Waylon Read Free

how things are gonna turn out.”
    The Jennings were a different breed. Irish and Black Dutch, as far as I could tell, and as God-fearing as they come. They
     belonged to the Church of Christ; my Dad was as close to being a preacher as he could without being a preacher.
    Daddy was truly my hero. He would never punish us kids—me and my three brothers—for something he himself did. Anyway, he could
     never hurt us. He’d sooner put a foot of quilts over us and beat the hell out of that cover with the belt. His motto was “I’ll
     never whip one of ’em for what I do in front of them, what I do and they know that I do.” Like smoking. Or cussing. He’d not
     even say “dang it.” Instead of tobacco, Daddy chewed ice. We just watched what he did and knew we were expected to do the
     same. He had a quiet strength.
    He was built stockily, like his dad. It came natural from his side of the family. All of them were heavy, and big boned. My
     grandpa Gus weighed close to three hundred pounds, and always wore his belt buckle to the side. I used to think he liked the
     look of it better over there, but my cousin Wendell Whitfield says it was probably because there was no room for it in front.
     He also wore a black hat.
    The Shipleys were slim. When they gained weight, it went to the face and stomach, just like it does to me. When I gain weight,
     my face gets real wide even if my legs stay thin.
    We had to ride in the back of the truck out to Grandpa Jennings’s place, no end gate to it and just a tarp flapping. We’d
     ride in the back of that truck all day long; they didn’t go that fast then. If you fell out of one it wouldn’t hardly hurt.
     You could run and catch up with it, chasing down Route 54 straight as an arrow till it took a right-angle zigzag around Bula
     High School, near the spot where I first heard Johnny Cash sing “Cry, Cry, Cry,” bouncing over a buffalo wallow that we thought
     deep as a canyon, and out to the Jennings farm.
    Grandpa Jennings never let anything bother him. He thought no matter how bad it might look today, it’d probably be all right
     tomorrow. He’d set and twiddle his thumbs and look off in the distance; he was kind of a homebody. His cotton planting day
     was June 6, unless it fell on a Sunday. Everybody else had already planted twice; they’d be hailed out and have to go back.
     Grandpa just waited for his day.
    As you’d expect, we ate good there. We’d get up in the morning, always before daylight, and fix big platters of eggs, frying
     or scrambling them. We’d just scrape off what we wanted. Then there would be bacon, pork chops, sausage, and butter. Homemade
     butter, that you would churn “frush.” I used to do that myself.
    Breakfast was the big meal. Lunch was called dinner, and we’d have fried chicken and eat the leftovers after five that night.
     Grandma Tempe would keep the butterbeans going for at least two days. There’s one thing I could never understand about her.
     After church on Sunday we’d go back to the farm, and she’d put on her old feed-sack dress, grab some poor chicken by the neck,
     and wring its head off. Now I know it was Sunday dinner, and we all had to eat, but some transformation happened between the
     hymn and closing prayer and jerking that poor chicken’s neck. Grandma Jennings was a stern woman. I can still hear her muttering
     “nasty nasty nasty” anytime she’d catch us calking about girls. In later years, after I’d have sex, it seemed like someone
     ought to come up and shake their finger at me, saying “nasty nasty nasty.”
    Supper wasn’t that important, though it was probably the most fun. You’d dip corn bread into sweet milk, and Daddy was always
     taking peanut butter and putting it in karo syrup, stirring it up. You’d have a little bread with it. Our staples were coffee,
     bread, and sugar: We would take biscuits and open them up, butter the breads, pour sugar on them, and pour coffee over that.
     Momma