Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen.

Susan Gregg Gilmore.

For my family husband, daughters, mother, father, sisters, brother without you, there would be no story to tell.

CHAPTER ONE.

In the Beginning.

My daddy always said that if the good Lord can take the time to care for something as small as a baby sparrow nesting in a tree, then surely He could take the time to listen to a little girl in Ringgold, Georgia. So every night before I went to bed I got down on my knees and begged the Lord to find me a way out of this town. And every morning, I woke up in the same old place.

It was a place that I, Catherine Grace Cline, never wanted to call home, even though I was born and raised here. It was a place where everybody knew everything about you, down to the color of underwear your mama bought you at the Dollar General Store. It was a place that just never felt right to me, like a sweater that fits too tight under your arms. It was a place where girls like me traded their dreams for a boy with a couple of acres of land and a wood-framed house with a new electric stove. It was a place I always planned on leaving.

When I was no more than nine years old, a tornado tore right close to my house. I remember yelling at my little sister to run and hide in the bas.e.m.e.nt. "Martha Ann," I warned her, "if that twister hits this town, n.o.body's even going to notice it's gone."

She started crying for fear she was going to be swept up in the clouds and carried away, and n.o.body, not even our daddy, would be able to find her. Turned out the only thing of any importance swept up in the sky that day was Mr. Naylor's old hound dog. People said that Buster Black flew some fifteen miles, those long lonesome ears of his flapping like wings, before landing in the middle of some cornfield over in the next county.

Mr. Naylor walked for miles looking for that dad-gum dog till finally my daddy and the sheriff had to go pick him up. And just when that poor man finished planting a wooden cross by Buster's little house, darn it, if that four-legged fool didn't come limping back home, wagging his tail and acting like he'd found the Promised Land. Mr. Naylor was crying, praising the Lord, holding Buster Black in his arms. The local newspaper ran a color picture of them both right on the front page, like that dog was some kind of prodigal son.

"You know, Martha Ann," I told her after reading about Buster's triumphant return, "a tornado like that just might be our ticket out of here, but unlike that stupid old hound dog, we are not going to limp back home."

My daddy said I was a little girl with a big imagination. Maybe. Or maybe I was a patient girl with a big dream, or a despairing girl waiting for her divine deliverance. But either way, I was going to hitch a ride out of Ringgold, whether it was on a fiery twister ripping a path through the Georgia sky or on a Greyhound bus rolling its way down Interstate 75.

Truth be told, I never even liked the name Ringgold. I mean, there's nothing in these green rolling hills that even faintly resembles a ring of gold, a ring of anything for that matter. And believe me, me and Martha Ann looked, somehow figuring that if we could find a ring of trees or ancient rocks, then just maybe our living here would have some kind of meaning. But after years of searching, the best I could figure was that it was just these darn hills that I had stared at every morning from my bedroom window that formed the ring, the ring that had kept me hostage for the first eighteen years of my life.

n.o.body much ever bothers to visit this town except the truckers who stop to fill their fuel tanks because they can get some of the cheapest gas in the state here and Mrs. Gloria Jean Graves's second cousin, who has come up from Birmingham every year for the Thanksgiving holiday since before I was born. She always said it was refreshing to get away from the big city for a few days.

One time the governor came by for about twenty-five minutes to cut a ribbon at the new elementary-school library. Everybody in town came out to see him. Daddy made me wear a dress and tie my hair back in a ribbon, just like I was going to church. Six days a week my daddy didn't care too much how I looked, but on Sunday mornings there was no negotiating the dress code. My sister and I wore our very best dresses with a fresh pair of cotton panties underneath, out of respect for the Lord, Daddy said.

I really didn't think Jesus cared what I wore to Cedar Grove Baptist Church, or to see the governor for that matter, considering the fact that in every picture I ever saw of the King of Kings, He was wearing sandals and bundled up in nothing more than a big, baggy robe. But I figured this governor must be the most important person I was ever going to meet if Daddy was making me wear my navy blue Sunday dress with the white lacy collar and my patent-leather Mary Janes.

Martha Ann pitched such a fit about wearing her Sunday clothes that Daddy ended up leaving her at home with a neighbor. My little sister is a couple of years younger than I am, but she has always been a couple of inches taller, my guess from the time she came into this world. She has thick, dark brown hair and deep brown eyes like our mama. I have blue eyes like my daddy and straight brown hair that looks more like the color of a field mouse.

Martha Ann was a pretty baby and a pretty girl. Everything on her face just fits together so perfectly. When we were little, people said we looked just like twins for no better reason than we might have been wearing the same color shirt. You had to wonder if they were truly looking at us. But one thing was for certain, Martha Ann hated putting on her Sunday clothes even more than I did. She'd have much rather been in the library picking out a new book to read than waiting to look at some strange man cut a ribbon.

I told her that if she didn't stop all that stomping and snorting, she was going to get left behind. And sure enough, she did. She had to spend the entire afternoon with Ida Belle Fletcher shucking eighty-four ears of corn for Wednesday-night supper over at the church.

Ida Belle said she cooked for the Lord, but all I knew was that she smelled like an unsavory combination of leftover bacon grease and Palmolive soap. She kept her big, round tummy covered with a tattered, old ap.r.o.n permanently stained with the meals of another day. The only time I saw her without that ap.r.o.n was when she was sitting in church, and then she kept it folded in her pocketbook.

My patent-leather shoe rubbed a blister on my big toe, but it was worth it. The governor turned out to be, if nothing else, the most handsome-looking man I'd ever seen. He wore a dark navy suit and a crisp white shirt that must have been starched so stiff, it could've stood up on its own. A red-and-blue-striped tie was pulled around his neck, and the tip of a white handkerchief was peeking out of his suit pocket. I had never seen a man dressed so fancy. He was in Ringgold for only a few minutes, and then he jumped in the back of a long, black car and sped off down Highway 151. I wanted to go with him so bad that for weeks after that, when I went to bed at night, I got down on my knees and begged the Lord to make me the governor's daughter.

But He didn't bother to answer that prayer either, not that I really thought that He would. G.o.d put me here for a reason, Daddy kept telling me; I just hadn't figured it out yet.

Now I know my father was a certified man of G.o.d, but at a fairly young age, I decided that when it came to my destiny, he did not know what he was talking about. He certainly did not understand that there was nothing for me here in Ringgold, Georgia. Sometimes I wondered if he had noticed that this town had only one red light, one part-time sheriff, and one post office, which was nothing more than a gray metal trailer perched on a bunch of cinder blocks in the back of the Shop Rite parking lot.

There was one losing high-school football team and one diner, which has been serving pork chops on Thursdays since 1962. There was one fire station, but it burned down five or six years ago when the entire fire department, which amounted to the sum total of Edward and Lankford Bostleman, were spending the night at their aunt's house over in LaFayette.

And there was, thankfully, one Dairy Queen, where Martha Ann and I spent the better part of our childhood licking Dilly Bars and planning our escape. We spent every Sat.u.r.day afternoon sitting on the DQ's only picnic table, sticky from the drippings of a thousand ice cream cones, thinking about a world the kids in the 4-H club couldn't even begin to imagine.

I'm talking about a world with department stores and movie theaters and fancy restaurants that require a reservation and keep candles burning on the tables. A world with enough lights turned on at night that it makes it hard to see the stars. A world that for so many years seemed well beyond our reach. A world where girls like me and Martha Ann could dream of being more than country girls content to raise a family and grow a crop of tomatoes in the backyard.

Martha Ann and I had visited this world a couple of times already. Daddy had taken us to Atlanta twice, once to see Santa Claus at the Lenox Square mall. Santa sat on his ruby red velvet throne at Davison's department store where hundreds of Barbie dolls and all her clothes were on display for every little girl to admire. I remember Martha Ann sitting on the floor of that toy department, for what seemed like an hour, just staring at the fancy gowns and plastic shoes in Barbie's endless wardrobe. Most of our doll clothes were homemade from pieces of dresses Martha Ann and I had outgrown. Our poor Barbies looked pretty pitiful compared to these big-city dolls waiting for a winter snow in their pink coats and slick white boots.

The other time we went to Atlanta was to see Daddy's beloved Georgia Bulldogs play in the Peach Bowl. Daddy said we were watching history being made when the Dawgs squeaked by with a one-point victory over the University of Maryland. But as soon as the final second ticked off the clock, Daddy was herding us back to the car. We begged him to take us to the Varsity so we could get a chili dog and a chocolate milk shake. We could see it from the highway, but Daddy said we needed to hurry on home.

We weren't in Atlanta long either time, but it was sure long enough for Martha Ann and me to figure out that the world we kept dreaming about was no more than a hundred miles from our front door.

Daddy, on the other hand, couldn't see the good in leaving Ringgold. He was born and raised there, and he couldn't imagine being happy any place else. Ringgold, he always told me, had everything a man needed, and what it didn't have, a man didn't need.

Truth be told, I think Daddy was a little bit scared of the world beyond the Catoosa County line. And I guess I can't blame him. Every night he would get comfortable in his reclining chair, turn on the television, and then let Walter Cronkite convince him that the world was much too dangerous for anyone he loved. Boys were getting themselves blown up every day in some country I knew nothing about. Grown women were pulling off their bras and burning them in broad daylight for everyone to see. And a man named Martin Luther King was telling the black people they deserved a better life, and everybody around town seemed afraid that they might actually get it.

Daddy said the devil was sneaky, that he's been known to take the shape of ordinary-looking people. That's why, Daddy said, you always had to look someone in the eyes, because that's where you could see the greed and the hate and all the impure thoughts. But from where I was sitting on the brown braided rug on our living room floor, all I could see in my daddy's eyes was fear. I think he thought that here in Ringgold he could keep his babies safe, just like his daddy had done and his daddy's daddy.

You see, three generations of Cline men had been known for three things-their love of the Lord, their devotion to their family, and their commitment to growing the perfect tomato. And even though this was not my life's ambition, unfortunately it was in my blood. I am convinced to this day that even my own mama considered the tomato a symbol of a person's G.o.d-fearing commitment to biblical and civic values. It may be hard to believe all that's wrapped up in one little, red tomato, but that's the gospel truth.

Martha Ann and I weren't falling for it, though. We didn't care what Mrs. Gladys Gulbenk, our eighty-year-old home economics teacher, tried to tell us. There were not enough ways to prepare a tomato to keep us entertained for a lifetime.

"Remember, guls," preached Mrs. Gulbenk, always holding the most perfect red tomato in her hand for all of us to admire, "you can fry 'em, bake 'em, stew 'em, and congeal 'em. A good wife and m.u.t.h.a will always have a tomata on hand."

I can still hear those words rumbling around my head some nights when I'm lying in bed and can't sleep. And the worst part, the really tragic part of it all, is that now, all grown up, I always have a couple of tomatoes sitting on the kitchen counter. That's just how strong a hold the tomato can have over a Southern girl. But when I was little, perched on that picnic table at the Dairy Queen, with Martha Ann sitting right by my side, I never once dreamed of tomatoes, not for a single, solitary minute. No way. I spent my time thinking about being a Hollywood movie star or some famous doctor who cured hard-to-p.r.o.nounce diseases.

But one thing was for darn sure, after licking a thousand Dilly Bars, we had successfully traced the roots of our discontent to one man, our great-granddaddy William Floyd Cline. William Floyd is still considered a very important man in Ringgold, although he's been dead for a long, long time now. To this day, people talk about him as if they know him, kind of the same way they talk about somebody famous like Hank Aaron or Dolly Parton or Abraham Lincoln. The talk about him was always so big that sometimes Martha Ann and I wondered if he was still living, hidden somewhere up on Taylor's Ridge.

William Floyd was one of the most prolific bootleggers the state of Georgia has ever known. He brewed and ran illegal moonshine throughout northern Georgia and Alabama and southeastern Tennessee. His whiskey was corn-based, bitter, and wickedly potent. Everybody knew his was the best, and his customers paid top dollar for one of his little brown jugs. Mr. Tucker, down at the Dollar General Store, said he heard that a man over in Bledsoe County, somewhere up in Tennessee, slept for three whole weeks after drinking some of our great-granddaddy's moonshine.

Standing no more than five feet three inches tall, William Floyd weighed about a hundred and seventy pounds, but Daddy said it was all muscle. He said he had a barrel-shaped chest and arms as big and round as watermelons in July. He didn't have one single strand of hair on his head, and legend has it, his steely blue eyes could pierce through a man and see inside his soul. The shining business was a dangerous trade and William Floyd found himself hunted, chased, and shot at, but, fortunately, never caught.

Then one sticky, Georgia afternoon in the middle of August, William Floyd made a spur-of-the-moment decision that changed his life and my family's fate forever. Smelling of corn mash and cigar smoke, he stumbled into a white tent propped up in the midst of some lonesome field next to some unmarked country road. And under that tent, with its canvas sides flapping in the gentle summer breeze, William Floyd found the Lord somewhere in the congregation's third singing of the fourth verse of "Just As I Am."

The preacher, who had found the Lord himself only the week before, took my great-granddaddy by the hand and led him down to the banks of the Tallapoosa River. And in the middle of that river on that hot August day with the cool water moving against their backs, the preacher lowered my great-granddaddy under the water a sinner and raised him up a man of G.o.d. Without much more than an "Amen," newly found Brother William Floyd quit drinking, fighting, and cursing and dedicated his life to his Savior Jesus Christ.

My great-granddaddy didn't remember much of the days following his salvation. Story has it he walked miles and miles in some sort of divine daze so high on the Lord that he glowed like the Angel Gabriel. When he finally stumbled into Ringgold, the townspeople took one look at him and figured he had been specially delivered by the Lord himself. They called him Preacher, and within days he was sermonizing from his own makeshift pulpit next to a grove of cedar trees. And during the course of the next forty years, he built a church and nurtured a flock, all the while delivering another type of libation just as intoxicating as his moonshine.

When William Floyd pa.s.sed on, Daddy said the townsfolk mourned for weeks. They had lost their spiritual leader, their confidant, and their friend. Their only comfort was knowing that his son, Floyd Marshall, would take over the pulpit at Cedar Grove Baptist Church. Floyd Marshall followed in his daddy's footsteps, all right, but I'm not sure it was as much a divine calling as it was a fear of breaking the Fifth Commandment, more loosely translated to mean Thou shalt do what your daddy tells you to do.

People don't talk as much about Floyd Marshall. Even I know it would be kind of hard to follow in the footsteps of someone who's been divinely delivered. And I think my poor granddaddy struggled with his destiny long before Martha Ann and I ever sat down on that picnic table at the Dairy Queen. We never did get to meet him. He died shortly before I was born. But from the stories my daddy has told me about him, I always felt like he would have understood me. I always felt like he would have enjoyed a Dilly Bar of his own.

Daddy said Floyd Marshall was a quiet man who loved to read books and work in his garden, the one he sowed directly behind the church. He planted squash, strawberries, okra, green beans, watermelons, and four different kinds of tomatoes. He grew some of the biggest, reddest tomatoes this town has ever seen, and he grew these little, yellow, pear-shaped tomatoes that Daddy said he could pop in his mouth and suck like a piece of hard candy. But best of all, he grew these deep purple ones that Daddy said came from the Cherokee Indians over in Tennessee. That's right, a real live Indian gave my granddaddy his first vine.

Granddaddy watered, fertilized, pruned, and talked scripture to those vegetables every day. I imagine they heard every sermon he ever preached. Daddy said his daddy would come in from the garden with dirt on his hands and sweat dripping off his brow and say with a smile on his face, "Now son, those there are some true Baptist vegetables."

Daddy said he marched into his Sunday-school cla.s.s one day with his chest all puffed up, holding a yellow squash so big that he had to carry it in both hands. He informed his teacher that his daddy was such a powerful man of G.o.d that even his vegetables had found the Lord. His Sunday-school teacher told him that may very well be, but she hoped his son and his vegetables remembered that the meek and the mild were the ones who were going to inherit the Kingdom of G.o.d. Then she took that squash home and fried it up for supper.

Of course, I imagine those poor plants also heard a thing or two about the choir director driving down to Florida during the dead of night so he could bet on the greyhounds. Or about Brother Hawkin's baby daughter who was shipped off to Texas to live with an aunt because she had gone and gotten herself in the family way in the back of her boyfriend's pickup truck before taking the time to say, "I do."

Granddaddy must have grown tired of listening to people complain about the color of the cushions in the pews or the cost of the new hymnals or how much meat loaf the young deacon, Brother Fulmer, whose faith in the Lord was as big as his appet.i.te, ate at Wednesday-night suppers. Every preacher must need a place where he can hide from his flock, and that garden must have been my granddaddy's secret hiding spot. He probably felt closer to G.o.d hidden among those stalks of corn than anywhere else on this earth, probably the way I felt sitting on that picnic table at the Dairy Queen.

When my daddy was only eighteen years old, Floyd Marshall asked him to come and join him behind the pulpit. He said he was getting tired and needed his son's strong back and patient ear to help keep his flock from falling from grace.

I think my daddy had been ready to step behind that pulpit since he was old enough to talk. He loved all people, and they loved him right back. He was named Marshall William, after both his daddy and granddaddy, and he had a good portion of each in his blood. He was tall like his daddy but solid and thick like his granddaddy, and he looked like he could save you from a burning building just as easily as from the fires of h.e.l.l.

He spoke with such confidence and persuasion that it wasn't long before everybody in town started comparing him to the great William Floyd, and people from as far away as Dalton started coming to Cedar Grove Baptist Church just to hear him preach. Daddy kept photographs of William Floyd and Floyd Marshall on his desk at the church. He said their faces reminded him every day of his reason for being.

Not more than a year after a.s.suming his new position, he married my mama, Lena Mae Pierce. My mama's family was from Willacoochee, a town even smaller than Ring-gold situated down in the southern part of the state. She had come north one summer with a girlfriend who was visiting relatives, and she and Daddy met at the Fourth of July fireworks celebration on the field behind the high school.

Daddy said it was love at first sight. Mama was beautiful, and he said he took one look at her with those big brown eyes shining like moonbeams and knew there was no other woman for him. By Labor Day, they were engaged, and they married the following month on Mama's birthday, the twenty-fifth of October. She was only sixteen when they married, but Daddy said she was mature for her years. Sometimes I couldn't help but wonder if Mama had just been looking for a way out of Willacoochee, and sometimes I wondered if she wished she had stayed. I've never met any of my mama's family. Daddy said Mama leaving Willacoochee was the best thing that ever happened to Lena Mae.

Granddaddy died shortly after their wedding, and Daddy said the day he left this world was one of the saddest days of his life. But he also said the day I was born, nine and a half months after they returned from their honeymoon in Gatlinburg, was one of the happiest. He said that for every angel that leaves this world there's another waiting to take his place. And I guess I was the one waiting in line to take my granddaddy's place.

Mama stayed home and took care of me. She tended to the house, the one Daddy said he bought just for her. It was a white-framed house with a big porch that stretched clear across its front. All day long Mama cooked and washed and cleaned. She even tended to the tomatoes she planted right outside the kitchen door. But when the day was nearly done, Mama would rock on that porch and watch the sun fall behind Taylor's Ridge. Sometimes Daddy would sit along next to her with a big smile on his face. He had everything he ever wanted.

Daddy worked at the church almost every day. When his granddaddy started preaching, Cedar Grove was nothing more than a lean-to in a little clearing of cedar trees not far from where our house stands now. But today there's a real brick building and a fellowship hall and eight cla.s.srooms for Sunday school. Daddy hoped that in the next few years he could build a swimming pool right behind the pulpit so he could baptize people inside the church building.

One thing was for darn sure, my daddy never needed to grow a secret hiding place. He could listen to people chatter on and on about the silliest things in the world and always seem interested. He just saw the best in everything and everybody, and I think people really felt like they were in the presence of G.o.d when they were with my daddy. They must have been because he even found it in his heart to love Emma Sue Huckstep.

Every Sat.u.r.day before Easter, Emma Sue's grand-mamma planned a big egg hunt at Cedar Grove Baptist Church. Hidden in the bushes and the tall green gra.s.s were all sorts of candy eggs-brightly colored, speckled eggs with malted milk inside and creamy marshmallow eggs with dark chocolate sh.e.l.ls. There were even plastic eggs filled with jellybeans and pieces of bubblegum. But the egg to be had was the golden egg. It was the biggest, most beautiful egg of all, made of solid milk chocolate and wrapped in shiny gold foil. The sunlight reflecting off that egg was almost blinding. When I was real small, I was convinced Jesus Himself had sent this egg to Cedar Grove. He had sent this egg hoping it would be found by little Catherine Grace Cline.

But every year, Mrs. Roberta Huckstep took her granddaughter by the hand and led her right to the holy egg. Mrs. Huckstep owned a small gift shop in town and for some reason seemed to think that because she knew something about leaded crystal and fine bone china that she was better than the rest of us and that her precious Emma Sue was the only one among us who could appreciate such a heavenly piece of chocolate.

With her blond, curly hair tied back in a big pink bow, that bratty Emma Sue would sit on the front steps of the church, and with a big stupid smirk stretched across her face, would hold that golden egg in her hands as if she'd won some first-place trophy. She was rubbing my face in it, and I just wanted to rub her face and that big pink bow in the mud.

"Looks like Jesus was smiling down on you again this year, Emma Sue," Mrs. Huckstep would say, like she actually believed her precious little granddaughter, in her precious little white smocked dress, had found that egg on her own, her uncanny sense of direction coming straight from the Lord above.

I know I was taught that Jesus loves all the children in the world, but sometimes I wished He had made one exception with that Emma Sue. Martha Ann and I would stomp our feet and beg Daddy to make Emma Sue give back that egg. "It isn't fair," we'd cry in unison, sounding almost as though we'd been practicing our refrain.

And we weren't the only ones complaining. Three or four deacons were regularly standing right behind us, waiting their turn to talk to the preacher. But as usual, Daddy knew just what to say to calm the crowd, something about the real gift of Easter not being hidden in the bushes or something Christian like that. Then one year, when Brother Buford Bowden, the town's only doctor and the same Brother Bowden who had donated all the money for the Bowden Fellowship Hall, finally threatened to join the Presbyterian Church in Fort Oglethorpe, Daddy came up with the idea of hiding two golden eggs, the second secretly placed well out of sight of Mrs. Huckstep's roving eyes.

It seemed to make the hunt a little more equitable, at first. But funny thing, Brother Bowden's niece, Mary c.u.mmings Bowden, was always the lucky girl who found the second egg.

Walking home with Daddy after the hunt one year, Martha Ann and I were kicking up the dirt on the road, griping about Emma Sue and Mary c.u.mmings. Daddy calmly looked at us and said, "Girls, life's not fair. You know that by now. But I promise you there is a golden egg waiting for you, somewhere, someday."

Maybe, but one thing I had already figured out was that my golden egg was not hidden anywhere in Ringgold, Georgia.

CHAPTER TWO.

Dreaming of the Promised Land.

My mama died when I was six years old. I don't remember much of anything about her dying. I imagine I pushed those memories about as far out of my head as possible. All I really do remember was Ida Belle Fletcher and the blue-haired ladies from the Euzelian Sunday-school cla.s.s who came and cared for Martha Ann and me in the days right after Mama's accident.

I called them the Zillions, partly because I couldn't p.r.o.nounce their name and partly, I think, because there seemed like a million of them huddled in my house. I know they meant well, but I just wanted them to go home and leave us alone. They didn't make peanut-b.u.t.ter-and-jelly sandwiches like my mama. They didn't brush my hair like my mama, and they certainly didn't smell like my mama. And they kept saying the same thing over and over again like a choir singing some plaintive hymn, "Oh, you poor little children, your mama has pa.s.sed and left you and your daddy alone. Oh, sweet Jesus. Oh, sweet Jesus."

Funny thing is, "pa.s.sing" didn't sound like dying to a little girl. At first I thought Mama must have pa.s.sed on over to the next county like Buster Black or some bird flying across the sky. But surely if she had pa.s.sed over, she would pa.s.s on back soon. Even Buster came home. She wouldn't leave me and Martha Ann like that. Years later, Daddy told me that after Mama died, I watered her tomatoes every single day, all summer long, just waiting for her to come home and tell me what a good job I'd done.

I begged and begged Jesus to bring my mama back to me, but He didn't answer that prayer, either. Finally, I decided that heaven must be something really special, like the picture in my Bible where the streets are paved with gold and the blue sky goes on forever. It had to be more beautiful than even I could imagine if my mama couldn't bring herself to walk out those pearly gates and find her way back to Ringgold, Georgia. Then again, I figured Ringgold probably wasn't much of a temptation for an angel living in a golden paradise.

After the funeral, n.o.body really talked about my mama much, not even my daddy. I guess everybody thought it would be too painful for me and Martha Ann. I think it was just too painful for them, because I could never hear enough about her. I was always thirsty for more.

Mama drowned in Chickamauga Creek, which is known on occasion to run pretty fast, especially after a thunderstorm. Daddy said she had gone down to the creek to pick some blackberries late one afternoon in the middle of July. She loved the taste of those wild berries, and she always picked enough so she could make a batch of blackberry jam. That way, Mama said, she could eat her berries all year long.

Daddy said she walked along the creek a mile or so south of town to a small clearing just beyond the old gristmill where the blackberries grew particularly thick. She must have gotten hot and waded out into the water to cool herself off and wash the chiggers off her legs. I can still picture my mama standing in the middle of the creek in her white cotton slip, with her long, brown hair hanging down her back, dripping with water.

Mama was a good swimmer. She had already taught me to keep my head above water. But the sheriff told Daddy that she slipped, hit her head on a rock, and fell, unconscious, into the current. The water wouldn't let go and took her away from me and Martha Ann.

The blue-haired ladies kept whispering in each other's ears. I knew they were talking about the poor preacher's wife, but all I really knew for sure was that when the sun set on that hot, sticky summer day, my mama was gone forever.

I've kept the same picture of her on my dresser for as long as I can remember, and then I've kept another one locked in my head, which I can see better than any old piece of paper. And even now when I'm lying in bed at night with my eyes closed tight, I can see her pretty face with her deep brown eyes and full, pink lips. I can touch her soft skin and smell the Jergen's lotion that she rubbed on her arms and legs before going to bed. In this picture, she talks to me. She tells me that she loves me. She tells me that she's sorry she had to leave me. She even sings "Hush Little Baby," her perfectly pitched voice lulling me back to sleep.

Then I wake up, and she's gone.

I have lots of little pieces of memories of my mama and then I have one very vivid one, and I've guarded every detail of it as if it's some secret golden treasure. I was playing in the backyard with my baby doll, pushing her around in a little carriage Mama got me at the S & H Green Stamp store down in Dalton. The carriage was white with a delicate navy pattern scrolled around the sides, and it had a matching navy hood I could pull up to protect my baby's eyes from the bright sunlight. Mama had collected those green stamps for months at the Shop Rite before she could get me that stroller. It took five whole books of stamps, most of which I licked myself. Mama placed them all real neatly on each page until the books were full.

"Catherine Grace, I do think your tongue is going to turn green licking all those stamps," I remember her saying. "Sweetie, that's why I put the kitchen sponge there, so you don't have to do so much licking and tire your tongue out so."

Daddy said I pushed that buggy around the backyard for hours while Mama did her ch.o.r.es. She'd prune and water her tomatoes and then let me pick the really red ones, the ones she was going to serve with dinner. She'd hang the day's laundry on the clothesline that stretched from the house to a pole stuck out in the middle of the yard, making our house look like a ship about to set sail. All the windows were wide open and Loretta Lynn, Mama's favorite singer, was playing on the radio in the living room. Loretta's voice just floated across the backyard serenading us both. Mama sang along, like she was standing there with her onstage at the Grand Ole Opry.

It's funny how you can take just one memory of someone and create a lifetime of feelings and attachments. Sometimes I think I'm really lucky. Martha Ann was only four when Mama died. She doesn't have any memories of her at all, only the same black-and-white photograph I have sitting on my dresser. I think she carries another one around in her head, too, but I think to Martha Ann, Mama sounds more like Miss Nancy on Romper Room.

The Lord would heal our hearts, Daddy kept telling us. But mine never did quit aching, and eventually I decided that the Lord had forgotten about Catherine Grace and Martha Ann Cline. He had forgotten about the preacher's daughters in Ringgold, Georgia, who needed their mama.

But Daddy never lost his faith, not for one minute. He said G.o.d didn't take Mama away. It was an accident, and G.o.d doesn't cause accidents. He just helps us cope with them. Then he'd call to mind some part of a hymn, trying to comfort me with a bunch of rhyming words.

"The Lord will strengthen and help thee, and cause thee to stand upheld by His righteous, omnipotent hand." Daddy always spoke the words 'cause he knew, unlike Mama, he couldn't carry a tune.

One day, I asked Daddy what omnipotent meant, and he said it was a big fancy way of saying "more powerful than anybody or anything in the whole wide world." "In other words, hon, it means there's nothing the Lord can't do."

Yeah right, I thought to myself. If G.o.d was really, truly omnipotent, He could have kept one needed mama from slipping on a stupid rock. But I still went to Sunday school every week wearing my best dress and my patent-leather shoes, looking like I had absolutely no complaints with the all-powerful One. I had everybody at Cedar Grove Baptist Church, even my own daddy, thinking I was the most Jesus-loving girl in town. Sometimes I wondered if I even had the Omnipotent One fooled, too.

Truth be told, even though I had grown a bit tired of waiting on the Lord to get around to answering some of my most pressing questions, I found an unusual amount of pleasure in reading His good book. Well, at least the stories. I figured if Noah could survive a flood that covered the entire earth while rocking around in a homemade boat filled with a zooful of animals, and David could beat up a giant with nothing more than an old slingshot he fashioned together with a st.u.r.dy stick and a piece of leather, then maybe little old Catherine Grace was going to find her way out of Ringgold after all.

But Moses was my favorite. His life was exciting from the minute his mama birthed him. This mean, old Egyptian king commanded that all the Hebrew baby boys be killed, including Moses. So his mama put him in a basket and floated him out into the river so the king's daughter would find him and protect him. Then his mama, who must have loved him something awful, pretended to be some kind of maid or something and offered to help the princess take care of her newly found baby boy.

When he was all grown up, Moses got a message from G.o.d telling him he was going to lead all the Hebrew people out of Egypt. Moses was sure G.o.d had gone and gotten the wrong man for the job, apparently forgetting momentarily that He was the Omnipotent One. But G.o.d reminded him, even parting the Red Sea square down the middle so Moses could walk the Israelites right out of slavery once and for all.

Miss Margaret Raines, our Sunday-school teacher, ill.u.s.trated these stories using the green-felt board hanging on the front wall of our cla.s.sroom. She moved from Tuscaloosa when I was about eight and taught the one and only first-grade cla.s.s at the Ringgold Elementary School. She said she had come to teach for only a couple of years before moving on to something better. Well, she didn't say it quite like that, but I knew what she meant. Anyway, that was so many years ago now, I've lost count, and Miss Raines is still teaching the only first-grade cla.s.s at Ringgold Elementary School.