A Miracle of Catfish (64 page)

They walked over to the pipeline through the naked winter woods and crossed through the light tan sage grass that was standing dead on it and climbed up one oak-covered ridge that was dusted with snow and he stood there looking down into a patch of cutover and saw some small cedars down there.

“They's some nice ones down yonder,” he said. He pointed toward them.

“Let me go look at em,” she said. “You may not get the right one.”

“Why, I will, too,” he said. “What, you the tree expert?”

“I'm the tree expert,” she said, and went ahead of him, pushing some limbs aside, slipping and sliding on the snow. He grinned at her back. She'd already picked up some pinecones and stuffed them into the big pockets of her coat. She had a red bandanna tied around her head. She wanted some mistletoe if they could find it, too, but he wasn't going to tease her about her not having anybody to kiss under it the way he used to when she was sixteen. She was past all that now. So he followed her down the hill, calling back to Peter Rabbit to come on. Peter Rabbit was more interested in trying to find some squirrels, but it was midafternoon and most of them were in their nests and dens, their trails as cold as the ground. So he came on.

Cleve told her to be careful. He didn't want her slipping in the snow and falling. He was already worrying about the baby, if it would be all right and everything. And he'd been worried about her, too, for a long time. She'd been vague about where she'd been. He thought maybe she'd been to see her mother in Flint, but she wouldn't say. And he wasn't going to push. He was too glad to have her back home. And he didn't want her to leave again. In truth he'd thought he'd lost her the same way he'd lost Tyrone and Woodrow. When she didn't let him hear from her for so long. Almost two months. Not a letter or nothing. But now she was back and it looked like maybe everything would be okay. They'd already gone and bought some baby clothes at Wal-Mart. He let her drive because she had a license. And could run him by the liquor store with no problem from city cops.

He went carefully down the hill, holding the ax by the shaft just below the head, so that he could throw it safely away from himself if he slipped. But he didn't. And neither did she. She used to climb every tree in the yard and had broken her arm falling out of one when she was a kid. That arm still looked a little crooked when she turned it a certain way. He wondered if it would be a boy or a girl. It didn't matter to him. Either one would be fine. A boy was fine, a girl was fine.

She pointed to a tree and he followed her as she went toward it. It was a nicely shaped cedar but he thought it was too tall to fit under the ceiling, since the ceiling was so low in his homemade house. They stood there looking at it. Seretha walked around it, pulling at the limbs, fluffing it. Then putting her hands on her hips and standing there to look at him.

“That's a nice one,” she said.

“Look how big it is, though.”

“I ain't about to have no shrimp tree in my house,” she said.

“Long way to drag it.”

“Go get the truck, Ebenezer,” she said.

He stood there looking at it. He knew it was too tall. But he also knew he'd chop down whichever one she wanted.

“I guess maybe get it back to the house we could cut the bottom off of it,” he said. He looked up to see a hawk wheeling in the winter sky.
Just floating. He looked at the tree again. With a little trimming it might fit.

“What you gonna put on it?” he said.

“I'm gonna paint these pinecones white and hang on it. And hang some popcorn on it. And run back up to Wal-Mart and get some of them silver icicles. I saw some other day. Go on and cut it. I'll hold them bottom limbs out of the way for you.”

She did. Knelt and held the limbs back and allowed him to bend in, chop lightly at the tree, but the little ax was very sharp and it didn't take long to bring it down. He had a rope in his pocket and he tied that to it. Then they both got a grip on the rope and started dragging it back up the hill. It was snowing again. Little sparrows were hopping around on the ground. And the wind had turned cold. But he had done this with his own father when he was a little boy. It had been snowing then, too. So there was again sweetness in his life.

That night he sat in the dim kitchen with the warm stove out there in front of his sock feet. She'd made chicken and dumplings and he was cooking the corn bread that they would crumble up and put in a bowl. They had fresh milk to pour over it, a big white onion he'd soon slice, and she'd made some tea. You couldn't ask for anything better than that. And you couldn't ask for anything better than spending Christmas with some of your family. He'd bought her a watch that he'd already wrapped and hidden. She'd always wanted a watch. The tip of the tree was brushing the ceiling, but he'd made it fit, had sawed and hammered together a stand with a big nail in it that went into the center of the tree's trunk on the bottom. She had already painted the pinecones white with some spray paint she'd bought uptown and now she had her sewing needle and her string of popcorn laid out on the kitchen table, working at it. Peter Rabbit was sleeping on his rug. They had the radio on a Memphis station and the man on the air said it looked like a pretty good chance for a white Christmas. Cleve hoped that was so. They had plenty of food and he had some whisky and beer and some cigarillos. He could stand a white Christmas.

He lifted his bottle and took a sip. He thought he might play a while later. Before he went to bed. He needed to get some wood cut tomorrow.
And then he guessed they needed to figure out what they were going to cook for Christmas. He'd always liked turkey, and she'd always liked ham. He was thinking maybe they could buy a small one of each. Put the rest of it in the icebox. Make sandwiches out of it.

He bent forward and checked the corn bread. It had risen in the black iron skillet, but it hadn't cracked open and turned brown yet. Maybe a few more minutes. He closed the oven door and took another sip of whisky. He'd noticed that she hadn't had a drink around him since she'd been home. He'd even offered her a beer one day just to see what she'd say, but she'd turned it down. He kept turning it over in his mind: Boy or girl? Girl or boy?

“You thought up any names yet?” he said.

She had her tortoiseshell glasses perched on the end of her nose and she was intent upon her popcorn stringing. She didn't look up.

“Yes sir,” she said. “A few.”

“What you thought of?” he said.

She'd already fixed herself a glass of tea and now she put down her needle and thread and lifted her glass and took a drink. He was eating a lot better again now that she was back. Once a week she got in the truck and went to town with the money he'd given her and brought back pork chops and sliced picnic and cracklings and strawberry preserves to put on their biscuits in the mornings, and sometimes she whipped up some of the eggs that she gathered regularly from the chicken nests outside and made a really good thing he'd never had before that she called an omelet. Filled with chopped-up ham and bits of cheese melted inside it. She didn't turn her nose up at fresh deer meat. And she could do some wonderful things with the black iron skillet and a couple of young squirrels.

“I thought of KuShonda if it's a girl and Leroy if it's a boy. After that ‘Bad, Bad Leroy Brown' song.”

“Mm hmm,” he said, nodding. He liked both those.

“Mm hmm what?” she said. “You thought of any?”

“Ain't my place to think of none,” he said. “I'm just the grandpappy.”

They sat there a little longer. He checked the corn bread again and it was done. He got a pot holder and took the skillet out and set it on top of the stove and with a dull knife broke the crust away from the sides of the
skillet. She brought him a plate and he held the plate over the corn bread and turned it and the skillet over, and the pone slid out, solid brown and crusty, steaming. He set it on the table. He was so happy about the baby coming that he didn't know what to do. Didn't matter if it was a boy or a girl, he was buying it a fishing pole. A girl could fish as well as a boy.

“Let's eat,” he said. […]

Christmas vacation seemed to last a long time after Christmas was over. Jimmy had to spend quite a few of those days inside, kind of trapped in the trailer with the girls while his mama and daddy were at work, because it started raining and kept on. Days on end, rain falling from the sky off and on, the sun not coming out, the days all alike and gray and cloudy. Too muddy and cold to ride the go-kart. He tried it once, but since it didn't have any fenders, it threw mud all over him, so he didn't try again. He walked up to the pond a couple of times to see how much water it had in it, and it had come up a good bit and was a lot bigger than what it used to be. A green boat was tied to the bank. He wondered if that big fish was still in there. He looked down toward the house when he was up there, but he didn't see Mister Cortez anywhere. He wondered if he had the cast off his arm yet. He almost went down to the house to knock on the door but then didn't. Something kept him back, but he didn't know what it was.

And he worried about delivering some puppies out his butthole. He counted off the days on the calendar and whenever he went to the bathroom he made sure the door was locked and always checked to see what had come out of him. Nothing ever looked any different. But he kept an eye on things just the same.

Evelyn asked him one day if he wanted to make five dollars and Jimmy said yes. He asked her what he had to do to make the five dollars and she said all he had to do was keep his mouth shut and he said okay and she handed him five dollars. Jimmy didn't know where she'd gotten five dollars. Probably from their mama. In about fifteen minutes one of the big boys off the school bus opened the door of the trailer and walked in without even wiping his really muddy feet off like he owned the damn place. He looked at Jimmy, but he didn't say anything to Jimmy. He walked across the living room carpet tracking red mud and into the kitchen where Evelyn was and kissed her and she kind of swooned and then Velma came walking by with what looked like five dollars in her
hand. Jimmy hadn't heard any car pull up outside. Usually you heard some tires crunching in the gravel at least. He went to the front door and opened it and looked out there and there wasn't any car out there. He wondered how the big boy had gotten there, but he didn't figure he should say anything since he'd agreed to keep his mouth shut. Evelyn took the big boy back to the bedroom she shared with Velma and locked Velma out, and Velma and Jimmy sat on the couch in the living room and watched TV with the volume up pretty good while the big boy stayed back in the bedroom with Evelyn for about thirty minutes, and then there were some steady regular bumping noises that lasted for about two minutes, and then about a minute after that the big boy came out and left in a hell of a hurry, tracking more red mud across the carpet as he went. Jimmy hoped his daddy wouldn't see all that mud on the carpet. And about two minutes later Jimmy's daddy walked in. He had a beer in his hand. He plopped down on the couch next to Jimmy. Velma was in the kitchen making herself a mayonnaise sandwich since she was still crazy about mayonnaise sandwiches.

“Hey, Daddy,” Jimmy said.

“Hey, Hot Rod,” Jimmy's daddy said, and tilted his head back while he took a long drink of beer. He twisted his head around. “Hey, Velma.”

“Hey,” she said, slathering about a half inch of mayonnaise on her bread, both pieces.

“Where's Evelyn?” Jimmy's daddy said.

Jimmy didn't say anything. Velma didn't say anything. Jimmy's daddy sat there for a few moments and then took a long look at both of them.

“I said where's Evelyn?” Jimmy's daddy said.

Velma didn't say anything, so it had to fall on Jimmy to take up the slack.

“I think she's back there in the bedroom,” Jimmy said, concentrating like hell on changing channels with the remote.

Jimmy's daddy turned his head to look down the hall at the closed door to that bedroom. Then he turned back around and took another drink of his beer.

“What's she doing in the bedroom at this time of day?” he said. “Hell, it ain't but four thirty. She sick?”

Jimmy thought he'd let Velma catch this one, but she was evidently
a tough little cookie with plans for her five dollars. She kept her mouth shut, so Jimmy had to answer again.

“I don't know,” he said.

“Why hell,” Jimmy's daddy said, and stood up. He turned to Velma, still standing in the kitchen, trying to put the bread away. “Velma.”

She looked up.

“Yes sir?”

“Is your sister sick?”

Velma shook her head, her long black hair shaking for a moment, dark eyes enormous, lovely, and scared.

“Can you not talk?” Jimmy's daddy said, and took another drink of his beer. Jimmy started getting a little nervous. There were clumps of red mud on the carpet. Some of them had pine needles stuck in them. And
gravel.
It was only a matter of time until his daddy saw them.

“Yes sir,” she said. “I can talk.”

“Well answer me then when I ask you a question. You hear?”

“Yes sir,” she said. “I hear.”

“All right, then, goddamn it,” Jimmy's daddy said. “Is Evelyn sick?”

“I don't know,” she whispered.

“Well, how long's she been in the bedroom?” Jimmy's daddy said.

“She's been back there about thirty minutes,” Jimmy said, just to kind of keep the ball rolling.

“Well, is she sick?” Jimmy's daddy said.

“I don't know,” Jimmy said.

“Y'all don't know very damn much,” Jimmy's daddy said, and took another drink of his beer. Then he went back to his bedroom and stayed in there for about five seconds and came back out with a coat. He stopped in front of Jimmy.