We ate those hot dog weenies and sat out there on the hill by the fire until it had just about burned itself out, and then he let me go up into the woods behind us and find some sticks to put on the fire. I knew that Daddy had told him to make sure that I went to bed on time because I had school the next day, and I knew it was already way past my bedtime by then, but we just sat out there on that hill and looked at the fire.

“You got you a girlfriend?” my grandpa asked me.

“No,” I said.

“You like girls yet?”

“They’re okay, I guess,” I said. “My mom says I’m too young to have a girlfriend.”

“That sounds about right,” my grandpa said. He turned up his cup and drank what was left in it and tossed it into the fire, and then he reached into his pocket and took out the metal flask and unscrewed the top and took a long drink. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and let out a long sigh like he was thinking about something he didn’t want to think about. “That sounds like these women up here,” he said. “They’ll cut off your pecker before they’ll let you play with it.”

I thought about telling him I didn’t know what that meant because I hadn’t ever thought about a girl cutting off my pecker, but my grandpa just looked into the fire like he didn’t want me to say nothing, so I didn’t. He took another sip from the bottle and spit into the fire and the flames shot up a little bit and I could feel the heat from the fire on my face. My grandpa looked over at me and opened and closed his fingers like they were a pair of scissors. “They’ll cut it clean off if you let them,” he said. “Just like that.” He laughed a little at what he said and I laughed too, and then I lay back on the ground and looked up at the sky and watched little glowing pieces of ash float up toward the stars and disappear.

“It don’t surprise me that your mother would say something like that to you,” he said. “About you being too young to like girls. It doesn’t surprise me at all.”

“Why not?”

“Did you ever meet your mama’s mama? Your grandmother?”

“No,” I said. “She died before I was born. I never met her daddy either.”

“I never did either,” my grandpa said. “He’d been dead for years when her and your daddy met. Her people lived up in Mars Hill, and I didn’t know a single one of them. I only met her mama once on the day those two got married up there.” He stopped talking and unscrewed the cap on the flask and took a swig, and then he put the cap back on. “Your grandmama was a big woman, bigger than you can imagine her being.”

“How big?” I said.

“You know how big a washing machine is?” he asked.

“Yes.” He sat there quiet for a second, and then he looked over at me.

“Have you ever seen a Volkswagen Beetle?”

“She wasn’t that big,” I said. “There ain’t no way she could’ve been.”

“You never saw her,” he said, laughing. “She was a big woman, biggest woman I’d ever seen. She was a strong Christian too. Mars Hill’s a dry town, and they held that wedding in a little Baptist church by a cornfield. It was early in the summer, and that corn was just as bright green and shiny as it could be. Your grandmama’s name was Margaret, I think, Margaret Sampson, and she was already sitting right down front when I got to the church. And then, after the wedding, I walked outside where they’d set up some picnic tables with food, and there she was just sitting in the shade under a great big oak tree. I never saw that woman move, and I couldn’t ever figure out how she got out there so quick.

“And let me tell you,” he said. “She sat out there and watched the folks at that reception like she was a hawk. She held the wedding and reception both there at that church and there wasn’t going to be any dancing and there definitely wasn’t going to be no drinking. I reckon folks knew that before they came. I ain’t never seen a woman so intent on getting her way, but that’s how she brought your mama up. Religion was important to them. I didn’t bring your daddy up that way; I didn’t bring him up much of a way at all. But your mama was brought up to be religious, and folks don’t change,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how bad you want them to.” I heard him unscrew the cap off the flask and take another drink. “Sometimes it don’t even matter how bad they want to change themselves.”

I thought about that, and then I thought about how much Daddy had changed in just the past few days, and then I thought about Stump sitting up in Heaven watching all the things that were going on down here. I wondered if he’d been watching me and Grandpa sit out there by that fire roasting those hot dogs, and then I wondered if he was watching me right then as I stood on the dirt court in Joe Bill’s backyard with Joe Bill trying to dribble the ball between his legs right there beside me. He stopped dribbling and looked up at me.

“Can I ask you something weird?” Joe Bill asked.

“All right.”

“Do you think Stump’s in Heaven?”

“Of course he’s in Heaven,” I said.

“How do you know?”

“I just know,” I said.

“Was he saved by the Holy Spirit?”

“What?”

“My mom says that’s the only way you can get into Heaven,” he said. “She says you’ve got to confess your sins and be saved by the Holy Spirit.”

“I guess he was saved then.” I knocked the ball out of his hands and carried it out to where the free-throw line would’ve been if it was a real basketball court.

“But how do you know?” Joe Bill asked.

“I just think he’s in Heaven,” I said.

“How?”

“What do you mean, ‘how?’”

“How’s he in Heaven if he can’t talk? How could he have confessed his sins and been saved by the Holy Spirit?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just think he’s in Heaven. My dad told me he’s there.” I remembered how Mama used to tell me and Stump that you’d know you’d been saved when you felt the Holy Spirit move inside your heart. I tried to imagine what that would feel like, but it was too hard for me to think about it out there behind Joe Bill’s house with that thunder rumbling out over the mountain and Joe Bill running his mouth.

“Maybe that’s why they were trying to heal him,” Joe Bill said. “Maybe they wanted him to talk so he could confess his sins and go to Heaven when he died.”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” I said.

“I wasn’t talking about it,” Joe Bill said. “I’m just saying that maybe that’s why they did it.”

“You don’t know why they did it,” I said. “You didn’t even see it. You ran away. And you don’t know what they did on Sunday night either.”

“Neither do you,” he said. “You weren’t in there.”

“You don’t even know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“Neither do you,” Joe Bill said again. I looked at him and thought about tossing that basketball into the grass and busting him in the nose, but instead I just dribbled it once and then shot it as hard as I could. It bounced off the backboard so hard that the pole shook in the ground. The ball rolled toward Joe Bill’s house, and we both stood there looking at it. I wanted to tell him about what I’d seen on Friday afternoon when Stump fell off the rain barrel, but I knew it was too late. I knew that if I was going to tell anybody about that I should’ve done it before Stump went into the church on Sunday morning, and I definitely should’ve said something before Mama took him back in there that night. But it wasn’t going to make no difference telling Joe Bill about it now.

“Go get my ball,” Joe Bill said.

“You get it,” I told him. “It’s your ball, and it’s your shot anyway.” He looked at me for a second, and then he walked toward his house and picked up the basketball. He turned back toward the goal and stood there looking at me like he was thinking about saying something else. I could see the road in front of the house over his shoulder, and I saw Scooter and Clay tearing down the road on their bikes. Gravel dust flew up behind them from under their tires, and I watched as they got closer and closer.