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Show Blue Run/94 when you think you're about to die but don't? Say? I planted an herb garden, sage and basil and catnip. Joey and I set up a family reunion up at Heber for Fourth of July. Every morning-O.W. out on his run-I'd throw open the doors and go outside without my dark glasses. Horse's would neigh in the lime field and I'd brew tea and fry bacon. I added oregano, chives, cherry tomato. Sometimes Td turn on the radio and stand swaying in the doorway, neither inside nor outside I smoked cigarettes and drank sweet wine when O.W. was on his run. I wrote Shawn Terrence one letter, then another. And he wrote me back. And he wrote me back again. But honey, it takes a long time, drowning. Mine's taken a lifetime. I was born Stepwell, landed gentry on the Trail of Tears. Uncle Marlin was Yell County Sheriff. Famous for stealing elections, he'd once ridden on the back of a live jackass right into the fully convened Arkansas State Legislature Beryl, Jeryl and Meryl'd all passed through the University up in Fayetteville. They'd played tennis with the Fulbright boys. Charles Rickey was an expert on spiders. Dodger'd punted for the Razorbacks Uncle Waylow was a pulpwood man, balling his own diesel down Danville Mountain. My paternal grandfather owned a hotel We've been traced John and John Quincy Adams. Aunt Naveen counts Jesse James among our kin. And Daddy was the apple of their eyes-cream of the Stepwell crop. I picture how it must've been for Mama, all swallowed by his letter jacket, Marion Weldon Stepwell stitched inside the left hand pocket. Then I see the two of us in the ambulance, tightening and loosening Daddy's tourniquet, the misty blood between us. It was a week or so after the mess with the peanut butter jar, and I Mama still had fourteen stitches in the back of her head where Dr. Jenkins had shaved a big circle. I remember the stitches, how she winced her eyes with each step out to the ambulance, still holding a bouquet of |