A Miracle of Catfish

by Larry Brown

  So he turned it around at the edge of the cotton field where he’d found the spear point, where a long culvert had been installed in the middle of the ditch and pit run gravel graded over it to make a road in and out for the tractors and spray rigs and pickers that moved through the field. It was a big one, about ninety acres, and Jimmy had watched them from the bridge at night in the fall, the round yellow lights of the pickers moving through the darkness as they rolled the length of the long rows and plucked the cotton from its stalks. And when he turned around and got back on the road and headed back toward home, he saw her standing on the bridge.

  He stopped. She was standing there, looking at him and crying. She was big and beautiful, and she was wearing a long, old-timey dress. A black lady. Jimmy knew she was not real. She was more like a silhouette. She was standing right in the middle of that cold place. And that cold place was right in front of that old house that you couldn’t see for all the stuff that had grown up around it. And then she was gone.

  Scared the living shit out of him, and the chain didn’t come off even though he spurted all the way up the road with gravel flying out behind him, rattling off into the woods like something that was chasing him. Something was.

  17

  Johnette was lying behind closed curtains, almost fully clothed, on a bed in a dim room in the Downtown Inn, just off the square in Oxford, already stoned. She had removed her panty hose, balled them up, and put them under her pillow for later retrieval. Or maybe she’d just throw them away. She had to make sure Jimmy’s daddy didn’t see the charge for the room on the Visa card statement, not that he ever looked at it anyway. He didn’t like to mess with paying for things on a credit card. She took care of all that stuff, bills and statements and things like that. She hadn’t fucked anybody besides Jimmy’s daddy for the last ten years except for the guy she was about to fuck again, on her lunch hour this time, since he was off from work today. She kept in touch with him through her cell phone, another thing that Jimmy’s daddy didn’t have any interest in. She couldn’t think of much he was interested in besides hunting videos and fishing and riding around and drinking beer. She had some addictions herself and knew how they were. She loved going to Margaritaville, but she rarely got the chance unless she got out with some of the girls from the bank on one of their business trips to places scattered throughout North Mississippi. It was harder to take a trip now. She had to think about the kids. It wasn’t like it used to be when they’d first married. She’d been on pills and cough syrup back then. She was off all that shit now. Some of the girls at the bank had given her some kind of herb and she’d been enjoying that for a change. Only thing wrong with it was that it made you hungry. She knew she needed to lose some weight. She was a little overweight, sure. She tried to watch what she ate, but Lord she got hungry sometimes. Didn’t everybody? Sure they did. Hell yes they did. There was nothing better than a big plate of whole fried catfish, all crisp and hot and brown, with some lemon wedges on the side, and some sliced white onions on top. Unless it was those good cold shrimp on ice. Or fried green tomatoes. And all the desserts they had at the Seafood Junction at Algoma were good. They made their own biscuit pudding. Strawberry pie with all that whipped cream on top of it. Any flavor ice cream you wanted. But she’d gotten to where she hated to go over there with him. He acted like such an asshole. Always had to sit in the parking lot and drink a whole beer before he could go in. This was always after he’d had four on the way over there. He had to drink them fast because it wasn’t far once you got past Toccopola. And he acted so ugly all the way home that time he had to talk to the preacher for three minutes by himself. She knew she was fat. She just wished he’d stop calling her fat. Fat hog. Fat bitch. Dumb fat bitch. Stupid fat bitch. She didn’t know you weren’t supposed to spray WD-40 on charcoal to try and get it started, it didn’t say not to on the can. Laid out in the gravel and messed with that junky old car he’d blown all that insurance money on when the kids needed things, lots of things, and they needed some new furniture, and a new stove, cheap son of a bitch that came with the trailer only had two burners working now. That made it take twice as long to cook supper if you were cooking a meal that took all four burners. She knew they sold new burners for stoves somewhere. But she didn’t know how to get them. Or where to get them. And he wouldn’t do it. Didn’t have time to. Bitched all the time about it only being two burners, though. Why didn’t he build a back porch? And Jimmy’s teeth needed fixing. They needed fixing bad. She didn’t know what they were going to do about that. She guessed maybe she could see if there was some place around town where she could wait tables on the weekends. Maybe Friday and Saturday nights. Make a little extra money and try to get his teeth fixed. But who would watch the kids? Not him. He was always out on Friday and Saturday nights. Every weekend. So how was she going to get the money for Jimmy’s teeth? Steal it from the bank? No. Too risky. She’d get caught.

  She was lying on her back on top of the bedspread with her thick legs slightly spread, and she was just looking at the ceiling. It was quiet in the room. Nice and cool and dark. She heard something kick on and run for a while, maybe an ice machine outside, and then it kicked back off. She heard something come rolling by her door, something that sounded like a cart, and the sounds of two women talking. Maids.

  She was listening for the approaching footsteps that would sort of announce the soon-to-follow knock on the door. She was bracing herself for that, for the knock on the door. Would it be soft, would it be sharp, would there be one, two, three raps? Would her heart leap when she heard it? It was broad daylight outside. Anybody could come by and see her car parked out there, even though she’d tried to kind of hide it by the swimming pool.

  Johnette hadn’t been satisfied in a long time. She hadn’t been satisfied with her name her whole life. Used to argue with her mother and daddy about it. Why didn’t you just drop the h? she’d say. And she didn’t know why she’d gotten married again, because she’d already tried it two times before this and that should have told her something. But you never learned. You wanted love. You wanted love and good sex and you put up with a couple of not apparently sorry sons of bitches who gave you love and good sex for a while, and a couple of kids, but then when they both turned out bad you figured that was all you deserved to get in your life, two of the assholes, and then the third one made it three in a row. If that was a football game three in a row and you were the quarterback throwing the football and each marriage was an interception, you’d be headed for the bench to cool down pretty quick. Or the showers. Or the parking lot. Or a bus out of town.

  But it was hard for a woman to make it on her own. And raise two children. Three now. Put clothes on their backs and food on the table and try to keep the cuss words out of their mouths. It was awful how Evelyn talked to Velma. Picked on her. Called her names and slapped her. Wouldn’t share her stuff with her. But it was impossible to watch them every minute. There was too much to do when she was home. Cook. Clean. Wash their clothes. Pick up after them. Worry about having enough money to make the payments on a trailer and still have enough left for everything else you had to take care of every month. Pay the light bill and the phone bill. Son of a bitch couldn’t even build a back porch. Which made them not have a back door they could use. The back door was there, and it opened and closed just fine, but it was also four feet off the ground. It would be embarrassing if anybody came over and saw it, but that was one thing they didn’t have to worry much about, since nobody ever came over except for Rusty, and Rusty knew how he was. Hell yeah. Asshole buddies. He’d rather go ride around and drink beer with Rusty than just about anything. Never gave her a look much anymore. Except once in a while when he was drunk and came in wanting it and didn’t even want to kiss or hold her or anything, just wanted to fuck her. […] Selfish son of a bitch always thinking of himself first every time, even when it came to the kids. And Jimmy. She let him whip him too hard. She shouldn’t have let him whip him that hard. She should have knocked
him in the head with something the way Ellen Barkin did Robert De Niro when he was beating up Leonardo DiCaprio in This Boy’s Life. Got into his tools, big deal. Like that pile of shit in that rusty old box was worth whipping his own kid like that.

  She kept lying there on the bed, with not even the TV on. She knew there were people sitting in new cars out on the hot street in front of the hotel, waiting for the red lights to turn green, listening to their stereos and running their air conditioners. Watching the people at the gas station across the corner work on cars and change flats. People walking up and down the streets shopping or going into cafes and restaurants for lunch with friends.

  And here she was. Waiting for some guy to come in and get naked and kiss her a few times and suck her nipples for a while and finger her some, enough to get her wet, then get on his knees on top of the bedspread between her legs, panting like a hot dog and leaning in toward her, holding himself, ready to push it in. That’s what she was waiting for. Gladly.

  Then there came the footsteps.

  Oh boy. Here we go.

  Yep. He was knocking and she’d left the toe of one of her shoes just between the jamb and the door.

  “Come on in, baby,” she said.

  So he did. And he damn sure wasn’t Jimmy’s daddy.

  She didn’t think.

  But hell, who knew?

  18

  Down below the barn, in the partial shade of a line of river birches along the creek, where an unborn baby was buried inside his mother without a name, Cortez Sharp’s peas were wanting a drink of water. The dirt they grew in was nothing but dust, and the only moisture they got was the faint mist of dew that gathered on their veined leaves each night, a thin sheen that was gone almost as soon as the climbing sun’s rays touched the pea patch from across the Cutoff road. He had planted them way too late, but they’d still make.

  Just back of the pea patch, behind a skimpy brake of tall green cane, good for fishing poles or bean stakes, the bank sloped down through sandy ground and patches of velvety green moss to the rocky bed of the creek, which was only a trickle now. There were holes here and there, where catfish and bream lived and bass lay low and waited for more water to come, but the beavers had all said to hell with it and left and gone on down the tributary to the river bottom, overland, eating bark as they went, looking for some water to dam. And thence to build houses where they could raise their junior beavs. Now their abandoned slides were impotent dusty troughs down the banks where frogs sat and sang under the stars. Coons grabbed them sometimes. Fat juicies. Brief little struggles. Snakes, too, big scaly cottonmouths, fanged them between their back legs. Then the frog would be hopping, trying to jump, the venom slowly working on him. Not a pretty sight. Slid whole feet first down a snake’s throat. Maybe one last croak in the dark of the sandy cane brake: Cr-oak!

  Behind the house, down the hill, his corn stood browning day by day under the sun. Cortez had pulled some shucks open to see barely anything inside there kernel-wise. No Silver Queen this year, dadgumit. Would have to get it at the store if he got any. If they had any. He might be able to go over to the Amish community close to Pontotoc and get some if they’d had any rain over there. You could get it over there for a dime an ear and it was good stuff. His wife couldn’t eat it anymore, of course, without teeth. She could try. She could mush the shit out of a cob with her gums, but no teeth made it pretty hard to do anything much but just kind of maul it without actually getting any down your throat, which was all that mattered, he guessed.

  Each evening he stood on the porch and studied the sky. On the prettiest evenings the gray patches of clouds reddened in the wake of the sinking orange ball and were backlit in some kind of old beauty that fell behind the curve of the world and turned the sky into a painting he never tired of watching. The days had been hot and long. All things dry. The grass in the yard had slowed its growing and grown brown patches instead. And the bottom of the future pond was cracked open in places, so dry it was.

  His wife wanted the air conditioner on all the time now. She wouldn’t sit out on the porch and try to catch the breeze. There wasn’t a TV out here. She wasn’t going to sit somewhere there wasn’t a TV. Hell no. Shit no. She might miss some jackoff selling make-your-peter-hard or make-your-peter-longer medicine. He didn’t know if she even knew what she was watching or not. She’d watch just about anything. She watched Bonanza religiously, every morning Monday through Friday. She watched The Andy Griffith Show and I Dream of Jeannie. She never missed a single episode of Leave It to Beaver, and she always was up for watching Forensic Files as well as Lifetime’s movies for women. She was a big fan of The Big Valley.

  Most days the flies were pretty bad on the front porch. He kept a flyswatter on the front porch and sometimes went into fits of flyswatting that went on for ten or fifteen minutes, and he’d keep count of how many he killed on the porch posts and the rocking metal chairs they’d had for so long, 27, 35, 52. And it didn’t seem to matter how many he killed one day, because there’d always be more back the next day. Even if he killed 100. Or 150. The most he’d ever killed at one session was 236 but that had taken a long time. About two hours. Missed no telling how many. Got the posts all bloody with mashed fly guts because some of them had probably been biting his cows. Damn TV blaring in there ninety to nothing. Made him want to shoot the son of a bitch sometimes. Shoot her, too. Just go ahead and kill her. Put her out of her damn misery. For damn sure put him out of his. She was going to die anyway. One of these days. She needed a hearing aid, too. Had done about drove them both deaf with the damn TV.

  It was hard not to go over and look at the pond, but on the other hand he knew that nothing had changed and that there wasn’t any need of going over there and looking at it. But sometimes he went anyway because he liked to stand there in the bottom of it and look at the high walls of dirt around him, still bearing lots of dozer tracks, and visualize what it was going to look like when it got filled up with all that water. Maybe ducks would come in. He’d be fishing. He could get a boat and paddle around. A boat dock to tie the boat to maybe. He wondered how muddy it would be when it first filled up. Probably pretty muddy. It probably took a while for all those dirt particles to settle down. He just wished it would rain. Hell, it had to rain sometime. It couldn’t just keep on going like this. This wasn’t the Sahara Desert.

  […]

  He couldn’t get any fish until the pond filled up. He couldn’t feed any fish until he got some fish. It was taking too long and it was getting worse than waiting for Christmas when you were a kid. Not that he ever got much for Christmas when he was a kid. An orange, if he was lucky. Maybe a sucker. Times were hard back then. Back in the thirties. He never would have thought he’d have made it this far. He’d figured something would get him before now, a bull, somebody’s husband. But nothing had, and he was still going. He didn’t know how much longer his wife could keep going. He wouldn’t be surprised if he woke up one morning and found her cold beside him. He’d been looking for that, in fact. Another stroke could take her out. He’d seen it. Damn pills didn’t do no good if you didn’t take them. And she said she didn’t care if she lived or died anyway. She’d been that way ever since Raif died. He didn’t feel that way. He never had felt that way. No matter how bad he’d felt in other ways. He wanted to keep on going and everybody else could do whatever they wanted to, long as they just left him the hell alone.

  He’d been looking around for fresh sign of the trailer kid in the bottom of the pond, in the undisturbed dirt, but there was nothing new, just the old circle of tracks he’d found just before he’d seen the kid. He didn’t really feel bad about yelling at the kid to get the hell off his place, but in another way he kind of wished he hadn’t done it. Hell, he was just a kid. He remembered how he was when he was a kid. Into everything. Mean as a yard dog. But it wasn’t any wonder, the way he was raised. It was hard coming up back then. They didn’t have any of this shit they had now. All this crap on the damn TV. They didn’t have ti
me to watch TV. They didn’t have no damn TV. And besides that they had to work. You couldn’t just sit around on your ass all day and half the night and watch a bunch of jerkoffs in a box. You had to have some food and you had to raise it. Pigs and goats and cows and chickens and peas and corn and beets and sweet potatoes and tomatoes and beans and okra and squash and watermelons and peppers and you had to milk a cow, too, had to churn your butter, kill your hog on a cold morning, scald him in a barrel of hot water, scrape all the hair off with a dull knife, cut him up and cook out the fat, cure the hams and bacon in the smokehouse. Keep your milk cold in the springhouse. These kids now didn’t know shit. What they did know they got off the damn TV. Looked like all they cared about was getting almost naked and shaking their ass.

  He sat around on the front porch and swatted flies, and picked his tomatoes, and cut his okra every few days, and picked some squash, didn’t really need any more, just had it for the hell of it, was really in a routine of growing it whether they needed it not, and they didn’t, because she couldn’t cook and he wasn’t that crazy about squash anyway unless it was fried and he didn’t know how to do that. He wound up just throwing it over the fence, then cutting down the rest of the plants. They were drying up from lack of rain anyway.

  And then one evening, when he was out in the barn, looking at some old issues of a magazine called Hustler that he’d found down the road in a Dumpster, staying away from his wife, he heard it thunder, far off. He went outside and looked south, and dark rain clouds were grouped down there. It had been sunny all day but now within the last thirty minutes while he’d been looking at pictures of naked women simulating sex acts with vegetables, this bad weather had come up good.