I understood completely. Tommy wasn’t trash like Clem, but he acted like it sometimes. And Captain Morris seemed at least to be better for me than Tommy let on. Maybe me and Skippy had more in common than I thought.
“Do you read comic books?” I said.
“Never. They’re stupid.”
Nope, we would never be friends.
The Captain came in and paid for his gas and I got back into the truck. We headed on home, and the whole time I couldn’t help but think about Skippy and Mr. Dexter. I wondered if me and the Captain could be the same as them. Maybe he could buy a gas station and I could wipe off the counters. Course, there was only two gas stations and none of them was for sale.
Dang that Cannon luck.
The Captain pulled into our driveway.
“I’d better get going. I’ll see you again when I come back into town,” he said.
I tried to not show how sad I was.
“When do you reckon that will be?” I said.
He shrugged.
“You never know,” he said, then he got a funny look on his face like there was a mosquito stuck in his boxers. “I’m sorry. I’m terrible at good-byes. No idea what to say.”
I shrugged.
“All Tommy said when he left was that I was to take care of Pa. But that’s how Tommy is, always thinking about others.”
He chuckled. “Right before he abandoned you two, right?”
“Well, he done that for his country. So it was noble.”
His eyes got real stern-like.
“No. You don’t abandon your family for anything. There is nothing more important than your family. Nothing.”
His words hung in the air like the humidity and it made me about as uncomfortable, too. Then he put his truck into reverse. I hurried and got out.
“Hasta luego,” he said, and then he pulled out and drove off. And it felt terrible to see him go.
Pa walked around from the backyard.
“Where’d the Captain head off to?” he said.
“I don’t know. He said he had to go meet another old friend.”
Pa rubbed the back of his head.
“He did say he was leaving later, but I didn’t know he meant right now.” He must have just then noticed that I was home. “Why are you here so early?”
“Got sent home for hitting Eddie Gorman.”
“Did he deserve it?” he said.
“Yup.”
“Then that’s fine.” He started to head to the backyard. “Go on inside and watch you some TV. I got to focus on what I’m doing.”
A shining example of manhood, for sure.
I started to go, but I was worried I’d spend the whole time daydreaming about the Captain being for me what Mr. Dexter was for Skippy. Didn’t want to do that.
“What are you doing?” I said, and I followed after him. He stopped walking.
“Oh, you wouldn’t be interested,” he said. “It’s all real boring technical stuff.”
“Come on, I want to know. You don’t got to dig into the technical mumbo jumbo or nothing. I just want to see why I’ve been stuck in my room every day for the past week.”
He thought about that for a bit, and then he agreed to it. We went around to the shed and he unlocked a padlock that was on the outside. He opened the door and let me go into it. And, I got to admit, it was pretty dadgum impressive.
It was like a whole military radio station, like what I’d seen in all them World War II movies. There was a bunch of wires and boxes with knobs on them. There was a hand-cranking generator nearby, and then there was a big thing that I reckoned was a microphone like Willie’s and some headphones, all plugged into another box on a table. There was a chair set up in front of it with Pa’s favorite afghan draped over the back. He had a few notebooks piled up on the table and a whole mess of pencils. I tried to see if he had any crossword puzzles, but that must not have been appropriate for radio work.
“Wow, what does it all do?” I said. He raised his eyebrows.
“You sure you want to know?” he said. “It’s awful technical.”
“Maybe I need to get more technical stuff in my head.”
He got a big fat grin on his face at that and started going like I did when I was talking about baseball stats. He showed me the knob where he selected the frequency he’d be using and he explained how at different times of day different frequencies would work better for him. He showed me how he’d get the power going with the generator, and how it’d run for up to an hour after he’d cranked it real good.
“I’ve gotten to where I can talk to folks pretty far away,” he said.
“How far?”
“This morning I was talking to a fella in Japan.”
Well, that floored me.
“If you can talk that far with the radio, what do you need that telephone out here for?”
The phone from the living room was sitting on the desk, and the line was running out the door and all the way into the kitchen window.
“Oh, that’s the best part,” he said. “You see this box here?” He pointed at a little white box that had two holes on top. “I can set the phone in there and the folks I’m talking to on the radio can talk to folks on the phone.”
It was one of them moments where I knew I was looking at something I should have been excited about, but I just couldn’t muster up the effort. Like when I watched a soccer game.
“That’s great, Pa,” I said.
“No, it is, it really is,” he said. “See, what I’m doing out here is, I’m connecting with soldier boys that ain’t got no access to telephones themselves. They tell me their home phone number and I call up their families so they can gab a bit.”
His chest swelled up and there was some tears that came to his eyes.
“Considering my own boy is off on a military base, it’s sort of like I’m helping Tommy.”
I was too focused in on something else to appreciate that.
“Are all them families local?” I said.
He looked confused.
“What you mean?”
“I mean, are all them calls you’re making local calls?”
“No, of course not,” he said. “Like, the boy this morning, his family was up in Vermont.”
“Dadgummit, Pa!” I said. “You mean you’re making a mess of long-distance calls? Those cost by the minute. Please tell me you’re getting paid or something for all this.”
His face stopped looking happy, or proud, or anything else. He only looked mad.
“I’m doing this for God and country,” he said.
“All right, then which one of them should I send our phone bill to?”
He tapped his cane on the ground a couple of times, which was usually a sign I was about to get my butt busted.
“Stop your worrying,” he said. “We got my disability check coming in, plus money in the bank. And you’re making money too. We’ll be fine. It’s like Jesus said, ‘Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.’ ”
I hated it when he quoted Scripture at me.
“That was easy for him to say,” I said. “His pa could make money out of dirt.”
He was done listening.
“Time for you to go inside now,” he said. “I got work to do. There’s boys out there that actually wants to talk to their parents, and with respect, too.”
He turned his back to me and I knew the conversation was over. I went inside, frustrated as all get-out, and decided to watch some TV. While I was sitting there, watching Lassie, I couldn’t shake this feeling I had. Like, as bad as things looked, it was only the tip of the iceberg. Something real bad was blooming, I just knew it. It made my stomach hurt to think of it. I tried to convince myself that it was just all them bills and dollar signs g
etting to me, but deep down I didn’t believe it.
No matter how hard I was trying, it seemed like yesterday was marching closer and closer to blowing up in my face.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE PRICE OF A PONYTAIL
The next couple of weeks was real busy for me. What with Pa doing his thing out there in the shed, it was up to me to take care of all the things there was to care for around the house. I was cooking and cleaning and straightening up the lawn and such. We didn’t have nowhere to put all them things Pa’d pulled from the shed, so I made a pile of them over against the house and covered it with a tarp. Then the tarp blew away, so I covered it with my blanket. Then I got cold, so I covered it with Tommy’s. Then a stray cat had kittens in the blanket. I reckoned I should wash it before Tommy came back. Or at least shake it out.
Our meals wasn’t much more than sandwiches when we ate, ’cause I couldn’t hunt for no more than what was asked for by folks in town since we didn’t have no deep freeze to hold it in. I also couldn’t ask Mrs. Parkins to come help out since I didn’t have no time to go do nothing in return. Anyway, I was avoiding Willie like the plague. Eddie’d probably say “like the Black Plague,” but I’ll just say the plague. Even though “Black Plague” is a pretty dadgum funny joke.
It was a Wednesday and I was on my way to school when I realized I’d been forgetting about getting the mail out of our box every day. Or maybe I’d been avoiding it, ’cause them bills downright terrified me. I got the stack of it out and took it with me. I spent the whole bus ride looking at the Sears summer catalog, thinking about all them things I couldn’t afford to get. Like the grill with the blue lid on it that I could use to burn food on. It was twelve dollars. I had to decide if it was worth putting off one of the bills for. Maybe during deer season it would be.
When we got into class, Mrs. Buttke already had the board filled out.
This Day in History: March 29, 1951—The Rosenbergs convicted of espionage.
I wrote that in my book and didn’t even have to ask, Mrs. Buttke got right into explaining what the big deal was. The Rosenbergs was an American couple that gave the Russians the secrets they needed to make an atom bomb. And they was real slick, too, but it didn’t matter. After a while, they got caught.
She walked around the classroom to Eddie’s seat and picked up his science book. She pulled out a girlie magazine he had stashed in there.
“You always get caught,” she said, then she went back up to the front to start the prayer.
I wrote in my book: You can’t avoid what’s coming to you. I didn’t like that too much.
After the pledge, she had us get out our books and I snuck the mail inside of mine so I could have something worth reading. I had to be real careful since she was on the lookout now, but it had to be done. I was responsible for taking care of Pa.
The first few pieces of mail was bills and more sales papers. Then there was an envelope with Pa’s disability check in it. I figured I needed to run by the bank after school to drop it off. Maybe I could stop by Mr. Thomassen’s first, let him know I’d be late, and ask him to show me how to fill out a deposit slip, since Tommy hadn’t gotten around to showing me. I could pop the cap off a beer bottle with a knife, thanks to him, but filling out a deposit slip was a trick I couldn’t get.
The next envelope was a notice from the bank. It said we was sixty days past due on our house payment.
Dadgum, I definitely needed to go by the bank.
A pudgy hand reached over my shoulder and snatched the letter out from in front of me.
“Well, look who’s sneaking now,” Eddie whispered from behind me. Thankfully, Mrs. Buttke was putting sentences up on the board for us all to work on.
“Give it back,” I whispered.
“Ooh, looks like y’all are in trouble.” He was reading the letter. “Got to get your act together, or you might wind up living in the Colony.”
“Shut your mouth,” I said, still whispering. A couple of the kids around us was looking at us. “Or I’ll shut it for you.”
“So? What if I tell everybody what this says? What if I tell Mrs. Buttke that you was sneaking? Socking me in the mouth ain’t going to change that.”
“I hear whispering,” Mrs. Buttke said, her back still turned to us. I waited a couple of seconds, then I wrote a note and slipped it to him.
What do I need to do to keep you quiet?
“Five dollars,” he whispered as soon as he read it. Didn’t even hesitate. That was when I realized that Eddie was pure evil, through and through.
“How about one dollar?” I said.
“Mrs. Buttke?” he said real loud.
She turned around.
“Yes?”
I turned to look at him too, begging him with my eyes not to say nothing. He got a disgusting grin between his puffy cheeks.
“Nothing, ma’am. I was just wondering if you could hear me.”
She muttered something about having ears like a dog and went back to writing on the board. I wrote another note.
If I had five dollars, I’d give it to you, but you already know I ain’t got enough money.
He thought about that for a bit, and then he reached into his desk and pulled out a pair of scissors. He scribbled onto a note and gave me the note and the scissors together.
I’ll keep quiet for part of a ponytail.
I looked back at him, praying that he wasn’t meaning what I thought he was meaning. Then he nodded at Martha Macker’s head, which was paying real good attention to her notebook, where she was drawing the prettiest picture of a mountain stream I’d ever seen. Her hair was pulled into a perfect ponytail that hung just below the top of her seat. The thought of cutting even a smidge off of that ponytail made my hands get all sweaty.
“I can’t do that,” I said.
“Then get ready for the whole class to know your family ain’t no better than white trash.”
I hated Eddie right then, and I hated myself for what I was about to do. But, taking care of my family was the most important thing, and I had to do what he asked. Still, the thought of cutting Martha’s hair nearly made me sick, and that made my head start hurting again. I tried to ignore it so I could focus on being sneaky.
All I had to do was cut off a tiny bit, maybe she wouldn’t even notice if I was real careful. Maybe she wouldn’t know that the boy behind her who touched her hand every single day when she handed him his homework had mutilated her hair. Maybe this was the kind of story we would laugh about years later, remembering back when Eddie wasn’t rotting in prison somewhere and we all had fun with our shenanigans. Maybe.
I leaned forward and reached up with the scissors in my hand. I only needed to cut off an inch or so to say that I cut her ponytail. I tried to go real slow. I had the spot to cut right in mind.
Dadgum, my head was hurting real bad.
I inched the scissors up to her ponytail. Only an inch, that was all I needed.
My head started pounding. I tried to swallow.
Mrs. Buttke put the chalk down. I had to do it before she turned around.
I was going super slow and focusing real hard, and I would have just cut an eighth of an inch off, but then Eddie shoved me. He put his hand right square in the middle of my back and gave me a real hard push. And next thing I knew, my scissors went all the way up to right next to her head and I panicked and closed them. I cut her ponytail all the way up at where the hair thingy was. Right at the back of her head. About a foot and a half of hair fell down onto my desk.
Martha jumped up and shrieked, then she felt for her ponytail and shrieked again. Eddie dove over his desk to grab her hair before she turned around and he dropped the bank letter in my lap. Mrs. Buttke came running back to where we was.
Martha spun and saw me holding them scissors, and she hollered at me like a banshee. It didn’t sound nearly as prett
y as her normal voice was. I wanted to say something, apologize and explain myself. Maybe even offer to buy her a wig or something. All I could muster out was, “It wasn’t me.”
She pointed at them scissors in my hand and hollered again. She still hadn’t gotten around to making words, just wailing that only comes from a woman who got her hairdo butchered.
I dropped the scissors.
Mrs. Buttke grabbed me by the ear and yanked me up.
“Principal’s office! Now!” she yelled, and shoved me toward the door. I tried to grab the mail I had on my desk, but she blocked me. “I said now!” She wrapped her arm around Martha, who had moved from shrieking to crying, and tried to get her to calm down.
And all the while, Eddie Gorman was grinning like a fat possum. It was a good thing for him he wasn’t a possum, ’cause I was itching to shoot him.
I got into the principal’s office and he didn’t waste no time. He spanked me something fierce, almost broke the paddle on my backside. I had to do a lot of fast talking to convince him not to call my pa. I had to use the Dead Ma excuse and the Brother Away from Home excuse, with a hint of the Pa’s Only Got Half a Lung excuse. But he eventually had mercy and sent me back to class.
Martha was gone for the day. Her ma had come and got her to take her home. I was kind of glad for it, ’cause I didn’t want our first real conversation to be me telling her that I’d stolen her ponytail ’cause my pa couldn’t pay bills good.
I slid into my seat while Mrs. Buttke was going over math problems. I snuck a peek into my English book. All the mail was still in there, so she must not have seen it. The letter from the bank was in there too. Which was weird, ’cause I didn’t put it in there. I double-checked everything to see if anything was missing.
Pa’s disability check was gone.
I shot a look back at Eddie, but he was busy doing the math problems in his book.
“Psst,” I said. “Did you grab my pa’s check?”
“Johnny Cannon,” Mrs. Buttke said real loud. “That is enough from you.”
The Troubles of Johnny Cannon Page 7
