He had leukemia. If he'd been older, he might've been bitter about it. But he wasn't. Nine-year-olds don't know how to feel such things.

He spent his days in a camouflage recliner, staring at a laptop. He didn't have much energy for anything more than browsing the Internet. What he did have, however, was friends all over the Southeast. People he'd met on online hunting sites.

"They were older than he was," his mother said. "But they meant a lot to him. He was always talking this'n that about them.”

She means fellas like—we'll call him, Rob—a fifty-six-year-old deer hunter from middle Tennessee.

Rob said, “Didn't know he was so young when we first messaged. We became big buddies. He'd never been hunting and liked reading about it. I like to talk hunting, so it worked...”

He confided in Rob. He told him about his illness. About his daddy, who once promised to take him hunting, but died before he ever got the chance.

“Every time we wrote,” Rob said. “I'd think of

my own boy, and how fast life can change. Sometimes my wife'd find me crying at the computer."

One day, Rob woke to see a post to the group, asking if anyone in his area might take him hunting on the weekend before he underwent invasive treatment.

“I felt something in me,” said Rob. “I just thought, you know, this kid ain't got nothing, all he wants to do is kill a spike. Nobody was replying. Broke my heart.”

So Rob called the boy's mother and made plans. He took off work, drove to Alabama for the weekend. His friends thought it was bizarre.

And on the Saturday Rob arrived at his house, he found other trucks parked in the driveway. Each with Browning, Winchester, and Remington stickers on the tailgates.

"They were other guys from the group," said Rob. "One came all the way from frickin'…

Maw Maw is ninety-seven today, and sharp as a jack knife. Well, she might be really ninety-eight. Her granddaughter says her birth certificate and Social Security Card don't match.

Anyway, government paper wasn't vital in 1918. Not compared to things like prayer, food, the Bible, or enduring flu pandemics.

Things have changed. 

“She grew up in Turkey Hill,” her granddaughter says. “Everyone knows her by her real name, Ozenia. She hates being inside, loves outdoor things like blackberry picking, or gardening...”

Her granddaughter shows me a photograph that goes way back.

The woman is a leftover from Alabamian history. She has Native American blood. High cheeks, blue-black hair, a glare hard as the flat-side of a skillet.

And old time religion.

The ancient kind without air conditioning, stadium seating, or headset microphones. The rural sort, with faith healers who could raise the dead.

She was reared in the days when radio was witchcraft. When girls went shoeless, and boys called them, ma'am, or Mama. When children knew how to fend off cottonmouths with

nothing but faith and garden hoes.

“When we were kids,” her granddaughter goes on. “She carried a hickory switch in her purse. She didn't spare the rod... That woman fears the Lord.”

She does more than fear him, she speaks in tongues to him. She'll tell you about healings and miracles she's seen over the years. And she can even help you get one.

Maw Maw is part of a generation who sees prayer and weeping as going hand in hand. Who believes God can make something out of nothing. She may be old, but her heart isn't.

“After church,” her granddaughter says. “She always visited the nursing homes. She'd bake cakes, take'em with her. She'd ask if we wanted to go. We rarely did.”

Today, Maw Maw lives on her own, does her own laundry, doles her meds, has her teeth, and will be dog-gone if…

Lunchtime—a service station somewhere in Alabama. He was chatty. Too chatty. He was as tall as boom-truck, big ears, dirt smudges all over his work clothes, a wide smile, and some gray on his temples.

The place was crowded. His voice was the loudest one in the room. He talked to anyone who'd listen. And it drew looks from other folks in line.

If he'd been this talkative in a Northern city—say, the wrong side of New York—someone might've tried to quiet him by landing one on his chin. Though chin-level is five feet above eye-level.

Maybe six.

As it happens, New York is where he just left. Last month. But he's not from there, he's from here. And to listen to his accent sounds like an afternoon holding a fruit jar.

He was a marine. Semper Fi. He's retired now. When he left, the first thing he did was travel here. He couldn't get back home fast enough to see his mother.

“You know what I miss most?” he said, between bites of his gas-station

hotdog. “Not being in a hurry. You take it for granted. In a city, they's in a hurry for every-damn-thing.”

Every damn thing.

Yeah. I know what he means. I know some folks in such hurries they can’t use microwaves without cussing at them.

My new buddy went on to explain that he'd spent a lot of time traveling between New York and overseas. While across the world last year, his mother passed. It happened suddenly, and it about killed him.

“I had a service for her, where I's stationed. Our chaplain said a few words over a picture I printed on the computer. All the guys in my unit came. I was supposed to be tough, but I cried pretty hard.”

His eyes got glassy when he said it.

He visited her grave within the first five minutes of crossing the county line. He…

“I hate the South,” he shouts to the bar. “I miss living in Philly.”

He's an obnoxious fella, ten-times my size, drunk as Cooter Brown.

“Rednecks,” he goes on, ordering a whiskey sour. “Everyone's racist, they don't know jack $#!+ about the world, prolly can't even SPELL Philadelphia.”

This is an affront.

Willa, the bartender, accepts his challenge. She concentrates, then scribbles the word on a napkin.

He cackles. “Oh my GOD! There's no F in Philadelphia!”

He celebrates with another whiskey.

Willa's embarrassed. She's from Oxford—a city once named Lick Skillet before the Union Army came along.

"You ignorant girl," he says. "Didn't you even go to SCHOOL?"

Now wait just a hot minute.

Look, say what you want about the South. Heckle all day. But when you insult a woman's intelligence, it's time to have a little talk with Jesus.

The idea that those below the Mason Dixon are racist bumpkins—ridden with poor dental genetics—lacking enough smarts to spell Poughkeepsie, is loathsome.

First off: I just spelled it.

Second: spell Czechoslovakia.

We aren't Philadelphians. We don't eat much cream cheese. And we

don't drink whiskey sours—putting eggs in your bourbon would get you shot in some parts.

But we're not so different. We're humans, same as Yankees, Canadians, East Europeans, and good spellers. Sure, we have gross racists. So does Boston.

We also have exceptional people.

Such as, Caroline—a white-haired woman with fourteen black boys living in her house. They're college baseball players. In exchange for room and meals, they maintain her antique home. They're well-behaved, straight-A students.

Daryl—from a town no bigger than a postage stamp. His teachers noticed how smart he was when he practiced math on the sidewalk in chalk. Today, he works for the Pentagon.

Michelle—a six-foot-five, black, lesbian who found a toddler underneath a bridge, then adopted him. I dare you to stereotype her.

Don—a Georgia man who gave a minivan to a…

The doctors gave him a few years, tops. He says he's not afraid.

He spends a lot of time in the woods. He's been this way since childhood. Chances are, if you don't find him in the forest, you probably won't find him.

A few weeks ago, I visited. We went for a walk near his house. 

He looks good. He's bald. His hair is growing back in patches. He covers it with an Ole' Miss cap. Once upon a time, I would've given him hell about Alabama's recent victory against the Rebels. Not now.

They first discovered his cancer when he was young. They operated; he thought he was cured. For a long time, he seemed all right. Then he started going downhill. He's forty-three now—and a ways down the hill.

“My body hates me,” he said. “I've come to terms with that. But I'm not my body. I just live in it, lotta people don't get that.”

Well, to tell you the truth, I don't get it, either. But then, I never claimed

to be smart.

“I ain't worried about dying," he went on. "I mean, it's sad, but this life ain't all there is.”

Well, I've thumbed through afterlife theories before. I've had a hard time making heads or tails. I've heard enough to confuse me.

A college professor once told me there was no hereafter—he emphasized that everything either becomes worm poop or limestone. My mother believes in streets of gold. My deranged uncle believes we come back as possums. My wife believes her father is a turkey buzzard.

"Oh, I believe there's a Heaven," he said. "I have to.”

We stopped to look at the pine trees. He still loves them. When he was younger and more agile, he could scale them like a monkey. Now, he just looks upward.

“God gave me a gift,” he said. “Letting me get this sick.”

Yeah? Well, I…

For a funeral, it was a nice one. They say she looked good. She represented Auburn to the end, wearing orange and blue—and eagle broach. I understand her artificial smile set off her outfit.

Her kids weren't enthusiastic about her get-up, but before she died she'd made her wishes were clear.

“The funny thing,” her son says. “She didn't go to Auburn. None of us did. Actually, I don't even know if my mother finished high school.”

Truth told, her kids don't know much about her early days. What they do know, they cherish. Now that she's gone, they wish they'd asked more questions.

Hindsight.

She was the eldest of five. Her mother died young. After her mother passed, she raised them. She changed diapers, prepared suppers, and they say her father was too familiar with her.

“When she married my dad,” he says. “She was twenty-five. She'd already reared a family at that age. My uncles and aunts all treated her like their mother.”

She had a good adult life. She bore

three kids, made sack lunches, and knew her way around an oven roast. To her children she's a saint.

“My mother never got mad,” he says. “Like when I got arrested for driving drunk. Mother came to pick me up. She never even addressed it. I'm sure she was was upset, but she just told me, 'Son, I forgive you.'”

She forgave him so intensively, she made him paint their entire two-story home using a paintbrush and Campbell's soup can.

“She adored my dad,” he adds. “He was like her second shot at a normal life. To make up for her childhood, Dad was so good to her. He let her be herself.”

And thats how she came to show interest in Auburn football. The couple worshiped the SEC calendar. She started pulling for the Tigers to tease her husband—a committed Alabama fan. On the weekends, she'd…

She's been living in the South four years, but can't seem to get Chicago out of her accent. She waits tables in Mobile. All her customers notice the way she talks. Her regulars kid her about it.

“I try saying, 'y'all' sometimes,” she said. “But it never comes out right.”

It's okay. Truth told, I hear more Southern teenagers using Yankee birdcalls such as: “you guys.” They say it with a drawl. It comes out sounding like, “You gahz,”

I blame the Internet.

“I've always wanted to live in the South,” she said. “Always felt I should'a been born here. Something about it.”

She's no spring chick. She has lines around her eyes, a wiry frame, and her hands look strong. I asked how she came to the area.

“Moved here after my husband tried to kill me.”

I could tell she wasn't being funny. So, I quit asking questions and made a remark about the weather.

She kept on, “Since he couldn't kill me, my husband ended up killing himself, and our son. Ran the car right off

the road, hit a tree. Looked like an accident, but I know it wasn't.”

Jesus.

“I went from being a wife and a mother to being nothing. It was hard.”

After they passed, she quit taking care of herself. Her days consisted of Hamburger Helper, Marlboro Reds, and long bouts of crying.

A friend suggested she see a therapist. So, she looked one up in the phonebook.

“Didn't even know what I was looking for,” she said. “Just stuck my finger on a name and made an appointment.”

And as fate would have it—if you believe in that sort of thing—the therapist was a widow who'd lost her child, too.

“When my therapist opened her mouth," she went on. "She had a Southern accent, sounded so warm and friendly... I just really bonded with her.”

The Georgia-born therapist suggested traveling. But life…