She tells me her father was a hard man. And he'd earned the right to be. He'd survived one Depression, one World War, and he was a dirt farmer. He'd forgotten how to cry.

And when it came to the subject of God, he once told his daughter, "If God's real, he's a heartless sumbitch, honey."

His words, not mine.

Anyway, it happened one sunny day, while she and her brothers were in the woods. She saw smoke in the distance. Black smoke. The bad kind. They ran home.

Only, there was no home. Just flames.

Her mother stood covered in soot. Her baby sister screamed. Her daddy was coughing in the yard.

They salvaged what they could from the dust. A few skillets. A potbelly stove. Their clothes were gone, photo albums, beds, food.

That night, the family slept in the barn. She said it was the first time she'd seen her daddy look rattled. She expected him to cry.

He didn't. He only cussed the sky.

The next morning, a man came to visit. He was

dressed in his Sunday best. He placed a handful of cash in her father's hand.

"We talked about you in church today," the man said. "And I wanna help."

Not long after, another couple came. It was the neighbors, with a wagon full of lumber.

Next, she remembers her mother hollering, "They took up an offering at church! Look! Six hundred dollars!"

Before the day ended, one hundred thirty-two people had visited the rural plot, each offering help.

One hundred thirty-two.

Over the following days, she says men showed up to frame the home. Even local clergy swung hammers. Sunup to sundown, they worked.

You might think this sounds like a fairytale. Only this is no bedtime story. This was South Alabama.

She tells me they ran out of lumber. But it didn't slow them. Men took apart their own barns and…

I'm in Dothan, Alabama, eating at Annie Pearl's Home Cooking Restaurant. They tell me this is the only spot in town where you can get a decent liver covered in respectable gravy.

They were right.

I'm in a good mood. Not just because of the liver. But because earlier today, an eighty-six-year-old woman with Parkinson's hugged my neck. She said in a weak voice, "Your daddy sure is proud of you, young man."

It unsettled me.

Daddy's been dead for two thirds of my life. Nobody's ever told me that.

Let alone a stranger.

So we went out for smother-fried liver. I've already eaten fifty pounds of the stuff. Also: butter beans, turnip greens, and enough biscuits to qualify as a misdemeanor.

This restaurant is empty, except for a few camouflage hats and their wives.

Our waitress is Kendall. She's a breath of fresh air. She visits every table, speaking to customers as friendly you'd talk to your cousins.

I overhear her say things like: "How's your sister doin' after her divorce?” Or: “Lordy, girl, did you see

So-And-So's engagement ring?”

Or: “Congratulations, Dalene, I heard your nephew made bail last week.”

People say sweet things in this town.

It's not a small place—this is the New York City of lower Alabama. But it's rural.

There's a Feed and Seed next to the Piggly Wiggly, muddy trucks in the movie-theater parking lot. At gas stations: old men in ten-gallon hats who can't figure out pump card-readers.

I spoke at the Houston County Library today. It was a small crowd. I met good people. Men like Fletcher Moore—an old man who talks so loud it makes you grin.

I got introduced to white-haired women who grew up barefoot, who still remember handpumps on kitchen sinks. I met ladies with antique names like Delphinia, Eugenia, Thomisina, Betty Sue, and Viola Ann.

I shook hands with a man in a neon orange cap…

You find her hiding in a closet. She's crying, behind the hanging clothes. She's still wearing her black velvet dress. A hair ribbon. Shiny shoes.

You don't blame her for hiding. After all, your house is full of visitors dressed in the same shade of funeral-black. They congregate around food, talking in quiet voices.

Hiding doesn't sound like such a bad idea.

“What're you doing in the closet?” you ask.

"Nothing."

"Are you crying?"

"Yeah."

So, you step inside. You sit beside her. Without saying anything, she crawls into your lap and rests her head against your chest.

"Is Daddy really dead?" she asks.

"He is."

She's not in the mood to talk, which is unlike her. This girl could chat the bark off a tree. But, not today. She's had a busy afternoon.

Funeral visitations are endurance sports. She stood beside you while you pumped nine hundred hands. Folks who cried so hard they couldn't keep their eyes open.

You heard things like, “Your daddy's in a better place, son." You got embraces. Kisses. Preachers reminded you that suicide

is not an unforgivable sin.

When it's over, it feels like someone beat you with a rolling pin.

And now your sister is asleep, drooling on your shirt, and you start wondering. You wonder who will braid her hair, tie her shoes, or help her navigate grade-school. You wonder who will teach her to drive.

So, you talk to God. Man to boy. You tell him that even though you're an inadequate little cuss, you're volunteering for the job.

You make promises to fix breakfasts, do laundry, tell bedtime stories. You swear to attend swim-meets, to cheer so hard your voice breaks. To treat her friends to ice cream.

And when she gets her first job, it will be you who visits Chick-Fil-A, unannounced, to snap a photo.

It will be you who walks her down the aisle.

And when…

I'm parked near the bay, eating salted peanuts, watching a hound dog swim.

I shouldn't be here. I'm an adult. I have a busy schedule to maintain. I have errands, a grocery list, a dentist appointment this afternoon. I also have a coonhound who likes water.

So, I called the dentist to cancel. “Cancel?” the lady on the phone asked. "Is everything okay?"

“Yes ma'am, it's just that my dog wanted to go swimming.”

No answer.

Yeah, I know I'm batty. But Ellie Mae lives for this bay, and it's been a while since I took her swimming. Which isn't fair. God gave her webbed paws the size of basketballs. Swimming is her birthright.

Today, when she saw the bay water through my truck windows, she howled until I stopped the truck.

I'm a softy.

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy this. The fact is, folks from my side of the tracks have entertained themselves by watching bird-dogs since the earth cooled. All my best friends have had fleas.

When she crawls out of the

water, she shakes. I toss the duck again.

She lights out after it.

I like wet dogs. I keep beach towels in my truck for such occasions. And treats. And leashes.

We're joined at the hip. It's no exaggeration to say she likes to keep me within sniffing distance.

Once, while I was repairing our roof, Ellie Mae attempted to crawl the ladder behind me. She got stuck. It took an hour to get her down.

Another story: once, I found Ellie chewing something in our driveway. In her paws was an open packet of Beech-Nut tobacco.

I hollered at her.

She paid me no mind.

I let her alone. Because the first rule of dog ownership: never touch a hound while she's chewing tobacco.

She's part of my life. In evenings, when I pull in our driveway to see a…

It's suppertime. My wife is teaching school late tonight and I don't like eating alone. So, I picked up barbecue from a place my mother-in-law likes.

I appeared on her doorstep, unannounced, holding a fresh bouquet—fresh from the supermarket.

Surprise.

She's independent, my mother-in-law. She lives alone—not counting her cats.

She fell recently. A few times. Once in the garage. Again this morning, in the bathtub. She has a bruised tailbone. I can tell she's in pain. I wish there were something I could do.

Sandwiches and flowers are the best I could come up with.

“I brought supper," I say. "Hope you're hungry.”

I'm in luck. She is.

Mother Mary uses a walker. It's candy-apple red. The same contraption that took me four tedious hours to assemble. We call it the General Lee.

When she finishes arranging flowers, she tells me she'd like to eat supper in the den, on her recliner. So I get her situated.

The Weather Channel is blaring at a volume loud enough to interfere with air-traffic transmissions.

I start to turn it off.

"No," she says. "Leave it

on, I wanna see tomorrow's weather."

Yes ma'am.

And so we eat pulled pork while Jim Cantore demonstrates the impact of high-pressure systems on the greater southeastern region.

"How's Ellie Mae?" my mother-in-law shouts.

She's being polite. I don't have kids, so she's asking about my coonhound.

"She's good," I holler.

She adds with a wink, "I like it when you write about your dog, but I like it better when you write about me."

Shameless.

I know Mother Mary's not feeling well. I can see it on her face. But she's sophisticated to a fault. She comes from a world that's peppered with Antebellum columns and parlors with high ceilings.

She's learned how to smile through pain and make dinner guests welcome.

In the years I've known her, I've watched her give that welcome to…

I'm at a barbecue. At least that's what they call it.

The man who threw this party is a doctor. He's the friend of a friend, and his house deserves its own zip-code. The propane grill looks nicer than most Japanese SUV's.

Someone offers me a beer. It's a European brand. Never heard of it.

I shake a man's hand. He's an attorney in Atlanta. He just bought a summer home on the Gulf. He shows photos of it to anyone within eyesight.

I meet a woman, she's the owner of a big-city PR firm. She cannot begin a sentence without saying, "I have to be completely honest with you."

I don't belong here.

I have to be completely honest with you, this doesn't feel like any barbecue I've ever been to.

The cookouts of my childhood were pitiful affairs. We had smoke pits. Not the kind from Sears, but the kind your granddaddy makes with cinderblocks and chain-link fencing.

If I close my eyes, I can see the whole thing.

On the grill—if you can call chain-link

a grill—sits a recently skinned pig. Men sit on stumps. They wear work-shirts with snap buttons. They have coolers of cheap beer. And clear stuff.

Behind the pit: a structure called the “hut.” It's not a barn, nor a shed, but a half-building, rusted to hell. It houses a broken tractor, a Ford, and an orange sofa.

From time to time, men lift the pit cover. They shovel glowing red pecan embers into the smoking hole. Some talk about baseball, hateful boss-men, or their war-hero daddies.

While they jaw, I notice a white-haired man missing his pinky.

“Lost this finger in the gear-drive of a stock-roller,” he tells me.

“Did it hurt?”

“What do you think, boy?”

Somebody's wife exits the house. Men notice her. Everyone stands when she nears because she's female. One man removes his hat—a practice I hope never…

I wrecked my truck one mile outside Georgiana, Alabama. Long ago. The only thing I remember is the smack of metal. My driver's window busted into ice.

I thought I was dead.

I had the life-flashing-before-my-eyes experience. I saw myself in diapers. Middle school. I saw my wife, Jamie, in the passenger seat.

She screamed, "I love you, Sean!" while my truck rolled.

They would've been her final words.

I was too shell-shocked to repeat those words back to her with what might've been my last lungful. I regret that.

She helped me climb out of the vehicle. We sat on the side of the highway. Jamie tore a piece from her shirt and dabbed blood from my face. She cried so hard she gagged.

I tried to say something, but my voice didn't work.

The paramedics arrived.

“Sir, can you tell me your name?” asked a large blue uniform.

I couldn't.

“Your NAME, sir.”

I was too confused. All I said was, "My truck."

"Yeah," he said. "That ain't a truck anymore. You're one lucky sumbitch, sir."

It was an understatement.

After

I regained my senses, the EMT's told me that earlier the same morning—only miles up the interstate—another accident had happened.

A semi truck jack-knifed. An economy car skidded beneath the trailer. The top of the car got ripped off—the family inside was ruined.

“It was a traveling gospel group,” said the paramedic. “They were leaving a church gig. They were high-schoolers.”

I'll never forget hearing about those kids. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I've seen my share of old-fashioned gospel groups.

Take, for instance, the time I drove six hours to North Alabama, just to watch three brothers sing. I used to lay concrete with them before they started traveling the circuit. The eldest, Aaron, was a good man—built like a Philco refrigerator.

I remember when a contractor tried to cheat Aaron and his brothers…