God had given him one-half of His Own Right Eye.

[I like to pretend I'm writing my memoirs, all of them at the same time, and so this is an excerpt from my second memoir, entitled The Deer in the Road. Feel free to edit, as you go along. Just don't let Amanda know.]

On the outside looking in, I had a tragic childhood, I know, I’ve read that…but that’s only the way the story goes. It has a whole different feel, when it’s told. The truth is I had a very conventional upbringing, for the most part, and it included a lot of church.

"On a hill far away..."

I was brought up by a great uncle, who was also the church organist thank you very much. And not just at any church; it was one his father built. His next-door neighbor was his sister with her two daughters, much, much older than I (mostly, anyway) that I merely told everyone were my sisters. And good old Uncle Moon, that was Nana’s husband, Uncle Larry’s brother-in-law.  He worked for the county, drove bulldozers and backhoes to work every day of the week and on the weekends they just sat in the driveway and I got to crawl all over the bulldozer like a retarded ant, and make mud pies in the lift of the backhoe. I secretly had always believed heaven to be made of metal, most of it anyway, and Uncle Moon proved it to me, so of course I loved him with every bone in my body.

He also had no toenails due to some unfortunate accident that involved a cement truck and a visiting evangelist from somewhere down south of Hattiesburg, Ellisville or Lumberton, if people even lived in such places. It was a wonderful story, too, full of a long Sunday dinner, a cursing mynah bird belonging to my great-grandmother Tigi, and a dire need to have a paved driveway. All of which converged on a certain given Lord’s day back in 1978, the result of which were the smoothest-edged toes this side of the Mississippi, and a little to the left of the Tombigbee. 

I envied those toes.

Rumor has it that I was left on a washing machine, at the smart age of two, in my uncle’s utility closet.  Seems I’ve always been in and out of closets, by choice or abandonment. Then again, maybe it was just plain forgetfulness.

It tends to happen.

More likely, I was simply brought to his house and left under his careful and inexhaustible eye, right in front of him, like a drooling bargaining chip. Thank God he kept me. And if I was left anywhere, it was probably either on the kitchen table or at the most dramatic, on the hearth in front of the buck stove. Which I suppose has its dangers.  At least during winter. Wherever I was left, I still managed to grow up, limbs intact.

Until I was eight, my biggest bragging right was that I’d never broken any bones, could eat a stick of butter without taking more than three big breaths, and that I’d never been bitten by a rattlesnake.

I also, at an early age, began a love affair with books. You write it, I’d read it, even Helen Steiner Rice and her bunch of poems. I read with the diligence of a Baptist minister with a Catholic secret.

I read as if everything were sacred, as if I expected to discover some deep and wide truth about, oh, anything and everything from the purpose of grasshoppers to the importance of jelly shoes.

And I read constantly: I read at breakfast, I read in the bathtub, I read on the way to school, I read in my sleep, I even attempted to read during church (and I don’t mean just the Bible, but I had to be about the sneakiest spy in the world to get away with anything else because Uncle Larry played the organ, as you know, and because of this, God had given him one-half of His Own Right Eye.

I’m not sure how that could possibly be considered fair. But, believe me…no one wants to be stared down from the church organ.

Every time a chord swelled, the whole congregation would turn, as one – just like Jesus said the church should do somewhere in Galations, and become one body – and look me square in the face. I like to think Jesus meant become one body by doing good or taking communion or cleaning the church, which some grown-ups I will not say who (initials of M.D. and H.F.S.) wriggled out of every month, but Jesus being Jesus, I was, I guess, happy to help out anyway I could…and so I stared right back, grinning as wide as the pew I sat on.

Naturally, because of my place of importance in the church hierarchy of the children of preachers, deacons, song leaders, and such, PK’s (preacher’s kids) had nothing on me.  I was beyond special because I wasn’t a wanted child, first off, which you can’t shake no matter how hard you try, no matter how good you are to animals and the elderly. So, there was that. And besides Uncle Larry being the organist, John Robert was the song leader (a cousin), Marsha was Director of Vacation Bible School (a sister/cousin; also Vacation Bible School, as you may well know, is the only triple oxymoron in existence); Nana was a Sunday School Teacher; Joey, a deacon…you get the picture.

Plus, Uncle Larry and Nana had been at the church longer than the preacher, so you can see how I was pretty much in charge.

I didn’t take advantage of it, though.  I knew that with having power meant responsibility, or something like that, and responsibility was the last thing I wanted. It’s hard to believe, but there was a time in my life when I didn’t want attention, nor did I want to be within fifty feet of its center. Unlike today, where I’m bound to carry it around in my pocket.

Back in the day, I was happy just sitting on the pew, minding my business, coloring in my He-Man coloring book, until getting caught…but as fate would have it, I was smart. I started to read too early, and learning how to string words together to create ideas piqued my interest, and so I started trying to read the hymns along with the choir, and then I accidentally sang out loud one time on “Because He Lives,” and Miss Ada Lee heard me and told everyone (she should have been a police scanner, honestly) after services, and the next thing I knew, I was on the marquee every Sunday for Special Music.

A solo.

For a long time, I just suffered the fools gladly right through the Tag and the Chorus of every song I had to sing for the glory of God and Uncle Larry.  I spent most of my time singing as if church would be over when I finished, which came across as divine inspiration, I imagine. 

I wanted to be through with church and outside so I could be playing There’s No Ghosts in the Graveyard, a game I think maybe Clay made up or Shannon…maybe Melinda, she was smart, too. It didn’t matter, it was too fun, and we played it constantly, Sunday Best or not, even though, truth be told, it was more of a nighttime game, usually played between Discipleship Training and evening worship.

"When the roll is called up yonder..."

It didn’t matter when you played it, though.  Ghosts plus church was just barely under the Too Evil To Say Near the Church Doors Line, and that could really get your blood going.  

On those days, those halcyon-kid-friendly-ignorant days, church was near about wonderful.  The time I hated church the most was when everyone got chicken pox, and I was the only kid there for what was, without a doubt, almost the length of forever.  But, then, I got them, too, and had to stay home for nearly two weeks, so everything was fine again, and I’d forgiven them all.  I was twice as nice to Bart because, deep down, I figured I’d caught them from him. So, I thanked him by letting him shoot the red birds in our yard without telling Uncle Larry, who, hand to God I guess, knew anyway.

[...]

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