I,,,, I\ I, I \" I) \) ~ I I ,;\W ;1 ,!link" l11;Lll (;Lllln,~ l'll.I 1>\('1 ('1111. ,111.1 Ill' {,", ',,1\\ Ilw '1>111,11' 1I"'1'III,~ '1 IUllv forfry hand in hand. Several pedestrians were killed hy people bllin~ frolll till' ,h, ,\ tin'llLIII \\',1' killed by a body falling from the sky. But he reached for her hand and she reached for his hand and thn' k;'1wd out the window holding hands. ]he day ofthe Lord will come as a thiefin the night, in which the hel/7'<'II,1 ,h,dl pass away with a great noise, wrote John the Apostle, and the elemmts ,hI/II melt with a fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein,lmll I,,. burned up. TONY EARLEY, an MFA in creative writing from the University ofAlabama, I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and the harrowed families of has been named one of the "twenty best young fiction writers in America" by the dead and the screaming souls of the murderers but I keep coming back to 7he New Yorker and one of the "Best ofYoung American Novelists" by Granta. his hand and her hand nestled in each other with such extraordinary ordinary His books include a collection ofshort stories, Here TYe Are in Paradise: Stories; succinct ancient naked stunning perfect simple ferocious love. a novel. Jim the Boy; and a collection of essays, Somehow Form a Family: Stories ]here is no fear in love, wrote John, but perfect love casteth outfear, because.fi'l/I' 7hat Are Mostly True. His stories have also appeared in the New Yorker, Harper:r. hath torment. Esquire, and the Best American Short Stories. His work has been widely antholo­ Their hands reaching and joining are the most powerful prayer I can imaw gized and translated into many languages. The Samuel Milton Fleming Chair ine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of in English, Earley has taught at Vanderbilt University since 1997. against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe that we are not craven fools and charlatans to believe in God, to believe that human bein~s have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great In July 1969, I looked a lot like Opie in the second or third season of ]he Andy fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence ofwho we are persists past the (;rfffith Show. I was a small boy with a big head. I wore blue jeans with the cuffs dissolution of what we were, to believe against such evil hourly evidence that I limed up and horizontally striped pullover shirts. I was the brother in a father­ love is why we are here. Illother-brother-sister family. We lived in a four-room house at the edge of the ]heirpassing away was thought an ajJliction. and theirgoingforthfrom us utter ,ountry, at the foot of the mountains, outside a small town in North Carolina, destruction, says the Book ofWisdom, but they are in peace. ]hey shall shine, and Ililt it could have been anywhere. shall dart about as sparks through stubble. On one side of us lived Mr. and Mrs. White. They were old and rich. Their No one knows who they were: husband and wife, lovers, dear friends, col­ ,Iriveway was paved. Mrs. White was the president of the town garden club. leagues, strangers thrown together at the window there at the lip ofhell. Maybe When she came to visit Mama she brought her own ashtray. Mr. White was they didn't even reach for each other consciously, maybe it was instinctive, a Limost deaf. When he watched the news on television, it sounded like thunder reflex, as they both decided at the same time to take two running steps and III the distance. The Whites had an aluminum travel trailer in which you could jump out the shattered window, but they did reach for each other, and they held ,ce your reflection. One summer they hitched it to their Chrysler and pulled it on tight, and leaped, and fell endlessly into the smoking canyon, at two hundred ,Lil the way to Alaska. miles an hour, falling so far and so fast that they would have blacked out before On the other side of us lived Mack and Joan. They had just graduated from they hit the pavement near Liberty Street so hard that there was a pink mist in ,ollege. I thought Joan was beautiful, and still do. Mack had a bass boat and a the air. I hree-tray tackle box in which lurked a bristling school of lures. On the other I trust I shallshol'tly see thee,John wrote, and we shall speakface to face. o;ide ofMack and Joan lived Mrs. Taylor, who was old, and on the other side of Jennifer Brickhouse saw them holding hands, and Stuart DeHann saw them Mrs. Taylor lived Mr. and Mrs. Frady, who had a fierce dog. My sister, Shelly, , holding hands, and I hold on to that. ,llld I called it the Frady dog. The Frady dog lived a long and bitter life. It did 1, not die until well after I had a driver's license. 167 1,.:-: I I I ',~ , \ I\ I I ~ " <I 11 I I 11' I \\ I l I' 111 ,I 1.\ III I 1\ II.'I ()Il thl' Llr 'ddl' III till' \Vhll," 111(,1 \I,,111l1 \1"',,1,.111,11.,111, \1, ,llld \11_, I Ill' hla,'k III Ill' Ill'", 111,11 .~I"\V hetwel'll ollr yard ,tllli that ofthl' Whites, J\!1al'k Burtoll I Ltrris livl'd heY"lldtIH'IlI.},J111 ,111l1 Bllrlllil 11'('1,' Ii", ">lI·,II".II,hll 11',1­ 1"'lnted the tramit at thl' sky. Daddy held me up so I could see. The moon inside a teacher who in the summcrs fixed lawn Illowcrs, ilH'ltldill.l~ 1l11I', in :1 h,"I,llllg Ill(' instrument was startlingly bright; the man in the moon was clearly visible, behind his house. Budon reminded me of Mr. G rCl'lljcall' Illl (:II/,Iilill f.:(III,~(II{j{j, i III hout!;h the men on the moon weren't. "You can't see them or anything," Mack He kept horses and let us play in his barn. Shelly oncc L'l)lll111andl'erl'd o Ill' of ,lid, which I already knew. I said, "I know that." I wasn't stupid and did not like his cats and brought it home to live with us. Budon did not mind; hl' askl'd Ill'l 1" he talked to as if! were. Daddy put me down. He and Mack stood for a while ifshe wanted another one. We rode our bicycles toward Mr. I larris's housl' as it' 11111 talked. Daddy smoked a cigarette. In the bright yard Shelly chased light­ pulled there by gravity. We did not ride in the other direl'tion; the Frady dot!; sal 11 int!; bugs. She did not run, but instead jumped slowly, her feet together. I real­ in its yard and watched for us. 'led that she was pretending to walk on the moon, pretending that she was In July 1969, we did not have much money, but in the hierarchy of southern wl'ightless. The moon was so bright, it cast a shadow at her feet. I remember poor, we were the good kind, the kind you would not mind living on your road, I hl'se things for sure. I am tempted to say that she was beautiful in the moon­ We were clean. Our clothes were clean. My parents worked. We went to church, t light, and I'm sure she was, but that isn't something I remember noticing that Easter mornings, Mama stood us in front of the yellowbell bush and took ollr II it!;ht, only a thing I need to say now. picture. We had meat at every meal-chicken and cube steak and pork chops 1 and ham-and plenty of milk to drink. We were not trashy. Mrs. White would ":ight, maybe nine months later, Shelly and I rode the bus home from school. It ! Ii not sit with her ashtray in the kitchen of trashy people. Trashy people lived in was a Thursday, Mama's day off, Easter time. The cherry tree in the garden the two houses around the curve past Mr. Harris's. When Daddy drove by those 'l'parating our driveway from that of the Whites was in brilliant, full bloom. houses we could see that the kids in the yard had dirty faces. They were usually \ Ve could hear it buzzing from the road. One of us checked the mailbox. We jabbing at something with a stick. Shelly and I were not allowed to ride our ), ,oked up the driveway at our house. Something was wrong with it, but we bicycles around the curve. , (,uldn't tell what. Daddy was adding four rooms on to the house, and we were I knew we were poor only because our television was black and white. It was 'I scd to it appearing large and unfinished. We stood in the driveway and stared. an old Admiral, built in the 1950s, with the brass knobs the size ofbaseballs.lts I\lack tar paper was tacked to the outside walls ofthe new part, but the old part cabinet was perfectly square, a cube ofsteel with a painted-on mahogany grain, \Vas still covered with white asbestos shingles.