A Miracle of Catfish (10 page)

But for some reason it didn't. It stayed on past the curve down the hill and Jimmy kept taking it easy, letting it just roll along, bumping gently in the gravel, on down the road toward the wooden bridge. It was kind of a good place to hang out in the summer. It had some big trees for shade nearby, growing on the banks of the creek, and people sometimes came down there and shot .22 rifles at cans and things. Sometimes they sat down there in the shade in lawn chairs and drank beer, and he'd seen his daddy and Mister Rusty take a leak there one time when they were riding around drinking beer.

Suddenly Jimmy passed through a cold place, near an old house that was overgrown and almost hidden, just off the road. The only thing that could be seen of it was a rusted piece of tin on the roof. It was surrounded by tall weeds and vines and trees that had grown almost completely over it, maybe even through it. He had felt this cold spot before, walking down to the bridge. Then he was on the other side of it and it was normal again. Hot summer night breeze, crickets calling, stars shining high above.

He stopped on the bridge and sat there for a few minutes, trying to
see what was down in there. Somebody had shot a big gray crane and thrown it off in there one time. Somebody else had shot a road sign and thrown it off in there, too. The creek wasn't deep enough to fish in unless it had been raining lately, and Jimmy had seen some snakes down in there, too. A copperhead and a water moccasin. Jimmy knew his snakes.

He pushed on the gas lightly and rolled to the end of the bridge and then down into the gravel again. If he kept going straight he'd wind up on the paved road, but he knew better than to go down there. And he didn't want to get too far away from home in case the chain came off. It might be better to turn around. His butt was hurting anyway. Maybe he needed to just go home and go to bed and try for a better day tomorrow. Maybe he could get a paper route and save enough money to buy a new chain. Or his own tools. Or a '55 Chevy like his daddy had.

So he turned it around at the edge of the cotton field where he'd found the spear point, where a long culvert had been installed in the middle of the ditch and pit run gravel graded over it to make a road in and out for the tractors and spray rigs and pickers that moved through the field. It was a big one, about ninety acres, and Jimmy had watched them from the bridge at night in the fall, the round yellow lights of the pickers moving through the darkness as they rolled the length of the long rows and plucked the cotton from its stalks. And when he turned around and got back on the road and headed back toward home, he saw her standing on the bridge.

He stopped. She was standing there, looking at him and crying. She was big and beautiful, and she was wearing a long, old-timey dress. A black lady. Jimmy knew she was not real. She was more like a silhouette. She was standing right in the middle of that cold place. And that cold place was right in front of that old house that you couldn't see for all the stuff that had grown up around it. And then she was gone.

Scared the living shit out of him, and the chain didn't come off even though he spurted all the way up the road with gravel flying out behind him, rattling off into the woods like something that was chasing him. Something was.

Johnette was lying behind closed curtains, almost fully clothed, on a bed in a dim room in the Downtown Inn, just off the square in Oxford, already stoned. She had removed her panty hose, balled them up, and put them under her pillow for later retrieval. Or maybe she'd just throw them away. She had to make sure Jimmy's daddy didn't see the charge for the room on the Visa card statement, not that he ever looked at it anyway. He didn't like to mess with paying for things on a credit card. She took care of all that stuff, bills and statements and things like that. She hadn't fucked anybody besides Jimmy's daddy for the last ten years except for the guy she was about to fuck again, on her lunch hour this time, since he was off from work today. She kept in touch with him through her cell phone, another thing that Jimmy's daddy didn't have any interest in. She couldn't think of much he was interested in besides hunting videos and fishing and riding around and drinking beer. She had some addictions herself and knew how they were. She loved going to Margaritaville, but she rarely got the chance unless she got out with some of the girls from the bank on one of their business trips to places scattered throughout North Mississippi. It was harder to take a trip now. She had to think about the kids. It wasn't like it used to be when they'd first married. She'd been on pills and cough syrup back then. She was off all that shit now. Some of the girls at the bank had given her some kind of herb and she'd been enjoying that for a change. Only thing wrong with it was that it made you hungry. She knew she needed to lose some weight. She was a little overweight, sure. She tried to watch what she ate, but Lord she got hungry sometimes. Didn't everybody? Sure they did. Hell yes they did. There was nothing better than a big plate of whole fried catfish, all crisp and hot and brown, with some lemon wedges on the side, and some sliced white onions on top. Unless it was those good cold shrimp on ice. Or fried green tomatoes. And all the desserts they had at the Seafood Junction at Algoma were good. They made their own biscuit pudding. Strawberry pie with all that whipped cream on top of it.
Any flavor ice cream you wanted. But she'd gotten to where she hated to go over there with him. He acted like such an asshole. Always had to sit in the parking lot and drink a whole beer before he could go in. This was always after he'd had four on the way over there. He had to drink them fast because it wasn't far once you got past Toccopola. And he acted so ugly all the way home that time he had to talk to the preacher for three minutes by himself. She knew she was fat. She just wished he'd stop calling her fat. Fat hog. Fat bitch. Dumb fat bitch. Stupid fat bitch. She didn't know you weren't supposed to spray WD-40 on charcoal to try and get it started, it didn't say not to on the can. Laid out in the gravel and messed with that junky old car he'd blown all that insurance money on when the kids needed things, lots of things, and they needed some new furniture, and a new stove, cheap son of a bitch that came with the trailer only had two burners working now. That made it take twice as long to cook supper if you were cooking a meal that took all four burners. She knew they sold new burners for stoves somewhere. But she didn't know how to get them. Or where to get them. And he wouldn't do it. Didn't have time to. Bitched all the time about it only being two burners, though. Why didn't he build a back porch? And Jimmy's teeth needed fixing. They needed fixing bad. She didn't know what they were going to do about that. She guessed maybe she could see if there was some place around town where she could wait tables on the weekends. Maybe Friday and Saturday nights. Make a little extra money and try to get his teeth fixed. But who would watch the kids? Not him. He was always out on Friday and Saturday nights. Every weekend. So how was she going to get the money for Jimmy's teeth?
Steal it from the bank?
No. Too risky. She'd get caught.

She was lying on her back on top of the bedspread with her thick legs slightly spread, and she was just looking at the ceiling. It was quiet in the room. Nice and cool and dark. She heard something kick on and run for a while, maybe an ice machine outside, and then it kicked back off. She heard something come rolling by her door, something that sounded like a cart, and the sounds of two women talking. Maids.

She was listening for the approaching footsteps that would sort of announce the soon-to-follow knock on the door. She was bracing herself for that, for the knock on the door. Would it be soft, would it be sharp,
would there be one, two, three raps? Would her heart leap when she heard it? It was broad daylight outside. Anybody could come by and see her car parked out there, even though she'd tried to kind of hide it by the swimming pool.

Johnette hadn't been satisfied in a long time. She hadn't been satisfied with her name her whole life. Used to argue with her mother and daddy about it.
Why didn't you just drop the
h? she'd say. And she didn't know why she'd gotten married again, because she'd already tried it two times before this and that should have told her something. But you never learned. You wanted love. You wanted love and good sex and you put up with a couple of not apparently sorry sons of bitches who gave you love and good sex for a while, and a couple of kids, but then when they both turned out bad you figured that was all you deserved to get in your life, two of the assholes, and then the third one made it three in a row. If that was a football game three in a row and you were the quarterback throwing the football and each marriage was an interception, you'd be headed for the bench to cool down pretty quick. Or the showers. Or the parking lot. Or a bus out of town.

But it was hard for a woman to make it on her own. And raise two children. Three now. Put clothes on their backs and food on the table and try to keep the cuss words out of their mouths. It was awful how Evelyn talked to Velma. Picked on her. Called her names and slapped her. Wouldn't share her stuff with her. But it was impossible to watch them every minute. There was too much to do when she was home. Cook. Clean. Wash their clothes. Pick up after them. Worry about having enough money to make the payments on a trailer and still have enough left for everything else you had to take care of every month. Pay the light bill and the phone bill. Son of a bitch couldn't even build a back porch. Which made them not have a back door they could use. The back door was there, and it opened and closed just fine, but it was also four feet off the ground. It would be embarrassing if anybody came over and saw it, but that was one thing they didn't have to worry much about, since nobody ever came over except for Rusty, and Rusty knew how he was. Hell yeah. Asshole buddies. He'd rather go ride around and drink beer with Rusty than just about anything. Never gave her a look much anymore. Except once in a while when he was drunk and came
in wanting it and didn't even want to kiss or hold her or anything, just wanted to fuck her. […] Selfish son of a bitch always thinking of himself first every time, even when it came to the kids. And Jimmy. She let him whip him too hard. She shouldn't have let him whip him that hard. She should have knocked him in the head with something the way Ellen Barkin did Robert De Niro when he was beating up Leonardo DiCaprio in
This Boy's Life.
Got into his tools, big deal. Like that pile of shit in that rusty old box was worth whipping his own kid like that.

She kept lying there on the bed, with not even the TV on. She knew there were people sitting in new cars out on the hot street in front of the hotel, waiting for the red lights to turn green, listening to their stereos and running their air conditioners. Watching the people at the gas station across the corner work on cars and change flats. People walking up and down the streets shopping or going into cafes and restaurants for lunch with friends.

And here she was. Waiting for some guy to come in and get naked and kiss her a few times and suck her nipples for a while and finger her some, enough to get her wet, then get on his knees on top of the bedspread between her legs, panting like a hot dog and leaning in toward her, holding himself, ready to push it in. That's what she was waiting for. Gladly.

Then there came the footsteps.

Oh boy. Here we go.

Yep. He was knocking and she'd left the toe of one of her shoes just between the jamb and the door.

“Come on in, baby,” she said.

So he did. And he damn sure wasn't Jimmy's daddy.

She didn't think.

But hell, who knew?

Down below the barn, in the partial shade of a line of river birches along the creek, where an unborn baby was buried inside his mother without a name, Cortez Sharp's peas were wanting a drink of water. The dirt they grew in was nothing but dust, and the only moisture they got was the faint mist of dew that gathered on their veined leaves each night, a thin sheen that was gone almost as soon as the climbing sun's rays touched the pea patch from across the Cutoff road. He had planted them way too late, but they'd still make.

Just back of the pea patch, behind a skimpy brake of tall green cane, good for fishing poles or bean stakes, the bank sloped down through sandy ground and patches of velvety green moss to the rocky bed of the creek, which was only a trickle now. There were holes here and there, where catfish and bream lived and bass lay low and waited for more water to come, but the beavers had all said to hell with it and left and gone on down the tributary to the river bottom, overland, eating bark as they went, looking for some water to dam. And thence to build houses where they could raise their junior beavs. Now their abandoned slides were impotent dusty troughs down the banks where frogs sat and sang under the stars. Coons grabbed them sometimes. Fat juicies. Brief little struggles. Snakes, too, big scaly cottonmouths, fanged them between their back legs. Then the frog would be hopping, trying to jump, the venom slowly working on him. Not a pretty sight. Slid whole feet first down a snake's throat. Maybe one last croak in the dark of the sandy cane brake:
Cr-oak!

Behind the house, down the hill, his corn stood browning day by day under the sun. Cortez had pulled some shucks open to see barely anything inside there kernel-wise. No Silver Queen this year, dadgumit. Would have to get it at the store if he got any. If they had any. He might be able to go over to the Amish community close to Pontotoc and get some if they'd had any rain over there. You could get it over there for a dime an ear and it was good stuff. His wife couldn't eat it anymore, of
course, without teeth. She could try. She could mush the shit out of a cob with her gums, but no teeth made it pretty hard to do anything much but just kind of maul it without actually getting any down your throat, which was all that mattered, he guessed.

Each evening he stood on the porch and studied the sky. On the prettiest evenings the gray patches of clouds reddened in the wake of the sinking orange ball and were backlit in some kind of old beauty that fell behind the curve of the world and turned the sky into a painting he never tired of watching. The days had been hot and long. All things dry. The grass in the yard had slowed its growing and grown brown patches instead. And the bottom of the future pond was cracked open in places, so dry it was.