…The world that came in over the radio was wide and far away and didn’t touch us at all.  We lived on one porch or another all summer long, laughing at Little Earle, teasing the boys and picking over beans, listening to stories, or to the crickets beating out their own soft songs.  When I think of that summer—sleeping over at one of my aunts’ houses as easily as at home, the smell of Mama’s neck as she bent over to hug us in the dark, the sound of Little Earle’s giggle or Granny’s spit thudding onto the dry ground, and that country music playing loud everywhere, as much a part of the evening as crickets and moonlight—I always feel safe again.  No place has ever seemed so sweet and quiet, no place ever felt so much like home.

 I worshipped my uncles—Earle, Beau, and Nevil.  They were all big men with wide shoulders, broken teeth, and sunken features.  They kept dogs trained for hunting and drove old trucks with metal toolboxes bolted to the reinforced wood sides.  They worked in the mills or at the furnace repair business, or sometimes did roofing or construction work depending on how the industry was going.  They tinkered with cars together on the weekends, standing around in the yard sipping whiskey and talking dirty, kicking at the greasy remains of engines they never finished building.  Their eyes were narrow under sun-bleached eyebrows, and their hands were forever working a blade or a piece of wood, or oiling some little machine part or other.

            “You hold a knife like this,” they told me.  “You work a screwdriver from your shoulder, swing a hammer from your hip, and spread your fingers when you want something to hold safe.”

            Though half the county went in terror of them, my uncles were invariably gentle and affectionate with me and my cousins.  Only when they were drunk or fighting with each other did they seem as dangerous as they were supposed to be.  The knives they carried were bright, sharp, and fascinating, their toolboxes were massive, full of every imaginable metal implement.  Even their wallets bulged with the unknown and the mysterious—outdated ID cards from the air base construction crew, passes for the racetrack, receipts for car repairs and IOUs from card games, as well as little faded pictures of pretty women who were not their wives.  My aunts treated my uncles like overgrown boys—rambunctious  teenagers whose antics were more to be joked about than worried over—and they seemed to think of themselves that way too.  They looked young, even Nevil, who’d had his teeth knocked out, while the aunts—Ruth, Raylene, Alma, and even Mama—seemed old, worn-down, and slow, born to mother, nurse, and clean up after then men.

            Men could do anything, and everything they did, no matter how violent or mistaken, was viewed with humor and understanding.  The sheriff would lock them up for shooting out each other’s windows, or racing their pickups down the railroad tracks, or punching out the bartender at the Rhythm Ranch, and my aunts would shrug and make sure the children were all right at home.  What men did was just what men did.  Some days I would grind my teeth, wishing I had been born a boy…

 (Allison 22-23)

Home    Passage    Family Members    Book Summary    Project Summary    Author Biography    Works Cited