The Christmas Bracelet
Hensel Patterson, Jr. was my cousin. Since he was named after his father, most of the family called him Junior. Most of his friends, and I, called him Henny because when he was eight he was flogged by a setting hen. After that when he saw a hen with chicks, he would turn and run like crazy in the opposite direction.
Henny was two years older than me, and was also my closest neighbor, so we did all the things that young boys growing up in the rural south of that day did. He taught me how to smoke my first cigarette in the loft of their barn. Fortunately the smoke made me cough so badly, I dropped the cigarette, caught the hay on fire, and for a few moments thought we were going to burn the barn down, including Uncle Hensel’s tractor. Because of that trauma, that
