The Struggles of Johnny Cannon (13 page)

Anyway, right as the service was starting there was a whole mess of commotion, people hemming and hawing at the back of the sanctuary, but since we was so far up and Pa had his arm around me, I couldn't turn to see what was going on. I didn't reckon it was the Holy Ghost, 'cause stuff like that only happened in black churches or the occasional Pentecostal one. When they wasn't playing with rattlesnakes.

I sat there during all them hymns trying to figure out what had gone on, but I shouldn't have wasted my time, 'cause I found out soon enough. After the offering, Pastor Pinckney got up with a special announcement.

“As many of you have heard, Sheriff Tatum is retiring soon,” he said. “A great deal of speculation has been going on about who the next candidates will be. I am pleased to tell you that one candidate has chosen today as his time to officially toss his hat in the ring.”

Folks in the sanctuary gave a little clap, which was weird 'cause folks didn't normally clap for nothing at that church.

“However, the privilege of introducing this man does not fall on me,” he continued. “Instead, I am privileged to introduce to you a very special guest who has come to give his endorsement to the candidate, and he will join me on the platform now to introduce the man to all of you. Please welcome, all the way from Birmingham, the Commissioner of Public Safety for that fair city, Mr. Bull Connor!”

The whole place blew up in applause and I spun around to see it. Sure enough, out from the very same back pew I'd wanted to claim for myself was the man himself, with a white shirt that matched his hair and a black tie that matched his glasses, and with fat rolls under his neck that jiggled when he walked. He came marching up the aisle of the church like it had been built just so he could step in it.

Now, in case you haven't heard, or in case you need a refresher, Bull Connor was one of the most notorious fellas from Alabama. Segregationists loved him, 'cause he was famous for saying things like that black folk would have equal rights over his dead body and such. Integrationists hated him. And Willie didn't mince no words, he called him a fascist without a shred of hesitation. And I was inclined to believe him.

Which was why it made sense that he and Bob Gorman was buddies.

Bull got up on the platform and didn't even approach the microphone. Didn't need to, his voice was as loud as a tornado siren.

“Thank you, Brother Pinckney. And thank you, fine, fine citizens of this here Cullman County,” Bull said. “I don't think anyone, anyone at all, truly realizes just how important the business and politics of this area are to those of us down in Birmingham. When the law is weak, when the people believe they can get away with murder, when the blacks are allowed by the law to mingle and interact with the whites, even in a small hamlet such as this, it creates ripples, which affect even the largest of metropolises.”

People all around us started nodding and agreeing. I wondered if maybe they hadn't heard what he said about blacks and whites. I mean, really, that was the dumbest thing ever. But nobody seemed to care. I was beginning to understand how come Hitler was successful. People didn't care much what you said exactly, just how loud you said it.

“And that is why,” he said, “I am glad to introduce a candidate after my own heart. A man committed to keeping the integrity of the law, of separate but equal treatment of races, and of ensuring this happy little town can remain as pure and untarnished as possible. So I'd like to introduce my pick for the next sheriff of Cullman County, Bob Gorman.”

Everybody clapped again, real hard this time. Bob stood up and made his way to the platform, strutting like a rooster that had plenty of hens in his henhouse. I leaned over and whispered to Mr. Thomassen.

“I wonder if the Three Caballeros could do something about that?”

He pinched my gut and I didn't say no more.

Bob went into a real long speech that I didn't bother listening to and then, when he was done, he posed with Bull for some pictures for the paper. And then we still had the rest of the service to get to. Dadgum, I sure wished I was in Colony. Or even back home answering some of Martha's interview questions. That's how bad it was.

The worst of it all, unfortunately, was when Ethan got up to do communion. He was so nervous, he muttered real quiet and stared down at the Bible the whole time. About midway through the passage, Bob said to his wife, real loud, “Well, I sure hope the Lord can hear him.”

Then Ethan started crying. Just like that, right up there on the platform, in front of God and everybody. A grown man bawling like a baby. It was the worst thing I'd ever seen at church.

Ethan went running off the platform and back to his pa's office and Pastor Pinckney got up and finished the communion. Then he reminded all of us about the Labor Day picnic out at the park, which none of us needed reminding about, and said that Bull Connor was going to be the guest of honor for the fireworks. Fantastic. There wasn't no way anybody from Colony would be coming if that was the case. And I had a bet with Willie that I'd beat him at horseshoes.

When the service was over, I tried to find Ethan, but he wasn't nowhere to be found.

Instead, I found Eddie by himself around the back of the church. He'd caught a mess of crickets and he was popping their back legs off. He offered me a couple, but I was still planning on licking the grape juice off my fingers later, so I declined. Still, I was grateful for the offer, 'cause that meant he wasn't sore at me for leaving him out at Snake Pond.

But, from the looks of his face, he was sore about something. That was for darn sure.

“So, your pa is going to run for sheriff,” I said.

“No, my pa is going to
be
the next sheriff.” He let one of them crickets hop up his arm.

“You excited?”

“I don't care.” He flicked the cricket on the ground and stepped on it. “I ain't going to be here nohow.”

That made me take a pause.

“What you mean?”

He looked me in the eyes. “You can't tell nobody.”

“Of course not,” I said.

He nodded. “I'm running.”

“You mean like Otis Davis at the Olympics or—”

He blinked at me a couple times. “Like I said before, we're Tom and Huck,” he said. Then he finally got a half smile. “Which, since I'm the one running off, I guess that makes
me
Huck.”

Which made me Tom. Which meant I got Becky. Okay, this wasn't the time to dwell on that. Back to the conversation.

“You're running away? To where?”

He shrugged. “The woods first, I reckon. Then maybe up to New York or something. Anywhere I can go that ain't here. That ain't with my pa.”

I couldn't say I blamed him.

“Look, why don't you go stay with a relative or something? Tommy did that, he went and lived with our grandma for a while.”

“My dad would find me and bring me back. And I ain't living with him no more. I can't.”

The air around us got quiet, even though folks was laughing and carrying on congratulating Bob around at the front. Where we was, in that moment, you could hear a pin drop onto a dandelion. Eddie and me stood there, breathing the same air, and I wasn't really sure what I ought to say next.

“It ain't safe,” I finally said. “Them woods, you saw that tent. That fella had a gun. There's all sorts of dangerous folks out there and you're going to be by yourself.”

“I'll be fine,” he said. “I'm good at making friends.”

“No you ain't. I'd say you might be the worst at it of anyone I've ever known. Besides myself.”

“That's 'cause I'm here, in Cullman. 'Cause of my name and such,” he said. Then he grinned. “Trust me, I'm one in a million.”

“Them ain't the kind of odds you gamble on,” I said, but he wasn't going to change his mind.

We stood back there just sort of being, not really doing, and I reckon part of me was wondering what in tarnation life without Eddie was going to be like, and realizing that most of my friends would probably be real happy to hear he was leaving, and not sure why I was as sad as I was. Finally Pa came and fetched me, and Bob came to get Eddie, and we all went off to head home.

While we was driving, Pa curled his nose up and rolled down the windows for some reason.

“What's that smell?” he asked.

I took me a second to know what he was talking about. “Oh, that's my pants,” I said. He shot me a look. “I got grape juice on them.”

He looked at my lap. “Ain't them your school pants?”

“Yup.”

“Well, you best get them over to Mrs. Parkins after lunch so she can wash them. I ain't gonna ask her to do it on Labor Day,” he said, and I got plumb confused for a bit.

“Ain't we going there for lunch?” I asked. “I can give them to her then.”

“No, Sora is cooking a big lunch for us.”

That didn't seem like a good idea. “Is it all right for her to be cooking in the kitchen, what with the baby and all?”

Pa laughed. “She'll be fine,” he said. “Cannon babies are the healthiest kind. And women are built for this kind of work, carrying babies and cooking meals.”

I didn't really think that would fly if I said it to Martha, but since I was going to get a meal out of it, I didn't reckon I'd argue too much.

We got to the house and Sora had a feast fit for the king of Korea ready for us. Which meant it wasn't suitable for even the hungriest kid in Kentucky. And they keep them hungry up there.

She had a bowl of rice, which was fine except it was plain white and sticky and didn't have no beans or nothing mixed in. There was also another bowl of something she called “kim chee,” which looked and smelled like rotten cabbage with pickle juice thrown on it. Then there was some green stuff, and some black stuff, and a plate of hot dogs.

“Those are for you, Johnny,” she said with a smile. “Tommy told me you probably wouldn't ever like any Korean dishes.”

I was grateful to Tommy for that, though I didn't reckon she'd have needed any special insight to figure that out. I sat down, grabbed three of them hot dogs, and covered them in mustard. Pa started making himself a plate of all the other junk and we got to eating.

After we all munched away for a while in quiet, I realized something.

“Pa, did you go to the store without me?”

He shook his head, his mouth full of rice.

“Then where'd we get these hot dogs?” I asked.

Pa swallowed.

“We probably already had them,” he said. Sora didn't say nothing.

“No we didn't,” I said. “Trust me, if we'd had hot dogs in the house, they wouldn't still be in the house by today. I'd have eaten them as a midnight snack a while ago.”

“Okay, so she borrowed them from the Parkinses,” Pa said, and he looked sort of embarrassed. “Why are you making a big deal out of it?”

“Or somebody got them for her,” I said, then I looked at Sora. “That's what it is, ain't it? Somebody brought you them hot dogs, didn't they?”

I was just primed to pull out that picture I'd found at the tent and ask her if she was communicating with that fella who was stealing groceries and such, but Pa decided to change the subject.

“So, Sora . . . ,” he started. “You haven't ever told us how you met Tommy.”

That frustrated me, but I knew when my ears was getting close to being boxed, so I piped down. She looked relieved.

“I first met Tommy two years ago, actually, in Mobile,” she said. “He was there working and taking language classes—”

“Language classes?” Pa said, and he couldn't help his disbelief from sounding. Tommy had enough trouble with English, adding on another language might have made his head explode.

“Yes, he wanted to be ready before he got deployed.”

“Oh, right, to—” Pa stopped himself.

“Korea,” she said real fast. Maybe a little too fast, I reckon. “He needed a—uh—a tutor in Korean, so he hired me. We met at my parents' house twice a week.”

Pa looked at me like he was getting suspicious. For good reason, what with the Korean lie being told like it was truth. But maybe Tommy's cover just had to be that good or something. I decided to keep listening before I passed judgment.

“So then what happened?” Pa asked.

“As we had lessons, he told me more and more about his home and his family. And with every story, I began to have feelings for him. But, of course, I couldn't say anything with my mother listening to us. She would not have approved. Didn't approve.”

Pa nodded. The story sounded good, even if it was unbelievable.

“But then, one day, while we were talking, there was some smoke in the house and we ran outside. My mother went to call the firemen and left Tommy and me alone in our front yard.”

“Was there a fire?” Pa asked.

“Oh yes,” she said, and blushed. “Tommy had set fire to a wastepaper basket in the bathroom. He hoped it would help us get away from Mother.”

Pa chuckled at that.

“Sounds like Tommy.”

Sure did. If I had a nickel for every time he almost burned down the house to get out of doing the dishes, I could buy the Yankees. Well, maybe not the Yankees, but I could sure buy the Phillies.

“Anyway, I thought it was the perfect time to tell him about how I felt, but he beat me to it. He asked me to go out on a date with him. And after that, even when he went back to Cullman, we still kept dating. In secret, of course. But, whenever he came back down to Mobile, we would find ways to get away with each other. All the way up until April. Right before he left for Korea.”

And there she went with the Korea business again. Didn't make no sense, and I could tell Pa wasn't having it. But he didn't have it in his blood to call out a woman, so instead he stood and picked up his plate.