A Miracle of Catfish

by Larry Brown

  Lucinda called him one night and talked for about twenty minutes, but he failed to tell her that he’d rolled the 4020 off into the pond. And had broken his arm. And had to be rescued by the fire department. And had been admitted to the hospital overnight. He did tell her that he’d met this little boy down the road named Jimmy. He didn’t tell her that the little boy had saved his life or that he’d bought him a nice rod and reel. He thought he’d keep all that to himself for now. She said they might be there for Thanksgiving. He told her to come on and asked her if she knew how to cook a turkey and she said no, because her mama always did it. He didn’t tell her that Queen used to cook all theirs. When she was still around.

  He rode down to Batesville one day to see how they were coming with his tractor and to do a few other things, too. It took him about twenty-five minutes to get over there from his house. His arm wasn’t hurting anymore, and one reason he hadn’t told Lucinda about rolling his tractor off into the pond was because he didn’t want her to start telling him how he needed to stop driving his tractor. He’d only made one little mistake in about fifty years of tractor driving. Two mistakes if you counted when he tried to pull that post that was set in concrete.

  Tri-County Marine was on the way, just a few miles out of Batesville, so he pulled in there to see if they had any boats. He was thinking that maybe he needed one. He’d gone out to the barn that morning and grabbed about two thousand dollars from one of his many hidey holes and stuck it in his pocket in case he found just what he wanted. He was also wondering how much it would cost to build a boat dock. Hell. He didn’t even know anybody who knew how to build a boat dock.

  A salesman came out to meet him as soon as Cortez got out of his truck. They had lots of boats. Lots of them looked like ski boats, but they had some big fiberglass fishing rigs, too. Cortez saw exactly what he wanted almost right away, actually a whole stack of them: olive drab twelve-foot aluminum boats with handles on each end. alumacraft was written down their sides.

  The salesman came over and shook hands and introduced himself and Cortez asked him how much they were getting for those twelve-foot boats. The salesman said he could let have him a real good deal today since fall was here and they wouldn’t keep as much stock over the winter. Cortez asked him if he had any paddles and he said he did and in not over ten minutes Cortez was out of there with a new boat tied in the back end of his pickup. From there he drove on down to the John Deere dealership just on the other side of the bridge in town and turned in.

  He parked in front but no salesman came out to meet him. He looked at a couple of big glassed-in-cab John Deere tractors with their pretty green-and-yellow paint, but none of them had price tags hanging on them. They never did. The John Deere salesmen didn’t want you to be able to walk up to a new one in the parking lot and see how much it was because that might scare you off the parking lot right away. You might figure you’d just keep on using your old one. Or maybe buy a Kubota. Or a Belarus. Or a Kioti. And the John Deere salesmen didn’t want you to do that. They wanted you to buy a new John Deere from them because they wanted that sales commission. But Cortez wasn’t ready to talk to a salesman until he found out something about his 4020, specifically whether it was ever going to be worth a shit again after being rolled off into a pond, so he walked on back to the shop and let himself in. They had his 4020 out in the middle of the big concrete floor and they had the hood off it and some parts were lying around. He didn’t see anybody in the shop.

  “Anybody home?” Cortez hollered. He looked around but he still didn’t see anybody. So he walked on over to the 4020. He could tell they’d put some new fuel lines on it. A new linkage rod for the throttle. Must have bent it. A new exhaust pipe and muffler. He’d needed a new muffler anyway, loud son of a bitch. There was a drain pan sitting under it full of black oil and his old blue Chevron filter. He’d bet anything the motor had gotten some water in it. It probably wasn’t going to be worth a shit. He was probably going to have to trade. Shit. He wanted to trade. But there was no need in letting these money-grubbing sons of bitches know how eager he was for one of those new ones out front. He could imagine himself Bush Hogging on hot August days in air-conditioned comfort.

  “Can I help you?” he heard somebody say behind him. Cortez turned to see a tall young man in tan Carhartt coveralls walking toward him with a sandwich in his hand. The young man was chewing and he had a quart of buttermilk in his other hand.

  “That’s my tractor,” Cortez told him. “I was wondering how y’all was coming along with it.”

  The young man walked over and took another bite of his sandwich. He chewed for a bit and then swallowed. Then he lifted the box of buttermilk and turned a long draft down his throat. Cortez almost cringed watching him. One of the worst things he’d ever had to do his whole life was watch his wife eat corn bread and drink buttermilk. He didn’t know how anybody could drink that shit, but she could. And here this young fellow was the same way. The young man took the box of buttermilk down and took another bite of his sandwich.

  “This the one that went in the pond?” he said, spewing bits of Cortez didn’t know what. Looked like pieces of lettuce maybe.

  “That’s right,” Cortez said. “Reckon how long it’s gonna take y’all to get done with it?”

  “I don’t think it’s gonna take too much longer,” the young man said. He took another big long drink of that buttermilk and Cortez turned his head toward the tractor. His mama had tried to make him drink buttermilk when he was a kid and after he almost vomited a few times she stopped trying to make him. He just couldn’t swallow it. It tasted like it was ruined. All clabbered up with all those chunks in it? He didn’t want any buttermilk.

  “Was they any water in that motor?” Cortez said.

  “It’s hard to tell,” the young man said. “We gone start her up this afternoon, Joe said, and let her run a few minutes and then drain her again and put some more new oil in her and Joe said he thought she’d be okay. We can’t see no water on the dipstick. How come her to roll off in a pond?”

  Nosy son of a bitch, too. Cortez didn’t want to tell him. It wasn’t any of his business. People wanted to know everything, though.

  “Don’t you worry none about why it went off in there,” Cortez said. “I can promise you it won’t go off in there no more. Now what’s the price on them new tractors out front?”

  The young man looked like he’d been slightly offended. He lifted his shoulders briefly and scratched at his nose with the open spout on the box of buttermilk. Then he took another big drink of it.

  “You’d have to talk to Joe, mister,” the young man said, and took another bite of his sandwich. It had some tomatoes in it too and it was dripping onto the floor. “Sixteen something I think for that littlest one.”

  “Reckon what my old one’s worth?” Cortez said.

  “I don’t know,” the young man said. “I ain’t really the one to talk to about that. I just work on em. I don’t sell em. You’d have to talk to Joe.”

  “Ever body gone to lunch?” Cortez said.

  “Yes sir. I’m just catching the phone while I eat.”

  He kept eating. Cortez kept standing there. He wanted to get some idea of how they’d trade with him, but he didn’t want to have to wait around for somebody to get back. That might make him look eager.

  “What’d you do to your dang arm?” the young man said.

  “Broke it,” Cortez said.

  The young man chewed some more and then he looked at the tractor sitting there.

  “What would you take for that old forty twenty?” he said.

  “You interested in it?” Cortez said.

  “My daddy might be,” the young man said. “His old one’s about wore out.”

  “I can’t sell it till I get another one,” Cortez said. “You think y’all’ll be through with it in another week?”

  “I think we’ll be through with it by tomorrow,” the young man said. “How could I get ahold of you if my daddy wan
ts to talk to you about that forty twenty?”

  “I’m in the phone book,” Cortez said. “My name’s Cortez Sharp. I live over close to Oxford.”

  “Okay,” the young man said. “I bet Joe’s got your number already. We’ll call you before we bring it home. You ain’t got no idea what you’d have to have for it?”

  Cortez thought for a moment. It had a lot of hours on it. The seat was ripped. The tires on the front weren’t that good. And he really wanted one of those new ones out front with a cab on it so that he could stay warm in the winter and air-conditioned in the summer.

  “Just tell your daddy to call me sometime,” he said, and he walked out and left the young man standing there, nodding and chewing.

  That night Cortez saw lights up at the pond. He was just about to go to bed and he stepped out the front door to take a leak off the edge of the porch and the porch light wasn’t on, so a bobbing yellow light was easy to see up on the hill. It was Friday night and he was going over to Moore’s at Pontotoc in the morning to get some salt blocks and some minerals for his cows. Unless that was Jimmy up there with a flashlight, somebody was trespassing on him. He stood there in the dark and watched the light. Then it went off. Who would it be if it wasn’t Jimmy?

  He started to go up there. Just to see. But he figured it was Jimmy. Maybe he was up there tightlining. If he knew how to tightline. He couldn’t believe his daddy never had taken him fishing.

  He kept standing there. He didn’t see the light anymore. And he didn’t really want to have to go put his shoes back on and get the keys and start the truck and drive all the way up there when it was probably just Jimmy anyway. So he didn’t go investigate. He just went back inside and went to bed.

  Later, just at the point when he was almost asleep, he heard the sound of a vehicle up on the road. And then it went down the road and out of hearing. Or else somebody killed it. But he just rolled over. He’d be glad when he could get that cast off his arm. Son of a bitch was heavy. And it itched where you couldn’t scratch it.

  55

  Peter Rabbit woke from his afternoon nap and came out the back door with his nose to the boards and vacuumed the scent up his nostrils as he followed it over to the end of the porch and around the old wringer washing machine and then back to the steps and down them. He snuffled and snorted and blew bits of grass and dust and dead bugs up with short explosions from his nose and then headed out across the yard. He was actively snorting and snuffling some kind of enthusiastic nose language as he followed it around one of the catalpa trees and then out past one of the leaning sheds and then back around the old pickup and then over to the side of the house and then back across the yard where he crossed the scent again and was puzzled and then began to go in circles until he crossed out on the other side of it and followed it over to where Montrel’s car used to sit and then back across the yard under the clothesline that was propped up with a few rotted planks and that held only Cleve’s underwear and a few T-shirts. He stopped and snorted. He wagged his tail. He didn’t bark. He started moving again and he followed it around the chicken house and back by a pile of old rotting wooden Coke cases and down beside the edge of the yard. He stopped again. He backtracked. He backtracked again and picked it back up where he had turned around and followed it along the wall of tall grass beside the hog pen and then he stopped at the other catalpa tree and looked up it. He sat down, looking up it. Then he stood up on his hind legs and put one paw on the trunk. And then he barked. Once. Then he barked again. By then he could see the squirrel skin that was hanging in the tree by a rope and he put both feet on the trunk and started barking steadily. He barked and barked and barked and barked and Cleve, hidden behind the door of the corncrib where he could watch him and see how he did with just a skin, sat there looking through the cracks in the boards with something like a shy smile, a pint of whisky in his hand, nodding, sipping.

  56

  The weather turned overnight […]. Jimmy watched the leaves on the trees from the windows of the school bus each morning and each afternoon and saw how they went from green to yellow and orange. His daddy had been out in the woods looking for deer sign, but he hadn’t said if he’d found any signs of deer or not.

  One afternoon Jimmy came in from school and changed clothes while the girls were getting snacks. He got his rod and reel and took a raw hot dog from the icebox and cut it up into chunks and put it in a sandwich bag and got his tackle box and got on his go-kart and went up to Mister Cortez’s pond. He fished for a while and caught four little catfish about six inches long, but he didn’t keep any of them. He just turned them loose and then he sat there. The pond was pretty. He looked down the hill at Mister Cortez’s house. His truck wasn’t home, but there was a big new-looking green-and-yellow tractor sitting beside the house. It had a nice glassed-in cab. Jimmy guessed his old one had gotten messed up from being in the pond.

  He sat there a little longer and then he put another piece of hot dog on his hook and threw it out there. His daddy had been staying out late again, and the peaceful happiness that he’d begun to feel and hope might last for a long time was gone again and he wondered why. He heard them arguing about money some nights. His daddy was talking about selling his ’55. Even Jimmy thought that was probably a good idea. It always had something wrong with it and he’d gotten used to hearing his daddy cuss about it. He was hoping that if his daddy bought something else, it would be a big jacked-up pickup.

  Jimmy wished he could see Mister Cortez. He could see a bunch of big round bales of hay stacked neatly beside each other next to Mister Cortez’s yard. He could see some of his cows. And then it was on. The rod was almost pulled out of his hands and he looked out there to see nothing but a tight line whipping deep beneath the water. Was his drag set? The reel went screeeeee and scree, and then the reel was talking to him by going Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! and Jimmy knew he was doing no good at reeling, but he had the crank going as fast as he could turn it. The line kept peeling off and peeling off and peeling off and then it stopped peeling off and he tried to lift the rod. And that just made more line peel off, so he stopped. He turned the hand crank some but didn’t gain any line back. He was watching the line closely. It moved in the other direction, tight as could be, and Jimmy kept trying to reel, but that didn’t do any good. Something sluggish and heavy was on the other end. Something that was down close to the bottom. He’d never had this much line off his reel before.

  He could feel his heart beating pretty hard, but he was trying to stay calm and not lose it. If it wasn’t a turtle, what was it? It had to be a turtle. But could a turtle move that fast? If it was a fish, what kind of fish was it? Not a catfish. There couldn’t be one that big in here. There wasn’t even any water in here back in the summer. A fish couldn’t grow that fast. So what was it? And if he lost it again, was he going to tell his daddy this time? What would it hurt to tell his daddy?

  The line made a great surge again and it went in a curve around the pond, the line cutting the water in a sweep. Jimmy started working his way toward the shallow end, figuring it might be easier to get it in if he could get it over there. The line stopped again and it moved his way and he was quick to turn his reel handle. This time a little line went back in. That meant he was getting him closer. But then it peeled back off a lot more than he had gained, until it went to the far end of the pond, and then it stopped again. Jimmy was almost over to the clay gravel parking lot where the fire truck had rolled in. The water at the edge was only a few inches deep at this end. Jimmy kept reeling and he got some more line back. But still he couldn’t raise whatever it was. It was deep in the water, and Jimmy remembered how the pond had looked when it was dry. That end was the deepest. He kept reeling and he got a little more back because the line moved back his way. But then it stopped again and then it went right and came around the edge of the bank, closer. He kept reeling and got some more line back. And then he saw just a flash of his bobber and his heart leaped again. His bobber was o
nly two feet above the hook. So maybe in a few minutes, if he could ever raise it, he might be able to see what it was. If his arms held out. He hadn’t noticed it at first, in all the excitement, how much strain it was on his arms to keep the tension on the fish. And he knew by now it was a fish. It couldn’t be anything else. Unless it was a beaver. It couldn’t be a beaver, could it? Nah. Beavers didn’t eat hot dogs. They ate bark. But his arms were almost starting to shake, and the worst strain was in the muscles of his forearms, and they were standing up in little ridges. He kept turning the crank, and then he stopped and just concentrated on holding the rod steady as the line moved right and then left and then circled and came back to where it had been, and he couldn’t reel in any more line. And his bobber went back out of sight.

  He wished Mister Cortez would come in. He wished he’d drive home from wherever he was and see Jimmy up here and come up to say hi and then see that he was in trouble and come over and help him and then maybe both of them could get it in. He didn’t think he was going to be able to get it in. He didn’t think his arms were going to hold out. He turned the hand crank again and took back a little more line, not much. He wondered if his drag was too loose. Twenty-pound test. How much would it take to break it if it was tightened down a little more? What if it caused him to lose the fish? He’d already lost it one time. But he thought he’d try it anyway. He wasn’t doing any good this way because he couldn’t force it closer. He looked down at the reel for a moment and checked to see which way the arrows were pointing for more or less and turned the wheel toward more with his thumb. That cranked up the tension a little. The line was still coming off when the fish pulled, but not as easily. He cranked a little more in. The fish was closer to the shallow end now. Didn’t that mean that he was getting closer to catching it? Boy. If it weighed maybe five pounds or something maybe he could get his mama to take a picture of it and he could take that to school for Show and Tell. He cranked a little more in and he thought he saw another flash of his bobber. He was tempted to tighten the drag a little more, but it was better now and he didn’t want to take the chance on having his line broken again, and losing the fish again, so he left it alone. But his arms were killing him. They were definitely shaking now, and they were hurting. Even his back was hurting. It was in a strain, too, a constant one he couldn’t get away from. He’d never thought fighting a fish would have been this hard.