Saw in the Sunday paper that Bill Hartley passed. We were in school together. Hadn't laid eyes on him in thirty years.

I'll tell you something I haven't told anybody. I held a grudge against that man over something so small I can't even tell you what it was now. Something he said at a ballgame in '78 or '79. I know it was after Wendell. I know I was raw. I remember walking out of the gym and deciding I was done with him.

Thirty years. Maybe more.

I went out to the shed this morning after I read it. Wendell's old tackle box is still in the corner where I put it. I don't know why I went out there. I stood looking at it a while. Caught myself whistling that song he used to whistle and didn't know I'd started.

The mill's still standing too. Closed twenty years and they haven't pulled it down. Drove past it Tuesday.

I can be patient with a thing. I can wait on a truck to warm up, wait on coffee, wait on the rain to quit. I sat under Brother Wallace forty years and never once was in a hurry for the sermon to end.

People are the hard one. I let a man stay dead to me for thirty years over a sentence I can't remember.

I got to feed Hank.

Papaw