He was two-foot tall, happy faced, chubby. He had the gift of gab. He stood at the public boat ramp eating Cheetohs, holding a cheap rod and reel.

The little fella's first words to me were: “I guess fish hate me."

Welcome to the club, Tex.

We talked about things. About life. The weather. It doesn't take long to make fast friends with chubby, chatty kids.

I should know, I was one.

That weekend, his mother bought him a fishing rod, wrapped it in a red ribbon, and left him a note reading: "No more video games. Go fishing today. Love, Mom.”

He rode his bike to the public boat launch and that's where he met me.

The truth is, there were better teachers. I'm a mediocre fisherman at best. Even so, I did my utmost to show him how to tie knots, how to cast, and how to yank a popping cork hard enough to frighten millions of innocent sea creatures.

He was clumsy. The same as I was during childhood. It took some practice, but underneath all his baby

fat was a natural.

He caught a trout. It was his first one. Tiny.

He shouted, "This is the greatest day of my LIFE!!"

And he meant it.

We drank gas-station Coca-Cola and ate potato chips. He did all the talking.

He carried on about fighter jets, rifles, and his runaway father—who left earlier that year. Who never picked up the phone thereafter.

I told him I was sorry.

He shrugged, saying, "Aw, it's okay, I don't even care about my old man."

Liar.

Before he bid me goodbye he reminded me it was indeed the greatest day of his existence.

That was a lifetime ago.

Yesterday, I wouldn't have recognized him. He's a grown-up. He had a toddler with him. She was fidgety. She tried to say my name, but the task proved insurmountable.

He pumped my hand…

He wore a sign on his chest that read: “God hates fags.” He paced the sidewalk, waving a Bible like it was a firearm.

The street-preacher zeroed in on me. He fired several ugly words in my direction. And true to his sandwich-sign, he was downright hateful.

I told him God didn't hate anybody.

He told me to go to Hell.

From the looks of it, he was leading the way.

The first thing you should know is that I was raised in church. My people are the rural kind who believe in covered dishes, homecomings, and canned-food drives at Christmas.

The truth is, I don't talk religion. I remember the words of Grandaddy, who said: “Don't talk politics or religion in mixed company—and always carry toilet paper in your glovebox.”

Sound advice.

Even so, I cannot abide rudeness. My people have come too far to be represented by Eddie the Evangelical in a plywood jumpsuit.

Besides, he's got it all wrong. And it's not fair to let him tinkle in our tea.

It's not fair to Anne Miller—a seventy-year-old widow

who adopted a teenage prostitute, then raised her crack-addicted baby.

It dishonors the legacy of Terry Johnson—with his weekly barbecues for fatherless boys. Who taught hundreds how to throw footballs, crank fishing reels, and swing Louisville Sluggers.

I don't care what the hand-painted sign says. This kid's never met Sister Caroline—a lesbian nun who started a women's halfway house in an auto garage.

Or: Penny Dugan—mother of three. Whose husband said he'd been cheating on her with a man. He explained he was HIV positive. Penny nursed him until his death, then she cared for his dying boyfriend—and thousands more AIDS victims thereafter.

Thousands.

Dammit, this isn't religion. This is my heritage you're lifting your leg on. And as a card-carrying member of the Little Brown Church in the Vale, I'm obliged to tell you:

God isn't hate.

He's…

He wasn't a bad kid. He just acted out in class. His teacher knew something was wrong at home, but she didn't know what to do. So she went easy on him.

Rookie mistake.

"Nicer I was," she said. "The more he acted out. He wanted attention.”

So she gave him the positive kind. She moved his desk, praised him for hard work. She even gave him rides home.

When she dropped him off, she noticed his mother wasn't around.

"Where's you're mother?" she once asked.

"She's getting clean-o-therapy," he said. "It makes her cancer better."

That's when her heart broke. She did what any God-fearing woman would. She rushed home and cooked up a whirlwind. Cookies, cakes, cornbread, and casseroles.

She stopped by the following day. His mother was napping. So, she snooped around his house. The place was a hog pen. No toilet paper, no snacks, and the refrigerator was a wasteland.

"When I met his mother," she went on. "She was in a bad way. Her hair was gone. No wonder she didn't have food,

she could hardly talk."

The teacher asked her Bible study group for help. They raised money, bought groceries. A handful of ladies cooked suppers. Some donated money.

His mother died suddenly.

The family couldn't afford a funeral. His grades dropped. His uncle moved in. He started skipping school.

“I had to do something,” she said. “Or else I knew he'd be another statistic.”

She began spending time with him. She carried him to waterparks, movies, malls, church parties, you name it. She celebrated his birthdays, Thanksgivings, Christmases, and all other occasions. He even lived with her for six weeks when his uncle was out of town.

She wedged herself into the kid's life and didn't let go.

Then he moved away. They lost touch.

A few dozen years have passed by. She doesn't look like the young photograph she showed me. Her…

Sometimes when they cremate people they put them in cardboard boxes. At the crematory, we signed a release form and got a hundred-pound box in return.

This suited Daddy fine. He thought fancy urns were ridiculous.

“When I die,” he said once. “Don't keep me around, collecting dust. Turn me loose, let me be with the Lord.”

After he died, he was anything but loose. He came tightly packed in what looked like Priority Mail. We kept him in the laundry room for a few months. I sat beside him carrying on one-sided conversations.

He didn't have much to say.

He passed during the worst possible time of year. It was football season—weeks before the World Series. I listened to games on a pocket radio, sitting beside his cardboard mortuary.

"Touchdown," I'd say.

He'd agree.

Eventually, we scattered Daddy in the mountains. Only he didn't scatter. His remains were too compressed. They stuck together like a gray brick.

There were no dramatic wind gusts. No orchestras. He fell seven-hundred feet like old mud, then crumbled.

And that's

how it happened. I was supposed to set him free, but I didn't. His ashes might've been loose, but I kept him around for years. I brought him along for fishing trips, dates, weddings, barbecues, and baseball games.

Because there were few things worse than watching baseball alone.

Anyway, last week my wife and I walked the beach. I saw a man and his family having a funeral near the surf. He held what looked like an elaborate coffee pot. People stood in a semi-circle.

Strangers along the shore quit walking when they got close. Folks folded hands and bowed heads. We did the same thing. There must've been ten of us.

The man flung the dust into the waves. The wind caught it and whipped it into a big pattern in the air. It was poetry.

Some folks get all the luck.

When I asked her to marry me. I gave her the world's tiniest diamond.

I bought the ring with cash I'd hoarded in an Altoids tin. I walked into the jeweler and said, "Give me whatever this'll buy."

He said, “This is the smallest diamond we got, sir.”

I left with a small box and a promise to pay the twenty-seven-dollars I still owed.

She wore a red blouse the night I fumbled my proposal. It surprised me when she said yes. She could've married a man of means—or at least someone with a nicer truck.

Instead, she got a rock the size of an Oxford comma.

To celebrate, we ate at one of those meat-and-three places. We ran into my uncle. Jamie showed him the ring.

He squinted and said, “Lord, if that thing were any smaller it'd belong in a saltshaker.”

Uncles.

Our wedding was in December, our honeymoon landed on Christmas. I wanted to get her a gift, so I bought a carriage ride and a carton of ice cream.

We moved into an apartment

the size of a turnip crate. We ate Hamburger Helper for suppers. We had no internet, cellphones, or cable. Instead, we played poker on the floor using Cheez-Its.

She taught preschool. I crawled on people's roofs with a hammer. In the evenings, we'd eat supper and say painfully corny things like: "I can't believe we're really married, can you?"

"Don't it beat all?" the other would say. "You want some ice cream?"

You bet your Barbie Ring I do.

Then, we'd sit in the den eating, watching a console television I'd salvaged from a roadside garbage pile. When the picture got fuzzy, Jamie would cuss and kick until it improved—making her popular with the downstairs neighbors.

The fact is, our lives have been average. We've buried good dogs together, totaled two trucks, and lost one mobile home.

Last spring, they found a…