A Miracle of Catfish

by Larry Brown

  “You can fix you a sandwich or something when the feeling comes back. Not before, okay?”

  “Okay,” Jimmy said, and got out.

  “Bye, babe,” she said, and Jimmy said bye and closed the door. He watched her back out of the driveway and then she turned her car toward the county road and took off. Jimmy watched the dust roll out behind her and he waved to her. She waved back and then was gone.

  The little dogs were all gone somewhere. Sometimes they did that, just left. Jimmy figured they were probably out hunting rabbits. He didn’t know why his daddy didn’t take them hunting with him.

  He went on inside the trailer and it was absolutely quiet. It was different. It wasn’t like being alone in it at night, as he sometimes was. It was daytime now, and the quietness made it feel like a strange place. […] He wondered if it would be okay for him to have a Coke. Surely he wouldn’t chew a hole in his cheek with a Coke. So he got one from the icebox, and then he set it down and got a glass and filled it with ice cubes and poured some of the Coke over it, then took it into the living room and set it down and grabbed the remote and turned the TV on.

  He was still pretty numb, and the Coke tasted kind of funny when he took a sip from it. But the toothache part was over. He was fixed. And he knew he had to go back, but he wasn’t scared anymore, just because the dentist had been so kind. And also because the dentist had stuck a small mask over his face and let him breathe through it for about ten minutes before he gave him the first shot in his gum to deaden his tooth. By then, from breathing whatever it was through the mask, Jimmy wouldn’t have cared if the dentist had pulled out an old deer horn to work on him. He’d had all kinds of pleasant daydreams about arrowheads and Indians while the drill turned inside his mouth and tooth dust flew out. It was like every bone in his body had turned to Jell-O. He had actually almost enjoyed it. So much for being scared of a dentist. Jimmy thought Doctor Tony was probably the kindest man in town.

  […]

  Jimmy thought he’d sit here and watch a little TV, sip his Coke, and he knew he had some M&M’s somewhere. He’d sit here and let the feeling come back into his mouth and then he’d fix himself a nice sandwich and get some potato chips and some dip and just lounge around until the girls came home from school. And then he thought he’d walk up the road and look across at the pond and see if he could see Mister Cortez anywhere. He knew he’d gone to the hospital, because he’d still been down at the pond when the ambulance came for him, and had watched them take him away. So he was wondering if he was still in the hospital. Jimmy had changed his mind about Mister Cortez. He’d decided that he wasn’t a mean old man after all. Jimmy knew he shouldn’t have been on his land.

  It was hard to find much good on the TV in the daytime. They had all those daytime shows and none of it was very interesting, just people sitting around talking. He watched part of a western and then he flipped it around and found a show about bank robbers and watched that. Bonnie and Clyde. John Dillinger. Baby Face Nelson. He sipped his Coke. He could tell that the feeling was slowly coming back. And he was getting a little hungry.

  He got up and went over to the icebox and opened the door to see what was in there. His mama had gone to the grocery store yesterday, so he was hoping there was something good to eat in there. But it looked like the girls had already been in there because the pickings were pretty slim. Hot dogs. Some old dried-up pizza still in the box from Pizza Hut. He opened it and looked at it anyway. Old nasty curled-up pepperoni and dry-looking cheese. It didn’t look like anything you’d want to eat, although Velma seemed to prefer cold pizza for breakfast over everything else. He closed the box and stuck it back in there. She could have it. He opened one of the bins and looked in there. There was some baloney, but it was old and curled up, turning color. […] So he looked in the cabinets to see what was in there. Spaghetti noodles. Flour and meal. Soup. Did he want soup? There was tomato and chicken noodle. Be hard to chew a hole in your cheek with soup. Nah. He didn’t want soup. There were a few cans of tuna fish, but he didn’t know how to make tuna salad. There were plenty of vegetables in cans, but he didn’t want vegetables for lunch. He needed some meat. There were several cans of pork and beans. Some cake mix in boxes. More noodles. And then he saw some Vienna sausages and got down a can of them. He found some crackers. He got a plate. And then he happened to think to look in the freezer section of the refrigerator to see what was in there, and he found a brand-new unopened half gallon of Rocky Road. He put the plate back and found a bowl instead. And a spoon.

  He was lying on the couch watching The Real World with his empty bowl on the coffee table and eating M&M’s when he heard some gravel crunching out in front of the trailer. He put his candy down and turned the TV down and heard a door slam, so he went to the trailer door and opened it. He was kind of surprised to see Mister Cortez walking toward him. He had his arm in a cast, but his fingers were sticking out the end.

  “Hey,” Jimmy said, holding the door wide open.

  “Hey there yourself,” Mister Cortez said. “What you doing home from school today? You playing hooky?”

  “Naw sir. I had to go to the dentist,” Jimmy said. “I got my teeth fixed. See?” He opened his mouth so that Mister Cortez could look in there. Mister Cortez stood at the bottom of the steps trying to see up inside Jimmy’s mouth which was mostly full of melted M&M’s.

  “I see,” he said. “That looks pretty good.”

  “You all right?” Jimmy said.

  “Aw yeah. I’m fine,” Mister Cortez said. He held up his cast. “I just got to wear this thing for a while.”

  He stood there and looked around.

  “Where’s all them little dogs at?” he said.

  “They took off,” Jimmy said. “They’ll be back later. I think they go out and run rabbits. But they don’t never bring none home. You want to come in? I’m watching TV, but they ain’t nothing much good on.”

  “I was wanting to speak to your mama or your daddy, one,” Mister Cortez said. “Is one of them home?”

  “No sir,” Jimmy said. “They both at work.”

  “I see,” Mister Cortez said, and nodded. “Well. I just wanted to ask em something. I can come back some other time. What time they get in?”

  “Mama don’t never get in till after five but Daddy gets in sometimes at four. But sometimes he don’t come in till later.” Jimmy didn’t want to tell Mister Cortez that lots of times it was dark when Daddy came home.

  And then Mister Cortez looked over there by the pine tree and saw Jimmy’s go-kart. He nodded at it.

  “What’s wrong with your go-kart?” he said. “I ain’t seen you on it in a while.”

  “Chain won’t stay on,” Jimmy said. “It’s done got too loose.”

  “Will it run?”

  “Oh, yes sir,” Jimmy said, and came on down the steps. He walked over to the go-kart and flipped the toggle switch marked Off/On and choked it, then pulled the starter cord a few times, and it sputtered to life. He mashed the gas pedal with his fingers and revved it up, then pushed the choke off. It sat there running smoothly and the clutch was turning, but the chain was draped over the driving gear like a loose necklace. He shut it off.

  Mister Cortez squatted down next to the go-kart and looked at it. He looked up at Jimmy.

  “Can your daddy not fix it?” he said.

  “I don’t reckon so,” Jimmy said.

  Mister Cortez was looking closely at the chain by then. He slipped it off the driving gear and looked at the gear. Then he looked at the mounting plate beneath the motor. He looked back up.

  “That’s all that’s wrong with it?” he said.

  “Far as I know,” Jimmy said. “Daddy tightened it one time and then he said the chain had got stretched and he didn’t know how to fix it.”

  “It just needs a link took out of it,” Mister Cortez said. He held it up. It was greasy and it was getting black grease on his fingers, but he didn’t seem to care. Maybe he’d been around greasy things before.


  “How you do that?” Jimmy said.

  “I’ll show you,” Mister Cortez said, and he got up and walked over to his truck and lifted what looked like a pretty heavy metal box from the back end with his good arm. He brought it over and set it on the ground, and when he opened it, Jimmy saw more tools than he’d ever seen in one place at a time. Mister Cortez had a lot more tools than Jimmy’s daddy, and his weren’t rusty, they were shiny and clean. He had wrenches, screwdrivers, sockets, all kinds of stuff. He picked up a pair of pliers that had long slim tips. He looked up again.

  “Will your daddy care for me fixing it for you?”

  “I don’t guess,” Jimmy said, and then he started to get excited. Oh boy! If Mister Cortez could fix it, he could start back driving it all the time, as long as he had some gas. He could drive it at night, with his flashlight headlight. He wondered if Mister Cortez had ever seen the dead black lady who walked the road crying. But he didn’t ask him. He just sat down in the gravel next to Mister Cortez and watched him as he started fixing the go-kart.

  “See this little thing right here?” Mister Cortez said, holding up the chain. Jimmy saw a tiny plate in the links.

  “Yes sir?”

  “That comes off. It’s just like a chain on a hay baler. All we got to do is take it off and cut one link out, then put it back together, and it’ll be good as new. Then we’ll take them bolts off underneath the motor and put the chain on and add some washers to them bolts, raise that motor until it’s tight. I got some washers. Won’t take long.”

  “Boy,” Jimmy said. It was all he could think of to say.

  “You ain’t got a brick around here nowhere, do you?” Mister Cortez said.

  “Yes sir, I sure do,” Jimmy told him, and walked around behind the trailer and found a couple and brought them back.

  “Here’s two,” he said, and Mister Cortez took one of them and set it down in front of him. He was being careful with his bad arm.

  “One may be enough,” he said.

  Jimmy squatted close to Mister Cortez and watched him closely. He laid the chain on its side on top of the brick and then he rummaged around in his tool box and came up with a small hammer with a rounded head on one side and a flat side on the other. And he found a small punch. He put the punch on top of the link in the chain and tapped it gently with the hammer. Then he stopped.

  “Let me see that other brick,” he said, and Jimmy handed it to him. He set the second brick down so that there was a gap of about an inch between them, and he put the link in the chain over that empty space. Then he set the punch carefully on top of the tiny plate, and tapped it with the hammer. The tiny plate popped off and fell to the ground. Mister Cortez picked it up and handed it to Jimmy.

  “Don’t lose that,” he said.

  Jimmy took it and looked at it. It was just a little piece of metal that resembled a figure eight, with two small holes in it. Then Mister Cortez put his tools down and worked the chain apart, and he came up with another little piece of metal like the first one, only this one had two pins in it. Mister Cortez handed it to him.

  “Don’t lose that neither,” he said. “That’s your master link.”

  Jimmy looked at it. Master link? Mister Cortez was rummaging around in his tool box again and he came out with what looked like a brand-new file in a plastic sleeve. He pulled the file from the sleeve and laid the sleeve aside.

  “If I had this in my vise I could do it quicker,” he said. “But this’ll work. It may take me a little bit. You know how to check your oil?”

  Not even an hour later Jimmy was running up and down the road. He was power sliding, cutting donuts, pressing the gas as hard as he could, and the chain didn’t come off. He roared down the road and roared back up it, and Mister Cortez stood in front of the trailer and watched him as he put his tools away. Jimmy knew he didn’t have much gas, because he’d already pulled the cap off the gas tank and looked inside. And there wasn’t any way to get any more until his daddy came home, and even then he might not get any, if his daddy didn’t want to go to the store. So he pulled back in front of the trailer and shut it off. Mister Cortez was leaning on the fender of his truck.

  “Running pretty good, ain’t it?” he said.

  Jimmy got off his go-kart and looked down at it, then up at Mister Cortez.

  “It sure is,” he said. “I sure thank you for fixing it for me.”

  “You welcome,” Mister Cortez said. He stood there looking at Jimmy for a few moments. “I been wanting to ask you something,” he said.

  “Okay,” Jimmy said. He already knew what he was going to ask him.

  “How come you to see me when I rolled my tractor over?” he said. “Did you just happen to be walking by?”

  “Well,” Jimmy said, and looked down. He hated to tell him that he’d been watching him through the binoculars, but he hated to lie, too, even though he had to lie sometimes merely for self-preservation purposes. Like if Evelyn wanted to know what little fucker ate all the Twinkies, he’d say, Not me. He looked back up. “I was watching you,” he said.

  “How come?”

  “Well,” Jimmy said. “That man come by here other day, and his truck said ‘Tommy’s Big Red Fish Truck,’ and I was wondering if you put some fish in your pond.”

  Mister Cortez was smiling just a little.

  “So you was kind of spying on me, huh?” he said.

  “Yes sir,” Jimmy said. “I guess I was.”

  Mister Cortez nodded.

  “I’m glad you was,” he said. “Nobody would have found me till I was dead.”

  “Can I ask you something?” Jimmy said.

  “Sure.”

  “What’s that stuff you throwing out in the water?”

  “It’s catfish feed,” Mister Cortez said. “I got three thousand of em in there. I feed em at night.”

  “Golly,” Jimmy said. “How big are they?”

  “Oh, they’re just little bitty things right now,” Mister Sharp said. “But I’m gonna keep feeding em and by next year they’ll be big enough to eat. You like to fish?”

  “I never have been,” Jimmy said. “My daddy keeps saying he’s gonna take me, but he ain’t never took me yet.”

  Mister Cortrez looked like he was really surprised by that.

  “How old are you?” he said.

  “Almost ten,” Jimmy said.

  “You almost ten and you ain’t never been fishing?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Does your daddy fish?”

  “Yes sir. He goes with Mister Rusty and Mister Seaborn.”

  “He just don’t never take you?”

  “No sir. He don’t never have time to, I don’t reckon”.

  “Hmm,” Mister Cortez said, and he turned toward his truck. He reached over into the bed and brought out a beautiful red reel on a shiny black rod, and the rod had SHAKESPEARE written on it. The reel was already strung with line that stretched out through the ferrules and the rod had a little yellow rubber practice-casting plug on the end of it. He handed the rod and reel to Jimmy. And then he reached back into the truck for a new Plano tackle box and handed that to him as well. When Jimmy set the rod down long enough to open the tackle box and look in, he saw that it was loaded with fishing gear: crappie hooks, bream hooks, bass hooks, catfish hooks, red-and-white plastic bobbers, supersensitive porcupine-quill bobbers, lures and jigs, packets of lead weights, some nylon stringers, a fish scale, a fish scaler, a Fiskars fillet knife in a leather holster, even a hook disgorger for getting hooks out of fish that had swallowed hooks deep. “Well, now you’ve got something to fish with whenever he takes you,” Mister Cortez said. “And you can fish in my pond any time you want to. Long as it’s okay with your daddy and your mama. I was gonna wait and ask them if it was okay for me to give you this stuff, but if it ain’t, they can let me know.”

  Jimmy looked at the fishing pole. It was the most awesome thing he had ever seen, including his go-kart when it was new. It was sleek. It looked ex
pensive. And somehow, it was his. Along with what looked like everything a boy would need to fish. He looked up at Mister Cortez. The world had suddenly changed on him again. And for once, not in some chickenshit way.

  “What does catfish eat?” Jimmy said.

  “Your fingers if you stick em in their mouth,” Mister Cortez said. “Get you some red worms and try them. Or night crawlers.”

  Then he bent over toward Jimmy and lowered his voice a little.

  “Just don’t tell nobody about the catfish, okay?”

  “Okay,” Jimmy said immediately, and then wondered immediately if it would be okay to tell his daddy about the catfish. But he didn’t ask. Everything was going way too good that day to mess it up with a bunch of stupid questions.

  50

  Seretha cried for three days when she found out Montrel was gone and then she left. Packed up one night while Cleve was asleep, was gone the next morning along with her hair curlers. Some clothes and shoes. A small FM radio. Montrel’s car was still sitting beside the house, spotted with tree sap, old dog piss showing yellow on the whitewall tires.

  Cleve sat out on the porch with Peter Rabbit sleeping in his lap and figured on what to do with the car. He knew she wouldn’t go against him if it came to the law. Best thing would be to just get rid of it. He didn’t have the title, so he couldn’t sell it. It probably wasn’t paid for anyway.

  He sat there, rocking. She’d know for sure now, but she probably already did anyway, so he got up and went inside and found the keys on her dresser. He got three Budweiser tallboys from the ancient icebox and shut Peter Rabbit up in his bedroom so that he couldn’t follow him.

  He slipped on a pair of Playtex Living Gloves that Seretha used to wash dishes and went out and slipped behind the wheel of Montrel’s ragged-out ’79 deuce and a quarter. It fired right up. Then he got out and found a couple of bricks and put them in the floorboards. He opened the first beer when he pulled it down in Drive.