Wise-cracking Wiley Cantrell is loud and roaringly outrageous -- and he needs to be to keep his deeply religious neighbors and family in the Deep South at bay. A failed writer on food stamps, Wiley works a minimum wage job and barely manages to keep himself and his deaf son, Noah, more than a stone’s throw away from Dumpster-diving. Noah was a meth baby and has the birth defects to prove it. He sees how lonely his father is and tries to help him find a boyfriend while Wiley struggles to help Noah have a relationship with his incarcerated mother, who believes the best way to feed a child is with a slingshot. No wonder Noah becomes Wiley’s biggest supporter when Boston nurse Jackson Ledbetter walks past Wiley’s cash register and sets his sugar tree on fire. Jackson falls like a wet mule wearing concrete boots for Wiley’s sense of humor. And while Wiley represents much of the best of the South, Jackson is hiding a secret that could threaten this new family in the making. When North meets South, the cultural misunderstandings are many, but so are the laughs, and the tears, but, as they say down in Dixie, it’s all good.

Shaking the Sugar Tree

Jackson stood, a hint of a smile about his lips.


“We’d best mosey on down the river,” I said. “Got school tomorrow.”


“Shut up and kiss me like you mean it.”


After stoking my internal fires—like any more stoking was necessary at that point—the meth baby and I took our leave.


I wiped my lips as I walked to the car.


We were reduced to underpants to cope with the summer heat. I was tempted to turn on the window unit in the living room so we could bed down in there, but there was no money for such extravagance and I could not risk having the electricity shut off again for not paying the bill. Did that once already. It wasn’t pleasant.


I wiped at his face with a wet wash cloth to help cool him off. I adjusted the box fan so that it wasn’t blowing directly on his face.


Chapter 6