Zack

by William Bell

  Wading behind him, I wrapped my arms around his chest and dragged him onto the slippery bank.

  “What in the name of all that’s holy d’y’all think you’re doing?” he thundered, spluttering and sitting up. His voice, carried on the damp night air, echoed back from the far side of the bayou.

  “I heard a noise. I thought I saw someone with a gun.”

  Lucas wiped his face and spat river water onto the ground. “A gun? Y’all seen too many movies, boy. Now, go on back in the drink and fetch my pole!”

  I waded into the bayou, grabbed the float and pulled on the line, hand over hand, until the fishing rod rose to the surface. I tossed it onto the jetty and waded to shore, shivering with disgust at the sucking mud around my feet.

  Lucas stood dripping in the harsh light, his sopping shirt and overalls clinging to his bony frame. When he saw me scrabble onto the bank in my underwear he began to laugh.

  “What’s so damn funny?” I said, though it wasn’t him I was angry at.

  “Mike,” he chortled, “y’all look like a bull catfish done had a bad night!”

  He threw back his head and his laughter echoed across the bayou once more.

  “I’m sorry,” I said lamely for a third time. “Are you all right?”

  “Turn off them darned lights,” he rasped, “and let’s go inside and get dry.”

  Later, we sat on the jetty in the tranquil darkness, a vacuum jug of hot coffee between our chairs, two red-and-white bobbers floating in the light on the still water. Three small crappies and two catfish bumped their noses against the sides of the white bucket and worked their gills.

  “You know,” Lucas said slowly, “when I was a boy the swamp and bush over yonder was full of fish and wild game.”

  “Were there panthers?”

  He chuckled as he threaded a fresh wriggling minnow on his hook. “Panthers? In Mississippi? Where’d you get such an idea?”

  “I saw your book.”

  Lucas laughed again. I was beginning to feel like the straight man in a comedy duo.

  “That’s a history of the Black Panthers,” he told me, casting his line. “They was a militant Black Power outfit back in the sixties. Done a lot of good, too, even though some of ’em preached armed rebellion. The system done ’em in, though, like it always does.”

  He slapped a mosquito on the back of his neck. “How’s that eye of yours?”

  Gingerly, I touched the pulpy flesh under the prize-winning shiner that half closed my eye. “It’s all right. Maybe it’ll make me look tough.”

  Lucas laughed. “It will that,” he said. “It will that. Hey! Y’all got a bite.”

  We fished all night, sitting quietly together, listening to the night sounds of the swamp and watching the stars appear when a breeze came up to clear off the clouds. A few hours before dawn we returned to the house and washed up.

  “Y’all grab some sleep in the spare room,” Lucas said, hoisting the pail of fish onto the counter beside the sink.

  I dragged myself into the small bedroom beside his and without turning on the light, kicked off my shoes, lay down and fell into a dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 8

  When I padded into the kitchen the next morning, yawning and knuckling the sleep from my eyes — and yelping when I mashed the tender flesh of my shiner—Lucas was pouring coffee. On the table were two plates, each bearing a sandwich made with thick slices of white bread.

  Clean-shaven, and dressed in black trousers and a long-sleeved white shirt with a black tie, Lucas looked unlike the fisherman of last night. A suit jacket hung on the back of one of the chairs.

  “Mornin’, Mike. Sit down and dig in.”

  Hungry from staying up all night, a bit bleary-eyed with fatigue, I took a bite of my sandwich. Whatever was between the bread was warm, crispy and delicious. I finished in four or five bites and drained my mug.

  “How’s the eye?” Lucas asked, a tinge of embarrassment in his voice.

  “A bit better. The swelling’s gone down a bit.” Lucas nodded.

  “That sandwich was good,” I said. “What was it?”

  “Fried catfish. More coffee?”

  “Er, sure.” The image of one of those ugly flat-headed and whiskered creatures with the black eel-like body slithered into my mind. I was glad I had asked him after the meal.

  “One of the ones we hauled in last night. The rest of our catch is in the freezer.”

  Lucas set my refilled cup on the table. “Mike, I hope you’ll forgive my bein’ rude, but, are you plannin’ to move on today?”

  I had been looking out the window across the yard to the gold sunlight on the bayou, and his question caught me by surprise. Leaving that peaceful place was the last thing in my mind.

  “Um, yeah. I guess so,” I stammered.

  “Reason I ask,” he continued. “I got to go to a funeral today. I should phone my nephew soon. He’ll carry me to the church in his car.”

  I felt hurt. My own grandfather was rushing me out the door. Okay, I was being stupid. I knew that. To Lucas I was a stranger named Mike from up north who he’d known for a day. But we had spent the whole night fishing together, him telling me stories about the places and people around Natchez, his quiet voice and our laughter drifting like smoke into the inky darkness. He had shown me how to bait a hook with a worm or minnow—which he pronounced minner—and how to tell the difference between a crappie’s anxious strike at the bait and the cagey tug of a catfish. Now it was over.

  “It’s okay, Mr. Straight,” I assured him. “I understand. I was planning to—Hey! Wait a minute. Why not let me take you to the funeral? I’d be glad to. I’ll drop you off and leave from there.”

  “Well, I don’t want to put you to no trouble.”

  Half an hour later, showered and wearing my last set of clean, not-too-wrinkled clothes, I drove along a series of dirt roads through flat green fields. Lucas sat beside me, his polished shoes resting on a carpet of fast-food wrappers, his cane between his knees.

  “Was the—Is the funeral for a relative?” I asked him.

  “A good friend,” he answered solemnly. “A real good friend.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, it was a blessing when he passed. A release. Poor ol’ Ray had the cancer, smoked like a fiend all his life, two or three packs a day. He had a lot of pain at the end. Take the next left, Mike. That’s the church over yonder.”

  I brought the truck to a stop where a gaggle of pickups and older sedans huddled in the shade of an oak. A hearse and two black cars were parked by the church steps.

  “Ain’t been to a service since the last funeral I went to,” he said.

  “You’re not religious, eh?” I asked, mentally slapping myself for the Canadianism. I’d been successful so far, I thought, in keeping “eh?” from my speech for fear I’d give myself away.

  But Lucas seemed not to notice. “No, I ain’t. Christianity was imposed on us by the white man when our ancestors came here from Africa. It was a means of keepin’ us down, encouragin’ us to accept things the way they were. I was raised a Baptist but I threw it off when I was a teenager, when I learned how the world worked and got my mind straight. But this is neither the time nor the place,” he went on. “You’re welcome to come on in, Mike.”

  “No, sir, thanks. I guess I’ll say goodbye here.”

  “Well, don’t say it yet. There’s a picnic after the service. I’d like you to come, ‘less you’re in a hurry.”

  “No. No, I’m not.”

  “Good.” He closed the door and limped towards the church.

  I had decided while I drove not to tell Lucas who I really was. It would be a dirty trick to drop such a bomb on him on his way to his friend’s funeral. No, I’d write to him when I got home, thank him for his hospitality, hope he wrote back. As for the Family Mystery, well, I could ask him in my letter.

  I had noticed a phone booth at a gas station we had passed, and after Lucas disappeared into the shadow of the ch
urch door I drove there, prepared to commit fraud against my parents and grandparents again. Luckily, Mom and Dad weren’t in their hotel room. “See you in a few days,” I chirped to the answering service. My grandparents weren’t home, so I left a message there too.

  I pulled the truck in alongside the pumps, got out and began to fill the tank. It was hot. It was hotter than hot. The still air smelled of gasoline and oily dust and coffee from the convenience store attached to the gas bar. There was little traffic in this part of town. I was trying to decide if the community was as dull as Fergus when a big pickup, shiny and blue and wet from a car wash, roared up to the pumps, clouds of dust pluming from the wheels. Country music twanged and moaned from the cab, and in the rear window hung a Confederate flag. The passenger, a long-haired man in a faded baseball hat, threw me a malevolent stare. Behind his head a pump shotgun lay cradled in a wooden rack.

  The driver’s door slammed and a denim-clad middle-aged man appeared from behind the truck, unscrewed the gas cap and slammed the pump nozzle into the opening. He peered at me from under the bill of his cap, then scanned my truck, his pale blue eyes lingering on the licence plate. There was a black line under his lower lip, as if he’d put mascara on the wrong place, but the effect was more sinister than comic.

  “How’s ever’ little thing up north?” he sneered, his accent as thick as glue, then he leaned forward a bit and spat out a long stream of tobacco juice. The dark liquid rolled in the dust like a gob of motor oil.

  “Fine, thanks,” I said evenly.

  I felt scorn and fear at the same time. This was a cliché if I had ever seen one—the truck, the music, the flag and gun and tobacco juice, the unconcealed contempt for a black kid in a beat-up Toyota. I wondered if the two louts wore tattoos under their shirts, read right-wing outdoors magazines, slunk home each day to mobile homes where overweight women named Bobbie-Jo or Wendy-Lou poured a Bud for them before target practice.

  I pulled the nozzle from the tank inlet and replaced the gas cap, knowing I had only taken on a couple of gallons. I wanted out of there, fast.

  “Ain’t they got no American trucks up there?”

  “Um, my dad couldn’t afford one,” I said lamely, hoping my voice didn’t shake as much as it seemed to me.

  “Strange,” the man in the truck drawled over the guitars and banjos, “your kind gettin’ all the good jobs nowadays.” His voice was heavy with menace. “Or collectin’ welfare all yer life.”

  Ignoring the impulse to make a snide comment about the contradiction, I turned my back and walked to the store. Hands trembling, I handed over the money.

  “Y’all come on back, now,” said the teenage clerk, smiling and popping her gum as she stuffed the bills into the cash register.

  Maybe not, I thought as I pulled out of the lot. I turned on the windshield washers to clean the smear of tobacco juice from the glass.

  Back at the church, I parked under the same tree, grateful for the breeze that sighed in the branches overhead, rustling the leaves and flowing into the cab. In the small white building the singing had started, loud, harmonious and joyful—not at all what I’d have expected at a funeral.

  The after-effect of the adrenalin rush from the scene at the gas station left my muscles soft and quivering, and I felt the full weight of my black skin. More than once in my life I had secretly wished that I wasn’t half-African, and guilt had always followed, as if I was betraying my mother. After reading about Pawpine I had begun to be proud, a little at first, that I was connected to the generations of women and children and men who as slaves had built the farms and plantations of the South and then had migrated north and west to build airplanes, trucks, machines and roads. Now I was reminded that there was nowhere to hide.

  The music faded and died in the church, replaced by birdsong. A few moments later a procession flowed from the church door and down the steps, the coffin floating like a leaf on the stream of mourners. In the graveyard the burial proceeded at a leisurely pace. White handkerchiefs flashed in the sun, were raised and lowered.

  After pausing to speak to a few people, Lucas limped slowly towards me. Behind him the small crowd broke up and drifted towards the cars. I got out and opened the door for him, then came around and climbed in again. Lucas sat for a moment without speaking. Around us, car motors came to life and the mourners drove away.

  “Well, that’s that,” Lucas murmured. “Ol’ Ray’s in the ground. He’s free, now. Let’s go, Mike.”

  Chapter 9

  The picnic was held at Ray’s widow’s house, a place much like Lucas’s, on a back road near the Mississippi River, but with a much bigger yard. Mrs. James sat on a rocking chair on the gallery, greeting her guests as they arrived. Lucas spoke to her for a few moments, then called me up to meet her.

  She was a large, capable-looking woman, formal in her black dress, and her handshake was firm. “Y’all are welcome to our home, Mike,” she said.

  Inwardly I winced at hearing my phoney name. “Thank you for having me, Mrs. James.” I said.

  “Go on down there, you two, and get somethin’ to eat.”

  Beside the frame house a trestle table sagged under the weight of enough food to feed the two dozen or so assembled people several times over—platters of chicken fried golden brown, huge bowls of creamy potato salad and coleslaw, dishes of rice and beans, cakes, pies and tarts galore, and a long metal tray of shredded meat that gave off a tangy mouthwatering aroma. Tubs of crushed ice at each end of the table held beer and soda.

  “What’s that?” I asked Lucas, pointing to the meat.

  “Why, that’s barbecue,” he said. “Get you some. Can’t go back to Oh-high-uh without tryin’ real barbecue.”

  With our plates stacked high we found chairs in the shade and began to eat. Little white butterflies danced in the long grass around us, and farther away a few kids played catch. It was the first time in my life I had been to a social function of any kind where everybody was black. People stood or sat around the gallery, the men jacketless, with their sleeves rolled up past their elbows. The women had removed their hats and fanned themselves with their hankies as they talked and ate. Whenever someone passed by us, Lucas would introduce me. I got lots of exercise standing up and sitting, and saw lots of smiles when Lucas explained my shiner. He obviously enjoyed telling the story, and each time he did, there was a little more detail, a fraction more drama.

  “Yonder’s my two nephews,” Lucas said, pointing with his chin at two long-legged, athletic-looking men about Dad’s age. “Ned and Cal. Cal’s the one with the bad arm.”

  The taller man’s left arm was shorter than his right and it hung uselessly at his side, twisted so that the back of his hand touched the side of his leg. He and his brother sat down at a card table, laying out cutlery and paper napkins.

  “And them’s their wives, Rose and Sharon,” Lucas added as he wiped his plate clean with the last of a bread roll.

  Sharon was the widest woman I had ever seen. Her huge buttocks rose and fell like pistons as she walked. Rose was big too, but her sister-in-law made her look almost slender. Carrying two plates of food each, they joined their husbands.

  I watched my mother’s cousins. Cal leaned close to Rose and whispered in her ear. Frowning fiercely, she elbowed him, knocking his fork from his hand and sending a gob of potato salad down the front of his shirt. Sharon let out a laugh, then clapped her palm over her mouth. Ned smiled, shaking his head like a school teacher.

  “What happened to Cal’s arm?” I asked Lucas.

  He gnawed the last shred of meat from a chicken bone and dropped it on his plate. When he spoke there was a hard edge to his voice. “When Cal and Ned were younger than you, ‘round twelve, I guess, they was real hellions. Got mixed up in the civil rights movement back there in the sixties. At Selma, Cal managed to get hisself in the first row of a demonstration. A police dog got at him. Chewed his arm up real bad before the cop got it under control. Probably wasn’t in much of a hurry, the cop. Ca
l almost bled to death.”

  “It’s hard to believe they used dogs on people, isn’t it?”

  “Yep. And fire hoses, and nightsticks. That was in the daytime, in front of the TV cameras and reporters. After dark, some people used guns and even bombs. You probably learned about this in school.”

  “Yeah, some.” The American civil rights movement wasn’t exactly a big item back in Canada, especially in Fergus.

  “Well, that was a bad time,” he went on, shaking his head. “Between the movement and the war, a lot of blood flowed. A lot of boys from around here never made it to thirty.”

  Lucas put his empty plate down on the grass and drained his tea. I had finished eating. I said nothing, unwilling to interrupt the flow of his thought.

  “Fought our war here against the white man’s laws—Mississippi was the worst state in the union to live in if you was black—and fought the white man’s war over there in Vietnam. Lost both of ’em.”

  Lucas drew his pipe from a shirt pocket and a tobacco pouch from his trousers. He began to fill the pipe. Most of the picnickers had finished eating and a few women and men moved among them, collecting paper plates on trays. My mother’s cousins were playing cards, Cal dealing one-handed.

  As Lucas lit his pipe with a wooden match, I asked him, “Did Cal and Ned fight in the war? The one in Vietnam, I mean.”

  “No, they was too young.”

  “Did you?”

  Lucas took his pipe from his mouth and spat into the grass. “Nope. I was drafted around the time they were shutting the war down, but I refused to go. You know, Ray and me, we knew each other all our lives. That’s the onliest thing we ever really argued about. He said we ought to fight for our country. I said I wouldn’t go to some little place in Asia and shoot people I had no quarrel with. No coincidence those Asian people wasn’t white, Mike. None at all.”