A Miracle of Catfish (56 page)

He didn't take a shower. Jimmy's daddy didn't take many showers because showers were a lot of trouble. You had to take your clothes off and get wet and then get dry and then get more clothes on. They took too long. He didn't stink anyway. At least he couldn't smell himself. He went back to their bedroom and got undressed and standing there in his shorts and gray fuzzy socks he stuck a hunting video into the VCR and picked up the remote and pulled the covers back and got himself an ashtray and plumped up a few pillows and piled them against the headrest and got into bed and pulled the covers up over him and pushed Play. Then he turned off the bedside lamp so that it was nice and dark except for the TV screen, kind of like being in a movie theater, all he needed was some popcorn. But it seemed like every time he ate popcorn, he wound up getting a hull or two between some of his teeth and would sometimes have to dig at it with his tongue for two or three days, almost drove him apeshit.

He'd seen this one before, but only five or six times. It was a hog-hunting video, too, except this one had been shot in some mountains with snow all over them up in Tennessee somewhere. It was pretty hairy. The hunters were out in the snow, wearing white clothes and tramping around in hog country with Ruger .44 Magnum rifles, and every single
time they saw a hog, the hog charged. These were not feral pigs like the ones down in the river bottom on Old Union Road. These were genuine badass Russian boars somebody had imported to Tennessee. They shot about four or five of them. Talk about some big tuskers. One of them ran the cameraman up a tree. Shit. He didn't want to watch that crap again. He got out of bed and ejected that one and put it on the dresser and got one that showed guys in black wet suits like the one Burt Reynolds had worn in
Deliverance
wrestling big monster catfish out of logs in some reservoir and shoved it in. […]

He got back into bed and lit a cigarette and pushed Play again and the video started up. Jimmy's daddy lay there and thought about watching Jimmy through the binoculars this afternoon. When he'd come in from work, Jimmy was gone, and the girls had told him that Jimmy had left on his go-kart, and Jimmy's daddy had just driven up from the county road, and hadn't met Jimmy anywhere, which meant that if he was on his go-kart and in the road, he was off in the other direction. So he got his binoculars from where he'd stashed them on the top shelf of the closet in his bedroom and he walked up the road toward the old man's place. He kind of had an idea that Jimmy might be up there. Since the old man had been so nice to Jimmy, and had given him that nice new rod and reel, and a tackle box, and all that gear, Jimmy's daddy thought that maybe the old man had told Jimmy that it would be all right for him to go up to the pond.

It only took him a few minutes to walk up there. When he got close to the old man's barn, he stepped into the woods along the other side and got off the road and when he got up even with the new clay gravel road that he'd already seen, he stopped beside a tree and raised the binoculars and looked through them at the pond. That's when he saw Jimmy. He was sitting on the ground beside his go-kart doing something, and when Jimmy's daddy focused the glasses on Jimmy's hands, he could see that he was rigging up a line. Then he saw him get something from a paint bucket that looked like one that had been in the shed. Worms probably. Maybe some night crawlers. Then Jimmy threw his line out there. Jimmy's daddy stood there leaning against the tree watching Jimmy fish. It kind of made him feel funny to watch him like that without Jimmy knowing it. He wondered what the fuck he was going to do about
Lacey. What if Johnette found out about it somehow and he had to get divorced? He'd lose Jimmy. And he didn't want to lose Jimmy. And he wasn't ever going to whip him again as hard as he'd whipped him over the tools. That had been wrong. And standing there watching him and thinking about all that made Jimmy's daddy feel bad in his heart. But in about two seconds Jimmy's daddy stopped thinking about all that because by then Jimmy had one hooked. But what had he hooked? Had the old man already put some fish in his pond? Hell, it wasn't even full of water yet. But he'd hooked something. And he was reeling it in. Doing a pretty good job of it, too. That was when the rod bowed almost double and then suddenly Jimmy was fighting hard with something big. Jimmy's daddy watched it, his heart kicking a little faster, and he could see how hard Jimmy was trying to fight the fish, and it was easy to see when the line snapped because Jimmy took a step back to regain his balance. And then he just stood there. Damn. What the hell
was
that?

The guys in the boats on the TV screen were talking to somebody in another boat while they were going out over the water. Then it cut to a scene where the boats were stopped and the men were getting out of them into chest-deep muddy water. But Jimmy's daddy wasn't listening to what they were saying. He was wondering what that old man had in that pond.

There was one thing about it. He was damn sure going to find out. He didn't like it that the old man had fixed Jimmy's go-kart. It kind of made him feel a little embarrassed that he hadn't known how to fix it and/or hadn't taken much time to
try
and fix it. It wasn't any of the old man's business, what went on down here. The way he looked at it, the old man was poking his nose into Jimmy's daddy's business. Aw, he knew the old man was grateful to Jimmy for calling the fire department when he was under his tractor in his pond and all that shit. But still. Jimmy was his boy, not the old man's. In his mind, it gave him a good reason to go on up there sometime and see if he could hook what Jimmy had. Revenge or something like that. At night. In the dark. Maybe with a flashlight.

But how did a fish that big get in there that quick?

Unless somebody had
put
it in? Nah.
Shit
. Go your ass to bed.

Cortez's 4020 was in the tractor shop at Batesville after the John Deere people drove their low boy over and loaded it up with a winch and took it away. He hated to see it gone from the stall where it always sat in the equipment shed. He felt useless without it. It was the first time there hadn't been a tractor sitting on the place in all this time. He couldn't even move his Bush Hog from where they'd unhitched it and left it sitting beside the pond. If it rained it was going to get rained on. He didn't want it to get rained on.

He kept feeding his fish at night, wondering why he couldn't feed them in the daytime. Wouldn't they eat in the daytime? He didn't see what difference it made, but that's what the fish man had said, and if he'd been in the business for all those years, he ought to know. So Cortez would wait until dark, and then get into his pickup and go up the driveway and turn down the road to the new road and drive down to the pond and park there. He'd get some feed from the steel garbage can, and he'd throw it out there, and it wouldn't be over twenty seconds before a whole lot of little splashes would be forming across the top of the pond. He hated that cold weather was coming so soon, because it meant they'd stop eating over the winter. He wondered if they'd grow any over the winter, without being fed. If so, by next spring, plenty of them would be big enough to eat. He stood there a lot of nights, listening to them feed. He'd thought about taking a flashlight and looking out there with it, but he was afraid that would scare them off and they'd quit eating.

One night he heard something that was splashing out there in the dark, and it was making so much racket that he couldn't figure out what it was, so he drove back down to the house and got his flashlight and drove back up there and turned it on. All the feed was gone. The water was black and smooth. He got some more fish feed from the garbage can and threw it out into the pond. When the splashing started up again, he looked again with the flashlight. Hundreds of little eyes were out there, showing red in the flashlight's beam. There were so many of them that
they were making a hell of a splash. So that's what it was. Just so many of them. He nodded to himself. Next year the splashes would be much bigger. And with the winter rains, the pond would probably be totally full of water by Christmas. He was really looking forward to seeing that. Jimmy could fish all he wanted to next spring and summer. Shoot. Maybe they could fish together once in a while. That would be nice. That would be almost like it had been with Raif. Just as he got into the truck he heard another big splash.

Lucinda called him one night and talked for about twenty minutes, but he failed to tell her that he'd rolled the 4020 off into the pond. And had broken his arm. And had to be rescued by the fire department. And had been admitted to the hospital overnight. He did tell her that he'd met this little boy down the road named Jimmy. He didn't tell her that the little boy had saved his life or that he'd bought him a nice rod and reel. He thought he'd keep all that to himself for now. She said they might be there for Thanksgiving. He told her to come on and asked her if she knew how to cook a turkey and she said no, because her mama always did it. He didn't tell her that Queen used to cook all theirs. When she was still around.

He rode down to Batesville one day to see how they were coming with his tractor and to do a few other things, too. It took him about twenty-five minutes to get over there from his house. His arm wasn't hurting anymore, and one reason he hadn't told Lucinda about rolling his tractor off into the pond was because he didn't want her to start telling him how he needed to stop driving his tractor. He'd only made one little mistake in about fifty years of tractor driving. Two mistakes if you counted when he tried to pull that post that was set in concrete.

Tri-County Marine was on the way, just a few miles out of Batesville, so he pulled in there to see if they had any boats. He was thinking that maybe he needed one. He'd gone out to the barn that morning and grabbed about two thousand dollars from one of his many hidey holes and stuck it in his pocket in case he found just what he wanted. He was also wondering how much it would cost to build a boat dock. Hell. He didn't even know anybody who knew
how
to build a boat dock.

A salesman came out to meet him as soon as Cortez got out of his truck. They had lots of boats. Lots of them looked like ski boats, but they had some big fiberglass fishing rigs, too. Cortez saw exactly what he wanted almost right away, actually a whole stack of them: olive drab twelve-foot aluminum boats with handles on each end.
alumacraft
was written down their sides.

The salesman came over and shook hands and introduced himself and Cortez asked him how much they were getting for those twelve-foot boats. The salesman said he could let have him a real good deal today since fall was here and they wouldn't keep as much stock over the winter. Cortez asked him if he had any paddles and he said he did and in not over ten minutes Cortez was out of there with a new boat tied in the back end of his pickup. From there he drove on down to the John Deere dealership just on the other side of the bridge in town and turned in.

He parked in front but no salesman came out to meet him. He looked at a couple of big glassed-in-cab John Deere tractors with their pretty green-and-yellow paint, but none of them had price tags hanging on them. They never did. The John Deere salesmen didn't want you to be able to walk up to a new one in the parking lot and see how much it was because that might scare you off the parking lot right away. You might figure you'd just keep on using your old one. Or maybe buy a Kubota. Or a Belarus. Or a Kioti. And the John Deere salesmen didn't want you to do that. They wanted you to buy a new John Deere from them because they wanted that sales commission. But Cortez wasn't ready to talk to a salesman until he found out something about his 4020, specifically whether it was ever going to be worth a shit again after being rolled off into a pond, so he walked on back to the shop and let himself in. They had his 4020 out in the middle of the big concrete floor and they had the hood off it and some parts were lying around. He didn't see anybody in the shop.

“Anybody home?” Cortez hollered. He looked around but he still didn't see anybody. So he walked on over to the 4020. He could tell they'd put some new fuel lines on it. A new linkage rod for the throttle. Must have bent it. A new exhaust pipe and muffler. He'd needed a new muffler anyway, loud son of a bitch. There was a drain pan sitting under
it full of black oil and his old blue Chevron filter. He'd bet anything the motor had gotten some water in it. It probably wasn't going to be worth a shit. He was probably going to have to trade. Shit. He
wanted
to trade. But there was no need in letting these money-grubbing sons of bitches know how eager he was for one of those new ones out front. He could imagine himself Bush Hogging on hot August days in air-conditioned comfort.

“Can I help you?” he heard somebody say behind him. Cortez turned to see a tall young man in tan Carhartt coveralls walking toward him with a sandwich in his hand. The young man was chewing and he had a quart of buttermilk in his other hand.

“That's my tractor,” Cortez told him. “I was wondering how y'all was coming along with it.”

The young man walked over and took another bite of his sandwich. He chewed for a bit and then swallowed. Then he lifted the box of buttermilk and turned a long draft down his throat. Cortez almost cringed watching him. One of the worst things he'd ever had to do his whole life was watch his wife eat corn bread and drink buttermilk. He didn't know how anybody could drink that shit, but she could. And here this young fellow was the same way. The young man took the box of buttermilk down and took another bite of his sandwich.

“This the one that went in the pond?” he said, spewing bits of Cortez didn't know what. Looked like pieces of lettuce maybe.

“That's right,” Cortez said. “Reckon how long it's gonna take y'all to get done with it?”