Dad had a fine baritone, with strength and timbre and range, and despite
being tanked, he sang that hymn like the roof-raiser it is.
I looked over Jordan, and what did I see Coming for to carry me home?
A band of angels coming after me Coming for to carry me home.
I climbed in next to the driver. On the way home—with Dad still singing
away in the back, extending the word. "low" so long he sounded like a
mooing cow—the man asked me about school. I told him I was studying
hard because I wanted to become either a veterinarian or a geologist
specializing in the Miocene period, when the mountains out west were
formed. I was telling him how geodes were created from bubbles in lava
when he interrupted me. "For the daughter of the town drunk, you sure
got big plans," he said.
"Stop the truck," I said. "We can make it on our own from here."
"Aw, now, I didn't mean nothing by that," he said. "And you know you
ain't getting him home on your own."
Still, he stopped. I opened the pickup's tailgate and tried to drag Dad out,
but the man was right. I couldn't do it. So I climbed back in next to the
driver, folded my arms across my chest, and stared straight ahead. When
we reached 93 Little Hobart Street, he helped me pull Dad out.
"I know you took offense at what I said," the man told me. "Thing is, I
meant it as a compliment."
Maybe I should have thanked him, but I just waited until he drove off,
and then I called Brian to help me get Dad up the hill and into the house.
A couple of months after Erma died, Uncle Stanley fell asleep in the
basement while reading comic books and smoking a cigarette. The big
clapboard house burned to the ground, but Grandpa and Stanley got out
alive, and they moved into a windowless two-room apartment in the