Gone Crazy in Alabama Read Online Free

hurting from what he had done to us a long time ago. He was my uncle and I couldn’t stop running until I was hugging him.
    Vonetta’s hurt hadn’t dried up and she hadn’t forgotten a thing. She couldn’t let go because she didn’t get it. She couldn’t see how our family was scattering, piece by piece. She only cared that Uncle Darnell had stolen our concert money last year and ruined our chance to see the Jackson Five at Madison Square Garden. It didn’t matter to her that our uncle had gone to the army hospital to get himself cleaned up and off drugs. You’d have thought she was Fern when she set eyes on Uncle Darnell, clenching her fists and banging them at her sides, ready to fight. Vonetta marched up to Uncle Darnell, took one of her fists, and reared back the way the puncher shouldn’t if she didn’t want to be the “punchee.” Then she gave a war cry before letting him have it in the gut. She had been saving that up for months.
    I knew a look of pity and shame when I saw one. He took her punch and said gently, “Vonetta.”
    â€œI hate you. You junkie. You thief.”
    Fern gasped aloud. Her natural instinct was to follow Vonetta, but this time she wouldn’t. She loved Michael Jackson, but she loved Uncle D more, and she clamped herself around him in a hug.
    That left Vonetta outside of our hug and she seemed happy to not be a part of us.
    â€œYou hate me?” Uncle D asked her. “Still?” After all, he had sent us the Jackson Five album by special delivery to make up for stealing from us.
    Vonetta showed her teeth like an animal. “I hate you.” She breathed short and heavy. “I hate you.”
    â€œSo you’re not going to ride with me up front?” he asked.
    Vonetta crossed her arms. “Not for a sack full of candy.”
    Fern looked at her like she was crazy.
    â€œI’ll ride in the back,” Vonetta said.
    â€œOoh! In the truck part, where it’s nice and bumpity-bumpy! Me too!” Fern cried.
    â€œThere’s a huge bag of chicken feed back there to rest against,” Uncle D said.
    â€œSo,” Vonetta said. She hadn’t uncrossed her arms.
    â€œWait.” If Uncle Darnell was hurt by Vonetta he didn’t show it. He lifted our luggage onto the truck bed, then took a blanket from the front seat, shook it, and spread it down next to the luggage. He lifted Fern up and into the truck. He went to lift Vonetta but she said, “I can climb.I don’t need your help.” But she couldn’t climb and Uncle heaved her up into the truck bed next to Fern.
    â€œNo standing, no horsing around.” His voice changed. He was serious.
    â€œWe can wave at all the people we pass, right, Uncle Darnell?”
    â€œYou bet.” I think he waited for Vonetta to add her two cents, the way she normally would if Fern beat her to the first line. Vonetta stayed mum, arms crossed, chin pressed to her chest.
    He and I got into the cab and we were off.
    Uncle D was different. Older. He wasn’t twenty-one yet, but he wasn’t the way he used to be. Singing, dancing, telling us stories about princesses in the tower or about the Arabian Knight of Herkimer Street. The war had made him older. And the drugs. I didn’t know if people could be fixed. The way they showed it in health films, commercials, and episodes on crime stories, drugs turned you into something or someone else. Like in Old Yeller . Old Yeller was a good family dog who got bit by a rabid wolf while protecting the family. Then he became a mad dog foaming at the mouth and the only thing left to do was to shoot him. When Uncle D came home from Vietnam, he became like a ghost rattling his chain and moaning in the night. Then Pa said he had to leave our house.
    I glanced at my uncle, who knew I was staring at him. Knew it but kept his eyes straight on the road.
    â€œUncle D . . .”
    â€œAsk me what you want to