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that—” When Mother started a sentence with “you realize,” it never led to anything good. “—I am missing the Prince Albert Show on WSM. Mr. Hank Williams is probably singing right this minute and here we are listening to a bunch of nothing about men running around a triangle.”
    Daddy kept right on hammering. I held my breath. If he was tired and grumpy, he’d look at her mean and say something like, Don’t you carry on tonight. If he was tired and happy, he’d let it slide.
    â€œIt’s a diamond, Lillian. Not a triangle.” He sat down heavily on the old oak stump, letting the hammer fall to the ground. “What we should be listening to is the news, to see what that fool Strom Thurmond is up to.”
    Daddy coughed and spit a big one into the dirt, talked about how Thurmond ran out of the Democratic National Convention with his States’ Rights Party and how they were going to get people to vote for them.
    â€œIf President Truman loses, does anybody think Thomas Dewey and the Republicans are going to care if I’ve got a job or not?”
    â€œI care, Daddy,” Carter said. Our father held out an arm and my brother walked into it, easy as you please. Carter had the same barrel chest, brown eyes, and square jaw as our father. I had Mother’s slight build, light coloring, and the unmistakable Parker family dimples—one in each cheek and one in the chin—which earned me years of school-yard teasing.
    Daddy pushed Carter off with a pat and went back to hammering. My brother walked up the steps and plopped down next to me, our legs almost touching.
    â€œSure is hot still,” he said.
    I nodded. Neither of us wanted to go to bed yet. It was cooler outside.
    Mother threw us a glance that said bedtime was only a minute away. She kept staring at us until she looked like she was going to cry. Then she got up all quick, knocking over her glass, and ran inside the house. The tea glass tumbled down one stair, then the next, and the next, until it landed in the dirt and spun around. Daddy didn’t even look up.
    I didn’t know for sure what made her upset that night but it was an easy guess it had something to do with the fact that life—in this case, plans for Carter—was not working out. Again.

Six
    1985
    Tucker and I walk the streets of Pigeon Forge every morning and every night for six days, stopping in shops where most of the “genuine” souvenirs are made in China instead of Tennessee. We eat at McDonald’s so much the girl on the drive-through morning shift starts recognizing my voice.
    Through the speaker, she says, “Good morning, darlin’. Sausage biscuit, hash browns, and coffee for you?”
    She winks at me as she hands over the food. I put her age at somewhere over fifteen and under twenty. Her lips are full and buried beneath layers of lipstick; she is pretty in a hard kind of way. On Thursday morning, I feel disappointed when a stranger takes the order.
    At a downtown fudge shop, I buy a postcard from the three-for-a-dollar rack that I have no intention of mailing to anyone. What would I write? Greetings from the Town of my Suicide! The scene on the front shows a farm surrounded by the Smokies. I stare at the picture until it conjures another farm, in Virginia this time, surrounded by another set of blue-tinted mountains. Cousin Georgia and her husband, Osborne, and me around the dinner table, sharing stories of our day together. My room overlooking the apple orchard. A whole world opening up to me at the University of Virginia. And then it all disappeared. I slip the postcard into the back pocket of my jeans.
    By the time we reach the six-foot-tall wood bears flanking the Logland Inn office, I know tonight is the night. The money is about to run out and my nerve will float away the more Big Macs and beer I consume. Tucker limps into the hotel room behind me and I wonder if he knows something, if he