Shaking the Sugar Tree Read Online Free PDF Page A

of line. She ran a tight ship.
    “The sleeves on Noah’s coat are too short,” Mama complained. “Why do you let him walk around wearing this thing?”
    “I can’t buy children’s clothes with food stamps, can I?” I asked.
    “Shelly, if you’ll watch the food, I’m going to take my grandson to the bedroom and we’re going to try on some clothes. What’s the sign for ‘try on clothes’?”
    I showed her.
    “Oh, I can never remember all these signs,” she complained, leading him away.
    “He’s getting big,” Shelly observed.
    “What happened to Mary?” I asked.
    “She went with her church group for some fund-raiser or other. She’s too embarrassed to be seen with us these days,” Shelly answered, a trace of bitterness in her voice.
    “She’ll be embarrassed when she goes to school with two black eyes,” Bill added. “Can’t hardly get her out the damned bathroom anymore. She sits there combing her hair like it was made out of solid gold.”
    “She’s fifteen,” Shelly pointed out.
    “I’ll fifteen her,” Bill promised.
    He talked a good game, but he would never lay a hand on any of his kids. Well, not under normal circumstances.
    “I need a beer,” Bill announced.
    Mama didn’t allow alcohol in the house, but I knew Bill kept beer in the cooler in the back of his truck. I followed him through the house and back outside, where we stood on the porch, drinking ice-cold Coors while listening to KUDZU on his radio. Papaw sat in the rocking chair, rocking back and forth like an old woman.
    “Do You Want to Go to Heaven?”floated across the porch.
    “How’s FoodWorld treating you?” he asked.
    “Not as good as Lane is treating you,” I replied.
    He was a shift supervisor at a furniture company and spent all day watching over people who pounded together furniture for a living. It was a noisy, somewhat brutal existence, and he had the muscles on his arms and chest to show he’d spent many years of his life in the trenches putting together sofas and recliners and coffee tables.
    “You still looking?” he asked, referring to my on-again, off-again job search.
    “Sometimes,” I said. “Noah keeps me busy.”
    “You ain’t gonna get a decent job by wishing and fishing,” he observed.
    I said nothing to this bit of brotherly wisdom.
    Bill is taller than I am, stronger, bigger; always was, always will be. As kids, we fought all the time. As adults, we rarely get into it. He’s a good brother, a good man, solid as a rock. A little religious in his old age, though.
    “Could have joined the Marines,” Papaw said. Then he cackled at the thought of me being a Marine.
    “Thank you, Papaw,” I said.
    “Probably get thrown out for wearing pink undies and lipstick,” Papa added.
    “It’s all good,” Bill observed. That was the Southern way of saying that life is crap, so suck it up and deal with it and stop squealing like a stuck pig. He tipped his Coors back, drank it down, and immediately reached for another.
    “Probably court-martial you for beating your meat in the mess hall,” Papa said.
    “Thank you, Papaw,” I said firmly.
    I heard shouts as Bill’s boys played some game or other in the backyard. Bumblebee padded onto the porch, wanting attention.
    “Mama’s thinking about selling the house,” Bill said.
    “Why?”
    “Too big for her. Dad’s gone. We’re gone. She’s here by herself with Papaw. I don’t understand why you don’t come back and live with her so she can take care of Noah.”
    “She’s probably just talking,” I said.
    “She’s been talking to a Realtor. She loves Noah, you know.”
    “I hope so.”
    “She worries about him.”
    I rolled my eyes.
    This again.
    “I know you’ve been a good dad,” he said, turning to look at me. “Everybody knows that. But… well, you know. You’re by yourself. Noah needs a family.”
    “He has a family,” I pointed out.
    “You know what I mean.”
    “I thought you were on my side.”
    “You always were