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…

Rural Florida. The Depression was alive and kicking.

This was a time when folks sat on porches, swatting gnats. Fathers gave out bottle-caps for allowances, mothers canned anything with seeds. Ketchup was six cents a bottle.

She was a striking seventeen-year-old with honey-blonde hair—like her mother. She was dating the son of a wealthy man—an arrogant, rowdy kid.

One night, the boy got half tight and broke into the girl's house. Only, she was out that night. He forced himself on her young widowed mother. He violated her. He broke her collar bone.

Her mother didn't tell anyone.

It wasn't long afterward, her mother started noticing morning nausea, and her clothes got tight.

Her mother decided to end the pregnancy. After working up the courage, she drove to visit the amateur doctor on the edge of town—a man who fixed things.

She sat on a wood table with her skirt off, crying too hard to go through with it. She left. And she hated herself for even considering it.

Months went by, her mother developed a tummy. People in

town punished her with words like, “hussy,” and, “whore.”

And on the day her daughter found her sobbing on the kitchen floor, she extracted the truth from her.

They left town for a fresh start, rented a city apartment. Menial jobs paid the bills. Sometimes, chicken soup looked like saltwater—provided they were lucky enough to have salt.

Those were merciless days, and they got worse.

Her mother had complications during labor. She bled to death. And because she was destitute, the county classified her as a, "necessary burial."

She got a pinewood box. No marker.

With her mother gone, she claimed her newborn brother as her son. She met a man while working in a cotton factory. And with the help of the new husband, she raised the boy everyone believed was hers.

When the economy improved, so did lives.

The…

Her husband left her with two boys. And since money didn't grow in the backyard, she worked more than one thankless job.

One morning, she found a stray dog on her porch, stealing food from her cats. She tore out the door and shouted. A man came out of the woods to fetch the dog. He was bearded. Dirty. Homeless. He apologized profusely.

The next morning, she found a brand new bag of food on her porch.

She got to know the man, introduced him to her boys. The next thing she knew, she'd put him up in her guest bedroom. She took him to a barber, helped him get a job, even let him use her car. After a few months, he found an apartment.

One that allowed pets.

"Couldn't believe how fast it happened," she said. "I realized, 'Hey, you ain't gotta be rich to make a difference in someone's life.'"

That's when she started volunteering at the local rescue mission with her boys. They started serving meals, washing dishes, rocking babies to sleep. Soon,

she volunteered more often than she worked her regular job.

“Was a real eye-opener,” she went on. “So many addicts, crazy folks out there, and kids, too."

Kids.

One of the children she's talking about was a toddler who I'll call Briana—whose mother was dying from drug-related problems. The two shared an instant connection.

“I just knew I had to do something for that girl.”

So, she approached Briana's dying mother with a proposition.

“I asked about adopting her. I was afraid I's gonna offend her, but she just said, 'I've been praying you'd ask me that.'"

She paused to wipe an eye. "She died a few weeks later.”

Briana got her own room—decorated in green, which is her favorite color. Her closet was loaded with new clothes and shoes. Her bed had Disney sheets. As it happened, Briana had only ever slept…

My father died on a Wednesday. On Thursday morning, my aunt was already in the kitchen cooking.

Pound cakes, fried chicken, smothered dove, enough gravy to be a felony.

My aunt also covered our mirrors with blankets. I asked why she did such a thing.

She said, “Same reason I'm cooking, it's what we do.”

Well, nobody tells you death and food go hand in hand. When someone dies, an explosion of casseroles follow. Our front porch nearly buckled from the weight of the covered dishes.

We received food of all kinds. The man down the road delivered bullfrog legs. One lady brought tomatoes in jars. Someone even brought a garbage bag of green peanuts.

I wish I could tell you how it all tasted. But I can't. After daddy's funeral, everything was bland.

Anyway, my wife cooks for funerals, too. I've seen her whip up enough to fill two city blocks.

A few years ago, a man died. She broke her back making more food than I've ever seen. She slaved for days in the kitchen—popping Advil.

When all was finished, our galley looked like a grease pit.

That night, we loaded coolers into my truck. She sat in the passenger seat, balancing casseroles on her lap. When we made the drop, a boy met us at the door, which took me off guard. I didn't know the man had kids.

The boy eyed the dishes.

I forced a smile past the lump in my throat.

His hair was redder than mine.

Later, he and I sat on the porch. He didn't have much to say. When he eventually did speak, he said, “Why'd you bring so much food?”

I couldn't answer.

The truth is, I'm not sure why. God knows, he wasn't going to enjoy it no matter how much he ate. And that's a shame—my wife makes exceptional biscuits.

But, I've thought about it a lot since…

Montgomery, Alabama—the meat department. I stood behind them. They were Mexican. Maybe fourteen. Faded caps. Ratty jeans. Clothes covered in dirt and mortar. Skinny as a flock of number-two pencils.

They ordered a half-pound of beef.

The butcher handed them enough wrapped packages to sink the U.S.S. Alabama.

One kid remarked, “What this? we only ask for half pound.”

The butcher said, “Aw, it's free. I have to get rid of it. Expiration date's today. Freeze it, it'll last for years."

The boys looked like they'd just discovered teeth.

One said, “God bless joo, sir.”

Pensacola, Florida—Cracker Barrel parking lot. I saw a man with his wife. Maybe it was his girlfriend. She was in a wheelchair. She had blonde hair. She couldn't stop twitching.

He rolled her into the restaurant. She dropped her purse. He picked it up.

She moaned, “I'm so sorry, honey.”

He kissed her. “Don't ever apologize to me, silly."

Silly.

Macon, Georgia— Walmart. A man and his kids stood in the checkout lane. They had a basket with a few things. He swiped his card. It wouldn't go.

The cashier said,

“Sorry sir, this card's denied.”

His face changed. He turned to leave.

The lady behind him stepped forward, removed her wallet, and said, “How much?” She paid for his groceries.

He thanked her.

She answered matter-of-factly, "I'm a single mother, I know what it's like being broke."

How about this one:

Defuniak Springs, Florida—I saw an elderly man with car trouble at the gas station. The clerk—in her mid-twenties—rushed outside to help. She got his car started. The man tipped her ten bucks.

The clerk took the money and said, “You have NO idea how bad I needed this today."

So he dug into his pocket and gave her more bills. Handfuls.

Listen, while I write this the news is playing on television. The announcer reads headlines. Shootings, stabbings, rapes, racism, pressure-cooker bombs. He's…

They say he was a storyteller. A genuine Br'er Rabbit Man. And these days, it's hard to find good storytellers. They keep dying from old age.

When he opened his mouth, you could hear rural Georgia in him. He was lean, tan, with gaunt features.

He grew up on a big-tired Farmall. His father died when he was ten. His brother died when he was thirteen. His mother got sick when he was sixteen—it made her blind. He cared for her until she died.

Saying his life was hard is like saying vinegar tastes like molasses.

He worked as a farmhand, a cotton-picker, and a logger. But most folks remember him as a school custodian. That's the job he held the longest. He got along with the kids. And he'd seen hundreds turn into seniors.

During an English class long ago, a teacher invited him into the fourth-grade classroom. Students were learning how to interview. He was their first victim.

As it happened, he had more to say than they did. He began telling stories

about the Br'er Rabbit and Tar Baby—the way his mother had once done. And Bible parables.

“It became a weekly thing,” one teacher said. “He'd stop in on Fridays and talk for ten or fifteen minutes. It was the highlight of my day. He was so gentle.”

And then he got sick.

Teachers noticed he lost weight. He was having a hard time walking from his diabetic foot pain. His work started suffering, easy tasks took hours to finish.

They fired him. And because insulin isn't cheap, he went downhill. He quit shaving, started spending days in bed.

“Not working broke his heart,” said a teacher. “He loved being around those kids.”

He got sicker. His sister in South Florida offered to let him move in, so she could take care of him. He didn't have the money to make the trip.

So, the kids…