Ask the Little Bald Bastard

  "Yer a bit of an idjit, ain't you?"
  "Well sir, I don't-"
  "Oh, I know. Yer momma probly calls ya 'challenged,' or 'special,' or some other fancy word. But the god's-honest truth is that ya ain't bright enough to light up a dark closet, are ya boy?"
  I'd never heard anyone speak about me so plainly, with so little pretense. He sat there on the porch, idly pulling at the peeling paint, flicking aside the drops of condensation that had pooled in in the cracks where he'd set his can of beer. His gray eyes stared levelly at me from under the brim of his sweat-stained cap.
  "Nossir, I suppose I ain't... I'm not terribl' smart. I try to learn things, but is seems like they just fall right outta m'head."
  His gaze flicked away, out into the dusty dirt yard. "There, now," he grunted. "It's out'n the open and we kin deal with it. Ain't no shame in being stupid, boy. Worst possible thing you c'do is go 'round foolin' yerself about it. Nothin' worse than a damn fool tryin' to convince hisself he's got more brains'n he was blessed with."
  His eyes twitched back and took me in completely. And not just the me in front of him, but all of me, my life stretching all the way back to the womb. I sometimes believe that, if he'd stared at me long enough, my uncle could have looked right back into the past and seen the faces of all the ancestors whose blood ran in my veins. Instead, he looked out past the yard at the cloud of dust just topping the hill that separated our land from the county's.
  "Just you remember, boy. There ain't many places in this life that intelligence kin take you, where hard work'n persistence can't git you just as well."