I decided that it was a magic horse and man that I’d seen. From that day on I believed that magic hides in the early morning. If you get up early enough you might find something so beautiful that it would be all right if you just died right then because nothing else in life could ever be better.
It was still dark when we made it down to Lucinda Greg’s house. She was Otum Chenier’s girlfriend. I warmed up the engine while Mouse changed clothes and made lunch inside. He came out in gray pants and a gray shirt, work clothes that fit him like dress clothes.
When we drove off it was still way before dawn. Mouse was sleeping against the passenger door and I was driving with the few feeble lights of Houston behind us. It was going to be a warm day but the air still held a light chill of night. I wanted to sing but I didn’t because Mouse wouldn’t have understood my feelings about magic and the morning. So I just drove quietly, happy on that flat Texas road.
People don’t understand southern Texas. They think that the land there is ugly and flat. They take their opinion about the land and put it on the people but they’re wrong on both counts. If they could see Texas in the early dawn like I saw it that day they would know a Texas that is full of potential from the smallest rock to the oldest woman on the farm.
The road wasn’t paved or landscaped. On either side there were dense shrubs and bushes with knotty pines and cherry and pear trees scattered here and there. I was especially aware of the magnolias, their flowers looking like white faces staring down from shadow.
They say it’s like a desert down there, and they’re right - at least sometimes. There are stretches of land that have hardly anything growing, but even then it’s no simple story. Texas is made up of every kind of soil; there’s red day and gray sod and fertile brown, shipped in or strained over by poor farmers trying to make the land work. That earth gives you the feeling of confidence because it’s so much and so different and, mainly, because it’s got the patience to be there not ever having to look for a better place.
But there’s no such thing as a desert down near the Gulf. The rains come to make bayous and swamps and feed every kind of animal and bird and varmint.
As the night disappeared the last foxes and opossums made their way to shelter. Animals everywhere were vanishing with the shadows; field mice and some deer, foxes, rabbits, and skunk.
‘I’ma show you how t’fish while we down here, Ease.’
I jumped when Mouse spoke.
‘Man, ain’t nuthin’ you could tell me. I been droppin’ my line in the water since before I could talk.’
‘That’s all right,’ he said with a sneer. ‘But I show you how the master fish.’
He took a fried egg sandwich from a brown paper sack and tore it in half.
‘Here you go.’
We were both quiet as the sun filled in the land with light. To me it was like the world was growing and I was happy to be on that road.
After a while I asked Mouse how it was that he happened to get Otum’s car just when he needed a ride.
Mouse smiled and looked humble. ‘You know Otum’s a Cajun, an’ them Cajuns is fam’ly down to the bone. They’d kill over a insult to their blood that normal folks like you an’ me would just laugh at. An’ Otum is a real Cajun. That’s a fact.’
Mouse knew how to tell you a story. It was like he was singing a song and the words were notes going up and down the scales, even rhyming when it was right. He’d turn phrases that I wanted to use myself but it seemed that I couldn’t ever get the timing right. Sometimes what he said fit so perfectly I couldn’t ever find the right time to say it again.
‘.. . I always known that a message from his momma would light a fire under Otum. An’ puttin’ out fires is my especiality.’ We laughed at that. ‘So that night I come home from Galveston I stayed over at Lucinda’s, for a weddin’ gift she said. I thought ‘bout how she take care’a Otum’s car an’ how they got a phone down at that beauty shop she work for. . .’
Mouse smiled with all his teeth and put his foot against the dashboard so he could sit back comfortably, ‘You know once Otum got that message from Lucinda he knew he couldn’t take his car down there. The bayou ain’t no place t’drive no good car. So Lucinda tole him that you would start it up for him and look in on it every once an’ a while.’
‘Me?’
‘Well, yeah, it had t’be you, Easy. I cain’t drive no car. Anyway, Otum never did trust me too much.’
We had been going southeast for dose to two hours when we saw two people with thumbs out on the road. A big young man and a girl, maybe fifteen, with a healthy chest and smile.
‘Pull on over, Ease,’ Mouse said. ‘Let’s pick ‘em up.’
‘You know ‘em?’ I asked as we passed by.
‘Uh-uh, but oppu’tunity is ev’rywhere an’ I ain’t passin’ up no bets.’
‘Man, you don’t know what they’s up to. They could be robbers fo’all you know.’
‘If they is then this here gonna be they last stand.’ I shifted the clutch down and put on the brake. As soon as we stopped, Mouse was out with the door open and the seat folded up. He waved at the couple and they came running. The boy was dragging a duffel bag that was bigger than his girlfriend.
‘Come on!’ Mouse shouted. ‘Jump in the back wit’ me, man. ‘Cause Easy got all kindsa dirty rags back here an’ you don’t want no girl in that.’
‘That’s all right. We sit together,’ the young man said in
a gruff tone.
‘Uh-uh, Clifton,’ the girl complained in a high voice. ‘I don’t wanna get filthy! Go’on an sit back there wit’ him.
You can still see me.’
Mouse smiled and gestured for the boy to get in. Clifton did as he was asked to do, but he wasn’t happy about it.
I could see in his face that Clifton hadn’t had a happy day in his life. His jaw was set and his eyes were hard but he couldn’t have been over seventeen. He was what Mouse called ‘a truly poor man.’ Someone who doesn’t have a thing and is so mad about it that he isn’t likely to ever get anything.
‘Where you-all goin’?’ I asked.
‘Down t’N’Orleans,’ the girl said. She looked in my eyes to see how surprised and jealous I’d be. She had a wide face and a forehead that sloped back. Her eyes were so far apart it looked as if she couldn’t focus both of them on the same thing. Her look was careless and lazy, and I looked away before I got myself into trouble.
‘Where you people from?’ Mouse asked in his friendliest tone.
‘Nowhere special,’ Clifton mumbled. ‘Where you-all goin’?’
‘Pariah,’ Mouse announced. ‘Farmin’ capital of south Texas.’
‘Hm!’ The girl frowned. ‘I ain’t never even heard’a that place.’ She turned her back to the door and put her bare feet on the seat, her toes grazing my leg.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked as I shifted gears.
‘Ernestine.’ She showed me her full set of teeth. ‘What’s yours?’
‘They call me Easy, an’ they call him Mouse.’
She laughed and dug her toes under my thigh. ‘Them ain’t even names at all. What’s yo’ real name?’
I never liked telling strangers my real name, but with her toes wiggling under my leg and Clifton breathing down my neck I didn’t feel like arguing.
‘Ezekiel.’
She guffawed at that and got her whole foot under my thigh. I had a hard time keeping the car in the road.
While we rode along Ernestine flirted with me in the front seat and Clifton pouted in the back. Mouse was telling us a story about how a bad man in Houston shot his foot off while trying to shoot Mouse. It was a funny story and we all laughed, even Clifton, in that respectful way you’re supposed to laugh when complimenting a well-told lie. But I knew that Mouse wasn’t lying. That gangster, fat Joe Withers, died from gangrene poison. He had made the mistake of grabbing EttaMae one night and we all knew that Mouse would get him one day.
Ernestine was still gi
ggling and wiggling her toes when Mouse started checking Clifton out.
‘Ain’t I seen you wit’ a guitar down in Fifth Ward? I swear I seen a big man like you down there playin’.’
‘Ain’t me, man. I ain’t the least bit musical.’
‘Well, yeah, I guess you must know. It’s just I seen this boy who looked powerful like you and I wondered why such a big man would waste his time on music.’
‘I cain’t tell ya. I mean I like t’listen but, uh, you know, I ain’t never gonna play nuthin’.’
‘Uh-huh.’ I could see Mouse nod in the mirror. ‘That’s just how I feel. You know I go on down t’ George’s saloon an’ get all the music I needs. You ever go there?’
‘Naw. The way them men in the bars an’ juke joints be lookin’ at Ernestine gets me mad.’ Clifton talked slowly as if every word he said had to be exactly right.
Ernestine stopped wagging her foot long enough to say, ‘He just jealous, that’s all. ‘Cause the men like a girl wit’ big titties like I got.’ She sneered at him; Mouse and I looked away.
‘You shouldn’t be talkin’ like that, honey. What these men gonna think?’
‘Well I am nice t’look at, ain’t I,’Zekiel?’ she said as she arched her foot.
I swear that I meant to look out at the road but I found myself staring down at her. Clifton would have opened my head if he saw my eyes but I guess he was too busy looking at her to notice what I was doing.
‘Ernestine, stop it!’
‘I will not! I will not! On’y reason we here is ‘cause you so jealous an’ you don’t know that a girl can get a compliment an’ not do nuthin’ ‘bout it!’
‘That’s enough now, girl!’ Clifton was threatening but Ernestine didn’t care.
‘What difference it make? If that boy die you know they gonna fines you an’ they gonna get you too!’
Mouse had a talent, he could smile without letting it show. You could be looking at him and if you didn’t know it you’d think his face was just plain, but if you knew what to look for you’d see how his eyes got larger and how his mouth lost its hardness.
He was smiling then.
‘You in some kinda trouble, Clifton?’ Mouse spoke the boy’s name like they’d known each other for years.
‘Ain’t nuthin’, man. Just a little disagreement.’
Ernestine frowned and turned to look out at the road. I missed her toes under my leg.
‘I wanna know, man, ‘cause we here wichyou in the car an’ if the po-lice stops us I just wanna know,’ Mouse said.
Clifton didn’t say a word.
‘You know you can get in trouble wit’ the law fo’just he’pin’ somebody done done sumpin’ wrong. . .’ Mouse let that one hang for a minute then he said, ‘An’ you know a guilty man more nekked than a baby, the patrols see you out here. . . I mean I wouldn’t wanna put you out or nuthin’, but me an’ Easy cain’t afford no dose look by John Law ourselfs. ..’
‘Ain’t nuthin,” Clifton said again. ‘Man was lookin’ at Ernestine wit’out no respect an’ I showed him a little sumpin’, that’s all.’
‘He beat that boy so bad that he prob’ly dead!’ Ernestine shouted with her lips stuck straight out.
‘Is that true, Clifton?’
‘He wasn’t movin’ much when we lefted,’ the sullen boy admitted.
‘But that don’t mean he dead.’
‘Anybody see it?’
‘We was in a bar fulla people!’ Ernestine had turned completely around. She was like a little girl in that dirty blue dress with litde pictures of cows stamped all over it.
Mouse shook his head and hummed his dissatisfaction, ‘Mmmmmm-mm! An’ you out here in the road for any hick sheriff t’haul you in? Mm! You two headed fo’a rope.’
‘I tried t’tell ‘im,’ Ernestine said. ‘But he won’t listen t’me. He think he so smart an’ they gonna hang him.’
‘You ain’t gonna be too frisky in jail neither,’ Mouse answered.
‘What you mean? I ain’t done nuthin’!’
‘But you wit’ a bad man. The law see you wit’ him an’ they call you the same. An’ if you a woman they call you a bad man’s girl an’ that’s even worse.’
Ernestine pouted and turned to put her face against the window. Clifton hunched down in his seat and glowered. And Mouse sat back with his plain face secretly grinning from ear to ear.
I started thinking about my magic horse and how far away he was. It was closing in on noon and there wasn’t a shred of my morning left.
We drove for a little while in silence. The land was getting more lush as we pressed south into bayou country. Our passengers were brooding and Mouse was waiting; waiting for them to accept his wisdom.
Finally he said, ‘Look, kids, I know you got troubles an’ I ain’t tryin t’be no bad man to ya. It’s just that I know what’s goin’ on. . . But me an’ Easy got a heart.’ Ernestine turned her face to him, reminding me of a flower being drawn to the sun. ‘An’ we wanna he’p ya, right, Ease?’ I didn’t say a word, but that didn’t bother him. ‘Now listen: You cain’t stay on the road, ‘cause that’s where the po-lice be lookin’. An’ you cain’t stop out here, ‘cause country folk is suspicious’a strangers an’ anyway, if Ernestine let sumpin’ slip like she just did, then you in it deep. So what you kids need is a place where they gonna look out fo’you. What you need is Momma Jo.’
‘Who?’ That was me.
‘Friend’a mine, Ease. Momma Jo. They call her a witch an’ she be ‘lone most the time. If we bring her a strong man an’ pretty girl she be one happy woman.’
‘But I thought you said that these country people ain’t got time for strangers?’
‘True, true. But I ain’t no stranger. I been bringin’ homemade an’ store-bought liquor t’Momma Jo fo’years. She trust anybody I brang.’
‘But why you wanna he’p us?’ Clifton asked.
‘It’s a favor, man. Maybe you he’p me someday.’ That time Mouse smiled for real.
‘Uh-uh, I don’t think so. We plan t’go out t’Loozdana t’my folks,’ Clifton said.
‘You done kilt a boy an’ you gonna hang that on yo’ folks neck?’
‘That’s across state line, they cain’t do nuthin’ down there.’
‘An’ you don’t think the white man gonna be down there? You don’t think that if he know you at your momma’s that he cain’t go get you?’
‘How anybody gonna know where I am ‘less you tell’em?’
‘Boy, you better get that chip offa yo’ shoulder an’ listen t’me.’ Mouse sat back and frowned. ‘Now the first thing is that the cops know your name. I know that ‘cause Ernestine was there an’ she love t’yell “Clifton.” Second thing is they know you headed fo’ the state line ‘cause that’s where a man scared’a the law always be headed. An’ last thing is they know you gonna go whey it’s safe, an’ seein that you already wit’ yo’ girlfriend they know you gonna go see Momma.. . The man ain’t no fool, Clifton.’
Mouse actually scared me. I was amazed and proud of him. He revealed to us the police mind in a way that I never even considered. I could see hi the mirror that Clifton felt the same way.
‘Com’on, Clifton,’ Ernestine pleaded. ‘Let’s do it. He right ‘bout these country cops.’
Clifton didn’t say anything. The only change hi him at all was that his jaw set a little tighter.
Mouse tapped my shoulder and said, ‘When you see a ole beat-up sign that say Rag Bayou, follah it.’
The turnoff to Rag Bayou was rough and unpaved. We bounced along. Everyone was quiet. Everyone was lost in their thoughts. I kept thinking about that horse in the backyard and how it got there. I was five when I first saw it, and then, fourteen years later, it came to me, from nowhere it seemed, that my daddy had stolen that horse and sold it for meat.
Chapter Three
A mist of gnats and mosquitoes swarmed along the road. Mouse was shouting over the whining cicadas, ‘Turn down there, Easy! . . . That�
�s it! ... Take a left! ...’ The path was so rutted that I worried about breaking an axle - and I knew Otum loved that car more than his whole Cajun family.
‘You can stop it right here, man!’ Mouse yelled at last.
‘We in the middle’a the road, fool! I gotta park.’
‘Okay.’ He shrugged. ‘But Otum ain’t gonna like his Ford knee deep in swamp.’
‘But we cain’t leave it in the road. What they gonna do when they come drivin’ down here?’
Mouse laughed. ‘Man who gonna drive down here but a fool?’
I wished I had an answer to that. I pulled the car as far over to the side of the road as I could, and hoped that there was enough space in case some other fool decided to drive by.
‘Com’on, Clifton, you safe fo’the first time since you laid that boy down,’ Mouse said.
‘Hey, man.’ Clifton put up his hands. ‘Keep it quiet.’
Mouse smiled and followed Ernestine out of the car door. Clifton went too.
But I stayed in the car putting on my heavy shirt and pulling my cotton cap down to my ears.
Mouse leaned in the window and said, ‘What you doin’, Easy?’
‘It’s them bugs,’ I said. ‘Just one mosquito in a room will bite me twenty times and every bite swells up into a hump on my skin, and every hump itches me until I scratch it hard enough to draw blood. I hate bugs.’
‘You just too sweet an’ sensitive,’ Mouse said. ‘All I gotta do is wave my hand in front’a my face once or twice and the bugs leave me be. An’ if anything bite me he ain’t never gonna bite nuthin’ else.’
I came out finally. Mouse slapped my shoulder and said, ‘Right this way, honey boy.’
We walked into a wall of vines and baby bamboo. It was reedy and mulchy and thick with gnats. It was hot too. Ernestine squealed every time a frog jumped or one of those bright red swamp birds got startled and croaked its hoarse swampsong. I was sweating heavy in all those clothes and still getting bites on my face and hands.
‘How far is it?’ I yelled over the cicadas.
‘It’s up here, Ease.’
‘How far?’
‘Dont rightly know, man.’ He smiled and let go of a bamboo stalk.
Gone Fishin’ er-6 Page 2
