A Miracle of Catfish (41 page)

That morning, Jimmy was shaken awake with the words “Come on, Hot Rod.” Jimmy dressed quickly and they ate on the road. Jimmy's daddy knew a place out on Highway 30 and they pulled the '55 in there by eight o'clock. They went in and sat down to a red-checkered tablecloth and the sounds of country radio playing and the smells of coffee freshly brewed and succulent meat sizzling, ordered big breakfasts of ham and eggs and french toast and regular toast and molasses and strawberry preserves, hot coffee for Jimmy's daddy, orange juice and milk for Jimmy.

Jimmy thought it was about the coolest thing his daddy had ever done for him. It went a long way toward stifling most of the feelings of ambiguity he'd been feeling about his daddy ever since he'd almost drowned him. He would have eventually gotten over it anyway, just because he loved his daddy so much, but this hastened the process. The eggs were cooked the way he liked them with the yellows runny and the french toast was sweet and crunchy at the same time, smothered in lots of Aunt Jemima syrup, something Jimmy rarely got at home. Why? Because Aunt Jemima cost too much to buy, according to Jimmy's daddy.

And another thing was that Jimmy's daddy seemed to be in a really good mood, that's how it appeared to Jimmy. He was telling Jimmy jokes and stories about the stuff he did when he was growing up, like working in Halter Wellums's sawmill and digging big splinters out of his fingers in the evenings and walking home through the woods, saving his money to buy his first car. And he went on to tell him what a piece of shit it turned out to be, about all the rattles it had in the dash. Jimmy cut off some more french toast and asked his daddy a few questions about motors just because he knew his daddy liked to talk about motors, and his daddy talked about Edelbrock intakes and Isky cams some. He confided in Jimmy that he was going to have to fix the transmission in the '55, or maybe get a new one, maybe with a Hurst shifter. Jimmy immediately
wondered how much that would cost. He'd pretty much given up on the Kenny Chesney concert, but there was still a little piece of hidden mythical pasture in the dreamy back part of his mind that was labeled Tupelo Buffalo Park.

“How far's Tupelo from Ripley, Daddy?” Jimmy said.

His daddy had finished eating now, but the waitress had brought him some more coffee and taken away his plate of egg scraps and puddled syrup and one last piece of country ham he hadn't been able to eat.

“I don't know,” he said. “I ain't never drove from Ripley to Tupelo. I wouldn't think it'd be over a hour.”

Jimmy's daddy lit a cigarette and the waitress smiled and brought over a clean metal ashtray.

“Thanks, baby,” he said, and winked at her. Jimmy saw it. He'd seen his daddy do that before, wink at women. Like there was some secret he was sharing with them.

“I'll tell you what else I'm gonna do. This fall,” Jimmy's daddy said.

“What's that?” Jimmy said. He was about to get full. And he was so glad the girls didn't get to come with them that he didn't know what to do. It was just the two of them, Jimmy and his daddy. No stinking girls allowed. He wondered if he ought to tell his daddy that he'd already seen Evelyn messing around again with some of the thugs on the school bus, but then decided that he might ought to withhold that information for now and possibly use it later as some form of leverage against Evelyn if she continued to get meaner and more trashy mouthed and bigger and stronger and might actually try to slap the shit out of him or send her thug boyfriend over to beat the crap out of him. He wondered if he ought to tell his daddy that a guy driving a big red truck that said
TOMMY'S BIG RED FISH TRUCK
had stopped by the trailer the other day asking for directions for an old man who'd just built a pond. Jimmy's daddy fairly beamed at him.

“I'm gonna take you over to the Gun and Knife Show. How'd you like that?”

“I'd like that a lot, Daddy,” Jimmy said, and put his fork in his plate and wiped his mouth with his napkin. He just said that. He didn't really mean it. He was still a little uncomfortable every time he thought about that videotape his daddy had where those dogs chased down those hogs
and the men with the dogs stabbed the hogs to death. All that blood and squealing. Jimmy never had shot a gun and didn't know if he'd be too scared to or not. But he knew his daddy expected him to sometime. But maybe he'd enjoy the Gun and Knife Show. He sure wasn't going to tell his daddy that he
didn't
want to go. Lots of things were hinging. He might still get his go-kart fixed one day. And it was entirely possible that Tupelo Buffalo Park might be right across the street from the Gun and Knife Show, so that they could just walk over. Jimmy didn't want to limit his options on travel opportunities.

“Let me see them teeth,” his daddy said, and Jimmy opened his mouth. His daddy leaned closer for a better look. He had a serious look on his face when he pulled back.

“You need to get them teeth fixed. You need to go to the dentist.”

That struck fear into Jimmy's heart. He'd already heard all those horror stories his daddy had told him about what some dentists had done to him when he was little. Pulling his teeth. Drilling holes.
Root canals!

“I don't want to go to the dentist, Daddy,” he said, and closed his mouth.

“You gonna have to,” his daddy said, and stubbed out his smoke. He grabbed the ticket off the table and told Jimmy to come on. He paid up front and didn't go back to the table to leave any money for the waitress. They went back out and got in the '55 and took off again. The windows were down and the wind rippled Jimmy's T-shirt, a red one with a pocket. He had on shorts and tennis shoes to try and stay cool.

Jimmy's daddy pulled a cigarette from his pocket and rolled his window up long enough to get it lit. Then he rolled it back down and told Jimmy to reach back there in that cooler in the rear floorboard that was under that blanket and hand him a cold beer.

Jimmy got up on his knees and turned around on the seat and reached way down behind the front seat and pushed the old green blanket off the cooler. He opened the lid and looked in. It was full of ice and beer. He shoved some of the ice aside and looked around in there to see if maybe there were some Cokes in there, but there didn't appear to be any. A nice cold Coke would have been good after breakfast. Wash it all down. Burp a few times. But Jimmy didn't say anything about there not being any Cokes in there. Even though it looked like if his daddy could go to
all the trouble to ice himself down some beer for a trip they were taking together, he could stick a few Cokes from the refrigerator in there for Jimmy. How long would that have taken? Twenty seconds? Jimmy had been hoping that if things went really good today and his daddy stayed in a good mood all day, then maybe he could ask him again about the spear point. And hopefully get it back. How cool would that be for Show and Tell? With his two red arrowheads, he could have a nice little set. Maybe put them in some kind of frame on a background of green velvet. Herschel Horowitz had said he had all his arrowheads fixed up like that.

“Now be sure to put that top back on that cooler and stick that blanket back over it,” Jimmy's daddy said. “That way if a cop stops us he won't see my beer. We in a dry county now.”

Jimmy handed his daddy a beer. He knew what a dry county was. A dry county was a place Jimmy's daddy didn't like to visit, simply because they didn't sell cold beer there. Whenever Jimmy's daddy knew he was going to pass through a dry county, he took his cooler and packed it with ice and beer. And covered it up with that old green blanket.

Jimmy's daddy opened his beer and took a sip. He nodded to himself.

“Let's turn on the radio,” he said, and did. “I usually listen to this station over at Ripley. Kudzu one oh two? They play some pretty good country music. Bluegrass on Sunday mornings. Course I ain't never up much on Sunday mornings.” And he laughed. Jimmy was glad to hear him laugh. He wondered again what had happened at the stove factory. The day his daddy whipped him so hard. Nobody had ever told him, but sometimes he caught his daddy staring off into the distance, even if he was inside.

Jimmy's daddy turned the volume up and they listened to the last half of “Diggin' Up Bones” by Randy Travis, and then a commercial for mobile homes came on and Jimmy's daddy turned it down.

“That's the only thing about listening to the radio,” he said. “You got to listen to all them goddamn commercials. They just play em over and over. Trying to sell you all their shit.”

Jimmy's daddy drank some more of his beer and they rode along. After a while, Jimmy's daddy finished that beer and threw the can out the window and told Jimmy to get him another one, which he did.

“You ever heard that commercial for Tupelo Buffalo Park?” Jimmy said, as his daddy popped the top.

“Naw,” Jimmy's daddy said.

The commercials finished and Jimmy's daddy turned the volume back up. The announcer said that there was a Merle Six-Pack coming up within the hour, and that there was going to be a benefit for Bud and Hazel over at the community center at Ripley next Saturday evening, to bring your lawn chairs. Then they started playing “Mama Tried.”

“You like old Merle?” Jimmy's daddy said.

“Sure,” Jimmy said. Who was Merle?

“He's one of my favorites of all time,” Jimmy's daddy said, and then he started singing along with the radio. He sang right along, and knew a lot of the words, but he had to just hum when he didn't know them. He broke back out on the chorus pretty strong and nodded his head and tapped his left foot on the floorboard beside the clutch pedal. Jimmy didn't think his daddy could sing very good, but he didn't say anything since he much preferred being with his daddy and him trying to sing than to not be with his daddy at all.

The song finished and Jimmy's daddy drank some more of his beer. He smoked another cigarette while a rest home commercial ran. Then a body shop commercial ran. Then a feed store commercial ran. Then a commercial for Crawl Daddy's in New Albany. They sold stuff for four-wheelers and big jacked-up pickups. Then a commercial ran for a product that grew hair because it stopped the body's production of DHT.

“That's horse shit,” Jimmy's daddy said. “That shit ain't gonna grow no hair. Look at me,” he said, and pulled his cap off for a moment. Jimmy gazed onto the bald dome of his daddy, his long streaks of gray hair. Jimmy's daddy put his cap back on. “That shit wouldn't grow no hair up there. Not unless it'll grow hair on a bowling ball.”

Jimmy chuckled a little bit, mostly for his daddy's benefit, and then he stopped and got serious.

“What's a motherfucker?” he said, and Jimmy's daddy almost coughed his cigarette out. Then he did cough. He shoved his beer between his legs in a fast move and caught the steering wheel with that hand and took the cigarette from his mouth with the other hand and coughed hard.

“Damn,” he said. “I think some of that beer went down the wrong swallow pipe.” He cleared his throat and took another drink and set his beer back between his legs. “Where'd you hear a word like that?” he said.

“From Evelyn,” Jimmy said immediately.

“Oh yeah?” Jimmy's daddy said. It looked like it pissed him off. He took another sip of beer. “She's about a little smartass. What she needs is a good ass whupping ever once in a while. Course your mama don't want me to lay a hand on her. That's what's wrong with her right now, Johnette won't whup her ass. Did, she wouldn't do all that sassing she does. Iron some damn clothes once in a while or something. 'Stead of talking on the phone ten hours a day.”

Jimmy didn't say anything, and he kind of hated that he'd just lied to his daddy about Evelyn, since
he
was the one who'd said he knew what a motherfucker was that day at the empty pond, back when the go-kart was running. And Jimmy wondered if now was the right time to tell his daddy about the dead black lady he'd seen on the bridge that night. And about how he kept seeing her, sometimes at night around the trailer, and that ever since he'd almost drowned that day, he'd seemed to be able to see her more often. He was afraid his daddy wouldn't believe him.

“Evelyn lies down on the bus seat with the big boys and they do things with her,” Jimmy said instead. He almost said,
Evelyn lies down on the bus seat with the big boys and kisses them
, and that's what he
would
have said if it had been back in the spring, when she
was
just kissing them, but now that school had started Jimmy had looked toward the back of the bus a few times and had seen Evelyn lying across one of the big boys' laps, with her head out of sight, and the big boy with his eyes closed and his face red, straining and grunting like he was picking up something heavy. The bus driver had already stopped the bus one time and had gotten up and gone back there, but by then Evelyn had straightened back up in the seat and was wiping her mouth with a tissue.

“That little whore,” Jimmy's daddy said, and Jimmy nodded to himself. He'd been right about her all along.

“Ain't that just a fine kiss-my-ass?” Jimmy's daddy said. “Buy damn clothes for her and feed her, and then she does
that
on the school bus?”

“Does what?” Jimmy said. “What's she doing?”

“Never mind,” Jimmy's daddy said. “I'll talk to your mama about it.”

“Tell her not to tell Evelyn I told it, Daddy. Please?”

“Okay. I'll tell her not to tell her.”

They rode along for a while and Jimmy looked at the farms and fields they were passing. He saw a farmer out mowing his pasture with a Bush Hog. He saw some hogs in a pen. One of them was stretched out pretty comfortably sleeping on a couch. Then they went by some fish ponds where people were fishing. It sure looked like fun. What if that mean old man up the road
had
put catfish in his pond? How would you know? How would you know if you didn't go down there with a rod and a reel and some bait and see?