Sketcher

by Roland Watson-Grant

  “You’re missin’ the best part, Beaumonts. Let’s all go back into my office.”

  Now I’m thinking: “OK, soon as we get into the house, Pa Campbell’s gonna grab a rifle and tell James, ‘Stand down soldier’, and James and his boys, they’ll take off and leave us alone.” See, Pa told me once that you need to understand a disturbed guy like ol’ James. He’s the delusional type that says things happened to him that never did, or the details didn’t quite go the way he described it. And if you talked down to him without respectin’ his delusion, then you’re plumb out of luck. So let’s say he’s got a gun pointed at you and he says he was in WWI, then he was in WWI. Don’t tell him he’s too young to have been there. That’s gonna get you shot. Twice, in the head. You gotta know that he really feels like he went to WWI, and you got to let him cry and then tell him the War is over and hug him a little bit so you can get the goddamn pistol out of his grip. But as we all got shoved into Ma’s house, I realize we were behind the eight-ball. Ma and Pa were both being tied down to their bed, and there was a big can of gasoline on the floor.

  “Now,” said James, “it’s gonna get hot as hell in here if I don’t get some cooperation. First order of business is roll call. Please answer to your names when they’re called. Let’s go... Paw Campbell?”

  Pa groaned. “Jesus.”

  “Nope, that name ain’t on the register, Paw. And I’m the one doing the name-callin’, not you. So let’s go again. Paw Campbell?”

  “Oh Lawd.”

  James trailed his finger down a make-believe register. “Nope, neither.”

  “For godssakes Pa, just play along!” hollered Ma Campbell beside him. Ma was annoyed enough already that she was still horizontal and starin’ at the ceiling at the end of the day, when there was work to be completed. Well, soon ol’ Couyon, he ditches the register that never existed and declares that he was done with watchin’ Pa’s “elligador and crawfish bidniss go to pieces, and therefore he was there to conduct a takeover to move the bidniss forward”. Said he wanted to be on the cover of Fortune 500, and the old man had no vision.

  Meanwhile, Pa Campbell’s eyes kept drifting off to the space behind the door. Couyon saw it before I did. He reached around and snatched up Pa’s rifle and said, “Ah, nothin’ like a little more staff motivation.”

  “Aw, shit,” said Pa, gettin’ worried.

  “Nope. No bathroom breaks yet, Paw. Now that we’re all heah, let’s begin again.”

  And James went through the purpose for the meetin’ and marked the register again, only this time addin’ the year, Nineteen Eighty-six. Now, as I looked around the room and saw Ma and Pa and my brothers, I honestly started blamin’ myself for this whole mess, until I realized that all was going to be all right. See, everything was going according to some divine plan. I didn’t care about whatever CEO obsession Couyon Jackson was havin’, even though he was talkin’ about money. But I was thinking this situation is ideal. Soon Moms, being held out on that porch, is gonna say to hell with it and start conjurin’ or – better yet, since she and Frico were prob’ly workin’ together – they’ll definitely see this as a crisis and sketch us the hell out of all this mess. So I was excited like it was Christmas and I got presents and I was going on a campin’ trip all at the same time. This was show time. And Couyon Jackson didn’t know the kind of Beaumont Retribution that was comin’ to him.

  “Now, ladies and gentlemen – Paw included – I, James Altamont Jackson, today in my capacity as the Human Resource Director and CEO of the New Campbells’ Catcheries, will be conducting interviews to determine my Vice President of Operations.”

  Everybody groaned in a chorus, but me, I was almost impressed with James’ speeches for a guy who walked out of the third grade. That was until I realized I had heard some of them before. He’d actually ripped off most of the dialogue from a few of those soap operas on Channel Twelve, where people are always taking over oil companies or wineries and vineyards and celebrating every single nothing with a glass of champagne.

  With one hand still on the rifle, James reached into the toilet and yanked at the toilet-paper roll. He reeled the whole thing out into the livin’ area and handed the end of it to me and said I should take the minutes. Tony told him he didn’t need minutes in an interview. He said, “Shaddup, your interview is first. And you ain’t off to a good start.”

  So of course my eldest brother is sittin’ there lookin’ at James Jackson and not cooperatin’, and the CEO slash Human Resource Director slash Rigolets River Murderer now has two rifles and is not amused. But Tony isn’t budgin’. And I see this waltz was turning into a wrestlin’ match real quick, so I started blurting out loud.

  “Mr Jackson, Tony is real good at electronics like his pops. He’s almost out of high school and has a lot of ideas about the future of technology.” Doug and Frico and Tony are lookin’ at me like, “What the hell, fool?” But this is for their own good. I want them to cooperate while he’s still in character and give Frico time to make his move. The last thing you want to do is give Crazy James Jackson reason to add more damn titles to his name and then let so many of his personalities get pissed off in a group. Then we would all be eaten by catfish over in the Rigolets. So I keep talkin’ and I ask Couyon if he knew that they were inventing helicopters with tractor beams like the aliens use, and once the light hits you, you’re frozen.

  “Rubbish.” He spat black liquid from his chewin’ tobacco on Ma Campbell’s floor. I didn’t blame him, cos I didn’t believe that one when Tony told me neither.

  “Wait, there’s some more!” I told him. And I blabbered on about how Tony predicted that in the future everybody in the world would travel thousands of miles in less than a second, just by walkin’ through a door, and read two hundred books in an hour.

  “Bullshit,” said Jim. “Learnin’ takes your whole life.”

  “Then we’ll be able to learn much more in a lifetime,” said Tony, soundin’ real cool and controlled, even though he was biting the nails on his flat fingers. “Computers will make everything pos’ble. We’ll even have photo maps of the whole Milky Way. So we can look down from satellites and see everywhere in our Galaxy, including the swamps and the L-shaped island and the house with the man holding people hostage.”

  So I see my big brother was trying to psych out ol’ Couyon Jackson. And that wasn’t part of the plan – at least not in my head. So James, he starts lookin’ up and around. He’s gettin’ jumpy, so I hand the toilet paper off to Frico and I tell him to get to sketchin’. He looks at me wide-eyed as usual, and then says it doesn’t even make sense, cos the paper is not ideal and he doesn’t even have his pencils.

  Now James, he sees I’m fidgety and talking to Frico, so he points the rifle at me and tells me I’m his secretary and I should go make him a cup of coffee. And – would you believe it? – in the middle of this crisis ol’ Ma Campbell, tied up as she was, she starts doting on her boy James.

  “Skid, maybe you should make Jim a coupla hush puppies too – poor boy must be hungry – that’s why he’s actin’ up. You hungry Jim?”

  “Damn right I am, Ma.”

  And that old lady is tied to the bed, but she’s craning her neck to look into the kitchen so she can give me instructions on how to deep-fry hush-puppy biscuits for ol’ James Couyon Jackson.

  “Not too much buttermilk, now Skid”, or “Mix them ingredients real good, or it’ll upset his bowels. Yes, that’s right – keep stirring, Skid, keep stirring.”

  Damn. I used to like Ma Campbell – up to that point.

  So I’m deep-fryin’ them hush puppies in a big ol’ cast-iron skillet that must be older than Pa and Ma put together, while James is conducting his interviews, and I realize somethin’s goin’ on. For starters, Tony is not sayin’ another word. Every time I dropped a hush puppy in the hot grease and it crackled up a bit I could hear Tony just hittin’ the key on that HF-1200 walkie-talkie beside Pa Campbell’s bed. Dit. Dit. Dit. Dah Dah Dah. Dit. Dit. Dit.

>   He did it about three times sittin’ on the floor with his hands behind him. Then he dah-ditted some more – but hell if I could make out them words.

  So I went ahead and brought the hush puppies to Couyon, and he’s lookin’ at me suspicious. He had good reason too, cos I’d heard a rumour that because he walked out of the third grade, James couldn’t read too well – and that’s why he ripped off speeches from movies. Hell, they said it was so bad that you could write his name on a slice of bread and he’d gobble it down like there was nothing different about it. So I had gone ahead and written “JAMES” on the dough of a hush puppy with a fork, and he guzzled it down like a hungry blind dog. After that, outside was completely dark, and I was wonderin’ what’s next and where was Moms in all of this and why the hell Frico wasn’t sketchin’. Then Pa Campbell, on account of missin’ his chill pills, he just started hollerin’ at Jim.

  “Now look, I really need to go. Are you done keepin’ us all hostage, you S–O–B? Sorry, Ma.”

  And James said, “I’ll keep ya-all ostrich for as long as I can.”

  And Pa said the word was “hostage”, and James said: “No, it’s ostrich, cos ostriches, they can’t fly – and right now, right now I got your wings clipped.” And Pa Campbell said, “Look it up – I ain’t got taam with this shit, Couyon!” And Ma is tryin’ to calm Pa down, but Pa is hollerin’ harder.

  “Woman, don’t calm me down, calm your son down!”

  Pa is losin’ it, and Crazy James “Couyon” Altamont Jackson, he just whips around with flames in his eyes and puts one of the rifles in Pa’s white-bearded mouth and pulls the damn trigger. And we all scream loud, cos we’re waiting for it to rain brains in there, but there’s a click and Pa is laughing still with the nozzle in his mouth – and I didn’t even know there weren’t no rounds in that other rifle Crazy James was swingin’ about. Pa Campbell went ahead and emptied out the chamber when James appeared in the swamp. Then, all of a sudden, there was a thunderin’ overhead. And the wind came. And I’m ready to shout hallelujah, cos the Great Beaumont Retribution had begun – but then a light comes through the window, and we all get down real flat on the floor, cos it became obvious that it was one of those new Coast Guard helicopters with a goddamn freeze-ray tractor beam light on it, and it’s thunderin’ right over the house and the whole swamp is as fluorescent as the comin’ of the Lord. Then I hear Moms above the noise from all the way across the yard. She’s chantin’ “Jerusalem” and girls are screamin’ and Couyon’s whole gang is tryin’ to get inside, and Couyon himself is tryin’ to get outside, and before launchin’ through the window he looks me in the eye me and says, “Next time not so much salt in the hush puppies, Skid Marks. That stuff will kill ya before I do.”

  Pa saw that the man was fixin’ to escape. So he wrung himself free, reached up off the bed and grabbed Couyon, who was already halfway through the wooden window. Couyon spotted the turquoise ring Pa must have been hidin’ all evenin’ and, in three quick moves, he hit the old man in the face with the back of the rifle, spat on the hand that was holdin’ him and easily slid that ring off Pa’s finger before tumblin’ out backwards into the darkness. Professional.

  We all jumped up and burst through the door. And we see James running and the tractor beam from the helicopter looks like a big ol’ broom the colour of lightning, and it’s sweepin’ away shadows left and right, searchin’ for Couyon and his gang. He’s behind the house when the chopper buzzes over the tin roof and the light swivels around and shines on that sucker through the trees, but it doesn’t freeze him like Tony said it’s supposed to. Damn. I couldn’t believe it, but that bastard kept on running, and him and his boys, they dive straight into the bayou. And the police dogs and Calvin’s kids and the Coast Guard and the City Police went in right after him – and Moms, she splashes in right after them as mad as hell with the rifle she retrieved from the house, and she’s yellin’: “Oi! Oonu try nuh come back ’roun me pickney dem again, y’hear bwoy?” Then she stops and she’s standin’ knee-deep in the bayou with the rifle on her hip pointin’ up. The chopper is right above her head. There’s a big circle on the water around her. The beam sweeps across her face and out into the bayou, and she’s not droppin’ the rifle like they’re tellin’ her over the loudspeaker. Freeze frame. Bad Ass Pam Grier with a Caribbean accent. And that’s the first time I heard my moms speak San Tainos patois. It was like somethin’ preserved in a jar, but that jar broke and the stuff flowed out strong and sharp and deadly like moonshine full of broken glass pieces.

  And by the way, I swore that would be the last time I listened to any more of Tony Beaumont’s predictions. To hell with freeze rays and teletransport and all that. Frico would change the world as we knew it, even though in that instance he didn’t do a damn thing.

  Sixteen

  Well, after the Couyon Gang cleared out of L-Island, we realized they’d cleaned us out as well. Somewhere between the time those boys were drinkin’ beer out of the boat and the end of James’ ostrich-takin’, they disconnected our four eighteen-wheeler back-up batteries, tore down our thirty-foot CB antennae and dug up and sawed through the PVC pipe attached to the well tank just to flood the place. Worst of all, they swiped our big ol’ 45-kW generator. I guess they couldn’t get inside our house on account of Frico’s protection paintin’, but they took our electricity, so Moms had to stumble around in the dark to get the rifle, especially since she couldn’t find her way around the house without Pops’ clutter. After the drama and the police takin’ all the city kids home to their finger-pointin’ parents, Moms just went inside quietly, and we followed her. We could hear her searching under the cupboard for ever. When she finally emerged, she struck a match and lit this old kerosene lamp that I’d never seen. It was huge with a glass base and a cord wick in it. A jagged flame jumped up, and black smoke spirited off the edges. She put a lampshade over the flame and it settled down a bit. “Home Sweet Home” was printed on the shade in letters that were curly like the smoke. All this time she’s hummin’ a hymn. She broke the stanza to say: “I guess we can see a lot more stars now, boys.”

  Yeah right. I wasn’t goin’ outside ever again. Her face looked tired by lamplight. Doug brought her some tea. The KeroGas stove was about the only thing that still worked. Our sink was piled high with gummy pots and pans from the shindig. In the sad lighting, the CB radio sat cold. Those neon-red digital numbers and lights that would greet you in the dark when you woke up at night and those voices from the static of some far-off American highway were all gone. I guess we all felt more foolish than afraid, and across Moms’ brows you could see her thinkin’ that she’d made a mistake – or a couple of ’em. She was barely thirty-eight years old, and she was fixin’ to go grey any day. But this episode wasn’t over by a long shot.

  Harry T turned up next morning when Moms was still sleepin’. That’s how early it was. The guy had pedalled in the half-darkness all the way into the mist of the swamp. Crazy. We heard a tappin’ at the window, then a copy of a gossip tabloid, Télépathie, was slapped against the louvres. Even through the frosted glass you could read the headline: “SHIN-DIG SEVENTEEN: DARING RESCUE IN SWAMP”. We tumbled out onto the front porch, and below the headlines there was a photo of a chopper and the story of the whole drama. Well, at least their version of it. They said it was around midnight that Couyon hijacked the party. Hogwash. They said we were all tied down to beds and tortured. Bullshit. They didn’t even mention the Morse code or Moms’ runnin’ after the gang and the police tellin’ her to stand down. Hell, it wasn’t even seventeen of us.

  They had a very eerie picture of our house in it, all painted up and lookin’ spooky. They “reported” that supernatural elements from the swamp were takin’ over the city. Man. Only one thing was true in that whole fake story, and that’s the fact that the police caught Shotput and Boogers the same night they dived in the bayou. Shotput gave himself up to let Couyon get away, but that Boogers guy prob’ly got caught cos he was swimmin’ with one ha
nd up his nose.

  Well, we couldn’t believe what we were readin’, and I’m sure Belly felt the same way, but we couldn’t say for sure cos Aunt Bevlene, she was packin’ him up and gettin’ him ready to be shipped off to Atlanta like a bat out of hell as soon as those stories started flyin’ around. Poor guy begged her to let him “touch the swamp again one last time”, but she said “over my dead body” and sent him off. And she was smart too, cos pretty soon we were all catchin’ hell at school in the city.

  Doug said after that night his girl fans’ parents forbid them to come into the swamps. And all of the fans that didn’t come to the shindig, well they saw the papers and just couldn’t believe that the Great Doug Beaumont lived in a one-room, rundown shack in the swamps. So, pretty soon he wasn’t cool any more, especially after he busted a guy’s lip for callin’ Moms a witch and the coach put him on the team bench for the whole soccer season.