Music of the Swamp

by Lewis Nordan

  My mother kept walking up the filthy sand.

  Daddy called, “Jesus Christ, honey! I can’t do no better! Maybe if we lived near a better beach!”

  THAT’S NOT the end of the story. It seems like it could be, since it’s just the kind of thing I’m always hearing myself say these days: If the world were different, I would be different, I would be more in love.

  But it’s not the end. There is one more thing to tell.

  We did not drive back to the Delta that day. We stayed on the coast the whole month. Federal grant money came through while we were still staying at the beach house, and so the bulldozers started up. Cranes with steel balls swung into the walls of buildings and finished the collapse the hurricane had begun. Politicians stumped around making speeches, billboards with clever sayings went up: THE SOUTH SHALL RISE AGAIN. Pumper barges and dredges cleared the Gulf channels and pumped new white sand up onto the beaches. Dead fish and turtles were hauled off in garbage scows, the whale full of buzzards was dragged out to sea by a tugboat. The red lights of ambulances and police cars flashed all night, as the last bodies were carted away to funeral homes. Plate glass in windows was replaced, fallen trees were chainsawed into firewood and stacked in ricks. The ospreys and the swamp creatures lay quiet, quiet in the Mississippi darkness. The knife-throwers went back to New Orleans, the swamp-midgets got work in the construction industry.

  My parents and I took long drives in the car and watched the reconstruction. The Gulf coast slowly became beautiful again.

  One day as we drove along we realized we had left the state of Mississippi altogether and were actually speeding down a Florida highway, and this made all of us happy, but for some reason it also frightened us, and so Daddy turned the car around and we drove back in the direction of Biloxi and Symbol City and Pass Christian and Gulfport and Pascagoula.

  Daddy looked longingly out the car window at house painters on high ladders, brightening the walls and corners of big houses that the hurricane had stripped of paint. He spoke wistfully of possibly moving here, where work was so plentiful, and where the land was so beautiful and the Gulf waters smelled like flowers on the islands beyond the reef.

  We kept all the windows of the car rolled down and Mama’s hair was beautiful when the wind blew it. Daddy’s face got sunburned and his freckles stood out like copper pennies. I found Connections magazine in the trash one day, and so I took it out to the dumpster with the shells of shrimp we had peeled and eaten together the night before.

  There was no more talk of love or of romance or of metaphors, though this seemed to be a good thing, not bad. My parents talked more, I would say, and kissed less, and this seemed to make both of them happy, though I cannot say why. We spent less time on the beach and more time in the car, driving, driving, driving along the Gulf of Mexico.

  Daddy said, “Symbol City is a funny name for a town.”

  Mama said, “Mississippi was never a subtle state.”

  Daddy said, “It’s funny how you end up somewhere, and then that’s your life.”

  Mama said, “I guess.”

  Daddy said, “I think I would like to read more books. I used to always be reading a book when I was in the army.”

  Mama said, “I guess.”

  Daddy said, “I met this guy who was writing a book. He was a writer, that’s what he told me.”

  Mama said, “Is that right? I heard John Dillinger the gangster used to drive down this very highway.”

  Daddy said, “What has that got to do with a writer?”

  We were in the car with the windows down. I was in the backseat thinking about cocksuckers.

  I said, “Daddy.”

  Daddy said, “What is it, Sugar-man?” Then he said, “I could have given this writer a few tips for his book, if I’d of thought of it.”

  Mama said, “Tell the truth.”

  I said, “What if I wanted to grow up to be a cocksucker?”

  Daddy said, “Sex facts about animals, that’s what the book was about, see. He was collecting sex facts about animals.”

  Mama said, “I know one. I know a good one.”

  Daddy said, “You do? You know a good sex fact about animals?”

  Mama said, “The common opossum has a forked penis. That’s one, that’s the one sex fact about animals that I know.”

  I got real quiet in the backseat. I had never heard my mother talk about sex before. It was stranger than seeing the silk ties on the bed posts.

  Daddy said, “A forked one?”

  Mama said, “That’s it.”

  Daddy said, “Woo-ee.”

  Mama said, “In case they want to boink up the nose, I guess, I don’t know.”

  The two of them laughed quietly at the joke. The wind was whipping through the car and stirring up dust devils in the backseat. The Gulf skies were blue, blue. It would have been an excellent time to be sitting on a hardwood floor instead of in the backseat of a car, I was thinking.

  We drove along for a while and didn’t talk.

  Daddy said, “In the army I was stationed in Sarasota for a while.” He said, “Friend of mine was with the circus. He was a swordswallower.”

  He seemed to be talking to me. I wondered if this was an answer to my question about cocksucking.

  I said, “The circus?”

  He said, “The winter circus. It’s in Venice, near Sarasota. If we had an extra day or two we could drive down there. I wonder if he’s still alive. He could take eighteen inches right down his throat.”

  Mama said, “It’s so far to Sarasota, honey, and we’re so comfortable here.”

  Daddy said, “Okay, all right, it was just a thought.” He looked at Mama. He scrunched down in the driver’s seat and looked through the steering wheel at the highway. He said, “I’m John Dillinger, rolling through, balling the jack, watch out, po-lice, watch out law-abiding citizens, watch out all you possums and cocksuckers!”

  She said, “You’re John Dillinger all right. You think you’re John Dillinger.” My mama was blushing and laughing, and she was flushed with excitement and joy.

  He said, “You’re my moll, bebby. You’re a dangerous woman. You’re the Lady in Red. You’re my pistol-packing mama.”

  He gunned the engine and we sped along laughing like a bunch of wild Indians down the long bad coastal highway of the Gulf of Mexico.

  Daddy said, “Git on down the damn road! Yeah!”

  Field and Stream

  MY GIFT under the Christmas tree the year I turned twelve was a single-shot .410 gauge shotgun. It was a fine-looking little gun, with a dark-wood stock and forepiece. It breeched with a sharp metallic crack, so that a shell might be dropped into the chamber.

  The shells were another gift, a bright box of number six shot. And also a canvas hunting jacket with a game bag built into the lining, and a canvas cap as well, with earflaps that could be pulled down in case of cold weather. Next to these was a stiff bright pair of wool boot socks, gray with a red stripe around the tops.

  Not only were these things under the tree, which would have made my life complete in any case, but also a small sturdy metal box with two suitcaselike latches. I flipped open the latches and saw what was almost too good to be true, a sectional ramrod, a bottle of cleaning solvent, patches of cotton swabbing and a length of soft cotton rope. Also, a can of gun oil, a bottle of something called “blueing,” and a thin pamphlet titled “Care and Cleaning of Firearms.”

  It was just daylight Christmas morning. My father was puking in the bathroom from drinking too much the night before. The fat red Christmas tree lights were shining and there was an angel on top of the tree. My grandfather was in his room smoking a cigar, though it was only six o’clock on a misty Mississippi morning, and the house stunk weirdly of tobacco and oranges.

  I was holding the shotgun across my lap where I sat on the floor.

  My mother said, “Do you like it?”

  I said, “It’s okay. Yeah, it’s fine.”

  She said, “I wasn’
t sure it would be what you wanted. I was guessing. I hope I guessed right. Is a .410 all right? Is a .410 what you wanted?”

  I said, “You can’t hunt deer with it. It’s too small for deer hunting.”

  My mother said, “Well, but maybe you wouldn’t want to start with, you know, big game. Maybe you’ll want to hunt, maybe, squirrels at first, until you’re more experienced, maybe. Maybe rabbits.”

  I turned the gun on its side. I had to force myself not to pet it, like a living thing. I read the writing stamped into the barrel. Winchester .410 gauge Full Choke

  I said, “Full choke.”

  My mother said, “Was full choke the wrong thing to get? Mr. Gibson at the Western Auto Store didn’t mention anything about ‘choke.’ Or if he did, I mean, I guess I didn’t hear, wasn’t listening carefully. I don’t even know what ‘choke’ means. Is full choke all right?”

  We could hear my father finishing up in the bathroom. The big finish this morning, with the final gags of dry heaving and the scuffing sounds of his crawling on the floor, where he had been lying with his head in the toilet. Now the spitting and the cursing. Next the gargling.

  Even my mother had to notice. She said, “Dad’s driving the porcelain bus this morning.”

  I said, “‘Modified’ or ‘open’ choke would be better for quail.”

  She said, “But how about squirrels, or maybe rabbits? Just to start, you know, to get some experience first. Would full choke be all right for either of them?”

  My mother was sitting on the floor beneath the Christmas tree with her hands in her lap. The fat red bulbs burned among the tinsel behind her. I cocked the hammer, and then eased the hammer back to the ‘Safe’ position. I sighted along the barrel, out the window at a pecan tree, black with rain from the night before.

  I knew nothing at all about guns. This was the first gun I had ever held in my hands. I lowered it from my shoulder and did not look up.

  I said, “Full choke is perfect for squirrels.”

  In my room, behind the closed door, I held the gun, I breeched it, and cocked the hammer. I even loaded it once, dropped a dangerous bright little plastic-coated cylinder into the chamber and snapped the gun shut and cocked the hammer and aimed from the hip at my closed door and knew that I could shoot right through it.

  I took the gun apart, barrel and stock, and laid each piece on my bed separately. Then I put the parts back together.

  I read Field and Stream magazine. I read about rifled slugs, about removing musk glands from animals, about cooking wild game, about constructing a dove blind in a harvested corn field. I read advertisements for insulated boots, for “pocket warmers,” for battery-operated socks, for long underwear and waterproof shell bags. I looked at the men in the ads wearing flannel and leather and canvas and rubber. Men with pipes in their mouths and color in their faces.

  And sometimes I even took the gun to bed with me, beneath the covers. I dumped the shells out of their box and scrambled them with my hand over the sheet, just to listen to the click. I picked them up and let them run through my fingers like gold.

  THOUGH I did these things, I did not go hunting. With the exception of one aborted attempt soon after Christmas, my father resisted steadfastly all my mother’s suggestions that he take me. Whenever the subject came up, he lapsed into sentimental memory. He told of a man who hunted with “a little beagle dog, sweetest baby voice you ever heard on a dog, like banjos far off in the woods somewhere,” and when that poor man accidentally shot and killed that sweetest of animals one day, why, my father said, “He set down on the bumper of his truck and believe it or not because he was a big man, six foot ten or eleven, he set down on the front chrome bumper of his truck and he cried. I mean cried like a baby.” He would tell this story several times in rapid succession, only varying the height of the crybaby on the bumper of the truck.

  And yet, at night beneath the covers I fed a romance of nature and all its rhythms of forest and field.

  For weeks my mother worked her small manipulations. “You know, there’s nothing quite so beautiful to me as a father and son together,” she might say at the dinner table. She might actually place her right hand on my father’s shoulder and her left hand on mine and make a physical connection between us. Her words were the blessing and benediction that should have made the magic work.

  Nothing did work, of course, hinting least of all. And not direct pleading. “Please take him, Gilbert. Take the boy hunting. Get to know him, you hardly know the child.” This had as little effect as her subtler attempts.

  Then one frozen Saturday morning in February, I woke up with both of my parents standing above my bed, my father saying, “Get up, Sugar, I’m taking you hunting.”

  My mother was actually wringing her hands. The wedding ring on her left hand, a simple thin gold band that fitted loosely beneath the knuckle, was for a moment the only thing of her that I could see, and it struck me to the heart with loneliness.

  “Get up,” my father was saying, harshly. “We’re going hunting.”

  I rubbed my eyes and sat up against my pillows.

  My mother said, “But will you be careful? You will be careful, won’t you? Sugar, please be careful, listen to your father. Gilbert, teach him about safety. I’d just, I mean if anything happened to him, I’d just, just. . . .”

  My mother and father had had a fight. It could have been about anything. This was his punishment of her.

  My father took the canvas coat and cap from my closet and tossed them onto the bed beside me. He said, “Dress up like a hunter. Let’s have a look at Mama’s little hunter.”

  My mother wrung her hands and then picked at the frayed sleeve of her robe. She said, “Teach him safety, Gilbert. Please? Teach him all about safety.”

  He said, “You’re the one wants him to go hunting.”

  To me he said, “Bring along that fine gun-cleaning kit too. You might need to clean your gun, you don’t know. You never can tell when you might need a gun-cleaning kit along with you.”

  MY FATHER was wearing no hunting clothes, and he had no gun. He was wearing a pair of slick polyester pants, shiny as a lizard, and he had on a heavy corduroy coat and a pair of yellow plastic shoes, loafers of an unbelievable strangeness, that somebody had told him were the latest thing, and for which he had paid five dollars. It was difficult, in the presence of those plastic shoes, to keep on believing that I was a person who would ever resemble the men in Field and Stream who stirred fragrant pots of wild stew over campfires in the wilderness.

  We left the house with my mother still wringing her hands and saying, in as cheerful a voice as she could invent from her despair, “Now you boys be careful, just be real extra careful, and, uh, and have yourselves a, uh, you know, good time.” As we pulled away in the car, she called out, “Teach him firearm safety, Gilbert!”

  AS I’VE SAID, this was not the first time my father had set out with me to go hunting. The other time was a few days after Christmas, before the first of the year. Then he had said, “Hole up just a minute, Sugar, I’m thinking I might stop off at the Delta Cafe for a minute.”

  He was stopping to drink, of course. “You stay out in the car,” he said. “I’m not going to be but one minute.”

  I stayed in the car for an hour. And then I took off my canvas jacket and hat and walked to the big plate-glass window and looked through the sign painted on it—I peered through the big hole in the D of Delta—and saw my father sitting on a stool at the counter with many other men. One of the men had a wicker basket full of newly born puppies. He must have been trying to give them away, to find homes for them.

  Then I saw my father take one of the pups from the wicker basket and rub its little head with his forefinger. He held the pup up to his face and seemed to be talking to it, sweetly I thought, and then he talked to the man with the basket in his lap. My father drank a shot of whiskey and made his face, like oh yes! and then took a sip of beer behind the whiskey. Then he did the most remarkable thing I had
ever seen anyone do.

  He turned the puppy around and took the dog’s tail in his mouth, between his teeth, and bit the dog’s tail off, clean off, and spat it onto the linoleum floor, under a table where a couple was eating catfish. I could hear no sound, but the puppy was obviously squealing with surprise and pain.

  There was blood all over the front of my father’s shirt and on his chin. He was grinning proudly, as if he had done something fine. When the dog’s owner had recovered himself—it took only a second or two—he took the pup from my father and looked at the other astonished faces sitting behind beers at the counter and said not a word. The expression of complete disgust for my father was sufficient. No words were necessary. He wrapped the puppy’s tail in a napkin and picked up the rest of the pups, in the basket, and turned to leave the café. I wanted to run, but I stayed there and watched the man come out the door.

  As the door opened I could hear my father’s voice. He said, “Put a little salt on that nubbin to help it heal!”

  SO IT IS miraculous that for even one second I had been deceived by the romance of this possibility of a hunting trip.

  Mr. Shanker was the pharmacist. This time my father and I were not stopping at the Delta Cafe for shots and beers. We were stopping at the drug store for opium. My father said paregoric was good for a hangover if you didn’t mind the constipation. And to be helpful he sometimes gave Mr. Shanker an injection of morphine to help him sleep. Mr. Shanker was the only man in town to whom my father seemed sober in comparison.

  Immediately now I received a clear picture of how the two of us looked, my father and I. We were clowns. He was wearing yellow plastic shoes and lizardly pants, and I was wearing stiff new canvas clothing several sizes too large for me, and the new leather of my unoiled boots was almost as yellow as my father’s. My feet hurt like torture.

  I was paralyzed by shame for the two of us. I was my father’s son, there was no doubt in my mind, and it was impossible for me to tell which of us was more worthy of loathing and disdain. In addition to my preposterous outfit, I was carrying a shotgun and a metal box with the words Gun Cleaning Kit stenciled on the front. “Don’t forget your hunting equipment,” my father insisted in his ironic way when I tried to leave the gun and kit behind in the car.