A Miracle of Catfish

by Larry Brown

  Damn. She didn’t look too friendly, did she? Kind of looked at him like she was thinking, Eat some shit and die!

  “Come on, we ain’t got but twenty-seven minutes left,” somebody said behind Jimmy’s daddy, and he turned around to see who it was. It was Snuffy Smith, who worked down on the line, wrapping insulation around stove liners all day long, and he was holding what looked like a damp and thawed-out Lean Cuisine of beef tips and noodles in his hands. Jimmy’s daddy turned back around and saw that there was about six feet between himself and Hootie Pearson, who was just sticking his baloney-and-cheese into the microwave, and Jimmy’s daddy knew that he only warmed it for thirty seconds. Every time. Dependable as clockwork. He had it down to a science. Jimmy’s daddy closed the gap between them and when Hootie finished, Jimmy’s daddy walked on up and stuck his chili in and twisted the dial over to get it piping hot.

  While his chili warmed, Jimmy’s daddy stuck the spoon in his mouth and held it there, his fingers slipped into his front pockets. He looked over at Seaborn and them. They were talking and eating. He knew that Seaborn was probably telling them some lie. He’d been knowing Seaborn for a long time and knew that he’d rather climb a tree and tell a lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth.

  Forty-five seconds later the bell dinged on the microwave and Jimmy’s daddy reached in for it. It was hot, so he had to hold it gingerly and he set it down on the edge of the counter for a moment while he grabbed some napkins from a dispenser and wrapped them around it.

  “Now I got twenty-six minutes left,” Snuffy Smith said, standing there watching his watch and waiting for him to get out of the way.

  “She’s all yours, Snuffy,” Jimmy’s daddy said, around the plastic spoon, and scooped up his chili and made his way over to where Seaborn and them were sitting. They’d left a hole for him to sit in and he set his chili and napkins down with the spoon and told them he had to get a drink and then walked over to the Coke machine. He could see the back of the big-tittied heifer’s blue shirt and her long light brown hair, and he dug down in his pocket for some more change. Shit. He didn’t have but thirty-seven cents left. He had to step over to the dollar changer then. First he had to root through his billfold and look among the crumpled and sweat-soaked ones to try and find one that might be accepted by the machine. This one here in the break room had gotten to where you had to have a pretty dadgum smooth dollar bill or it would spit it back on you. Sometimes you had to put one down on the counter and try to smooth some of the wrinkles out of it, and this was the case with the one Jimmy’s daddy pulled out. He worked on it for a while, unbending the corners, flattening it with his hand and running his hand over it, and by then, when he finally got it to looking a little better, somebody else had already stepped around him and stuck a bill into the machine, which promptly spit it back out. It was Miss Cricket, from down on the line, who put screws into stove parts all day long, hinges and self-cleaning door covers mostly. She was tiny and white haired, couldn’t possibly have weighed over sixty-five pounds and looked mummified. She had a high, nasal voice like somebody on helium. Smoked the hell out of some cigarettes, worked with one in her toothless mouth, blew the fumes out her nose like a small dragon. Favorite footwear: slip-on tennis shoes.

  “Cheap son of a bitch,” she said, and looked up at Jimmy’s daddy. “Why don’t y’all fix this piece a shit?”

  “I don’t know how to fix it,” Jimmy’s daddy said. This was true. Jimmy’s daddy didn’t know how to fix anything much. Collums could probably fix it if he stared at it long enough.

  The old lady worked on her bill some, straightening it in her veined and knobby hands, smoothing it, stretching the wrinkles from it. Then she looked back up at him, her watery blue eyes enormous behind her glasses.

  “Why not? You in Maintenance, ain’t you?”

  She stuck the bill back in the machine.

  “Yes’m,” Jimmy’s daddy said, “but I don’t know how to fix no dollar changer.”

  The machine spit the bill back out. Jimmy’s daddy looked up and saw the big-tittied heifer eating a spoonful of what looked like maybe vegetable soup. She chewed and then laughed at something one of the dumpy girls was saying. He wondered how long they’d all known each other.

  “Have you got change of a dollar?” Miss Cricket said. She was looking at Jimmy’s daddy with a hopeful expression.

  “Not me,” Jimmy’s daddy said. “If I had change of a dollar I wouldn’t be standing here in line to get change of a dollar.”

  “Well shit,” she said. “Have you got a good dollar bill you can swap out with me?”

  Jimmy’s daddy held out the one he was holding. It was pretty sad.

  “This one’s about the best one I got. And it ain’t good.”

  Miss Cricket leaned over and looked at it. She examined it closely and then looked at hers. Then back again.

  “Dang, looks like somebody’s wiped their ass with that one. I’ll just go get fifty cents from Doris.”

  She stuck her dollar in her pocket and hurried away. Jimmy’s daddy walked up to the dollar changer and very carefully started threading it in. The whole idea, he thought, was to keep it good and flat until the rollers kicked in and caught it and pulled it on in. He felt the pull. He held on to it for a second, just to put a little tension on the bill while the rollers were pulling on it, and then he turned loose. The bill rolled right on into the machine and it spit four quarters back out. Jimmy’s daddy grinned and got them in his hand and walked around the corner to the Coke machine, which happened to be directly behind the big-tittied heifer who was now laughing and telling some story that sounded like it was about a picnic. Jimmy’s daddy didn’t look at her this time. He wasn’t going to stare at her this time. He was just going to listen to her. He put two of the quarters into the coin slot and stood there for a few moments, acting like he was trying to make up his mind what kind of drink he wanted and listening to the new girl.

  “And so we went up this dirt road, and it had all these funky-looking … I don’t know what they were. Buildings,” she said, and laughed again. “But I’m telling you, I was glad to get the hell out of there.”

  Jimmy’s daddy wondered who we was and wondered if she had a boyfriend and heard the two dumpy girls laughing and he pushed the button for a Coke. Nothing happened. He pushed it again. Zero. Piece of shit! He looked at his watch. He’d already been in the break room for almost ten minutes and now he only had about twenty-something minutes left to eat and smoke and shoot the shit with Seaborn and them. And his damn chili was getting cold.

  He mashed the button for the coin return and his two quarters rattled down into the plastic tray. He instantly put them back in, like a sucker feeding a slot machine. He pushed the button for a Coke and nothing came out.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, and he heard a girl laugh behind him. He didn’t look around, though, because he didn’t have any way of knowing if they were laughing at him not being able to get a Coke out of the machine or not. They might be laughing at something they were talking about. Hell, they might be laughing about something that happened last summer. Or at the senior prom. His face turned red anyway and he felt it. Damn it, he hated for his face to turn red!

  He waited until his face turned back to not red and pushed the Coke button and nothing happened again. So he pushed the button for the coin return. Nothing happened. Son of a bitch! He whammed it pretty good a couple of times with his fist.

  “That old machine don’t work half the time,” somebody said behind him, and he looked around to see who was talking. It was one of the dumpy girls. She was sitting beside the new girl, and both of them were turned around looking at him. The new girl was chewing, and she looked at Jimmy’s daddy with what he saw as thinly veiled disgust. […]

  “It won’t gimme me my money back,” he said, looking at the new girl while he said it. She was still chewing, and then she swallowed. Then she turned back around. The dumpy girl got up and came over. Jimmy’s daddy was
n’t sure what her name was. She worked down in Porcelain, kept a mask over her face most of the day, and sprayed liquid porcelain on stove interiors that were coming by hanging on hooks. He saw her down there pretty often since he had to walk all over the plant to work on this or that.

  “It took my money last week,” she said. “But the Coke man’ll give you your money back if you leave him a note.”

  She looked up at Jimmy’s daddy. Her hair was kind of frizzy and long and she had a wide face that was powdered heavily. She looked like she had painted her lips on.

  “I got a pen in my purse. You want to leave him a note?”

  Jimmy’s daddy cut his eyes past her briefly to see if the big-tittied heifer had turned her head to listen to their conversation, but she hadn’t. She didn’t appear to be interested in what was being said between Jimmy’s daddy and the dumpy girl. But the dumpy girl was smiling up at him in a way that made him wonder if she was the one they were talking about who had given somebody the blow job in the parking lot. How the hell would he find out? And would she be able maybe to introduce him to the heifer? Because he saw now that her beauty was so great that he wouldn’t be able to work up the guts to just nonchalantly walk up to her and toss off some bullshit. He needed an introduction.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Jimmy’s daddy said.

  The dumpy girl never had stopped smiling and she stepped back over to the table and said something to the other girls and they giggled, the heifer, too, then the dumpy girl picked up her purse and brought it over and started digging through its contents. Jimmy’s daddy was looking over the top of her head at the back of the new girl. She was still eating and now she was listening to some story the other dumpy girl was telling, and nodding a lot, and saying, “Um hum,” and picking up some cookies and biting into them. She had a box of milk. She had a blue purse with red and yellow cloth flowers sewn onto it. She had tight blue jeans and sandals. Maybe she was a college woman.

  “Here’s the pen,” the dumpy girl said, and pulled out a black-and-white Bic missing the cap. She handed it to Jimmy’s daddy and he stood there watching her paw through her purse.

  “I need to get on and eat,” Jimmy’s daddy said, and the dumpy girl looked up while still pawing.

  “I got a piece of paper in here I know,” she said. “I see you around the plant a lot,” she said. “You used to be in Spot-Welding, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Jimmy’s daddy said. “I’m in Maintenance now.”

  “I know,” she said. “I see you working on them Towmotors and things. I bet you know a lot about lubrication. That sure was bad about John Wayne Payne, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it was,” Jimmy’s daddy said. He wished to hell people would stop mentioning it to him, about how bad it was. About fifty people had already said something to him about him accidentally crushing John Wayne Payne, although almost all of them said how they understood that it wasn’t totally his fault. But none of that made a shit. By then he was wishing to hell he never had come over here and gotten into all this. She was still looking through her purse and pushing things aside.

  “He gimme a lift one time,” she said.

  “Do what?”

  She looked up. “Gimme a lift. On my Mercury. I had a flat at lunch one day and he drove his lift right out in the parking lot and picked it up while some fellers changed it for me. Ate his baloney sandwich with one hand. I know I got a piece of paper in here.”

  “That’s okay,” Jimmy’s daddy said, and tried to hand her back the pen. “I got to go eat before my lunch break gets over.”

  She stopped pawing through her purse and took the pen back and stuck it in there.

  “What about your fifty cents?” she said. “Don’t you want it back?”

  “I’ll just get it from the Coke guy next time I see him,” Jimmy’s daddy said, and started to turn away.

  “Well,” she said. “It was nice talking to you.”

  And then she stuck her hand out.

  “My name’s Lacey,” she said. “I already know your name.”

  “Aw yeah?” Jimmy’s daddy said. He shook her hand and then dropped it. “How’d you know my name?”

  “Asked somebody,” she said. “I live down at Water Valley. You ever get down there?”

  “Well, naw,” Jimmy’s daddy said. “I don’t get down there much. I went to the Watermelon Festival one time back when I was a kid. Did you ever go to it?”

  “Shoot. My sister Loretta was Watermelon Queen one year. I live on Church Street,” she said. “One eleven Church. I always have some cold beer around if you ever down there and want to come by for some.”

  Some what? Jimmy’s daddy wondered. “Uh. Well,” he said.

  “My house is easy to find. It’s on Church and if you going up from Main Street it’s the fifth house on the right.”

  “Oh yeah?” he said. Damn. She wasn’t shy, was she?

  “I’d be glad to draw some directions. If I could find some paper.”

  She grinned. She had a few teeth missing, but the ones she had were okay. Jimmy’s daddy didn’t have a whole set of teeth himself.

  “We could drank five or six beers.” She giggled slightly.

  “Well, uh,” Jimmy’s daddy said. Did she say 111 Church?

  “I stay up late,” she said.

  He would have talked to her some more, but he had to go eat.

  “Specially on the weekends,” she added.

  “Okay. Well. Maybe I’ll see you sometime,” Jimmy’s daddy said.

  “I sure hope so,” she said. She wasn’t making any effort to move. Then she said, “But I’ll let you go eat your lunch. I wouldn’t want you to get hungry and go all weak on me.”

  “Okay. Take it easy.”

  “You, too.”

  By the time Jimmy’s daddy got back to the table where Seaborn and the Tool-and-Die guys were sitting, he figured his chili was cold and he still didn’t have a Coke. He was kind of pissed off. He sat down and looked at his watch and saw that he only had seventeen minutes left on his lunch break.

  “What the hell you doing?” Seaborn said.

  “Aw, the damn Coke machine,” Jimmy’s daddy said, and picked up his spoon. He stirred his chili a little and dipped his spoon in and took a bite. It was barely warm. Some orange grease was standing in tiny puddles in there. And now three or four people were standing in front of the microwave, maybe warming up pies they’d brought from home. Some of the ladies in the plant did that, brought cakes or pies from home and warmed the pies up in the microwave and shared them with the other ladies in the plant who worked in their sections, or even just people they knew. He didn’t think it was worth getting in line and waiting all over again.

  “Looked to me like you’s over there tryin to get you some,” Seaborn said with a grin, and the Tool-and-Die guys grinned across the table, too.

  “I don’t think so,” Jimmy’s daddy said, and took another halfway warm bite of his chili. He was about to get pissed off now. If he had a goddamn wife who’d get up and fix him some lunch, he wouldn’t be going through this shit right now. But hell naw, she couldn’t do that. She had to go back to bed for another hour after she got the kids off to school. And they weren’t even in school now. So she didn’t even get up as early as she did the other nine months of the year. She just slept later all summer, like she was doing now. Didn’t have to be at the bank until nine. So she stayed up later. Watched HBO and Showtime and Cinemax and he didn’t know what all else. He had to go to bed. But she didn’t. Couldn’t get up and fix him a nice lunch that he could sit down and enjoy. Oh no. He had to get some chili from a machine. In a can about big enough to feed a small dog. And chili just wasn’t good if it wasn’t hot. It didn’t taste the same.

  He sat there and ate it anyway. Seaborn was telling the Tool-and-Die guys the story about the skunk causing him to knock his front teeth out, and he wished to hell he had a Coke. A glass of lemonade. Water. Anything.

  It looked like most people had already fin
ished eating. Lots of them were throwing their empty lunch sacks into the garbage cans and pushing open the double glass doors to go outside in the parking lot and sit in their cars for a few minutes or smoke or talk to people. He looked down at the little can of chili. He didn’t even want the shit now. Cold as hell. The whole damn thing was about to put him in a bad mood. And he hated to get in a bad mood at work. If he got in a bad mood at work, it always meant he’d be in a bad mood when he got home. And he hated to be in a bad mood when he got home. It messed everything up. […]

  He didn’t finish his chili. He just dropped the spoon in the can and wiped his mouth with one of the napkins and reached into his pocket for a cigarette while reaching for one of the butt-strewn ashtrays sitting nearby on the table. He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and pulled his disposable cheapo lighter from his shirt pocket and struck it, but it didn’t light. He struck it again. And again and again and again. It didn’t light.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said. This son of a bitch ought not be out of lighter fluid already. He’d just bought it down at the store the other day. They’d had a whole plastic bucket of them sitting on the counter for fifty cents apiece. It was one day when he’d come by and there weren’t over two or three vehicles sitting out there, no delivery trucks, and he’d turned in just to grab some smokes without having to go to town. He’d grabbed one while he was getting some smokes and a cheeseburger. Last weekend was when it was. Oh. It was right before he went and picked up Seaborn and Rusty. Just before they’d taken Jimmy swimming.