Some Sweet Day by Bryan Woolley Page A

was born. Maybe even when the first man was born. And when the last man dies, they’ll still be there, just like they are now. Maybe just a tiny bit smaller. Now, I reckon that tells us something about God. He made some things that last forever, but man ain’t one of them. And as for that bosom-of-the-Lord business, I can’t think of any reason why the Lord would want any one of us anywhere near his bosom or any other part of him. I just can’t see the Lord getting all excited about the Haskells of this world. Understand?”
    â€œI guess so.”
    He grinned. “You really don’t, do you?”
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    â€œWell, you will someday. You just try to remember and see if your old daddy ain’t right.”
    He started the car again and drove across the rickety old planks, on down the road to home that I hadn’t traveled in almost a year. It was a rainy summer, and the Johnson grass and sunflowers stood higher than the fence posts between the road and the fields. Daddy drove slowly, trying to keep the tires in the deep ruts that no amount of county gravel could keep from being rolled into that soft land in a rainy season. The country looked familiar to me, and yet somehow new. When we had moved to town, it had been later in the summer—almost the end, in fact—and things were more brown and gold than green. It had been a drier summer, too, probably.
    When Daddy turned into our lane, he stopped again and pointed through the windshield. “Well, there it is,” he said. “By God!”
    Our name was still on the mailbox, but somebody had scratched an X through it with a nail, and the X had rusted. “Turnbolt,” Daddy said. The wind was whispering in the redbud trees and parted the Johnson grass sometimes, revealing the white stone beyond the fence that I knew stood over the grave of my grandfather. The house and tractor shed at the end of the lane were very dark under the clouds, almost the color of the earth itself. I could see four light forms moving in the yard. Some of Shipp’s children, playing, probably, in the soft dirt in the corner where Belinda and Rick and I used to play. It started sprinkling, and Daddy turned on the windshield wipers and moved the car toward the kids, his eyes glistening behind the gold-rimmed glasses.
    He saw Shipp’s rump sticking out from under the hood of the tractor in the shed and stopped. The three girls and the little boy stopped their playing and watched me through the fence as I got out and brought Daddy’s sticks around to his door and waited while he got out. The front gate was off of its hinges, I noticed. Somebody had tried to tie it back up with baling wire, but it still slumped open. Shingles had blown off of the porch roof, leaving a hole as big as a bushel basket that nobody had taken time to fix. Shipp had come out from under the tractor hood and was walking toward us, wiping his hands on a rag. Grease streaked his face and matted his shaggy blond hair. He didn’t recognize me, I knew. And I guess he’d never seen Daddy, because he nodded and looked at him kind of funny when he came around the car and saw him hunched over his sticks.
    â€œHowdy do,” he said.
    â€œSomething wrong with the tractor?” Daddy asked.
    Shipp nodded. “Carburetor, I think. Gas squirts out all over the engine when I crank.”
    â€œHmpf,” Daddy said, kind of smiling. “I’m Will Turnbolt. I own this place.”
    Shipp nodded curtly. “I’m Jack Shipp. I work it.” He looked down at his hands, rubbing very hard at the edges of his fingernails with the rag.
    Daddy watched him, kind of smirking. Then he asked, “How are things?”
    Shipp still rubbed. He nodded again. “Okay, I guess,” he said. He looked up. “Want to come in out of the rain?”
    It was falling harder. The children left the corner and scrambled up the porch steps. They