A Miracle of Catfish

by Larry Brown

  32

  A Tommy’s Big Red Fish Truck sat in front of the fancy double-wide, whose neat deck and shady porch held thick leafy ferns in pots and a variety of tropical plants. All the flower beds were mulched and free of grass, and the big red truck was dusty from the road. The left front tire was almost halfway down.

  There was some kind of notice on a flimsy piece of pink paper tucked beneath one of the windshield wipers, but it had been rained on and the ink had smeared and there were rain spots in the dust on the truck.

  On a hill behind the trailer, five well-manicured ponds were scattered down its length, each of them connected to the other by pipes and pumps. The big hatchery barn down below them stood quiet under the sun. A lot of white fluffy clouds were drifting very slowly in the sky.

  Inside the double-wide, muffled by the walls, the phone rang. It was shrill and insistent, and it sat there ringing, maybe twenty times. It stopped. In the front lawn were some ten-year-old pecan trees, mere babies compared with the leafy giants standing down behind the trailer.

  The phone started ringing again and it kept ringing constantly until it had been ringing for ten minutes. It finally stopped and then there was nothing to hear again but the something-like-whispering noise green leaves made from breeze in the trees.

  Up in the sky above all this a bald eagle soared in the blue void, its wide brown wings white tipped and flared for the thermal updraft he was surfing. He circled as he soared, ever lifting, so small he became not much more than a speck. And then he leveled off and began a gradual glide that curved and came back over the land behind the trailer. He was coming fast and he was getting lower all the time. He untucked his talons just before he touched the top of the bream pond, making a thin splash, and without actually slowing down much he flapped his wings and pulled back up, droplets of shiny water falling from the fat and still-flopping bluegill, little diamonds of just a wink of light as the eagle climbed with him, the long feathers gliding them through the air, until they became smaller and smaller and then flew away into the solid blue above the green line of trees that overlooked that part of Arkansas.

  33

  Cortez sat there and listened to the phone ring. After it rang four times, somebody picked up and said hello. A man.

  “Uh, yeah,” Cortez said. “This is Cortez Sharp over here in Oxford, Mississippi, and I wanted to talk to the fish man if I could.”

  The man on the other end laughed just a little.

  “This is him,” he said. “Or what’s left of him. I’m Tommy Bright, but I’m just about out of business.”

  Cortez was alarmed to hear that. He’d been calling for a couple of days, trying to get somebody to answer the phone number Toby Tubby had given him, and this was the first time somebody had.

  “Well dang, I hate to hear that,” Cortez said. “I got your number from a friend of mine who works at the Co-op in town. They said they didn’t know when you’s gonna come back.”

  Cortez heard some kind of noise on the other end of the phone. It sounded like a door slamming.

  “Yes sir, well, I’ve had some trouble and it looks like the bank’s gonna foreclose on me next week. I’ve done let most of my help go. All I’ve got on hand is some small catfish right now. Are you interested in some of them?”

  “Some little catfish is exactly what I need,” Cortez said, and some hope began to rise in his heart. He didn’t want to ask the man why he was going out of business because that wasn’t any of his business. All he wanted was some fish. He didn’t give a shit about the rest of it.

  “How many you got?” Cortez said.

  The man paused for a moment as he thought.

  “I think I got two thousand four inch and a thousand eight inch left. I got em in some tanks in my barn. How many catfish were you wanting, Mr. Sharp?”

  “I don’t rightly know,” Cortez said. “My friend said you can put a thousand to an acre. Is that right?”

  “Yes sir, that’s how we figure it when we custom stock a large pond. How many acres is yours?”

  “It’s about a acre and a half,” Cortez said. “But it ain’t filled all the way up yet. It’s a new pond.”

  “How deep’s your water?”

  “It’s nine foot or better in the middle.”

  “Aw, why, you’re okay,” Tommy Bright said. “Let me figure just a minute. You sure called at a good time cause I need to get rid of these last fish. Let me … just a second.”

  “Okay,” Cortez said, and just listened. There wasn’t much to hear. There was a radio or a TV playing. Some music. Shitfire. He might wind up with some fish after all. He was going to have to get the guy to bring them, though. He wondered what a custom pond was. Maybe he customized the fish to fit the pond. He wondered how soon he could come and bring the fish. It’d be nice if he could do it today. But he probably couldn’t do it today.

  “You need any bream, Mr. Sharp? I got some in one of my ponds and I need to get rid of them. They’re hybrid, grow to a pound and a half in about a year or two. They’re great fish for grandkids.”

  “I ain’t got no grandkids,” Cortez said, wishing like hell he did.

  “I see,” Tommy Bright said. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Mr. Sharp. Uh. I hate to ask you this, but can you pay me in cash?”

  “Shit yeah,” Cortez said, thinking of the barn dough, stashed.

  “Okay. I get twenty-nine dollars a hundred for my four-inch catfish. That’d be … five eighty if you want all those four-inchers. On the big ones, the eight inch, I get seventy-nine dollars a hundred on them. That’d … be … seven ninety on them…say eight hundred and six hundred. These eight inch, now, if you’ll get you some feed and feed em regular, you’ll have some big enough to eat before long. I got to charge you a little something to deliver from Arkansas. It’s six hours. But I’ll do you right. So let’s see. Mr. Sharp, I’ll bring these fish right to your pond and put em in for fifteen hundred dollars cash. That’s two thousand four-inch, one thousand eight-inch channel catfish. If your pond’s going to be eighteen feet deep it won’t hurt to put that many in there. What do you say?”

  “I say bring em on,” Cortez said. “When can you come?”

  “How about Friday?” Tommy Bright said.

  “Friday’s fine,” Cortez said.

  “Okay. Now let me ask you this. Have you got a good road going to your pond? My truck’s really heavy when it’s loaded with water and I hate to get it stuck. Last time I stuck it I had to get a dozer in there and we snapped three log chains before we got it out.”

  Shit. He hadn’t thought about that. Of course it was heavy. Water was heavy as hell. And he’d have a lot of it for three thousand fish. Three thousand catfish! Imagine what that was going to look like!

  “Well, I ain’t got much of a road in there to it,” Cortez said. “It’s just a old log road that goes up through the woods. If it’s dry I can drive my pickup in there to it.”

  “Is it muddy now?”

  Was it muddy now? After all this rain? Shit, yeah, it was muddy.

  “It is right now,” Cortez said.

  “Well,” Tommy Bright said, and Cortez could almost see him maybe thinking about backing out. “That ain’t good.”

  “I tell you what I’ll do,” Cortez said. “I’ll call the gravel company right now and tell em to bring me out some pit run and grade it smooth. You won’t get stuck on that stuff.”

  “You think they could do it by Friday?” Tommy Bright said.

  “They will if they want any of my money,” Cortez said. “I aim to have them fish. My daughter wants to come over and catch some of em. She lives in Atlanta.” He started to add, And lives with a retard. But he didn’t. Wasn’t any need in getting too personal with this fish guy.

  “Okay, then, Mr. Sharp. I’ll plan on being there sometime Friday afternoon. I’ve made that run to Oxford plenty of times, but if you’ll give me directions to your house, I’ll call you on my cell phone when I get to Oxford and let you know I’m there, and
if I have any trouble finding your place, I’ll just call, okay?”

  “That sounds mighty good,” Cortez said.

  “Okay, then. I got my pencil. Tell me how to get there.”

  Cortez told him. Promised to be sitting by the phone Friday.

  As soon as he hung up with the fish man, Cortez got out the phone book and started looking through the yellow pages. Dirt. Sand. Gravel. That’s what he was looking for. What he was really looking for was a picture of a dump truck. When he found one, he folded the pages back and set it down and dialed the number. It rang three times and then some woman answered. She had a very sexy voice.

  “Rebel Gravel, this is Reba,” she said lazily. “How may I help you?”

  “Y’all got any pit run over there?” Cortez said.

  “Pardon me?” the woman said.

  “Pit run,” Cortez said. “I need some pit-run gravel.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that,” the woman said. There was a lot of noise behind her and Cortez could plainly hear some guy yelling, “Warren? Y’all git out of them goddamn culverts fore you crawl up on a snake! I done told you little shits!”

  “Y’all don’t sell that?” Cortez said.

  “Well we sell sand and gravel and clay gravel and washed gravel and pea gravel but I don’t think we’ve got any pit-run gravel. I never heard of it if we do.”

  “It’s that stuff that sets up like concrete,” Cortez said.

  “Oh you mean clay gravel?” the woman said.

  “Does it set up hard like concrete?” Cortez said.

  “Yes, it does,” the woman said. “Excuse me just a minute.”

  It sounded like she put her hand over the phone, but she must not have put it over it very well because Cortez could hear her yelling, “Clay, would you get him off that backhoe before he kills himself?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, when she took her hand off the phone. “My sister’s kids are here from Peoria and they’re about to drive my husband crazy. Now you want some clay gravel, right?”

  “If it sets up like concrete I do,” Cortez said.

  “How much do you need?” she said.

  “I don’t know. Enough to build a road.”

  “How long of a road?”

  Cortez had to think. More than a hundred feet. Might be close to two hundred feet. Enough to come from the dirt road where the dozer dude had unloaded down the hill to the pond.

  “I’m just guessing,” Cortez said. “I’d say maybe two hundred feet. Enough to come down to my pond. I need a road built for the fish guy to come on Friday.”

  “Maybe I’d better let you talk to my husband,” the woman said. “Hold on just a minute, please.”

  It sounded like she put the phone down. He could hear some kids screaming and the woman yelling at them and the man yelling at them and then he heard the woman say, “If you gonna take that tone with me I’ll go my ass straight to the house and watch TV and you can answer your own damn phone!” and then the phone was picked up and a man said, “This is Clay.”

  “Hey,” Cortez said. “This is Cortez Sharp and I need some clay gravel brought over and put out on the road to my pond. And I need it by Friday. Can you do that?”

  “Yes sir, I sure can,” the man said. “How much you need?”

  “I don’t know,” Cortez said. “I’d say it’s about two hundred feet long.”

  “Well, give me some directions to your house,” the man said, and Cortez did.

  Cortez had to tear down his little hog-wire go-kart barrier to let the dirt men in, and it took six truckloads to do it right, but by late afternoon they were nearly done. Cortez stood under the shade of the last monster white oak and watched the man on the dozer shaping and smoothing the new red road that snaked its way down from the dirt road that fronted his property to the pond. The man and his nephew had made a good sort of parking lot at the lip of the pond, so that it was easy to park right beside the bank.

  When they finished he paid the man, and they loaded their dozer, and the man got back into his dump truck, and his nephew climbed into the truck pulling the low boy that held the dozer, and they left, black smoke pouring from their exhaust pipes.

  Cortez stood there, looking at it. It was mighty fine. He’d have to put a gate up to keep people from being able to drive in to it. Later.

  Here’s what he’d do: He’d go get one of those steel garbage cans with a tight-fitting lid and he’d put it right here next to the bank. Then he’d go to the Co-op and get some fish feed. It might be a good idea to just go ahead and go to town tomorrow and get the feed so that Friday when the fish man got here and put all the fish in, he could go ahead and start feeding them right away. Make them feel welcome.

  He was so excited about the fish coming that he wanted to talk to somebody about it when he got back home, but he didn’t know who to call. He’d already called Toby and told him. He thought about calling Lucinda and telling her, but he didn’t know if it would make him look bad to be so excited about some catfish he was getting when they’d just buried his wife and her mother a few weeks back. So he didn’t call her.

  Ham didn’t ruin very fast and he was still eating some of it from the fridge, although he’d whittled his way through most of it. He fried a few pieces of it for supper and fried some potatoes that he peeled and cut up. He used a Fry Daddy he found with some cooking oil already in it in a cabinet. He sliced a pretty tomato. He mixed a glass of instant iced tea and then took his supper into the living room to eat it while he watched TV. It was strange. As much as he used to hate the TV, probably from hearing it played so loudly all the time, day and night, now, when he could pick and choose whatever he wanted to watch, he was getting to where he liked the TV. There was a lot of good stuff on it. They had hunting and fishing shows. He’d already watched one bass show and one elk show.

  He sat down with his plate in his lap and set his tea on the table and picked up the remote. He was getting pretty good with it, too. He was starting to learn the names of the channels and the numbers that represented them. The Western Channel was 326. The guy who used to play Chester on Gunsmoke was the host on that channel. Then they had all those National Geographic shows. They had snake shows, lion shows, elephant shows, crocodile shows, all kinds of shows. There was a lot to choose from, and there was rarely a channel that didn’t have anything on it. It wasn’t like the old days, when stations went off the air late at night. Now there was always something on. It might not be something you wanted to watch, like people selling jewelry, but if you kept pushing the button on the remote, you could eventually find something to watch no matter what time it was.

  Shit. He forgot to get a knife to cut up his ham. But he hadn’t sliced it very thick and could cut it with his fork so he did, and held the remote out in front of him and aimed it at the TV. He pushed the button and it came on. CNN News. More shit getting blowed up. More killing. He pushed the button and then took a bite of ham. He cut off a piece of tomato.

  He was kind of looking for that old woman’s sex show, because sometimes women called in and asked interesting questions. […] There was some man speaking at a podium. There was some sports news. A baseball game. Some baseball scores. An old World War II movie. A World War II documentary on Hitler. A documentary on Vietnam. A naked man and a naked woman on a couch. Cortez stopped right there. He took a sip of his tea. This was the channel he’d been looking for. What number was it? He backed up the remote to check: 517. Okay. He’d remember that. Then he flipped it forward again and kept eating his supper while he watched the man and the woman panting and rocking against each other. The woman was slinging her hair around. He raised the volume a little.

  “Oh baby,” the woman was saying. She was blonde and had some kind of bosoms that didn’t look exactly natural. They were way too big for her, for one thing, and the skin on them looked like it was stretched so tight they might explode. They didn’t look like real bosoms to Cortez, who’d seen a lot of them.

  “Oh yea
h,” the man was saying. He was a muscleman and he was whamming at her from behind. He didn’t look too excited.

  “Holy shit,” Cortez said, chewing his ham. He watched them until they finished and then it switched to an office scene where everybody had their clothes on, so he picked up the remote and started looking for something else to watch. He was getting kind of full although he hadn’t put that much on his plate. It seemed like the older he got, the less he could eat. He could remember a time when he could sit down and polish off almost two whole plates of catfish and hush puppies and green onions, but that was when he had been a young man and needed a young man’s intake. Back when he was still plowing a pair of mules, before he ever bought his first tractor. And it hadn’t been much. A little old John Deere 40, a two-cylinder, but it had planters and a disk and you could raise a cotton crop with it. He raised four before he traded for a bigger one. And he never had bought another brand of tractor. He’d owned six and every one of them had been a John Deere. He took one more bite of ham and then put his fork in his plate and set it on the table. He took another sip of his tea.

  […]

  He turned the volume down and got up with his plate and his glass and carried them back to the kitchen. He raked the food off the plate into the garbage and poured the rest of the watery tea down the drain and set the glass and the plate and fork in the sink.

  He went out the back door and looked at the sky. It was clear, gray fading to black, a few pink streaks fading along with it. The leaves on the big pecans were still and he could hear a bobwhite calling. Some lightning bugs were dancing in the air out by the equipment shed and he pulled up a chair to sit in the yard for a while. The days were already shortening and he knew those kids down the road would be going back to school pretty soon. A long time ago when Raif was a kid, the county would let the kids out of school so they could help their parents pick cotton. But those days were long gone. Now they taught schoolkids with computers. He couldn’t believe how much the world had changed.

  He heard a dog bark somewhere far off and in the distance a gun fired. What was somebody shooting at this time of day? Evening? Kids probably. He saw them running up and down the roads on their four-wheelers. He’d seen some of them come up his road in a line.