A Miracle of Catfish (46 page)

“Unsociable old fart,” Jimmy's daddy said.

“I wish I had a Coke,” Jimmy said.

“Why didn't you bring one from home?” Jimmy's daddy said.

“I didn't think about it,” Jimmy said.

“Well, see, you need to plan ahead,” Jimmy's daddy said. “That's what I try to do. Plan ahead. I knew I'd want some beer so I brought some. How about handing me another one out of that new cooler I bought back there?”

Jimmy moved the blanket off the cooler and got the beer for him and Jimmy's daddy tossed the empty one out toward the tiny trailer. It bounced off the front door onto a pile of cans. Jimmy thought for sure that would bring his grandfather out if he was really in there, but it didn't.

“Probably passed out,” Jimmy's daddy said. “We gonna set here ten more minutes and if he don't come out, we leaving.”

“Where we going then?” Jimmy said.

“You going back home,” Jimmy's daddy said.

It took some guts for Jimmy to ask his daddy the next question, but he did anyway:

“Where
you
going?”

“Don't you worry none about where I'm going,” Jimmy's daddy said. “I'm going to town to get this flat fixed. So I'll have a spare. I got to have a spare before I go back to work Monday.”

“Oh,” Jimmy said. He waited a few moments.

“Can I go?”

Jimmy's daddy turned his head to look at him. He had slumped back in the seat and he had his beer can sitting on his belly.

“What you want to go for?” he said.

Jimmy spoke the truth.

“Just to be with you,” he said.

Jimmy's daddy didn't answer at first. But he turned his face back toward the windshield. Jimmy could tell that his daddy was getting drunk. He'd seen this transformation before. His daddy slowed down. He talked slower, he moved slower, he thought longer before he spoke. He was doing that now, thinking long. He thought so long that Jimmy thought he wasn't going to answer him. And then he did. In a low, husky voice. A very quiet voice that came deep from somewhere inside him and didn't sound like him at all.

“Look,” he said. “A man's got stuff he's got to do. I mean, I might want to go up to a bar and have a beer or something. And I can't take you in there cause you ain't old enough. You'd have to just set in the car and wait on me.”

“I wouldn't care,” Jimmy said.

“But
I
would,” Jimmy's daddy said. “
I
would.”

Jimmy just nodded. He decided he wouldn't tell his daddy right now about the man who'd been driving the big red fish truck. Or of how he'd sat there in the darkening woods for a while the day he'd found the binoculars, motionless, hidden behind green leaves, watching across the road through the binoculars, not moving very much, even when the mosquitoes whined close to him. He even let some of them bite him. He figured that's what you had to do when you were hunting and were supposed to be still. So he was still. He kept the glasses close to his eyes
and swept the length of the pond with them, examining the dark still water, and then something making ripples along one of the banks. He couldn't tell what it was. Frog? Snake? Snapping turtle? Whatever it was didn't ripple long. The water stilled. Jimmy kept watching the spot and didn't move the glasses. Then he saw another ripple. And then he heard something coming and swung the glasses to the left and saw a very big headlight moving toward him and took the glasses down long enough to take a look and see the mean old man coming up his driveway. Jimmy almost got up and ran, but then he remembered how still the hunters in his daddy's hunting videos stayed when they were up in a tree and not talking to the cameraman, so he just stayed still. He wasn't on the old man's land anyway. He was on some land across the road. And his daddy had already told him that somebody in Memphis owned that piece of land. So Jimmy just stayed where he was. He sat very still with his heart pounding as the old man stopped at the end of his driveway, and then pulled out, headed toward where Jimmy was sitting. The truck passed on the dirt road, screened by the green leaves in the woods. Then it turned down onto the new road that Jimmy had already noticed riding by it on the school bus. He put the glasses back up to his eyes and everything was blurry, even though he could tell he was looking at the pick-up's tailgate. He focused the glasses with his thumb and then he read the license plate. At the bottom it said
MISSISSIPPI
. Jimmy adjusted the glasses as the truck pulled down into the woods, and he saw the old man get out and slam the door of the truck about a second before he heard it. Jimmy kept the glasses on him as he walked over to a tree and took the lid off a steel garbage can. The glasses were so good that he could see the old man scooping up with a quart fruit jar something that looked kind of like dog food, only smaller. And then he walked over to the edge of the pond and started throwing it out over the water. Turning the jar up and pouring it into his hand and then flinging it. It flew out into the air and sprinkled on top of the water like raindrops. Then the old man sat on the ground. Nothing happened for a long time and Jimmy sat there in the woods and watched the old man. He just kept the glasses on him and looked at him. The old man's face was turned to one side as if he were listening for something. Jimmy felt some sort of strange feeling from watching him and knowing the old man didn't know it.
What was that stuff in the garbage can and what was he doing with it? And why was he just sitting there? Was he sick? Jimmy's mama had told him that the old man's wife had died a while back. And the day she'd told him, they'd driven by the cemetery, and had seen a blue tent set up, and Jimmy had asked his mama what that tent was for, and she'd said it was for Mr. Sharp's wife. Jimmy knew he was looking at Mr. Sharp. And that Mr. Sharp was probably pretty sad, missing his dead wife. He didn't look that mean from here, where you could take your time and get a good look at him. He was big. He had gray hair, but he had a lot of it. His hands looked strong. The main thing Jimmy remembered was him yelling
Get the hell off my place!
at him. It was almost too dark to see.

Jimmy glanced at his daddy. He was just sitting there, looking at the trailer. Jimmy didn't know why he didn't want to go knock on the door. And he didn't know why his daddy didn't go see his daddy a little more often. Jimmy's daddy's daddy had never been over to their trailer. And Jimmy's daddy rarely mentioned his daddy. So that caused Jimmy to wonder what was going on between the two of them. And why his daddy's daddy lived off in the woods like this by himself. There was no vehicle parked here. How did he get in and out when he needed some groceries? What if he needed some kind of health care? He bet Jehovah's Witnesses never came up in here knocking on the door. Shoot. What did he do about Christmas? And how much were all these aluminum cans worth?

They kept sitting there. Once Jimmy thought he saw something move inside the trailer, just a shadow on the shade for a moment, but nobody pulled the shade aside and looked out. Jimmy wondered if ten minutes had passed yet. It felt like it had. Then he heard a gentle snoring and looked over at his daddy, who was asleep.

“Daddy?” Jimmy said. Jimmy's daddy didn't say anything. He just kept snoring. His cap was down over his eyes. His beer was almost tilting in his hand and Jimmy reached over and took it out of his hand before he spilled it in his sleep. He held the beer on his lap.

“Daddy?” he said again. There was no answer. And he didn't know if he should wake his daddy or not. Maybe he was tired from working so hard at the stove factory. Maybe he needed some rest.

Jimmy looked at the black woods around them. They were pretty
black. He leaned his face out the window and looked up at the stars. They seemed to be fading. He pulled his face back in and looked at his daddy, who had slumped against the door now and was starting to cut some pretty good Zs. Jimmy set the beer in the floor between his feet. The air coming in his window was kind of cool, so he rolled up the window and sat there. The wind coming in through his daddy's window was kind of cool, too, but Jimmy couldn't do anything about that since his daddy was slumped against the door where the window crank was located. So he reached over the front seat and pulled the blanket off the cooler and put it over him, being careful not to turn over his daddy's beer. Then he reached down and picked it up and set it on the dash in front of his daddy. Then he stretched out on the seat with his feet up against his daddy's leg and lay there. He pushed the can of Stop Leak aside with his foot. He wasn't very sleepy, but he didn't want to sit there and look at the trailer anymore. He thought he'd just close his eyes and stay warm under the blanket and let his daddy sleep. Let him get some rest. He worked so hard for them.

When Jimmy woke up again, he was in his bed and it was Sunday morning and he had no idea how he'd gotten there. The last thing he remembered was stretching out on the seat beside his daddy and closing his eyes. So he closed his eyes again. He could hear Velma saying something and his mama saying something back to her. Then the TV came on and he didn't hear anybody else talking. He wished they had some Aunt Jemima syrup and some pancake mix so he could have some when he got up. Like in the restaurant that day his daddy tried to take him to First Monday. He hated they didn't get to see everything his daddy had told him about. His daddy had promised him he'd take him again. And Jimmy sure hoped that would turn out to be true. And maybe one day they could go fishing, too. Maybe that would turn out better than the swimming trip and the First Monday trip. He hoped so.

His tooth was hurting but he wasn't going to say anything about it. He wondered how much the dentist cost. Probably more than a chain for a go-kart.

It was hard to see the fish come up for their feed at night, but Cortez was trying to be patient. He remembered the fish man telling him that it took two weeks to train them to come up to eat, and it hadn't even been a week yet. But he was enjoying feeding them. He was looking forward to the time when he could see all three thousand of them trying to eat at the same time. No telling what that was going to look like. They'd probably churn the water all to hell. He hoped so.

[…] He was getting ready to put the Bush Hog on the 4020 and go up there and mow down that grass that had sprouted up around the pond. He didn't think it was too muddy. There was one slope on the side that was kind of steep, but he didn't think it would be any problem. He'd put his safety belt on. He always did. […] It was still pretty hot out there even though it was September, and he knew if he'd wait until a little later on in the afternoon, it would be cooler. So he took his brogans off and turned the TV off and lay down on the daybed and got a pillow and put it under his head and closed his eyes and sighed. Lots of times when he took naps he thought about Queen. He ran images through his head that he'd retained in his brain. They were kind of like movies in that the same things happened over and over. The same words were said. The same things happened. She said this, he said that. They fought, they made up. They rode to town in the snow and they picked peas in the June heat. They screwed in the barn. […]

He rolled over onto his side and faced the window. He wasn't very sleepy. But maybe if he stayed here a while he could drift off. So he kept thinking about Queen. He thought about her when she was fourteen and he thought about her when she was twenty-four. He thought about the first time he'd seen her naked and he thought about the last time he'd seen her, after he'd poisoned her. She wasn't naked then. But she was dead. All the light gone from her eyes, and her hands cold and stiff. It had taken him eight hours to dig the grave. In the dark. His wife thinking he was out whoring again, no doubt. He'd come in at daylight
after putting the rest of the dirt over her and smoothing it out so that it hadn't looked any different from the rest of the plowed ground. He'd come in and he'd fixed himself a cup of coffee and sat there at the same kitchen table and drank it, with his hands shaking, and then he'd gone to bed. He'd gotten into bed with his wife and she'd been just waking, and she could probably smell the dirt on him because she'd asked him where he'd been all night, had told him that she'd woken at two and he wasn't in the bed. He told her he'd been up all night with a sick heifer, and then he'd rolled over and closed his eyes and listened to the bed creak as she'd gotten up and pulled her robe from the closet, and gone out and closed the bedroom door. And he'd never laid a hand on her again. And she'd never asked him to again. He'd told her that Queen had gone back to South Carolina on the train to take care of her aunt and that she wouldn't be back. His wife had said that she'd miss her corn bread. And that had been the end of it. For his wife, anyway.

Shit. He wasn't sleepy. […] He wondered if that little boy had told his daddy about the big red fish truck. He probably had. He'd probably told all his friends at school, too. It probably wasn't a thing he'd have to worry very much about over the winter, people going down to his pond, but next spring, when the dogwoods bloomed and the days started warming, he'd have to keep an eye on it. But he'd have a gate up by then. That would stop anybody from driving down to it, but it wouldn't stop anybody from just walking in off the road. Maybe he needed to build a fence. But he didn't really want to. He'd already built so many fences that he didn't get too excited about the idea of building another one, although he still had to fix that section down by the pea patch sometime. Maybe next month when it cooled off some. It was too hot to mess with a fence right now.

He rolled over the other way. He wasn't going to be able to go to sleep. He didn't think. But he kept lying there anyway. He'd been thinking about calling Lucinda, but he hadn't. He'd been thinking about getting a phone with caller ID, but he hadn't done that either. Nobody ever called him anyway. Except Toby once in a while. All the old women who used to call his wife never called over here anymore because they didn't want to talk to him. Bunch of old biddies. He never had been able to understand how his wife and her old biddy friends had found so much to talk about over the telephone. Cortez never had used the phone like that, to
just call somebody up and talk. But women were different. They could talk for hours. Queen was the only woman he'd ever been with who was content to just be silent sometimes. And more than sometimes. He'd known sometimes that she felt guilty for doing what they had for so long, right under his wife's nose. In the barn. Just up the driveway. And then Queen would have to come to the house and do something like help his wife peel and can tomatoes. Put up corn. Blanch peas and pick out the bad ones and bag them up for the freezer. Even eat with them sometimes. Cortez sometimes wished he was already dead along with his wife so that he wouldn't have to keep on thinking about things. He was tired of thinking about them. He was tired of asking himself if he'd done the right thing or the wrong thing. All he knew was that he missed her so bad. He missed the taste of her mouth. And the weight of her naked breasts in his hands. And if she'd lived he'd have a little half-black bastard running around somewhere. Not little. Thirty-seven years old almost. And you couldn't have that. Maybe some people could but not him. It would have been too embarrassing to stay here on his farm. He would have had to leave.