The old man was in Walmart. He was wearing pajama bottoms and an Eagles T-shirt. The band, not the football team.

He also wore slippers. I knew they were slippers because they were fuzzy and white. Ballcap, crumpled and stained with sweat and grime. He hadn’t shaved in a while. Gray stubble covered his cheeks and chin.

There were tattoos on his forearms. Not the new kind of fancy tats, multi-colored and expensive. These were a few grades below battleship tattoos. Crudely done. Almost like the inkwork inmates give themselves with guitar wire and BIC pens.

He wore an oxygen tank, contained in a fanny pack, strapped around his waist. A rubber cannula snaked from his pack, securely set beneath his nose.

The old man checked out at the self-checkout kiosk. He loaded his own plastic bags. The machine spit out his receipt. He grasped his aluminum cane and began shuffling toward the door to present his receipt to the receipt checker.

Consequently, I

remember the days before receipt checkers. I remember the days before self-checkout kiosks, too. In fact, I remember a time, boys and girls, when—hard as this is to believe—you walked into a store and there was an ACTUAL person behind an ACTUAL cash register, who, after they rang you up, ACTUALLY told you to have a “blessed day.”

Those days are gone.

The old man, unsteady on his feet, walked toward the door. I was afraid he was going to fall. By the time he reached the receipt checker, he was teetering badly, on the brink of collapse.

He fell into the Walmart employee, holding the employee’s shoulders for support.

“God, I’m sorry,” the man said to the employee. “I’m so sorry.”

The receipt checker looked like a manager of some sort. Maybe even a high-level guy, stuck working the door. He was well dressed. Pressed khakis,…

“Dear Sean, are you a Christian? Sometimes I can’t tell. There is only one way to heaven, and your ‘tolerance for all,’ and ‘just be a good person’ philosophy sounds fine, but it leads to hell.

“...Hell is real, Sean. I read about your affinity for alcohol, and how you condone flagrant sinners. …As a Christian, I find your feel-good writing to be misleading and disgusting to Believers. There is only one way to heaven… and I believe you know this. I am not saying any of this in judgment, I am only saying this as your brother. Repent, friend. The time is at hand.”

Dear Friend. Gosh. First of all, your concern for my soul humbles me. I am honored. You sound like someone I could be friends with.

Thank you for taking time to write such a stirring and unsolicited email.

It’s funny, I used to know an elderly retired preacher who said that someone’s eternal soul was like their groin region. To just walk up and start talking about someone’s

groinal region is rude and downright uncalled for. But congratulations to you. You just jumped right in there.

The writer in me needs to tell you that your letter was extremely well written. Not one grammatical error. I am verry empressed. I actually counted your total words. There were 912. It takes me hours to write 900 error-free words.

Ergo, you spent at least an hour out of your day writing to me. How unselfish.

I’ll bet you spend the same amount of time worrying about children who are born to crack-addicted parents. I’ll bet, each day, you visit those drug-addicted babies in their lowly states.

I’ll bet you are also a frequent volunteer in the NICU, holding motherless and fatherless babies, so they don’t die of neglect. Kudos to you, sir. I wish I could be like you.

You probably also visit the homeless shelters and…

The little redheaded boy found his grandfather on the porch swing, late at night. The old man was whittling basswood, listening to a ballgame on the radio. The kid let the screen door slap behind him. The boy wore Evel Knievel pajamas.

“What’re you doing up?” said the old man. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Had a bad dream.”

The old man patted the swing. “Step into my office, Kemosabe.”

The kid climbed onto the swing and leaned against the old man who smelled like burley tobacco, Old Spice, and sweat. The crickets were singing their aria.

“I’m scared, Granddaddy.”

He resumed carving. “Hush now. Ain’t nothing to be scared of. Just a dream.”

The ballgame droned in the background. The Braves were playing the Cardinals and getting shelled.

“What’re you carving?”

The old man held up the block of basswood. “It’s a dog. Hunting hound. This is Shelby.”

The boy looked at the crude canine figurine. It looked more like a deranged ferret than a dog.

“I know it ain’t pretty,” said the old man. “But she ain’t done yet.”

“Who’s Shelby?”

“My old dog. I got her

when I was a little older’n you. I found her. She was caught in a mess of barbed wire in our east field. Nobody knowed where she come from so I took her home and kept her.”

“That was a long time ago?”

“You have no idea.”

“Was she a good dog?”

He inspected his wooden handiwork. “She was.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Well. Old Shelby came ever’ where with me. One time I took her to a church dinner on the grounds. She embarrassed me so bad when she jumped on the table where all the fancy dishes were. Looked like she was surfing. Broke ever’ piece a china.

“I had to work a custodian job at the church that summer for punishment, sweeping the floors, touching up the pews with wood stain.”

A side-of-the-road restaurant. Way out in the sticks. The young boy was seated at the table with his mother and father.

His mother had green hair. His father was bald, with tattoos on his face and on his scalp. The little boy was using a wheelchair.

I was eating lunch in Small Town, Alabama, USA. It was a crowded meat-and-three. I had just finished making a morning speech for a convention, and I needed to meet my saturated fat quota for the day.

I found this restaurant by chance. I pulled over because the sign advertised field peas.

I am a field-pea enthusiast. I would crawl across a sewage plant on my lips to eat a good field pea.

I appreciate field peas in much the same way I love, for example, mullet haircuts. I am a big fan of mullets, which were popular during my heyday.

The horrendous hairstyle has made a stylistic comeback among America’s youth. These days, I see all sorts of kids wearing “Tennessee Tophats,” “Camaro Cuts,” “Neck Warmers” and

“Achy-Breaky-Big-Mistakys.” And I think it’s wonderful. Why should my generation be the only generation who looked like dorks?

Anyway, field peas. I like them almost as much as I like homegrown tomatoes. Both of which were served at my wedding.

The heirloom tomatoes at my wedding came from my mother-in-law’s garden, and were served on a giant plate. Everyone in the wedding party ate slices. The best man received the highest honor by drinking the tomato water.

When it comes to field peas, I like them all: Crowder peas, purple hulls, lady peas, zipper peas, big red zippers, turkey craws, Hercules peas, Double-Ds, whippoorwills, rattlesnakes, slap-yo-mamas, homewreckers, foot-tappers, and tailshakers.

But getting back to the young boy I saw.

He was using surgical prosthetic implants to help him hear. His mom and dad both ordered the field peas and the fried chicken. So did the boy.

DEAR SEAN:

My father has brain cancer. I do not have a relationship with him. I haven’t seen him in 6 years. My father is a sick man. He tore my family to pieces with sexual addictions, alcohol, drugs, and narcissism. He abused my younger sister. I hate this man now. But my heart is also torn for him.

I used to pray to God as a boy to change my father, to make him good. But this never happened. I feel like a bad son because I can’t have a relationship with my father. Do you have any advice?

Thanks,
SONUVA-BAD-DAD

DEAR SONUVA:

I decided long ago to never give advice. Namely, because advice givers are know-it-alls. And know-it-alls make life hard for those of us who actually do.

What I can tell you, however, is that I am the son of a bad dad, too. And if there is one thing I’ve learned: The real enemy is not your dad. The real enemy is hate.

My dad was abusive. I remember the first time he ever hit me. I was 5. It was evening. Supper was over. I was crying about something—the way 5-year-olds often do. I don’t even remember what it was about.

My father told me to hush. I didn’t. So, he hit me. I fell off my feet. My head slammed against the wall. I kept crying; he kept hitting. And he kept shouting, “Don’t talk back me, boy!”

My father went on to do lots of bad things. And shortly after he was released from county jail, after trying to kill my mother, he died by his own hand.

And that’s when I started hating him.

I’m sorry for writing such a downer article, but you need to know that I grew up hating my father. I hated him so badly that I did the worst…

I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. She was waiting for me. In the theater lobby. After the show. The little girl was with her family, smiling.

Theater goers were filing out of the auditorium, trying to forget the one-man shipwreck they had just witnessed onstage.

I exited stage left to go shake some hands in the lobby and apologize. And there she was.

You couldn’t miss her. An elementary-school-age kid. Big smile. Flaxen hair. Bright eyes. Holding a brightly colored poster board sign which read “I AM THE MEMPHIS BELLE.” With little hearts drawn on the sign.

“This is Luxe,” her father said by way of introduction.

That name.

I couldn’t place it at first. Luxe? Do I know a Luxe? Have I ever met a Luxe? And more importantly, do I owe Luxe money?

“Hello, Luxe,” I said.

“Hi,” came the quiet reply.

“How are you?” I said.

Then, without preamble, she hugged me. Her little arms squeezed me tightly, like she’d known me her entire life. She was about as big as a minute. Dressed up in a fancy jumper, ready

for a night on the town.

“Don’t you remember me?” she asked, mid-hug.

And something clicked in my brain. I recognized the girl immediately. I felt hot tears threaten to fill my eyes. But as I say, I promised myself to remain composed.

I wrote about Luxe Trivett. It must’ve been, what, two years ago. Maybe more. I don’t know. Time flies when you’re an AARP card holder.

No, I’m kidding. I’m not an AARP member. But I might as well be, because standing next to this fresh-faced child made me feel like the late Walter Brennan.

She was 9 years old when I wrote a column about her. She was at an outpatient residence at Saint Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, recovering from her second bone marrow transplant for aplastic anemia.

Things weren’t looking good for Luxe.…