He and my great-aunt Barbara had 3 dogs who’d run the length of the fence, barking at passing cars and knew not to leave the property, though the fence was always open. We’d visit when my mom was tired and in need of the crappy Folgers coffee that filled old glass pyrex cups. In the evenings, I’d help uncle Howard with the ‘chores’ – feeding and watering horses, cows, sheep, dogs, rolling back the sprinklers and salting slugs. The dogs were working animals as any other, respected by my uncle for what they did and respected as pieces of the whole. When Amy dog’s hips gave out, it was time; and a gun was not a source of power, but a tool. Amy was not shot because her owner lacked compassion. They did not attend the Presbyterian church because they wanted to assert themselves as Christians upon the world. Uncle Howard didn’t smoke cigarettes because he wanted to be a sonofabitch, and he certainly didn’t own a gun for power or a truck for anything else but for hauling hay.

Though this is not Virginia, or Tennessee. And this should be no measure of the whole. And I get what you mean. There are always multiple truths.