Sketcher (23 page)

Twenty-Five

Moms came runnin' up from the lake after seein' the fishermen off.

“Quick, hide!”

Tony had appeared in the swamp. He was walkin' down the slope from the train tracks. She was up for playin' jokes, even when she was tired. And who better to play one on than ol' Tony Beaumont?

Hell, last time we saw that guy, he was screechin' out of L-Island like it was almost midnight, and he was drivin' somethin' that used to be a pumpkin. We hid beside Pa Campbell's house and watched ol' Tony Beaumont walk into L-Island with his pretty girlfriend on his arm. She was clingin' to him and lookin' all around. It must have looked like some cursed forest with all the dried-up waters and the witherin' trees. He stepped up on the porch of our house. He knocked and waited. When no one answered the door, he opened it and saw chicken wire and two dozen huge, helluva mud crabs crawlin' around inside the Beaumont house, where people used to be. We could hear the door slam and Doug shouted out: “Ow!” from behind the house, the way he thought a crab would prob'ly say it. Man, you shoulda seen the sheer terror on Tony's face. Now he'd have some explainin' to do. Imagine takin' your girl to meet your whole family and – boom – your girl thinks your folks are some big ol' nasty mud crabs in a godforsaken swamp somewhere. You could see superstition givin' his logic a good ass-whoopin'. He wiped his brow and told his girl to sit on the porch for a second. He ran over to Ma Campbell and she was ready for him. That old lady just opened that door and grabbed her cheeks and looked ever
so worrisome, and before he could say a word she beat him to it.

“Oh my Laaawd! Tony. You're so late!”

“What? Why? What happened?”

“Your mother and your siblin's... oh my Laaawd.”

“Ma. Seriously... what!?”

“Well, don't get testy with me young man, I ain't the firstborn who ran off and caused this whole calamity! Come inside, quick!”

She looked this way and that way and pulled him inside with absolute terror in her eyes. This woman was a classic. I bet she was almost a Hollywood actress back in the day.

And when he came in and looked around and saw our furniture in the Campbell's place and no sign of us and Pa just sittin' there shakin', he couldn't even sit down.

Ma is lovin' every minute of this, cos she always thought the boy was too uppity and know-it-all. So she poured herself some tea and sat down and made him sweat some more bullets before she began.

“Those Vietnamese, Tony. They're good at everythin'. They got people who came to this country and made the best of things. Those Vietnamese fishermen over at Lam Lee Hahn, they went deep-sea-fishin' in the Gulf and they invented a new net that went so deep it caught them a nasty old mermaid.”

“A what?”

“Listen, Tony, keep calm. You want some tea?”

“No, Ma. I need an explanation!”

“OK. Well, they went and caught themselves a nasty old mermaid – or a Melusine, or like what you'd call a Sirène or whatever. Those ones that sing and lure sailors to get all shipwrecked. Well, she told them she was seven hun'erd years old and used to be French royalty, but she got cursed. Anyway, she wanted to know if they knew a conjurer in these parts who could change her back. And those fishermen were afraid o' her... so they brought her here.”

“Why?”

“You mother can do stuff, Tony. I know you caught up in all your learnin' and whadeva, but you gotta make some room in theah for the natural runnin's of this earth, y'hear?”

Pa Campbell chimed in from starin' at nothin'. “Oh, yes.”

“Anyway, your poor momma changed her back right quick. Right in front of us she became a beautiful dame again. Then she demanded the first-born son for a husban'. Well, your poor mother, she tried to pass off Douglas as the firstborn. Now Doug, he liked how she came up from the water – wet, naked, hefty bosom and all – so he was ready to go back into the Gulf with her. But when you're seven hun'erd years old, you cain't be fooled easy! So she smelt Douglas up and down and all around. Then she just turned aside and asked for you by name.”

“By name?”

“Oh yeeesss,” said Pa.

Ma lapped up the support.

“Yessir! Anthony Beaumont! Heard it with my own ears! And then, when Valerie confessed to tryin' to trick her, she just walked out the door headed for the lake, and when she got to the very edge she sang out loud, “
Ruine! Ruine! Ruine!
” – which is like “Doom! Doom! Doom!” in French. Then she looked straight into our eyes, folded her arms over her breasts, fell into the lake backwards and disappeared. She put a spell on this whole place. Me an' Pa, we old crabs already, so we couldn't be changed any further. But your sweet mother and brothers... they're so innocent. And you're so late!”

Well, I wish I could see his face, but by that time Frico and Moms and Doug, they're fightin' for the same peephole and pushed me aside, so I have to be dependin' on descriptions. Doug, he said Tony is fixin' to go crazy in about ten seconds, so we hurried back across to the crab crawl and sat on the porch right as Ma Campbell is tellin' him to shout out “Sorry!” and “Amen!” and turn around three times to break the
curse. Well, if he did, none of us can tell, cos by that time we were busy meetin' his girlfriend on what used to be our porch, and she was lookin' as bewildered as ever, but fine nonetheless.

You shoulda seen the look of relief on this boy's face when he came back over there and saw us on that porch with just two legs each and no claws or beady eyes. Man, we just hung over the porch and had a good laugh at ol' Mr Logical while he took off his coat and sat down and wiped his brow and put his head in his hands and asked for some camomile and ginger tea to calm his nerves. And right in the middle of all that fun that's when the weather decided to go dark on us.

We were all inside watchin' Pa, silently laughin' at Tony and lookin' at his girl, when we smelt the earth outside being cooled. Delicious rain rappin' on the tin roof like someone arrivin' late at a closed door.

“Aw shit,” said Tony in his fancy white shoes.

Moms stepped in with pots and pans and a look on her face that was more relief than excitement.

“Action, stations!”

We knew that meant we needed to hurry and set the containers to catch rain water. I grabbed a bucket and told Moms I would stick it under the run-off from the roof of the crab crawl. She told me to hurry and get back before it was a real downpour, but I had other plans. See, I thought I'd do somethin' romantic and run across to Mai in the rain, and she'd have a towel for me to dry my hair that would be all curly once the water soaked it, and we'd eat prawns and laugh. So I lit out and set the bucket at the crab crawl and took off my shoes. I was about to run out in the rain when I saw that ol' Fricozoid had left his glasses on the porch ledge. I hesitated, cos I remembered last time he put a spell on me over these specs, so I wanted to run back and give them to him, but then I'd be caught by Moms and my romantic mission would be off.

So I'm there contemplatin' while the rain was comin' down. I put on Frico's glasses to mock the guy, and I had to grab on to the porch to steady myself. Not because they're bifocals, but because it was as if my eyes, my eyes were opened and I could see
everything
that the Sketcher saw. The dying swamp was a different world. A wonderful world. Nut grass wasn't nut grass any more. Cypress and oaks were giant trees in their prime. No Spanish moss. Just over the porch the bayou was perfect and clear and ripplin' and full of water hyacinths again. I turned around and the shacks were new and the raindrops on the roofs had turned into petals – thousands of petals floatin' down instead of fallin' hard. The broken creek was complete again – our tamarind tree was in bloom. Mai was walkin' across the footbridge in her Vietnamese
ao dai
dress, coloured petals slidin' off her red bamboo umbrella. I couldn't wait to see what she looked like up close, so I ran out in the floral rain, and the grass was misty and as soft as ever.

I met her just as she stepped off the bridge, and she was perfect. She twirls her umbrella, and that pretty Vietnamese song with no translation is playin' from the sky.

I swear that wearin' Frico's glasses is the best wagonin' I ever did. When we get to the crab-crawl porch, I run through the streams pourin' off the roof and try to help her up the steps. But she stops out in the rain and she's not movin'. So I whip the glasses off and put them back on the porch ledge. When I look up, she's standin' there lookin' sad, in a white top and blue Levi's. The red umbrella is cold steel, and the Vietnamese song drowns in the water whippin' the metal roof.

“What's the problem? Come on up.”

She caught herself, but she stayed out in the rain. She tried to smile.

“Did you like the
lan-yap
? The men brought enough for a lot of weeks.”

“Uhm, yes, we have a huge crab crawl now.”

“Uh-huh. I heard. Did they tell you how to feed them?”

“They told us everything. So... with all that lan-yap, does that mean I'm a real customer now and not your
petit chou
any more?”

“Uh-huh. I have to go,” she says.

“OK, I'll come with you.”

“No you can't. I mean, my mother says we're leaving. Leaving the swamp.”

I stepped down towards her. She took one step back, farther into the rain.

“Well, we're all leavin'. Even Ma and Pa are leavin' tomorrow, but we'll stay in touch, right? What about the shop – where are you movin' to... the city?”

“Closer to it. But you don't understand, Skid. I want to help...”

I tried to interrupt to tell her the dream, but she counter-interrupted me.

“Listen, Skid. The whole swamp is turning upside down. The earthquakes are increasing. We have sinkholes in our shrimp ponds now. We don't want to wait until one opens under the house.”

“I know what's causin' the earthquakes, Mai.”

“I don't really care, Skid. I'm trying to tell you something!”

She never got so annoyed with me before, so I shut it.

“This swamp, this business, I want more than that. Or maybe less. I want to help people in different way. I need to be where people are dedicated to something big. So I've decided to become a postulant.”

“A what?”

“It's the first step to becoming a nun.”

“A nun?... You're sixteen!”

“It's not for another two years, but I want to start preparing myself now. So...”

“So we can't be friends?”

“Yes, friends. But only that.”

“Oh.”

Pause.
The red wooden fence behind her is covered in bougainvillea. It's the time of year for it, and durin' a drought they come out in a rash. The bushes have more flowers than leaves, and all together they look like a white wave. I look around, and the swamp is once again a bowl of poison gumbo garnished with those bougainvillea white lies on the Lam Lee Hahn fence. The streams of rain running off the roof have become bars between Mai and me. They might as well have been a solid steel cage set in concrete. My breath is stuck in my throat again. It's hard to talk between these goddamn bars.

“What about you and me goin' to the San Tainos volcano and to Vietnam when we're eighteen? What about you showin' me the Great Mekong River that runs from the top of the world?”

She sighed. I had never seen her sigh.

“Those were promises that I will not be able to keep, and I'm sorry, but this is what I want to do with my life.”

“I thought you wanted to be a businesswoman, like your mother.”

“I do what my mother tells me. If I'm good at it, it's because she taught me to watch and listen well. She also told me not to fool myself. That's why I am doing this. I hope you understand.”

“No... I don't.”

“Look, it's kind of your fault, Skid.”

“My fault... what?”

“Do you know when I made this decision?”

“When I turned my back, obviously.”

“I decided this after you told me something you said no one else believes. When you told me about your brother, I saw it in your eyes how much you believe in what he can do. You believe that he can fix broken things in a much bigger way than your pops, who just repaired radios and TVs. It doesn't even matter if it's true. What is important to me is how deeply you
believe it. Everybody else wish they were a star or maybe take trips to some place or had a lot of money. But I wish I had what I saw in your eyes and heard in your voice. Somethin' to believe in as
desperately
as you believe in your brother. I have to go and look for it, so I want you to let me go find it. And please believe in me too.”

Yes, I did tell Mai about Frico and the whole sketchin' thing. But I didn't even know she was listenin' between tendin' to the shop and studyin'. But now there she was tellin' me she wanted to believe like that. That was the closest anybody came to givin' it a chance to be true.

So that was the beautiful breakup. She wouldn't let me hug her. She wouldn't know what to do with her hands.

She gave me a pen and said she had no paper, but I should write down her new address. I wrote it into the porch rail between two flower pots. 113 Meadow Vale, off Gregorian. Then she gave me her phone number.

“You gotta call first.”

And I just laughed and wondered when I would ever have a phone.

“And ask for Francine. That's my American name.”

“Francine” looked at me for a long time, and I knew she was in love, but she turned and left me anyway. Her T-shirt was shorter, the skin of her back glowin' and smooth as a river stone, with two dimples I used to call “hug handles”. But you shouldn't think of a nun that way. Funny, she wasn't even my type when I met her. Now, walkin' over the footbridge as if on wheels and hikin' up the slope, Mai was almost perfect, like the English she now spoke, and I knew I would never see her again. I decided this. That address was the inscription on a gravestone.