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

Later, after Noah went to bed, we went to my room, undressed, and fell into each other’s arms. I was gratified to note that he was just as hungry for me as I was for him. More so, it seemed. Our love-making was urgent, intense.


Afterward, we lay side by side looking up at the ceiling.


“I fucked up,” he whispered in the dark. “I came down here to get clean. To get away from Boston, from my friends, from people like Mack, who got me involved in all of that. I wanted to start over. I have to, or I won’t have a career left. I’ve got to do it for myself. But I got down here and it was difficult. Everyone is so weird. So religious. I started feeling lonely and I…fucked up. I thought I could control it. Then I met you. I actually eased up a bit after that, but I couldn’t get rid of my stash.”


Chapter 79