The stars are out tonight. Thelma Lou, the bloodhound, stops to stare at the them. She sits for several minutes, looking up.

I’ve never seen a dog do that.

“What’re you looking at, girl?” I say, squatting beside her. “Are you looking at stars?”

Thelma Lou keeps staring upward.

I don’t blame her. The sky above is so magnificent I can hardly stand it. Stars are so bright they look like they might fall from the sky and land on me.

My mother says when I was a toddler I liked stars so much I would stand outside, staring upward, wearing a numb look—like my cornbread wasn’t done in the middle.

When I was thirteen, after my father died, I would sit on the porch and make wishes on stars. I wished for all sorts of things. Fast cars, money, a big-screen TV, Barbara Eden.

And I wished to be happy.

I was the most awkward and chubby thirteen-year-old you ever saw. My hair was pure copper. Today, red

hair might be the rage, but back then it was as stylish as a cold booger on a paper plate.

To make matters worse, my mother bought my pants at Sears. I wore “Husky” pants, sold in the back of the store, where chubby boys were routinely executed.

And if anyone doubted I was overweight, my pants bore an actual label on the hindparts which stated: “Husky.”

I did not care for myself.

Still, the males in my family promised I would undergo a transformation one day.

“One day,” my uncle said, “you’ll have a growth spurt, and get skinny, like we all did, just keep your chin up.”

But it wasn’t happening fast enough.

So I took matters into my own hands. My friend, Davis, suggested trying a diet he found in Popular Mechanics Magazine.

The diet consisted…

I showed up to a nine-year-old’s birthday party. I was with my friend, Chubbs. I felt strange being there.

I knocked on the door.

A blonde boy answered only to find me and Chubbs standing on the porch, singing an energetic rendition of “Happy Birthday,” while doing the Tango.

Before we finished dancing, Chubbs said, “Quick! Dip me!”

The crowd went wild.

We came bearing gifts. Nothing fancy, it was a T-shirt with Andy Taylor and Barney Fife on the front, with the words “Nip it in the bud!” in bold print.

The shirt was an extra-large because that was the only size the novelty store had in stock. And it was either the Andy T-shirt, or a shirt which read: “F.B.I. Federal Bikini Inspector.”

A few months ago, Bailey’s mother emailed to tell me that her son likes me. She told me he listens to my podcast each week, and reads my stuff even though some of the words are too big.

I was touched.

Bailey removed the T-shirt

from the gift bag and held it against his shoulders. The thing hung down to his feet.

“Look, Mom!” he shouted. “It’s a shirt with weird guys on it!”

“Sweetie, that’s Andy and Barney,” his mother explained.

“Barney?” The kid frowned. “But, where’s his purple dinosaur suit?”

His mother asked me not to share too much of their story, and I won’t. But I will tell you that Bailey’s parents divorced last year, and it was traumatic. The stress has made Bailey sick. He has developed medical problems because of the anxiety.

“He internalizes everything,” his mother told me. “It’s been a rough year.”

Anyway, the party was nice. I sat on Bailey’s back porch with his friends to watch a talented husband-and-wife magician duo from Birmingham. The magicians dazzled the crowd.

During their performance, they selected Chubbs as…

The NCAA National Championship. Alabama is playing Clemson in a fight to the death. I am in a living room with my elderly mother-in-law, Mary, preparing to watch the big game.

Mother Mary sits beside me, sipping seltzer water. Mother Mary is eating ice cream. Mother Mary is hard of hearing.

The phone rings.

She answers the phone.

“HELLO?!” she hollers into the phone. “YES! THAT’S RIGHT! WE’RE WATCHING THE GAME! HOW ARE YOU, EDNA?”

Brief silence.

“OH, ISN’T THAT NICE?”

Kickoff.

I’m tuning her out and focusing on the television. This is, quite possibly, the most pivotal game of all time. These are the best teams in the—

“HAAAAAAAH! IS HE STILL ALIVE? OH, I REMEMBER WHEN HE WAS A YOUNG MAN, HE WAS HANDSOME! REMEMBER WHEN HE USED TO WEAR THOSE BASKETBALL SHORTS! REMEMBER? THOSE REALLY TIGHT SHORTS? LORD HAVE MERCY, I DIDN’T HATE THOSE SHORTS.”

Shoot me now.

“YES! THAT’S RIGHT! THEY WERE SUCH SKIMPY SHORTS FOR SUCH A WELL-BUILT, STRONG BOY!”

The Lord is my Shepherd…

Clemson scores. Alabama

is falling behind. This is difficult to watch. Our team is making big mistakes.

“UH HUH! I JUST SPOKE WITH BEVERLY YESTERDAY! YOU KNOW SHE HAD THAT GOITER CUT OFF HER NECK LAST WEEK? DO YOU KNOW THE DOCTORS CUT IT OPEN AND FOUND SOME TEETH AND HAIR INSIDE IT? BLESS HER HEART!”

This game is tense. In fact, I am so nervous, I am about to make a puddle from all the stress. But the important thing to remember here is—

“OOOOOHHH NOOOOOOOOO! SHE DID?! REALLY? OH, GOD LOVE HER! I HEARD SHE HAD HIP SURGERY! HOW IS SHE? OH, SHE IS? THAT’S WONDERFUL! ISN’T SHE JUST THE SWEETEST THING? BUT A LITTLE BIRDIE TOLD ME HER POTATO SALAD TASTED LIKE FERTILIZER!”

Halftime.

Alabama is still behind. Their defense has been drowning. We are falling. I don’t…

I was fired from the only retail job I ever had. The important thing to remember here is that I wasn’t fired because I was a bad worker, or undependable. It wasn’t because I was a crummy person, incompetent, tardy, or lazy.

It was because—and I will never forget this—I didn’t iron my shirt.

The bossman came into work and looked at me with disgust. “God,” he said. “Don’t you ever iron your shirt?”

At the exact moment he said this, I was eating a ham and swiss on rye—heavy on the mustard. And it’s impossible to defend yourself intelligently with a mouthful of ham and swiss on rye with mustard.

He fired me. I packed my things and I was gone in fifteen minutes.

So yeah, I’m messy. I don’t mean to be, but I am.

My truck, for instance, is a mess. A few days ago, I found a small oak tree sprout growing in a pile of decomposing trash in my floorboards. I couldn’t bring myself to uproot

the thing because I love greenery.

My office is a mess, too. I have fifty thousand books. Tall stacks sit on every flat surface so I can always see them, and one day when I am gone, God-willing, someone will think I actually read them all.

I don’t know how I became so messy. I didn’t take a special course to learn how. It’s just a gift.

My mother is tidy. My father polished his lawnmower engines for kicks. My sister keeps a house so clean you could eat supper off her toilet seat. My wife irons our dog-bed covers.

Me? I have a tree growing in my truck.

Yesterday, I was in the post office. I stood in a long line. The room was full of folks with violent winter colds.

After every cough, I covered my nose and…

The stars are out tonight. It’s the fourth day of a new year, and I’m waiting for my dog to finish her business so we can go back inside.

But she’s wandering. And I’m thinking.

One of my first published columns was about going water skiing with my cousin. There were lots of people on a pontoon boat—my aunt, cousins, a pastor, innocent children, nuns, etc.

I wasn’t able to stand up on the skis after several attempts. I was dragged face-first through the water like a limp trout before finally giving up and crawling back aboard.

I clambered up the swim ladder, I shook off like a dog, and announced to the group: “Aww, waterskiing is for losers.”

After I said it, I heard gasps. My cousin covered his eyes. My aunt fainted. The pastor’s wife started praying in tongues. The nuns dove overboard and started swimming for Key Largo.

I realized I was not wearing swim trunks.

That story ran in a tiny magazine. And I can still remember hitting the

“send” button to email it to an editor. It was as though I were pressing the “detonate” button on a nuclear reactor.

I had written an actual “column.” That sort of made me an actual “columnist.” And it was like being born again.

The story tanked. The editor wouldn’t return my calls.

Even so, my life was never the same after that.

The next gig I landed was writing for a magazine in Georgia. My assignment was about the history of baseball in Savannah.

For a week, I camped in Richmond Hill, with my dog. I was there to research baseball. I interviewed elderly residents, one historian, one city official, and one former shortstop. I wrote an eight-hundred-word column.

The editor read my words and said, “Sorry, kid. This is basal writing.”

Kid? I was in my thirties. And…

He’s old and gray. His skin is like used tissue paper. He has liver spots.

I see him seated on the bench in front of a supermarket. He is the quintessential old man. Boots. Plaid. Suspenders. Hearing aids.

There is a blonde child riding one of those coin-operated horses that cost fifty cents per ride. The old man is watching over the child. His hands are resting on his cane.

“Ain’t it fun, Benny?” the old man says.

“Yeah, Grandpa!” says the blonde kid.

Another boy wanders toward the ride. This child is Hispanic. Black hair. Dark skin. Two adults are with him, parents maybe.

They are a handsome young couple in ragged clothes, covered in dust and plaster. They look tired.

The kid points at the horse. “Qué chido, Papá!”

I don’t speak Spanish, but I know childhood wonder when I see it.

The young couple starts speaking rapid-fire. I can’t understand them, but I know what they’re saying. It’s universal parent talk:

“Get away from that

horse,” the Hispanic man is saying to the boy. “Come inside, we have shopping to do.”

But the little boy is just that. He is little. He sees a fiberglass horse, adorned with a shiny saddle. And what boy on earth doesn’t want to be a cowboy?

The old man seems to know this. He smiles at the child. “You wanna take a ride on Trigger, son?” he says.

The kid doesn’t answer.

The man taps his cane on the horse. “Trigger? You wanna ride Trigger?”

“Trigger?” the boy says.

As it happens, when I was a child my father and I watched every Roy Rogers melodrama ever made. For most of my life, my father called all horses either “Trigger” or “Silver.”

“Porfa, Papá!” the kid says. “Porfa, porfa! Trigger!”

“No,” says Papá.

There will be…