Henry lit the match, curved his fingers around the flame, brought in his other hand, cradling, like he might cradle a lightning bug.
Late that evening the dump truck, Chrysler following, passed houses whose interior lights, yellow through shades, or white through windows, had just come on or were coming on. Clearwater thought about having Caroline inside one of those houses, in the living room maybe, just kind of knocking things around. All that hard breathing, coming on so quick. She’d never once mentioned the name Glenn, from the very beginning, the one Henry said was her boyfriend. Available ones never mentioned husband or sweetheart names. Unavailable ones did. He would look her up again sometime — even a good ways down the line.
Just outside Jemson, Georgia, it started raining, a slow drizzle. Henry sighted a service station with a shelter and pulled in for gas and a drink. As he stepped around the back of the dump truck, he glanced at the front bumper of the Chrysler, stopped, gasped, closed his eyes, not wanting to believe, opened them again to see the tiny red and black rivers of ink and rainwater running down and off the bumper sticker and onto the chrome bumper, very little left of jesus saves. But holding on at the bottom in small, proud print: “Carson’s Premier Printing, Simmons, N.C., phone 6-5912.”
PART IV
GENESIS
1938
A drop of water from Uncle Jack’s finger fizzed in the frying pan. “Put on your coat and hat,” he said to Henry, “and bring me in a bucket of stove wood.” He turned the bacon slices with a fork, one at a time. Grease bubbled beneath them. Outside, darkness was dissolving into gray light.
Henry brought in the wood, dumped it into the wood box, took off his coat and hat, and sat at the breakfast table.
Uncle Jack turned bacon again, sang-talked: “Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean; and so between the two of them, they licked the platter clean.” He lifted bacon slices on the fork and placed them on a clean rag. “Doodle-lee, doodle-lee, doodle-lee do. Doodle-lee, doodle-lee do.”
He cracked an egg on the rim of the frying pan and opened the egg with one hand, dropped the yolk and white into the grease popping and sizzling, then cracked another, then another, tossing each shell into the trash can beside the woodstove. “Come here a minute. Here. Stand on . . . stand on this stool. Now. Look.” Henry looked at the red tip of the match that was in his uncle’s mouth. “Here’s how you do this egg with one hand . . . Try it. No. You better use two. Like this . . . Okay. And if you don’t have the pan real hot, the eggs’ll stick. Here you go . . . Good job. Good job. That’s kind of messy, but it ain’t bad. Now sit back down over there.”
Uncle Jack sang again. “They licked that platter left and right, they licked it up and down. They licked that platter front and back, they licked it all around. Doodle-lee, doodle-lee, doodle-lee do. Doodle-lee, doodle-lee do. Then one day while they did lick, their two tongues they did touch, and now old Jack’s not worth two cents, he loves to kiss so much.”
Jack set a plate in front of Henry.
Henry looked at the eggs. They had black bacon specks in them. When Uncle Jack started eating, he would mix his eggs and grits together with knife and fork.
Dorie came in.
“Do you want me to fix you a plate?” said Jack. “I got enough.”
“I can fix it. And I’ll make some sandwiches. I know you-all want to get on the road. Let’s say the blessing.” She looked to be sure that Henry was closing his eyes. He closed them. “Dear Lord, please bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies, and to thy glory. In thy blessed name, amen.”
Henry broke off the end of a crisp bacon strip. He touched his toast to the egg yellow near the grits.
Uncle Jack shook Texas Pete hot sauce from the bottle onto his eggs. “Want some of this?” he said.
“No sir.”
They motored the boat out of the creek and into the calm sound, then along the shore until they came to another inlet. By this time light had moved into the air as if gaining confidence. In the east, above the coming sun, the sky was a muddy red. “We’ll cut the motor and drift,” said Uncle Jack. “Dip me a half bucket of water.”
Henry made his way to the bucket, dropped it over the side. He played around with the lip of the bucket touching the water.
“Hurry up.”
Uncle Jack gathered up the cast net and shook the weights loose from each other, stood on the bow. He held the net in one hand like a loose skirt gathered at the hips, a single lead weight under his thumb, a single weight in the other hand, and looked out across the water as they drifted.
Henry knew to look for a water ripple, but there were always water ripples, and he had a hard time telling the right ripples. Suddenly Uncle Jack swung the net back and then forward into a wide circle that splashed into the water, sinking quickly. He began pulling it in, hand over hand. “Ah, we got us a good mess,” he said. Henry saw the picture of Jesus asking the disciples to throw the net on the other side of the boat. They did and caught fish. He leaned forward so he could see the flashing silver sides of the finger mullet underwater. Uncle Jack lifted the net over the bucket, shook and unpuckered it so that the small baitfish fell loose. Henry, leaning in with his hands on the cross plank so that he could see, watched them dart from side to side of the bucket and around the walls.
“Okay, now,” said Uncle Jack, “let’s motor up and drift along that marsh over there.” He sat by the engine, wrapped the starter rope and pulled once, wrapped again and pulled, and the engine sputtered to life. He killed the motor when they were a good casting distance from shore so that they could drift along the marsh grass line and cast for red drum. Three rods and reels rested against the gunnels. “All right,” said Uncle Jack, “get you a baitfish.”
Henry reached into the cold water, chased, and closed his hand around a finger mullet. He positioned it in his left hand so that the head was visible. The boat quietly drifted. He held the hook in his right hand and placed its point on the finger mullet’s eyeball and pushed so that the hook went through and pushed against the other eye from the inside, then came out. Henry could feel bone sockets move somehow.
“Good work,” said Uncle Jack.
They fished without luck until midmorning.
“Let’s wind ’em in, eat us these sam’iches,” said Uncle Jack. “Yum, yum.” He dropped anchor, stood, moved to the front of the boat, then pulled a paper sack from the bow space, opened it, and got out two sandwiches wrapped in wax paper and a canteen of water. He looked out across the marsh and then up the inlet to the sound. The wind had risen since morning and there were waves, though no white-tops. He took in the sky all around. “Don’t look like we’ll be getting any rain.” He took a bite of the sandwich. “Ummmm, good old monkey meat.”
“Yes sir.” Henry ate, drank a swig of water. He hadn’t realized he was so thirsty. He felt enclosed in the refuge of the fishing trip, the rules, the boundaries: the placement weights, hooks, the operation of the reel, the net casting that only Uncle Jack could do, the waiting, the wallowing of the boat when someone stood and moved around, the need to stay close to center, the changing of water to keep the bait alive.
Uncle Jack moved the cork on the fishing line so that the finger mullet would be deeper. He cast, handed the rod to Henry. “Watch that cork, now. You can cast next time.”
Henry’s cork dropped out of sight. “I got one!”
“Whoa. Set the hook. Yank it.”
Henry gave a pull and the line resisted solidly. His heart thumped in his neck. The rod tip dipped toward the water.
“That’s right. Hold the tip up. Hold the tip up.”
The fish swam in a big half circle, rising to ripple the water, then diving, the line leaving a moving V on the surface.
“Just hold on. Let him get tired. Reel in like I showed you.”
Henry pulled the rod tip up high, then eased the pressure while winding, pulled up. Suddenly the fish started away — toward shallow water. The drag whined.
&nbs
p; “He’s a big one,” said Uncle Jack. “You’re playing him just right. Keep that tip up in the air.” The drag whined again.
As the fish tired, Henry wound him in toward the boat. Uncle Jack found the landing net, knelt against the side of the boat, waited with a hand cradling the taut line. He scooped with the net and swung the shining drum, bronze-colored along the back, white on the belly, up into the boat. “It don’t get no better than that, does it, boy?”
“No sir.”
“It don’t get no better. Now, you cast this time.”
Henry cast. It was a good one.
By noon they’d caught eight redfish. “Let’s go get some more lunch at Duke’s,” said Uncle Jack.
In the truck, riding along, Henry asked Uncle Jack about a dog dead on the road — if dogs ever had funerals.
“I don’t think so. But some of them might. We’ll give Trixie a funeral. We gave her mama and daddy one.”
They sat in a booth at Duke’s Bait and Burgers, eating a hamburger each. Jack ordered a Blatz beer and then another. “Don’t you want some dessert?” he asked.
“Yes sir.”
“What you want?”
“A piece of apple pie.”
“Donna. Bring this boy a piece of apple pie.” He took a long swig of beer. “Don’t you want a cup of ice cream?”
“Yes sir.”
Uncle Jack went to a freezer, pushed the top doors back, got a cup of vanilla ice cream and then a flat wooden spoon from a big glass jar. He sat and placed the cup and spoon in front of Henry, then pulled out a pouch of Prince Albert, some papers, and began to roll a cigarette. “Can you get that top off, bud?”
“Yes sir.” Henry pulled on the little tab on the lid of the ice-cream cup.
Donna brought the pie.
“I’m going to have me one more Blatz to go with my cigarette,” said Uncle Jack. He pulled a box of matches from his shirt pocket and lit the cigarette, shook out the match. He opened his billfold, held it open, toward Henry. “Pull me out that five-dollar bill. And a one.”
Henry pulled them out, handed them to Uncle Jack, who motioned for Donna.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“I’ll get one for the road.” The cigarette stayed in place in Uncle Jack’s lips.
“Yes sir.”
“Donna, this is my brother-in-law’s boy. You knew that, didn’t you?”
She was headed back to the bar; she stopped, turned. “Oh yeah. Danny’s boy.”
Outside, Uncle Jack asked Henry to stand by the truck and wait for him. He crossed the street and entered the barbershop. Ten minutes later he came out with a leather jacket over his arm. Henry had never seen it. In the truck on the ride home, Henry looked at the jacket, on the seat between them, several times. Uncle Jack explained. “It’s just something I acquired. It ain’t something you need to mention to Aunt Dorie or anybody else. Okay?”
“Yes sir.”
When Uncle Jack pulled the truck into the driveway and up beside the house, Aunt Dorie came out to meet them. She stopped and didn’t move toward them. She watched Uncle Jack unhitch the boat with some difficulty. Then she walked up and looked in the truck cab.
“What?” he said. “Wha’s a matter?”
Aunt Dorie ordered Henry inside.
After a while, when Aunt Dorie came in, Henry asked her where Uncle Jack was.
“He’s checking his rabbit boxes.”
Henry watched from the back window, looking down the wagon path that came out of the woods, the path lit by the garage light. Uncle Jack came bouncing along, carrying two rabbits by their hind legs. “He’s back!” Henry said to Aunt Dorie. “Can I go out there?”
“Go ahead.”
In the backyard, at the cleaning table, Henry watched as Uncle Jack with his pocketknife punched into a rabbit’s skin on its back, then cut where a belt would be. Its eyes were open and cloudy. Henry would sometimes talk to a dead rabbit when Uncle Jack left to go to the smokehouse for the hatchet. He’d say, “Hey there, little rabbit.”
“Okay,” said Uncle Jack. A cigarillo hung from his lips. He puffed, chewed tobacco. “You pull his pants off, and I’ll get his shirt. That’s right. Pull hard, boy. Now, good. Look-a there. Whoo, my hands are cold.”
Uncle Jack snapped off the feet, chopped off the head with his hatchet, sliced the belly open with his pocketknife, and pulled out the guts, which Henry knew he’d smell in a second or two. The guts rolled in Uncle Jack’s hand like tiny sausage bags of jelly and steamed in the cold air.
“Look at that little heart,” said Uncle Jack.
They skinned the other rabbit, then pulled up water from the well, poured some into a pan, washed both rabbits, and dried them with a white rag.
1941
Carson stayed with Henry for a few days after the family reunion, before Uncle Samuel took him and Aunt Linda back to Florida. On their first night in bed together, as soon as the house was quiet, Carson asked, “Do you ever jack off?”
“Is that the same thing as beating your meat?” asked Henry.
“Yeah.”
“I think I’ve done it, but Uncle Jack says that when you get older something comes out called ‘sum,’ and it’s got some kind of fertilizer in it that goes in a woman and then she lays a egg in some place inside of her body where the baby comes out of into this sack that she keeps in her stomach for ninety days.”
“Sum?”
“Something like that. And the real name is serum or something.”
“Did you ever see him and Aunt Dorie doing it?”
“What?”
“Making sex,” said Carson.
“Yeah — one time. I thought they were fighting. There was this grunting.”
“Who called it beating your meat?” asked Carson.
“Uncle Jack. He told me his mama told him he’d go blind if he did it, and so he asked her could he do it till he started wearing glasses.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does he wear glasses?”
“No. Do you know what a goiter is?” asked Henry.
“No.”
“It’s something that makes a big ball in your neck like that man Yancy down the road has. The one I showed you at the store. Remember?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Do you think God would care if you beat your meat in a dream?”
“If you dreamed you did? Or if you did it while you were dreaming?” asked Carson.
“If you dreamed you did it.”
“I don’t know. It wouldn’t be your fault. I guess that would be God’s fault.”
“But Aunt Dorie said don’t do it. The Bible says don’t do it somewhere in there.”
“That’s what Daddy said too,” said Carson.
“I bet he didn’t call it beating your meat.”
“Naw. He called it playing with yourself.”
“You think God forgived you?” asked Henry.
“Yeah, since I asked him. That’s all you have to do.”
“You have to mean it.”
“Oh yeah, I know that.”
Henry sat in a chair near Yancy’s bed. Yancy lay with his eyes closed and the death rattle in his chest, a sound with both ice and warmth in it, a rattle that if Yancy could wake up, maybe he could just sit up and cough out, Henry figured. Mrs. Albright was talking about Pearl Harbor, and Henry couldn’t quite understand. Somebody had bombed a pearl.
Yancy was lying on his back in his bed, covered up, and his face looked smaller and whiter, and his nose longer than usual. Mrs. Albright had had his bed moved into the living room, close to the kitchen, so that she wouldn’t have to go back and forth so far, and Henry wondered about Yancy not liking the cats. But now he seemed like he was asleep, but maybe he would wake up, since his chest and throat were making that noise.
Aunt Dorie sat down beside Henry. Mrs. Albright walked over and sat in a chair nearby. There were some neighbors in the room that Henry didn’t kno
w very well. Uncle Jack was eating a biscuit and a chicken leg. He sat at the kitchen table. He’d come down to help move the bed the day before.
Mrs. Albright said, “Henry, son, Yancy might not make it. And if he don’t, he’ll go on up to heaven, and that’s where we’ll all be, where we can all meet, where I’ll see him again and be able to take care of him.”
Thomas the cat smelled Death up in the ceiling near the stovepipe. He looked. It was big and yellow and like a cave, darker in the middle.
Henry thought about Yancy not having a daddy either, about his own daddy being in heaven, about Saint Peter at the gates of heaven. Before Henry could stop his mouth, he said, “Will he have the goiter?”
“The goiter? Well, yes, if he wants to, if God wants him to, and I bet God will leave it up to Yancy,” said Mrs. Albright. “Well, no. I bet he won’t have it. Because Yancy never did like that thing while he was down here on earth. So he won’t have it in heaven. God will damn it. It will be a God-damned goiter.” She looked around. Nobody minded. Nobody was looking at her. She said, a little louder, “It will be a God-damned goiter, because it will go to hell.”
“Praise the Lord,” said Uncle Jack from the kitchen, food in his mouth.
A couple of people looked in on Mrs. Albright from the kitchen.
In a single bound up from the floor, Paul landed on the foot of the bed. Mrs. Albright stood, stepped over, scatted him back down. “Git away, Paul,” she said.
Paul strode over to the far side of the wood box and sat. Both his ears twitched, one then the other. He settled down — squatted on his back legs, then kind of collapsed onto his front ones like a dog. “It’s so sad his daddy didn’t live longer,” he said.
“My daddy was always so serious,” said Isaac, “kind of looking off at things.”
“That he did,” said Judas.
“Hush, you bad man,” said Paul.
“Sometimes I think I couldn’t help it,” said Judas.
“Be happy,” said Angel. “Rejoice. Yancy’s in heaven.”
The Bible Salesman Page 12
