If I could do it, I'd do no writing at all here. It would be photographs; the rest would be fragments of cloth. bits of cotton, lumps of earth, records of speech, pieces of wood and iron, phials of odors, plates of food and of excrement.... A piece of the body torn out by the roots might be more to the point.----James Agee, "Let us Now Praise Famous Men"

To Mother, Gay and Nana, for the stories

Henry and I dug the hole seven feet deep.

If he worked and prayed hard enough. If he was stubborn as well as lucky. If he really had a shine.