Same Sun Here Read Free Page B

wasn’t longer. I was running late for basketball practice and just wanted to get something in the mail to you. But I still don’t think I can write as much as you.
    You asked what I look like. I am redheaded, with freckles all across my nose and shoulders. Mamaw says the freckles are because our people are originally from Scotland and Ireland. So I guess when you really think about it, we are all from some other place, way off across the ocean. Mamaw is half Cherokee, so I have her big nose. People give me a hard time about it and call me Toucan Sam sometimes, but I don’t care. I kind of like my nose. Mamaw says I will grow into it and it will be the best thing about me. I wish I was taller so I could be a better basketball player. Lately I have been doing this leg-stretching exercise my buddy Mark told me about, where you squat down and put one leg at a time out behind you as far as you can. It’s supposed to make you taller. I’ve only been doing it a week and already, according to my measuring tape, I have grown 1/16 of an inch. It’s pretty amazing.
    It’s weird that you are originally from the mountains, because that’s where I live now. I looked up where you were born online, and it’s cool because the mountains there look so much like mine, with pine trees and everything. I always expected India to only have big palm trees, for some reason. You said your mamaw wouldn’t come to America because she would miss the mountains too much, so maybe she could move here instead of New York City. At least that way she’d be way closer to you than she is now, way over in India, and I bet she’d like the mountains here. My uncle sells houses and could find her a place. Let me know if you need help with this.
    We have an Indian who lives here, Dr. Patel. My mamaw goes to him because she has sugar diabetes, and they are always laughing together. He says that she reminds him of his mother, and you should hear the way he says “Mama Justice” (that’s what he calls her). It’s funny with his accent, although Mamaw says it’s not polite to laugh at him over that and that he must be real smart to be able to even learn our language and to be a doctor besides. We have seen him and his wife at the Piggly Wiggly before, and she has a red dot on her forehead. Do you? I would like to know how those things work. Are they glued on there, or is it a Magic Marker, or what? I don’t understand, and Mamaw always elbows me when I stare at her.
    My father is nothing like Mamaw, though. He is always making fun of anybody who is different. He used to say the N-word all the time (especially when we were watching basketball), but now he is friends with all kinds of black people down there in Biloxi. He works with them. So I wonder if he still says that word. I hope not. It makes me feel tight inside, like I am smothering.
    You asked if I have been to New York City. HA!!! I’ve never been anywhere except to Dollywood, which is a big amusement park not too far away, with this awesome roller coaster called the Thunderhead. You should ride it sometime. When somebody is real sick they get sent to the hospital in Knoxville, and that’s where Mom used to go to shop for my school clothes on Tax Free Day, so I have been there a few times. It’s the only city I really know, but it’s too loud and there are too many cars. The houses are right on top of each other. I don’t believe I could stand it without my woods.
    You asked me about music. (We have been studying poetry at school and how it doesn’t have to rhyme, so I think I’ll write this next part like a poem.)
    I mostly like music that my parents
    were always playing back when we all lived
    together on Free Creek. Sometimes, in the
    evenings, Daddy would put on his
    favorite album, which was by Tom Petty,
    and he’d play this song called “Wildflowers.”
    Daddy would put me up on his hip and
    Mom would lean in real close and we were like
    a circle going round and round the