Chapter One

The dust swirled from beneath my bare feet. It felt cool and soft . School had just ended for the year. I walked down the tree shaded road that followed the ridge through the small community of Brayton, Tennessee. It wasn’t much of a community; mostly just a collection of modest homes inhabited by the descendents of the Scots, Irish, and English who had migrated to the area in the last century. I was about to take a momentous turn in the evolution of my belief system.

Overhead were the recently installed TVA wires. Few homes had electricity. I could hear the hum of the wires and chuckled to think of what my older brother had told me when I was younger. The hum was a secret signal that meant the Devil was coming to get me. The story hadn’t scared me, but I still remembered it as I trundled down the road.

My progress was uneven, as I wandered from side to side, paying little attention to my route. I was given to dreaming and pretending, so I was in another world. My other world was about cars. I thought about cars a lot. I could tell anyone who would listen the make and year of every car I saw. To tell the truth, I would tell them even if they didn’t want to listen. I always imagined myself driving around in the latest car I had seen. I used to make the sounds of the cars. This led to me being teased a lot, as the sounds I made weren’t easily identified, and made me sound more like some demented idiot than an automobile.

Tennessee in the spring is the way I once imagined Heaven as it was preached about in the little Seventh day Adventist Church back up the road. My grandfather had come south to convert heathens fifty years before. He had built the church and the parochial school I and my siblings attended. My family believed devoutly in all the traditional homilies of Christian faith, plus some not seen anywhere else. We attended church every Saturday, just like Jews, and weren’t allowed to do much of anything between Friday sundown and Saturday sundown. Dancing and even listening to worldly music were never allowed, although the old car radio hooked to the car battery in our living room was tuned to the Grand Ole Opry some Saturday nights.

That was probably because my mother liked to hear “Tennessee Waltz” and “The little Church in the Wildwood” and thought the Carter Family were fine Christians, even if they had not seen the light and been baptized Seventh day Adventists yet. It was only a matter of time, and they would be converted, along with the rest of the world.

The air was full of the sweet smell of the honeysuckle vines that lined the road along with the huge elm and pine trees. The trees cast dancing shadows which seemed to be laughing with me. It was a good day to be alive, and I was looking forward to spending the day with my cousins and friends just down the road.. It was wash day back home, and I was glad I had been released from the onerous chore of hauling water to be heated in the big black iron kettle that straddled the wash day fire.

My mother always tried to find a way to reduce the size of her big brood by sending us off to spend some time away from home. She did that a lot lately, as the job of caring for 6 kids (including the latest; an 18 month old boy) taxed her limited resources.

I was free for the rest of the day, and loved to go to Aunt Ella’s house, as she always had some fresh bread and jelly to give me. My reverie was interrupted by the clatter of an approaching auto. Now, the passing of a car on this particular stretch of road was an event to be noted. I stepped to the side of the road and turned to watch it’s approach. It was My cousin Paul’s Model A pickup, and someone was in the bed. It was my older brother Donny.

“Ronnie has drownded”, he shouted.

Ronnie was my 18 month old brother, and the apple of my mother’s eye. What did that mean? Had he simply been under the water and was okay? Was he dead? No, that couldn’t be. God loved him, and wouldn’t let him die. I didn’t understand the rush. I climbed aboard the little truck, and Paul turned around in the road, heading back toward home.

As we neared the house, I noticed cars lining the road on both sides. I hadn’t seen as many cars in one place in a long time. As Paul clattered to a stop, Donnie and I leapt out of the back. We went running toward the little white house set behind the tall pines that lined the road. The front porch was crowded, so we went to the back porch. Cousin Pearl was there, and crying her eyes out. That didn’t look good. If God had saved Ronnie, then why was Pearl crying?

I remembered back a few years to something that had happened to a family pet. Chigger had been a stray mongrel that was adopted by the family when I was 6 years old. He was a nondescript cur, and not much of a dog, really. One day, while we kids were playing in the road with the dog, a new (1948) Ford auto came roaring down the road. It must have been going 40 or 45 miles per hour. We kids all scattered, but poor Chigger never got the message. He was struck broadside, and the car kept on going. He was killed instantly, but we kids chose not to accept it. We carefully carried him up to the lawn and laid him on a blanket.

I sat down on the lawn and began my vigil. I just knew the dog would wake up soon and everything would be alright. I prayed and waited. God was said to notice every sparrow, so a feller’s pet should be well within God’s power to heal. I waited all afternoon, and didn’t leave until suppertime. The next day, we buried him and had a little funeral.

I thought about that and it began to disturb me. It really began to disturb me when my wailing mother came back across the street from the Levering house where they had taken Ronnie. She was completely out of control.

“No, no, no”, she screamed over and over again.

If God had saved Ronnie, why was she carrying on so? It wasn’t looking good. Cousin Pearl confirmed my worst fears when she told me Ronnie had died. Hmm. What did that mean? Since, as I had heard in Sabbath School, God controlled everything, and he had a reason for everything that happened, why’d he let Ronnie die? Did he not like Ronnie or, for that matter, Chigger? The doubt that had occurred when Chigger died began to grow in my little unsophisticated mind.

It turns out that Ronnie had drowned in the laundry tub being used for the weekly wash. That same tub was used by every member of the family for their weekly bath. Apparently he had been playing in the water and slipped in.

When anyone died in this part of Appalachia, it was commonplace for everyone in the area to bring food. The big table in the middle of the kitchen was heavily burdened with the simple country food of this devout little community. There were Mrs. Levering’s delicious baked beans made with blackstrap molasses. Aunt Alice had made a huge peach cobbler. Their were numerous cakes and vegetarian casseroles. The one thing that was missing was meat. These devoted Seventh Day Adventists were vegetarians. Beans and soy products were their “meat”.

I took a big bowl of beans and some macaroni and cheese made by Mildred Frasier. I washed it down with some fresh whole milk from the Noah Gadd farm. I finished up with some of Aunt Alice’s peach cobbler. I hadn’t eaten this well in weeks.

The next few days were frenetic. My woefully unprepared mother first had to tell her husband what had happened. In order to do this, she would have to travel down to Graysville and call him in Washington, D.C. She decided to take her two youngest (Curtis and me) with her. She caught a ride on the U.S. Mail Jeep driven by Wade Cunningham. Wade and his twin brother were 4^th cousins of my father. Wayne had died in WWII. They said he had been hit by a cannon shell. I always imagined him with a big hole where the shell had gone through him.

We went to the home of the telephone operator, and she began to try and get through to dad. Finally, after about 4 or 5 hours, she managed to get his girlfriend on the phone. She was told what had happened, and said she would relay the message.

At that point, the still quietly sobbing little mother went to the undertaker’s where Ronnie had been taken. She picked out a casket (a cheap one, as she had very little money), and they met Uncle Ray for the trip back home.

The next few days were spent in preparation for the funeral. Dad showed up, drunk as usual. His first trip was to his favorite bootleggers; Perry and Fred Ferguson. He filled up the trunk of his ‘47 Desoto with hooch in quart jars. I had tasted the moonshine once. It was a milky green color, and looked real pretty. I stuck my finger into the jar, and put the finger into my mouth. The burning sensation was exactly like that of an Indian turnip, the root of a local plant that was used to torture younger kids. My gag reflex started me throwing up. I never once liked the taste of whiskey again.

On the day of the funeral, the church was packed. In the front with the little casket were the many home grown and arranged bouquets that had been brought by the neighbors, friends, and relatives who had come to show their respects.

I sat in the front row with the rest of the large family. All were sobbing. Except me. I simply didn’t understand what was going on, and wasn’t about to cry for something I didn’t understand. The preacher began his combination eulogy and sermon. I had no idea that Ronnie had lived long enough to become such a wonderful human being. I had lived for 9 years, and I certainly wasn’t wonderful. The preacher said things like: “We all have to live our lives in Christ so we can join Ronnie in Heaven”. Whenever the preacher said something like that, mom’s wailing would get louder. Hmmm. If everyone was going to join him in Heaven, that must mean he was now in Paradise. Why cry about someone going to Paradise? Of course, Mom didn’t understand. She thought I was just being thoughtless, and gave me a good slap across the face for my trouble.

Nothing was ever the same again after Ronnie died. All us kids were shunted off to live with relatives or church members like usually happened when things went to hell. My haggard mother could think of only one thing to do. Six months after Ronnie died, she loaded the rest of the brood onto a train and headed for Washington, D.C.