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Fourteen years later, Pat became the number one golfer on the Mississippi Delta State “Statesmen” golf team. A scratch golfer known as the “Texas Stallion,” Pat had just won “low medalist” at the SEC tournament on the Arkansas Razorbacks’ home course. The coach called a team meeting on the bus ride home. “Tomorrow morning, my house, eight a.m. sharp.” The next morning Coach gathered the team around him in his living room and said, “I have a concern that some players on our team were smoking marijuana in the city park of Little Rock yesterday before the tournament. Now, what we need to do is find out who it was that brought the marijuana from Delta State to Little Rock, and who was smoking it.” He was staring at Pat.

Pat, raised by my dad to know that telling the truth would save your ass, stepped forward.

“Coach, it was me. I brought the weed, and I smoked it.”

Pat stood there, alone. None of the other teammates moved or said a word even though three of them had passed the doobie with him the other morning in Little Rock.

“Nobody else?” Coach asked.

Nothing.

“I’ll let you know what my decision is tomorrow,” Coach said. “You’re dismissed.”

The next morning, Coach showed up at Pat’s dorm room.

“I’m telling your father and you’re suspended from playing golf next semester.”

Pat caught his breath. “Come on, Coach, I told you the truth…and I’m the best golfer on the team.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Coach said. “You broke a team rule about drugs. You’re suspended. And I’m going to tell your father.”

“Look here, Coach,” Pat said. “You can suspend me, but you can’t tell my dad. You don’t understand, a DWI you could call him about. But marijuana? He’ll kill me.” Pat had gotten busted with weed a couple times in his late teens, and after being on the receiving end of Dad’s brand of discipline and disdain for Mary Jane before, he was going to make sure there wasn’t a third.

“Well, that’ll be between you and him.” Coach didn’t budge.

Pat inhaled deeply, “Okay, Coach, let’s go for a ride.”

They got in Pat’s ‘81 Z28 and headed out for a drive across the Delta. After about ten minutes of silence Pat finally spoke up: “Let me make this real clear, Coach. You can suspend me, but if you call my dad…I’ll kill you.” Pat got suspended.

My dad never found out.

Conservative early, Liberal late

Create structure so you can have freedom.

Create your weather so you can blow in the wind.

Map your direction so you can swerve in the lanes.

Clean up so you can get dirty.

Choreograph, then dance.

Learn to read and write before you start making up words.

Check if the pool has water in it before you dive in.

Learn to sail before you fly.

Initiation before inaugurations.

Earn your Saturdays.

We need discipline, guidelines, context, and responsibility early in any new endeavor. It’s the time to sacrifice. To learn, to observe, to take heed.

If and when we get knowledge of the space, the craft, the people, and the plan, then we can let our freak flag fly, and create.

Creativity needs borders.

Individuality needs resistance.

The earth needs gravity.

Without them there is no form.

No art.

Only chaos.

As I said, I was an unplanned surprise—an accident as my mom still calls me—and my dad has always half jokingly told her, “That ain’t my boy, Katy, that’s your boy.” Dad was on the road a lot when I was growing up, working to take care of the family, so I spent most of my time with Mom. It was true. I was a momma’s boy. When I did get to spend time with Dad, I relished every moment.

I wanted and needed his approval, and on occasion he gave it to me. Other times, he’d rearrange my considerations in extremely colorful ways.

The best way to teach is the way that is most understood.

As a kid, my favorite TV show was The Incredible Hulk starring Lou Ferrigno.

I marveled at his muscles and would pose in front of the TV with my shirt off, arms bent, fists high, doing my best bulging body-builder biceps impersonation.

One night Dad saw me. “What are you doin, son?” he asked.

“One day I’m gonna have muscles like that, Dad,” I said, motioning to the TV screen. “Big baseball-size biceps!”

Dad chuckled, then took off his shirt, matched my pose in front of the tube, and said, “Yeah, big biceps make the girls scream and they sure look good, but that ol’ boy on the TV, he’s so muscle-bound he can’t even reach around to wipe his own ass…the biceps? They’re just for show.” He then slowly lowered both his arms in front of him, straightened them out with his fists to the floor, then he twisted his arms to the inside, and flexed a pair of massive triceps muscles.

“Now the tri-cep, son,” he said, this time pointing his nose back and forth toward the bulging muscles on the back of his upper arms, “that’s the work muscle, that’s the muscle that puts food on the table and the roof over your head. The tri-ceps? They’re for dough.” My dad would take the stockroom over the showroom any day.

It was the summer of 1979 when Dad moved Mom, me, and Pat from Uvalde, Texas (pop. 12,000), to the fastest-growing oil boom East Texas city in the nation, Longview (pop. 76,000). Where Uvalde taught me to deal, Longview taught me to dream.

Like everyone else, we moved for the money. Dad was still a pipe salesman, and Longview was the place to make it rich in the drilling business. Soon after arriving in town, Pat went away to a golf camp, and Mom went on an “extended vacation” at a beach house in Navarre Beach, Florida. Rooster, already a multimillionaire in his midtwenties, had moved to Midland, Texas, so it was just Dad and me living in a double-wide trailer on the outskirts of town.

My dad could hurt with his hands, but he could also heal with them. Painkillers were no match for his hands on my mom’s head when she had migraines. Whether it was a broken arm or a broken heart, Dad’s hands and his hugs could heal, especially when in service of an underdog or someone who couldn’t help themselves.

The other inhabitant of that double-wide trailer Dad and I were living in that summer was a pet cockatiel named Lucky. Dad loved that bird and that bird loved Dad. He’d open her cage each morning and let her fly around the trailer, she’d roost on his shoulder while he walked around, and perch on his forearm while he petted her. He talked to Lucky. Lucky talked to him.

We only put Lucky back in her cage at night to sleep. The rest of the time, Lucky was loose in the trailer morning until night. The only rule was, you had to “watch it” when you exited or entered the door so Lucky didn’t get out.

One late afternoon, after a July day of exploring the countryside on foot, I got back to the trailer at the same time Dad got home from work.

When we got inside, Lucky wasn’t there to greet Dad like she always did. We looked all over. No Lucky. Shit, I thought, did I accidentally let her out this morning when I left? Did anyone else come over today while we were gone?

Seconds later, I heard Dad in the back of the trailer, “Oh god, oh god, noooo, Lucky.”

I ran to the back and found Dad on his knees leaning over the toilet. There, floating in circles in the bottom of it, was Lucky. Tears dripping off his cheeks, Dad reached with both hands into the bottom of the bowl and gently cradled Lucky out. “Oh, no Lucky, noooo,” he groaned through sobs. Lucky was dead. Soaking wet. Motionless. She must have accidentally fallen into the toilet and gotten stuck beneath the seat’s edge trying to get out.

Dad, still weeping, brought Lucky’s soggy and lifeless body closer to his face where he examined her hanging head. Then, he opened his mouth wide and slowly put Lucky into it until the bottom half of her wings and her tailfeathers were all that was outside it. He started to give Lucky mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Only breathing through his nose so to keep constant airflow into her lungs, he made sure his breath was measured, enough, he hoped, to revive her, but not so much to burst her tiny lungs. On his knees, over a toilet, cradling the bottom half of a cockatiel named Lucky with the top half of the same bird in his mouth, he breathed into her with the perfect amount of pressure. One exhale…Two exhales…Three exhales. His tears soaking the already saturated bird. Four exhales…Five…A feather quivered…Six exhales…Seven…A wingtip fluttered. Eight…Dad lightly loosened his grip and released some pressure from his lips. Nine…Another wing tried to flap. He opened his mouth slightly wider. Ten…And that’s when we heard, coming from inside my father’s mouth, a small chirp. Now, with tears of pain turning to tears of joy, Dad gently removed Lucky’s torso and head from his mouth. Lucky twitched some toilet water and saliva off her head. Now face-to-face, they looked into each other’s eyes. She was dead. Now she was alive. Lucky lived another eight years.

God’s lucky.

The Goddess of luck is fortune,

fortune is the Sister of fate,

fate is the Divine Order,

and the Divine Order is God.

So, as far as I can tell,

if you believe in luck,

you believe in God.

That same summer, while Dad was at work every day, I explored the endless acres of the Piney Woods, barefoot and shirtless, wearing a shammy roped around my waist, with my Daisy BB gun in hand. Coming from Uvalde, I’d never seen trees like this. Towering pines shooting straight up into the sky, thousands of them. I was in awe of one in particular, a white pine among the ponderosa, six feet wide at its base, its peak trespassing the airspace.

One late afternoon while chasing down a squirrel with my Daisy a half mile from home, I came across a fence, about ten feet tall. It was strangled with vines and overgrowth and a few faded No Trespassing signs. I crouched, pulled back some foliage, and peeked through. On the other side was a lumberyard. Men in hard hats, a couple of forklifts in action, and mountainous stacks of 2 x 4’s, 4 x 4’s, and plywood. Perfect, I thought. For a tree house.

And I knew just the tree. I stayed there until they shut down the forklifts, packed up, and closed down for the day. It was about 6:00 p.m. I ran home with a plan. A plan I couldn’t tell Dad. A plan for the next three months of my summer.

The next morning after breakfast, Dad went to work at 6:30 like he always did. As soon as he left, I went to our toolbox and found what I was looking for, a pair of wire cutters. I put on my shammy, grabbed my Daisy, left my shoes in the closet, and ran to scope out my mark.

How was I gonna do this? There were people working at the lumberyard all day, so I’d have to come at night, I plotted. What if I got caught by someone at the lumberyard? What if I got caught sneaking out at night by Dad? And what if he then found out I was stealing lumber from a lumberyard half a mile from home? I was nervous. I was excited.

That night after dinner and watching The Incredible Hulk like I always did, Dad and I said our good nights. I lay in bed, wondering how long I should wait before I opened the double-wide bedroom window to sneak out. I could hear Dad still moving around on his end of the trailer so I waited until the slightest creaks had been silent for at least an hour before I made my move. Slowly, quietly, I got out of bed. I wrapped on my shammy skirt, left my shoes in the closet, grabbed my Daisy, a small flashlight, and the wire cutters. I tossed them all carefully out the window onto the lawn below, then snuck myself out the window and headed to my secret stash.

It was around 1:00 a.m. I figured I should be back home in bed before five, so I had a few hours to work. The yard was quiet. I threw a couple of rocks over the fence to see if any guard dogs were around. Nothing. I pulled back some vines and bushes, then, with the flashlight between my chin and chest, I brought the wire cutters to the first chain link with both hands. Clip. It took all my double-fisted might to cut through it. Clip. Clip. Clip. Clip. Until I had cleared a space about six feet wide and a foot tall—wide enough to get those plywood planks through, small enough to go unnoticed. I hoped.

Adrenaline pumping, I lay on my back and shimmied under the fence onto the private property. I went to the stack of 4 x 4’s, pulled one off, and dragged it to the opening in the fence. I pushed it through as far as I could, then crawled under the fence and pulled it out from the other side, where I then dragged it the few hundred yards deep into the forest and left it at the base of the big white pine. Then I ran back to steal the next one. Once I got my second load to the tree, it was already a little after 4:30 a.m. so I raced back to the fence, replaced all the brush and vines to conceal the hole I’d cut, then ran back home. I snuck in the window, put my Daisy and the flashlight back on the shelf and the wire cutters under my mattress, got under the covers, and slept until Dad woke me up at 6:00 to make breakfast.

It went on like that for over a month. Getting little sleep at night, I’d take catnaps under that white pine next to my growing stack of lumber during the day, then make it home for dinner, and do it all over again. I did this every night until I had enough 2 x 4’s, 4 x 4’s, and plywood planks to build the biggest and tallest tree house in the world.

With the most dangerous part of my plan behind me and two months of summer left, it was time to start construction. I’d also stolen about forty feet of 15-gauge Steel Trim Pin Nail gun nails from the yard and I already had a hammer and a twenty-six-inch handsaw from our toolbox at home. All I needed was daylight.

Up at six and out the door by seven, I worked on that tree house until dark seven days a week for the next two months. Shirtless and shoeless in my shammy I crisscrossed two paper collated clips of the nails over my shoulders and across my chest. Half Comanche Indian, half Pancho Villa, with hammer in hand, I went to work. I started with the bottom floor then built up. I cut a two-by-two-foot hole in each floor next to the trunk of the tree where I nailed pieces of 2 x 4’s for ladder steps to get from floor to floor. I also made a pulley system that I raised with each floor. I’d pack my lunch each morning and take it to my construction site, put my brown bag in the trough, climb up to the highest floor, and hoist my sandwich up to eat during my lunch break.

Six weeks later when I was done, my tree house was thirteen stories high.

The thirteenth floor was over one hundred feet above the ground. From there I could see all the way to downtown Longview, fifteen miles away. For the next two weeks I spent every day up there, above the rest of the world, where I hoisted up my brown bag lunch and daydreamed, swearing I could see the earth’s curve on the horizon, now understanding where and why the city of Longview got its name.

It was the best summer of my life.

Greenlight.

Then September came and I had to go back to school. Mom came back from Florida and we soon moved into a neighborhood house on the other side of town. I never saw that tree house again.

I often wonder if it’s still there today. I thought of that tree house when I was making the movie Mud. My tree house was those boys’ “Boat in a Tree.” A secret, a mystery, a place of danger, wonder, and dreams. If Mud had been released in 1979, my dad would have come to me and said, “Hey, buddy, there’s this movie called Mud I saw, we gotta watch it together, damn it’s a good one.” Then I might have said to him, “Dad, there’s this tree house in the woods I built, I gotta show it to you, damn it’s a good one.” Oh yeah, that “extended vacation” in Florida my mom was on? It would be twenty years before I learned that in fact she was not on vacation, rather, she and Dad were in the middle of their second divorce.

It’s not vanity, it’s commerce. (Until it’s vanity again?)

During high school, we still lived in that same house on the other side of town in Longview. Mom had just started selling a product called “Oil of Mink,” a facial cosmetic that she peddled door to door. It was touted as a breakthrough skin care treatment that would “bring out all the impurities in your skin” and “saturate your face with beautiful mink oil so you would have a clear, glowing complexion for the rest of your life.” At the same time, I was entering adolescence—you know, pubic hairs growing in, balls dropping, voice lowering, and…a few pimples.

One day my mom looked at my face and said, “You should use the Oil of Mink!”

A fan of self-regard and looking my best, I listened to her and started applying Oil of Mink to my face each night before bed. The result? More pimples.

“It must be bringing out the impurities!” Mom said.

I listened to her again and continued to slather more Oil of Mink on my face each night.

A week went by. More pimples.

Twelve days passed. Now I had what looked like full-blown acne.

“Mom, are you sure this is okay for me to be using?” I asked.

“Of course it is, but let’s call my boss, Elaine, to come over and have a look just to be sure.”

Elaine came over and took a look at my swollen, zit-infested face.

“Oh, wow!” she shrieked. “Yes, the product is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. It’s bringing out all the impurities! And my oh my, you must just have a lot of impurities, Matthew! Just keep applying the Oil of Mink each night, and eventually it’ll pull all the impurities out, and then you’ll have a clear, glowing complexion for the rest of your life.” Well, shit, okay. Sounded like I just needed to weather the storm. I stayed at it.

Three weeks in, my entire cheeks were swollen, red pustules. Huge whiteheads. Blistering geysers of pus. I looked like a different person.

Against my mother’s counsel, I decided to see a dermatologist. Dr. Haskins looked at my face. “Oh my, Matthew, what the…the pores on your face are clogged and holding oil and grease in. There’s no room for them to breathe. What are you putting on your face?” he asked.

I pulled out a bottle of the Oil of Mink. He examined the label.

“How long you been using this product, Matthew?”

“Twenty-one days.”

“Oh my god, no, no, no! This is for people that are at least over forty years old, definitely not for a teenager going through adolescence when your skin is secreting more oil. This product has completely blocked your pores, Matthew; you have severe nodular acne. You are ten days away from having ice-pick scars in your cheeks for the rest of your life. I am going to prescribe you a pill called Accutane. Hopefully we’ve caught it in enough time that the Accutane will dry you out to such an extent that maybe you can get rid of the acne within a year and hopefully not have lifelong damage.” “Well, that Oil of Mink didn’t work at all, did it, Matthew?!” Mom innocently proclaimed.

“No, Mom…it didn’t.”

I immediately got off the Oil of Mink and got on the Accutane, which came with its own set of side effects. After a few weeks, my skin started drying out, my face began to scale and flake, the creases in my lips dried up and bled, my knees got arthritic, I got headaches, my hair started falling out, I got hypersensitive allergic reactions, and I looked like a swollen prune. All side effects I was more than happy to live with to get rid of my Oil of Mink–induced acne.

But that’s not the end of the story. No, not in the McConaughey household. My dad smelled an opportunity.

“We’re gonna sue em!!! That goddamn Oil of Mink company! That’s what we’ll do. We’re gonna sue em and make some money off this whole deal. I mean, look at you, son, that product should have never been given out to you, boy, and that lady Elaine, she shouldn’t have been telling your mother to give it to you! I’m tellin ya, we got a case.” Dad took me to meet his lawyer, Jerry Harris, a good-looking, erudite middle-aged man who had an air of confidence about him that made you think he was from Dallas, not Longview.

“Damn right, we got a case,” Jerry said. “This product should have never been administered to a teenager, there’s no disclaimer or warning on the bottle about its possible harms either, and I am sure that besides all of the physical pain you’re goin through…” Jerry and my dad homed in on me.

“You are under great emotional distress as well, aren’t you, Matthew?”

“Uhh…yes.”

Jerry pulled out a cassette recorder and pressed the red button.

“Yes, what?” he asked.

“I am…under great emotional distress at this time.”

“Why?” he asked, nodding.

“Because…I now have bad acne on my face that I never had before using this Oil of Mink product?”

“Exactly,” Jerry said, “and has this predicament affected your confidence?”

“Yes, sir.”

“In what way?”

“It’s lower.”

“Good. Has it affected your relationship with the girls?”

“I mean, I was doing really good with the girls before I had the acne, and I’m not doing as well now.”

“Exactly,” Jerry said, stopping the tape recorder.

“We got a case, Jim. Emotional distress is a strong tack for prosecution, and hell, look at him, he’s all swole up, looks like shit. I think we can get thirty-five to fifty grand out of this deal.” A big gunslinger’s grin spread across Dad’s face. He gave Jerry a heavy attaboy handshake and patted me on the back.

“Good job, boy, good job.”

Well, as you know, lawsuits take a while. Two years had passed since the Oil of Mink applications, and with my acne long gone, not a pimple on my face, and no side effects in sight, the Accutane had worked. I was now being called into a deposition with the defense attorney representing Oil of Mink. Cassette recorder on the desk, red button pressed.

“Matthew, how are you, son?”

“I’m doin better, thank you.”

“I’m just so sorry that this all happened to you, Matthew, it must have been such an emotionally distressful time for you.” I couldn’t believe it. The defense attorney just lobbed me a softball and I was ready to crush it over the fence.

“Oh, yes, sir. It was an emotionally distressful time. I mean, I looked like the Elephant Man, and my scalp was dry, my hair was falling out, my knees hurt, my back hurt, my face flaked, I didn’t have any confidence, and I wasn’t doing any good with the girls. I mean, that Oil of Mink almost scarred me for life.” “Oh, bless your heart, young man. I can only imagine how tough it must’ve been and still is on you.”

I doubled down, “Yes, sir, that’s right.”

He stared at me a moment and then the slightest Cheshire grin began to creep up on his lips as he reached under the table and pulled out a high school yearbook—my high school yearbook—from that year, 1988. He slowly opened it and turned to a flagged page, swiveled the book around to face me and slid it in my direction. Then, reaching across the table, he put his finger on a particular picture and said, “Is this you?” It was. It was a picture of me with Camissa Springs. We both had a silk sash draped across our chests from shoulder to hip. Hers read “Most Beautiful.” Mine read “Most Handsome.” Shit. I knew right then and there our case was done. He had me.

“Scarred for life, huh?…Sooooo emotionally distressed,” he said, as his grin got wider.

I was right. We were done. Case dropped.

My dad was inconsolable, he went on about it for weeks, muttering “Goddamn you, boy!!! Here I am, I got a chance to make thirty-five to fifty thousand dollars on a lawsuit that we coulda won!!! And you gotta go off and win ‘Most Handsome’! You screwed up the whole lawsuit, son! Damn you, boy!” There’s bullshitters and there’s liars. Difference is, the liar tries to hide his bullshit while the bullshitter lets you know he’s lying. That’s why I like bullshitters more than liars.

______________

A few months later, with Mom on her second extended vacation to Navarre Beach (not another divorce, just a little “break” from each other), it was just Dad and me living together again, this time in our three-bedroom house instead of the double-wide. I got home by my midnight curfew. Unexpectedly, Dad was awake, and on the phone.

“Sure, Mr. Felker, he just got in. Lemme ask him,” I heard him say as I entered his bedroom. The lights were on and he was sitting on the side of his bed in his underwear. He lowered the phone from his ear and held it between his neck and shoulders.

“What’d you do tonight, son?”

I should have known I was busted but instead chose to try and hustle the man who had taught me to hustle.

“Uh, not much, me and Bud Felker went to Pizza Hut then he dropped me off here at home,” I said.

“You pay for that pizza, son?”

He was giving me a second chance to come clean and avoid getting punished for the one thing worse than getting caught misbehaving, lying about it. But rather than admitting what I had done, and instinctually knew he knew I had done, I chose to double down on my grovel.

“Well, I think so, Dad…I mean, I went to the car before Bud, and I’m pretty sure he was supposed to pay for it.”

Digging my own grave, I was in too deep to climb out now.

Dad took a deep breath, a delayed blink, and looked distraught for a moment, then he lifted the phone back to his ear.

“Mr. Felker, thank you, sir, I’ll handle mine from here,” then he placed the phone back in its holster.

I was now starting to sweat.

Dad calmly put his hands on his knees and raised his chin to look me in the eye when I saw his molars meet.

“I’m gonna ask you one more time like this, son: Did you know you were gonna steal that pizza?”

All I had to do was say, “Yes, sir, Dad, I did,” and he would have only cussed me about not committing a crime thoroughly enough to get away with it and lashed my ass with his leather belt a couple of times because I got caught, but no.

My eyes widened, a quarter-sized spot of urine now showing on the crotch of my jeans, I stuttered, “No, sir, li-like I said I…” Whoppp!! The back of my father’s right hand crashed across my face as he leapt from the bed and interrupted my pitiful plea. I hit the ground, not so much from the force of his strike as from the instability of the cowardly, panic-stricken, lactic acid legs I was wobbling on.

I deserved it. I earned it. I asked for it. I wanted it. I needed it. I got it.

I lied to him, and it broke his heart.

Stealing a pizza was no big deal to him, he’d stolen plenty of pizzas in his life and then some. All I had to do was admit it. But I didn’t.

Now on my knees crying from shock and fear just like my brother Mike had done but for different reasons, I was ashamed. Unlike him at the barn, I was a rat, a fink, a pussy, a coward.

That’s not my boy, Katy, that’s yours, is all I could hear in my mind.

He stood over me.

“The waitress at the Pizza Hut recognized Bud. She looked up his number and called his house, asked his dad to have him just bring the money for the pizza by tomorrow. Bud told his dad it was all his idea to steal it and that you just went along with it. But you lied to me, son, told me you didn’t know.” All he wanted me to do was stand up like a man, admit I had fucked up, look him in the eye, and shake it off, but no.

I cowered, made excuses, and whimpered as he looked down on me. The piss stain on my jeans now spread to my leg.

Getting more furious with my spinelessness, he dropped on all fours like a bear in front of me, then taunted me, “C’mon, I’ll give you four to my one. Four of your best shots across my kisser to one of mine across yours!” Paralyzed, numb, I didn’t take the offer. The idea of striking my dad made my hands feel like papier-mâché. The thought of him striking me again made my brain drain.

“Why?! Why?!” he raged.

Unable to answer, I just stumbled to knee level and crawled to the nearest corner where I stayed until he finally stood up and shook his head at me, wondering what he’d done wrong to raise such a coward of a son.

I’ve often regretted what I did—or didn’t do—that night.

I had my chance at my rite of passage—to become his boy or a man in his eyes—but I got stage fright, pissed my pants, and failed the test. I choked.