The Troubles of Johnny Cannon (14 page)

“Dirty work?”

“Collecting, mainly,” he said, and his eyes had changed. They was darker, somehow. “When you let men gamble with you, they tend to lose more than they should. The bigger places knew how to get their money out of men's kneecaps. I couldn't ever do that. I was terrible at collecting.” He leaned against his counter where he had his hair-cutting stuff. He rubbed his razor, I don't think he even knew he was doing it. “I've gotten better lately, though.”

I watched him for a second, letting my mind make all the connections.

“Bob Gorman,” I said.

He got all kinds of shocked.

“What did you say?”

“Bob owes you money, don't he? That's why you came to Cullman. Why he does whatever you tell him to, including making Eddie offer me fifty dollars. How much does he owe you?”

Mr. Thomassen raised his eyebrows at me. I think he was impressed.

“Forty-five grand. Not all in one night, of course. He was a frequent customer at my club, and a frequent loser. He and his air show came to Havana quite often. We let him keep coming back because he was a heavy drinker. It wasn't until I was kicked out of the country that I wished I had gotten my money from him.”

I filled up some of them little Dixie cups he had with more lemonade and thought for a bit.

“Dang, there sure are a lot of folks from Cullman that went to Cuba, ain't there?”

He chuckled.

“Havana was paradise,” he said. “Everyone went there. Honey­mooners, lovers, celebrities. It was where you went when you needed to escape where you were from.”

“So, if Havana was Heaven, what does that make Cullman?”

He opened his mouth to answer but then a whole new group came in for drinks and snacks. I wondered if it was weird for him to give out free drinks considering he'd spent so much time charging for them back in the day, but I didn't ever mention it to him. In fact, we didn't talk about it again that afternoon.

When I got home that night, Pa was sitting at the table with an envelope in front of him, and he had a smug smile on his face. He patted the chair next to him, so I sat down.

“What's going on?” I said. He slid the envelope over in front of me.

Vega Suministros Médicos
the return address said. I opened the envelope, which he'd already opened, and pulled out a check. Soon as I saw the total on it, I dropped it like it was a hot potato.

The check was for thirty-five thousand dollars.

“Told you I'd take care of things, didn't I?”

“Holy cow, Pa. What'd you do?” I picked the check back up to see if it was real. Sure looked real.

“Don't matter how I got it. Just take it to the bank tomorrow.”

“No, actually it
does
matter how you got it,” I said. “It ain't easy to get this kind of money doing honest things.”

He got real indignant at that.

“Listen here, I've about had it with you acting like you're the pa and I'm the kid around here. I earned that money fair and square, no bones about it. Now, you do what I say and take that money to the bank. Or I'll tan your hide and remind you of your place.”

We both stared at each other, and it was plain as day that he planned on winning the standoff, so I grabbed the check and headed up to my room without another word. I knew enough math to put two and two together, and I didn't like the four it was making. Pa had told some Spanish folk about Operation Pluto, and now here we had a check from some Spanish folk. And Short-Guy had said he was looking for a radio operator that had come into some money. And now, here my pa was a radio operator that had come into some money.

I shook my head. Just 'cause there was evidence piled up a mile high didn't mean Pa was guilty. This was America, after all. You was innocent until you got caught. Or something like that.

I rolled the check up and stuffed it in my sock drawer right next to Pa's map.

The next few days made me get more and more nervous about everything. The papers was going on and on about what was happening in Cuba, and how many of the invaders was dying, and what a terrible losing cause it was. And through it all, they claimed that America had been behind it. And through it all, Pa kept insisting they was wrong, but I had a bad feeling they was right.

I had to know the truth. It was one thing if Pa ratted out a bunch of Cuban exiles for money, if he did, but ratting out American troops was the sort of thing that got you hanged. I started reading everything I could get my hands on, and listening to the radio, and even watching the news. It was terrible, seeing how all them folks was getting killed. It was like hearing about World War I while you lived in France. This was happening in the same air we breathed. So to speak.

Of course, the mess that was actually happening in our own air from the tornado was making everything seem about fifteen times worse. A lot of people that had lost their homes decided to leave town for good, and it was real solemn watching the moving trucks pulling what few things had been salvaged down the highway as folks relocated their lives. The bank manager and his family left, and so did one of the teachers, which meant we had to share Mrs. Buttke with another grade till the end of the school year. To do that, they combined our class with the fifth graders. A whole mess of little twerps came in that thought Eddie Gorman was the coolest kid they'd ever seen. He was turning into the king of their little jungle.

With the bank manager being gone, I kind of hoped that all the business about our house would be put on hold until the new manager got himself situated. That way I could come up with another plan to make some money without using that check of Pa's. If I didn't deposit it, then it was like it didn't exist.

I went down to the Parkinses' house just about every day and me and Willie would compare notes on all that was happening. I didn't tell him about the check, though. Or the map. I figured that was too heavy for a kid with one good leg to bear. Somebody had to look out for him. I really wished the Captain was around, looking out for me. I felt like he could give me some real good advice. Or, at least he could show me how a real pa would handle everything.

I wished that on Thursday. On Friday, I regretted it.

I got called into the principal's office right after lunch. The lady that was filling in for the usual secretary didn't know my family at all, so it was an honest mistake when she'd told Mrs. Buttke that my pa was there to see me. But it wasn't.

It was Captain Morris.

He waved at me when I walked into the office.

“Hey, Johnny!” he said. I just about fell over.

“Captain? What are you doing here?”

“You're going home early, kid,” he said. “I got to talk to you and your pa. Together.”

I had a real bad feeling this was about the radio shack and the money. We went and got in his truck, and as we drove to the house I tried to get the truth out of him.

“You here on account of the CIA?” I said.

“Lord, no,” he said. “Why? Should the CIA be here? I know it's a disaster area, but I don't think you can blame the tornado on Commie spies.”

Now I was real confused. My stomach was starting to feel real sick, too.

“So this ain't got nothing to do with the radio shack, or Cuba, or nothing?”

He got quiet.

“Why'd you put those together in your brain?”

“Got my reasons,” I said.

“Well, forget your reasons. And no more questions,” he said. “Wait till we get to your house and I'll explain everything.”

We got to the house and Pa was out mowing our lawn. He didn't never mow the lawn. I reckon he was feeling like twice a man on account of that money he'd made. The Captain told him to go inside with us and we all three sat down in the living room.

“What's going on?” Pa said.

“I wasn't planning on coming back so soon,” the Captain said. “But then I got word of something that I hate to have to tell you. But I'd hate it even worse if you heard it from somebody else.”

That sick feeling in my stomach was getting worse.

“What's going on, Rick?” Pa said.

“It's about Tommy,” the Captain said.

“What happened?” I could tell Pa was getting excited, 'cause his voice was threatening to get all high and squeaky.

“There was an—” the Captain started. “That is, he was flying and—” He sighed and pulled something out of his breast pocket.

“This is a copy of the letter they're going to bring to you two tomorrow, I'll just read it,” he said, and cleared his throat.

“ ‘Mr. Cannon,' ” he read, “ ‘the Secretary of the Air Force has asked me to express his deep regret that your son, Corporal Thomas Cannon, died in a training exercise at Fort Humphreys, Korea, on April 17, 1961. He crashed into the ocean, and they have not had any luck in finding his body. The secretary extends his deepest sympathy to you and your family in your tragic loss.' ”

He wiped his eyes after he read it and started apologizing real hard to the both of us. But I didn't listen to him anymore. I felt like somebody'd just socked me in the face with a sledgehammer. Pa wasn't breathing, he was so shocked. Part of me was afraid that he was going to die and join Tommy.

I shook my head. Tommy was dead. But it didn't make no sense. He was the best pilot I knew, the best pilot anybody knew. He had been taught by the legendary Major Harrison. He wouldn't have crashed in a training exercise. Not in Korea, especially.

'Cause he wasn't in Korea. He'd told me so himself.

I started convincing myself like that, 'cause my brain was giving me a ton of questions to think about. Why did they say he was in Korea when I knew he wasn't? He was in Nicaragua. And I didn't think he'd been in a training exercise, neither. He was already a danged good pilot.

So, basically two thirds of that letter was a lie. What if the whole thing was a lie? What if they just wanted us to think he was dead? What if they fooled the Captain into thinking it?

But why would they do that?

What if he
was
dead?

I shook my head again. I wasn't going to believe it. Not until I saw the body.

I reached over and patted Pa on the back and he started crying. Captain Morris came over and hugged on him.

I didn't cry. I'd save it and cry at the funeral, if we ever had one.

And I didn't think we would.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ALL BLOOD NO BODY

I
t was funny, what with the news of Tommy dying, that whole Bay of Pigs thing stopped seeming so important to me or Pa. Or to anybody else for that matter. Folks just sort of stopped talking about it once the week was up. It'd be in the paper every once in a while, but that was about it. I didn't see Short-Guy poking his nose anywhere either, so I reckoned maybe we was in the clear.

Captain Morris stuck around for the next few days to give me and Pa his support. It was real nice of him to do that. He went with me into town a few times. Sometimes he'd go off on his own and strike up conversations with folks like a regular Cullmanite. He seemed to get along with Bob Gorman a lot better than me or Pa ever did. He avoided Mr. Thomassen like I avoided eating onions, though. I thought that was a bit odd, but then again, Pa was avoiding most everybody anymore. So maybe that's just what grown-ups did when they was sad.

He wasn't there when the petty officer came to deliver the official letter, same as the one the Captain had given. And it didn't take a genius to see that this fella was lying about the whole thing. Either that or he was the worst truth-teller there'd ever been.

Oh, sure, he did make it all official and made us feel real important. He told us that it was a crash off the coast of Korea, and they couldn't never find Tommy's body no matter how hard they looked. Told us he was a real hero, though, never saw nobody he wouldn't help out. Loved his country like he'd loved his ma.

And through it all I knew he was lying through his teeth. Even if he didn't know it.

After the officer left, Pa called our pastor so we could get started preparing for a funeral. Since there wasn't going to be no body, the pastor suggested we make a memorial of some of Tommy's personal belongings we had around the house. Pa agreed, and we set to finding the perfect things to symbolize who Tommy was. The Captain offered to help out, but Pa didn't think Tommy would be too keen on that, so he said it was just a family project. I felt real bad for that, and I think it hurt the Captain, too, 'cause he said he had business to take care of somewhere else anyway, so it wasn't no skin off his teeth. He left town again after that. I didn't enjoy watching him go this time at all.

Me and Pa went into Tommy's room and dug out his keepsake box. There was a stack of comic books, some baseball cards, his Captain Midnight decoder ring, and a photo from the newspaper of us with the two biggest fish anyone in Cullman had ever caught. There was also newspaper clippings from all his air shows, and the photos from his graduation from boot camp. We grabbed it all for the funeral.

At the bottom of his shoebox there was a newspaper article written in Spanish dated July 16, 1955. A folded-up piece of paper was clipped to it with what I figured was the translation of the article. I grabbed it and read it while Pa was looking through some other things.

The story was from the newspaper in Havana, Cuba. It was the story of the accident Ma and I had been in. I hadn't never known the details, never really cared, but reading it all of a sudden made me realize just how bad it had been.

Ma had been in the passenger seat, which was the side of the vehicle that got hit by a truck at the intersection. I had been in the back. It didn't say who had been driving, in fact, it made it seem like the reporters didn't know. What they did know, though, was that the little boy who had been in the back was lucky to be alive. Lucky that someone had taken him to the office of Dr. Raúl Vega, the best surgeon in all of Cuba.

See, the same impact that had crushed my ma to death had also crushed me, the article said. It had sent metal into my body from head to toe, and it had broken most every bone in my body. It about near destroyed some of my organs and even crushed in my skull, they was pretty sure that meant my brain was damaged. But Dr. Vega wasn't just a surgeon. He was a miracle worker. That's what the article said. And somehow he was able to save my life.

I read that whole article and couldn't believe how much of a miracle I was. Nobody'd ever told me that, but there it was in black and white. Close to the end of the article, it mentioned the company that Dr. Vega owned, the company that I owed my life to. I thought my eyes would pop out when I read it.

Vega Suministros Médicos.

The people who sent Pa that check.

Pa looked over and saw me reading the article.

“Oh, wow, I didn't know Tommy kept that,” Pa said.

I nodded.

“I ain't never read this,” I said, then I got a question in my head. “Who was driving?”

He scrunched up his forehead.

“What do you mean?”

“Look, it says they didn't know who the driver was.”

He came over and read it.

“Well, I'll be. I always assumed your ma was driving. I was too tore up to get all the details.”

“Why was she even in Havana?”

“Oh, she was meeting a friend there,” he said. He looked at the picture in the article of the car all messed up. He shivered. “Still can't stand to look at it.”

“Who was the friend?” I said.

“I don't remember. Some girl she'd met in New Orleans that flew down every once in a while for a shopping weekend. She enjoyed the little vacations, and she loved taking you with her most of all.”

“She didn't tell you the girl's name?” I said. I was pretty sure that friend was the driver, I just knew it.

“She did, but I don't remember it.”

“But you know it was a girl?” I said.

“Well, she had a girl's name, so I reckon so.” He sighed. “Anyway, I reckon we should get this stuff to Pastor. We can talk about that another time when we ain't getting ready for another funeral.”

By Wednesday we was having the funeral without a body, so it didn't feel like nothing more than a social get-together. The old women from the church even brought their roast chicken, same as they did for the Fourth of July. Pa cried, which helped remind me that there was supposed to be a body to be missing, but if I tried real hard, I could imagine that we was all just waiting for Tommy to come home on leave.

Waiting for him to come back and start taking care of me and Pa again.

I decided to do it like that, for my own sake, and keep quiet about it, for everyone else's.

It was nice to see the Mackers come to the funeral. Tommy'd made a habit of helping Mr. Macker get drunk at the bar, so he was real sad. Martha cried too. That was my lot in life. Even dead, Tommy was still better with the girls than I was.

We went on out to Mount Vernon Cemetery to where we was putting his gravestone, right next to Ma's gravestone. Since I hadn't hardly ever visited her, I sort of forgot where it was at. I was real thankful it was on the opposite side of where our fight had been at. I wouldn't have wanted her to know I'd been fighting.

Everybody had something to say at the graveside. I figured they felt freed up for talking since nobody'd had to dig the hole or carry a casket. The preacher went on for longer than I'd ever heard him. By the time he was done, he'd preached Tommy so far into Heaven I could imagine him hustling poker with Moses and the disciples.

They asked me to tell something, but I couldn't think of nothing serious to say, so I declined the offer. That ticked Pa off more than usual. He shot me that look that said I'd better be ready for the fires of Hell when we got home. It helped me finally get upset like folks wanted, which was a good thing, 'cause the rest of the funeral went off without a hitch.

When we got home, he was too mad to even yell at me. He sent me to my room and went straight to the living room to turn on the news. After a little while there was a knock at our door. I could see out the window that it was Willie and Mrs. Parkins. Pa got to the door before I could and told them that we needed some space for a little while. I tried to catch Willie's eye from the window, but his ma rushed him off the porch, leaving a basket of food in Pa's hands.

I'd made it through that day pretty good. It was the following Monday that did me in. We only had a few weeks left to school, and as soon as I showed up, everybody acted all quiet and sad, and I knew those few weeks was going to be the longest I'd ever gone through. Nobody would talk to me, nobody'd even look me in the eye. I'd walk down them narrow halls and everybody'd just turn and walk the other way. If I thought having no friends was lonely, I was wrong. Having folks' pity was worse.

In class, there was notes passed around that wasn't meant for me, and when I tried to read them, the other kids would just tear them up and look real sad. It didn't matter that I believed my brother was still alive, they was all doing their best to convince me he was dead. By the time the last day of school came around, I was almost starting to believe all of them, and that was ticking me off something fierce.

I hadn't been paying no attention to the
This Day in History
at all until that day. Mrs. Buttke wrote up on the board
Lindbergh Baby Found Dead.

I started copying that down, but then I realized that everybody was looking at me, like the Lindbergh baby was my brother or something. I closed my notebook. There wasn't no use writing nothing down. Might as well just let the vultures pick off my bones.

About an hour before the last bell rang in the afternoon, we was all sitting in our classroom, listening as Mrs. Buttke was giving us an end-of-the-year lecture on how the world might end over the summer from all the missiles. She showed us a map of the world, she called it the “Map of Enemies,” and was explaining that every continent besides North America and Australia was gunning for us.

I wasn't paying no attention. I was only interested in running out the door. In fact, Mrs. Buttke made me jump the gun at the end of her talk. She said, “Well, I suppose I've bored you all enough.”

I grabbed my books and stood up.

“Sit down, Johnny,” she said, and a few of the girls giggled. “I want you all to discuss with each other what we just spoke about. Pair up and ask each other, ‘What will you do if the Soviets attack us this summer?' ”

It was one of them things I always hated, 'cause most everybody already knew who they'd pair up with except me. Usually me and Eddie did it, but he was too busy being the god among little idiots to even consider joining me, and I was too busy hating him to consider it myself. Which probably meant it would be me and Mrs. Buttke talking. Which meant summer was an eternity away.

Martha turned around in her desk.

“Will you pair with me?” she said.

I forgot how to breathe and started exhaling before I inhaled.

“I—uh—I,” was about all I could muster.

She put her hand on my arm. Dadgum, now I'd have to shower with my arm wrapped in a trash bag for the rest of my life.

“I'm so sorry about Tommy,” she said.

I nodded. My tongue felt three times too big for my mouth. Like if I'd gotten stung by five hundred bees or something.

She started to say something else, but my dadgum brain and dadgum ears picked up on some whispering coming from behind, and what was being said grabbed my attention something fierce. Dadgummit. If I could, I'd go back and slap myself to keep on listening to Martha.

But, no. My brain decided to listen to Eddie.

He was whispering to his little fan club of fifth graders.

“I mean, can we really say he's a hero if he couldn't even fly a routine training exercise?” he said to the little people, and they all giggled under their breath so nobody'd hear them.

I heard them.

I snapped my pencil in half and stood up in the middle of Martha saying something about us seeing each other over the summer. I wish I would have sat back down. Heck, even Mrs. Buttke tried to get me to sit down. But I didn't.

Instead, I turned to Eddie's desk and slapped it, just to get his attention.

“What was you saying about Tommy?”

He snickered and looked at his friends. “We was saying how much of a hero he is, to all of us.”

His buddies covered their mouths with their hands to hide that they was laughing. I nodded at him and tried to think of what the right thing to do was. All the Sunday School teachers had always taught me about the Golden Rule, that you do to others what you want them doing to you. Well, if somebody ever heard me mouthing off like an idiot and badmouthing my brother, the way Eddie just had, I'd hope they'd smack me in the mouth.

So that's just what I did for him.

I blasted my fist right into his nose, and it was like turning on a faucet, he was bleeding all over his desk. His buddies jumped up and tried to throw their own punches, but they wasn't near fast enough, and they was all nursing black eyes and bloody noses themselves before too long.

I was primed to give Eddie another wallop for good measure, but Mrs. Buttke grabbed my arm mid-swing and dragged me away from him.

“See, that's what socializing with Tiggers will do to you,” Eddie hollered, little blood droplets spraying all over my shirt. “You start turning into a dadgum savage.”

I almost pulled back out of Mrs. Buttke's arms, but she pulled me past Martha and out of the room to the principal's office. On our way, we passed the trophy wall, where Tommy's name was printed on half the stuff they was showing. I started to feel sick to my stomach.

They called Pa, and he came to pick me up. He preached me a sermon on the way home, with an altar call and everything, and I couldn't muster up the courage to explain myself. All I knew was that I missed Tommy like crazy, more then than anytime before. He usually had a way of letting me know I wasn't alone when Pa was laying into me as bad as he was.

I went up to my room and read all my comic books again, even though there wasn't a one of them that I hadn't read at least five times. After a while, I heard somebody at our door. I looked out and Mrs. Buttke was there. I was sure that she was telling Pa all about how bad of a kid I was, and maybe aiming to get me another whipping or something. She handed him a big book, and then she left.