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Grabbing For weeks, we’ve been slopping the catfish with offal the butcher can’t sell, wading out waist deep into the slough to sink hollow logs with rocks. Daddy kneels down in the mud, bowing into the river. A gray cloud stirs the surface. He juts up through the slick, arm nearly elbow deep in a flathead, and fingers out the gills. Nailing it to a cedar between the eyes, he rips the white belly, scoops out a handful of entrails, pliers exposing the white flesh, while the body bucks trying to swim up the tree. Sundays, Mama amens the preacher’s stained armpits and his thin index finger, the trials and burdens, Jesus’s strong back and our eternal guilt, and thanks God for all we don’t have and don’t deserve. She clanks what’s left from a week’s mining back into the polished plate of the company church. 52 ...

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