âWhen Daddy comes in, he carries you to bed. Is there anything you feel like you could eat, Pokey? Anything at all?
All you can imagine putting in your mouth is a cold plum, one with really tight skin on the outside but gum-shocking sweetness inside. And he and your mother discuss where he might find some this late in the season. Mother says hell I donât know. Further north, Iâd guess.
The next morning, you wake up in your bed and sit up. Mother says, Pete, I think sheâs up. He hollers in, You ready for breakfast, Pokey. Then he comes in grinning, still in his work clothes from the night before. Heâs holding a farm bushel. The plums he empties onto the bed river toward you through folds in the quilt. If you stacked them up, theyâd fill the deepest bin at the Piggly Wiggly.
Damned if I didnât get the urge to drive to Arkansas last night, he says.
Your mother stands behind him saying heâs pure USDA crazy.
Fort Smith, Arkansas. Found a roadside stand out there with a feller selling plums. And I says, Buddy, I got a little girl sick back in Texas. Sheâs got a hanker for plums and ainât nothing else gonna do.
Itâs when you sink your teeth into the plum that you make a promise. The skin is still warm from riding in the sun in Daddyâs truck, and the nectar runs down your chin.
And you snap out of it. Or are snapped out of it. Never again will you lay a hand against yourself, not so long as there are plums to eat and somebody-anybody-who gives enough of a damn to haul them to you. So long as you bear the least nibblet of love for any other creature in this dark world, though in love portions are never stingy. There are no smidgens or pinches, only rolling abundance. Thatâs how you acquire the resolution for survival that the coming years are about to demand. You donât earn it. Itâs given.â
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