Slow Way Home (11 page)

Moving away to the other side of the boat, I looked towards the island. I could hear them laughing and teasing each other about who would eat the most fish that evening. The eagle had returned to its nest and turned to see where the noise was coming from. Its head twitched from side to side until the gold beak was directly on me. We held our stare, daring each other to break away. When Johnny cranked up the engine again, the bird snatched a twig from the nest and flew away.

The length of Nana’s hair wasn’t the only thing that changed. To my surprise she took Bonita up on her suggestion and let Bonita put a permanent in her hair. Nana even took a job at Nap’s Corner working the lunch shift with Bonita. Since we only had Poppy’s truck for transportation, Bonita would pick her up and bring her home the days she worked. Sometimes they would pick Beau and me up after school and
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we’d all go to the state park down by the beach. Beau, Josh, and me would sit at the concrete tables and eat the hush puppies and fried fish that were left over from lunch rush. We’d walk along the sand and try to capture tiny crabs in Styrofoam cups while Nana and Bonita sat on the car hood talking. Whenever the wind would shift, pieces of their conversation would roll down to the beach like driftwood that floated in with the changing tide.

Mostly Nana shielded her eyes from the sun and offered a smile or a look of worried concern depending on the information Bonita provided. I figured Nana liked being with Bonita because she never had to do any of the talking. There were no lies that had to be told with Bonita.

No one in Beau’s family questioned why I lived with my grandparents. The made-up answer sat on the edge of my tongue ready to be discharged on a second’s notice. I had made it all the way to Thanksgiving without the topic ever being discussed; I had been relieved and maybe even too comfortable.

“How much longer till school lets out for Thanksgiving?” Josh asked. The inlet water came up to his knees, and Beau had told his brother to stand still once already.

The long pole that arched above Beau’s head looked like a rake except for the net that hung at the end. With one fast jerk, he swatted the water. Through the murky water, we could see the crab race away.

“Dog, Josh. I told you to be quiet.”

“I didn’t even move. You just missed is all.”

We trudged towards the tall brown grass and mass of pine trees.

The thick mud sucked us down deeper, and I wondered if we had discovered quicksand. When I turned to see if Josh was still with us, the tall bridge that led into town was far behind us.

A pelican drifted inches above the water and then swooped down for lunch. Sunbeams sparkled off of the broken water until the area began to seem like one big kaleidoscope. Splashing sounds echoed from deep within the nearby island, and I pictured the land as one big kingdom. The tall pines became noble kings and bushy 74

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stalks of saw grass turned into queens dressed in ball gowns. Bright green palmetto stalks fanned out across the edge of the beach to guard their fortress.

That inlet where sea and fresh water connected made my nerves feel healed right down to the wiry ends that our science book illustrated. A place where the past could be buried deeper than the bot-tomless mud floor we walked across.

When we had made it to the prickly brown grass, Josh sat down on a patch of sand and poked his finger at the crabs. The sound of their claws rubbing against the tin pail reminded me of fingernails on a chalkboard. “Beau, I need to know. When is school letting out?”

“Next Wednesday. Brandon, you got one to your left.”

Hunching over the murky water, I was as still as a trained bird dog. The pinchers on the crab below were wider than his body. He paused when I lifted the pole, and his eyes never flinched as the net came down. “He’s mine now,” I yelled. Flailing in the net with his underside facing us, the crab displayed a pearl white belly that glistened in the sun.

“Can we have crab claws for Thanksgiving?” Josh asked.

“We’ll see if we can’t get you some,” Beau poked my arm with the side of his pole.

“Yeah, Josh, you should ask your mama to fix you some crab,” I added.

“What y’all doing for Thanksgiving?” Beau never turned to look at me as we treaded back through the mud.

“Just stay here I guess.”

“Brandon, are you a orphan like Superman was?”

“Shut up, Josh.” Beau shook his head at his brother.

“Well, that’s what mama said he was.”

Trying to ignore their words, I stared at the mud that churned with our steps. If only the sound of sloshing water could have been louder.

“Don’t pay no attention to him. He’s just a first grader. He don’t know nothing.”

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“I do too. I asked mama how come he don’t live with his own mama and daddy and that’s what she said.”

Jerking the bucket from my hand, Beau held it over Josh’s head.

“If you don’t shut your mouth, I’ll throw ever one of these crabs on your head and they’ll pinch it shut.”

Josh’s eyes were big only for a second. He squinted at Beau and twisted his mouth. A spray of spat shot out of his mouth and landed on Beau’s T-shirt. Before Beau could grab him, Josh was running and splashing water all the way to the bridge.

Beau waited until Josh had made it to the base of the bridge before he said anything. “Johnny ain’t my real daddy.”

I stopped, but he kept moving forward, never looking back.

When I caught up with him, he was looking down as if reading words from the water’s surface.

“My daddy left when I was just a baby. I don’t remember him too good. Except for this one time. He sat me up in a kitchen cabinet to see if I would fit in there. I remember him laughing real loud. I can’t see him, but I can still hear him.”

“What about Johnny?”

“He married my mama when I was just two years old. Josh don’t know nothing about it but I just wanted . . . Hey, don’t say nothing.

Okay?”

Beau didn’t know that he was dealing with the master of secrets and part of me wanted to toss the script, but by then it had all become a habit. “I won’t. I didn’t know my daddy neither.”

Beau glanced over at me and nodded. “How about your mama?”

Telling Beau about her travels to Canada working the pipeline and about a trip she made to Hawaii, I felt closer to her than ever.

As we moved towards the bridge, it seemed taller than a sky-scraper. Barnacles clung to the wide pilings that held it in the air.

“How’d she . . . you know, pass?”

“She got killed over in Africa. Doing work in that Peace Corps thing Miss Travick told us about.”

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“What, a lion get a hold of her?”

“No, worse. A big fat rhino. People don’t know how mean those things are. Ripped her right down the middle like a slaughtered hog.”

The image of a newspaper with Mama’s picture as a local hero came to mind. She would be dressed in a safari coat and her hair would be all fixed like it was the time she met us at Dairy Queen.

Beau grimaced. “Dog. When’d it happen?” His words echoed underneath the bridge.

I could see Josh clearly now. He was sitting on the concrete boat ramp, acting like he wasn’t listening. “I can’t talk about it.”

That night Poppy and me watched the tiny black-and-white television with tinfoil wrapped around the antenna. Nana’s words competed with those of Hoyt Franklin, the reporter who drove around the country in a motor home until he had found the oldest living veteran or a farmer who had trained a hog to jump through hoops. Watching his show,
Navigating the Nation,
had become a new ritual.

Nana tapped Poppy on the shoulder. “Did you hear what I said about Bonita? She wants us to come over to her place for Thanksgiving.”

Poppy’s eyes rolled up towards Nana. “A bunch of people gonna be there? We sure don’t want a bunch of people asking . . .”

“Nobody’s going to be there except Johnny’s mama and from what they say she’s a little touched. She runs that junk stand just past the curve.”

The sounds from the television filled the camper as Poppy rubbed his chin. “Well, if you think she won’t get all in our business.”

Nana grabbed the recipe box that was stacked on top of the cluttered shelf. A stack of mail fell on the floor near the edge of her shoe, but she never looked down. She began flipping through the cards with an energy that I hadn’t seen since she cut her hair with the butcher knife. “I’m going to fix pecan pie and turnip greens. Bonita will know where I can get a fresh mess. Thanksgiving is just not Thanksgiving without my turnips. I can hear Cecil telling me now how he loves my . . .”

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Clutching the recipe container as if it were a safe-deposit box, Nana opened the camper door and stood outside. Poppy never looked away as the TV reporter interviewed a woman in Iowa. The sound of crickets competed with the woman’s televised voice. All the while, the camera scanned an imaginary world the woman had created for herself out of a collection of dollhouses made from dollar bills.

Beau lived near town in a white block home. When we got there, paper turkeys with top hats, the kind that Miss Travick put up on the bulletin board at school, were taped on every window of the house.

Bonita had the front door open before we could get out of the truck.

“Y’all come on in. Now the turkey is a little tougher than I like, but Johnny got to talking to his mama and left it in the smoker too long.”

Bonita rolled her eyes and imitated a flapping mouth with her hand.

Johnny’s mother, Mama Rose, was dressed in a pantsuit the color of Pepto-Bismol and had a matching vinyl purse with an outline of the state of Florida printed on the side. But Nana missed the mark when she told Poppy that Mama Rose would keep quiet.

As the turkey was passed, Mama Rose told us all about her business. A mercantile, she called it. An eternal yard sale, where plywood tables filled with secondhand goods were converted into fancy store displays thanks to colored construction paper and Mama Rose’s neat penmanship.

“You heard about that fire over in Panama City? The one that took out that store on the strip?” Mama Rose looked around the table and inhaled real loud. “Well anyway, I got a pile of fancy paperweights filled with beach sand for ten cents each. Ten cents, mind you. I can sell them for at least fifty cents, maybe even seventy-five. Yankees pay big money for anything with genuine beach sand. Now y’all aren’t Yankees, are you?”

“Come on, Mama.”

Poppy chuckled and nudged Johnny. “No, ma’am. I assure you we aren’t.”

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Mama Rose patted the flamingo pin on her jacket. “Well, you never know these days. Especially with you being from down the state. Yankees come down here and just take over. I can spot ’em in no time flat.” She pointed a fork at Poppy and bugged her eyes until the fake eyelashes spread out like wings.

After lunch Mama Rose offered to let Beau, me, and Josh have first dibs on her latest merchandise if we agreed to help her unload it out of the trailer she used as a storeroom. Nana only let me after Johnny said he would drive us down there and pick us up when we were through. When I ran back inside for my jacket, I received Nana’s final warning.

“And don’t you take food from her,” Nana whispered at the front door. “No telling what kind of nasty shape her kitchen’s in.”

Little did Nana know, but to me Mama Rose’s front yard, with long moss that hung like banners from the trees, was a natural wonder.

Rows of plastic flamingos were propped around the plywood tables as if they had been frozen there during migration. As we unloaded the boxes that still smelled like smoke, she directed us where to place them.

“No, Beau. Use your head. Don’t you know that table can’t hold that heavy box. Put it down at the other one. And don’t break a thing.” Beau never seemed to notice the clipped tones in which Mama Rose spoke to him. He would just change the subject or laugh like it was all a joke. I wondered if she was the only person in town who didn’t know he held elected office.

Placing the paperweights on the plywood table covered in a red paper, I examined one of the glass balls filled with water. The sand would scatter whenever I secretly shook it. Mama Rose had given us strict instructions not to shake the weights. Watching the word

“Florida” appear as the sand was released from the bottom, I remembered a similar paperweight sitting on the bookshelf in Uncle Cecil and Aunt Loraine’s home. Looking into the glass like a crystal ball, I tried to picture what they were doing. They would probably have finished Thanksgiving dinner. Uncle Cecil would be unfastening the top
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of his pants by now and watching football on TV while Mac and Mary Madonna sat in the old car pretending to search the highways for me. Aunt Loraine had probably stopped criticizing us for leaving by now. Maybe she would even feel sorry for my mama and invite her over for leftover turkey sandwiches. Rubbing the edge of the paperweight base, I felt a hard place where the fire had melted the imitation wood. I rubbed the groove like a lucky penny until Mama Rose snatched it out of my hands.

“You’re as bad as Beau. I’m not paying you to daydream. Get to unpacking.”

Josh laughed, and Mama Rose winked at him.

“He’s probably thinking about his mama getting ate up.”

Mama Rose planted both hands on her hips. “What?”

“Josh, you better watch your mouth,” Beau warned.

Mama Rose never turned away as she held up her hand towards Beau. “Wait a minute. What is this about your mama?”

I felt her eyes on me tighter than radar; my ears began to ring with the rising blood. “She had this . . . umm . . .”

“She was in the Peace Corps and got tore up by one of them rhinos,” Beau yelled.

Mama Rose leaned down closer. A scar lined the side of her wrinkled chin. “You been telling stories to these boys?”

Never turning away, I forced myself to look into her eyes. “No, ma’am. She was down in Africa working with the Peace Corps just like Beau said. A big rhino got a hold of her and ripped her wide open.”