Cormac

9781596920613

1596920610

PROLOGUE IT ALL BEGAN with a silver and black-saddled German Shepherd. He was my first dog. I remember it this way: The big dog leaned all its weight against my leg. I answered by reaching out my hand to stroke the thick fur between his ears, looking into his deep mahogany eyes. He knew something was wrong, but I had no confidence to share. I turned up my face and searched my mother's eyes hoping to find some reassurance. She repeated her instructions, telling me to take a different school bus, telling me not to come home this afternoon on bus 50, to instead find bus 64 and show the driver the note she had just tucked into my shirt pocket. I placed my hand over the pocket, as if to press the note into the skin of my chest so I would not lose it somewhere around school or on the playground. The only time I had ever been to Big Mama's creepy house was when my father had taken me there, and never had I spent the night there. It had a woodshake roof going mossy green and gray walls with no paint. Almost all of my relatives and friends now had a television. She did not even have a radio. Plus, she smelled like the snuff she dipped, or she smelled like wood smoke from the black iron stove in her kitchen. She was also huge, her bosom like a fat pillow, and it seemed to me that I should not call her big to her face. My father had hit me across the face for calling Waymon Culpepper by his first name. And this seemed to me a worse thing to say, that my grandmother was big. And, she was not my mama. "Who's going to feed Rex, Mother?" I looked at my dog and his eyes brightened and his tail wagged, but tentatively. "I will feed your dog, Sonny. Or your daddy will." "No. You have to feed Rex," I demanded. "You feed him, or I'm not going on the other bus." "Young man! You will not speak to me like that," she said, making fists and propping them on her hips. Then her face went soft and she pushed her fingers through her hair. "Sonny, sweetie, don't worry about Rex. I will feed him." "But why do I have to go to her house?" "It is not her house. She's your grandmother," mother said.My father required me to address her as Big Mama. I think that's because she used to be married to my Pop Brewer, and "Grammy" was used by Pop Brewer's new wife. "Look, Sonny, Big Mama's excited to have you come for the weekend. Why you're going is so your father and I canwell, take a break from things.Maybe drive to the lake. Just talk." "You mean argue?" "No, Sonny. And I don't like you saying that. This is a good idea, good for all of us. You stay tonight and tomorrow night at Big Mama's house. Your daddy and I will come and get you on Sunday morning.We'll all stay for lunch, and we'll come home. It's not like you're being sent to a work camp, for goodness sake." "But, Mother..." "Rex will be fine. You just be sure to get on the right bus. Mr. Owens drives bus 64.He told me himself that he will watch after you on his bus." "I'm eleven years old. I don't need anybody to watch me." "Of course, you don't, Sonny. It's just that one of those Rayford boys picked a fight on that bus last week." "I'm not afraid of Doug Rayford," I snapped. "No, I don't expect you are." She tousled my hair and told me to go and meet my bus. "I hear it coming