I spent the summer between the 7th and the 8th grades
in Mayberry RFD, fishing for bream, about the size of your hand.
Bill was my nigger. We used wasp larvae for bait. I'd knock the nests down
and he would have to go and get them. If you spit tobacco juice on a wasp sting,
it neutralizes the venom. We took a kid with us who chewed tobacco as a sort of
walking first aid station. He was like Huckleberry Finn to our Tom Sawyer.
My mother didn't like to cook fish, but we were broke, and Bill and I
would clean them, so she cooked them. My dad had a circuit of three churches
at Culloden, Yatesville, and Rogers, Georgia, and we lived in the parsonage
at Culloden. We were preacher's kids. Every Sunday morning we were supposed
to recite a Bible verse we'd learned. Every week, I recited the same one. John 11:35.
Jesus wept. There are two kinds of preacher's kids. Goody-two-shoes and rebels.
Sometimes the girls act out. She's a little spitfire. Suzette was the base commander's
daughter. Same thing. She dated Uncle Potter, a seine fisherman. She was a barmaid at
the Highway Bar, across from the truck entrance to the paper mill.
Potter's father made him patrol the road and bury road kills.
Gladly, the cross-eyed bear.
We all have our histories.
Suzette took a psychology class
and could tell you how all of Potter's brothers
were potty-trained. One of them didn't like it.
Who did she think she was? She was an educated fool.
She ran rabbits and bayed at the moon. She didn't love Jesus.