What I’ll miss most is the sound of his voice, cooked up in the North Carolina mountains out of remnants from across an ocean. There always thar, fire always far. I loved the phrase ever which a’way but loose. Loved how things liked to happen. How hello was what do you say and how being still meant setting awhile.  

Even his voice was quiet, throaty and clipped in the way of men in these mountains — a voice meant for conversations beyond a crowd, meant for the group of men eyeing the door, aiming to be outside where it’d be easier to talk about nothing or just as soon not talk at all. 

He could go hours without saying a word, but a flash of wit always waited on his tongue. For nearly 70 years he kept up a constant, good-natured banter with Grandma over anything and everything. 

“I can’t rightly remember,” she said on one of my story-seeking visits.

“You’re getting too old to remember all that, woman.”

“I surely am.”

“I know the feeling.”

A month before he passed, faded and worn down to a wheelchair, his head still popped up when Grandma walked into the kitchen: “Hey thar, pretty girl.” 

The morning after Grandma called me, I took my boys by to see Papaw for the last time. He’d been unresponsive for a day, but when we entered the bedroom, he was awake again. He couldn’t find his voice — he’d been breathing through his mouth, and his throat was too dry to speak up — so I leaned in. He looked to my sons and said, “Hey, fellers.”

They waved. 

“I love you,” I told him.

“Love you, buddy,” he whispered. 

“You done good,” I said because that’s how he would’ve said it, but also because that’s how I meant it. He’d done so much good, even if it couldn’t be listed on official records or captured in the stat sheet of an obituary. The good of his life was ever-rippling water, quiet and steady, and my boys and I would long be swept up in it.