Tell the folks back home
This is the Promised Land calling
One summer day, when he was still a toddler in diapers, Billy took off from our duplex on Granny White Pike, just down the road from Hutcheson's Pharmacy, and got as far as Stokes Lane and Belmont Boulevard before we found him. If anybody in our house had believed in signs and portents back then, we might have thought that Billy would go far.
We would have been right. When he was already grown with a family and a good job, Billy confounded everybody by throwing it all away for a lottery ticket on showbiz. I think the whole Elvis thing had gotten to him - the look, the easy smile, the slightly snarled upper lip. Billy could do that. So he went to California in search of fame and fortune.
He found a little - parts in afternoon soaps and commercials for Church's Fried Chicken and Snapple. He played a speaking role in the movie that was made about Jackie Robinson's life. Just enough to keep him hanging in. What made it survivable is that he found a life partner, in Katie.
Billy was also lucky. Once, while taking a nap in a muddy Korean field, he was run over by a tank. The mud was so thick that the tank just pushed him down in it. On another occasion, while we were all visiting in Nashville, Billy borrowed my car one evening. Hours later, the hospital called to say that they had Billy - he had been in a wreck. Momma hopped in her car and drove to the hospital. She said later that she passed the car on the way - it was wrapped around a telephone post. She said she knew he was dead, but he wasn't - he escaped with cuts and contusions and a bruised backbone.
Shortly before Christmas last, Billy's luck ran out. Or just kicked in, depending on your belief.
