In my sole memory of him, he was sitting in my grandmother’s den, but to my chagrin he wasn’t smoking. I remember him the way you might remember the way the sky was lit on a great day 20 years ago: brightly yet faintly.
In the world of my childhood – spent on a Pentecostal compound in Oklahoma – my uncle Ronnie was a hothouse flower: the way he laughed the way he smiled through his beard his professorial cardigan his glasses his pipe.
