in case they forget who they are. Our reunions began with a phone call from Granddaddy to one of his eleven kids. If a Boone girl didn’t have a phone, she received a visit. If a Boone boy didn’t have a car, he and his family were collected by a brother or sister who did. Somehow, we all found our way to Granddaddy’s with bowls of potato salad, macaroni and cheese, green beans, pork and beans, and coleslaw. We carried tubs of ice topped with soda and beer for the adults and plastic Little Hugs juices for Boone grands. As the adults cooked, we children congregated around the large, gray propane tank that sat in the backyard. We mounted and rode it like a wild steed trying to buck us off. We stood on it, waving imaginary American flags, having transformed it into the naval ships we often saw on the waterfront. We tapped beats on it as the boys rapped and the girls choreographed dance routines. Those performances often ended after one of the adults ordered us to get off or be blown to pieces if we punctured the tank’s metal skin.
Even though I was no older than ten, I often thought about Momma in my space of leisure, carting buckets of water into the house, journeying to the outhouse on the coldest days and darkest nights, fearing the witch’s red eyes. I imagined Momma cutting grass with a push mower, raking leaves with a snaggletoothed rake, watching her brothers chop wood to heat the house on winter mornings. There was no propane tank then pushing gas into the home, no light bulbs illuminating the house we journeyed to those Saturdays and Sundays of our lives. For Momma and her brothers and sisters, my land of adventure had been a place of work, a place of rule, a place of silence.
Despite the busyness of the backyard, Granddaddy’s house maintained that silence whenever we visited. Grands were only allowed inside when Granddaddy or one of our parents needed something. There were also those occasions when Granddaddy charged one of our mothers with cleaning and we quietly worked alongside her, dusting furniture and washing baseboards. Granddaddy paid our efforts with fifty-cent penny rolls and butter cookies, which we ate outside, so as not to leave a crumb in the newly cleaned home.
On those quiet cleaning days, I envisioned the home in its previous state. Candles replaced light fixtures. The bathroom, with its wobbly toilet and rust-stained tub, reverted back to a closet with a urine-filled pot in the corner. The porcelain sink had been a steel washbasin that doubled as a bathing tub, and when coupled with a washboard, became the family washing machine. The kitchen, with its oven, refrigerator, and cabinets, stood naked, just four walls with a cast-iron stove and a wooden icebox that held a block of ice, milk, and the meager amounts of food the family shared. Cupboards of dishes and drawers filled with forks, spoons, and knives vanished. What appeared was a thin stack of plates, some cracked, some misshapen, barely enough for four people to eat at a time. The living room, with Granddaddy’s chair, television, and overstuffed sofa, was no longer a living room at all. It brimmed over with Granddaddy’s bootlegging customers, who found seating wherever they fit. The bedrooms were just squares, no frilly bed sheets, no comforters, no oasis for sleep. They functioned to suspend battered and worn bodies between the work that had occupied the previous day and the work that would occupy the next.
By building a home, Granddaddy had lived up to his end of the bargain with his children. Their end was to take care of it, themselves, and him. It didn’t matter that he doled out more beatings than hugs, and that his words were meant to deconstruct rather than build. The world didn’t love them. Trees didn’t bow when they walked by. Grass didn’t thank them for walking on it. The world tolerated them, as did he.
But he had loved them, fiercely. He beat them, but that was only to teach how hard the world could be. He screamed, but he was a man of few words, and screaming ensured they heard him right the first time. He’d raised all of his children to look out for one another, to keep a clean house, and to be resourceful. And resourcefulness was always necessary.
While life was physically taxing for the Boone children, the lugging of buckets, scrubbing of clothes, and chopping of wood was nothing compared to the hunger they carried. Their hunger made grass a possible substitute for greens. It made mud pies as inviting as steak. It prompted them to suck droplets of nectar from honeysuckle buds and stuff their faces with wild berries that lined the road leading to Granddaddy’s home. It caused blurry vision, pounding headaches, shortness of breath, and left little energy for walking, talking, and completing the chores Granddaddy assigned before he left for work. It was hunger that gripped hearts, pulsing, contracting, until stomachs felt as hard and as large as fists punching out of bodies.
After Grandma Rachel left, the three Boone babies often waited, praying for one of their older brothers or sisters to provide. Uncle Bruce was usually that brother. He was the third oldest Boone boy and one of the first to leave Granddaddy’s home. He was hard like his daddy, but soft compared to him. The few times he’d raised his voice or hand against his father were in defense of his mother. Even then, he didn’t attack with the full force of his strength. His charge was to get his daddy off of her, so a tug of an arm, a “Daddy, please,” were deemed acceptable in those moments.
When he was fourteen, the state of Virginia sent him to Great Bridge Detention Center for killing a man. The deceased’s name was Cuffee and he’d reigned, unchallenged, as the Deep Creek bully. Every man, woman, and child knew not to mess with him, and Deep Creek residents regarded him as bad from the beginning, like a rabid pup coming out of the womb snarling and snapping. He’d never bucked against Big Boone because he knew better, but everyone else he considered easy prey. He’d invited himself to one of Grandma Rachel’s shindigs and she’d attempted to uninvite him at the door. Her “uninvitation” was RSVP’d with a two-tine fork stab to the chest and back. A young Bruce, having earlier been instructed to pick up his mother’s dry cleaning, returned to a crowd in front of her house. He found her hurting, bleeding, as partygoers turned witnesses, testified to the sky that Cuffee had hurt his momma. Cuffee stood firm on Grandma Rachel’s lawn, so confident in his reign of terror he remained at the scene of his own crime.
Cuffee had not been Uncle Bruce’s daddy, so there was no soft tussling, no pleas for him to stop or leave. A young Bruce grabbed the first thing he saw, a clothesline prop, and smashed Cuffee across the head. He then stomped to the side of the house, grabbed the axe he’d earlier used to chop wood for his momma, and chopped Cuffee out of existence.
Soon after, Uncle Bruce was found guilty of murder and sent away. At sixteen, the state released him and he went back to Deep Creek. Then, he suffered as most independent children do. He could not make his childhood home fit around his adult self, so he left for good, but he always came back for his younger brothers and sisters. Just like his mother, he always came back.
He often found them hungry, but he never left them that way. Some nights, he snuck into the farmhouse at the top of Shipyard Road, the one owned by a white man who wasn’t averse to filling Big Boone’s boys with shotgun shells if he found one on his property. Still, Uncle Bruce stole in that farmhouse, pulling breads, cakes, eggs, and potatoes out of sacks that littered the farmhouse floor. In one pass, he could get enough to feed the family for a week.
Some days, he’d send the younger kids, like Momma, from house to house on a borrowing mission. Each child would hit a different house until they could piece together a full meal. That resource never offered enough for true sustenance. Then, Uncle Bruce was forced to be even more resourceful, like the evening that Momma huddled between her sister, Bir’t, and brother, Barry, under the living room window, waiting for their brother to gather food.
Uncle Bruce tightened twine around a long stick. Layer upon layer, tighter with each rotation, his hands moved like legs of a spider. He ran the loose end of twine into the window and placed it in the open space next to his brother. In front of the house, he propped a wooden box with the twine-strangled branch. He took the last crumbs of corn meal from the house and scattered them around the yard, creating a trail that led to the trap. He then placed the remaining pile of cornmeal underneath the box. That morsel, so much less than a meal, no longer edible, was to lure food. Uncle Bruce crawled through the window and sat next to his brother and sisters as they began their silent wait.
An echoing caw, caw pulled their eyes toward the sky. The raven’s wings were so grand they cast a shadow that made Momma cover her head with her arms. The bird swooshed down to the first bits of cornmeal, those farthest from the window and