Making Waves

by Cassandra King

  Guess I had spring fever then or something, but I couldn’t concentrate on my classes, damn near flunked out. It was really weird, gave the shrink a tizzy. Suddenly every classroom I went into became a class back in Clarksville High, and I’d lose touch with reality. Actually, confusing Tulane and old CHS is more than weird; it’s ludicrous.

  But there I would be, sitting and taking notes in a world history class, old fart professor going on and on about a revolution somewhere in some godforsaken country no one gives a shit about. I would lose contact with the present, the room would fade out, and suddenly I’d find myself back in Clarksville High, dizzy and disoriented. The eminent Dr. Reinhold Dietrich’s face would blur and become the blobby face of Old Man Holman in my eleventh-grade American history class. The whole class was a hoot, one of the few I really enjoyed because we gave old Holman pure hell.

  Holman would have bored us shitless reading aloud from the textbook every class but he was such an idiot he couldn’t pronounce the words right, entertaining us with his attempts. Laissez-faire became lassie fairy, Shiloh, Shill-oh, and Cat and I screamed with laughter.

  Of course we were the only ones who knew the difference. Tater Dyer slept the whole time, once so sound asleep that he fell out of his desk and busted his fat ass, everybody laughing like hyenas as he bled like a stuck pig. I tormented old Holman relentlessly, putting on a Cajun accent, pretending I couldn’t speak English, mocking his every word. Cat sat in front of me and I’d goose her and feel her up, so she’d be cussing and slapping hell out of me until Holman’d have enough and send us to the principal, who’d sigh and roll his eyes when he saw us coming again.

  We cheated like politicians, too. During the exam every Friday we’d be passing our papers back and forth right under Holman’s big hairy nose, which he would often pick in front of us, then carefully inspect the loot. Once I started a special fund to send him to college, putting posters all over the school, claiming he’d never been. God, poor old fellow must have hated my guts!

  The only serious student in there was Tim, and he’d shut us out completely, lost in the unbelievably boring details of the War Between the States and Reconstruction. We threw spitballs at him and tried to distract him, but he ignored us, asking Holman questions the idiot couldn’t come close to answering. Holman always put Tim off by changing the subject, inquiring instead about an upcoming game. Which pissed me off, folks treating Tim like a dumb jock, and I’d end up looking up the answers for him and despising Holman even more.

  I got over that sicko classroom fixation though, once the semester was over. And I’d been doing pretty good until the famous chase and now the call from Aunt Della. If only she hadn’t begged me to come home again. ’Course she had a point—two years is a long time, and she said it was time I put that behind me and got on with my life, what everybody else told me, too. Only problem was, they didn’t tell me how the hell to do it.

  The beer and the heat got to me eventually and I fell asleep in the chair, clutching my empty beer can like a teddy bear. When I woke up, it was dark and the damn phone was ringing like hell. I didn’t know how long it’d been ringing; I was so disoriented I didn’t know where I was. Finally I stumbled back into the bedroom and fumbled around until I found it.

  “Taylor? Taylor, baby, is that you?” Aunt Della again. Except this time she was crying.

  “Aunt Della, what’s wrong? You okay?”

  My voice was sleep-slurred, but hers … oh God, her voice killed me. I loved her rich Southern drawl, conjuring up magnolias and mint juleps. But now—now it was so feeble and so old-sounding.

  “Taylor, Mary Frances just called me—Maudie died,” she cried.

  For a minute I couldn’t think, couldn’t connect a name with a person. Then I saw her, plain as day, my third-grade teacher, Miss Maudie Ferguson. One of Aunt Della’s cronies. They’d been raised together in Clarksville and were the best of friends. Poor Aunt Della.

  “Oh, man. I’m so sorry, Aunt Della. What happened to her?”

  “Well, she hasn’t been right since she fell and had her hip replaced. She just never bounced back. Then she had a stroke—” Her voice broke again. “Oh, honey! I hate it so bad, her dying like that, off from home in that awful place. Though I know she is with Jesus now.”

  Aunt Della was a real Jesus freak, always had been. But I kind of liked her Jesus. The way she talked to him was cool, even to a sinner like me. Sometimes I wished I could have such a simple faith. Or any faith at all.

  “Maybe it wasn’t so awful, Aunt Della. I’ll bet she was well taken care of.”

  There I went, bullshitting about something I knew nothing about, trying to make her feel better. But she was having none of it.

  “Huh! That’s what breaks my heart. Since I’d gotten to where I couldn’t go see her, nobody else did, with Sarah Jean living so far away. Maudie went down in a hurry after I quit coming. It just breaks my heart.”

  I couldn’t resist stupid platitudes, still trying to cheer her up. “At least she had you, Aunt Della.”

  That turned out to be the wrong thing to say, too, because it hung in the air between us. Unlike you, it said, unlike you who has nobody but a disappointing jerk like me.

  “Taylor, baby. I hate to ask you again. But reckon you could come home, take me to the funeral?”

  God, I hated how broken her voice sounded, how it hurt her pride to beg me like that. Still, I hesitated.

  “I—I just don’t know if I can, Aunt Della.” I then added lying to my sins: “My job—you know … I’ll have to see....” Of course, I hadn’t told her I got fired.

  “I know Harris won’t let me go.” Her soft voice was resigned.

  I wanted to argue with her but didn’t even try. She was probably right. It’d be just like Daddy Clark not to let her go to the funeral. Oh, for her own good, of course. Then the hypocrite could tell everybody how he had to look out for his poor, failing old sister. Damn him. It was almost enough to make me go just to show him that somebody else could see about her. Almost.

  “Tell you what, Aunt Della. I’d dozed off, I’ve been working so hard.” Liar. Creep. “So I can’t think right now. Let me call you back, okay? Let me think a while, then I’ll call you back, hear?”

  And then her soft voice, breaking my heart. “No, baby. Don’t you worry about it. I wish I hadn’t asked you—I know how it hurts you to think of returning here. Just forget it.”

  With anyone else, you’d think that a manipulative move, but Aunt Della is the most honest person I’ve ever known. I knew she meant it.

  “No, really, Aunt Della—I want to. Let me think, okay? When’s the funeral?”

  “I don’t know for sure yet. She just died, just a minute ago. Mary Frances called me soon as Cleve got the call. Ordinarily she’d be in state tomorrow night, but there’s a delay. Her niece who’s in charge of everything—you remember Sarah Jean? Well, she’s overseas, attending some kind of meeting, so it won’t be till she gets here. Friday, maybe. I’ll have to let you know.”

  “Okay.” Silently I blessed the unknown niece and the delay that bought me some time. “Okay, I’ll call you back after a while, hear? I’m real sorry about Miss Maudie.”

  “Me, too, honey. Except I’m sorry for myself, losing her, not for Maudie. She’s with Jesus now, out of her misery.”

  Well, there was sure something to be said for that. We said our good-byes and I hung up, my hands shaking like hell. I needed another beer. And a cigarette. I’d been quit for a month, but I knew now that a bona fide basket case like me would never make it without all my props.

  I ate cold leftover pizza for supper and drank two more beers. Then dessert was the long-awaited cigarette, which I eagerly lit once I had settled into my favorite spot.

  Since the place wasn’t air-conditioned, and the humidity unbearable in August, I had to raise all the creaky, grimy windows. The apartment was so damn cheap it was the only one in the Quarter without a balcony. So, I’d taken to sitting in the win
dowsill of the back window and looking down St. Peter’s Street, out over the seedy back alleys. Made me feel like Stanley Kowalski, except I usually skipped the tee shirt and sat there in my briefs. One up on old Stanley.

  You could see the Mississippi from here, sort of, and there was always something going on, fights and yelling and all sorts of seamy little human dramas. I especially liked to watch the two old drunken sisters in the top apartment across the alley, Blanche and Stella fifty years later, two Southern belles fallen on hard times.

  But tonight, instead of seeing the drunken belles, I imagined I was looking out the window of my room in Aunt Della’s house, a room that had gone unoccupied, untouched, for two years. The blinking neon sign of the sleaze bar across the alley became the white neon cross of the Clarksville First Baptist Church, and I smiled to myself, remembering. Once Cat dared me to paint “At the Clarksville Savings and Loan” under their “Jesus Saves” sign, and of course, I did.

  Cat was the most irreverent person I’d ever known. I went along with her crazy, wild schemes most of the time, except for one in particular. She always begged me to do it on the altar of her daddy’s church. Not at night, mind you, but in broad daylight, claiming the risk of discovery would add to the thrill. She got furious at me when I wouldn’t cooperate, calling me chicken shit, fag, impotent, among other niceties. Then she tried shaming me into it by threatening to get my cousin Sonny to instead. I knew better than that. Sonny talked a big line and swaggered around like the original macho man, but I had his number: he really is chicken shit. No one would ever believe that because he’s such a cocksman and good-ole-boy, but I know Sonny through and through. He was, and I’m sure still is, nothing but a spoiled baby. I’d bested him so often it wasn’t even fun anymore. As a result, he hates my guts more than anybody I know, and believe me, he’s got some competition.

  Cat never forgave me my cowardice in refusing to participate in her crazy scheme and pouted on and off as long as we were together. However, her daddy was so deranged I figured he’d come in and shoot my bare ass off. Hers too. I didn’t want that wild-eyed fanatic after me any more than he was already. But Cat loved to taunt him; it really turned her on.

  We did all sorts of other stuff just to get him riled, Cat constantly dreaming up new ways of tormenting him, with me her willing accomplice. Though after that first time, it was a wonder I ever did again.

  When we were ten, we stole some of Aunt Della’s fruitcake wine and replaced the communion grape juice with it. The communion stewards prepared round silver trays with tiny one-shot glasses, pouring in the Mogen David innocently. During the solemn communion service later, we were disappointed that nothing happened at first. Until old Estelle Hendricks, an avid teetotaler, knelt her fat ass at the altar and turned up the cup Brother Jordan gave her. She choked, spewing wine all over everybody, and declared loudly that the Welch’s had soured. Cat and I managed to contain ourselves through that, but when everybody else who came up began sniffing the cups before partaking, we got to laughing so hard that we both ran out of the church, Cat peeing in her pants in the process. Folks then put two and two together. Daddy Clark came after me, pulling his belt off right out there in the front of the church and belting the crap out of me, ignoring Aunt Della crying and begging him to stop. Cat swore to me that her daddy only prayed for her, that she was all banged up from a bicycle wreck, not a beating. But I never believed her. I always suspected that he jacked off beating her and her mousy mother, too. He was a real sicko.

  I lit another cigarette, lost in thought. Thinking about Cat was causing the old longings to stir again and I squirmed uncomfortably in my windowsill seat. Inevitably thoughts of Cat would lead to thoughts of Tim, and I couldn’t take that right now. Not now, already being upset about Aunt Della, feeling so rotten and guilty. I just couldn’t do it—evidently I hadn’t had enough beer yet to numb me and make me sleep. I’d have one more, then I’d hit the sack. Like Miz Scarlett, I’d deal with all this crap tomorrow. I jumped down from my perch and headed toward bed.

  Instead of the beer allowing me to sleep soundly, I became catatonic. I stared without blinking at the dark shadowy ceiling of my room, and the old demons returned. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe, was smothering in the airless heat. I sat straight up in bed gasping for air like an asthma victim. Oh, God—would it never end! The shakes now, the cold chills next, and then the pukes. Already I could feel the waves of nausea begin to sweep over me. I tried the shrink’s deep-breathing exercise but began to hyperventilate instead. Pull yourself together, you frigging nutcase—don’t freak out! But it was no use, I could feel myself losing it—losing, losing … on my bedside table were my tranquilizers.

  In reaching for them, all I could see was the phone. I fumbled for it, dropping it twice, then grabbed it and dialed with wet shaking fingers. This was what I needed instead—I had to do it. I had to go—or I’d be like this all my wasted, shitty, no-good life. I heard it ringing, ringing, then Aunt Della’s shaky voice, scared to death. No one ever called this late, I knew, and I felt her fear over the line.

  “Aunt Della, it’s me. I’ll take care of my apartment first thing in the morning. Then I’m coming home. I’ll be home by dark.” I hung up to her tears, but this time, tears of joy.

  And then I slept like a baby. Home. I was going home, back to Alabama, at last. Watch out, rednecks—here I come!

  I almost didn’t make it to Clarksville. Getting out of New Orleans, then out of Louisiana, all the way across Mississippi—I did fine. I stopped for lunch and even began to enjoy myself.

  However, when I finally drove into antebellum Columbus, Mississippi, twenty-five miles from Clarksville, I began to get shaky. It was all too familiar, conjuring up teenaged trips to Columbus, cruising the all-girls’ college there, wolf-whistling the coeds like rednecks. Then the elegant restaurants, nothing now after two years in cosmopolitan New Orleans, but the places to go for special occasions back then. Even snooty world-traveler Charlotte would take me to eat in Columbus, once a decade maybe, when she lowered herself to make an appearance in Clarksville and put on motherly airs.

  On the outskirts of Columbus, I pulled into a 7-Eleven that was all too familiar, the last place you could get beer before crossing the state line and entering Zion County—you buy your booze before that dry section of the Bible Belt. The cashier asked for an ID of course, and I produced the fake one I’d used for the past few years. Obviously a fake, but no one blinked whenever I used it.

  Back in the car, I suddenly felt like I was getting the pukes again. I got shaky inside and had to lean on the steering wheel, taking deep breaths. However, when I saw the cashier staring at me suspiciously, I pulled myself together and hauled ass, pulling out on the Columbus Highway like a madman.

  I was running later than I’d planned—it was what Aunt Della called good and dark now. I’d originally thought I’d be home for supper, so I sped on my way so she wouldn’t worry. I met only a few eighteen-wheelers on the lonely dark stretch from Columbus to Clarksville, Alicetown the only place I drove through, a hole in the road named for my great-great-grandmother. It was too late for the locals to be out; they rolled up the sidewalks at dark in this neck of the woods. Well, figuratively speaking—Alicetown has no sidewalks, or anything else.

  I almost stopped, still shaky as hell, when I drove over the Black Warrior River, a few miles outside of Clarksville, but forced myself to drive on. I’d have liked to stand on the bridge and look down at the mighty Black Warrior, one of my favorite places in Zion County. All the high school couples used to come down to the riverbanks, picnic baskets loaded down with beer and blankets, get drunk as skunks and make out like mad before either passing out or puking into the river. What we called a fun date in those days.

  God, Cat and I had some wild times down there. And me and Tim spent hours sitting our butts on the banks of that river or in the fishing boat, in the misty dawn, fishing like a couple of good ole boys. We’d play the roles, chewing tobacco and spitt
ing into the brown waters, calling ourselves Bubba and Buddy, throwing fishing lines out and then slowly reeling them in while the sun rose over the pines. We all loved the Black Warrior with a passion, but especially me. Of course, whenever I love anything, I tend to do so passionately.

  Right outside of Clarksville, I passed the Zion Funeral Home that Aunt Mary Frances and Uncle Cleve run. Except for the big spotlight highlighting the tacky sign, it was all dark. No one there. Well, Miss Maudie, I suppose. If she died late yesterday, they’d probably have her in state tomorrow. No, wait, Aunt Della’d said they had to hold up till her niece got back in the country. That delay proved helpful to my getting here in time to take Aunt Della to the funeral, which was really going to be rough on her. Aunt Della loved Miss Maudie like a sister. Everybody did, come to think of it. I certainly thought a lot of her, too. I loved the way she looked like a schoolteacher should look, a little bitty woman, dainty and old-world. She had sculptured snow-white hair that I always thought was so cool; it fit her old-maid personality perfectly. Maudie Ferguson was my favorite teacher and she loved me as a student, thinking I was smart as hell. I guess compared to the dumb hicks she taught all those years, I was the Albert Einstein of Zion County. Wonder what old Miss Maudie would think of the way her prize pupil had screwed up his life—what a genius!

  I turned off the Columbus Highway by the Phillips 66 station onto Main Street, Clarksville. I’ll just be damned! It looked exactly the same. Not a thing different about it—not a single thing. From what I could see in the streetlighted darkness, no one had even painted their stores a different color, and no new places at all.

  As I crossed the railroad track, I noticed that the old depot still looked like it was going to fall in. The whole place was like a ghost town, especially at night. Not much better in the daytime, either. The town is only two blocks long, the stores lining each side of the street like old soldiers standing silent guard. J. D.’s hardware store, Daddy Clark’s bank, the city hall, the library, the barber shop, grocery store—all looking exactly like they did when I drove out two years ago. Main Street dead-ends after three blocks, right past a dilapidated cotton gin that’s been out of operation long as I remember.