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“Yeah, I heard two days ago … this thing is completely out of hand … Mama is devastated … losing a son and a grandson to the same foolishness … for me a brother and a nephew. I don't even know where to start... I'd kill that boy myself except he already did the job.”
Sgt. Vincent Trent was talking to a cousin about the loss of his nephew.
“But that's the thing … we all sat around watching people drinking and talking and carrying on ... our whole family was moonshiners except for your branch and mine … and it looked good to a point … people who never talked or expressed their real feelings sometimes found a way when drunk … but if you had asked any of them what somebody said to them, they wouldn't have remembered .. it was all just selfish dumping … nobody was doing more than coping with their situation, and it doesn't work. It doesn't work. There was no real connection made with any of them, and so, they couldn't connect with us and we scarcely learned how to connect with those we love either.
“Look, cousin, I don't have a brother left. I really don't have any nephews either – just waiting for one shoe to drop after another after another – this is the cost of the foolery of dealing poison that our grandparents and great-grandparents went for, and why your mother and my father got out. We were poor, but we survived. God is good. Alcohol and drugs are not. Our family is going to keep dying until they figure it out.
“All I can do now is love on those I have – we gotta start all the way over as Trents and Suttons. We just gotta start all the way over – everybody that wants to die before the age of 60 needs to go on and do that, everybody who wants to put in 20 or more years in jail needs to do that, and we just gotta start all the way over like your mother and my father did. This is why we don't have much of anything – by the time we finish starting al the way over and picking up the wreckage for those who are finally coming out of it, there's nothing to pass on.
“Now you know Sadie can't afford that funeral. You know that. You are going to get called next for that. I already told her I'll help, but I'm not going to pay to clean this all up and make it look like my nephew squeaked into Heaven. There's a pandemic going on. I'll pay to keep him from a potter's grave, but we're not doing five or ten thousand dollars for a super-spreader event like that's going to do anything. Like thirty two-minute expressions from fifteen people that haven't done ten things to turn this boy out of the way of unrighteousness is going to do anything.
“How did I get thirty two-minute expressions out of fifteen people – you know they are going to go overtime, right? Now they want to have everything to say, but when there were things to be done – that's another reason not to have the big funeral Sadie wants. I'm a veteran just back from 20 years of service, and y'all know I put time in trying to encourage Sam to do right. I'd be sniping – literally sniping folks – at the podium for all that lying they are doing. I'm not going to pay to end up in prison. PTSD is real and so is my anger with my ninety percent of our whole family. Thank God for Covid, because it is going to keep us all alive who are ready to be alive.
“Cousin, I tell you: Mama is out here talking about she loved my father and he was a good man, but if she had known the rest of the family was like this she wouldn't have married in because burying five brothers and three sons and now the grandsons starting is too much. Gladys is about done with all of us but you and me and our respective sisters. Yes. DONE done. She was already talking about moving over the mountain to be closer to our families, and she says she's coming this summer now. She's DONE done with the Trents. Yeah, like she would say, 'Ain't it the truth.'
“Yeah, Gracie my baby daughter is so cute when she says that … God knows I needed that laugh … she can get her hands on her hips and get DONE done just like Mama too. With Mama living on this side of the mountain, that whole situation is going to get ridiculous if Covid lets up – those two twins across generations will be utterly ridiculous. But that's the thing … we gotta invest in those who want to live without needing to poison and kill others. That's all we have.”