by Larry Brown
He put his pick on a little table that stayed beside his chair and rummaged in the cooler beside him and pulled out a dripping Budweiser tall boy and opened it. Usually the sound of a beer opening would bring him out, too. He sat there and sipped it and then set it down. He reached for his Swisher Sweet cigarillos and lit one of them, then sat there smoking it for a bit, picking up his beer once in a while, not worrying about it dripping on the guitar since the Epiphone was old and cracked and wouldn’t be hurt any worse than it already was.
He wished he had some weed. He hadn’t had any weed in so long. Whisky made you mean, he knew that. But some shit a man just had to take care of himself. Like some Yankee nigger son of a bitch coming down here and turning your daughter’s head around and taking her to Memphis and putting ideas in her head, ideas like Chicago was a good place to live, Atlanta’s a good place to live. What was wrong with this place? It was good enough for him. Always had been. Never would have left them two times if it hadn’t been for smart sons of bitches who didn’t understand nothing but a bullet in the mouth. Dumbass niggers. Just what he had in the house right now. She wouldn’t know what happened to him. He’d just be gone. The only thing was, he’d have to listen to her crying.
He heard them go out the back door and he could hear them talking. Then she laughed. Then he laughed. And the son of a bitch ate everything in the house. Didn’t bring nothing in. Nothing. Not even a can of sardines. And his ragged-ass car wouldn’t run half the time. It had a blown head gasket is what it was. Get hot halfway to town every time. He’d ridden in it one time and he wasn’t going to ride in it anymore. Long as his pickup was sitting there he wouldn’t. Car had that nigger perfume all in it. Whew.
He set his Swisher in the ashtray and picked up his pick and his slide.He heard them stop talking. They were listening. Maybe they’d come on around here. He could dig some red worms. He could scratch up some night crawlers right under those oak trees out by the crib. What was he going to tell her? Tell her anything. Tell her somebody came by and her boyfriend caught a ride to town. Where’s he at? Damn if I know.
The sun was still pretty high in the sky, but it was starting to slant in on him, so he moved his chair back a little, sipped his beer some more, and played. After a few minutes they came around the side of the house and stood there looking at him. He stopped playing and pointed to the cooler.
“I got some beer if y’all want a cold one,” he said.
Seretha shook her head, but her boyfriend walked around to the front of the porch and grinned with his two gold teeth. He had on some fancy shirt. Starched jeans and pointy shoes. Kind of shit a pimp wore.
“I think I’ll take you up on that,” he said. His name was Montrel and Cleve didn’t even like his name. He didn’t like anything about him. And he never had. Talked so fancy. Been to thirty-three states. So fucking what?
Montrel reached into the cooler for one of the beers and put the top back on the cooler. He opened the beer and stood there sipping it.
“You want to go fishing?” Cleve said.
Montrel took a sip of his beer and looked around in the direction of the sun. He appeared to be judging it.
“Awful hot,” he said, then lowered his face to the beer, slinging drops of water off his fingers like a woman might.
“I know where they’s a good hole at,” Cleve said. “Full of catfish. I mean full of catfish.”
“Maybe later,” Montrel said. “We were thinking about going to town after while.”
“What in?” Cleve said. “That raggedy-ass Buick ain’t gone make it to town without getting hot.”
Montrel looked at Seretha and she spoke up then.
“Can we use your pickup?” she said. “We won’t be gone long.”
They were up to something. He could tell. The way they talked. The way they looked. The two of them. Plotting together.
“Where you going?” he said.
“Just up to Wal-Mart.
“What you need at Wal-Mart?” he said.
She chewed on her bottom lip. Ever since she’d been a kid she always chewed on her bottom lip before she told a lie.
“I need some women’s stuff,” she said.
“Oh.”
He looked back down at his guitar. Then he looked up. Okay. He’d wait. He’d wait like a spider waits. In prison you learned patience.
“I guess so,” he said. “Don’t burn up all my gas.”
“We won’t,” Montrel said, and turned up his beer. When he took it down he said, “You mind if I get one more for the road?”
“Help yourself,” Cleve told him, and went back to playing.
It was past dark when they came in. He’d already fixed his supper and eaten and he was lying on the couch, watching the black-and-white television. The picture was fuzzy and he wished he had one of those satellite dishes, but he didn’t want one bad enough to have to pay for it. He was about ready to go to bed anyway. He needed to get up in the morning and go down to Banner and see that guy about that puppy. He wasn’t going to pay over a hundred dollars for it.
They went around to the back and went through the kitchen and on into her room. So they wouldn’t have to see him. But where were his keys? He didn’t want to have to get up and go back there and ask for them, but he would if he had to. Women’s stuff? Huh.
He lay there. If her mama hadn’t left, maybe things would have been different. You couldn’t go off for that long and not have things be different. He sure didn’t want to go back to the pen over this simple son of a bitch. Honky-ass white motherfuckers and their horses. Call you old thang. Let that horse slobber on your back while you were bent over picking their cotton. Chopping out their corn. Loading their watermelons.
He heard some music come on. What kind of women’s stuff did they sell at Wal-Mart? And what had taken them so long?
He lifted his whisky bottle and pulled the last dregs from it. Then he capped it and put it on the floor. If it hadn’t been so late, he might have gone to town and gotten another bottle. But he thought he had another one stashed somewhere. Just remembering where it was was the thing. He thought he might have put one out in the pickup in back. Maybe in the floorboard. He didn’t want to lie here and listen to their bedsprings start creaking, like he did so many nights. So he got up in his undershirt and pants and walked to the back door and out into the yard. He stopped and stood there with his bare toes feeling the damp grass.
Lightning bugs were poking little green holes in the dark out beyond the trees that fringed the yard. It was very clear, and the stars were bright in the black sky. A dog yapped somewhere far off and he unbuttoned his trousers and took a leak in the yard, trying not to listen to them in there. They had their music going and that was good for killing their noise.
He walked over to the old pickup once he’d finished and the door squealed when he opened it. He felt around in the glove box but didn’t come up with a half pint of whisky. Maybe he’d already finished it all off. Where else would he have put one? A long time ago when he’d gotten out of the pen for the second time he’d bought a whole case of half pints of Canadian Mist and had stashed them all over the yard, in the hay beneath the chickens’ nests, under the back doorstep, in this old truck. It was hell to go that long without a drink of whisky, and he hadn’t wanted for that to happen again. So he’d stashed some. The same way everybody said Mister Cortez stashed his money in the barn. Talk about a mean-ass white man. That was one son of a bitch you better not cross.
He shut the door on the truck and looked toward the bedroom window. He could see Seretha, and he could see that she was talking. He took a seat on an old chair he sat in sometimes in the afternoons and watched her. She was talking to Montrel, but he couldn’t see him. Then she moved to somewhere else in the room and he couldn’t see her.
She was the last one. The baby. Nineteen. Tyrone wouldn’t never come back here. Neither would Woodrow. He’d lost touch with both of them. Or maybe that was the way they’d wanted it. He missed them,
though. A man missed his sons. He remembered when they were little boys, when he took them fishing. They were good boys. It was probably good that they weren’t here now, to see what he was dealing with.
He kept sitting there in the yard, just listening to the things around him. There were whippoorwills calling out near the road and there were crickets chirping everywhere. Far off somewhere he could hear a vehicle on his road, the road that ran through all the way to Old Dallas.
And then he heard crying. Seretha. What was it now? It was that damn fool. He had to go. Maybe even tomorrow. He’d see. He’d wait. But not too long. He was tired of his shit.
38
Tommy had all the lights turned on in the barn and he had on his apron and rubber boots because he always got wet transferring them out of where they’d been raised. He was putting them in big buckets, about fifty at a time, pulling them out of the bright blue concrete tanks with a long-handled net, and he was trying not to think about them being the last batch. But it wasn’t the end of the world. His life would go on in some form or other. He just wouldn’t be living here anymore. And raising fish. And if he wasn’t raising fish, what would he be doing? Assuming he lost the fifteen hundred. Driving a truck? Framing houses? He had to allow for the possibility of losing. He had to at least be able to eat.
He’d dropped a few of the little catfish on the floor and they were flop-ping around on the wet concrete, and it would have been nice if he’d had some help. But he’d started on his first delivery by himself. He guessed he could finish his last one the same way.
It was slow like this, by himself, taking them a bucket at a time to the truck and setting the bucket on the tailgate and then climbing up and pouring them into the metal tanks where the aerators were running. He had eight tanks on the truck and he was going to use six for the little fish, one for Ursula, and leave one empty for a spare, just in case something happened in her tank on the way. But he didn’t think anything would. As far as he knew, everything was working the way it was supposed to. At five hundred per tank the little fish wouldn’t be any more crowded than they’d been in here all their short lives.
[…] He was going to call Mister Sharp on his cell phone before he left, to let him know he was on his way. It would take him a while to get out to the old man’s pond and unload, and then he guessed he’d spend the night over there somewhere, get a good night’s rest, and bring the truck on back here the next day and leave it. He’d hated to let his new pickup go back, but his old one would run if he put a new battery in it. The last fish truck belonged to the bank now. And they might not like it if they knew he was about to drive it to Mississippi, but that was just tough shit. He still hadn’t figured out how he was going to slip Ursula into the old man’s pond, but he figured he’d come up with something by the time he got over there. Maybe he’d just tell him.
He kept working, going in and out, dipping the buckets full of water, dipping the net full of baby catfish, taking them out, dumping them in the tanks. And how many times had he done this? A thousand? And was Audrey not ever going to call? He would have thought she’d have called by now. And said something. Anything. But she hadn’t. The phone was disconnected now and unless she called him on his cell, she wouldn’t be able to get him. He didn’t know where he was going to go yet. Somebody from the realty office had come out and walked around and looked at everything and appraised all of it, but the man wouldn’t tell him how much it was worth. Said he couldn’t. Bullshit.
Well, he didn’t have anybody to blame but himself. And all the begging she’d done had just been wasted on his ears. She never should have gotten hooked up with him. She deserved somebody better. Somebody who wouldn’t take the chances he had with their money and lose everything. Somebody who wouldn’t promise and promise and promise.
By nine he had all the fish on the truck except for one. He checked them in their tanks, made sure the aerators were working, closed the lids and latched them. He’d stop about an hour down the road and check them, make sure they were all right. His generator had plenty of fuel in it. The truck was washed and full of gas. The low tire on the left front was fixed.
He opened the side doors on the brood house and backed the truck in very carefully and left it running. He had already pushed a sturdy table next to Ursula’s tank and now he got his chain hoist out and grabbed his clawhammer and climbed up on the table and hooked the cable on the hoist over a joist, slanting the braided steel line and then fastening it to the joist on top with some fence staples so that when she came out of the tank and cleared the edge of it she’d swing back over the table, and then he got his sling out and hooked the ropes on one side to the hook on the hoist. A hanging rectangle of canvas. He’d done a lot of work on it, for several nights, working from his drawings. He knew it would work if he could just get it under her and then pull up the other side and fasten it.
There was a drawstring at each end, to close it around her. He climbed down and reached to the bottom outside edge of the tank for the drain plug. It was rusted, and he had to get a pipe wrench off the truck to loosen it. But when he took it out, water started flowing and it drained all over the floor and the flopping little catfish he wasn’t going to pick up. He didn’t care. It wasn’t going to be his mess to clean up anymore. He walked over to the wall and flipped the light switch that killed her aerator. Then it was quiet. Just the water pouring out and lowering in the tank. Oh, the sleepless nights.
He leaned there with his forearms on the top edge of the tank and looked in at her. As big as the tank was, it would take it a while to drain. He went ahead and climbed back up on the truck and opened one of the back tanks, propped the lid open with a stick. Then he climbed back down and waited for the water to drain on down. He’d have to get in there with her. And she was going to raise some hell. He just hoped he could put her in the pond by himself. She’d eat a few of these little ones at first.
When the water level was down to a foot and a half, and her dorsal fin was sticking out, he put the drain plug back in and picked up two short lengths of rubber hose and got into the tank with her. She was splashing a lot of water and it was hard to get her to stay still, but he finally got down on his knees and held her that way while he slipped the rubber hoses over her side fins. He had it in his head to use them for handles to release her.
He stood up and lowered his sling with the chain hoist way down into the bottom of the tank and bent over her again. He started trying to slip it under her, but she splashed mightily and got him soaking wet. He just ignored that and kept working until he slid the canvas beneath her. She splashed water everywhere. He pulled up the other side and laced the ropes together and pulled the drawstrings snug against her on each end. Her side fins folded back and she was in.
He had to stand there and pull on the chain on the hoist with both hands to make her rise vertically against the side of the tank. She did a lot of flopping and slapping at the wall of the tank with her tail, but she was somewhat restricted in her movements by the sling, and all he had to do was keep pulling on the chain. He hoped nobody from the bank drove down here and asked him what the hell he was doing. Somebody would have to get told that it wasn’t any of their business.
He kept working at it and noticed that it was fifteen till ten. She was almost up to the top of the tank and he eyed the table, judging how wide she’d swing when she cleared the edge. He put one hand against the side of the tank and gave the chain a few more pulls, and she lifted dripping from the tank and swung over the table, swaying gently a few times, wriggling, her big wide tail sticking out, and making a grinding noise with her mouth. He raised her a few more inches and then pulled the table out of the way. It had only been there to catch her just in case he dropped her. But she looked like she was safe. He went back and got on the chain with both hands, raising her ever higher, until she was about a foot or two below the joist. He stopped. He tore a couple of paper towels off a roll that was mounted on the wall and wiped his hands. Then he walked around to the d
oor of the truck and climbed up behind the wheel.
He put it in reverse and looked through the back glass. She was not quite centered over the tank but he could sway her a little either way. He backed up slowly, hands and feet careful on the wheel and the clutch and the brake. The thought crossed his mind that if Audrey could see this shit she’d think he’d lost his mind.
He backed up cautiously, letting the raised lid on the truck tank be his guide. It was brushing her a little, but not enough to hurt anything. He stopped when he thought she was right over the truck tank, and then he put it into neutral and pulled out the hand brake. He got out and climbed up on the back of the truck. Could he lift her out of the tank by himself?
She was a little off center, but that was all right. The chain on the hoist was hanging down the side of the truck, and he reached out for it and got it on the inside of the tank wall. He flipped the trigger to reverse it and started lowering her. The cold water was bubbling in the tank. He wasn’t going to feed her while she was in there. He’d take some feed with him. He’d already told the old man to get some feed, so maybe he had. And hell. Once the old man started throwing feed out, she was going to come up to eat, and he was going to see her. He could always tell the old man to feed them at night. That might work. It didn’t matter. He’d be gone by then.
It only took a few minutes to get her into the water, and as soon as he did he released the drawstrings front and back. He kept lowering her and when her whole back was under the surface of the water he reached up and unfastened the ropes on the side facing him, and she rolled out, splashed mightily, throwing water up to the joists, and then she was in. Lying there pulling cold water into her gills. Opening and closing her mouth.
