Read an Excerpt

Satan is Real

The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers

---

By Charlie Louvin

Igniter

Copyright © 2012 Charlie Louvin
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780062069030

---

Chapter One

MY BROTHER'S KEEPER
My older brother Ira and I were finishing a stretch of shows,
the last in Georgia, and we decided to stop by Mama and
Papa's place on Sand Mountain for a quick visit. Of course,
we'd barely got on the road before Ira reached under his seat
and pulled out a bottle of whiskey, and he drank the whole
damn thing on the drive. When I pulled up to the house,
I stepped out on my side, and Ira just kind of poured himself
out on his.
Mama was out in the front yard, and you could tell how
excited she was to see us. She came running up to try to hug
Ira, but he put his arm out to hold her off. He was wobbling
on his feet, barely able to stand upright.
She knew what was going on. Mamas know everything.
"Aw, honey," she said, "Why do you have to do this to yourself?"
She wouldn't even take Communion in a church unless
they had grape juice instead of wine. She didn't use alcohol
and she didn't understand anybody who did.
She should have known better than to say that, though.
Nothing pissed Ira off like when somebody tried to put a
little guilt on him. "Aw, leave me alone," he said. "I ain't
hurting nobody."
"You're hurting yourself," she said. "That's who you're
hurting."
"Yeah, well, I don't remember asking you," he said, and
tried to light a cigarette. He was so drunk he couldn't even
get his lighter to make a flame. "Goddamn it," he said.
"That whiskey don't do you no good," she said. "It don't
do nobody no good."
Finally, he got his lighter to work, and he poked his mouth
at the fire to light the cigarette, but he missed.
"Your father's in Knoxville," she continued. "I sure am
glad he's not here right now to see you like this."
Ira threw the still unlit cigarette on the ground. "Will you
shut up, bitch?"
I can guarantee you the fucking fight was on then. I beat
the shit out of him right there in the front yard. He was lucky
it was just words, too. If he'd have touched her, I'd still be in
prison. Shit, if Papa was there, he might have killed him anyway,
but I just kicked his ass all over the place. Then I stuffed
him in the car, and we drove away.
"I know you ain't asleep," I said to him once we got on the
highway. He was curled up on his side of the car, holding his
busted face. "I'm only gonna tell you this once. If you talk to
her like that again, I'll beat the shit out of you again. I'll do
it every time. You can lump it or try to change it, but that's
the way it is."
"Oh, hell, I didn't mean nothing by it," he slurred. "That
was just that old whiskey talking."
"That ain't no excuse," I said. "Nobody forced you to drink
that stuff. And you'd better not ever do it again."
Then I stopped talking and just drove, fuming. And
I thought about that day, nineteen years ago, when I saw Roy
Acuff driving past the farm in his big air-cooled Franklin. I
thought it must be just about the best thing on earth to ride
in a car like that. Now I was driving down that same road, a
Grand Ole Opry star in an automobile almost as nice, and it
felt like I was suffocating. Like I was being buried alive in it.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from Satan is Real by Charlie Louvin Copyright © 2012 by Charlie Louvin. Excerpted by permission of Igniter. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---