Gone Fishin' (2 page)

‘How
you gonna do that?’

‘I
don’t know, Easy. All I can tell ya is that I ain’t gonna
hesitate one minute.’

Mouse
wanted something from me, and he wanted me to ask him what that
something was. But I was too stubborn to give in to that.

So he
puffed on his cigarette and I fumbled around with my glass. When he’d
look at me I’d just look back. Mouse had light gray eyes.

Finally he
said, ‘So, Easy, what you workin’ at now?’

‘Gardenin’
for the Lewis fam’ly. They man is sick.’

‘You know how t’drive a car, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I
tell you what. I give ya fifteen dollars t’drive me to Pariah
fo’a couple’ a days.’

‘Shit!’

‘Yeah, man, I ain’t lyin’.’

‘Let’s see it.’

Mouse got
that wary dog look again and said in a quiet voice, ‘I ain’t
never asked you t’prove nuthin’, Easy.’

I knew
right then that he wanted to trade; that he’d forget about me
and Etta if I’d drive him to Pariah for a fifteen-dollar IOU.
That’s how Mouse was, he didn’t care about me and his
woman; the only thing that ever got Mouse mad was if you played with
his money or caught him in a lie. This was just business, plain and
simple.

‘What
kinda car you got?’

‘Thirty-six
Ford. Drive so smooth you think you was in a boat.’

‘Now
where you gonna get a car like that an’ you don’t even
drive?’

‘Otum
Chenier want me t’take care of it while he gone down Lake
Charles.’ Mouse grinned and rubbed his chin. ‘Seem like
one’a his folks is sick.’

‘And when you wanna go?’ I asked.

‘Maybe half hour ‘fore dawn.’

‘Tomorrah?’

‘Com’on,
Ease. It’s late. I got business down south an’ I’ma
pay you fo’it too. I ain’t got no time t’waste.’

‘I
got a job, man.’

‘Easy,
you work fo’them three weeks an’ you be lucky t’get
fifteen dollars. Soon as they man is back you know they gonna put yo’
butt out. An’ I got food, an’ whiskey, an’ gas
money. I know ev’ry pretty girl in Pariah. An’, man, Etta
deserve a good weddin’, ‘cause you know she sumpin’
else.’ He winked at that.

I wanted
to go. I knew it from the minute he yelled in my door. I was a young
man then, barely nineteen years old, and alone in the world. Mouse
was my only real friend, and even though he was crazy and wild I knew
he cared for me - in his way. He made me mad sometimes but that’s
what good friends and family do.

I wasn’t
mad because Mouse had won Etta. I was mad because when they got
married I was going to lose my friend to his wife and family. This
was going to be the last time we would go running in the streets
together. I’d’ve gone with him without the threats and
the IOU.

‘I
want my fifteen dollars, man,’ I said, ‘You know I ain’t
doin’ this fo’my health.’

‘Don’t
you worry ‘bout a thing, Easy. We both git sumpin’ outta
this.’ Mouse was curled up in my second-hand upholstered chair
like a little boy. The room was all kinds of gray from light that
leaked in through the torn shades and the cracks in the door. He fell
asleep as soon as the light went out, but I woke up then. I laid
there in the dark thinking about the time Mouse had saved my life.

I
remembered Junior holding his bloody shirt and running from the bar.
Then I thought of what Mouse had said when I tried to thank him.

‘Shit,
man, I din’t save you. I just wanted to cut that boy ‘cause
he think he so bad… See what he think now…’ And we never
talked about it again.

Early
morning is the best time. You’re fully rested but not awake
enough to remember how hard it all is. Morning is like being a child
again, and morning before the sun is out is like those magic times
that you hid under the bed and in between the clothes hanging in your
mother’s closet. Times when any kind of miracle could come
about just as normal as a spider making her web.

I remember
waking up in the dark once when I was very small. I jumped right out
of bed and went up next to the screen door on the back porch to see
what kind of fantastic thing was going on outside. At first I
couldn’t see anything but there was a clopping sound,
nickering, and a deep voice that made me feel calm and wondering.
Slowly, coming out from the darkness, I saw a gray shimmering next to
a tall black pillar. The shimmer turned into a big horse and the
pillar became my father holding out an apple and cooing hi his bass
voice, ‘Ho! Yeah, boy,’ even though the horse was tame
and eating from his hand.

I drifted
into sleep thinking that we were poor and didn’t own a horse.
When I woke up it was light and there was no horse to be seen. I
asked my father about it but he told me that I was dreaming - where
were poor people like us going to find big gray stallions?

But there
were horse chips behind the barn and hoof-prints too.

I decided
that it was a magic horse and man that I’d seen. From that day
on I believed that magic hides in the early morning. If you get up
early enough you might find something so beautiful that it would be
all right if you just died right then because nothing else in life
could ever be better.

It was
still dark when we made it down to Lucinda Greg’s house. She
was Otum Chenier’s girlfriend. I warmed up the engine while
Mouse changed clothes and made lunch inside. He came out in gray
pants and a gray shirt, work clothes that fit him like dress clothes.

When we
drove off it was still way before dawn. Mouse was sleeping against
the passenger door and I was driving with the few feeble lights of
Houston behind us. It was going to be a warm day but the air still
held a light chill of night. I wanted to sing but I didn’t
because Mouse wouldn’t have understood my feelings about magic
and the morning. So I just drove quietly, happy on that flat Texas
road.

People
don’t understand southern Texas. They think that the land there
is ugly and flat. They take their opinion about the land and put it
on the people but they’re wrong on both counts. If they could
see Texas in the early dawn like I saw it that day they would know a
Texas that is full of potential from the smallest rock to the oldest
woman on the farm.

The road wasn’t
paved or landscaped. On either side there were dense shrubs and
bushes with knotty pines and cherry and pear trees scattered here and
there. I was especially aware of the magnolias, their flowers looking
like white faces staring down from shadow.

They say
it’s like a desert down there, and they’re right - at
least sometimes. There are stretches of land that have hardly
anything growing, but even then it’s no simple story. Texas is
made up of every kind of soil; there’s red day and gray sod and
fertile brown, shipped in or strained over by poor farmers trying to
make the land work. That earth gives you the feeling of confidence
because it’s so much and so different and, mainly, because it’s
got the patience to be there not ever having to look for a better
place.

But
there’s no such thing as a desert down near the Gulf. The rains
come to make bayous and swamps and feed every kind of animal and bird
and varmint.

As the
night disappeared the last foxes and opossums made their way to
shelter. Animals everywhere were vanishing with the shadows; field
mice and some deer, foxes, rabbits, and skunk.

‘I’ma
show you how t’fish while we down here, Ease.’

I jumped
when Mouse spoke.

‘Man,
ain’t nuthin’ you could tell me. I been droppin’ my
line in the water since before I could talk.’

‘That’s
all right,’ he said with a sneer. ‘But I show you how the
master fish.’

He took a
fried egg sandwich from a brown paper sack and tore it in half.

‘Here
you go.’

We were
both quiet as the sun filled in the land with light. To me it was
like the world was growing and I was happy to be on that road.

After a
while I asked Mouse how it was that he happened to get Otum’s
car just when he needed a ride.

Mouse
smiled and looked humble. ‘You know Otum’s a Cajun, an’
them Cajuns is fam’ly down to the bone. They’d kill over
a insult to their blood that normal folks like you an’ me would
just laugh at. An’ Otum is a real Cajun. That’s a fact.’

Mouse knew
how to tell you a story. It was like he was singing a song and the
words were notes going up and down the scales, even rhyming when it
was right. He’d turn phrases that I wanted to use myself but it
seemed that I couldn’t ever get the timing right. Sometimes
what he said fit so perfectly I couldn’t ever find the right
time to say it again.

‘..
. I always known that a message from his momma would light a fire
under Otum. An’ puttin’ out fires is my especiality.’
We laughed at that. ‘So that night I come home from Galveston I
stayed over at Lucinda’s, for a weddin’ gift she said. I
thought ‘bout how she take care’a Otum’s car an’
how they got a phone down at that beauty shop she work for…’

Mouse
smiled with all his teeth and put his foot against the dashboard so
he could sit back comfortably, ‘You know once Otum got that
message from Lucinda he knew he couldn’t take his car down
there. The bayou ain’t no place t’drive no good car. So
Lucinda tole him that you would start it up for him and look in on it
every once an’ a while.’

‘Me?’

‘Well,
yeah, it had t’be you, Easy. I cain’t drive no car.
Anyway, Otum never did trust me too much.’

We had been going
southeast for dose to two hours when we saw two people with thumbs
out on the road. A big young man and a girl, maybe fifteen, with a
healthy chest and smile.

‘Pull
on over, Ease,’ Mouse said. ‘Let’s pick ‘em
up.’

‘You
know ‘em?’ I asked as we passed by.

‘Uh-uh,
but oppu’tunity is ev’rywhere an’ I ain’t
passin’ up no bets.’

‘Man,
you don’t know what they’s up to. They could be robbers
fo’all you know.’

‘If
they is then this here gonna be they last stand.’ I shifted the
clutch down and put on the brake. As soon as we stopped, Mouse was
out with the door open and the seat folded up. He waved at the couple
and they came running. The boy was dragging a duffel bag that was
bigger than his girlfriend.

‘Come
on!’ Mouse shouted. ‘Jump in the back wit’ me, man.
‘Cause Easy got all kindsa dirty rags back here an’ you
don’t want no girl in that.’

‘That’s
all right. We sit together,’ the young man said in

a gruff
tone.

‘Uh-uh,
Clifton,’ the girl complained in a high voice. ‘I don’t
wanna get filthy! Go’on an sit back there wit’ him.

You can
still see me.’

Mouse
smiled and gestured for the boy to get in. Clifton did as he was
asked to do, but he wasn’t happy about it.

I could
see in his face that Clifton hadn’t had a happy day in his
life. His jaw was set and his eyes were hard but he couldn’t
have been over seventeen. He was what Mouse called ‘a truly
poor man.’ Someone who doesn’t have a thing and is so mad
about it that he isn’t likely to ever get anything.

‘Where you-all goin’?’ I asked.

‘Down
t’N’Orleans,’ the girl said. She looked in my eyes
to see how surprised and jealous I’d be. She had a wide face
and a forehead that sloped back. Her eyes were so far apart it looked
as if she couldn’t focus both of them on the same thing. Her
look was careless and lazy, and I looked away before I got myself
into trouble.

‘Where
you people from?’ Mouse asked in his friendliest tone.

‘Nowhere
special,’ Clifton mumbled. ‘Where you-all goin’?’

‘Pariah,’
Mouse announced. ‘Farmin’ capital of south Texas.’

‘Hm!’
The girl frowned. ‘I ain’t never even heard’a that
place.’ She turned her back to the door and put her bare feet
on the seat, her toes grazing my leg.

‘What’s
your name?’ I asked as I shifted gears.

‘Ernestine.’
She showed me her full set of teeth. ‘What’s yours?’

‘They
call me Easy, an’ they call him Mouse.’

She
laughed and dug her toes under my thigh. ‘Them ain’t even
names at all. What’s yo’ real name?’

I never
liked telling strangers my real name, but with her toes wiggling
under my leg and Clifton breathing down my neck I didn’t feel
like arguing.

‘Ezekiel.’

She
guffawed at that and got her whole foot under my thigh. I had a hard
time keeping the car in the road.

While we
rode along Ernestine flirted with me in the front seat and Clifton
pouted in the back. Mouse was telling us a story about how a bad man
in Houston shot his foot off while trying to shoot Mouse. It was a
funny story and we all laughed, even Clifton, in that respectful way
you’re supposed to laugh when complimenting a well-told lie.
But I knew that Mouse wasn’t lying. That gangster, fat Joe
Withers, died from gangrene poison. He had made the mistake of
grabbing EttaMae one night and we all knew that Mouse would get him
one day.

Ernestine
was still giggling and wiggling her toes when Mouse started checking
Clifton out.

‘Ain’t
I seen you wit’ a guitar down in Fifth Ward? I swear I seen a
big man like you down there playin’.’

‘Ain’t
me, man. I ain’t the least bit musical.’

‘Well,
yeah, I guess you must know. It’s just I seen this boy who
looked powerful like you and I wondered why such a big man would
waste his time on music.’

‘I
cain’t tell ya. I mean I like t’listen but, uh, you know,
I ain’t never gonna play nuthin’.’

‘Uh-huh.’
I could see Mouse nod in the mirror. ‘That’s just how I
feel. You know I go on down t’ George’s saloon an’
get all the music I needs. You ever go there?’

‘Naw.
The way them men in the bars an’ juke joints be lookin’
at Ernestine gets me mad.’ Clifton talked slowly as if every
word he said had to be exactly right.