Free Fat Lightning by Howard Owen

‘til it burns itself out. That’s the way Daddy done it.
    The other pile, the one that was between the one burning now and the river, it burnt most of the time I was a young’un, it seems like. Most of my recollections of this place has that burning wood smell in the back of it. And one day, it just caved in on its own when it had burnt enough, while I was off to war, after Holly left, too.
    I remember we used to play over behind it, and we’d make like that sawdust pile was hell. Momma’d tell us if we didn’t straighten up, the devil’d come out of there and get us and take us back down with him. Even had us believing it ‘til we was old enough to know better.
    And us boys would play a game Warren made up, called Tempt the Devil, where we’d all draw straws, and the one that got the short one would have to run right across the top of that smoking sawdust pile or be called a scairdy-cat. Then, the first one he tagged would have to come across, too. We’d get up at least six or seven young’uns, and nobody had to do it twice. We’d have to wait ‘til it was near-bout dark, so’s our folks wouldn’t see us and give us a whipping.
    Momma could be right mean unless you knew her like I did. She’d always tell me, “Lot, you’re just like me. When you know a thing, you know it. You don’t take no junk from nobody.” She used to give Daddy a hard time.
    Holly used to wouldn’t go nowhere near that other sawdust pile unless I was with her. Wanted me to hold her hand when we walked past it. She liked to hang around with me when I’d go down to the river and fish. It was just her and me back then, me already 18 and her 10 or 11, although it didn’t seem that much difference. But then folks got hateful and said things to her about me, and then I had to go into the Army, even though Warren was already gone and they ought to of let me stay and take care of Momma and Daddy, and when I come home, she was living with the Bondurants. Other folks is always doing something to see if they can’t keep others from being too happy.
    But this here’s my sawdust pile now, and I kind of like the smell it gives off. So I tell the fire chief, who ain’t nothing but the boss of a bunch of rascals that probably start most of the fires theirselves anyhow, that he ought to mind his own business and get off my property before I unleash Granger, who’s already growling over there. He goes, but he tells me I got to do something about that fire.
    My Lord. It’s like that place outside of Richmond where Grace and Walter live. They can’t cut a tree down or paint the house without some committee or commission or something telling them they can do it. Can’t even pick out their own mailboxes, ’cause they all got to look alike. And if one of ’em buys a boat or a camper, they got to put it in a big lot two miles away, so it won’t spoil the looks of the place sitting there in the driveway. Might as well be in Russia.
    That’s why I like to live right here. I know the rules here, ’cause they’re the same ones Momma and Daddy had, and if anybody makes up any new ones, it’s a-gonna be me. You live by my law here. That’s what I ought to of told that Jeter boy, when I caught him.

CHAPTER TEN
    Kim Stallings, who is on the Dabney High Class of ’61 10-year reunion committee, tells Nancy that Buddy has sent in his $20.
    â€œThat’s $20, Nance,” she says. “The cost is $20 a person. If you bring a date, it’s an extra $20. Wonder if Buddy’s bringing anyone? Well, you do the math.”
    Sam isn’t going. He’d just be bored, he tells her. She knows he’s never been that close to any of her old friends.
    Nancy goes with Sandy Hall Burden, her best friend from high school, and Sandy’s husband, who was a year ahead of them. Sandy used to be known as Sandra, but when she went