Read Online Reba: My Story by Reba McEntire, Tom Carter - Free Book Online

Hensley struggled to be heard above the noise of the crowd, and it was hard to communicate with his exhausted players. He wanted the play to end with the passing of the ball to Susie.
    She meant to ask him, “What do you want me to do, shoot?”
    Instead, in her nervous excitement, she asked, “What do you want me to do, shit?”
    Pake said the huddle fell out with laughter. He couldn’t remember if Susie’s team won or lost.

    E XCEPT FOR ONE MONTH IN 1962 WHEN MY DADDY TOOK US ALL to Okeechobee, Florida, where he bought cattle, my twelve years of education were spent at Kiowa. There were about thirty kids in the first grade, and ten of us graduated together eleven years later: Sherry Stiles, Melia Echelle, JoniWinslett, Roy Hatridge, Steve Phipps, Sue Fereday, Winford Hooe, Patty Ray, and Nathan Caldwell. My first cousin, Diannia Kay Smith, my uncle Dale’s daughter, started with us in the first grade but was held back in the sixth.
    Diannia, Melia, Sherry, and I were pretty inseparable in our early years. One time, Diannia and I hid in one of Daddy’s trailers so she could spend the night with me. But when Uncle Dale and Aunt Virginia got halfway home, someone missed Diannia and they came back for her. We didn’t get into too much trouble for that.
    You could usually find the whole gang of us at Sherry’s house on a Thursday night, when our favorite show, “Bewitched,” came on. We did fun, silly things together, like read Ouija boards and have séances. Those scared us all to death. We’d get Patty King from across the street because she was the lightest of the group. We’d lay her on the floor, and with two fingers apiece under her, we’d try to raise her off the ground. One time, we did lift her off the floor. We were so frightened when that happened, we dropped her!
    Melia, Sherry, and I still keep in contact yearly, one way or another. Old friends remind you of the past and all the fun and silly things you did. Sorta keeps you humble too.
    I also spent a lot of time with our other cousins, the Thompsons. With the ten-year-or-so age gap between us, they were our baby-sitters as well as our kinfolk. There were four of them—Doris Jean, Gary, Paula, and Rickie—the children of Aunt Jeannie, Mama’s sister, and her husband, Uncle Slim, whose real names were Imogene and Leslie Thompson. Doris was the oldest and the bossiest. She would put me behind the door whenever I’d get in trouble. Most of the time I’d fall asleep. She was also guilty of talking Alice into sticking her tongue to a frozen coffee can that was full of ice, and she was the one who put Pake on the calf that he fell off, breaking his right arm. I loveDoris Jean with all my heart. She’s a lot like Alice—I could call anytime I was in a tight spot and she’d be there to help.
    Paula, also the second girl, was famous for her bedroom, where there were two twin beds. One she slept on, and the other stayed piled high with clothes, clean and dirty. We were a lot alike.
    Rickie, the baby girl and a lot like Susie, used to keep big baskets of stuff in the top of her closet. Of course, I wanted to know what it was. I would shimmy up the sides of the closet, one foot on one side, one on the other, to find out—though finding out was never as much fun as getting there. I remember that, one time, Rickie was stuck taking care of me when she had a date with her boyfriend, Loyd. So we both got all dressed up—I was pretty excited, though not quite sure what a date was—but he never showed. Eventually they made up, and he is now her husband.
    The only boy, Gary, was a very handsome young man and a good calf roper too. One night he and Alice were both up at the Bogata, Texas, rodeo, and I was honored that Gary asked me to hold his pocketknife, a cowboy’s most valuable possession, while he roped. He won first place.
    The U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam was picking up, and we were all afraid Gary was going to have to go. Instead, on September