Here is Part 2 of Chapter 2.  If you haven't read the earlier part, click here to start at the beginning.

It was around eleven o’clock when I finished.  I got a drink of water from the hose and left without saying good bye.  I was sure she would think I was being a typical rude kid, but I didn’t want to talk because I knew I would act suspicious.  As I walked along the road, my back felt like it was on fire.  I hadn’t noticed it earlier due to worrying about finding the still.  The more I walked, the more it burned.  Finally, I pulled my shirt up in front, hoisted it over my head, leaving my arms through the sleeves and wore it like a shawl.  By the time I got home I was in agony.  As soon as I walked in the house Mama asked me what was wrong.
    “My back is blistered or something.”  I winced in pain.
    “Good Lord, Coy Jr.  You’re cooked.  Did you wear your shirt like that all morning?”
    “No ma’am.  It started hurtin’ when I was coming home.”
    “You smell like gasoline.  Take your shirt off and let me put something on your back.”  I slipped my shirt off and realized it was the source of the gasoline odor.
    “It’s my shirt.  It’s got gas on it bad.  That must be what blistered my back.”
    “Go take a bath and when you get out, come back in here and I’ll put some butter on it.  And throw that shirt outside.  Oh, and guess who’s gonna be at the reunion tomorrow…Benny and his wife and kids.  They’re coming all the way down from New Jersey.”  Benny was Benny Rob Talbot, Mama Pope’s little brother that is about 15 years younger than she is.  I had heard Mama refer to him as a “change of life” baby, but had no idea what that meant.
     I suffered with my back the rest of the day but luckily got out of cutting our yard.  All in all it was a pretty bad day.  My favorite tee shirt was now destined for the garbage, thanks to Uncle Lonnie, Mama Pope was living out “Thunder Road” and a bunch of Yankees were going to grace us with their presence at our good old family reunion.  Life stinks.

    Sunday morning I woke up to the smell of bacon frying around seven or so.  When I turned to get out of bed, I was rudely reminded of my blistered back. In total agony I mustered up enough willpower to sit up on the side of the bed.  It felt like it was kind of hot and crispy.  When I moved my upper body, the skin on my back seemed to wrinkle.  I sat there for a moment thinking about how miserable I was, and then I remembered the reunion.  “Hey!  I can’t go to the reunion now with this burnt back and all,” I thought out loud.  I was feeling better already.
    I went into the kitchen without a shirt on and sat down at the table.  In our house, coming to the table without a shirt was a sin.  You couldn’t even wear a sleeveless undershirt.  My father had tried it on several occasions, but Mama always chewed him out and made him go put a shirt on.
    “Go put a shirt on!  You know better than to come to the table without one!” Mama hissed.
    “I can’t.  My back’s too messed up.  It hurts bad.” I sounded as pitiful as I could without over doing it.  I was hoping to get an exception to the “no shirt” rule and to start working on getting out of going to the reunion.
    “Turn around and let me see.”  Mama looked at it and touched me in a couple of places.  “Son, you have ruined your back.  You’ve got clear blisters coming up.  Go sit down and eat your breakfast.”
    Holy mackerel!, I thought.  “I got an exception!  This was beginning to shape up pretty good.”  Daddy walked in the kitchen and looked at me sitting there at the table with no shirt on, then he looked at Mama putting a plate of food in front of me.  I knew he was confused.  He had never seen Mama feeding anybody older than two that didn’t have a shirt on.
    “How come you don’t have a shirt on, boy?”  He looked at me then at Mama with a very puzzled expression.
    “Coy, his back is burned from gasoline he had on his shirt.” Mama put another plate of food down on the table for Daddy.  He washed his hands and sat down.
    “Lonnie still hasn’t got his car going.  He put a rebuilt carburetor on it yesterday, but it looks like he has a timing problem.” Daddy said, never looking up from his food as he shoveled it in.  “I’ve got to take the timing light over there when I finish eating.”
    “Well come right back.  We’ve got to be over at Mama’s by 9:30.”  Mama was cool.  She knew what was coming and so did I.
    “Honey, I don’t think we can get it done that fast.  It might take two or three hours.  Maybe longer if that’s not the problem.”  Daddy was either brave or stupid.  He had thrown down the gauntlet and now it was Mama’s turn. I was disappointed that he was going to try to get out of going before I had a chance to secure my position as a non-participant.
    “Coy.  I WILL be at my mother’s house at 9:30 and you and Coy, Jr. WILL be with me.”  She laid down the law.  Just like I figured was going to happen, I was included in that statement.
    “I CAN’T GO!  I CAN’T WEAR A SHIRT!”  I blurted out, hoping she had made a mistake.
    “Coy, Jr.  You can go without a shirt.  Everybody will understand.”  Mama wasn’t joking.
    “MAMA!? I CAN’T GO THERE WITHOUT A SHIRT.  There will be people there…and…and…they’ll be eatin’.  I can’t be around the whole family eatin’ without a shirt.  It ain’t right.”
    “We are all going.  That’s final.”  Mama had spoken the final word.
    I looked at my father and couldn’t help but think this was his fault.  I had a perfect alibi for not going to the reunion and would have pulled it off if he hadn’t tried his stunt first.  But there was nothing I could do at this point short of dropping dead, so I stuck out my bottom jaw and sulked through the rest of breakfast.
    We loaded up in the car for the two-mile trip.  Mama had made some of her famous potato salad and baked a bunch of pies and cakes to take with us.  I sat on the edge of the back seat, being careful not to lean back and get butter on the seat covers.  When we rounded the curve leading up to Mama Pope’s, I saw a couple of cars sitting in the driveway.  One was Mama Pope’s Buick, but I didn’t recognize the other one.  It was big and real shiny.  As we got closer I realized it was a Lincoln Continental.
    “Whose car is that?” I asked, figuring nobody kin to us could own a car like that.
     “Probably Benny’s.  He works in the car plant, you know.”  Mama seemed kind of proud, like he was famous or something.
     "Probably in debt up to his ears,” Daddy muttered under his breath.
     We pulled up behind the Lincoln and unloaded the car.  I was naked from the waist up, toting a coconut cake and fixing to walk into a room full of strangers.  I had no idea what to expect.  I figured if Mama Pope said anything cute, I could call her a moonshiner.  Of course I valued my life so, I wouldn’t.  Sitting on the couch in the living room were a man, a woman and four kids.  The man, apparently Uncle Benny, stood up and ran over to hug Mama.  He was about six feet tall, pot gutted, and was wearing one of those stupid little flat hats that old men in convertible sports cars wear.  He had on one of those Cuban shirts that you don’t tuck in, Bermuda shorts, black socks and wing tip shoes.  I was praying nobody in the community knew he was kinfolk.
    “Oh my goodness!  Ruby, you have not changed in ten years!  It is wonderful to see you.”
    “Benny, look at you!  Has it been ten years?”  Mama got a loose from his grip and went over to speak to Aunt Bonny.
    Uncle Benny greeted Daddy a lot different.  Just a handshake.
    “Coy, you are looking good.  How have you been?”
    “Can’t complain.  Nobody will listen.”  Daddy never broke a smile.
    “And who is this muscle man?  Coy, Jr.?  The last time I saw you, you were five years old.  And if I remember correctly, you didn’t have a shirt on then, either.”
    “Hi.  I’ve got a burned back.”  I tried my best to be polite.  I smiled at Aunt Bonny and looked at the kids.  Three of them were red headed and freckle faced and one of them looked like a Puerto Rican.  The oldest boy looked to be twelve or so, but his head was pretty much shaved, and the stubble gave it a red tinge.  The other two red heads were a couple of twin girls.  They were pudgy, had long red hair in pigtails and were noticeably sweaty.  They looked identical, in their yellow shorts and lavender half tops that showed their wormy looking stomachs.  But it was easy to tell them apart because one of them had a big old scab on her stomach.  The littlest one had black curly hair and eyes as black as soot.  I didn’t know much, but I knew he wasn’t from the usual Pope stock.
    “Coy, Jr.  This is our oldest son, Fred, the twins Lucy and Ethel and the little one is Ricky.”  Aunt Bonny proudly introduced each one to me.
    “You’re kidding, right?”  I smiled at Aunt Bonny, and caught Mama, across the room staring a hole clean through me.  I knew that if I said anything else I would not live long enough to eat a piece of the cake I had in front of me.
    “Oh, son!  What on earth happened to your back?” Mama Pope asked drawing her hands up like she was trying to keep them from touching me.  You’d think that in all her years she’d seen a burnt back before.
    “I got gas on it yesterday and the sun made it burnt.”
    “Fred, why don’t you and Coy, Jr. go play?” asked Aunt Bonny.
    I looked at her and then looked at Mama.  Mama knew I was fixing to say something ugly about being too old to “play”, and headed me off by telling me to go outside with Fred.  Fred pulled himself off the couch and reluctantly started walking toward the back door, his overalls dragging his tracks out as he walked.  His arms hung limp by his sides making him look like he was going to collapse at any moment.  When we got to the back door he opened it and stopped short.  I knew nobody could see me so I gave him a push out the door.  He fell down the steps and hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.
    “Why’d you do that?  I’m a free bleeder you idiot!  I’m a free bleeder!  You could have killed me!
    “A free bleeder?  I don’t see no blood.”
    “I’ve got hemophilia.  Don’t you know nothing?  If I start bleeding, I can’t stop and I’ll die!”
    “Sorry” I said with the least sincerity I could muster.  “There ain’t no such thing.  How’d you get it?  From kissing your sister?”
     “I was born with it, you idiot.  You ARE a stupid Southerner!  Mama said you people were nothing but uneducated white trash!”
    This boy had just committed the ultimate sin a northerner can do in my way of thinking.  He was within one inch of having his brains kicked out.
    “Nobody named after some dumb TV show comes down here and calls me white trash.” I spoke through my gritted teeth.  “I got a good mind to knock you into the middle of next week, you stinkin’ Yankee!”  And I said ‘Yankee’ like it was the nastiest word you ever said.
    “You hit me and you’ll go to jail!”
    That was the worst excuse I had ever heard anyone give to keep from getting hit.  He was still lying on the ground, so I walked over and straddled him, my feet on each side of his hips.  I leaned down, grabbed his overall straps and pulled his head up off the ground, as I drew back my fist.
    “COY POVINE STOP IT RIGHT THIS INSTANT!”  Mama’s voice hit me like a shotgun blast from behind.  I dropped his head and it bounced off the hard ground.  Then he started crying, saying I had beat him up and all.
   “Mama…he called you white trash!” I said knowing surely that even Mama recognized those to be fightin’ words.  Nobody called my Mama white trash and lived to tell about it.
    “No I didn’t!  He’s lying!”
    “Mama, he said Aunt Bonny said we were all uneducated white trash!”  If looks could kill, Fred would have been splattered all over the ground.  Mama walked over there and grabbed him up by the overall straps, just like I had him when she walked up on us.
    “Boy!  Did your Mama call us white trash?  You better answer me!”  Mama’s face was red as a beet.
    “Yes’m…yes ma’am.” Fred whined as he stared into the face of the grim reaper.  Mama let go of his straps and his head bounced off the ground…again.  I had a tremendous feeling of satisfaction and started to go over and hit him a time or two, but Mama pushing me aside to get back to the house interrupted my plan.  Somebody was fixing to get hurt.  Bad.

Chapter 2. The Family Reunion and Its Aftermath (part 3)