Gone Fishin' (3 page)

Ernestine
stopped wagging her foot long enough to say, ‘He just jealous,
that’s all. ‘Cause the men like a girl wit’ big
titties like I got.’ She sneered at him; Mouse and I looked
away.

‘You
shouldn’t be talkin’ like that, honey. What these men
gonna think?’

‘Well
I am nice t’look at, ain’t I,’Zekiel?’ she
said as she arched her foot.

I swear
that I meant to look out at the road but I found myself staring down
at her. Clifton would have opened my head if he saw my eyes but I
guess he was too busy looking at her to notice what I was doing.

‘Ernestine,
stop it!’

‘I
will not! I will not! On’y reason we here is ‘cause you
so jealous an’ you don’t know that a girl can get a
compliment an’ not do nuthin’ ‘bout it!’

‘That’s
enough now, girl!’ Clifton was threatening but Ernestine didn’t
care.

‘What
difference it make? If that boy die you know they gonna fines you an’
they gonna get you too!’

Mouse had
a talent, he could smile without letting it show. You could be
looking at him and if you didn’t know it you’d think his
face was just plain, but if you knew what to look for you’d see
how his eyes got larger and how his mouth lost its hardness.

He was
smiling then.

‘You
in some kinda trouble, Clifton?’ Mouse spoke the boy’s
name like they’d known each other for years.

‘Ain’t
nuthin’, man. Just a little disagreement.’

Ernestine
frowned and turned to look out at the road. I missed her toes under
my leg.

‘I
wanna know, man, ‘cause we here wichyou in the car an’ if
the po-lice stops us I just wanna know,’ Mouse said.

Clifton
didn’t say a word.

‘You
know you can get in trouble wit’ the law fo’just he’pin’
somebody done done sumpin’ wrong…’ Mouse let that one
hang for a minute then he said, ‘An’ you know a guilty
man more nekked than a baby, the patrols see you out here… I mean
I wouldn’t wanna put you out or nuthin’, but me an’
Easy cain’t afford no dose look by John Law ourselfs…’

‘Ain’t
nuthin,” Clifton said again. ‘Man was lookin’ at
Ernestine wit’out no respect an’ I showed him a little
sumpin’, that’s all.’

‘He
beat that boy so bad that he prob’ly dead!’ Ernestine
shouted with her lips stuck straight out.

‘Is
that true, Clifton?’

‘He
wasn’t movin’ much when we lefted,’ the sullen boy
admitted.

‘But that don’t mean he dead.’

‘Anybody see it?’

‘We
was in a bar fulla people!’ Ernestine had turned completely
around. She was like a little girl in that dirty blue dress with
litde pictures of cows stamped all over it.

Mouse
shook his head and hummed his dissatisfaction, ‘Mmmmmmmm! An’
you out here in the road for any hick sheriff t’haul you in?
Mm! You two headed fo’a rope.’

‘I
tried t’tell ‘im,’ Ernestine said. ‘But he
won’t listen t’me. He think he so smart an’ they
gonna hang him.’

‘You
ain’t gonna be too frisky in jail neither,’ Mouse
answered.

‘What
you mean? I ain’t done nuthin’!’

‘But
you wit’ a bad man. The law see you wit’ him an’
they call you the same. An’ if you a woman they call you a bad
man’s girl an’ that’s even worse.’

Ernestine
pouted and turned to put her face against the window. Clifton hunched
down in his seat and glowered. And Mouse sat back with his plain face
secretly grinning from ear to ear.

I started
thinking about my magic horse and how far away he was. It was closing
in on noon and there wasn’t a shred of my morning left.

We drove
for a little while in silence. The land was getting more lush as we
pressed south into bayou country. Our passengers were brooding and
Mouse was waiting; waiting for them to accept his wisdom.

Finally he
said, ‘Look, kids, I know you got troubles an’ I ain’t
tryin t’be no bad man to ya. It’s just that I know what’s
goin’ on… But me an’ Easy got a heart.’
Ernestine turned her face to him, reminding me of a flower being
drawn to the sun. ‘An’ we wanna he’p ya, right,
Ease?’ I didn’t say a word, but that didn’t bother
him. ‘Now listen: You cain’t stay on the road, ‘cause
that’s where the po-lice be lookin’. An’ you cain’t
stop out here, ‘cause country folk is suspicious’a
strangers an’ anyway, if Ernestine let sumpin’ slip like
she just did, then you in it deep. So what you kids need is a place
where they gonna look out fo’you. What you need is Momma Jo.’

‘Who?’
That was me.

‘Friend’a
mine, Ease. Momma Jo. They call her a witch an’ she be ‘lone
most the time. If we bring her a strong man an’ pretty girl she
be one happy woman.’

‘But
I thought you said that these country people ain’t got time for
strangers?’

‘True,
true. But I ain’t no stranger. I been bringin’ homemade
an’ store-bought liquor t’Momma Jo fo’years. She
trust anybody I brang.’

‘But
why you wanna he’p us?’ Clifton asked.

‘It’s
a favor, man. Maybe you he’p me someday.’ That time Mouse
smiled for real.

‘Uh-uh,
I don’t think so. We plan t’go out t’Loozdana t’my
folks,’ Clifton said.

‘You
done kilt a boy an’ you gonna hang that on yo’ folks
neck?’

‘That’s
across state line, they cain’t do nuthin’ down there.’

‘An’
you don’t think the white man gonna be down there? You don’t
think that if he know you at your momma’s that he cain’t
go get you?’

‘How
anybody gonna know where I am ‘less you tell’em?’

‘Boy,
you better get that chip offa yo’ shoulder an’ listen
t’me.’ Mouse sat back and frowned. ‘Now the first
thing is that the cops know your name. I know that ‘cause
Ernestine was there an’ she love t’yell “Clifton.”
Second thing is they know you headed fo’ the state line ‘cause
that’s where a man scared’a the law always be headed. An’
last thing is they know you gonna go whey it’s safe, an’
seein that you already wit’ yo’ girlfriend they know you
gonna go see Momma… The man ain’t no fool, Clifton.’

Mouse
actually scared me. I was amazed and proud of him. He revealed to us
the police mind in a way that I never even considered. I could see hi
the mirror that Clifton felt the same way.

‘Com’on,
Clifton,’ Ernestine pleaded. ‘Let’s do it. He right
‘bout these country cops.’

Clifton
didn’t say anything. The only change hi him at all was that his
jaw set a little tighter.

Mouse
tapped my shoulder and said, ‘When you see a ole beat-up sign
that say Rag Bayou, follah it.’

The
turnoff to Rag Bayou was rough and unpaved. We bounced along.
Everyone was quiet. Everyone was lost in their thoughts. I kept
thinking about that horse in the backyard and how it got there. I was
five when I first saw it, and then, fourteen years later, it came to
me, from nowhere it seemed, that my daddy had stolen that horse and
sold it for meat.

Chapter
Three

A mist of
gnats and mosquitoes swarmed along the road. Mouse was shouting over
the whining cicadas, ‘Turn down there, Easy! … That’s
it! … Take a left! …’ The path was so rutted that I worried
about breaking an axle - and I knew Otum loved that car more than his
whole Cajun family.

‘You
can stop it right here, man!’ Mouse yelled at last.

‘We
in the middle’a the road, fool! I gotta park.’

‘Okay.’
He shrugged. ‘But Otum ain’t gonna like his Ford knee
deep in swamp.’

‘But
we cain’t leave it in the road. What they gonna do when they
come drivin’ down here?’

Mouse
laughed. ‘Man who gonna drive down here but a fool?’

I wished I
had an answer to that. I pulled the car as far over to the side of
the road as I could, and hoped that there was enough space in case
some other fool decided to drive by.

‘Com’on,
Clifton, you safe fo’the first time since you laid that boy
down,’ Mouse said.

‘Hey,
man.’ Clifton put up his hands. ‘Keep it quiet.’

Mouse
smiled and followed Ernestine out of the car door. Clifton went too.

But I
stayed in the car putting on my heavy shirt and pulling my cotton cap
down to my ears.

Mouse
leaned in the window and said, ‘What you doin’, Easy?’

‘It’s
them bugs,’ I said. ‘Just one mosquito in a room will
bite me twenty times and every bite swells up into a hump on my skin,
and every hump itches me until I scratch it hard enough to draw
blood. I hate bugs.’

‘You
just too sweet an’ sensitive,’ Mouse said. ‘All I
gotta do is wave my hand in front’a my face once or twice and
the bugs leave me be. An’ if anything bite me he ain’t
never gonna bite nuthin’ else.’

I came out
finally. Mouse slapped my shoulder and said, ‘Right this way,
honey boy.’

We walked
into a wall of vines and baby bamboo. It was reedy and mulchy and
thick with gnats. It was hot too. Ernestine squealed every time a
frog jumped or one of those bright red swamp birds got startled and
croaked its hoarse swampsong. I was sweating heavy in all those
clothes and still getting bites on my face and hands.

‘How far is it?’ I yelled over the cicadas.

‘It’s up here, Ease.’

‘How far?’

‘Dont rightly know, man.’ He smiled and let go of a
bamboo stalk.

‘What
you mean you don’t know?’ I had to duck down to keep the
bamboo from hitting me in the face.

‘Ole
Momma Jo’s a witch, an’ witch houses on out here is like
boats.’ He made his voice sound ghostly. ‘Floatin’
on the bayou.’

He didn’t
believe in that voodoo stuff, but Clifton and Ernestine got quiet and
looked around as if they expected to see Baron Samedi looking out
from under his skull mask.

‘You
can tell you gettin’ close t’Momma’s when the
cicadas stop singin’ an’ the mosquitoes die down,’
Mouse said.

I thought
he was still trying to scare us, but after a while there came a sweet
wood-burnt scent. Soon after that the whining of the cicadas receded
and the ground became firmer.

We came to
a clearing and Mouse said, ‘Here we is,’ but all I saw
was a stand of stunted pear trees with a big avocado rising up behind
them.

‘She
live in the open?’ Clifton asked.

A cloud
shifted and the sun shone between two pear trunks. A light glinted
from the trees. Mouse whistled a shrill warbled note and in a while
the door came open.

It was a
house hidden by trees way out there.

The house
was a shock, but it was the woman standing there that scared me.

She was
tall, way over six feet, wearing a short, light blue dress that was
old and faded. Over her dress was a wide white apron; her jet-black
skin shone against those pale colors so brightly that I winced when I
first saw her. She was strongly built with wide shoulders and big
strong legs.

When she
strode toward us I noticed the cudgel in her broad fist. For the
first time in my life I felt the roots of my hair tingle. She came to
within three strides of us and pushed her handsome face forward like
something wild sniffing at strangers. There was no sympathy in her
face. Ernestine jumped behind Clifton and I took a step back.

Then she
smiled. Big pure yellow teeth that were all there and healthy.

‘Raymond!’
The swamp behind us got even quieter. ‘Raymond, boy it’s
good, good to see you.’ She lifted Mouse by his shoulders and
hugged him to her big bosom. ‘Mmmmmmmmmmmm-mm, it’s
good.’ She put him down and beamed on him like a smiling black
sun. ‘Raymond,’ she said. ‘It’s been too
long, honey.’

Raymond is
Mouse’s real name, but nobody except EttaMae called him that.

‘Jo,
I brung you some store-bought.’ He held out the sack that still
had two fifths of Johnnie Walker. ‘An’ some guests.’
He waved his hand at us.

Momma Jo’s
teeth went away but she was still smiling when she asked, ‘These
friends?’

‘Oh
yeah, Momma. This here is Easy Rawlins. He’s my best friend.
An’ these chirren is the victims of a po-lice hunt. They in
love too.’

She took
the sack and said, ‘Com’on then, let’s get in.’
We followed her in between the trees into the house, passing from day
into night. The room was dark like nighttime because the sun couldn’t
make it through the leaves to her windows. It was a big room lit by
oil lanterns. The floor was cool soil that was swept and dry. The
whole place was cool as if the trees soaked up all the swamp heat. In
a corner two small armadillos were snuffling over corncobs and above
them was a pure white cat, its hair standing on end as it hissed at
us.

The cat
was on a ledge over a fireplace. Also on the ledge were thirteen
skulls. Twelve of them were longsnout opossums, six on either side of
a human skull that had been dried with the skin still on it. The
skull leaned back with its teeth pushed forward, dried black lips for
gums. The teeth were brown but here and there white bone poked
through cracked human leather. The eyelids were shut and sunken but
there was no repose in the broad features of that face. It was as if
the agony of life had followed that poor soul into the after world.

‘Domaque,’
Momma Jo said, and I turned to see her looking at me.

‘What?’

‘My
husband,’ she said. ‘Com’on, chirren, have a seat.’
She gestured for us to settle on the dirty blankets and piles of
pillows she had surrounding the fireplace. There were only two pieces
of wood furniture in the whole room. A three-legged stool and a
rough-hewn plank table that had six legs. The table was piled with
dried plants and all kinds of powders in glass jars and bowls. I
didn’t look too close at the table because I didn’t want
to see any other keepsakes like Domaque.

She opened
the sack and smiled when she saw little Johnnie. She said to Mouse,
‘You brought me lightnin’,’ then she looked at me,
‘an’ sugah.’