In 1973, when I was 10 years old, my newly remarried mother packed me and my bike in the car, drove to Virginia and deposited us both at my mamaw’s.

People in the South call their family members “mamaw” and “papaw,” or “mommy” and “daddy,” even when they are full-grown adults with their own children.

Her full name was “Mamaw Pat.” She had coarse black hair that she dyed on a regular basis, high cheekbones, skinny lips and sharp dark eyes. In her old black-and-white pictures she never smiled and always looked very dignified and exotic. She occasionally whispered, shamefully, that somebody in the family “married an Ind’an,” and that it was a long time ago.

In her more recent color pictures she had a tendency to look confused, and when her hair was messy I thought she looked as scary as Nebuchadnezzar from the Bible, except she didn’t eat grass as far as I knew. She was afraid of black cats, the dark in general, noises in the dark, and naturally, dead people.

She was crazy, of course, and I loved her as much as my bike and my Walter Farley books. Which is why I was willing to endure the trip.

Three colored-pencil drawings and 12 “Gentle Ben” chapters of flat interstate. Exit. More drawing, while the landscape changed to gently rolling hills — then began the sickening climbs and twists and turns through the trees, around steep ridges, the car’s automatic transmission always groaning.

The sunlight flashed on and off through the filter of dense leaves, while our tires made the hot gooey bubbles on the ancient pavement pop and crack like bubble wrap pinched between your fingers. Finally the last two miles on a more-dirt-than-gravel road, spiraling deeper into the woods, passing a handful of crumbling houses obscured by weeds and mountain laurels, a dip, a hill, a bend in the road, and there it was, her tiny wooden house with the shabby porch, nestled in a “holler,” far away from legal beer and indoor plumbing.

My plan for day one — look around. I climbed on the couch on my knees and looked out the wide open window.

There was a house next door, only a garden’s length away. The house was made of straight logs, painted peeling black and whatever was stuffed in between the logs was painted peeling white. The cabin door was open, so open that I wondered if there was any door at all.

I saw the old man limping around in the garden in his factory shirt and factory blue pants. I could hear him talking to himself, saying mostly words I wasn’t allowed to say.

He had a gun.

“Who’s that guy?” I asked my mamaw, who was on the floor searching through some 8-track tapes, probably looking for Percy Sledge.

“That’s Virgil. He cain’t hear good, at’s why he talks s’loud.”

Virgil had spotted my gawking head, raised his gun and was staring down the barrel at me.

“He’s going to shoot me, I think,” I said, matter-of-factly.