Weâre amused when young Charlie Boone shoots his grandfatherâs car with a hammer; we sympathize with his struggle to find a goal in life that doesnât include ten to twenty in the state pen.
Virtually an orphan with his father sent up-river and his mother blown away in a hurricaneâCharlieâs formal education features frequent tune-ups with a paddle wielded by a minor-league principal with a big league swing. Charlie learns far more at home from his demented yet sometimes wise grandparents, and from his aunt and uncle, who should be in prison if you believe the local sheriff. And most of all from the boys in reform school, a holding pen for oddballs that Charlie believes is paradise.
Many southern towns have families like Charlieâs, whose surname is synonymous with criminality. Such families can drift aimlessly for generations, but sometimes, God only knows how or why, the miraculous occurs and they are transformed. In My Only Sunshine, Charlieâs family is transformed by a visit from the Holy Ghost, by Cuban missiles tipped with hydrogen bombs, and by nine-year-old Charlie himself, who really isnât much worse than any other kidâat least according to the public defender at his trial.
Weâre amused when young Charlie Boone shoots his grandfatherâs car with a hammer; we sympathize with his struggle to find a goal in life that doesnât include ten to twenty in the state pen.
Virtually an orphan with his father sent up-river and his mother blown away in a hurricaneâCharlieâs formal education features frequent tune-ups with a paddle wielded by a minor-league principal with a big league swing. Charlie learns far more at home from his demented yet sometimes wise grandparents, and from his aunt and uncle, who should be in prison if you believe the local sheriff. And most of all from the boys in reform school, a holding pen for oddballs that Charlie believes is paradise.
Many southern towns have families like Charlieâs, whose surname is synonymous with criminality. Such families can drift aimlessly for generations, but sometimes, God only knows how or why, the miraculous occurs and they are transformed. In My Only Sunshine, Charlieâs family is transformed by a visit from the Holy Ghost, by Cuban missiles tipped with hydrogen bombs, and by nine-year-old Charlie himself, who really isnât much worse than any other kidâat least according to the public defender at his trial.
Authorâs Note
The town in this story no longer exists. It drowned some years ago, sad to say. But in 1962, Red Church was a bustling mill town known locally as âAmericaâs Sweet Tooth,â as it refined sugar for the vast sugarcane plantations of the Louisiana low country. This was an idyllic time and place for a boy like Charlie Boone, especially as Charlie was unaware that Russians were building missile bases in Cuba to lob hydrogen bombs onto his head. He was also unaware that his notorious uncle had escaped from prison and was just a few miles up the road. No, on this lazy Saturday afternoon, Charlieâs only concern was a wingless variety of thumb-sized wasps he thought were ants.
PART ONE
DAYS OF SUGAR
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1
With all the hurricanes breezing in from the gulf, farmhouses were set off the ground on stilts. Kids could run under them standing up, which we did, barefoot in dust as fine as talcum powder. We didnât run up the steps to the house, though, because red velvet ants sunned themselves there, and if one bit your foot it could swell up and burst open. That happened to a boy over in New Iberia. My teacher said he was lucky just to lose his toes, and we were all mighty impressed.
I was thinking of velvet ants because my brother was stuck on the steps. With all his hollering, I was sure heâd been stung by a velvet, but no, it was just a couple of tree ants on his leg. I brushed them off. Heâd dropped his Mason jar and it had rolled down. Root beer was foaming over the gray-painted wood, and he was still carrying on.
âIt hurts!â
âWhat hurts?â
âMy feet!â
âWell move, you dope. This woodâs hot.â
I had to push him down the steps cuz he was prone to freezing up. âI donât get it,â my grandfather had said. âLeast thing, he freezes up.â
âStop freezing up,â I said now. âIf something hurts, you get away from it.â
He said okay like he understood, but I knew he didnât. I handed him his jar, then raced him over to the pecan grove and beat him by a mile. He was bowlegged, so it wasnât something I could brag about, but I did like to win. He began picking up pecans and dropping them in his jar.
âDonât take the black ones,â I said. âTheyâre rotten.â
âUh-huh,â he said, but continued doing it.
âTheyâll turn your skin black.â
âNo they wonât.â
âWhere you think black people come from?â
He squinted one eye in the sun. âFrom New Orleans?â
As that couldâve been true for all I knew, I shrugged, cracked one pecan against another, and picked out the meat. âHereâs a good one. Want it?â
He shook his head. He actually didnât eat pecans all that much; he was more of a collector. He also collected gravel from the parish road and heâd put them in his mouth. Iâm pretty sure he swallowed them sometimes, but chickens did that too, so I figured it wouldnât kill him.
I saw the dust down the road long before I heard the car, then the rumble of the blue Buick as it drove over the cattle guard and up our long dirt driveway. The mud-caked Buick Roadmaster crunched to a stop next to the fence. The driverâs door said Tijuana Bible Co., and the driver grinned at us. He was my uncle Dan, who was tough looking with the scar on his face and his hair mowed off, but generally had a pocket full of candyâor he did before he left one time and didnât come back. A woman Iâd never seen before was sitting next to him real close, and she had her arm draped over his shoulder.
âHey there, squirts,â he said.
I didnât say anything because of that woman. With her short red hair and eyes the color of new pears, she was the most beautiful woman Iâd ever seen . . . except for the splotch on her neck. I couldnât help but stare at it. It reminded me of the worm-leech that had stuck to my leg once when weâd been swimming in Goose Lake and Iâd screamed until Pawpaw burned it with his cigarette. Leeches could suck you to the bone if you let them.
My uncle and that woman were out of the car now, and she was sort of leaning against him. Her plaid skirt fluttered in the breeze, just over her knees. She was barefoot like us, and Iâd never seen a lady outside without shoes. Her toenails were painted green like her eyes, and Iâd never seen that either.
âCharlie, Jute, I want you boys to meet your new aunt. You can call her Lona.â
I tried to say something but my tongue had gotten so oyster-thick it filled my mouth. Jute didnât say anything either. I always did the talking for both of us, as he was only four, and hence stupid.
âWhy, arenât you two a couple of angels,â Lona said. âJust a precious couple of heavenly angels!â She leaned down and pinched Jute on the cheek.
âOw,â Jute cried, and we both took a step back to avoid her pinchers.
âDonât hurt em, Lona, theyâre just skin and nerves.â Uncle Dan sort of chuckled. âDoesnât that memaw of yours feed you anything?â
I shrugged. âRice and syrup.â
âHere,â he said, reaching in his pocket and producing a handful of Bazooka bubblegum pieces, âtheseâll put some muscle on yah.â
We each grabbed some, Uncle Dan scruffed my hair, then he and Aunt Lona headed for the house. Aunt Lona was having trouble walking, and Uncle Dan was holding her up. When they got to the steps I remembered and yelled. âWatch out for the ants!â
Uncle Dan glanced back and winked, and they headed up as if they didnât have a care in the world. I ran to the steps just as the screen door snapped behind themâno ants now, just the sugary stain of Juteâs root beer, already dried.
Prospects are bleak for nine-year-old Charlie Boone. His father is in prison and his mother abandoned the family (got sucked into a hurricane, he is told), leaving Charlie and his bedwetting little brother, Jute, to muddle through childhood in the care of their Memaw and Pawpaw, as well as under the dubious influence of his fugitive Uncle Dan. His teacher sums up Charlieâs chances, âYou Boone Children are destined for prison. Thereâs no accounting why, and thereâs nothing to be done to save you.â
Set in 1962 in swampy Red Church, Louisiana, âMy Only Sunshineâ by Lou Dischler is a playful satire about a problem child making the best of bad situations. Unburdened by high, or even middling expectations, Charlie views the world with a combination of bemused honesty and candid innocence, and while hardly a deep thinker, he is nevertheless inquisitive, resilient, and remarkably perceptive.
Criminality is baked into the Boone DNA. Uncle Dan bungles a bank robbery. Memaw shoots a naked man. With role models like these, its no surprise that Charlie frequently gets into trouble. He and Jute dig a hole in the backyard, and it expands into an all-consuming bayou sinkhole. He fires a bullet by whacking it with a hammer and blasts a hole in Pawpawâs car. During an air raid drill, he is turned away from the fallout shelter and takes refuge in the mayorâs office, where he helps himself to hizzonerâs cigars and whiskey, and unwisely shares his sanctuary with two naked girls.
This last infraction lands him in reform school. Â Like always, though, Charlie adapts smoothly. âI didnât mind going because my daddy had gone there when he was twelve and Uncle Dan had gone there when he was thirteen. The Boones were famous at that school,â and âI began to see the advantages of juvenile delinquency.â
Dischler lets Charlieâs story flow in an easy, meandering first person that never misses a beat. Conversely, he writes Uncle Dan and his girlfriend Lonaâs criminal misadventures from their points of view, in third person. This technique creates some disorienting transitions, especially in early chapters, when readers immersed in Charlieâs mindset must shift mental gears to enter the parallel narratives.
Still, setting aside literary niceties, there are echoes of Twain and Thurber in Dischlerâs humor, which is folksy, whimsical, and sometimes incisive, but never bitter. âMy Only Sunshineâ mixes aw-shucks, lowbrow comedy with sneaky intelligence.