A Miracle of Catfish

by Larry Brown

  He stood there looking at what he’d done. What would it hurt to let the kid come over and fish once he got some fish? Nothing. It wouldn’t hurt a damn thing. How could it hurt anything?

  He’d parked his truck near the road and he had to walk back to it. He took the Thompson with him and stuck it under the seat. He dropped it off at the barn and hid it in the trunk again, and then he turned the truck toward Old Dallas and drove that way. It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. He knew he was still up, this early. He just hoped he wasn’t drinking. But there was a pistol in the glove box just in case.

  He could see a light on inside the house when he drove up in the yard and turned his headlights off and shut off the truck. The pistol was a little .32 and he stuck it in the pocket of his overalls when he got out.

  He wasn’t ever going to clean all this shit up. That ’59 Chevy had been sitting there with chickens nesting in it for at least twenty years. And a tree had grown out through the windshield of that Dodge pickup. Old refrigerators. Fifty-five-gallon barrels crammed full of trash. Rotten cardboard boxes full of bottles and fruit jars. Old tires piled up for safekeeping. Firewood long rotted stacked against trees in the yard. It was a wonder he didn’t have termites. He probably did.

  Two dogs growled at him from beneath the porch and he heard somebody inside the house say something. Then the door opened and he could see Cleve standing there in his undershirt and overalls, peering out at him. He was a very small man.

  “You up?” Cortez said, and stopped just short of the porch.

  “Hey, is that … ? Yes sir, I’m up, Mister Cortez.”

  And he came on out on the porch and pulled the door partway shut behind him.

  “Shut up, dogs,” he said, and they hushed.

  Cortez stood there waiting. Cleve’s little pickup and a strange car were parked beside the house. And the house wasn’t really a house, just something Cleve had made to live in. Part of it was made of blocks and part of it was made from sheets of tin, and the roof was patched together from asphalt shingles and wood shingles and some of it had a couple of sheets of Visqueen tacked over it. He wondered if that soldier was here.

  “What you know?” Cleve said. He leaned up against a post and struck a match to his cigarette. Cortez saw it light the stubble on his chin and then he blew the match out and tossed it into the yard.

  “You want some fresh deer meat?” Cortez said. “

  Yes sir,” Cleve said. “I been looking for you. I figured it was about time.”

  “They down there in the pea patch,” Cortez said. “It ain’t too bad wet.”

  “How many is it?” Cleve said, and Cortez saw the tip of his cigarette glow red when he drew on it.

  “Seven big ones and two little ones,” he said.

  “Good Godamighty,” Cleve said. He sat down in a chair and reached for the boots he’d left beside the door and started pulling them on.

  “They won’t last long in this hot weather,” Cortez said.

  “Yes sir. That’s right. I’ll get em on out a there right now,” Cleve said. “I know a guy’s got a big cooler we can hang em in till I can get em all skint. I’ll make Montrel get up and help me.”

  Cortez stood there. He didn’t know what else to say. He’d been knowing Cleve since he was a kid. And Cleve didn’t know about the things he’d done. He didn’t think he knew about Queen. Why of course he didn’t. Nobody knew all that but Cortez. Maybe God, if God knew all things. God was who he was going to have to answer to. He knew that. If there was a hell, Cortez was absolutely sure that he was going there. That’s where they sent people like him.

  He turned to go and stopped. He turned back around and spoke toward the porch.

  “You don’t know nobody that needs a good wheelchair do you?”

  31

  Lord God, this weather was fine for riding around. If it just wasn’t Sunday again. It had been a pretty good weekend, though. Johnette had been gone somewhere, which was fine. He’d caught three crappie and four bream and one catfish out of a pond that he and Seaborn had snuck into. They’d tried to get Rusty to go with them, but he’d said he was going up to Memphis to see the Boat and Tractor Show at the Mid-South Coliseum.

  He guessed he should have carried Jimmy fishing with him. But hell. You didn’t want a bunch of kids hanging around and talking and needing help baiting their hooks and taking fish off and asking a million questions when you were trying to just take it easy and drink some beer and hang out with one of your buddies. He’d take Jimmy when the old man’s pond filled up and he got some fish in there. Johnette said the old man’s wife had died.

  Jimmy’s daddy tossed an empty beer can over the roof of the car with his left arm, trying to hit a road sign, but he missed it by six feet. He got a fresh one from the cooler and popped the top on it. He was running kind of low on cigarettes, but he hadn’t wanted to stop by the store. He’d driven by there earlier in the evening, and it had been so crowded he hadn’t wanted to pull in. Four or five cars lined up on each side of the gas pumps. Jeeps and pickups parked everywhere. Folks standing around out front. It might have taken twenty or thirty minutes to get a pack of cigarettes. So what he’d done was just pace himself on his smokes. He’d only allowed himself one every fifteen minutes, which wasn’t easy when you were drinking beer, and that had lasted for a long time, but now he had only four left, and he was going to have to make a decision about where to go get some more. It was a long way to town. And the cops sometimes had those roadblocks put up. He didn’t want to drive through a roadblock because he’d been drinking all afternoon and didn’t really know how many he’d sipped his way through. Maybe seven or eight. Maybe nine or ten. He wasn’t drunk, no sir, no way, but still. The cops were strict about that shit. They’d say you were drunk when you really weren’t. And they had the law on their side. If you tried to argue with them, that would just make it worse. And if you got in court, it was your word against theirs. Plus now they had those video cameras on the dashboards of their patrol cars. He sipped again. It was hard to stop thinking about John Wayne Payne. Especially the blood.

  He’d been toying with the idea of riding down to Water Valley. Find a store down there and get some cigarettes. And while he was down there, he thought he might just cruise up Church Street and look around. What was her name? Lacey. Hell. Why not?

  He knew there was a store down on Highway 315 because he’d stopped in there one time and gotten some fried chicken gizzards and a big fountain Pepsi. They didn’t sell beer down there. Dry county. You had to drive on down 315 to Panola County and they’d sell you all you wanted down there, just across the county line. That was probably where Lacey bought her beer. The next closest place for cold beer was Grenada, in Grenada County, but you had to get on I-55 to get down there and he didn’t like to get on I-55 when he was drinking because that was where all the state troopers hung out. You had to stay on the back roads. You had to drink and drive responsibly if you were going to drink and drive.

  He wondered what she looked like with her clothes off. A lot of times, you couldn’t really tell what somebody looked like with her clothes off until you got them off and could take a good look at her. […]

  He lit another cigarette, which left him only three. He was going to have to do something pretty fast. Point this son of a bitch toward some place that had his brand of cigarettes. He couldn’t stand to wake up in the morning and not have a cigarette.

  Fucking Monday morning. He wished he was rich and didn’t have to work. Didn’t have to fuck with Collums. The son of a bitch. He wasn’t any better than anybody else. He knew how to fix a lot of shit, yeah, but he wasn’t any better than anybody else. Jimmy’s daddy had just about given up now on getting to meet the big-tittied heifer. He’d about convinced himself that somebody as fine as her was out of his reach. If she was a college student, she was probably fucking some college student. And if she wasn’t a college student, she probably had some boyfriend anyway. Anybody as fine as her wouldn’t be wantin
g for men. Shit no. Anybody as fine as her would probably have men drooling all over her. He knew she was too fine for somebody like him.

  Jimmy’s daddy turned the ’55 around at Old Union Baptist Church, and they were having church. He could see through the glass doors some people sitting in the pews, and somebody in a white shirt and tie standing at the front of the sanctuary talking to them, holding a Bible. Sometimes Jimmy’s daddy had a little voice that whispered inside his head and most times he didn’t pay any attention to it, because it was usually telling him that he was messing up in some way or another. Like right now, while he was turning around in front of the church, the little voice said, Yeah, look at you, riding around drinking beer while other people are in church. And not only that, but you’re also thinking about screwing somebody. And you don’t treat your kid right. Give him shit about drinking the last Coke. Why don’t you just buy some more Cokes, asshole?

  Jimmy’s daddy turned off the voice and made it shut up and just as he was about to pull back into the road, he was nearly run over by a jackedup pickup that came hurtling over the hill, big speakers blasting, whip antennas waving, chrome bumpers and roll bar shining, lights mounted all over with yellow smiley face covers, Yosemite Sam mud flaps that said BACK OFF!, a winch on the front, a metal step hanging from the bottom of the driver’s door, some kid who looked like he was about seven behind the wheel. Jimmy’s daddy slammed on the brakes and skidded in the loose gravel at the edge of the church parking lot, and the truck didn’t even slow down, just kept on hurtling down the road. Where did these damn kids come from? Who bought those big trucks for them?

  He watched the truck roll on up the road and then he looked to make sure nothing was coming before he pulled back out. Then he pulled back out. He thought he’d ride down toward Water Valley. He could be there in twenty minutes. If he only smoked one cigarette every ten minutes he could still have one left by the time he got to the store.

  Lacey answered the door on the first knock. He guessed maybe she’d seen him come up the street in the ’55, since he’d had to drive up and down it a few times before he saw 111 on the front post. He’d pulled the car in beside the house where her Mercury was sitting.

  Jimmy’s daddy thought maybe she was wearing a red negligee before she opened the door because it was one of those with glass in the top half and a thin curtain was hanging over it. So he had a vision of her coming hurrying down the hall in something red, and when she got closer, he was pretty damn sure it was a negligee, and when she pulled the door open he saw that he’d been right. […]

  “I thought I’s gonna have to run out on the front porch to stop you,” she said, and kissed him. To Jimmy’s daddy’s pleasant surprise she was a very good kisser. Her tongue working against his was warm and fat, like a well-fed snake. And then he had a revelation. She was seductive was what she was. He stood there kissing her for a while, and then he pulled back and took a sip of his beer.

  “I still got three twelve-packs of Bud in the fridge if you need one,” she said, looking up at him, pulling his cap off.

  “I think I do,” he said, and kissed her again.

  One a.m. Jimmy’s daddy rolls slowly down the road he lives on with his lights off, guiding it carefully, turning the last curve and turning into his driveway. […] He parks the ’55 and shuts it off. He rolls up his window. The other one is already up. He gets out and doesn’t make a whole lot of noise closing the door. The main thing he’s wondering is if the trailer door is locked. It probably is. It’s a good thing he’s got a key.

  The little dogs come moiling from their little doghouse under the trailer and they hop against his legs, so that he’s wading through dogs, and one thing he’s fearing among many others is that Johnette is going to be sitting up waiting for him, watching TV or something. He hopes she’s in the bed, sound asleep, preferably snoring. If he can just get in the bed without waking her, he won’t have to talk to her until tomorrow afternoon, which will give him some time to rehearse in his mind what he’s going to say about where he’s been tonight.

  He crunches across the gravel and takes the last drink of beer from the can and then tosses it over beside Jimmy’s go-kart, which is pulled up at the corner of the trailer. Jimmy’s not running it now because the chain won’t stay on at all. He needs to fix it. He needs to build a back porch with steps. He needs to get Jimmy’s rotten teeth fixed. And he probably needs to get divorced. But all that shit will have to wait until later. Right now what he needs worse than anything is sleep.

  He goes up the steps. The door is not locked. He goes inside, closes it, locks it. He stands for a moment in the darkness of the living room. There’s not even a lamp on. He can’t hear anything. So he goes down the hall toward his bedroom. The door to that room is open, too. He steps in. Johnette is a dark lump in a dark bed and she’s snoring gently. He takes his cap off and drops it on the floor and then takes his boots off without sitting down, which is hard to do because he’s been drinking so much beer and because he’s tired and because the boots are about half a size too small, but they’re Tony Lama ostrich and he thought they’d stretch eventually, only they didn’t. They hurt his feet every single time he wears them, but they look so damn good on him that he hates not to. Lacey likes them.

  He takes off his shirt, drops it, undoes his belt and his jeans, drops them, steps out of them, and peels off his socks. He kind of needs to pee, but he doesn’t want to make any noise going to the bathroom, so he just slips in under the covers next to her and settles his head carefully on the pillow, listening to her. She’s not moving. Then she does. She rolls over and flings one forearm across his forehead, and he reaches up and moves it. He puts it down by her side. Then he rolls over on his side, away from her. He can hear the little dogs whining underneath the trailer. He wonders if Lacey is asleep. He wonders if she’s dreaming about him.

  He rolls over onto his back and looks at the ceiling. It has those glowing stars plastered over it, but they’re very dim now. He wishes he didn’t have to get up in four and a half more hours. He knows he’s going to be hurting for certain. But it’s unthinkable to miss work. Then he wonders if the alarm clock’s set. Oh shit. What if it’s not? Surely it is. Surely she went ahead and set it before she went to sleep. She sets it every Sunday night so that he can get up in time on Monday morning.

  He lies there and thinks about it. He’ll have to turn on the lamp to see if it’s set or not. He doesn’t want to do that. He doesn’t want to take a chance on waking her up right now. He hasn’t had time to rest. He hasn’t had time to think about what he’s going to say. And he’s too tired to move. So he doesn’t get up and check it. He just lies there until he doesn’t know that he’s lying there anymore.

  The amplified voice of Kenny Chesney singing with Uncle Kracker erupts beside Jimmy’s daddy’s bed in such a volt of surprise that he nearly leaps from under the covers. He gropes for the snooze button and slams his hand down on it, then groans aloud to the blessed silence that follows. It will only stay off for two minutes, and then it will come back on. They’re selling tickets on the radio this week for that concert in Tupelo and Jimmy’s daddy knows how badly Jimmy and the girls want to go. He lies there, trying to go back to sleep. But he has to get up. Go to work. To hell with breakfast. Just getting there on time will be job enough. He moans.

  He doesn’t feel very good. He wishes he didn’t have to get up. He wishes now that he hadn’t drunk all that beer yesterday afternoon and evening. And then the sudden memories of Lacey’s naked body and all the things they did for hours come rushing in. He groans again. It’s still dark in the trailer. He looks at Johnette. She’s asleep on her back, her face turned away from him. What if she wants to eat lunch with him?

  “Two big shows!” the radio screams. “At the Bancorp South Center! Kenny Chesney! Live!”

  Jimmy’s daddy hits the snooze button again and closes his eyes. Oh my God. If he had known he was going to feel like this he would have just stayed home yesterday. All d
ay long. He groans and turns on his side. He’s going to have to get up. He’s going to have to go into the bathroom and turn the light on and piss and shave and find his work clothes and his work boots and put them on and get in the car and go. He isn’t going to have time to make a baloney sandwich. He’ll have to eat another can of that chili. But they’ve put in a sandwich machine now. He thinks it has hamburgers and ham and cheese. Maybe hot dogs. He doesn’t know what else. Salads? With those little packets of dressing? Sausage and biscuits.

  He lies there. Johnette is not moving beside him. He’s going to have to fix his life somehow because it’s not working the way it is. But what’s he going to do? What’s the first move he’s going to make? What’s he going to do today that’s going to be different from yesterday? Why couldn’t he have been born rich?

  Jimmy’s daddy can hear the waking birds when the central air stops running. There’s going to be dew all over the windshield of the ’55, and he’ll have to run his headlights for a while on the way to work. The road will be filled with other cars, in them people all hurrying to town, to work, to jobs, to steady employment, and some of them will be going to the same place he’s going. They’ll be coming from College Hill, from Paris, from Dogtown, from Yocona, from Tula, from Potlockney, from Bay Springs, from Cambridge, from Bruce, from Water Valley. All of them rushing to punch their clocks, start up their machines, work away their lives. He’s doing it, too, and already can feel his life seeping away, one day at a time. It’s enough to make him sick. But it’s nothing new.