Jim is wearing a cowboy hat, suspenders. Sometimes he sells tomatoes on the side of an old two-lane highway.

He’s sitting in a folding chair. His brim is pushed upward. Jim is smoker-skinny, and his belt looks too big.

He is my friend’s uncle, and his tomatoes look suspicious.

“Are these HOME-grown?” I ask.

“Yessir.”

The tomatoes are pink and blemish-free. They look like industrial candle wax.

“Did YOU grow them?” I ask.

He winks. “Friend of mine.”

But of course.

We talk. He’s been wanting to talk. He heard I'm a writer. He tells me he is a writer.

Since the third grade, he’s written over seven hundred poems. Maybe more.

His poems are mostly for his own reflection. Though he’s written poetry for local papers—a few funerals and birthdays.

He recites one. It’s about rows of peanuts, blue skies, and a dying mother. My kind of poetry.

But he never got a chance to pursue a career in writing. When the Vietnam draft enacted, he

joined. Instead of poetry, he learned how to jump out of airplanes.

“Killing changes you,” he says, “You’re trained to think of your enemy as nothing but a target, not human. Just how it is.”

All I can do is nod.

“But then,” he goes on. “You’re back home, you get to thinking about their mothers and such. And it messes with you.”

When he arrived stateside, he wasn’t the same. The guilt was crippling. Not for killing, but for surviving. His best friends met their ends before his eyes.

His first week home, he slept outdoors. Sleeping inside made him nervous.

And he had no interest in writing—it was hard enough just…

She is slightly overdressed for this place. They walk into the cheap Mexican restaurant and stick out.

She’s wearing a blue blouse, blue flats. He’s wearing khakis. They have matching white hair.

He has a nasty cough.

This place is busy, the hostess leads them to the bar while they wait for a table.

The walk is a short one. They make it arm in arm. She orders wine. Him: beer.

They don’t say much. They’re both watching the television above bar. Soccer is on.

“I don’t understand this sport,” he tells me, and he talks like a jar of Karo syrup.

I say something to him. He courtesy-laughs, which leads to a coughing fit. He holds a hanky over his mouth.

“We ONLY watch football,” his wife says, leaning forward while he coughs.

The conversational ice is broken. We talk.

Well—rather, she talks. I listen and say things like: “hmm,” and, “oh, how wonderful,” and “yes ma’am, I hear it’s lovely this time of year.”

She’s a flower. In our brief time together, I learn they have three kids, they are Presbyterians, he is an Auburn fan, she is

not. She is as friendly as a politician.

“You live here?” she asks.

“No ma'am, just here for the night.”

“Us too, we're on our way to Birmingham.”

He’s still coughing. Hard. He stands and leaves for the restroom.

When he’s gone, she tells me, “He’s having surgery in two days.” She points to her chest when she says it.

“It’s his second one,” she goes on. “Say a prayer for him. We’re taking all the prayers we can get.”

I yes-ma’am her.

She’s a cheery little thing.

The hostess calls them, I tell her it was lovely meeting her.

The old man offers her an elbow, they hook arms like it’s nineteen fifty-one. He slides out her chair for her. She sits erect, then places a napkin in her…

I left town early, headed home. I pulled off to watch the sunrise over a peanut field. I almost ran into a ditch, parking on the shoulder.

This small highway is old. And like most old roads in these small parts, it has no true shoulder.

Only a ditch.

I'm eating a breakfast sandwich from Hardee’s. It's not good, but it’s warm.

The higher the sun gets, the louder the birds talk. They’re just waking up. So am I. And it's humid. Warm April mornings like this can make you sweat buckets.

I love to sweat.

I’ve been out West a few times. I hiked the Grand Canyon and didn't sweat a drop all week. It was too dry. The rocks were pretty, but I missed sweating.

As soon as my airplane touched down in Bay County, my underarms and drawers were already damp.

Once, I accompanied a Little League team on an out-of-town trip to Mobile. The van’s air conditioner quit working. The vehicle smelled like little-boy sweat and stinky feet.

The boys opened the windows

and sang, “Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho,” and “Father Abraham Had Many Sons,” and “Zacchaeus Was a Wee Little Man.”

The harder they sang, the more they stunk. Sweating and singing go together.

Take, for instance, the Freedom Hill Gospel quartet. I saw them sing in Marianna, Florida a few days ago. The high-tenor was from Two Egg. He wore a John Deere cap, and testified to folks in lawn chairs who applauded when he hit the high notes.

He was sweating. So were members of the quartet. And could those jokers ever sing. Southern Gospel quartets can't sing like that unless their high-tenor is sweating through his shirt.

Anyway, take out a map. Place your finger anywhere in the bottom right-hand corner of the United States. That’s where you’ll find the kinds of small places I'm talking about.

Places with…

“You oughta think about Heaven from time to time,” a one-hundred-two-year-old preacher told me once. “I mean really concentrate on it. It'll make you feel good inside."

The old man sat in his wheelchair, his voice sounded more like a forced whisper. He only had enough stamina for a few words at a time. Then, the nurse came in to lay him down for a nap.

Two decades later, I still think about what he said.

Firstly: I know Heaven is big. I'm uncertain how I know this, but I know it just the same. I'm not sure about gold-bricked highways and munchkin representatives of the Lollipop Guild. But I know Heaven's larger than Texas—which took me a whole two days to drive across.

I also have it on good authority, that there is music in Heaven. One of my aunts had a near-death experience and claims she saw a string band playing “Little Brown Church In The Vale.” My uncle tells me he sang this song by her bedside

while she had that experience.

Once, at a halfway house, a fifteen-year-old girl told me she thought Heaven would be a place, “where nobody hurts nobody, and everyone's parents want them.”

A twelve-year-old boy named Bo, said, “Nah, Heaven's just another name for summer.” I suggested Bo take up country songwriting. But as fate would have it, nine years later, he overdosed.

I hope God makes it an outstanding summer.

A few nights ago, I watched a baseball game at a bar. I asked the man next to me what he thought about Heaven. “Heaven?” he said, eyes glued to the game. “First thing I think about is sunshine. Don't know why. I just think it'll be really bright up there.”

The lady next to him added, “I think Heaven's gonna be a place where we won't have to worry about paying any bills. You should'a seen my power bill…