A Miracle of Catfish

by Larry Brown

  They let him out the next morning about ten o’clock and Toby was there waiting in his room while Cortez changed back into his overalls. They had some stupid rule in the hospital where anybody who got discharged had to ride a wheelchair down in the elevator and then get picked up out front. He started to argue at first and then realized that the quicker he got into the wheelchair, the quicker he could get the hell out of here. So he got into it and Toby went out the back way to get his minivan. […]

  The automatic doors opened and the nurse pushed him out onto a concrete apron and then stopped the chair just short of the drive. […] He saw Toby’s minivan pulling around at the far end of the parking lot and he started getting up.

  “There’s my ride,” he said, and the nurse helped him, not that he needed it. Just because you were old, people thought you were feeble. He didn’t need anybody helping him stand up.

  Toby pulled his minivan to a stop right in front of Cortez, and he started to get out and come around, but the nurse opened the door for him and Cortez sat down in it.

  […]

  “You got all your stuff?” Toby said.

  “I didn’t have nothing,” Cortez said.

  “Okay, then,” Toby said, and he took his foot off the brake and they started rolling in a tight circle to get out of the entrance. “You need to go anywhere before you go home?”

  “Yeah,” Cortez said. “If you don’t care. I need to run out to Wal-Mart for a minute. I want to see about a good rod and reel.”

  “You in the market for a new one?” Toby said.

  “Yes sir,” Cortez said. “I am today.”

  When they got out on the bypass, some old guy was out in the ditch with a garbage bag, picking up cans.

  49

  Jimmy woke up that same morning and his tooth was hurting really bad. Worse than bad. It was the worst thing he’d ever felt. It had been hurting pretty bad when he’d gone to bed the night before, but he hadn’t wanted to tell anybody because he still didn’t want to have to go see the dentist, so he’d just slipped a couple of aspirin out of the medicine cabinet and taken them with a glass of water, and then gotten into bed. It was Thursday. A school day. But the pain had caused Jimmy to wake up early, and now he was standing in the dark hall with his hand pressed against the side of his mouth, with bolts of pain shooting through his whole head. His mama and daddy were both still asleep. His daddy didn’t usually get up until six, and sometimes his mama got up and fixed breakfast for Jimmy and Evelyn and Velma, but it was often only cereal, which of course beat nothing. Bacon and eggs would have been a lot better, maybe with some pancakes, but Jimmy didn’t get that too much on school mornings. His mama had been staying up later and later, even during the week, and sometimes it caused her to sleep past the time for Jimmy and his half sisters to get outside and wait for the school bus. But Jimmy didn’t know how he could get on the school bus today. He was afraid he was going to have to go to the dentist. And he was going to have to wake his mama and his daddy up. He didn’t want to, because he knew he wasn’t supposed to go into his parents’ room if the door was closed, but he had to. His tooth was hurting so bad that tears were squeezing from his eyes.

  He put it off for a long time. He walked up and down the hall, putting it off. He went into the living room and sat down for a while, putting it off. But finally he couldn’t wait any longer. He opened the door quietly and walked in there.

  It was still dark in there, too. His mama and daddy were lying in the bed, his mama on her side facing the outer edge of the bed, and his daddy rolled toward his edge of the bed. Jimmy walked over to him and stood there, holding his hand against the side of his mouth.

  “Daddy,” he said. His daddy mumbled something in his sleep that sounded like “Put that sumbitch over the top of Mister Richard’s Coke machine,” and then he snored lightly.

  Jimmy was afraid he’d be in a bad mood again. He’d been in a bunch of bad moods lately. Jimmy didn’t know why and his mama didn’t either. There’d been some kind of fuss with Evelyn and now she would hardly talk to him. He was afraid that his daddy had told his mama what Jimmy had told him about Evelyn and the boys on the school bus, and he was afraid that Evelyn had figured out who’d told on her. Which was him. Evelyn had been punished, he knew that. She’d been grounded and she hadn’t been able to talk on the phone for a few weeks. She’d been staying mostly in her room, but she’d pushed Jimmy hard a few times without saying anything, and once when nobody was around, she’d leaned over to him and whispered viciously, “You little pussy redneck, I’m gonna get you.”

  So that was something else to worry about. He’d also seen Evelyn talking to one of the big boys on the school bus and pointing toward him. And that was something else to worry about. But right now he could hardly think of anything but the pain in his mouth. It was getting worse all the time. The tooth had started throbbing inside his head and he didn’t know what he was going to do. He wasn’t worried about going to the dentist anymore if the dentist could just make it stop hurting. He thought it might help his case if he was crying when he woke his daddy up, so he started again. It didn’t take much. He was already over the brink. The pain was […] pounding a big drum to the beat of his rushing blood. Shawoom. Shawoom. Shawoom.

  “Daddy,” he said again, voice kind of shaky this time, and this time he reached out and touched his daddy’s shoulder. “Daddy, wake up.”

  Jimmy’s daddy didn’t wake with a jolt. He just opened his eyes, lying on his side, and saw Jimmy standing there. And he smiled at him. Until he saw that Jimmy was crying. And then he did something he rarely did. He sat up under the covers and swung his feet to the floor and reached out and hugged Jimmy. Put his big warm arms around him.

  “What’s wrong, Sport?” he said softly. His breath was awful.

  “My tooth,” Jimmy said, and let his daddy fold him in to his arms and hold him for a few seconds. “It’s hurting really bad, Daddy.” And he cried some more. It was easy to cry some more, with his daddy holding him.

  “Okay,” his daddy said, and he got up and reached for his pants, which were lying on the floor. He pulled them on and fastened them shut and zipped them and buckled his belt. “Let’s go in here and look at it.”

  Jimmy followed his daddy down the hall to the bathroom. A small light was burning in there but Jimmy’s daddy flipped on the overhead light and put the lid down on the toilet and sat on it.

  “Let me look at it,” he said. “Which one is it? Open your mouth.”

  Jimmy walked up next to him and opened his mouth.

  “Lean your head back.”

  Jimmy leaned his head back. He felt his daddy stick his finger into his mouth and he pointed to where it was hurting.

  “Ish … ova hah,” he said.

  His daddy was looking. Probing with his finger. Gently.

  “Damn,” he said. “Shit. You got more’n one. I can’t believe your teeth have got in this bad a shape. How long’s it been since you’ve been to the dentist?”

  “I ain’t never been,” Jimmy said. His daddy took his finger out of his mouth and Jimmy closed it.

  “Well, you’re gonna have to go today,” his daddy said. “How bad’s it hurt?”

  “Pretty bad, Daddy. It hurts awful bad.”

  “Let me wake your mama up,” his daddy said, and Jimmy followed him back to the bedroom and watched. Jimmy’s daddy leaned over Jimmy’s mama and shook her shoulder. He saw her raise up, and then Jimmy’s daddy said something to her. She raised up higher and rubbed one hand over her face and then she got up in her nightgown and came over to him. She bent down to him.

  “What’s the matter, babe?” she said.

  “My tooth hurts,” Jimmy said.

  “He’s got a big cavity in there,” Jimmy’s daddy said. “I guess I might as well go ahead and get dressed.”

  “Let me go get some Orajel,” his mama said, and she went out the hall. Jimmy heard her footsteps going toward the bathroom.

  “What’s the de
ntist gonna do to me, Daddy?” Jimmy said.

  Jimmy’s daddy had turned on the light in the closet and he was pulling a work shirt off a hanger and putting it on.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Is he gonna hurt me?” Jimmy said, while more tears came down his cheeks. […]

  “I doubt it,” Jimmy’s daddy said. “I think they’ve got a lot better dentists now than what they had when I was a kid. They was one up here at Oxford, that son of a bitch ought to be killed today for what he done to me when I was a kid.”

  Jimmy didn’t ask what. He didn’t want to know. He wondered what Orajel was. Maybe they could use that and he could go on to school and forget about going to the dentist today. Or maybe just take a whole bottle of aspirin with him.

  His daddy got some socks from a drawer and sat down on the bed and started putting them on. Looked like his toenails needed cutting pretty bad.

  “She’ll have to take you,” he said. “They won’t let me off from work for nothing like that.”

  Jimmy stood there. He had told his daddy and his mama the whole story of Mister Sharp and his tractor turnover and how he had stayed in the water with him. […] He still hadn’t told his daddy about the big red fish truck, or about Mister Sharp throwing something out into the water, or of how he had been watching him through the binoculars when he’d turned the tractor over. He’d put the binoculars back where he’d found them after carefully wiping them clean with some Windex he found in a kitchen cabinet and some Kleenex. They’d gotten a little wet in the pond. He hoped they were okay.

  His mama walked back in the room with a small tube and stopped in front of him. She knelt.

  “Let me put some of this on it, honey,” she said. “Show me which one.”

  Jimmy opened his mouth, leaned his head back, pointed, said, “Ang ish ung.”

  She squeezed some reddish jelly-looking substance onto the tip of her finger and then put her finger inside his mouth and rubbed it over the tooth. Then she took her finger out and squeezed another dab from the tube and by the time she got her finger back inside his mouth, Jimmy could feel his gum getting numb. Oh yeah. A numb gum. She rubbed some more. An even number gum. The pain started getting smaller. It didn’t go completely away, but it got better.

  She had been watching him intently. Jimmy looked at her and thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world with her brown hair and brown eyes. Nobody could be prettier than his mother. Why didn’t his daddy like her more than what he did?

  “Is that better?” she said.

  Jimmy nodded. “It’s not as bad,” he said.

  “You still got to go to the dentist today,” she said. “I should have already sent you up there for a checkup. It’s my own fault.” And then she muttered something about money.

  “You gonna take him?” Jimmy’s daddy said from the bed, where he was pulling his boots on.

  “I guess I’ll have to,” she said. “I’ll have to call Mister Carpenter and tell him I’ll be late. Unless I can get Jimmy in before nine. But I’ll have to go back and pick him up. And get him home somehow. “

  “Have I got to go back to school after I get back from the dentist?” Jimmy said, hoping like heck he wouldn’t have to.

  “I don’t know,” his mama said, and she reached into the closet and pulled out a bathrobe and put it on. Jimmy looked at his daddy. He was buttoning his shirt. Then he bent over and picked up his cap from the floor and put it on his head.

  “Hell, just let him skip the rest of the day,” he said. “One day ain’t gonna make no difference.”

  Suddenly everything was looking a lot better to Jimmy. The tooth wasn’t hurting nearly as bad and it was starting to look like he might get a whole day off from school. He wished his go-kart’s chain was fixed. He could ride it when he got back from the dentist. If there was any gas.

  “Let me go find the phone book and see when they open up,” his mama said, and went out of the room, up the hall toward the living room. Jimmy’s daddy stood up and started putting his shirttail in.

  “I think I got time to make me some coffee,” he said, and he went on out the door, too.

  Jimmy sat down on their bed. It felt lumpy. The girls weren’t even up yet. His gum was getting number and number. Orajel was a good thing. His mama came back in, looking at an opened phone book. She sat down beside Jimmy and turned on the lamp beside the bed and kissed him on top of the head. Jimmy hugged her and turned her loose.

  “Okay, let’s see,” she said. She had her finger on the page, looking at it. “Here’s a family dentist. I bet they don’t open till at least eight, though.” She looked up at Jimmy. “I can’t call for an appointment for two more hours. You may have to go to work with me for a while if I can’t get you in before nine. How’s it feel now?”

  “It’s a lot better,” he said.

  “You feel like eating something?” she said.

  “Yes’m,” Jimmy said.

  Couple of hours later, Jimmy’s in the dentist’s chair. He didn’t know what to expect, but so far everybody had been kind. A nice girl named Margie had brought him back here and put him in the chair and had clipped around his neck some kind of napkin that hung down on his chest. She had taken some X-rays of his teeth after putting a heavy vest across his chest. He was looking out the window at some boy mowing some grass. It felt strange not to be in school on a weekday. All his classmates were in class, listening to the teacher, waiting for lunch. What good was school anyway? It sucked. […]

  There was a TV he could watch, up on the wall, but the sound was turned down and it was some kind of a news show anyway. Jimmy never watched the news because they were always showing something about the war and there were always burned-out cars and tanks on fire and people lying bloody and shot dead in the streets. Smoke rising from buildings, helicopters flying overhead. He already knew he didn’t want to be a soldier. He kept sitting there. He could hear people talking in some other rooms. Somebody was laughing and talking about Hank Williams Jr. And then a young clean-cut man wearing a tie came into the room and held up his hand and smacked hands with Jimmy. He sat down on a stool.

  “Hi, Jimmy,” he said. “I’m Tony. You can just call me Doctor Tony if you want to. I hear you’ve got a toothache.”

  “Yes sir,” Jimmy said.

  “Well, let’s take a look at it,” the dentist said, and he pushed a button on the chair that started raising Jimmy higher. He turned on a bright light above Jimmy and told him to open his mouth. Jimmy did.

  The dentist spent some time looking around inside Jimmy’s mouth. He poked some with a small hooked instrument. He didn’t say anything and Jimmy didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad one. Finally he pulled back and looked at Jimmy.

  “How often you brush your teeth, Jimmy?” he said.

  “I’m supposed to brush em every night,” Jimmy said.

  “You really need to brush them after every meal, Jimmy,” the dentist said. “You’ve got five cavities and they all need fixing, but I’m just going to fix the one that’s hurting today and one more, okay? But then you need to come back and get the other ones taken care of before they start hurting. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Jimmy said.

  The dentist looked at the wall for a moment and then he looked back at Jimmy. There was a picture of a little baby on the wall behind him.

  “How do I get ahold of your mama?” he said.

  “She works at the bank,” Jimmy said.

  “Which one?”

  “The one up on the square.”

  Doctor Tony smiled and laughed.

  “There’s about four of them up on the square, Jimmy. Do you know the name of the one where she works?”

  “No sir,” Jimmy said.

  Doctor Tony sat there some more. Then he got up.

  “I’ll be back,” he said, and he patted Jimmy on the shoulder before he left. It was kind of reassuring. He was hoping desperately that they weren’t going to hurt him. But he was afraid they
were.

  Doctor Tony stayed gone a few minutes. Jimmy heard him laughing and talking about going to a steak house that had some good single-malt scotch. Then he came back and sat down again. Another girl in a smock walked in and she smiled at Jimmy. She had big white teeth. No cavities there. Jimmy thought maybe he’d better start brushing his teeth.

  “Good morning, Jimmy,” she said.

  “How’d you know my name?” Jimmy said.

  “A little birdy told me,” she said. She had something in her hand. “Now open wide.”

  Jimmy could feel his palms sweating, but he opened wide. He was about as scared as he’d ever been. But on the other hand, it wasn’t as scary as your daddy almost drowning you.

  He was back home before lunch. His mouth was still kind of numb from where Doctor Tony had filled his two front teeth, and they’d told him not to eat anything until the feeling came back, because if he ate something then he might start chewing on his cheek and not know he was chewing on it and maybe chew a hole in it. But his mama had stopped at the Sonic and bought him a chocolate milkshake, which he’d sucked through a straw. He’d looked at his new teeth in the makeup mirror on the way home.

  She pulled up in front of the trailer and stopped. She looked kind of upset. Jimmy had watched her write a check to the dentist’s office and she’d seemed to be kind of worried, but she didn’t seem that way now. Jimmy worried about his mama a lot. She didn’t seem to be happy. Not most times anyway. She could be reading a magazine and she’d just sigh. But if you looked at her, she’d look up and smile.

  “I’ve got to go back to work,” she said. “I’m running late. I hate to leave you here by yourself, but I don’t know what else to do.”

  “I’ll be all right,” he said.

  She reached over and touched his hair. Then she bent toward him and kissed him on the cheek. Gave him one last lingering touch with her hand.

  “I know you will. Just watch some TV or something,” she said. “The girls’ll be in at three thirty.”

  “Okay,” Jimmy said. He already knew that. And that meant he’d be alone with Evelyn and Velma until his daddy came in. He hoped his daddy would come in before Evelyn could do something nasty to him.