Christmas afternoon. I drove my truck down a familiar gravel road. It's a road I can see in my sleep. I hadn't made that drive in many years.

I pulled over on a small bridge, flipped on my hazards. I crawled underneath the bridge. It was muddy. Creek water flooded my boots. I dug with a hand shovel.

This was ridiculous.

My childhood Christmases were simple. Each member of my family received three gifts—which was a rule of Daddy's. Growing up poor changes a man.

One gift was practical. Blue jeans, slacks, or, God forbid, underpants. The other two were fun.

One year I got an LP record,—“Stardust,” by Willie Nelson—a cap gun, and khakis.

Mama opened her gift. It was a booklet I'd made from colored paper, entitled: “Mama's Coupons.” Inside were various pencil-written discounts. “One free kitchen sweeping,” or, “Seventy-percent off hugs,” and my personal favorite, “Free ice cream supper.”

She never cashed in on the last one.

Daddy's gift was was a bathrobe. Mama made it. It was a sweet gesture. Except, of course,

my father didn't wear robes. He crawled out of bed fully dressed with boots on.

He slid it over his clothes, anyway.

Our gift-opening took ten minutes, tops. Then, I ate so much at lunch my feet swelled and my ears rang.

After lunch, Daddy asked if I wanted to go for a walk. I'd expected him to say that. Daddy couldn't sit still for more than a few blinks, not even on holidays.

So we walked. We followed the creek. The small water cut through through the woods. We marched through the undergrowth until we came to a concrete bridge.

We sat on the railing, legs dangling. I reached into my coat and handed him a wrapped box the size of a butter stick. The gift-tag, covered in my sloppy handwriting.

“To: Daddy,” it read.

He made a face. "What's this? Why'd…

The day of our wedding, it was a blizzard. And in North Florida, that means: fifty degrees and overcast.

I was supposed to be nervous—that's what everyone told me. They said I'd feel sick, that my knees would shake.

But no shaking.

The chapel was within spitting distance of the beach. I had time to kill, so I parked near the Gulf. The sun was setting. The sky looked like orange sherbert.

I squinted at the chapel in the distance. Headlights filled the parking lot. Half of Brewton, Alabama was attending the wedding.

A few nights before, my pal asked if I wanted a bachelor party. No, I answered. I hated bachelor parties worse than bachelorhood.

“What about a cigar?” he'd suggested.

I don't care for them.

So he gave me a pouch of Red Man chew and a racy Congratulations card. They both sat on my dashboard, unopened.

I don't chew. But, since I had nothing better to do, I tried a cheek-full. It had been a long time since I'd touched the stuff.

As a boy, my father

gave me my first pinch while we sat on his tailgate. It made me dizzy, but not sick—which impressed him.

Few things impressed him.

"Whatever you do," he'd said. "Don't swallow your spit.”

Times have changed. A father could go to jail for doing such today.

I spat on the sand. I wished he were alive. I wished someone would've been around to toast me at the reception, to show me how to tie a bowtie.

Wedding-time: I arrived at the double doors and saw the preacher on the sidewalk. The first thing he did was straighten my tie and remind me not to lock my knees.

“No matter how tough you think you are," he said. "Everyone's knees shake.”

Not me. Mine were oak limbs.

I stood at the altar— it was decorated with lit Christmas trees. The piano…

Atlanta, Georgia—these kids are playing baseball in the community park. They've lost their minds. This is winter. It's forty outside.

They're wearing yellow and red T-shirts, running the bases. These little athletes come in different shapes and sizes. High-schoolers, grade-schoolers, boys, girls.

One boy has an undersized leg. Another has an implanted device behind his ear. The pitcher looks like somebody's father.

A few parents sit in the bleachers, bundled in coats. I ask a lady nearby what we're looking at.

“Special needs team," she says.

One coach yells, "GOOD HUSTLE!" It's the familiar way ball-club managers have been hollering since the dawn of Cracker-Jacks.

The lady says, "We started this team for Downs kids. But other kids started asking if they could play, too."

She points to her son who's punching his mitt. He's a freckled boy with Downs syndrome. The shortstop fires the ball to him. He drops it.

“GOOD HUSTLE!” comes the onslaught of shouts.

The lady goes on, “We got one player with CF, one with polio, you know, we're open for whatever.”

And whomever.

Like the

girl exiting the dugout. Her woven hair hangs from underneath her batter's helmet. The lady tells me this girl has no special needs, but her middle-school coach told her she was too overweight to play.

Well, not here.

This is an inclusive group. Informal. No championships, no trophies. Only Goldfish and Gatorade.

This community baseball diamond is well-used by Little League teams during the summers. During the winters, the yellow and red shirts get to use it.

“It's our fourth year,” she says. “It all started because a few of our boys wanted to learn baseball."

PING!

We're interrupted by an aluminum bat. It's the girl. She hits a bloop to left. The ball bounces. You ought to see this child run. Her dreadlocks wave behind her. Her helmet falls off.

She's magnificent.

“GOOD HUSTLE, Adriana!” people shout.

She…

“I'm not allowed to say, Merry Christmas at school,” she said. “It's harder than it sounds. You grow up saying it, it's part of you.”

She's an elementary teacher in Middle Alabama. I can't tell you her name, so I'm going to call her, Murdess—since I love that name.

I had a hillbilly aunt named Murdess Delphinia. She used to sign stationary with: “Dietrich, M.D.” Everyone got a kick out of that.

Anyway, Murdess—not my aunt—usually begins rehearsing her Christmas pageant in August. It takes months to teach kids how to dance and sing.

On the second week of December, her class performs in a musty gymnasium for several hundred parents.

Her students come from all backgrounds: African, Korean, Mexican, Hindi, Islamic, and average suburban Southerner.

Because of this, the school had outlawed Christmas. Sort of.

"There're all sorts of Christmasy words I can't say,” Murdess went on. “Can't talk about mangers, wisemen, shepherds, or even Santa.”

Some consider Saint Nicholas a symbol of Christianity.

There's also a list of blacklisted songs. “Silent Night,” was first to go.

Also: “Noel,” “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and “Here Comes Santa Claus.”

The authorities decided Murdess should call her production, “The Winter Festivity Concert.”

And instead of using characters like Saint Nick, they encouraged her to use one named, Mister Winter. A jolly young man with a brown mustache, who stuffs children's stockings with hand sanitizer and recyclable water bottles.

Murdess followed the rules. Her children sang songs nobody's ever heard. She paid tribute to Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Solstice, and read a passage from the Quran for her Muslim students.

At the end of the production, she sent her children to their seats. The lights dimmed.

And she recited:

“And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them,…

Walmart, 5:04 P.M.—this place is a nuthouse. There are so many folks here it looks like the walls are buckling. Nearly sixteen thousand shoppers with full carts, elbowing for a place.

There are two checkout aisles open. Two.

I'm standing in a line that stretches back to the Czech Republic.

I stopped in this hell-hole to buy more cheap Christmas lights for our tree. Our current lights are junk. Every time a bell rings a strand of lights goes out on our tree.

In line ahead: a young woman with two kids. She's dressed in a fast-food uniform, holding a baby.

Her infant is screaming. She's rocks the child back and forth, whispering. The baby locks eyes with me. Her crying stops. She smiles, then laughs.

The mother says in a thick, Alabamian accent, “Reckon she likes you.”

The young woman smiles her few teeth at me.

"Maybe she just smells my dog," I say.

She brings the baby closer. This child has the biggest brown eyes God ever made. Bigger than Barbara—our childhood Arberdeen heifer, who had eyes like

basketballs.

I didn't expect to feel this way while staring at a child, but something's happening to me. My voice is high-pitched. I'm making mouth-noises like an outboard motor.

The woman says, “You wanna hold her?”

“Me? No, that's okay, ma'am..."

At this stage in life, I've discovered that people like me weren't intended to hold babies—we're meant to watch everyone else have them.

But it's too late. The girl hands the baby over.

So, here I am, baby against my chest. She's light. She smells like flowers. Honest-to-goodness flowers. Her bald head is the softest I've ever touched.

The child locks eyes with me again. When she does, the world disappears. She smiles and it's summertime. She lays her head on my shoulder and falls asleep, drooling.

I was a wiseman in my grade-school pageant. Supposedly, three of us…

Help that boy, God. You know the one. The kid who wore hunter's camouflage in the Mexican restaurant. Who sat in the booth behind me.

He was there for a birthday party with all his towhead friends.

A girl his age asked him, “Have you ever even BEEN hunting, dork?”

What a first-class snot-bowl she was.

The boy answered, “No. But one day, my dad's GONNA take me."

"Oh yeah?" the girl said. "My mom says your dad lives in Tennessee, and that you've never even met him."

"So?" he said. "He would take me if he knew me."

Look God, I don't ask for much. But for the love of you, find someone to take that child into the woods.

He's already got camo clothing.

Also: if you have time, don't forget about the girl I saw outside the department store. She had crutches—the kind strapped to her forearms.

“Go shopping without me, Mom,” the girl said. "My legs hurt. I'll wait here.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” the woman answered. “I'm not leaving you. I don't have to shop, let's

go home.”

The girl said, “NO MOM. You NEVER get to do anything fun because of ME. Please go?”

The mother reluctantly agreed and went into the store. The girl sat on a bench and cried.

I know you saw that, Lord.

Listen, I know you've got a lot going on this season—especially with the Peach Bowl coming up. But please do something for her. Anything. You can send me the bill.

Something else before I leave:

Help the grandmother who kicked her rowdy granddaughter out. I'm sure she feels guilty about it, but she had to. The girl's mixed up in hard drugs and harder living.

Heaven knows where that kid will end up. But then, I guess you do know. Just give her a quick miracle or two, that's all I ask. Do it because that poor grandmother…

“Sure, I read what you wrote about me,” he said over the phone. “You made me sound more impressive than I am.”

Not really.

When I first wrote about the Alabama-born bartender, it was before Thanksgiving. I met him in a Pensacola sports bar. He's a widower, father of two boys, built like a defensive tackle.

Heart bigger than a residential king bed.

A month ago, he was leaving for Texas to meet his girlfriend's Mexican family. She's the first woman he's dated since his young wife died suddenly.

He and his boys planned to ask her to marry him. He packed neckties, khakis, the whole dog-and-pony show. He was nervous.

After I wrote about him, I tried tracking him down for a follow-up. I stopped by the bar where I first met him. He wasn't working. I tried a few days later. Someone said he'd moved to Texas.

A cook told me, "Hey man, I got his number. Let's call him."

So that's what's happened.

I sat in an empty bar before business hours, holding a cook's

cellphone. The giant television was broadcasting I Love Lucy reruns, a waitress was pushing a vacuum.

A voice answered. I reintroduced myself.

"'Course I remember you," he said. "My mom printed out your story and passed it around to her bridge club."

We small-talked. I asked how his marriage proposal went.

“Well, um,” he said. “Not at all like planned.”

Say it ain't so.

“I was nervous, man, I screwed it up. I guess I was just sick of wondering if she'd say yes or no. So I went for it.”

On the way to Texas, they pulled over in Louisiana for the night. They all stayed at a cheap motel. The next morning, she went to the lobby for a complimentary, room-temperature breakfast. He was already there, eating with his boys.

When he saw her, he knelt in the dining room.…

We delivered newspapers together. She'd drive the car. I'd fling. I'd aim for doorsteps. Seldom did papers land on doormats.

Sometimes, I'd hit cars parked in driveways so hard I'd set off burglar alarms.

Mama would laugh until she choked.

It bears mentioning, that in my life I've shoveled cow pies, cleaned chicken coops, baled hay, and unclogged septic tanks. Throwing papers remains the worst damn job I've ever had.

Ever.

Before the sun came up, Mama and I would arrive in an empty parking lot. A truck would deliver a pallet of newsprint with a forklift. After I signed for them, the delivery man would give me a look of sympathy.

We'd deliver roughly seventeen trillion papers to half of Florida. On Sundays: triple.

In the winter, Mama and I would sit in the vehicle, the heater blasting, stuffing newspapers into plastic bags. Often, I'd have a pissy attitude.

Not Mama. The woman could detail outhouses while whistling Dixie.

Thus, we'd canvas the city with a vehicle so packed with newspaper, the rear bumper scraped the

pavement.

Our route: four high-rise condominiums, three subdivisions, two trailer parks, a hundred newspaper vending machines, churches, whorehouses, space-stations, and one partridge in a pear tree.

When we'd finish, we'd watch the sunrise, eating donuts, drinking coffee. Then, I'd go back to my apartment and sleep for eight years.

Mama and I worked each day. Rain, sleet, or World Series. Weekends, black plague, holidays, Christmas Eve, even her birthday.

On her birthday, the roads iced over. And just when I thought things couldn't get any worse, I locked the keys in the car. My first reaction was to beat on the windows—I don't know why.

The sheriff deputy got a kick out of that.

Our deliveries were all late, the boss was fuming mad, he threatened to let us go.

We ate lukewarm fried chicken in the Winn Dixie parking lot. I sang…

I saw my old college professor in the supermarket, shopping. It was awkward. He never liked me.

“Heaven is a lie,” the venerable professor once said during class. “Just like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.”

Then he explained that God wasn't real. Neither were angels, nor Christmas, Easter, Elvis, or Beulah Land. He claimed the future of every human was to die and become, more or less, worm poop.

I disagreed with him in the middle of class. He asked why. I told him that I'd been to Graceland. Twice. He disliked me thereafter.

But I'm not sorry.

My first interest in heaven began when my father died. Once, I stood in an open hayfield, watching a gray sky, hoping for a glimpse of it.

Desperate boys do desperate things.

I prayed for a miracle, a sign. Nothing. If I'd been smart—like my professor—I would've given up on the idea. But I'm a slow learner.

My granny believed that when people died, they got sucked into the clouds. There, they could lean over a brass railing and see

the world below.

Weaver's Department store had one such railing. At Christmas, Mama would turn me loose in Weaver's with three bucks in my fat little hands for holiday gift shopping.

The first thing I'd do was clomp upstairs, taking two steps at a time. I'd lean over the second-floor bannister and people-watch—while resisting an urge to spit.

I still do this in airports, hotel lobbies, restaurants, and Walmart—the watching, not the spitting.

Take, for instance, yesterday. I sat outside Target, waiting on my wife. Busy folks rushed in and out of sliding doors. A little boy sat on the bench beside me.

His father dug through his wallet while the boy hummed to himself. The man handed the boy a twenty and told him to buy a gift for his stepmom.

"But Dad," the kid said. "Can't we call her Mom?"

Pace, Florida—today, the town is suburbia, but once it was Small Floridatown, USA. Think: men in camouflage, women in pearls, millworkers.

Schoolteachers.

Seventeen-year-old Jena was a good student. She had more ambition than her one-horse rural world could hold.

“In my first literature class assignment,” says Jena. “I wrote that I wanted to move far, far away from home and be a pediatrician.”

But good teachers have X-ray vision. They know which students will be pediatricians, lawyers, pipe-fitters, and which little hellcat wrote the F-word on the boy's restroom wall.

When Jena's teacher handed back her essay, it read:

"Dear Jena, I don't think you're supposed to be a doctor. I think you're supposed to be a teacher."

What nerve. But then, teachers are like that.

After high school, Jena attended the University of Florida.

"We exchanged a lot of emails once I left her classroom," says Jena. "She really cared."

But she was more than caring. The woman was pure love.

Four years and fifteen million essays later, Jena graduated. And just like her teacher predicted, she became an educator.

Jena

made the five-hour drive back to Pace to visit the old classroom.

It was a school day. Class was in session. Jena walked the halls to room 221. She pressed her ear to the door. A familiar voice with a thick drawl was reading aloud to the class.

Jena slipped into a seat on the back row to listen. When class was over, she stood before the teacher's desk like old times.

Before she could say anything, her teacher handed her a binder.

"What's this?"

"I made it for you," her teacher said.

Jena thumbed through it, starting with the first page. Every letter and email they'd ever exchanged.

And on the last page: an essay written by a restless seventeen-year-old who once wanted to "move far, far away."

When Jena read it, Niagara Falls.

Anyway, I'm getting…