A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash

then I stopped and laid down flat on my stomach behind some tree roots and looked back toward the yard. I could see the rain barrel where I’d pushed it back up, and I could see where the gutter had gotten bent and broken, but I couldn’t see Stump at all because he hadn’t stood up yet.
    I laid on my stomach in the woods and waited on whoever I’d heard to come around the corner of the house and find Stump, and then I remembered that my shoes were still up there and I knew they were going to find them and tell Mama and she’d wear me out because I should’ve never let Stump climb up there because we shouldn’t have been spying. But I forgot about all that when I saw Pastor Chambliss. I only saw his face at first because he peeked around the corner like he’d been hiding from somebody and was checking the side of the house to make sure it was safe to come out. He stood there peeking around the corner at the rain barrel, and then he walked into the side yard and I could see him good. All he had on was a dirty old pair of blue jeans that he had to hold at the waist because he wasn’t wearing a belt. He’d pulled his boots on over his blue jeans, and he stopped walking and bent over and pushed his jeans down over the tops of his boots. When he bent down, I saw the inside of his right arm and how bright pink and shiny it was. When he stood up straight, I saw that the pink, wrinkled skin covered his chest and ran up his neck too. He looked out toward the woods beside the house, and I got as flat as I could on the ground behind those roots so he wouldn’t see me. He walked over to the rain barrel and stopped, and then he just stood there looking down at Stump like he was surprised to see him laying there. Pastor Chambliss bent down and sat the rain barrel up straight. Then he fixed the top where it had come loose. He pounded on it with his fist and shut it tight. I heard the screen door slam, and then I heard Mama’s voice come around the house from the front porch.
    â€œWhat was it?” she hollered. Pastor Chambliss whipped his head around and looked toward the front yard.
    â€œNothing,” he hollered. “Go back inside.” He turned and looked down at Stump again.
    â€œYou sure?” she said.
    â€œYes,” he hollered. “It ain’t nothing. The rain barrel tipped over, that’s all. Go on back inside.” He squatted down like he was getting a good look at Stump, and then he reached behind the rain barrel with that wrinkly arm like he was offering Stump his hand so he could help him up. “What did you see, boy?” he said. He waited like he expected Stump to say something, and then he laughed. He turned and walked back to the front. I got a good look at that bad arm, and I saw that it didn’t even have any hair on it. I laid there in the woods behind those roots and stared at his arm until he’d gone around the corner of the house toward the porch steps and I couldn’t see him anymore.
    That night, while me and Stump were getting ready for bed, I asked Mama what had happened to Pastor Chambliss’s hand that made it look like that. Stump and I were already in the bed, and she was folding some of our clothes and putting them in the dresser and she was hanging our dress shirts in the closet. With the closet door open I could see Stump’s quiet box sitting up on the top shelf. Mama’d made it for him when he was little because she said when the world got too loud Stump needed a quiet place where he could go off and be alone. She took one of Daddy’s shoe boxes and wrote, “Quiet box—do not open” on the side of it. I could read her handwriting from where I laid in the bed. She’d never let me see what was inside the quiet box, and I’d always been afraid to even ask Stump because I was afraid she’d find out that I’d been messing with it.
    Mama had just picked up the shirt I’d worn