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and I was excited and fidgety enough to miss the ball the first two times I swung that day.
    He’d handed over his lucky quarter to be my ball marker, my placeholder in case I needed to pick up my ball on the green so that the golfers could putt in the right order, farthest away from the hole to closest. That’s how it went in golf. Once you got on the green, it was the people who had the longest distance to putt who got to go first. Didn’t quite seem fair to me that the closer you were, the longer you had to wait.
    Daddy’d dug that quarter out of a low pocket on his golf bag and told me to keep it. It was dated the year I was born, he said, which had been a good year. He looked so happy in the picture, and I closed my eyes for a second, inhaling the memory of the sweetgum trees and holly bushes that dotted the course.
    The last thing I put in the backpack, right around midnight, was Daddy’s urn. I carved out a spot between the pork and my paint box, cushioning it with the golf shirt. Just before I placed the urn inside, I had the sudden sensation that I was putting my daddy to bed, tucking him into a safe spot, about to scoot a chair right beside him and stay there until he fell asleep.
    â€œDon’t worry, Daddy,” I whispered, folding the golf shirt over the top of the urn and closing the backpack. “I’ll keep you safe.”
    Quietly, I crept to the kitchen and sifted through the cupboard until I found an old flour canister at the back. I stood it in the exact spot where Daddy’s urn had been perched, thinking maybe it would buy me some time.
    I checked on Mama, who looked awful, but out cold. She’d been crying in her sleep again. Leaving through the back door, I walked between picnic tables and stepped outside the front gate, feeling like the entire world had put its wonder inside me. I felt filled up, but not squeezed. I felt like right after I’d set a watery brush on a color plate and was about to touch it to paper, not knowing what would happen.
    When Daddy told me where to get some traveling money, I’d flinched for sure, but there was no way I’d take what little Mama had and this was Daddy talking. I couldn’t say no when somebody had given me one last chance to be the boy he wanted me to be. So I was about to do like he said and see how it turned out.
    I was about to go to the local bar to steal travel money from its mascot, Mrs. Clucksy, the most famous chicken in Hilltop, Alabama.

HOLE 6
Nest Egg
    T he bar’s real name was the Alabama Moon, but everyone called it Pastor Frank’s on account of the owner dropping out of the preaching world to take up barkeeping. An old cabin had been expanded and connected to a barn that got loud every weekend. On nights when Mama and Daddy went dancing, I used to sneak over and watch the windows glow with strung-up lights and with the heat from men and women stomping and twirling by in swatches of color and silhouette. Some things you can paint and they turn out better than they really are, but not that sight. I’d tried, but it didn’t want to be stuck on paper.
    While I walked, I looked up at the sky, which was clear and star-filled as anything. That storm had never hit, though the world still felt full of something brewing. I was grateful it wasn’t pouring, but it made me uneasy, too. Like whatever had been pushing and pushing at the clouds might return when I least expected it.
    Pastor Frank’s was at the far end of Main Street. I lay low and took Cricket Road all the way to where it dead-ended and nearly dipped into Hilltop’s favorite fishing creek, then crossed over to Main. I’ll be somewhere along the creek , that Noni girl had said. I glanced along the water quick, wondering where that girl had come from, but didn’t see a sign of her. Maybe she was nothing but a big liar. Or maybe she thought I was one.
    Get the money first; think about that girl second , the creek