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

“How about I take your picture, Jackson Ledbetter? We could do the standard tourist thing, which is where you stand behind Elvis looking up at his ass.”


“Take a nice picture and I’ll send it to my mom,” he said.


“Isn’t that what people say down here when they’re making fun of you?”


“Yes,” I said. “Go over there and I’ll take some nice pictures for your mommy of you and the cheese-eater.”


Jackson and Noah hammed it up for the camera.


“How about a nice picture of you and me for my mommy?” Jackson asked, offering me a come-hither look.


I called Noah over and switched the camera settings to automatic so he could point and shoot. He gave me an impatient thumbs-up when I told him to pay attention to the composition of the picture. He was getting better but he had a tendency to chop his subjects’ heads off.


He made a shooing motion with his free hand.


Chapter 60