June Bug

Missouri Writers Guild short story of the year

The full story of “June Bug” appears below this brief intro.

A week ago, I had the pleasure of attending the Missouri Writers Conference for three purposes: meet and build relationships with other writers; learn from the various speakers; and to give a presentation to the group on crafting more powerful dialogue.

A pleasant surprise awaited me, however. My short story “June Bug” had been named the top short fiction of the year by the Missouri Writers Guild, a historic association founded in 1915.

The story “June Bug” is the title track, if you will, of my short story collection June Bug Gothic: Tales from the South, published in 2022 by Evolved Publishing. The collection is an assortment of eighteen stories I’ve written over the years, plus a couple of new ones. Several had been previously published in magazines, anthologies, and the like. A few had never found a suitable home. “June Bug” was one of the new stories.

Set in Oklahoma and Arizona, and the car ride between the two, a little girl learns a dark secret about what really happened that night her momma put the car in a ditch.

Here’s the full story of “June Bug.” Let me know what you think, and of course feel free to grab the whole book from Amazon or any of your favorite online retailers, available in both paperback and ebook.

june bug

some moments last a lifetime

Mama claimed to be part Choctaw, but she weren’t. Who knows why? Maybe ’cause of where we lived.

Daddy was a petty thief who got in a lot of fistfights at the bar and spent more time in lockup than he did bein’ a daddy. Then one of his thirty-days ended, and he moved to Arizona for work. Some guy he’d met in county knew a guy who knew a guy with a construction company who was hirin’. Daddy figured the only way he’d get straight was to get away from Mama and her drinkin’ and get out of Oklahoma where every sheriff’s deputy in Choctaw County knew him by first name and could ID him at thirty yards in the dark.

Daddy didn’t take much with him. He didn’t have much to take. He hitched a ride with his former cellmate and left Mama the car even though she’d lost her license, which didn’t really stop her from drivin’ none. He threw some clothes in a black plastic leaf bag along with a carton of Lucky filters. Looked like a reverse Santa Claus slingin’ that bag over his shoulder and takin’ stuff away. He slipped Mama a wad of cash bills. I saw at least a couple of them were hunnerds. Might have been wrapped around a stack of ones, or even Monopoly money for all I knew. But I remember it—I’d never seen a hunnerd dollar bill before or since.

He left everything else to Mama. Which weren’t much, to be true, but it included me and Jimmy. Jimmy was eight; I was five. Can’t say I blame him for not takin’ us along, but I’d had hopes. I was disappointed when he kissed me on the forehead and said, “See ya later, June Bug,” but can’t say I was surprised.

The shack was fallin’ down around our ears. Some Goodwill furniture, but me and my brother still slept on sleeping bags on the wood floor. Some pots and pans. Mama loved to cook, and she could make a good meal out of not much, as long as she was sober enough not to burn it.

You’d think with a mama and an older brother, I’d have been well taken care of, but seemed most of the time I was takin’ care of them. If Mama passed out on the couch, me and Jimmy slept in her bed, so that was always a special treat as long as she’d fed us first. Not as many spiders crawled across my face as when we slept on the floor.

Ol’ man Boswell lived in the next house, about a quarter-mile down the road. He had this electric wheelchair he rode around in all the time. We’d see him up and down our road, or we’d see him at Save & More gettin’ groceries. He always waved to me. His hair was white, and he almost but never quite had a beard. Mama called him an ol’ coot and wished he’d stay off the roads. Said he was perfectly capable of walkin’ just preferred ridin’ ‘cause he was lazy. Then she said if she got her a scooter like that, maybe she could claim more disability.

I didn’t think he was an ol’ coot. He smiled when he waved, missing a few front teeth, lips and chin stained with tobacco juice. Sometimes he’d sneak a piece of candy to me if we passed in the store but he never said nothin’ to nobody. Just wave and smile and slip me a Necco wafer or Atomic Fireball.

Photo by Spenser H on Unsplash

By the time I was six, I was cookin’ more meals than Mama was. Jimmy just played outside, ridin’ a bike down the dirt road to his friend’s house, fishin’ in the creek behind our house, although I never recollect him catchin’ anything. Not sure he used any bait. By the time I was in second grade, I realized that Jimmy was none too bright. He always seemed to be fishin’ with no bait.

He weren’t stupid or slow, just no common sense and no sense of responsibility. Course, he never had no one to teach him that stuff, but then again, neither did I.

When I was eight, the lady from Child Protective Services came and picked me and Jimmy up at the county jail in Hugo. Mama had us in the car going somewhere, I don’t even recall where now, if I ever knew, when they took her in. Me and Jimmy was sleeping in the backseat, and Mama hit a deer, wound up in the ditch. She’d gotten her license back then lost it again. Third time’s a charm in Oklahoma, and she was gonna go away longer than Daddy ever did for his offenses. He was still off in Arizona, doin’ well enough to send Mama some money ever’ month, but not well enough to ever come visit.

I helped the CPS lady find one of the envelopes he’d sent Mama so she could get an address for him. Said if he couldn’t come get us, we’d have to go into foster care. While she searched the stack of mail on the kitchen counter and looked in the nightstand and on top of the fridge, I dug through the kitchen trash bag. I found it first.

Four days later, three nights in an actual bed at a group home—in an actual house with three adults and seven children and carpet and everything—a blue Ford truck pulled up in front. I didn’t recognize the man, but Jimmy knew it was Daddy right away. The picture of him in my head didn’t match up to this guy ringin’ the doorbell.

Photo by Matthew McBrayer on Unsplash

Ma’am wouldn’t let him inside until the CPS lady showed up, and she was runnin’ late. But Jimmy didn’t pay no mind to that. He shoved open the front door and nearly knocked this almost-Daddy man to the ground in a bear hug. Jimmy was bawlin’ his eyes out. I stood in the door and tried to sort his face out.

“Hey, June Bug,” he said. “You remember me?”

The face didn’t quite seem right, but I knew the voice. It was him.

Ma’am held the door shut to keep me in or Daddy out, but she didn’t have nothin’ to worry about. I was just watchin’ Jimmy blubber like an infant. Not sure why Jimmy was all ate up with this fella.

“Get yer things together,” he said to me and Jimmy both, prying Jimmy off him and givin’ him a little shove toward the door. “When CPS lady gets here with the paperwork, y’all are comin’ with me to Arizona.” He smiled real big like that was supposed to make me happy. Maybe he called her ‘CPS lady’ or by her given name or somethin’ else, that’s just all I remember. That was goin’ on three years ago.

Ma’am let Jimmy back in, keeping Daddy on the porch in the sun, and we went to our bedrooms to gather our stuff. For me, that amounted to a white plastic bag from Save & More that held my hairbrush, toothbrush, one change of clothes, one mismatched pair of pajamas, and Chickie, my stuffed duck. He didn’t actually have any stuffing left. Just an empty duck-shaped sock.

“Gonna take us a couple days to get to your new home,” Daddy said, cranking down the window of the blue pickup to let the blue cigarette smoke blow outside rather than in my face. “Long drive. I drove straight through for eighteen hours to get here, but I can’t do that again. We’ll head south first—I have to get out of Oklahoma—and we’ll find a motel on the other side of the Red.”

I sat in the middle between Daddy and Jimmy. Right in front of the ashtray, but Daddy didn’t use it. Just flicked the ashes out the window. When he finished, he handed me the stub to put out for him.

“Where’s Arizona?” Jimmy asked.

“It’s out west.”

“What’s it like there?” Jimmy was curious. I weren’t.

“It’s real hot, but I’ve got a swimming pool. You’re gonna love it.”

Jimmy was real excited about the swimmin’ pool.

“But you can only go in the pool if I’m with you.”

“I know how to swim,” Jimmy said.

“It’s the rules. Some kid who knew how to swim drowned there last summer. Slipped and hit his head and fell in. Nobody was around. They found him the next morning.”

I vowed silently to never go in the pool. Ever. I didn’t care how hot it was. How much hotter’n our place could it be anyways?

“Your sister don’t talk much, does she?” Daddy looked at me with a grin.

“Can’t shut her up sometimes.”

“Ain’t we goin’ to get Mama?” That may have been the first time I spoke since Daddy picked us up. I don’t recall for sure.

“She does speak. And no, I’m afraid not. Mama can’t come with us. You won’t be seeing her for a good while. Maybe ever. Just as well.”

That felt like it should bother me but it didn’t other than I wasn’t sure if Daddy knew how to cook or if that was all gonna fall on me now. I’d be in cookin’ while Daddy and Jimmy were swimmin’ in the pool, laughing, and tryin’ not to drown.

Daddy turned up the radio when a station came into range. Flipped from one preacher to country music to a Spanish station to another preacher. Finally settled on a country station without too much static.

“I listened to the X the whole drive last night. You ever listen to the X?”

“What’s the X?” Jimmy asked.

“It’s a rock music station in Mexico that turns up their power at night. You can pick up that station all the way to Canada. Best radio station in the whole damn world, but it goes away in the daytime. Listened to Wolfman Jack all night long.”

I’d never listened to the X and didn’t unnerstand half of what he was goin’ on about.

We didn’t drive long before Daddy pulled into a motel—the Parisian, ’cause we were in Paris. Daddy said he didn’t want to even get pulled over for a taillight out in Oklahoma. He picked up a big bag of little hamburgers and french fries and Cokes, and we ate supper in the room. Was only one bed, but Daddy went down to the office and came back pushing a folded-up bed on wheels for me. I hadn’t seen no spiders in the room but was glad to get up off the floor and in a real bed even if it had wheels. I worried it would fold up on me in the middle of the night, though.

It was just startin’ to get dark by the time we’d finished eatin’, and Daddy said we needed to get to sleep. We’d get an early start and grab some breakfast down the road. But he had to get back to work the mornin’ after that and we were still a good sixteen hours away. We’d have to stay in his apartment during the day while he worked, but he got home around three and then we’d swim in the pool and get supper and maybe play some board games or watch TV. Come next month, school would be startin’ and that’s where we’d spend our days while he was at work, but he’d get home before we did.

I took a shower that night in the motel room. I’d never had a shower before. Like taking a bath standing up in a warm rain. Then Jimmy flushed the toilet and purt-near scalded me. He thought that was real funny but Daddy told him not to do that again.

“You got a little sister and you’re the number two man in the house. Number one man in the house when I’m at work. You got to protect her and take care of her.”

Jimmy was pretty much useless at that, but I didn’t say nothin’.

We ate doughnuts and drank orange juice in the truck while driving through Dallas the next morning. Jimmy’s doughnut squirted grape jelly out the back end when he took a bite and got all over his pants and the seat. Daddy drank coffee and smoked and ate a doughnut and drove all at the same time.

A couple hours of silence went by, other than the tires buzzin’ on the highway and the wind and occasional static from a radio preacher. Weren’t many trees anymore. No more hills. Land got flat and bare and weren’t no one to be seen for miles. Looked like that movie I seen about Mars.

“How come I ain’t gonna see Mama no more?” I asked when Daddy flipped off the radio static.

“Well, June Bug, I know you’re gonna miss your mama an awful lot, but some things is just for the best. She’s got troubles enough of her own and she’s not gonna be anywhere you can see her for a good long while.”

“’Cause she hit that deer?” I didn’t correct him about me not missin’ her so much.

Daddy shot me a look then got his eyes back on the road and took a long drag of smoke. He held it in a long time then turned his head to the open window and pushed it all out at once.

“Yeah, something like that.”

We drove on in the silent roar of wind and tires.

“I gotta pee,” Jimmy said.

“There’s a rest stop about half hour ahead. Can you hold it that long?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why didn’t you go when I stopped for gas back there? I told ya to.”

I had gone pee at the gas station. I’d had to hold my breath the whole time on account it smelled so bad.

“I didn’t have to go then,” Jimmy said.

“There ain’t even no trees out here for you to go behind,” Daddy said. “I’ll pull over at the next road and you can stand beside the truck.”

Jimmy whined a little and squirmed in his seat for the next ten minutes until Daddy turned into a gravel driveway. Some cattle ate weeds on the other side of the fence, and a house with a barn sat way down the end of the road. Jimmy hesitated for a moment.

“Are any of those cows bulls? I don’t want no bull chargin’ me while I’m takin’ a leak.”

“They’re all cows,” Daddy said. “And there’s a fence. Probably electric, so don’t piss on it.”

Jimmy’s urgent need overpowered his fear of bein’ charged by a bull, so he stepped out of the truck. “Don’t be lookin’ at me, June Bug. I can’t go if anyone’s lookin’ at me.”

“That cow’s got her eyes on ya,” I said.

Even though no one else had to go pee, Daddy pulled off at the rest stop. Said he needed to stretch his legs. Halfway point, he said. Just had to finish up a few more hours in Texas then skate through New Mexico and into Arizona.

I fell asleep sometime after that. When I woke up, there were mountains off in the distance and tall buildings up ahead.

“Where are we?” I stretched and rubbed my eyes.

“Coming into Albuquerque. Anyone getting hungry?”

Jimmy was always hungry. We just ate lunch in Amarillo, I thought, but turned out I’d slept all the way from Texas to suppertime.

We stopped at a diner just before we got into the city where I ordered pancakes. Daddy said I could have whatever I wanted.

After dark, Jimmy fell asleep, and I kept havin’ to push him off me. Thought about reachin’ over to open his door and push him out so I’d have more room. Maybe ask Daddy if Jimmy could sleep in the bed of the truck. I didn’t have any room to stretch out or anything to lean against. Weren’t sure how I’d managed to sleep all afternoon sittin’ up like that, but now I weren’t sleepy anyway.

Daddy filled up his thermos with coffee in Flagstaff and bought us candy bars and potato chips. Jimmy fell right back to sleep, but he did remember to go pee this time. Daddy said it was the last stop before home. Said his home was a third-floor walkup, and it was just a studio so weren’t no bedrooms. We’d make pallets on the floor. The couch pulled out and that was his bed. I hoped there weren’t no spiders.

“Watch out!” I yelled. “There’s a deer!”

“I see it,” Daddy said.

Jimmy rustled and looked up, then fell back to sleep against the door.

“Besides, that’s an elk, not a deer. It’s like a deer, only bigger.”

“Sure glad Mama didn’t hit an elk.”

“She probably wishes she did about now.”

The elk stood on the shoulder of the road, watchin’ us go by.

Another hour went by, and Daddy fiddled with the knobs until he found a radio station. A man on the radio howled and woke Jimmy up.

“See those lights up ahead?” Daddy said. “That’s Phoenix. That’s gonna be your new home. There’s probably more people in this city than in the entire state of Oklahoma.”

The lights sparkled on the ground and glowed on the sky in both directions as far as I could see, like it was all afire or somethin’. Daddy cracked the window for a smoke. The air that rushed in felt hotter than daytime, like when I’d open the oven door to check on supper. The highway was three lanes wide and full of cars all goin’ the same direction. Off to the left was another highway just as wide, and even more cars, all goin’ the other way.

Back home, any time a car went down our road, I’d rush to the living room window to look out and see who it was, if it was anyone we knew or if they were stoppin’ or drivin’ on by to somewheres else or just lost and lookin’ for a place to turn around. Or if it was just ol’ man Boswell, motorin’ down the shoulder of the road, wavin’ and grinnin’ at us.

Those lights looked like we must almost be to Daddy’s place, but we still drove and drove, and the lights didn’t seem to get any closer. Maybe a little brighter and they stretched even farther off into the distance.

“Do they have giants here?” I asked.

“Giants? Why you asking that?”

“I think I saw a giant man on the side of the road. There,” I pointed. “There’s another.”

A man taller than Daddy, taller than our old house, stood off to the side of the road, holding his arms up in the air like he was waving at us to slow down.

Daddy started laughing. “That’s a cactus, June Bug. A saguaro. You’ll see in the daylight—just a big tall plant, almost like a tree. Don’t touch ‘em, though. They’re covered in needles that’ll prick you good.”

“As long as they ain’t giants.”

Photo by James Lee on Unsplash

Soon, the lights weren’t off in the distance anymore. They’d just disappeared. But it looked like daylight outside, even though it was nearly midnight. Cars were ever’where. Didn’t nobody sleep around here. And still we drove on.

Jimmy stayed asleep.

Daddy pulled into a parking lot and pointed up to the top of a building. “That’s our place up there. Wake your brother up.”

Daddy said it was a third-floor apartment, but we had to walk up six sets of stairs to get to his door. We kept passing other doors, all with people livin’ behind ’em.

“How will I know which one is mine? They all look the same.”

“We live in building six, room 307. Just remember that.”

“I ain’t never goin’ outside ’cause I’ll never find it again.”

“Yes, you will. You’ll be fine. Especially when you see it in the daylight.”

We walked into a big room. One side was a kitchen, the other side the living room. Two doors on one wall, one for a closet, one for the bathroom. On another wall, a TV sat between two windows that looked onto the parking lot where I could see Daddy’s truck. Another wall had a big window that slid open and you could walk outside onto a tiny little porch with two chairs. A tiny little table between the chairs held an ashtray that overflowed. From that porch, I could see the pool. I tried not to picture a boy floatin’ face down and not bein’ found ’til morning, but I saw it anyways.

“Where am I supposed to sleep?” I didn’t even see much room on the floor to make a pallet.

“Jimmy and I will share the pull-out. We’ll take the couch cushions and make you a bed right over here. I’ve already talked to the leasing agent about moving to a two-bedroom unit. Since I won’t be sending your mama money anymore, I can afford the extra rent.”

“How’s Mama gonna buy food and pay the light bill if you don’t send her money?”

“The good folks at the State of Oklahoma are taking care of her now, so no need to worry about her. Might be hard, but best thing might just be to try not to think about her much.”

I didn’t think that would be all that hard.

Turned out that was harder than I’d imagined it would be. I had a lot of time to think about lots of things while Daddy was at work all day and school didn’t start for another month. Locked in a room that was even smaller than our old house with Jimmy all day. He sat inside and watched TV. I sat on the little porch and watched kids play in the pool. I kept watch to see if any of them drowned.

Daddy kept the fridge full of food we could eat for breakfast and lunch on our own. Sandwich stuff mostly. I fried eggs in the morning. Milk and orange juice. Some sodas, but Daddy said we were only allowed one each day unless he said okay because of some special treat, like if we’d had a Coke for lunch but then he got pizza for supper and we could have another Coke then.

He’d take us to the pool in the afternoons when he got home from work. Jimmy could swim a little and Daddy taught him even better. I didn’t want to get in, so I just sat on the side and watched to see if Jimmy would fall and hit his head and drown. I got so sunburnt that Daddy had to go buy some stuff to rub all over my skin and then I couldn’t even go out to the pool for a couple of days so I’d sit on the little porch and watch them. After that, I had to put lotion on before goin’ to the pool.

There were some other kids my age at the pool and they kept tryin’ to talk to me, wantin’ me to get in the water with them. Jimmy splashed me and called me a pussy. Daddy yanked him up by one arm and set him on the side of the pool.

“Don’t you ever talk to your sister like that, you hear me? Now you go sit down over there for fifteen minutes and think about it.”

I’d never seen Daddy get mad like that before.

“Why don’t you come in the water, June Bug? It feels great.”

With Jimmy sittin’ in a lounge chair and poutin’ like a toddler, I decided to get in the pool just to rub his nose in it a little bit. Just in the shallow end where I could stand up and the water just came to my chest.

The water was cold on my legs when I sat on the side. Too cold. Gave me goose bumps all over.

“C’mon in. You’ll get used to it in just a minute, then it won’t feel cold anymore.”

I slipped in and gasped when the ice water hit my tummy. It was cold but felt silky and soft. I shivered.

“Dunk yourself under like this.” Daddy disappeared under the water and popped up again, water streaming down his face and soaking his hair. “Then you’re not cold anymore.”

I took a deep breath and did what he did. Came up spluttering and spitting.

“Next time, close your mouth.”

Some of the other kids hung out in the shallow end with me. Some swam off to the deep end. Some mamas sat in chairs with sunglasses on, reading books and occasionally yellin’ at their kids. Daddy perched on the side of the pool not far from me, dangling his legs in the water. His face, neck, and arms were a different color than the rest of him. A dark V under his neck changed to the color of snow below that. His forearms were deep brown, the color of his face, to just above his elbows, where a sharp line switched to snow again.

“You wanna learn how to swim?” Daddy asked me. “Then you can go in the deep end too.”

“No, not yet. Do you think Mama has a pool where she’s livin’?”

“I seriously doubt it,” he said, then he moved to a lounge chair and put on his sunglasses. He’d keep an eye on me, he said, but he seemed to be keepin’ an eye on one of the mamas.

I thought about it the whole next day and decided if I knew how to swim, even if I never went in the deep end, which I didn’t plan to, I could always swim back to the shallow end if I ever fell in or if Jimmy pushed me. As long as I didn’t hit my head and get knocked out.

School started. That was more kids than I’d ever seen in my life. We rode a bus to school and back every day. Daddy was always home waitin’ for us. Jimmy went to a different school ’cause he was older. Middle school. We moved into a three-bedroom apartment. Daddy said the manager let him have the three-bedroom for the same price as the two, so I got my own bedroom. He brought beds home in the back of his truck the next day so I didn’t have to sleep on the floor anymore. “A proper bed for a proper lady,” he said.

My teacher called the roll ever’ mornin’ and she always called me Annabelle ’cause that was the name on my birth certificate. I asked her twice to call me June Bug ’cause that was my name and she said it was a nickname not my real name and we go by proper names in school.

When I started middle school earlier this year, Jimmy was on a different bus to the high school. Only he wanted to be called James now. There were two other Jimmies in his PE class. One went by Jim, the other by Jimmy, so the coach started callin’ him James to keep them straight. “A proper name for a proper gentleman,” Daddy said. Weren’t nothin’ proper about Jimmy.

Daddy never mentioned Mama, and neither did Jimmy, so I didn’t either. But I did think about her ever’ day.

It was almost like a rule but it was never said. We just didn’t talk about her. Until pizza night.

“You think Mama gets pizza where she lives?”

“June Bug,” he said, which sounded weird since no one called me June Bug at school, “I don’t know what your mama gets to eat. That’s none of my concern anymore, and it’s none of yours neither. You’re never gonna see her again, so you needn’t worry about what she’s doing or eating or where she’s living.”

“Mama’s in prison the rest of her life,” Jimmy said. “I’m surprised they didn’t give her the electric chair.”

“Shush, boy.”

Jimmy shushed and so did I. Until I didn’t.

“Why is Mama in prison the rest of her life for drivin’ drunk and hittin’ a deer?”

Jimmy started to say somethin’ but Daddy shot him a look that would’ve stopped a runaway freight train. But it didn’t stop Jimmy.

“Don’t you think she’s old enough to know?”

“I told you to shush now, didn’t I?”

We ate pizza in a thick, heavy silence. Jimmy and I each got a second Coke for the day. Daddy sipped his thermos of coffee. He didn’t allow alcohol in the house. Told us both that we were never to partake. He used the word ‘partake.’

We didn’t talk about Mama anymore. Until we did.

Late that night, Daddy tapped on my bedroom door and opened it a crack. “June Bug, you awake?”

I was awake, readin’ Mark Twain by flashlight, holding Chickie next to my head. I’d restuffed him with old newspaper and I liked hearing how he crinkled.

“Yes, sir.”

“May I come in?” He was soundin’ real soft, like he didn’t want to wake up Jimmy.

I sat up and scooted over so he could sit on the bed next to me.

“I hate to admit being wrong. I guess everybody’s that way. But I hate it even more when your brother is right and I’m wrong. I think it’s time. You’re old enough to know.”

“Is this about Mama?”

“Yeah, it is. Do you remember what happened?”

“Not much. I was asleep in the backseat. Then we bounced all over the place and Mama screamed and I screamed and Jimmy screamed. Then it goes all quiet and we was sittin’ sideways.”

“After that?”

“We sat there for a while and Mama cried some more. Babblin’ on and not makin’ much sense ’cause she’d been drinkin’ pretty good. I had to climb off Jimmy. Mama turned around and asked if we was hurt or anythin’. We weren’t, just scared and rattled around a bit. Mama told us to stay in the car and she got out for a bit then she came back cryin’ and said she’d hit a deer. She tried to drive back onto the road but we were stuck in the ditch. So we just sat there sideways until another car came along. Some man got out to see if we was okay and Mama told him she’d hit a deer and we were stuck. He said he’d be right back with help. Then he drove off. Didn’t know if he was really comin’ back or if he just left us there.”

“Did he come back?”

“I don’t think so, but the sheriff showed up a little while later with a whole bunch more cars and trucks and all their lights flashing. Then some lady came and got me and Jimmy so we wouldn’t have to spend the night in jail with Mama. Then you came and got us.”

“June Bug, your mama had been drinking, but she didn’t hit no deer.”

I’d dreamed almost ever’ night since then about ol’ man Boswell givin’ me a hard peppermint or a root beer candy. I dreamed of him ridin’ his motorized scooter down the shoulder of the road in front of our house, wavin’ and grinnin’ with his missin’ teeth smile and tobacco-stained chin whiskers. I dreamed of him flyin’ through the air, his long, gray hair floatin’ in the breeze, his body goin’ one way and his chair goin’ the other.

We didn’t talk about Mama no more after that.