A Southern Place Read Online Free

purse and keys, and we all piled into Uncle Cal’s truck.
    The outside smelled different—not wet like before, but still kind of musky and sour, with a whiff of nastiness like outside the boys’ restroom at school. Brick and cinder block buildings in the town square were dirty, coated in a brown film from street level to three feet upward. Even the grass yards seemed soiled, rinsed in a filthiness that was now part of the landscape.
    And everywhere—even in the street—were random pieces of garbage and refuse. Rusty cans, an old tire, Sunbeam bread wrappers, dirty plastic flower arrangements once anchored in a cemetery. And lots of torn green garbage bags with little to nothing spilling out, like a trash truck had left them, one or two per address.
    No one said much as we rode through our sad little town.
    Turning at the water tower, Mama cried when we saw the bare patch of wet red clay that used to hold our house. A rusty piece of chain link fence and a mangled lawn chair sat in the corner of the lot. We’d never seen either before. There were bits and pieces of trash scattered about the small yard, but the space where the house had been was oddly vacant and clear of debris.
    “I’da thought there’d be—there’s not even a hint of the foundation. It’s like it was never here,” Mama said.
    “The foundation, as you call it, was a few concrete blocks on each end. The house didn’t sit on the ground, you knew that from the holes in the floor. This may be the best thing that ever happened to this poor little lot,” Uncle Cal said.
    “But it was our home, Calvin,” Mama said as her chin quivered.
    Uncle Cal put his arm around me, wrapping the hook arm around Mama. He nuzzled her ponytail and shook his head.
    “Come on, Sis, use the sense God gave you. What’s there to miss? Walls covered in newspapers and plumbing that works maybe half the time? I say good riddance to this dump. The Lord knew what he was doing on this one.”
    “Easy for you to say, Cal. What about us? What’ll we do?”
    “Exactly what you’ve been doing—stay with me. Save your money and maybe with any luck, you can move from this rat hole town, get Mojo to a better place. Get both of you a better life—things can only move up from here.”
    “Uncle Cal,” I said from underneath his shoulder, still caught in his bear hug of me and Mama. “Maybe the Lord did know what he was doing—”
    “Mojo, don’t get involved in this,” Mama said. She was particular about what I said about God and was full of advice on how to live holy, although we seldom went to church.
    “I’m not, Mama,” I explained. “I was just gonna say that the Lord destroyed the earth by water, but he kept the good people in Noah’s Ark, to start over again. Uncle Calvin was our Noah, and his funny house was our ark.”
    They both laughed, and we went back to the house on stilts.
    Me and Mama stayed on for over a year. She put up with the animals and even seemed to like them when she thought no one was looking. Uncle Cal’s card playing friends came a couple of times a week, just like my uncle was gone a couple nights a week as well. We kept the house clean, and Mama did the cooking, but she always said our living there was “temporary.”
    The grocery store, and then the panty factory, reopened and Mama went back to both her jobs. Saying we’d be moving soon, she took a third one on weekends, being a waitress at a bar. It was the closest I ever had to a normal family; me and Mama cooking supper together before she left for the bar, listening to music or watching The Three Bs ( Branded, Bonanza , and Bat Masterson ) with my uncle until bedtime.
    Then Uncle Cal was drinking more, a lot more, I realize in looking back.
    My uncle hadn’t had a full time job in my lifetime, but he’d worked odd jobs around town and on farms so much it seemed full time to me. I’d never known him without the hook, and as far as I could tell it never held him back. It was just