"So, I come slidin' down the hill and my glasses got tore clean off. I'm out there diggin' through the snow to beat the band and I can't find 'em. So, I says to myself, 'Just leave 'em and come back for 'em later.'" Old Pickle Miller was starting to work up a sweat from the animated re-telling of his tale. He was surrounded by other old men in overalls who hung on his every word.

"I tell you, right then, I seen two dogs. They was black labs, they was. I almost got it in my head to pet the fellas. Well, I gets down the hill and Effie is squealin' like a stuck hog. She's fit to be tied and she says to me, 'What was you doing messin' with them bear cubs?' I says, 'What bear cubs are you talkin' about, woman?' She says, 'Them bear cubs up the hill. You walked right between 'em with the mamma bear lookin' on. Pickle, I swear you're gonna be the death of me yet!' she says."

Pickle laughed and poked his wife in her ample ribcage. She smiled and swatted at his hand. Leann laughed under her breath as she walked by them to take her potato salad to the buffet table. Homecoming, the day when the whole community gathered to eat and play games, was the highlight of summer for hill people. Leann was glad to have made it, although, she had never expected to be home for so long. Nearly six months had passed and the seasons had changed. She watched the children as they played tag. One young boy with straw-colored hair had sought refuge in a large oak tree. He yelled down at his pursuers, "The tree's base! I call it!" The group of disgruntled children on the ground challenged his attempt to call base after the game had already begun.

Leann made a plate for her mom with fried chicken, potato salad, baked beans and cornbread. She brought it to where April Lynn was seated in a wheelchair under the shade of an ancient maple tree. Over the past few months, her mother's legs had healed considerably, but she still wasn't allowed to walk on them excessively. Leann was glad to get her out of the house because months of cloudy, winter weather had turned her mother's skin to a sallow, yellow color.

"You know, this place ain't half bad, Leann, when you give it a chance," commented her mother.

"Never said it was," replied Leann as she carefully placed the paper plate on her mom's lap.

"But you ain't stayin' much longer, is ya?" questioned the older, more weathered version of Leann.

"Seems like you're getting' along alright now, Mamma. It's 'bout time I got back to my life," Leann commented, hoping against hope that there would be no argument on the subject. She missed Shownu too much to stay on much longer. And she hoped to avoid the unhealthy entanglements that usually resulted when she was home too long.

"Your soul was always too big for this little valley. You couldn't stay here even if you wanted to," concluded April Lynn. She looked down at her faded pink cotton skirt with a hemline much longer than she was accustomed to. She loved to show off her shapely legs, but since the accident, they displayed deep red scars that she had been obligated to hide.

She took a deep breath for courage and launched into what she wanted to say. "I never done right by you. I know it and you know it. Might as well say it," admitted April Lynn to her stunned daughter.

"You never said that before, Mamma," whispered Leann.

"Well, I guess it's overdue," conceded the tired woman. "I ain't never been like you. I ain't strong like you. I can't stand on my own two feet like you can."

These revelations shocked Leann, not because she hadn't known they were true, but simply because April Lynn had never acknowledged them out loud. Leann couldn't quite meet her mother's gaze. She felt, at once, relieved to hear her mother face the truth and sorry that life had brought her this low and humbled her this much.

"I done the best I could with what I had," said April Lynn as she picked at the fried coating on her chicken.

"I know you did, Mamma," acknowledged Leann, and for the first time, she actually believed it to be true. Her mother was human. Every child is shocked by the revelation that their parents are imperfect, but Leann had been particularly averse to the notion. Leann had spent most of her life trying to be everything she felt her mother was not. I will be perfect, she had vowed. She would speak right, and act right, and guard her heart against any man who would seek to own it. The failure to do those things was the great sin of her mother and she would not repeat it. But now, as she sat on the ground at her mother's feet, she saw her as the wounded, bleeding soul that she was. Despite her failings, she had given the best she had to see her daughter living a life she could have only dreamed of.

April Lynn interrupted Leann's thoughts. "The day you was born, I looked at your wide eyes and I knew you was too much for me. You was too much for me and I wasn't enough for you. And that's the way it was," concluded April Lynn.

"I knew I couldn't make over you like your Mamaw and Pap could. I knew you would need that because your soul was so big and hungry. I didn't have nothing to feed that hungry soul." A tear escaped April Lynn's right eye and rolled slowly down her high cheekbone.

"But I'll have you know that there wasn't never a day that I didn't think you was the best damn thing to ever come out of me. You was the best of me and when you started growin' outside of me, you took all that with you and this here was all that was left," said April Lynn as she motioned to her broken body. "Now, I understood your brother. He was broke in the same way I was, and look where that got 'im," said April Lynn, wiping new tears that had sprung to her eyes. Leann looked around at the community gathered around them. They had all shown up when Tyler died. There were the covered dishes, and the handwritten sympathy cards, and the gentle pats on the shoulder after church. When her mother couldn't show up for her, the community had wrapped itself around her in ways she would never forget.

"I understood 'im, but that didn't mean I loved 'im more," continued April Lynn in a weary voice, dripping with regret. "He sure was a pretty boy, though, wasn't he?" she asked.

"Yeah, Mamma, he was pretty for a boy with those long lashes and pink lips."

"He was the prettiest damn baby I ever saw," she said convincingly.

Leann didn't even feel jealous that her mom was suggesting that her brother had been prettier than her. She knew it was true. He was too beautiful for this world and too fragile to carry its inevitable suffering.

"You know, Mamma, that boy I'm dating in Korea, he's awful pretty too. You'd like him. He reminds me of Tyler sometimes. He's real gentle and he has a big heart, Mamma."

"Well, I wouldn't expect no less from anybody you would pick. You got a good eye for people and what they're really like on the inside," April Lynn observed. "You showed me a picture once and I gotta agree that he was one pretty boy."

"I miss him. I need to get back. It's been too long, Mamma," said Leann.

"Yeah, you'd best be getting' back, because if there's one thing I know about men, it's that they don't wait too good."

"I'm not too worried that he hasn't been waiting," countered Leann. "He leaves me a message almost every day and he's been sending packages of ramen just about every month now."

"You know, you can let him come meet us. We ain't fancy, but we'll treat 'im so many ways, he's bound to like some of 'em," April Lynn laughed at her own joke. "And I'll take your Uncle Travis by the neck and throttle 'im like I used to so he won't say nothin' stupid about Orientals or nothin'."

Leann smiled, "Orientals are rugs, Mamma. Asians are people."

"Oh, well, whatever. You know what I mean. I'll make sure they treat 'im right because he's your man."

"Yeah, I know, Mamma. I'll bring him over when I can." And for the first time, Leann could picture a future in which her family could meet Shownu. She could see how her two worlds might be able to mix after all.