RING OF FIRE

I don't know how old I was the night the trailer burned down — or if the rumor was true that Daddy was the one who set it on fire.

What I do remember is cracking open the back bedroom door of the single-wide trailer just the tiniest sliver and poking my nose through to see why everything had gone so quiet inside. I could see beyond the living room to the yellow porch light that was swarming with moths. And I could see the outline of Daddy's face.

I nudged my head out farther but still couldn't tell what he was doing, maybe just fumbling for another bottle of beer in the Styrofoam cooler set by the front door. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the needle lowering on the record player to start another twangy country song.

I shrugged my shoulders and shut the door with a thud.

"I don't know what they're doin', but they went outside on the porch for something," I said to Sister and Jamie.

I hadn't started school yet, and my sister, Gina, was sixteen months younger. Our cousin Jamie was four years older than me, and it was always a treat when Daddy brought us to visit her on a Saturday night.

Jamie lived in Rockford, a little town south of Knoxville, Tennessee, with her mother and stepdad — my aunt Glenda, who was Daddy's closest sister, and her husband, George. They lived in a trailer park called Rocky Branch, just down the road a piece from Aunt Glenda and Daddy's mother, Mamaw.

We'd paused our game so I could check on Daddy, like I always did. When my mama was working nights at Genie's Bar, Daddy had a tendency to get himself into trouble, so from as early as I can remember, I put myself in charge of making sure he was okay. He rarely was.

His presence usually meant there'd be drinking and loud music, since Daddy's inclination was to turn every kitchen into a certifiable honky-tonk. Through the wall, I heard the raspy voice of Tammy Wynette, so all seemed right with the world again. I knew that the adults would soon begin dancing around the kitchen or out on the front porch, smoking Winston cigarettes and clanking their bottles of beer while they jigged.

Daddy was always shirtless and half-lit, leading the drunken parade and hollering "Woo, doggies!" whenever the pure joy of it all hit him just right.

"Okay, let's start over then," Jamie said to my sister and me, always keeping us on track with our games. She had us corralled in the back bedroom to play Bonanza, our version of house inspired by the Cartwright family in the popular seventies television show.

"Gina, you play like Hoss is just coming home," Jamie said, ushering Sister over to the corner of the room that we designated the kitchen.

"I'll be married to Little Joe again, and Edie, you'll be married to Adam. Gina, you're living with Hoss, and we'll play like he's just come home drunk, wanting you to fix him some breakfast."

"Why do I always have to be married to Hoss?" Sister complained. "He's mean, and I don't like fixing breakfast."

"You're the youngest and you have to do what we say, and besides, fixing breakfast ain't that hard and he ain't that mean," Jamie declared.

Being the oldest, Jamie always got to be Little Joe's wife, he being the most handsome and respectable of the Cartwright brothers. As Adam's wife, I was treated well too. Although I didn't think he was as handsome as Little Joe, he never came home drunk trying to pick a fight.

In our game, Hoss seemed to be a composite character of all the worst men in our lives, a character who pretty much embodied some of Daddy's kinfolks. He was always pushing Sister down on the bed, cussing her out, busting out the windows, or making her cook scrambled eggs for him in the middle of the night — like we'd seen some of the men in our family do.

"Play like Hoss is throwing his work boots at you, Sister."

"I don't want him to throw his work boots," Sister said, sitting down on the bed with her arms folded in rebellion.

Just as Jamie picked up Uncle George's boots to throw them across the room, we heard Daddy yelling.

"Girls, hurry up and get in the car! We gotta blow this joint!"

I grabbed Sister's hand as the three of us bolted from the back room out the front door. We dodged empty beer bottles on the floor and ran by the record player, which was still blaring. The next thing I remember, I was standing outside, staring at the other end of the trailer, trying to figure out why everybody was leaving so quick.

Daddy herded us into the backseat of his white Plymouth, us girls still wondering what was causing the commotion. It was a crisp spring night, and we watched the tree swallows swarming around the power lines looking for a place to land. With the windows down, I could hear Tammy still twanging out her last song as Daddy shifted the car into drive and we began to move. Through the back window, it looked like flames were shooting out of the other end of the trailer, and I began to worry over what was going on.

"Daddy, what's wrong? Did something happen to the trailer?" I said, on the verge of tears as I always was when things went south, which they had a way of doing when he was around. Jamie went quiet, like she usually did when things got crazy, and Sister was oblivious, leaning her head on my shoulder.

"Nothin'. We're going up to your mamaw's," he said, wiping from his forehead the sweat that was rolling toward his eyes.

Mamaw's trailer sat on the side of Brown's Mountain and was the official gathering place in good times and bad for the clan — a group of un- and underemployed relatives, subsisting largely on government checks, government peanut butter, and huge yellow blocks of government cheese.

All the way to Mamaw's I worried about the trailer and especially about the Tammy Wynette album...