A Miracle of Catfish

by Larry Brown

  Jimmy’s daddy stood there and poked at the meat. There was very little grease dropping from the grill onto the charcoal. It just kind of sat there and sizzled dryly. But it was going to be good. It was also free.

  The Marlin was broken. He hadn’t noticed it when he’d first picked it up, but the lever had been at a halfway position, and now it wouldn’t move at all and Rusty thought a part inside it must have gotten broken in the fall. But Rusty also knew a gunsmith who worked at Nationwide Gun Store in town and he thought this guy could probably fix it, he’d fixed one for Rusty once. So that was more money if he wanted to deer hunt anymore this year. Or shoot at some hogs.

  Jimmy was sitting there on the porch steps holding a plate and watching his daddy cook. His daddy had told him to hold the plate until the meat got ready.

  “How you doing there, Hot Rod?” Jimmy’s daddy said.

  “I’m doing good,” Jimmy said. “That sure smells good, Daddy.”

  “Shoot,” Jimmy’s daddy said. “It is gonna be good. Why don’t you get me another beer, Sport?”

  “Okay,” Jimmy said. He put the plate down on the step and walked over to the cooler and reached in and got his daddy a fresh cold one. He handed it to him and his daddy handed him the empty. His daddy opened the fresh one while Jimmy went back to his seat and picked up the plate again and tossed the beer can into a garbage can.

  “You think them taters is ready?” Jimmy’s daddy said.

  “I stuck a fork all the way through em,” Jimmy said. “I believe they done.”

  “Good,” Jimmy’s daddy said. “It won’t be long now.”

  He stood there poking at the steaks a little more, and sipping his beer. “Johnette and them girls don’t know what they missed, eating uptown,” Jimmy’s daddy said.

  “They got some good fried chicken at Applebee’s,” Jimmy said.

  “Is that where they went?” Jimmy’s daddy said.

  “I don’t think so,” Jimmy said.

  “Well, where’d they go then?” Jimmy’s daddy said, and took another sip from his beer. If he was going to go hog hunting, he was going to have to get that rifle fixed. Or get another one. He was sure wanting to go hog hunting. Rusty had told him on the way home that he knew a guy over at Dogtown who had some hog dogs and had actually hog hunted and killed hogs down there in the river bottom at the end of Old Union Road and he’d told Rusty that Rusty and a few of his buddies could go with him sometime if they wanted to. Said the whole damn bottom was crawling with them. Said this guy said there were so many of them back in the summer that they had wide trails in the woods like highways where there was nothing but thousands of hoof prints churned into the black mud, and that they’d evidently eaten every snake in the river bottom, because the guy said you just didn’t see snakes down there anymore, and that was saying something. That was eating a lot of snakes. So Jimmy’s daddy was kind of excited about that, but he was worried about how he was going to pay for having his gun fixed.

  “I think the girls went to the movies while Mama went somewhere else,” Jimmy said.

  “Somewhere else like where?” Jimmy’s daddy said.

  “I don’t know,” Jimmy said.

  “What was the girls gonna eat?” Jimmy’s daddy said.

  “I think she was gonna take them by the Sonic first,” Jimmy said.

  “How come you didn’t go with em?”

  “Didn’t want to.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jimmy’s daddy looked at his son. He’d noticed that Jimmy had been acting a little worried lately, but he hadn’t asked him if anything was wrong with him. What could he have wrong with him? Shit, he had it made. He had some of his teeth fixed. He had his go-kart going and his fishing rod going although pretty soon it was going to be too cold to fish or ride the go-kart either one. All he had to do was go to school. Do his homework.

  “Daddy, can I ask you something?” Jimmy said.

  “Sure,” Jimmy’s daddy said, wondering what it was going to be. Jimmy was pretty good about not asking a lot of questions now that he’d learned that his daddy didn’t like a lot of questions, so occasionally Jimmy’s daddy didn’t mind a question. And it was a nice night. He had a cold beer in his hand and he had some fresh deer meat on the grill that he’d brought down himself and he had his son with him. Screw all that shit with Lacey for now. If she wouldn’t speak to him, he couldn’t help her. Maybe later on he could talk to her. Or what? Maybe go up to the hospital when it was born and look at it? In April? And then what? Send some flowers? Buy a few pacifiers? Go to Big Star and get some formula?

  “How long does it take to have puppies?”

  “Sixty-four days,” Jimmy’s daddy said. “That’s what my daddy always told me. Cow’s nine months. Same as a woman. Takes a elephant twenty-two.”

  Jimmy nodded but he didn’t say anything. He just looked off into the black woods that surrounded the trailer like he was listening to something.

  […]

  60

  Somewhere about thirty-three thousand feet over Montgomery, in her tight designer jeans and her dark blue velour pullover, with Albert sleeping in the seat beside her, and the window cover pulled down, and her empty Budweiser can on the tray in front of her, Lucinda made up her mind. She had been thinking about it for a long time and she had asked herself many questions, and she still didn’t know all the answers, but she decided that she had waited long enough. She knew some things. She knew her mother was dead and that her father was getting older and that she was the only child they had left. Everything her daddy owned would go to her. Cows, land, house, vehicles, tractor and equipment, catfish pond, catfish, however much money he had in the bank. Or the barn. And she had a good bit of money saved up. She’d gotten what she’d wanted from Atlanta and didn’t have to keep staying there and modeling large ladies’ lingerie, even though it was a job she liked. She was forty-three years old and if she didn’t have a baby soon, she would never have one. And it would be risky enough at forty-three. But things were different now. You heard about older women having babies more now. Just because she never had had a baby didn’t mean she couldn’t have one now. Curtis Sliwa’s sister had one at fifty-six.

  She turned her head and looked at Albert. Nothing had set him off today, and his manners had been immaculate. He had been so pleasant and self-assured and polite and humorous with all the airline people they had dealt with today. She knew something about him, too. She knew she loved him and that he was the man she was going to stay with for the rest of her life. And that he was a kind and generous man. Who just had a little something wrong with him. And even though he had said over and over and over and over and over and over and over that he didn’t want a baby, because he didn’t want it to turn out like him, Lucinda knew that she wouldn’t care if it turned out exactly like him. Hoped, in fact, that it would turn out exactly like him. That was when she knew what to do, when she leaned across sleeping Albert and pushed the window cover up, to look out and see the sun going down ahead of them, so that it felt like they were chasing it at thirty-three thousand feet. They were above the clouds and starting to sink back down into them and rags of white vapor were streaking past the wings. She’d find some pins at Daddy’s house tonight and poke some holes in all of Albert’s rubbers. Then wait for Daddy to go to sleep. Then ask Albert if he was ready to get to bed. And once he saw what she was wearing, he would be. She had packed some new lingerie that Albert hadn’t seen yet, little bennies from her job. […] They would come home and find a place to live somewhere nearby. She would raise her child where she had been raised. She would make her daddy happy before he died. She would conceive where she was conceived.

  It was past dark when they rolled in in the rental car, and Lucinda saw that the front porch light was on. Her daddy was standing out there in his overalls. She stopped the car near the porch and saw right away that he had a cast on his arm. Albert was in the process of getting out and she was glad they hadn’
t seen a rabbit coming down the road. He’d been fine all day and was still fine. So she walked on over to the front steps and went up them and hugged her daddy hard. She felt him brush her back with the cast, and then he pulled back from her, the way he always did. Almost always had. She could remember a time when he wasn’t the way he was now. A warmer daddy.

  “What in the world?” she said, looking at the thing. It looked pretty nasty. It had a lot of dirt and grease on it.

  “Aw, I had a little accident,” he said.

  “A little accident when?” she said.

  “While back,” he said. He looked out toward the car, where Albert was standing, opening the back door to reach in for some luggage. He got two bags and walked up on the porch and set them down. He shook hands with her daddy.

  “Nice to see you again, Mister Sharp,” he said. “I hear we’re gonna cook a turkey.”

  “Well, I’m gonna try to cook a turkey,” Lucinda said. And then she smiled. She was so glad to be back home for Thanksgiving. It wouldn’t be the same without her mama, but it would still be Thanksgiving at home.

  “I figure between the three of us we can get it cooked,” her daddy said. He looked pretty good despite the cast on his arm.

  “Let me get the rest of our stuff from the car,” Albert said, and he went back down the steps.

  “Well what happened?” Lucinda said. “How did you get that thing so dirty? My God.”

  “It’s a long story,” her daddy said. “Y’all come on in and I’ll tell you about it. I’m cooking some pork chops I saw on sale when I went and got the turkey.”

  Albert was raising the trunk of the rental car. Lucinda looked at him for a moment and knew that everything was going to be all right. Then she followed her daddy the way she used to.

  By the time they finished supper, Lucinda knew all about Jimmy and his go-kart and what the fire department had done […] and how the hospital uptown didn’t have any decent beds. Her daddy was all excited about his catfish and he’d been telling her about feeding them. Albert had gone out to look at the new tractor, which she hadn’t seen when they’d first driven up because it was parked out by the equipment shed. Lucinda had bought some beer when they’d come through Oxford, had turned in on University Avenue and had run into Kroger for a twelve-pack of Bud and some ice cream for Daddy and some Cokes and Hershey bars for Albert. She was sipping one of the cold Buds at the kitchen table now and her daddy had already washed the dishes and put them away, not letting her help him, saying that he’d gotten pretty used to having to do everything with a cast on. He’d gone out to check on a cow about something.

  Supper had been good and she was pleasantly full. He’d fried the pork chops the way her mama used to and had cooked some peas from the garden with some okra he’d put up and he had some corn he said he’d gotten from the Amish people over close to Pontotoc for ten cents an ear. It was some of the best she’d had in a long time. He’d even wrapped three big fat sweet potatoes in foil and stuck them into the oven about an hour before suppertime and they had melted huge hunks of butter inside them. Albert had cleaned his plate. And her daddy had been talking to him. That was a good sign. It gave her some hope.

  She got up and opened the refrigerator door and reached inside for another beer and looked again at the turkey. Daddy had set it inside this morning, he said, and she pushed her finger against the bag it was wrapped in, and her finger sank in a little, not much. She wondered if she ought to leave it in the sink tonight just to make sure it got thawed in time. She got the beer and opened the kitchen door and stepped down onto the screened-in back porch just as the tractor started up. She wondered where he was going this time of night. She’d left her cigarettes out there on the table and she sat down in one of the old metal chairs and lit up. She took a sip of her beer and then set it on the table. His old army cot had been folded and pushed against the wall. She couldn’t believe he still had it because she remembered him taking naps on it when she was a kid. She saw the headlights come on, the twin powerful beams shining between the big pecans in the back, and then the tractor was moving toward the house. She sat there watching it, and it rolled down the pea gravel until it lit the figure of Albert, standing there waiting for it. What were they doing? The tractor stopped and a light came on inside the cab and she could see her daddy sitting up there with his hand on the wheel. And then the cab door was opening and Albert was climbing up into the cab with him. She didn’t know how both of them were going to fit in there. But when the cab door closed and the tractor started moving again, she understood that her father and her lover were going for a ride. Which was nice timing. She finished her cigarette after she heard the tractor go down the driveway and went back to the bedroom and unzipped her small overnight bag. She’d already found a straight pin in a pincushion of her mother’s and had stashed it on the dresser. […]

  Out on the back porch again, she lit another cigarette and picked up her beer. She couldn’t hear the tractor anymore. They must have gone down the road. It was the first time the two of them had ever done anything together, and she was holding her breath almost that it would be all right. Maybe they wouldn’t see a rabbit. Maybe they would. It didn’t matter. Daddy would get to know him better if they moved back home. Maybe they could go fishing.

  She sat there, enjoying her beer and her cigarette, knowing that if she got pregnant, she’d have to give both of them up for nine months. But she could do it. She knew she could. She still missed her mama. Saw her in her memory in so many places in the house just tonight. They were going to be here for four days, and she was going to town one day and get some fresh flowers to take over there and put on her grave. She knew Daddy had ordered the stone after the funeral, but he said it hadn’t arrived yet. She guessed it took time to make those things. They probably had a waiting list, like Harley-Davidson.

  She leaned back and put her feet up on the table, feeling the chill in the air out here on the back porch. But it was nearly December. It was time for it to be getting cold. She guessed people were out deer hunting now. Coming down DeLay Road, she’d seen some pickups hauling trailers with four-wheelers on them. People in orange hats and vests driving the pickups. Daddy never had done that. He never had hunted deer. He’d hunted squirrels. She seemed to remember him and Cleve going some when she was little. Cleve. She still wished she could see him. Just to see him. Just to see how he was doing. She knew his wife had left him, gone off, taken the boys, years ago. But Daddy said last time she was here that his girl had come back home. Lucinda didn’t know her. Tyrone and Woodrow used to ride Lucinda’s school bus when she was a senior or a junior, she couldn’t remember which. And they were just little bitty boys. So the girl must have been just a baby then. It had to be a hard thing, to lose your children like that. To have them just move away. But she was glad the girl had come back. She was glad for Cleve. And she still wished she could see him. Just to say hi. Just to let him know that she still remembered him. Daddy always said he was mean. And maybe that was true. But he never had been mean to her.

  And then she heard the tractor coming back up the road, and she went inside to get her toothbrush out and turn back the covers.

  […]

  61

  They had been running through the woods in the river bottom and they were still running, dodging past the trees and past the big hanging wild grapevines and over the dead leaves with their guns and following the sounds of the dogs and the squealing of the hog as he turned occasionally and stopped to fight. Jimmy’s daddy was almost out of breath and he hadn’t known it was going to be like this. The snow was still falling and everything was dusted in this surprising December white.

  Daniels, the hog guy, stopped again and put up his hand, and Jimmy’s daddy and Rusty stopped, too. They were in the deep woods, and the oaks and beeches were tall and stripped now of their leaves. Christmas was only two weeks away, and Jimmy’s daddy was supposed to be Christmas shopping today with Johnette. She’d raised some hell about not getting t
o go, too. Right in front of Rusty and Seaborn in front of the trailer when they came to pick him up this morning. Embarrassed the hell out of him. He was still pissed off about that. Should have slapped the shit out of her. Didn’t know why he didn’t.

  “Let’s listen a minute,” Daniels said, and Jimmy’s daddy could hear him heaving. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “I could use a drink of water.”

  Jimmy’s daddy nodded, but he didn’t say anything. He was saving his breath. He wondered if they were going to stop long enough for him to have a cigarette since it was hard to smoke while you were running. Rusty squatted beside a leaning cypress in his camo coveralls and rested his back against the trunk, holding the short-barreled .44 Ruger across his knees. They were seeing more cypresses now, as they got closer to the river. Rusty was listening, too, and Jimmy’s daddy could hear the dogs faintly, up ahead somewhere, just a vague clamor of voices that faded again back into the timber in hollow echoes.