It’s been fifteen years since Larry died—in his sleep, at the age of fifty-three, like his father in one regard (dying young) but unlike him in all the ways Larry wanted. The last words he spoke, to Mary Annie at bedtime, were, “Life is good, isn’t it, M.A.?” And it was. He helped raise three children who have proven constitutionally incapable of foregoing or abandoning their dreams. In the twenty-four years he spent writing, Larry published six novels, a memoir, a book of essays, and all the stories awaiting you, carving his name, indelibly, onto the thick tree trunk of American literature. He strained and he faltered, yes, but he never lost faith. “What do you have going for you?” he asked himself in a 1982 journal entry. “Nothing but desire, no talent, and a love of the written word.” But, he added, “that last should be enough to overcome the other two.” And it was.

—Jonathan Miles
Milford, New Jersey

Plant Growin’ Problems

Jerry Barlow eased the ’67 Sportster to the edge of the sand road and shut off the motor. He listened closely to the silence of the woods. Aside from the voices of a few mockingbirds and blue jays crouched in the leaves of blackjack oak and scrub pine, nothing could be heard except the ticking of his hot motor. He got off and unstrapped the short-handled hoe and the gallon jug of liquid plant food from the chrome sissy bar.

He knew Bacon County, Georgia, was a dangerous place to be doing what he was doing, but he was sure he wouldn’t get caught. He lit a cigarette and listened carefully for a few more minutes. Hearing nothing, no approaching vehicle, he picked up the hoe and the jug and stepped off the road. He had fifteen healthy female plants not four hundred yards off the road, and it was time to water them and hoe the weeds from between the stalks.

There was a fairly worn trail leading from the road beside his bike to his small patch of grass, and he didn’t look down and see the tracks made by somebody’s heavily booted feet. He slung the hoe over his shoulder and walked through the warm August woods, carefully watching ahead for snakes. There were rattlesnakes in these woods, and some of them were as thick as a man’s wrist.

Ahead of him by a few hundred yards, Sheriff Cecil Taylor lay on his enormous gut and wiped away the streams of sweat running down under his sunglasses. His cruiser was backed up and carefully hidden down the road a piece, as it had been for the last three days in a row. He could have sent some of his deputies to do this job, but he wanted to catch Jerry Barlow with the grass himself. He liked to get these drug addicts under his thumb, especially when they were bikers like Barlow.