Chapter 31: Because I’m Happy…“Come on, Uncle Wiley,” Mary Cantrell said. “Let’s do ‘Happy.’ I brought the CD. You promised you’d practice with me.”
The kids and I were in the living room. Bill, Shelly, and Mama had taken the Ledbetters outside to show them Mama’s garden and the rabbits and chickens Mama kept out back.
“I don’t feel like it,” I said.
“Please, Uncle Wiley? Please, please, please?”
Mary was my favorite niece. My only niece, actually, but had there been more, she would have been my favorite. Bill didn’t like it, but Mary and I were peas in a pod.
“All right,” I said, because I could never refuse her anything. “But I am not singing this song with you at the First Baptist Nazi Youth Marathon Campfest Radical Christian Soviet Indoctrination Ceremony, or whatever the hell it
