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Show 219 Dunn's, a mile and a half north of Joseph, and rolled over three or four times. Rachel simply crawled out of the wreckage and walked home, trailing the chiffon of her tattered dress fifteen feet behind her. She was on a nonstop crying jag as I ran a hot bath and put her in it, but her tears were not for the numerous bruises and contusions from the wreck, but because she was sure now that Leo would find out she had dated another boy. Grant was Mama's nearest approach to juvenile delinquency, because when he was sixteen or so he stopped going to church, began tampering with tobacco and alcohol. He had a good, loud voice, but couldn't carry a tune, so when he got drunk everyone in Sevier County could hear him singing. He would sing until he reached the front gate, stop abruptly and take off his shoes, tiptoe across the silent grass and try to sneak in without Mama knowing it. "Listen to him! " Mama would say. "Does the little idiot think he is fooling me?" Things reached a climax one night when my little orchestra was playing for a dance in little, string-town Sevier. The dance-hall was packed, but somebody had brought a keg of hard cider and the men were getting more and more convivial. One minute the benches were empty, the dancers all on the floor, and then, in the middle of a number, the hall was empty. Randall Stewart and Andrew Parker lay down their saxaphones, Clynn Utley his drumsticks and they followed the crowd outside. I was left alone at the piano. It was a fight between the Joseph boys and those from Sevier, with Grant the crux around which it swirled. I found out later that he had gotten |