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When Pop was satisfied with the sound of things, he put the air filter back on and closed the hood. I stuck my head out the window. “How about I ride along when you take it back?”

“How about you see if your momma has supper ready? It won't take me a minute to run this up the road.”

Miss Pauline's '35 Plymouth sat there purring like a cat on a Sunday afternoon and Pop wouldn't even let me ride with him. If you asked me, I deserved a little something for being his flunky.

Pop scrubbed the grease off his hands with kerosene, then went to the back porch to wash with soap and water. He lathered up his arms, singing “Amazing Grace” and how it saved a wretch like him.

He sure could act like a wretch.

I closed my eyes for a minute, pretending I was on the highway driving away from Pop. To some place where I could get me a little respect.

“Time to stop daydreaming.” Pop was back.

“Yes, sir.” I slid out from under the wheel.

“I meant what I said about school. Find yourself a job and take care of your momma.” He climbed in the car. “I'll be back before you can say ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy.'” Then he drove off and left me to put the tools away.

“Yankee Doodle Dandy,” I said. And he wasn't even out of the driveway yet.

July 1941

Momma used the skirt of her apron to dab at the sweat on her round face. “Junior, dish up a bowl of beans for Hammer.”

I crumbled cornbread into the beans. And added raw onions. Granddaddy would yell if I didn't. When I carried the bowl into the bedroom, he was sleeping in his rocking chair with his radio on. They were saying something about German U-boats sinking British ships and wondering how long it would be until those submarines attacked the United States.

Granddaddy's gray hair was flat on one side from sleeping on it. I nudged his leg with my knee. “I brung your supper.”

“Thunderation! You fool. You woke me up.” His eyelids slid shut again, and his mouth fell open like a trapdoor without a hook. A dried stream of tobacco snuff ran from the corner of his mouth and down onto his neck.

“Wake up. They're talking about America joining the war again.”

That got him going. “Huh!” he grumbled. “That yellow-bellied president is too chicken to take us to war. He ain't half the man the Colonel was.”

The Colonel—that was Theodore Roosevelt, who evidently loved war. But he'd been dead for twenty-some years. So far, our president, Franklin Roosevelt, had steered clear of fighting, and I figured he was doing his best for the good of the country.

I turned the radio up so Granddaddy would listen and maybe even eat supper. He reached for the bowl, and I turned to go. But his voice chased after me. “With any luck, they'll call up your pop and turn him into a real man.”

It seemed like he couldn't wait for Pop to be drafted. Or dead.

Granddaddy had been living with us for a week, but it didn't take one meal to figure out that he and Pop couldn't eat supper at the same table. After the first day, Momma started carrying Granddaddy's food into the bedroom to keep the two of them apart. But Pop and Granddaddy could argue without being in the same room. Pop would come in the house singing “
Ain't gonna study war no more”
—just to get Granddaddy going—and the next thing we knew, Granddaddy's radio would be turned up loud as possible. Then Pop would march over to the bedroom door and pull it shut. Hard.

I wanted to ask Pop why he hated his daddy so much, but talking about Granddaddy might set him off and I didn't plan to be the cause of him going out drinking with Wayne Walker.

Back in the kitchen, Momma had three plates dished up, but Pop still wasn't home. “I bet Miss Pauline got to talking,” I said.

“No,” said Momma. “It's her suppertime and she won't let anyone interfere with her schedule. You know that, Junior.”

“Maybe Miss Dinah, then.”

“Pauline keeps Dinah on schedule too,” said Momma.

Miss Pauline was a schoolteacher who liked doing things just so. As a matter of fact, she taught ninth grade. I sure wished there was a way to miss having her for my teacher this year. Besides quitting school, that is.

Momma sighed and glanced out the window. “Let's eat.”

While I was still eating, Granddaddy hollered for me to come into his room—which was actually
my
room, with him added into it.

“I'll be there when I'm done eating, Granddaddy.”

I finished up and found him on the floor, dragging a pasteboard box out from under the bed. “Open that,” he said. “We're gonna fancy up these walls.” Granddaddy had only a left hand. There was a scarred-up stub at the end of his right arm—something to do with a mill accident.

First thing out of the box was a studio portrait of a soldier. “That's your great-granddaddy there.”

“Your daddy?”

“Yup. Gideon Bledsoe. Confederate Army.” Granddaddy picked up the tin can he kept by the rocker, spit a stream of tobacco juice into the can, and kept on talking. “He was a pipsqueak when he joined. By the time he came back, he was hard as nails. I wasn't born yet, but I can attest to the truth of it. A war will grow you right up.”

Gideon looked to be about my age. Fourteen. His eyes were might near as shiny as the buttons on his uniform. His dark hair curled out from under his wool cap. Looking at that picture, I couldn't deny him for a relative of mine. He held his gun across his chest like that was the thing he wanted most to show off in the picture. As if the gun was what made his eyes sparkle the way they did.

“Set that on the bureau. And we're gonna need some tacks.”

Lucky for Granddaddy, Momma had some tacks in an old baking powder can. When I came back with them, Granddaddy unfolded a Theodore Roosevelt campaign poster and I tacked it up, like he told me to, on the wall above the iron bedframe. Then he started pulling newspaper pictures out of his box—local boys who were serving in the armed forces right that minute.
“Those fellas are fighting for your freedom. You better appreciate it, too.”

“Yes, Granddaddy. I sure do.”

Granddaddy started telling me which of those soldiers were from Brookford, the small mill town where he raised Pop. My aunts lived there. Brookford was only a few miles away, but a body would hardly know it, considering how the family never saw each other. Pop could ride past his sisters' houses without flicking an eyelash.

I didn't pay much attention to Granddaddy talking about the Brookford boys because my eyes kept wandering to that picture of Gideon Bledsoe. He looked so young. What was it like to fight in something so awful as the Civil War?

“Junior.” Momma was calling. “You're gonna have to do the milking.” That meant she'd given up on Pop.

“Yeah, Pop,” I grumbled. “Reason I can't play baseball is I gotta fill in for you when you take a notion to go out and get drunk.” I took the milk bucket and headed for the barn. While I was out there, it started to rain. The sound of it on the roof set up a rhythm for the milking. Afterward, I leaned into Pop's mule and stroked his mane. “Grover,” I said, “it appears he's out drinking again. Momma's gonna be downhearted. Don't it make you mad?”

When I went back into my room, Granddaddy was
getting off the chamber pot and pulling up his britches. “Left you a little something to carry out,” he said.

I sure didn't want to be dumping his dooky, but I couldn't sleep with that smell in the room either. “Granddaddy,” I said. “That pot is for using in the middle of the night. We have an outhouse for the rest of the time.”

“Hmph. It's raining out there. Besides, I'm too old to be trotting to a johnny house.”

Granddaddy wasn't that old. Not even sixty, according to Momma. His legs worked just fine. But he thought he was too good for country living.

I emptied the pot because, after all, what choice did I have? “Pop,” I said, talking to myself mostly, “I don't much like your daddy either.”

After washing on the back porch, I pulled up a stool and stayed out there, listening to the steady clattering of rain on the porch roof. It crossed my mind to bring my blankets and pillow out there and let the rhythm of it put me to sleep.

Seemed like it had rained the whole month of July. Pop's garden had so much corn he declared he could feed the state of North Carolina. He'd sold it by the dozen out along the highway. And more than likely a couple of bushels went to Wayne Walker for making whiskey.

The two of them were probably together right this minute.

Finally I headed for bed. But for me, bed wasn't
exactly a bed. Not since Granddaddy arrived. My bed was big enough for two people, but after three nights of him snoring and farting, I decided I'd rather sleep on the floor. So I'd piled me up a few featherbeds and grabbed my pillow and moved to the corner.

It was up into the night and I was sound asleep when Butch and Jesse started howling from under the front porch. Someone banged on the door, so I got up and went to be with Momma, just in case it wasn't Pop—or even if it was. Midnight surprises never seemed to turn out for the good. And this time it was the deputy sheriff, standing there with water dripping off the brim of his hat.

July 1941

The policeman leaned in and spoke up extra loud, but the rain on the roof still almost drowned him out. “Mrs. Bledsoe?”

“Yes.” Momma's voice was a whisper, but I could see the words on her lips. “What's wrong?”

“Could I come inside, please?”

She stood there not moving. I knew she wanted to shut that door in his face and pretend her husband was in bed where he belonged at this hour of the night.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Come on in.”

Momma sat in the closest chair—on the edge of it, like she didn't plan to stay long. I could tell she just wanted that deputy to say what he'd come for and then leave. He stood by the door and let the water drip onto the rag rug she'd braided.

He stuttered around for a minute or two and finally started to walk the floor, stopping in front of the mantelpiece. He picked up the framed photograph of Momma and Pop on the day they got married. Was
he trying to figure out if that skinny lady in the picture was the same person as the heavyset woman waiting for him to speak? Maybe he thought he was in the wrong house. I sure
hoped
he was, because him being there had to mean something bad.

Finally he put the picture down and turned to face us.

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Bledsoe,” he said. “We found Axel over on Hog Hill by the side of the road. Ma'am, we need you to come and identify the body.”

The body? What did he mean by that?

But Momma knew exactly what the officer was saying. “He can't be dead.” Her voice wobbled and cracked. “He was just here. He wasn't sick. He's never sick.” Which was a strange thing for her to be saying, considering how many times she'd told people he was taken ill. What she really meant was that he'd passed out from too much bootleg whiskey.

All of a sudden I felt light in the head—like
I
was fixing to pass out. But I had to be close to Momma, so I sat on the arm of her chair and she sagged up against me. I put my arm around her shoulder and we sat there, quivering. She was twisting the hem of her chenille bed jacket and picking at its fluffs. Staring at it real steady, as if ignoring the policeman would mean he wasn't even there.

I heard Momma swallow, and I heard the scratchy sound of her fingers on her bed jacket.

The deputy cleared his throat and shuffled his feet.

“We better go now, Momma. He needs us to identify the body.” I couldn't believe I'd said that. The body. As if Pop wasn't a person, even.

Later, when I saw him there on the table with a sheet pulled over him and his feet sticking out, I knew it was him by his shoes. Brown wingtips with a hole in each sole. Red clay caked to the edges.

But Momma wanted to see his face. She sat there for a long time, pulling bits of grass from his thick brown hair and holding his hand—which they hadn't done a spanking good job of cleaning up. There was some mud under his fingernails. So I fished his knife out of his pocket for her. She used the edge of that blade to clean under every single nail.

I didn't want to see how gentle she was, as if she thought that blade could hurt him. And I sure didn't want to cry. I just wanted her to stop so the deputy could take us home. I wanted to crawl between my blankets and listen to the rain pounding on the roof and pretend that none of this had ever happened. “Momma,” I said, “the undertaker will clean him up proper. He'll look real nice. You wait and see.”

But she didn't pay me no mind. She just whispered his name. “Axel Bledsoe. Have mercy, Axel. What have you done to yourself?”

The officer said it seemed to be a normal death. No marks on the body. No foul play.

Finally, after the coroner promised her she could see
Pop again before the burying, the deputy convinced her to go home.

He drove real careful because the windshield wipers slowed down every time he stepped on the gas. Water gurgled against the windows. It beat on the roof and swished under the tires, making a racket that bumped into my thoughts.

Pop is dead. Pop is dead
. The words bounced around, looking for a place to land in my mind.

I heard other things—the crunch of leaves under our feet while Pop and me headed into the woods with our guns, Momma begging him to give up drinking, the sound of him coming in the door late at night, singing “
Let me call you sweetheart
.”

For some reason, that was his stumbling-in-drunk song. I came close to hating him on those nights. Here he'd just done the thing Momma despised most, drunk himself senseless and acted the fool, for Lord only knows
who
to see. Why did he think he could sing his way back into her good graces?