Yard War by Taylor Kitchings Read Free Book Online Page A

him playing football with y’all.”
    “What would be so terrible?”
    “What would be so terrible? Do you want to give her a heart attack? Now tell everybody to run along and go down to the Gibsons’ and get Farish, will ya, honey?”
    “This doesn’t make any sense.”
    “It makes sense that I am asking you to do something, Trip Westbrook. Now hop to it!”
    I did what I was told, but I kept thinking, Heart attack? Meemaw is old-fashioned, but she’s nice. Sheand Papaw are always smiling at everybody. It would give her a
heart attack
to see Dee playing with us? She’s the one who taught me that Jesus loves all the children of the world. “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.” Meemaw used to sing me that song and read me Bible stories and rock in her rocker by me until I went to sleep, which wasn’t easy with all that creaking.
    One night she told me to listen carefully, that she had something real important to tell me. She said that when she was a young girl, not even married to Papaw yet, she caught special pneumonia and nobody thought she was even going to live much longer. Then, one night when she was lying in her hospital bed, Jesus came to her standing in a cloud, and she promised Jesus if he would let her live, she would go to church every chance she got. Jesus said all right, and she got well the next day. And it was a miracle.
    That’s why we went to church so much.
    Meemaw is president of the WMU, which stands for Women’s Missionary Union. One time at a party, I heard Daddy say it stood for Wild-Eyed Matrons United, and it wasn’t the hooch that was gonna kill Papaw, it was that good old-time religion.
    I went out and sat on the front porch. Dee was raking hard. I didn’t know exactly what to say to him, since I didn’t know how to explain that it was okay forhim to play football with me and my friends but not if certain people were watching.
    Finally I said, “Sorry you had to go back to work.”
    He shrugged. After playing on the same team with him, it shouldn’t have been so hard to think of something to say. Then I said, “So how come your name is Dee? Is that short for something?”
    “My mama said she named me after the movie
Demetrius and the Gladiators.
She saw it right before I was born.”
    “Why did she want to name you that?”
    “Because none of the other gladiators could beat Demetrius. Couldn’t anybody beat him. He killed three tigers with his bare hands. She said she wanted her little boy to be tough like that ’cause she knew I would have to fight for everything I got, like every colored boy.”
    “You sure play football like a gladiator. Has she ever seen you?”
    “I don’t guess so.”
    “Next time we’ll tell her to watch.”
    He looked at me like he wasn’t so sure about there being a next time.
    “How come your name is Trip?”
    “My daddy is Samuel Thompson Westbrook Junior, which makes me Samuel Thompson Westbrook the Third, so they call me Trip, like ‘triple,’ get it?”
    “I get it.”
    “Mama is Virginia Lynn McKenna Westbrook and my sister Ginny Lynn is named after her. Meemaw’s name is Farish McKenna and my sister Farish is named after her.”
    “Oh.”
    “But it’s hard to think about Meemaw having any other name besides Meemaw, you know?”
    “Ain’t got a meemaw.”
    “You don’t have a grandmother?”
    “Or granddaddy either. Died before I was born. Don’t even have a daddy anymore. He lives in St. Louis.”
    I didn’t figure he wanted to talk about that, so I didn’t ask anything.
    Mama came out to the porch.
    “Did you get all cleaned up? Hey, Dee.” She smiled at him like “Isn’t he cute?”—the way she smiles at a puppy.
    Then she looked at the rose bed and the smile went away. She tromped down the steps and marched over to the rose bed and stood there with her hands on her hips. She reached out and tried to make the propped-up ones stand up by themselves, but they flopped over as soon as