A Miracle of Catfish (72 page)

“Well, what we gonna do?”

She just looked at him.

“I don't know.”

By noon they had most of the trash cleaned out but they were having to stay out of the room where the wasp nest hung. They were sitting under the shade of some trees in a yard that honey-suckle vines had taken over. Like foraging cows they had trampled them down and flattened them.

“Now how much money have we got?” the old man said to them. He looked hopeful.

“I ain't got none,” Gary said.

“Don't look at me,” said Fay.

“Where's your purse?” Wade asked her.

“I said I ain't got none,” she told him. “What, you think I'm lyin?”

“I just want to check.”

“I done told you I'm broke.”

“Well, I just want to see.”

“Well, you can just jump up my ass.” She got up and started to pick up her purse, but he caught her by the arm. They fought briefly over it until he broke the strap and snatched it away from her. He upended it and dumped the contents on the ground while she cursed at him. A comb, a mirror, two sticks of gum, hair clips, lipstick. He shook it but nothing else came out.

“Now. You satisfied?” She knelt and started putting her things back in it, muttering under her breath.

“We got to have somethin to eat,” he said.

“You oughta thought of that before you got us out here.”

“You want me to slap you?” he said. She didn't answer.

“We gonna have to do somethin,” Gary said. “Find us a job.”

“Where you gonna find one at?” the old man said.

“I don't know. I guess I'll have to go look for one. How far is it to town?”

The old man looked around at the woods as if the trees bore road signs that marked the route to civilization.

“It's about ten mile, I guess.”

“Ain't there a store no closer than that?”

“They's one over here at London Hill. Or used to be.”

“Reckon they'd give us some credit?”

“They might. You could ask. They might give us credit.”

“Well, why don't we walk over there and see? We got to do somethin. We can't set around here all day.”

“You go. My legs is hurtin s'bad I can't hardly get up.”

The old woman had not spoken but she was unfolding limp green paper in her hands. Each of them realized it gradually, turning one by one to look at her as she sat with her head down, her fingers trembling slightly as she fumbled with the wrinkled bills. She smoothed each one on her knee as she drew it from the wad.

“Where'd you find that, Mama?” Gary said.

“I had it,” she said. Her hair was coated with dust and it hung limply around the sides of her head so that her ears stuck through.

“How much you got?” the old man said. He was taking it off her knee and counting it. “Eight dollars? You got any more?” She shook her head.

He got up immediately, his leg forgotten, and put the bills in his pocket.

“I'll go on over to the store,” he said. “See what I can buy.”

Gary got up. “Let me go with you,” he said.

“Ain't no need for you to go. I can do it.”

“Go with him, Gary,” Fay said, nudging him.

“Just stay here. I'll be back after while.”

“You gonna get some gas?” Gary said.

“Gas? What for?”

“For that wasp nest.”

Wade shook his head, already starting off. “I ain't got nothin to carry it in.”

“We gonna have to rob that wasp nest before we can stay in there.”

“Well, if I find a jar to bring it back in I'll buy some.” They
stood and watched him stagger away through the hot woods. When he was out of hearing Fay turned on her mother.

“What'd you give him all that money for? He ain't gonna do nothin but catch a ride to town and buy whiskey with it.”

“Leave her alone,” Gary said. “She don't need you fussin at her.”

At nine that night they were gathered around a small fire in the middle of the yard, mute in the thunderous din of crickets. The grasses and weeds were beginning to look like a bedding ground. They were cooking a meal of pork and beans in opened cans, and the old man was halfway through a bottle of Old Crow. They had foraged for firewood and had a pile nearby.

The faces around the fire were pinched, the eyes a little big, a little dazed with hunger. They sat and watched the blaze burn the paper off the cans. When the beans began to sizzle, the woman stooped painfully on her bad hip and reached for the cans with a rag wrapped around her hand. Clotted strings of hair hung from her head. She took five paper plates, set them out on the ground, and dumped the beans onto them, shaking them as she went, the way a person might put out dog food for a pet. She dumped the largest portion into the plate intended for the old man.

The breadwinner was sitting crosslegged on the ravaged grass, the whiskey upright in the hole his legs formed. He was weaving a home-rolled cigarette back and forth from his lips, eyes bleary, red as fire. He was more than a little drunk. His head and chest would slump forward, then he'd jerk erect, his eyes sleepy. Grimed and furtive hands reached out for the plates quietly, took them
back and drew away from the fire into darker regions of the yard. The old woman took two small bites and then rose and scraped the rest of her food into the boy's plate.

The fire grew dimmer. The plate of beans before the old man steamed but he didn't notice. A candlefly bored crazily in out of the night and landed in the hot sauce, struggled briefly and was still. The old man's head went lower and lower onto his chest until the only thing they could see was the stained gray hat over the bib of his overalls. He snuffled, made some noise. His chest rose and fell. They watched him like wolves. The fire cracked and popped and white bits of ash fell away from the tree limbs burning in the coals. Sparks rose fragile and dying, orange as coon eyes in the gloom. The ash crumbled and the fading light threw darker shadows still. The old man toppled over slowly, a bit at a time like a rotten tree giving way, until the whiskey lay spilling between his legs. They watched him for a few minutes and then they got up and went to the fire and took his plate and carried it away into the dark.

A SHANNON RAVENEL BOOK

Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

© 2007 by Mary Annie Brown.
All rights reserved.

“Larry Brown: Passion to Brilliance” by Barry Hannah first appeared in slightly different form in
The Yalobusha Review
, Vol. XI, 2006.
Copyright © 2006 by Barry Hannah. Reprinted by permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILBLE.

E-book ISBN 978-1-56512-696-1

Also by Larry Brown

ESSAYS

On Fire
Billy Ray's Farm

STORIES

Facing the Music
Big Bad Love

NOVELS

Dirty Work
Joe
Father and Son
Fay
The Rabbit Factory

“Larry Brown has slapped his own fresh tattoo on the big right arm of Southern Lit.” —
Washington Post Book World

PRAISE FOR
FACING THE MUSIC

“A stunning debut short story collection.”

—
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“If his first book … were itself a fire, it would require five alarms. The stories are that strong.” —
The Orlando Sentinel

“Larry Brown … is a choir of Southern voices, all by himself.”

—
The Dallas Morning News

“Ten raw and strictly 100-proof stories make up one of the more exciting debuts of recent memory—fiction that's gritty and genuine, and funny in a hard-luck way.” —
Kirkus Reviews

“Like his profession, Larry Brown's stories are not for the delicate or the fainthearted. His characters are limited people who are under siege… . Their stories manage to touch us in surprisingly potent ways.” —
The Cleveland Plain Dealer

PRAISE FOR
DIRTY WORK

“There has been no anti-war novel … quite like
Dirty Work
.”

—
The New York Times

“A novel of the first order… . A gem.” —
The Washington Post

“Explodes like a land mine… . A marvelous book.”

—
The Kansas City Star

“A real knockout.” —
New York Newsday

“An unforgettable, unshakable novel.”

—
The New York Times Book Review

PRAISE FOR
BIG BAD LOVE

“Larry Brown is an American original.” —
The Washington Post

“Larry Brown [is] a writer from Faulkner country who has the savvy to sound only like himself. His gift is the ability to capture convincing Southern voices and to allow them to tell their stories in their own words.” —
Chicago Tribune

“The images are sharp; the sense of love lost reverberates, hard. Painfully, powerfully elegant.” —
Detroit Free Press

“Big, bad and wonderful! … A stunning collection of stories about real people and real life.” —
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“A voice as true as a gun rack, unpretentious and uncorrupted. [In] a surprising combination of sharp wit and great sorrow … comes a sure sense of a compassionate writer deeply in touch with the sorrowful rhythms of not just Southern, but human, life.”

—
The Philadelphia Inquirer

PRAISE FOR
JOE

“Powerful… . In the whiskeyish, rascally Southern tradition of Faulkner.” —
Time

“That rare kind of novel that features a full display of a writer's gifts …
Joe
achieves the complete transparency and authenticity of great fiction, and ‘great' is not a word to be used lightly.”

—
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“A tragic, compelling new novel.” —The Associated Press

“Brown has quietly established himself as among the finest of the new generation of Southern writers. His latest work is absolutely riveting in its rawness. Brown has unleashed all his skills in this story.” —
The Denver Post

“Demands to be read, reread, talked about, and relished.” —
Booklist

PRAISE FOR
ON FIRE

“He left the Oxford, Mississippi, fire department after his first novel was published. It paid off.” —
Men's Journal

“Brown brings to his first work of nonfiction the same no-nonsense style that makes his novels and short stories so powerful and intense.” —
Kirkus Reviews

“He is blunt and abrasive about subjects that tend to cause flinching. He tells stories in plain language.” —
The New Yorker

“The writing in
On Fire
is so good and simple that we can appreciate all the effort that went into making it appear so.”

—
The Orlando Sentinel

“Larry Brown's determination to be a writer has certainly paid off.
On Fire
is a sharp, perceptive, enormously readable autobiography. Never for a minute will a reader doubt the honesty of this clear, pared-down prose.” —
The Dallas Morning News

PRAISE FOR
FATHER AND SON

“Powerful, suspenseful and moving literary entertainment, the work of an enormously gifted natural writer.”

—
The Washington Post

“The model is Faulkner, but his influence has been absorbed and transcended… . The work of a writer absolutely confident of his own voice.” —
The New York Times Book Review

“Larry Brown is one of the great unsung heroes of American fiction … His work is a reminder of a reason to read.”

—San Jose Mercury News

“
Father and Son
is so vividly written it is almost cinematic.”

—
Chicago Tribune

“Larry Brown is a master.” —
New York Newsday

“Riveting.” —
Vanity Fair

PRAISE FOR
FAY

“Hard, true, and beautiful.” —
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Larry Brown's writing is beyond seductive—it's addictive and nearly narcotic. His spare lines ring clear as single bell notes.”