L
ET ME START RIGHT off by telling you I’m not a righteous man. I’ve done my share of cheating and stealing, lying for sure, and a time or two, regretted it. For the most part, I didn’t repent, nor care much about the people I’ve hurt along the way. But I sure as hell didn’t deserve this. The sun’s so hot you could fry an egg on top of my head. The notion runs through my mind as I’m standing in a hole, buried in sand up to my neck. I can’t move, except turn my head from side to side, or stare up at the sky. When I was a boy, my mother told me angels lived up there behind the clouds. But not now. The sky’s as blue as a whore’s petticoat. There’s nothing between it and me but vultures circling above, waiting to feast on my face. The dirt is slowly crushing my chest, robbing me of breath. I’m praying to pass out soon, so I miss my death entirely. Tears trickle down my cheeks and dry before they reach my lips, though I try to catch them with my tongue. I need to bare my soul, before the sun steals it away.
— I WAS BORN IN the sleepy part of Texas, on a piece of land that carried a grudge. My father stepped outside our shack that April morning and told his three daughters their brother Burke was born. That meant a little less food on each plate, so I doubt they jumped with joy. I grew up an ordinary boy in a dusty town, with a shock of red hair like a lit candle, skinny legs, and deep green eyes that folks said were my best feature. I think of these eyes now, a morsel in a buzzard’s beak, and cry again. It was Tansy Clark who changed the course of my life, the way a rainstorm turns a dry creek bed into a flash flood. I couldn’t help but notice the sway of her skirt, or how her breasts pressed against a hand-medown dress, leaving little to a fevered imagination. Tansy had eyes the color of a Texas Bluebonnet, and a smile that lifted my heart. She lived near a field of sunflowers, in a white house surrounded by Sycamore trees. Her daddy was the local undertaker, his barn lined with pine boxes, a silent reminder of the Hereafter.
