ee, a stink like Little Jimmy’s diapers, times two, diseased the hot air like a fetid slaughterhouse. I pinched my nose closed, but it didn’t help much.

Jist look at that, Reverend, the man said to Daddy. She’s as full of dirt as these here worn-out fields. He wiped his sweating face with the rag he had hanging out his back pocket and then squatted down in the dirt.

Daddy patted the man’s shoulder. Mr. Johnson, maybe y’all can get a little meat off her even though she is poor. And the hide looks all right.

Preacher, Farmer Johnson said, all hunched over, his pants covered in bloody innards, his straw hat raggedy looking. This is the last of my livestock. The very last. He looked up at the burning sun. The sky was as blue as a number two Crayola. Not even a cloud fluffed around up there. It was just a haze of dust and all that unearthly blue. Sir, he addressed my father. Sir, I feel like Job, in the Bible. My wheat crop jist shriveled clean up and blew away, the chickens up and died, the cattle died, our new baby girl, Little May Beth, is sick. Preacher, he said, and then, worn out with talking I guessed, he gave out a long sigh, wiped his face with the grimy-looking cloth, took off his hat and put his sunburned head in his claw like hands, and pulled his fingers through his sandy hair. Preacher, I ain’t got nothin’ left to take care of the wife and five little ones with. The man began to belch out loud sobs, his shoulders shaking like he was sick with a chill.

Daddy shed tears, too, and said he would try to get help from church members for him, making me wonder if he knew a rich church member I hadn’t heard about.

Reverend . . . Farmer Johnson heaved a sigh. Don’t bother yourself none. I’ve ’bout decided to head toward Californie like Farmer Bates, and Charlie Martin, and all them other fellers. Maybe I can pick fruit. Anythin’ is better than jist a’sittin’ here a’waitin’ to die. The man stood up, but quickly squatted down again, like his legs were too weak to hold him up. But, Reverend, he said, I ’preciate your offer, I sure enough do, sir.

Daddy knelt down next to Farmer Johnson, put his big hands on the man’s head, and talked to God for a few minutes. Then Daddy stood up and brushed the sand off the knees of his only pair of suit pants and walked to the car. He started the engine, hit the horn twice—uga-uga—waved goodbye, and drove off, bouncing over swellings of sand and leaving Poor Farmer Johnson hunkered down in the dirt beside his opened-up dead cow.

Chick-a-lick, Daddy said, using his nickname for me. Chick-a-lick, these are hard times here on the High Plains. There’s an out-of-control catastrophe going on all around us. He pointed toward a weathered farmhouse and a falling-over barn where good church members had once lived. That’s an example. he said. Pretty soon we won’t have any parishioners left if they keep on dying off or moving away because of the drought and these sandstorms. Daddy took his soiled handkerchief and wiped the tears streaming down his face. Poor Farmer Johnson, Daddy muttered over and over again. Poor Farmer Johnson.

I thought about Poor Farmer Johnson now as I walked home past fields full of red sand where golden wheat had once grown. Cow skeletons were scattered here and there, ribs sticking up through drifts of dirt with bits of fur attached to the bones like raggedy flags. It seemed like a cow cemetery.

Home . . . I had to get home to safety before a dust storm decided to take out after me. I looked around, hoping to see a living human being out there in all that dirt. But there wasn’t a house or a tree or a bush or a cow or a sheep or a shack, except for one that had sand spilling from its busted-out windows. Not one living thing grew along that road. The land was flat except for wind-whipped sand dunes as far as the eye could see and filled with dust devils. All that forsaken space made me wonder if I was the only thing alive in the whole wide world. Maybe Jesus had come and the Rapture had happened and I missed it and now I was a Left Behind. I glanced around trying to spot danger so I could hide in a ditch. Leaning over, I pulled up my sagging stockings and wiped my runny nose on the sleeve of my brown coat that had once belonged to my sister, Poor Little Glendora, struggling to get over my scaredness. Maybe I should pray. Grit clawed into my skin as I knelt down on the road and addressed the Almighty.

Please forgive me, God in Heaven, for stealing from that mean girl, Pansy Jean, even though she had more than enough to share and could have offered me her leftover sandwich, I prayed. Get me home safely, and I promise never to steal again. My squinted-up eyes dripped tears while my nose ran, fusing with the dirt that blew in swirls around me. And dear God, save me from going to Hell like that preacher man said would happen to me.

Wiping gravel off the knees of my long gray stockings with my coat sleeve, I tied on the yellow rag Mama had given me to cover my nose and mouth against the needling dust, making it hard to breathe. Then I heaved a sigh and started walking, leaning into the wind that zoomed around me. This place was nothing like our old home, which had trees and Bermuda grass. At least there weren’t many nettles here. I’d never forget the day I learned about those. Flushed with excitement when I saw a red A on my first-grade report card, eager to spill the news to my parents, I’d run unheedingly through a nest of stinging nettles and ended up in pain and sobbing. It was my first memory of mingled emotions. On one hand I was happy, but my legs stung and bled from sticker picks.

That’s a lesson, Patsy Lou, Mama allowed in her Take-No-Prisoners voice. Pride goeth before a fall.

She knew what she was talking about, because the next day, a church deacon reared up on his white high horse and told my daddy we had to vacate the parsonage, even though Daddy had built it himself, hung flowered wallpaper, sanded floors, and we had scrimped to pay for everything. Mama cried and begged Daddy to stand up to Brother Williams, but Daddy said he followed the will of God, so we moved on.

Now we lived in a dilapidated parsonage with pitted white paint and a front porch so off-kilter I once slid off it and landed on a pile of dirt clods at the end of the overhang. The house, set on the lip of this same narrow road two miles east of Addington, Oklahoma, was bounded by a ditch full of parched bushes stabbing twigs out in a wasted hunt for water.

One of my pigtails had lost its red ribbon, and my hair blew against my face and across my eyes as I lowered my head and trudged along, wondering how many hobos would be hanging out on our back steps when I reached home. It was 1935, and Daddy said we were going through a depression. Patsy Lou and Charles, he said to my big brother and me one day, y’all need to know how good y’all have it, even though you’re hungry at times. Do y’all know that some of those fellows riding the rails are kids no more than fourteen?

No, sir, I didn’t know that, Charles answered.

They look grown up to me, wearing overhalls and stuff. I chimed in. They wear nice caps, too.

Patsy Lou, those boys sleep on top of boxcars, starved and worn out, looking for a way to make a living in these hard times. And its overalls, not overhauls.

Well, they flock to our steps like squirrels to a feeder. My teenage brother hee-hawed, They slurp up Mama’s watered-down soup like I don’t know what.

Daddy frowned at my brother. Son, everyone’s hungry nowadays. Hungry men trying to find work, having to leave families behind, trying to get to California and a job. These sandstorms have just about killed us all. We’re sure enough living in the middle of a dust bowl.

Mama thought the hobos and bums used a secret sign carved on fence posts leading them straight to our doorstep for a bowl of soup—and if we had the fixings, cold biscuits, too. When we don’t hardly have enough food for our own, Mama said.

Sometimes a wanderer would spend several days at our house sleeping on a back porch pallet and tinkering with stuff that Daddy didn’t know how to fix. One man repaired Daddy’s car and then drove off in it and didn’t come back. Mama was fit to be tied.

Charlie, she said to my father, I told you not to be so trusting!

Daddy wiped his face with a white handkerchief and then tucked it back into his pocket and gave out a long, heavy sigh before answering Mama. Myrtle, he said, staring up at the sky, I reckon that feller needs our car more than we do.

Daddy’s words made Mama explode like a Fourth of July firecracker. She ran into the house, slamming doors and yelling, Cain’t imagine anyone needin’ anythin’ more than we do. She shouted until Daddy told her to be quiet and put supper on the table. I was relieved when she simmered down and didn’t start World War number one hundred fifty-five thousand with Daddy.

As I looked down the forever road that stretched out ahead, I distracted myself by talking to my sister, Dead Bettie Ruth. She died a few months before I was born, and I never heard the end of it from my older siblings. Bettie Ruth was everything I was not. She had dark curly hair and was beautiful and smart even though she was only a toddler when she died from dust pneumonia. I didn’t tell my family that ever since we had visited her grave over a year ago, Dead Bettie Ruth had become my best friend.

  On one of our moves into the unknown, we had made a side journey into the familiar—at least to Mama, Daddy, Charles, and Poor Little Glendora—but not to me. It was to the town of my birth, Merkel, Texas, in the hard-hit Texas panhandle, and the cemetery where Little Bettie Ruth had been laid to rest six years earlier.

  The air was heavy and silent, except for flashes of lightning and occasional rolls of thunder that suddenly came sweeping across the plains, foretelling rain.

  It’s going to rain, I do believe, Daddy shouted, like he had just gotten religion. Rain, I’m sure of it, he said, hitting his fist on the steering wheel. Sure enough, two fat drops of water hit the car windshield––splat––smearing the dusty glass so bad that Daddy had to pull off to the side of the road and take a rag to clean it so he could see to drive.

  Halleluiah! Glory to God! Mama strangled out a cry, apparently unable to contain her excitement over seeing two drops of rain after five years of drought.

  Hooray! I yelled from the backseat, but then I cowered down because the rain had stopped and we were approaching the cemetery where Little Bettie Ruth lay in a white casket wearing a white batiste dress, I was told, with a lace cap embroidered in pink roses over her black curls and new white baby socks. An electric current of anxiety circulated between us from Mama to Daddy and Poor Little Glendora and Charles and then to me. Mama held a white lace handkerchief—a friend had gifted it to her at a shower for the new baby that was in her belly—up to her mouth as her cobalt eyes scrutinized the mounded graves that rose up ahead of us.

  Daddy parked the car, and we all piled out quietly and reverently like we were going to meet Reverend Billy Sunday and his wife, Ma Sunday. Mama sprinted on ahead of us, her blue flowered dress whipping in the wind that had suddenly sprung up and was blowing tumbleweeds and sand across the graves and banking up against the tombstones. Mama pushed several crinkly weeds off a tiny grave, and then she lay down sideways on that pocket-sized burial place and sobbed. Daddy wiped his eyes with his hands, and then he lay down next to Mama on the mounded dirt and put an arm around her. Not wanting to be left out, I threw myself on top of Daddy. Poor Little Glendora and Charles joined me. We piled on top of our parents on the red dirt grave of our sister, weeping. We were a mound of heartache, our sorrow filtering down through the red earth in a delicate stream, giving Dead Bettie Ruth the sweet taste of our tears where she lay sleeping in her pristine dress and cap with the pink roses on it, and her little white socks, her curly head resting on a pink satin pillow, as fierce wind blew silky red ribbons and shriveled carnations across that desolate cemetery in the panhandle of Texas.

  After a few minutes of lying on top of each other all tumbled together like that, and after Mama stopped crying, Daddy told us to get up. There was work to be done.

  Y’all get up now and help your mama and me get these tumbleweeds off of little Bettie Ruth’s resting place, he said, already stacking up a pile of crunchy weeds that had congregated around the headstone that he, himself, had carved with his hands and a chisel.

  Look here, y’all, Mama said, holding out a miniscule cup and saucer and a tiny pot to match. Somebody put these play pretties on Bettie Ruth’s grave. Isn’t that sweet? Patsy Lou, you want to take them home to play with?

  No, they belong to Dead Bettie Ruth, I said. I took the toys from Mama’s earth-soiled hands and wedged the tiny white porcelain dishes back into the ground that roofed my sister.

Since that day in the cemetery, if I felt scared or lonesome or worried, I talked to Dead Bettie Ruth. Dead Bettie Ruth, I would say to my sister, what’s going to happen if one of us gets sick? Where will the money for medicine come from? My sister didn’t talk much, and sometimes she disappeared in the middle of a conversation, but this time she shook her dark curls and smiled. Then I knew that everything would be okay. Bettie Ruth, I continued, Do y’all think we’ll ever have our very own house again? And what if Daddy makes a church member mad by inviting darkies to services like he did at the last place? Will we have to move again?

My dead sister didn’t answer, having disappeared back to Heaven. I decided to talk to God.

God, I said, my words muffled by the cloth tied over my nose and mouth, Are you going to make Daddy up and take us off to New Mexico or some other foreign place?

God was as silent as Dead Bettie Ruth.

Whenever Daddy heard the call of the Lord—and the Lord called often—we loaded up everything we owned and moved. Did the Almighty have a telephone nailed to a cloud just so he could call Daddy? If God did have a telephone, did he have an operator like Lucille, who listened in on our party line? Our phone was a wooden box hooked to a wall in the kitchen. We turned a handle on the side of it until Lucille said, Operator, what number, please?

Once in a while, Charles, his Robin Hood features and mischievous blue eyes smiling, quietly lifted the receiver while I stood on a kitchen chair to listen to neighbors gossip, until Lucille said, Get off the line, y’all kids. I know y’all are a-listenin’ in.

Charles crashed the receiver back on the hook, and we giggled like fools. Anyway, if Almighty God had a phone, I wished he would stop calling Daddy so I could catch up at school. Maybe I would answer the phone the next time God called. I imagined the phone ringing and Lucille saying, Hold on now, sir. Reverend Montandon, God is calling.

I would say, God? And a voice like an explosion of thunder from out of a purple cloud, the kind of worrying sound we had when it rained, would spark and boom through those tiny electric wires strung on posts at the front of our house, like it could hardly fit. HELLO, PATSY LOU. THIS IS GOD ALMIGHTY, CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, THE GOD OF ISRAEL, JEHOVAH, THE SAVIOR, THE EVERLASTING FATHER, THE ALMIGHTY GOD. HOW ARE YOU TODAY?

Just imagining such a thing made me fearful of being struck down dead as a doornail. Sorry, God, I muttered.

As the newest student in my class, it was hard to make friends. During recess at my latest school, I asked some girls if I could play hopscotch with them, but they shook their heads no.

Y’all are probably a crybaby, Pansy Jean said, her dirty-blond hair done up in fat Shirley Temple curls, making me jealous because my hair was stick straight, and worse, my nose zigzagged a little from a car wreck I was in on the way to my oldest brother’s wedding in Pilot Point, Texas, when I was five. I was sitting on Daddy’s lap in the front seat when the man driving us in his car hit a telephone pole. Wham! I slammed headlong into the dashboard. Blood gushed from my nose like I was Jesus on the cross. It hurt, too. But I was more worried about my new white dress getting ruined, the only new dress I could ever remember owning, than about my broken nose. I held my head way out over the road and watched my glistening cherry-colored blood run into pavement cracks instead of onto my pretty dress.

Church members said my smile was nice, though, and that I had straight teeth. I should hope so. When my baby teeth needed to come out, Mama sat on top of me with her rolled stockings around her ankles, hair undone, a face full of intent, and with kitchen scissors in her rough hands she zigzagged across my gums until she pried the teeth out as I bled. Y’all are not going to have crooked teeth like Poor Little Glendora, she said, although I wiggled and hollered and tried to get away. Nothing stopped my mother from her appointed rounds.

Thinking about how Mama had dug out my baby teeth, I kicked a rock and watched it tumble into the ditch. This dusty ol’ road seemed to go on forever. Heavy, wintry shadows hiding in the leafless trees leaped out to sop up the daylight, making me afraid Brother Webber would skitter out from the dead bushes and snatch me by my pigtails.

Brother Webber had paid us a visit once when Daddy was away water-witching for a dried-out farmer. I lay on the horsehair couch, my tonsils swollen together and dotted with white spots. Mama went to the kitchen for a minute, leaving me alone with Brother Webber.

Mama said to always be polite to my elders, so when he’d asked me to sit on his lap, I obediently perched on the knees of his olive drab suit, hoping he would push me off. But the old man pulled me higher up onto his knees, and before I knew what was happening, he deposited his freckled hands on my chest and rubbed round and round, real hard. Y’all like that, little girl? he said. A sour smell churned from his fish mouth.

When I tried to squirm away, he tightened his grip on me until Mama suddenly appeared in the doorway. In a startlingly swift motion, the old man pushed me across his bumpy trousers and off his sharp lap. Plop! My bottom splayed onto the icy linoleum floor.

Patsy Lou, Mama said in a stern voice, get up from there right this minute and go see about your baby brother. Brother Webber will excuse you. Mama sounded mad, and when Mama was mad, she could knock you off your feet with one glance from her penetrating eyes. I even forgot about my inflamed tonsils.

Yes, yes. Brother Webber hopped out of his chair and skidded across the room. He jammed his brown felt hat with the little green feather in the band down on his head so far it about covered his tiny green eyes. I need to be getting on home.

That’s a real good idea, Mister Webber. Mama opened the door, allowing in a whisk of cold air, and ushered him out. He scurried away real fast, like he expected our lazy old dog Red to fly from under the house and take out after him. Wham, the screen door banged back, and Mama slammed the inside door with so much force the glass insets trembled. She didn’t even say, Goodbye, Brother Webber. It was so nice of you to visit.

Lingering against the doorjamb, I had waited to see what was going to happen next, but Mama spotted me without even looking in my direction. As soon as the door thundered shut, she said, Patsy Lou, come here right this minute. Sweating in the frigid air, she fanned herself with a copy of The Herald of Holiness. I sat on the couch, swinging my legs, wondering what kind of trouble I was in. Patsy Lou, you be careful of Brother Webber, Mama said, her words wafting through the pages of The Herald. Do not go into a culvert with Brother Webber, even if he asks you to, and never ever go in his house. Mama closed The Herald of Holiness, showing she was serious. Even if that man says he’ll give you a fried pie. Understand?

Not even a fried apple pie, Mama?

Not any kind of pie, Patsy Lou, or cake or anything.

Not even if he says I can sit at that little table he made, the one with little chairs?

No, Patsy Lou, not even if he says he will give you that table set. Now don’t be aggravating.

I knew to shut up. Mama’s face was so red I was afraid she might bust a blood vessel.

Never go near that man again, or you’ll get a whipping you’ll never forget. I’m going to tell your daddy, too. You hear me? Brother Webber is not a nice man.

I don’t like Brother Webber, anyway. He smells funny.

That’s denture powder, Patsy Lou. The man has false teeth. He dyes his hair, too.

Ugh, I said, holding my nose. Mama, is Brother Webber a sinner? Daddy sometimes preached about the Hoors of Babylon who dyed their hair and ended up burning in the fires of Hell.

We should never cast the first stone, you know that. But I don’t think Brother Webber’s a Christian, even though he goes to church twice on Sunday and once during the week, Mama concluded, her impaling eyes piercing the veil into the hereafter.

The instant Daddy came home, I heard Mama tell him about Brother Webber rubbing my chest the way he did. Well, Daddy slammed out of the house, started the car, and zipped off down the road like he was a house afire. Mama wrung her hands and paced the floor, asking God to keep Daddy from killing Brother Webber.

About an hour later, with dirt flying around the car, Daddy skidded into the yard, very nearly hitting the porch. One sleeve of his black suit coat was torn from the armhole, and he rubbed his right hand.

Charlie, whatever happened? Mama asked, helping Daddy take off his ripped coat. Then she made him sit down in our cracked leather armchair while she washed his face and hands with a cold washrag and put Blue Star ointment on his knuckles. All that time, Daddy didn’t utter a word. After Mama insisted he go to bed, I listened at the door—the only way I could find out things, since nothing that didn’t involve Heaven or Hell was ever discussed in our family.

Daddy said, I declare, Mama, I tried to pray with that man, but he just glared at me, his eyes sending out sparks like a fiend. I told him never to touch my girls or any other child, or I would call the police on him! Y’all know what he said? He said, ‘Reverend, do y’all think the po-lice would arrest me? Naw, I donate to them. I’m a member of the church, an upstanding Christian, and I have money.’ Daddy let out a sigh I could hear all the way through the door. Mama, that man is crazy as a hoot owl. He’s strong, too—why, he grabbed my arm and hung on. I pulled away, and he plumb tore my sleeve off. I’m sorry to say it, but I boxed that old reprobate’s ears real good.

Well, I very nearly fainted dead away. Reprobate! That was a bad word, I was sure, although I didn’t know what it meant. Could Daddy go to Hell for using it? I must not have heard right. My daddy would never, ever use a bad word. Yes, I’d misunderstood, I decided.

I thought about Brother Webber as I trudged toward home, glancing over my shoulder every once in a while to be sure the road was clear. A noise from the bushes startled me. A scissor-tailed flycatcher zoomed up out of the brambles and did a dance in the sky. Mesmerized, I watched and watched, wishing I was a bird and I could fly away to a place with flowers and grass and trees. Daddy said poachers caught scissortails for their long feathers.

Hide! I shouted to the bird. Don’t let them catch you. He must have heard me, because he coasted back into the undergrowth and was lost from sight.

Lordy, I looked way down the road, but still no house. I put my schoolbooks on the ground and sat down on a big rock to pour out the sand that had gotten through the raggedy soles of my shoes. Then I dragged myself up and started walking again, hoping the Holy Poltergeist that Mama was always reading about wasn’t following me.

Mama wrote poetry. When I was five, she taught me to memorize long poems to recite in church. Somebody’s Mother was her favorite: The woman was old and ragged and gray / and bent with the chill of a winter’s day . . . It went on and on. But Mama’s tutelage sometimes backfired.

Patsy Lou, she would say, get that head of yours out of a book and come help Poor Little Glendora. She’s cleaning the house while you gom around.

When she was ten, Poor Little Glendora’s appendix had burst. She was operated on at Children’s Hospital in Oklahoma City and almost died. That was why we began calling her Poor Little Glendora. At the hospital, a woman gave me the hugest Hershey’s chocolate bar I ever saw in my entire life. I hid behind bushes at the hospital and ate the whole thing without once thinking about my sick sister. I didn’t tell Mama or Charles or anyone else what I did, and I wasn’t at all sorry.

Poor Little Glendora was born before God said she was ready and weighed about a pound, Daddy said. Why, she fit in the palm of my hand, she was so little. She was five years older than me, but petite, with thin legs that had scars on them and ached all the time. At night Daddy rubbed her legs to help her fall asleep. He said she was having growing pains. With her longish face and dark eyebrows, Poor Little Glendora looked like Daddy, but I looked like myself.

I was just sixteen and your daddy twenty-three, Mama often said, and yet, after the ceremony at your grandpa and grandma’s place in Coleman County, Texas, we left in a covered wagon to spread the Word of God. She always paused at this point, put her hands on her hips, and looked way off into the ancient past. Why, I remember having one iron frying pan and one kettle to cook with. We slept under the wagon on the hard ground at night. But we could see the stars and it was beautiful.

In their wedding picture that sat on top of Mr. Steinway, our piano. Mama looked soft and sweet and young. Her auburn hair was piled on top of her head and covered in a filmy white scarf. She was smiling and so pretty that I hoped to look just like her someday. When I looked at that picture, I imagined I sat at the top of the tall mulberry tree that grew in my Grandparent’s yard, watching the proceedings and stuffing mulberries in my mouth.

Daddy stood next to Mama, with one black high-topped shoe on a large rock and the other foot on the ground. A nifty dresser even then, Daddy wore a white shirt with a stiff high collar, a tie, and a dark suit with matching vest. He looked slender and handsome, with a gentle expression, unlike that of the fervent hellfire-and-brimstone preacher he was now, even though he got the Call to preach when he was fifteen. Daddy was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, after his parents came to the United States from France. They were Huguenots, Daddy said, fleeing religious persecution. He tried to teach us kids French, but my tongue didn’t work that way.

Hallelujah! Praise God! Finally our house rose up ahead of me in all its shabby splendor, with tumbleweeds and dirt from sandstorms piled up against the foundation. I broke into a relieved sprint. Lazy Red came loping up to greet me, leaving her puppies under the house where she had birthed them. Her dinners, as Mama called them, almost dragged on the ground from nursing all those puppies. I patted her head, and she wagged her tail so hard her whole body shook.

One afternoon, Charles had crawled underneath the house and found three squirming, squeaking, black-and-white puppies he brought out to the light. Dibs on the boy, he’d said, picking up a puppy with one black eye, one floppy ear, and black spots scattered all over its furry white