Voodoo, motels, & a Man Named Happy

One spring I followed my husband Heath to a local slumtel where homeless and transient people live. Behind each door were hard stories. There were half-clad elderly women who went visiting at midnight, children’s toys scattered among the broken glass and cigarette butts. Heroin addicts breastfed newborns. Incense coiled from inside the manager’s two-story quarters […]

Room #2

I don’t know how she got our number, but a young homeless mother messaged us asking for work to earn 4 days’ rent money for the motel room she and her son were sleeping in. She’d spent what she could of her fast-food paycheck buying supplies for the new school year; now her biggest concern […]

Stealing Grandpa

One time Daddy stole his grandfather. Great-grandpa Clark was sitting in his wheelchair outside the nursing home watching the traffic below. Daddy found him there, wearing his usual boggin and gloves in the hot summer breath of Alabama. Daddy stood a moment watching his grandfather, remembering the once strong, cross-tie cutter now frail at the […]