Dad’s Day

We’re playing basketball. We’re always playing basketball. When it’s hot out, when it’s cold out, when I still have 10 chapters to go in the book I’m reading, we’re playing basketball.

I whine and cry and give up trying, but it’s no good. He insists. We play more basketball.

He shells peanuts and munches them on the couch, watching basketball on TV. Sometimes he paints or draws or sings, but most often he’s somehow involved in a basketball game.

He doesn’t usually have a job. He sleeps a lot. He makes homemade donuts. He finds me a kitten for Christmas. He rakes the biggest leaf piles, and we jump in them.

He and Mom argue and yell. A lot. In kindergarten, I tell my teacher, “My dad moves in and he moves out. He moves in. He moves out.” It doesn’t occur to me that that might not be normal.

He cleans the house from top to bottom sometimes. We go to school and it’s a mess, but when we get home it’s spotless.

He writes love letters to Mom, or sometimes apology letters. My brother and I find them when we’re snooping in drawers in desks we’re not supposed to get into. He has the prettiest handwriting.

He thinks I am going to be the best basketball player the world has ever seen.

He yells sometimes, using the really big bad cuss words.

My sophomore year in high school, he is diagnosed with Schizophrenia. He moves out of the house….again. He goes to the hospital and takes medicine and then moves in with his sister.

I lose him for a long time. I vow that he will never be invited to my wedding or welcomed at Christmas time. I promise myself lots of things when I’m hurt.

As an adult, I learn a new perspective. I begin to accept him as he was and as he is. He remains very much a gentleman to me as a grown person, and bows gracefully out unless asked to attend. His presence becomes an awkward, almost-welcome shadow in the outskirts of my life.

This year, I feel the urge to call and wish him a Happy Father’s Day for what I believe is the first time ever.

I have to ask my sister for his number. I haven’t spoken with him since maybe before Christmas or maybe even Thanksgiving. I haven’t seen him in even longer.

I call. He answers. I can hear the pleasure in his voice when he realizes it’s me. We chat. Nothing heavy or personal, just the sort of stuff you might share with someone sitting next to you on a train.

For my own reasons, I keep it short. I say Goodbye and that I don’t mean to keep him. He stops me just as I’m about to hang up and says,

”You know I love you, right?”



Buddy and Papaw
Last Summer

 Where’s Buddy? is a running joke at all of our family functions. Let me explain. 

 My brother and I have been playmates, best friends, always-together friends since he got here. Okay, actually first I hated him a little because I was only a year and a half old and suddenly nobody thought I was that cute anymore with a new baby around.

The little booger grew on me, though. At the time my brother entered my life, I dragged around a battered and beaten “My Buddy” doll, popular with late-80s toddlers. Though my Mom had nicknames in mind for my brother, he instantly became my new “My Buddy.” The real life version!

The name stuck, was shortened to “Buddy,” and here we are today.

We played and hunted and skipped rocks and drank Nana’s Kool-Aid and rode around on Papaw’s tractor and basically lived the life dreams are made of, the one I write about here. That is, until I started kindergarten.

Suddenly, I’m told, I no longer had time for my pesky little brother. I had new friends, cool ones, and we went to school and did big kid stuff while he got left in the dust. I don’t remember this at all. In fact, since the time I actually can remember, I’ve been chasing him down, trying to be friends.

Three years ago, that no-good, pesky little brother of mine joined the Air Force. He hopped on a plane, had a few weeks of training, and made something of himself before we ever got out there to celebrate with him. Currently stationed in Korea, my brother has been missing family functions, get-together, holidays, birthdays, etc. for a few years now.

When I call home to chat with Nana, one of the first questions she asks is, “Have you talked to Buddy lately?”

For Father’s Day last year, Papaw was late to lunch by 45 minutes. Buddy called and he didn’t want to cut him off, so I sat waiting in the parking lot at the restaurant for an hour (after driving an hour to meet him there), fuming.

At Thanksgiving, Sissy makes deviled eggs that are to die for. You’ll never guess who she cites as the one who most enjoys those deviled eggs of hers… Every time we have a large family meal, the presence (or absence) of deviled eggs ensures a mention of my illustrious sibling.

Seeing that it irked me, my lovely family members couldn’t let up about it and so without fail, someone in the family always asks at an opportune moment, “Where’s Buddy?” It’s all (mostly) in good fun now, and we even took a moment to highlight this little Matlock family tradition at our most recent gathering – other little brother’s high school graduation. Can’t you just see the joy?

Oh, by the way, before I forget – Have you talked to Buddy lately?

Hot Summer Rain

Hot, hot breezes blow through the yard while we play by the warm glow of the Security Light. Lightning bugs waver unsteadily in the force of the wind. Glancing up from our game, we see bursts of light behind the dark clouds in the distance. A thunderstorm is rolling in.

The first fat raindrops fall one at a time. Plop. On my elbow. Plop. On top of my head. Plop. On my brother’s eyebrow. Plop. Plop. Plop. As the hot dust under our feet turns to gooey muddy madness, we run and jump and shout and twirl, soaking the rain into our skin.

“Get in here! You’re going to get struck by lightning!” Nana calls from the front door.

Grudgingly, we take our time trudging, jumping, splashing our way back to the house.

The inside air is sharp and cold against our hot, wet skin. We shiver and toss our wet clothes on the floor, instead piling on socks and sweats and blankets. Nana brings us a Zebra cake and sweet tea as we watch blocky images dance across the TV screen. The jolting, robotic voices and stuttering scenes mean that the storm is blocking satellite reception. Soon we only see a black screen with floating blue words telling us we need to check with our service provider. The signal has been lost. Outside, rain drums against the windows and thunder threatens to shake the whole valley awake.

We lose power. Nana starts lighting candles all over the house, which were standing at the ready just in case of an outage. We all end up in the living room, our faces glowing warmly in the candlelight, and I feel like we’ve stepped back in time. Every Little House on the Prairie story I’ve ever read is coming to life in our living room. Well, except for the one about tying up a pig’s bladder and using it to play catch.  In this moment, we all sit quietly, almost reverently silent, watching the flames dancing at their stations around the room and listening to the rain.

In the morning, the ground is damp and springy and giant earthworms slither and creep through the yard. Grandma Dori told me once that a little boy found a bunch of earthworms and picked them up, but they were actually baby snakes and they bit him and he died. I have been terrified of making that same mistake ever since. When the worms get too wiggly in my hand, I’m certain I have made that fatal error and toss them quickly to the ground.

In the misty morning sun, our yard has become a tropical rainforest with trilling birds and chirping insects and heavy humidity. Another summer storm has come and passed. We race to the creek knowing it will be full and flowing. Our next Summer Adventure awaits.

Mom is about to pop.

Her feet are swollen and she eats salt straight out of the shaker and her long, long hair keeps slipping out of the tight little bun on the back of her head. I have been playing basketball every weekend, as usual. The other moms ask about the baby and the due date and what they’ll name her. Mom smiles at them all, but as soon as we get in the van to go home, she’s a very cranky pregnant lady once again.

I get to skip school on Friday because Mom is being “induced.” I don’t know what this means other than supposedly it makes the baby come out on time instead of as a surprise. She got to the hospital super early, and Dad wakes us up at our regular school time and takes us in to visit her.

She and her enormous belly are propped up on the hospital bed, hooked up to buzzing, whirring machines and dripping bags of clear liquid. The TV is on, but turned down very low. My brothers are restless and Dad takes them to McDonalds when he goes to find brunch. By lunch, they are terrors, so he takes them home. Mom tells him to hurry back or he’ll miss the baby.

The baby needs to hurry up. I have to leave for a basketball tournament by 4:00pm. It’s after 1:00 and she’s still not here. Finally, Mom starts contracting and having pains and nurses rush in, and then a doctor. They don’t know that I’m not really supposed to be here. You have to be 14 to be present during delivery, according to hospital policy. I am three years too young, but I’m taller than most of them so they don’t question me staying in the room.

Good thing, too, because I am fascinated by this birthing process. I’ve only ever seen it in movies. The amount of blood and guts is unreal. And then the baby?!

Yuck. It’s covered in cottage cheesy stuff and bloody and all squenched-up in the face. The umbilical cord is disgusting. After the baby comes out, I think it’s over. I am wrong. Suddenly, Mom is pushing again and I learn about the existence of after-birth. Double yuck! That stuff is as big as the baby! They never show that part in the movies.

The nurses are busy prepping my little sister for life on the outside. They flip and flop her around, pulling on arms and legs, sucking liquid out of her lungs, pricking toes for blood samples, and eventually cleaning her up for a proper viewing. It’s all very thorough and routine.

When we get to hold the baby, you would think she was a landmine about to explode. It’s all soft, soft touches and slow, deliberate movements. Her tiniest activity causes the whole room to freeze in an instant. Each is afraid one of the others of us will be the one to drop her on her head. A few minutes later, I have to leave for the tournament. My head is so high in the clouds about my new little sister that I accidentally score a layup for the other team. What can I say? I’m smitten.

Here comes Summer.

Spring rains made the Creek rush and rage for a few days, but now it’s perfect for wading and crawdad catching. We find patches of clay that we use as a Slip-n-Slide, hurling our bodies toward the creek bank only to go rushing under at the last second when our feet hit the slick, blue patches of clay in the creek bed.

We run our fingers along the surface of the water and collect handfuls of the slimy green moss that floats on the top. Squeezed dry, it makes a clump the size of a kitchen sponge. We use it to wash rocks, then dunk the moss back into the water so we can squeeze them dry again.

I walk over a snake. Every time. My brother is behind me and I hop from rock to rock or let miniature waterfalls rush over my bare feet, and suddenly my brother calls out, “Snake!” I jump, shriek, and search frantically. It’s always right where I stepped last. They are skinny, short water snakes curled up on dry rocks, enjoying the Summer sun. They don’t even blink when we pass them. Sometimes, we pick on them with twigs and long pieces of grasses, poking at their faces. Mostly, we leave them be and keep an eye out for their comrades.

We collect crawdads in large-sized McDonald’s cups. Mama Crawdads have small, bubbly eggs attached along the sides of their tales. You get extra points for finding one. We find itsy-bitsy baby Crawdads that are all but impossible to catch. Very rarely, we find a Big Daddy. The closest thing to lobster that we’ve ever seen in the wild. We jump backward when they rush under rocks, evading our grasp. When you do catch it, you hold it by the middle, pinchers facing out. He’ll flip his massive tail and clamp his claws menacingly, but he can’t get a hold of you if you hold him by the middle.

We collect rocks of all colors, scratching and grinding them together to make face and body paints. We draw designs on our arms out of clay, and it gets stiff and crusty as it dries. When it gets too hot, we get down on our hands and knees and slurp the water straight from the Creek. It tastes like dirt and fish and Summer.

Trash. Broken bottles. Old tshirts. Lots of things come floating down the Creek. Papaw collects the glass bottles if they’re in decent shape. He digs the mud out of the neck and sets each one out on a shelf in the barn. They are green or blue, fat or tall, and we wonder if they were ever used for moonshine.

When a big rain comes, the Creek turns into raging rapids. The water gets so high that sometimes they close the road and we get to miss school because the bus can’t get through. Sissy and Papaw wade across in their giant rubber boots. Nana fusses the whole time the Creek is high, certain my brother and I have a secret plan to jump in when she’s not looking and get carried away forever.

The Easter Bunny came!

Easter morning, we wake up to big, brightly colored baskets full of eggs, candy, and sidewalk chalk. We gulp down as much chocolate as we can before we have to get dressed for Sunrise Service.

Getting up early on Easter morning is so much easier than other days in the year. I know a brand new Easter outfit will be laid out for me on the couch. The baskets will be lined up in a row in the living room floor, one for each of us. And at church, they will be making pancakes.

During the whole sermon, you can smell sausage and syrup wafting through the sanctuary. The new Easter dress is fabulous, of course, but the tag is kind of itchy and my tights are very tight. We pass babies from one lap to the next, straightening Easter bonnets and trying to look like we’re paying attention.

Finally, the minister asks us to bow our heads and we pray in thanksgiving for Christ Our Savior, His Death and Resurrection, and the Food We are About to Receive. The race to the food is demure. Everyone is on their best behavior. We have visitors today who don’t usually attend the service. People tend to come to church on certain Sundays, like Easter and Christmas, regardless of their habits the rest of the year.

In the afternoon, we head out to Cousin Mickey’s. She has a big yard, picnic tables, a basketball hoop, and a swing set at the bottom of the hill. We pick our way through the muddy, Spring grasses in search of tiny pink and blue plastic orbs loaded with chocolate and dollar bills.

We eat way too much. The kids are shooed outside to play, but we end up back under the grownups feet any chance we get. We gorge on pop and candy and fried chicken.

When it’s time to go home, we load up the van with leftovers and twice as many baskets as we came with. We will be pulling green and purple little strips of Easter grass out of the seat belt buckle for months. We are exhausted, sugared up, and cranky.

My brother and I squabble in the back seat and fall asleep before we reach home. The twenty minute drive is all it takes to knock us out. Tomorrow, we have to go back to school. Today, we doze away the rest of the afternoon, watching The Easter Bunny Is Coming to Town on Channel Four, munching on jelly beans while Nana, with glasses perched on the end of her nose, reads aloud the Easter story again from her leather, large print KJV Bible.

I never get up for school when I’m supposed to. Papaw comes to my room the first time, “Time to get up, Sarah!” A few minutes later, he comes by and flips on the light. Finally, he hollers out, “One foot on the floor!” and that’s when I know it’s really absolutely time to get up or I’m going to miss the bus. Then, I scramble, rush, and forget to brush my teeth and zip my coat, and run out to the end of the driveway as the bus starts to pull away. Our bus driver, Gail, always stops for us though. Those Matlock kids, always late for the bus.

On those rare days when I have time to eat Cheerios before the bus comes, I watch cartoons with my brother.

VR Troopers – kind of like the Power Rangers, except they wear digital headgear and are kind of nerdy.

Histeria! – a ridiculous cartoon with Big Fat Baby and Father Time and a museum tour guide who is always saying, “We’re walking. We’re walking. We’re stopping.”

Power Rangers – obvious.

Hercules – I love the movie Hercules and the cartoon is cool too. I love the singing statues and the little demon guys who are always messing up Hades’s plans.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – obvious. Also obvious that this is the original, well before the digitization, computerized version. Yuck.

Sailor Moon – Oh, I want to be her! "Fighting evil and moonlight. Winning love by daylight. Never running from a real fight."

Animaniacs – “Hellooooo, Nurse!”

Tiny Toons – kind of like Looney Toons, except they are all really young and at school together and still getting into all kinds of trouble.

Fraggle Rock – My absolute favorite! Puppets that live in a cave and try to avoid the giant trolls that are always hunting them. Fortunately, the trolls aren’t very smart. Man, those Fraggles sure love to sing.

Gummy Bears – "bouncing here and there and everywhere! High adventure that’s beyond compare!" This is probably where I develop my sense of “high adventure” that will last well into my twenties.

Care Bears – I am such a softy. I cry easily and I can’t take being teased and I love everything the Care Bears stand for. They just want to love and hug and help and treat people well. If I could, I would move to Care-a-Lot and live the rest of my life there.

Uh oh! I have to go! The bus is here!

Celebrating the New Year.

We watch I Love Lucy reruns from 10pm to midnight, sitting on Nana’s lap in the recliner. My brother on one side, me on the other. Papaw went to sleep ages ago. Mom and Dad are out celebrating at a party for grownups. All of the lights are off and it’s cozy and I barely make it until midnight. I am snuggled up in bed by 12:03 am.

An Elvis Presley marathon started at noon and lasts through the New Year. I watch Elvis sing in a convertible, wear leis and play a ukulele, blush awkwardly as a shy country boy asking out the prettiest girl in town. I stay up well past midnight. Everyone is in bed. I vow then and there to watch every single Elvis movie ever. A resolution, I guess.

Mom makes cheese and veggie trays. We fondue and dip bread and crackers in the chocolate. We string “Happy New Year!” banners across the living room and turn up Dick Clark as loud as we dare. Whistles, blowers, and streamers. Shiny gold and silver top hats are swapped and traded with the  shimmery paper tiaras that say “1999” or “2003.” Everyone gathers around the tv when we get within a few minutes of the new year. The ball finally starts to drop in Times Square and everyone is kissing and streamers are going everywhere. We blow our whistles and toot our horns and fight for the bathroom because all of the cheese and chocolate is leaving us in quite a bind.

The interesting thing about ringing in the New Year with the television set is watching them clean up afterwards. They show Times Square at 12:33am and it is barren. Trash is everywhere. Some lonely street sweeper is out there with a broom and a bag, cleaning up everyone’s mess. I hope he gets a big bonus on this night each year.

Finally old enough to go out for New Year’s! Four of us head out in the big, huge, gigantic city of Indianapolis. We pay $20 just to get in. I am simultaneously appalled and intrigued. We toast our “free” champagne at midnight. It is terrible. We see a man physically restraining and nearly abusing his girlfriend on the dance floor. Someone grabs my butt. We are done here.

My friend is hosting a New Year’s party in his penthouse overlooking The Circle in downtown Indianapolis. I ride the elevator all the way up. There are people everywhere. We pop bottles of champagne on the balcony and toast at midnight. My love is here. Champagne and a kiss at midnight? This is what I’ve waited for my whole life. It is just as magical as I ever expected.

My family keeps having chocolate and cheese and crackers. They call me when the ball drops. They post pictures of everyone wearing those silly, shiny hats and blowing the blowers. Nana and Papaw look exhausted by 10:30pm. Kids are passing out on the couch in the background.

I miss that.

We have to go meet the pizza delivery guy. I am always jealous of people in cities who can ride their bikes on sidewalks and have lemonade stands and have pizza delivered right to their doors. Dad orders pizza from the pizza place in Nashville, and then he has to go meet the pizza guy at Van Buren. The extra mile and half from the elementary school to our house is too much for the delivery guy to manage.

Dad heads out to the Crouch’s Market to rent a VHS and get some Coke. Coke doesn’t necessarily mean Coca Cola. “Coke” is any sort of dark soda, the way any tissue is a “Kleenex” or any photo opportunity is a “Kodak Moment.” We get to ride along.

Crouch’s Market has been around since the dinosaurs. It smells like gun oils and wood and the felt that covers a pool table. Norma runs the store. She sells lunch meat and souvenir hats and live bait. Right up by the counter, there are racks with Sour Straws and Kit Kats and Big League Chew Bubblegum.

The movie rentals are in three long rows. Dad rents the same movies every time – “Aliens.” “Predator.” “Terminator.” “Jurassic Park.” “Starship Troopers.”

One time, Gary and I found a huge mushroom in the woods and took my picture with it. It hangs on a board in the back room at Crouch’s, by the pool tables. I like to find it every time we go there. Pictures of Papaw and Troy and Gary with deer and turkeys they hunted are on display there too. We’re famous.

When we get home, Dad munches on the circus peanuts that always accompany a trip to Crouch’s. He cracks and shells nuts while he sits on the couch watching football or basketball or “Rambo.” He mixes peanut butter and syrup in a bowl and makes sandwiches with it.

Maybe once a year, he’ll order a pizza. He calls the pizza place in Nashville. Places the order. Waits a half an hour or forty-five minutes and heads out to Van Buren Elementary to meet the delivery guy who won’t come all the way out to our house.

Snow leaves our yard completely covered in at least a foot of fluffy white. Dad sets about making a snow village in the driveway. Some dads shovel snow so you can get the car out or make a path from the back door to the mailbox.

My Dad makes an igloo and a snow bench that lines the entire driveway. He creates snow chairs and a television with knobs and antennae. My Brother and I make lumpy snowmen out front. They don’t stand a chance in the face of Dad’s art and architecture and smooth edges and pristine, flat surfaces.

 He thinks he’s an artist. Sometimes, I believe him.

Christmas Eve is at Nana and Papaw’s house. I hear sleigh bells outside, and when we open the front door, a McDonald’s Play Set is out there waiting for me on the porch! I make Gary crawl all on his knees past the drive-thru window and order from a menu of plastic pancakes and rubber fries.

Before it gets too late, we have to go home so we can get to sleep before Santa comes. Mom always says we have to wait until Christmas morning to open our presents, but we are insistent and persuasive little boogers.

“Okay,” she finally says. “You can open your stockings. But that is all.” But we already know we’ve won. An hour and a half later, we sit in a pile of tape and shredded paper and toys we can’t take out of the box yet because we’ll lose the pieces in the mess.

We set out cookies and milk on the kitchen counter. We set out celery and carrots for the reindeer. We feel bad that everyone else forgets about the reindeer. They’re the ones doing all the work, you know – all that flying.

In the morning, Mom wakes us up. She can’t wait for us to get up on our own. She wants us to see what Santa brought. In the dining room, in front of the fireplace, little globs of melted snow on the floor show us the route Santa took from the Christmas tree to the kitchen for cookies and then back up the chimney.  The celery and carrots are nibbled too.

All of our presents from Nana and Mom and Sissy are wrapped and under the tree for ages before Christmas. In the weeks leading up to it, my brothers and I divide up our stacks and shake the boxes and count who has more and therefore must be more loved.

But Christmas morning – Santa Presents – this is different. These presents aren’t wrapped. Four shiny new toys sit in front of the Christmas tree. Our names are displayed in curly, North Pole-esque letters. Our stockings are also magically full again. Candy. Squirt guns. Lip gloss. Teeny figurines. We gorge on sweets and Tic-tac’s. We watch Christmas Vacation before lunch and after lunch and before bed, quoting every single line.

The stores are all closed. So are the restaurants. No one is on the computer or a cell phone or even earphones. We sit cozily ensconced in our little house, losing pieces of our new toys in the discarded wrapping paper, bundling up for brief sledding and snowman building and creek ice skating adventures. We come back inside; our snow-covered things end up sopping wet in the floor by the door.

Hot chocolate.  Eggnog. Homemade peanut brittle and a cheese tray that someone left for Papaw on the mail route. We finally feel brave enough to sneak the candy canes from the tree that have been hanging there as decoration. I like the sweet ones with rainbow colors that taste like skittles or bubble gum.

Our Christmas – the jolliest of holidays.

We’re going to Disney World! It is Christmas and my brother and I are sleeping on the pull-out couch at Nan and Pap’s. Santa comes in the night and brings me a soft Barbie, the kind you can snuggle and sleep with. I saw them on TV!

It is so dark and early when we get in Troy’s truck to drive to the airport. We pile into the back seat and I am comfortably dozing in a half-sleep state. I can smell Troy’s cigarette. He has the window down, so most of the smoke goes right outside, but a small, sweet bit of it drifts back toward me and it smells good.

At the airport, they put big orange and yellow tags on our suitcases. They are going to fly on a different plane and meet us there. But when we get to Florida and wait at the baggage claim, we find one, two, three suitcases. The others never appear. The airport people tell us they must have been tagged wrong and sent somewhere else, so we’ll get them in a day or two.

At the hotel, we sort out what clothes we have to share among four adults and two children. Nana finds my brother and I shirts with matching sweats. Mine is pink and has Pocahontas on it. There is a Laundromat in the hotel and we go with Nana each morning while our one change of clothes washes. I catch myself staring at a washer, and not thinking and not realizing I am awake. This seems like an important moment. My first daydream. I’ve read about it and heard about it, but now I’ve felt it.

Even though the commercials make Florida look warm and sunny and bright, it is cold. Sissy has diarrhea when we are walking to a ride in Toon Town and we have to wait. We stop by the ocean and watch the waves come up to the sand, but it’s so cold no one wants to touch the water.

Back in the hotel, all the grownups are getting ready and talking and I have to sneeze. The bathroom is occupied. There are no Kleenexes and this is coming out. I grab the closest thing, a t-shirt, and let ‘er rip. I think it is Troy’s. A few minutes later, Sissy picks up the shirt and asks what happened. “Who blew their nose in this clean shirt?” I say nothing. I hate being in trouble. If I just keep quiet and look away, maybe she’ll forget that it happened.

Before we leave, Nana makes a finally sweep of the room to make sure we got everything. Papaw leaves a twenty dollar bill on the nightstand for the cleaning ladies. Sissy whispers in my ear, “After everyone leaves the room, run back in there and grab that money!” So I do.

“No! No! I was kidding. Go put it back,” she says. Sometimes, I just can’t tell with her.

We skate on the ice in the Creek. Some patches of ice are wide and we build up pretty good speed. Mostly, though, where the water was shallow, rock edges stick up through the frozen surface and trip us in our tennis shoes. When a big snow hits, we start teeny little snow balls at one end of the field and roll them until they are ten times our size at the other end. Little bits of hay and brown grass and dirt cling to the snowy surface of the giant snow balls littering the pasture.

Ginger and Jiggy have shaggy coats. Their hair clumps in sections when the snow or sleet dries on their backs.   Their manes get tangled, and I brush them out and braid them. I am enchanted to be this close to such a big creature and not be trampled by hooves. Ginger especially likes it when I brush her. I  can see it in her eyes and the way she ducks her head down, inviting me  to pat between her ears. She and Jiggy sleep in the barn at night, packed in with bales and bales and bales of hay.

The hay loft is full. We climb the rickety ladder and squeeze through the square opening, coughing and sputtering as bits of hay and barn-dust invade our lungs. When you get into the hay loft, you’re supposed to pull the heavy wooden slat back across the hole so that no one accidentally falls through. But we always forget.

We’re too busy climbing over the scratchy bales, stacked high to ceiling. A barn cat has kittens and we hear them mewling in the back corner. Cozy and warm. Tucked away between two bales, their crusty eyes and wobbly legs are beautiful and pitiful to see. We can’t touch them yet, and it’s killing us.

 We peek out the loft window and watch the horses in the field below. They don’t do a whole lot. They just eat grain and hay and grass and get fat. Sometimes, Papaw sits us up on their bare backs, but they never learned what do with a kid on their shoulders, so they simply stand there, perplexed.

Papaw put a block of salt in the field. The deer have thick tongues and, in the wee hours of the morning, they lick deep grooves into the sides of it. We get down on our hands and knees and lick it too. We break ice cycles off the porch roof and suck on them like lollipops. They taste like rain water and tin.

My brother has a brilliant idea. “Let’s sled down the creek bank and onto the creek!” I go first. The round, silver sled flies down the bank! Excellent. I hit the surface with a thud, my head falls back with the jolt. My head hits the ice. No real damage done. Just a bump.

Oh, and I’m never listening to my brother again.

My brother has a brilliant idea. “Let’s stick our tongues to the pipe, like they do in A Christmas Story! Let’s see if it works.” I go first. And now I’m stuck. I simply cannot move, my tongue stuck to the piping above me in the tunnel. “Hewp!” I cry out. My brother says he’ll run inside and get some hot water. I wait. And wait. He isn’t coming. I rip my tongue from the frozen surface, and run back up to the house, bleeding. My brother is on the couch, stripped down to his long johns, drinking hot chocolate, and watching cartoons. In the bathroom, I peer at my battered tongue in the mirror. It’s brown around the edges, and red and bumpy in the middle.

I’m never listening to my brother again.

When the nights get cooler and the dark comes sooner, my brother and I play in the light cast by the Security Light. A power line runs through the yard, and we play a game. The high, thick, black cord is our target. A small Nerf football, with little holes chewed in the sides, is lobbed back forth across the wire. You get points based on “over it,” “under it,” or “hit it!” You get the most points when you hit it. We play this game for hours. Talking about everything and nothing, all at once.

At Christmas, we got fake laptops. The kind that look like real computers but are really full of dumb learning games like Hang Man and a music maker. Instead of using it to learn math or “spot the noun,” we play like we are in Twister and we run behind the tool shed, dodging tornados and trying to calculate the next likely touchdown in our area. My brother got a Terminator doll – excuse me, action figure – for Christmas too. When you push the buttons he says, “Hasta la vista… babay” and “Aisle be bach.” His arm is plastic flesh, and you can see the machinery underneath the skin.

Someone, Mom or Dad, tied up an old tire to the side of the barn and I practice pitching to it. I hate practice. I always get tired, and then I get worse, and then they want to make me stay longer until I get better again. But I’m not going to get better. At least, not tonight. They keep making me pitch the ball at the tire, trying to hit it dead-center, right through the heart. Those are strikes. "Keep going until you get 10 strikes." I hate it.

When I’m not playing or practicing, I’m reading. I read everything. I get in trouble for it sometimes.

“Sarah, we’re going to watch this movie as family. Come inside right now or you won’t get to watch it at all,” they say.

“But I only have 2 chapters left!” Oh, the humanity!

“Fine. Stay out here and read, but don’t think you can come in and watch it with us later. You made your choice.”

But I don’t care if I miss the movie. I’m reading about someone far away from here, someone grownup and free and setting out on exciting adventures and falling in love. Who cares if there’s a ghost man who plays on the basketball team? The Sixth Man is a dumb name for a movie, anyway. You can’t have six players on the court at one time. Everybody knows that.

Okay, maybe I do kind of want to watch it. Too late. I chose the book and now I can’t go in. That’s what you get when you make choices around here. Stick-to-it-iveness. Even when it’s against your will. I sit and read by the light of the Security Light, content in this other world that I wish was mine. Somewhere far away...

Aunt Sissy is grownup, but she’s kind of not. She smells good and has big, blonde, poufy bangs, and she’s the coolest person in the world. Her nails are long and pink. She plays the radio loud in the car, and gets Cheetos and Big Red pop when we stop at the gas station.

She works at the Season’s Lodge waiting tables. She stops there to say hello or pick up her check, and we stand at the front by the hostess and eat the mints. They’re in a bowl on the counter, and only guests who have just finished their meal are supposed to have them, but we’re with Sissy, so we’re allowed. They are delicious, and I shove five in my mouth at a time.

I’m trying to follow her as she weaves in and out of the tables and through the halls. I follow her into a room behind a heavy swinging door. It’s so loud. Dark. Smokey. Everyone in here is old. “Hey! You can’t be in here! This is a bar!” someone shouts at me, and I turn around, run back through the door and out the hall, mortified. What’s a bar? And why can’t kids be there? And why can Sissy be there if I can’t? We’re friends - don’t they know?

Because we’re friends, Sissy takes me along when she goes to a baby shower at the Season’s. It’s for one of the girls who works there with her. We play games at big round tables, but I don’t know how to do any of it and I don’t know the answers. Except for one. Baby food jars with characters’ faces taped to them are passed from hand to hand. Who’s that? Who’s that? Write it down on your list, but don’t show anyone or else they’ll cheat. “I know that one! It’s Cruella De Vil!” I helped.

At the drive-thru, Sissy tells us about conjunctions and types of nouns and teaches us new words, words that are way longer than the ones on my spelling test at school. Inside the truck, waiting for our fries, my brother and I get to sit up front. Some sharp corners make us slide and topple in our seats and look for something to hold onto, so Sissy tells us about the Cuss Word Bar. It’s right above the door, on the ceiling, and only for emergencies. And when you grab it, it’s just like saying a cuss word. We giggle and try to sneak our fingers to it when she’s not looking.

My brother and I get to ride in the back of the truck sometimes, but we have to lay down flat. The police will take us all away if they find us back here. We lie still, flat as boards and barely breathe, the wind rushes over us and sometimes tiny, sprinkling raindrops fall and splatter on our faces, our knees, our bare feet. I watch the leaves and branches and telephone poles passing overhead and try to guess where we are on the route home.

Any time I try to watch TV, Sissy attacks me. Sprawled out in the floor watching Yogi Bear or Lamb Chop, and suddenly she’s twisting her fingers tightly in my hair, or poking her long, pink nails into some baby-fat flesh, or sitting on me, pinning me down. “It’s loooove, Sarah,” she says with a grin, and then flits away, off to do something cool and fabulous and young. But when she wants me to sleep, she gently, gently rakes her long fingernails over my closed eyelids, soothing. It makes a soft scraping sound. It feels divine. 

The barn smells like dogs and dirt and old tobacco leaves.

Papaw grows fields of tobacco in the summer. When the tobacco is first planted, we get to ride around on the planter, pulled along behind the tractor. Two-seated, with a wheel in the middle, you have to stick the little backer plant into it really fast or else  your fingers catch and you miss a row. Papaw walks around afterward and presses the dirt in around the little plants, and fills in the holes we missed.

It’s really hot out when they cut the tobacco. The leaves are so tall and bright green. The Bacci Worms are long, and fat, and full of juice. Papaw squishes them and they ooze green backer juice into your hand or on your shoe. The cut stalks are stacked on Bacci Sticks, and left in the field to dry out in the sun. My brother and I use the Bacci Sticks as swords to be Donatello, or as canes, or tie them together to make a raft to float on the Creek. The rafts never float. 

The leaves are sticky and browning at the end of the summer when they get hung up in the rafters of the barn. Still on Bacci Sticks, they hang and are spread out evenly to dry out even more. When the barn rafters are full of upside down backer plants, the Bacci Worms fall from the sky. I’m sitting on the second or third highest rafters, which are as big around as a horse. I scoot back to make room for the bundle on its way up to the boards above me, and my bare leg catches on the dusty wood. I have splinter. And it’s huge. The wood inside my skin is as big as the tip of my pinky finger.

It takes forever for it to come out. Nana makes me sleep with a sliced potato wrapped against it to “draw it out.” I beg Papaw to take his pocket knife to it when it’s been in there for a week. I promise not to cry. I can tell he doesn’t want to, but it hurts. He sits down and exams my leg, places the knife to my skin, and the splinter pops out. No cutting necessary. The skin that was stretched scars and bubbles up and you can see it on my left calf.

When it gets cold, they run a kerosene heater and dress in camouflage coveralls and peel the leaves off of dry, crackly, yellowish-brown tobacco plants. We sit and watch, mostly trying to stay out of the way so the grownups won’t make us go back inside. Nana, Papaw, Sissy, Troy, Gary, Brian. They take turns standing in a row, forming an assembly line of tobacco stripping efficiency. A small, black radio blares country music. The floor of the barn is dirt and hay. When they get a pile of leaves big enough, they put them in a small, wooden box with a press at the top. Lower the press and then crank the handle until the tobacco block is small and compressed and a billion pounds.

Polly and Daniel lay content in the back stalls, howling occasionally, but mostly ignoring us. Ginger and Jiggy whinny when we ignore them, but Jiggy is old. She has arthritis in her legs and she bites our thighs when we try to sit on her back. Instead, we climb the tractor that sits in the middle of the barn, only scramble off again to press our noses close up to the crank handle when they start to press another load. Papaw is the strongest man alive, and he’s got the pressed backer bundles to prove it.

Rufus lives in a shack in the woods. My brother and I found it once. Old, rickety, a lean-to, really, at the base of a tree. Rufus scratches the side of the house at night, looking for children to steal. He takes the ones who won’t go to sleep when they’re supposed to. And we hear him. Scr-r-ractch-ch-ch. His gnarly, claw-like hands pawing at the house, hoping to find a way in and take us away.

We’re snuggled up in Nana and Pap’s waterbed. It’s warm. The blankets are warm, the bed is warm. The love is warm. Nana has an illustrated Bible that she props on her knees and reads us one story each night. She puts her finger to the page, searching out the stopping point from the night before, takes a breath, and says, “Okay….” That’s how we know it’s time to get down to business.

She wears a robe. The color changes, but it’s always thick and it’s always fuzzy. The belt is tied haphazardly at an angle. She has curlers in her hair. Pink and plastic and right out front to hold her bangs through the night.

When the story is over, we curl up on a pallet on the floor. She’s made us a cozy cocoon of blankets and sheets and pillows. We sleep there, between the bed and the wall, and she wakes me up in the night to use the restroom and have a glass of milk and a cookie. Sleepy and cozy and wrapped in Nana’s robed arms, Rufus is forgotten.

One night, I hear Rufus scratching outside the bedroom wall, hoping one of us will stay up just a tad too late. I notice that every time Rufus scratches outside, Papaw’s arm moves above his head, against the headboard. I know now. I’m in on the secret. But I do not tell my brother.

At night, we snuggle again on the semi-tipsy jiggle of the waterbed, making waves when we can get away with it. We read a Bible story. We curl up in our little nest by the bed. We wake to bowls full of dry Cheerios, already sprinkled with sugar, on the mornings Nana has to leave for work before we get up for school. So much sugar. Everything has a hint of sweetness – the tea, the Cheerios, the cookies. It tastes a little like sugar. It tastes a little like love. 

Singing in the car is our form of family bonding. No song is safe. Disney tunes, Christmas carols, little ditties from childhood, “Arms of the Angel” by Sara McLaughlin. We sing at the top of our lungs. Mom in the front seat driving and the rest of us crammed in the backseat with random articles of clothes, discarded fast food containers, jars of coins, ribbon. Mom just can’t seem to keep that car cleaned out. We pile in on top of it all, seatbelts optional, and sing.

On a road trip to Utah, we take a minivan. It’s a long drive. 16 hours. We sometimes pull over to nap in a rest stop or to watch the sunrise. My basketball team made it to nationals and we’re making the long haul there and back on the interstates. We stop at a little museum somewhere out west, and climb aboard covered wagons and watch a fountain of a man pouring water out of his boot. Costumes, sets, and other props take up an entire room in the back. We put on a play. Mom records it. I am a damsel in distress. My brother is an Indian chief who captured me. My other brother is the sheriff on his way to rescue me. We laugh so hard that we cannot breathe, cannot stand up straight, cannot think straight. And in the car, we sing “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang when we finally reach another state line.

Mom stops on the side of the highway to video a cow in a pasture. We have cows in the pasture at home too, but this is a Nebraska cow (or a Utah cow or something “western”). Our cramped legs can use the stretch anyway, so we gripe and whine and complain but we get out of the car and watch the cows. Suddenly, a snake! Mom is terrified of snakes. It is positioned between us and the van. Did we walk over it and not even realize it? It starts to slither. We jump and shriek as one, as a family. Perhaps more terrifying than attacking us, it makes its way toward the van. The side door is hanging wide open. Kids never think to close the door so the battery won’t run down or so the snake won’t be able to get inside.

We don’t have any idea where the snake went after he disappeared beneath the van. Someone surmises that he slithered up our tailpipe and would most likely poison, strangle, and eat us all in our sleep. We sing louder now, because we are afraid. The songs carry a hint of desperation. After a while, we forget to be afraid. Winter comes, and we drive through the streets at home, attempting to belt out “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…” but no one can remember all the words, so some parts come out as simply noise or hums. We sing on the way to school Christmas concerts, on the way from winter dances, on our way to town to get groceries. Our breath fogs up the glass and we draw little figures or write things backwards so you can read it from the outside or make foot prints with our hands, the way a girl showed me how to do on the school bus once.

We sing in the car.

“Papaw, what’s this scar for on your belly?”

“That’s where they cut my beans out.”

Each time he leaves his long-sleeved, button-up, always-flannel shirt undone bare-chested, we have this conversation. He’s standing by the window in the kitchen, munching on buttered toast, watching the birds flit and scatter around the birdfeeder out back. It’s chilly. Mornings with Papaw are somehow always chilly. It’s also the weekend. His mailman hours have him out the door by some ungodly, 6am hour every workday morning. But this day has to be a Saturday, or perhaps a Sunday since Nana is running a hot steamy shower in the big bathroom, getting ready for church.

The kitchen smells like coffee and ladybugs. So many ladybugs. At some point, someone trimmed a comic from the newspaper about the ‘bajillion’ ladybugs on the windowsill. Only, in the cartoon, the boy called out, “Dad! Look at the ladybugs!” but our copy is modified, scribbled out and replaced the first word with “Pap!” Our version.

Maybe it’s chilly because it’s fall. Leaves are scattered everywhere. The walnuts have all fallen out of the trees that line the drive, and they crunch and pop under the tires of The Jeep. The Jeep. That’s how we always refer to it. Nana had an accident in The Jeep once, and slid off the road in the ice. She hurt her shoulder and had to kick her way out of the passenger side door. For a long while, she called her shoulder her “broken wing.” She also ran over TJ in The Jeep. He wasn’t hurt too badly. She was backing up, still in the driveway, and she didn’t see him basking in the sunlight, lying on the gravel. He had a bit of a limp after that, but he was a tough dog.

My brother and I had our own version of “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells” that went something like, “Jingle Bells, Papaw Smells” and “The Jeep-mobile lost a wheel and Troy did ballet! Hey!” Clever children.

Chilly morning. Toast. Fallen leaves. This means Papaw will get out on the tractor today and scoop up all of the leaves on a huge tarp, dragging it (and us) along behind him. He makes the biggest leaf pile you’ve ever seen in the Creek. He just dumps them all there. And we just jump in them there.

When lunch time comes, we are a sweaty, dirty, covered in leaf debris and starving
todeath.

Nana brings us macaroni and cheese on Styrofoam plates, which is so bad for the environment but so tasty and creamy and cheesy and we don’t care. We drink purple Kool-Aid from Styrofoam cups too. Kool-Aid, shaken not stirred, in an old milk jug. Milk jugs hold every consumable liquid in the refrigerator. Papaw makes instant Nestle tea with 3 cups of sugar. You have to use warm water to mix it, though, or the sugar won’t dissolve, so he’s sure to pour the last of the old jug into a cup to keep in the refrigerator and sip on until the new jug gets cold.

She brings our lunch out to the club house, or the garage, or the trampoline, or the porch, or wherever we happen to sit still long enough to eat it. Papaw is on the mower now, or maybe still on the tractor, or working on a car in the driveway. She brings him a cup of cold, sweet tea. It may be chilly outside, but he’s always working up a sweat. And she’s always bringing him cups of cold, sweet tea.