The Struggles of Johnny Cannon (2 page)

I pushed her into the water.

In retrospect, that probably wasn't the best plan. Definitely didn't help Operation Happy Ending any.

She was splashing and flopping in the water like a chicken getting a bath and she was hollering about as bad too. Her hat was soaked and hanging all down on her face, her sunglasses had dropped into the river so them lake mermaids could wear them, and she had gotten some lake weed stuck on her ear. It was real funny and I finally understood why Tommy did it so much.

I reached out my hand to help her into the boat. She grabbed it and pulled me back into the river instead. She held my head under the water and I was pretty sure she was aiming to drown me, but then she let me up so I could gasp at the air. She climbed back into the boat and didn't offer me any help getting in myself.

After I got in and looked her once over, I couldn't contain myself. I started laughing again. She just looked so darn funny, like a waterlogged redheaded bunny rabbit.

She hauled off and slapped me across the face.

“You're a jerk!” she said. “You're lucky you're my brother, or else I'd never speak to you again.”

Yeah, real lucky. See, that's one of the biggest reasons my happy ending was getting further away every single day. 'Cause, the night that Short-Guy almost arrested my pa, she and I got to hug each other for the first time ever. I reckon it had something to do with the fact that my real dad, a fella named Captain Morris that was the biggest polecat there's ever been, almost shot her and me both in the head. And it was nice, hugging her like that. But then I slipped and told her I loved her. And, of course, she freaked out, so I scrambled and said I meant like a sister. Which fixed that situation, but killed any chance I had of kissing her. 'Cause, I don't care what you've heard about Alabama, we don't kiss our sisters down here.

She pointed back up the lake.

“Home, Jeeves,” she said. “And you'll be rowing all by yourself this time. That will be your punishment.” She dug into her purse and pulled out a little mirror, and then she got to work fixing her face back to normal while I paddled. Once she finally had everything situated, she grinned at me right before she unwrapped a sandwich and ate it. Didn't offer me a bite. Girls was as evil as rattlesnakes. But cuter. A lot cuter. Which is why I reckon folks don't generally marry rattlesnakes. Except maybe in Arkansas.

We finally got to the spot on the shore where I'd parked me and Pa's new truck and I steered us up close to the dry ground. Yeah, I was just barely thirteen, but in Cullman County it was absolutely normal for a kid to drive himself to go fishing. Hunting, too. About the only place you wasn't allowed to drive yourself was to your own funeral. Unless you timed it right.

As soon as I got the boat up onto the shore, she hopped out and went to get into the truck. Left me to tie it up onto the truck bed and everything. Dadgum lazy girls.

After I got it all tied up, I went and got into the driver's seat. I started the engine and opened my mouth to say something. She reached up and shoved a big mud ball right under my nose.

“There,” she said while I spit out the window, “now we're even.”

She turned on the radio to listen to some music and we drove down the road for a bit. Dee Clark was singing “Raindrops,” and it made me think of the wet butt prints we was leaving on the shiny new seats. I'd wrecked our old truck in a tornado. We bought the new one with money Pa was earning from working for Mr. Thomassen, the local barber who used to own a casino in Cuba. I'd helped Mr. Thomassen get his money back, so he helped us make some of our own. I wasn't real sure what exactly Pa did for him, but he claimed it was for God and country, so I left it alone.

After a few more songs, Martha turned off the radio.

“So, Mr. History-Man, what's today's thing?” she asked.

I had a book of daily history facts that I was prone to spout off. I was under the belief that history had lessons we could learn every day that would keep us from screwing up the way they did back in them olden days. 'Cause there ain't many stories that end well in history. Studying it had worked out pretty good for me so far. Except when I tried to adopt the once-a-week bath system. And even that wasn't so much bad for me as it was for everybody else.

“Well, today's August 26, so it's the day the Nineteenth Amendment was passed for the Constitution back in 1920, which gave women the right to vote. See, back in them days, the womenfolk was thinking that the menfolk wasn't doing the best job at deciding—”

She stopped me.

“Not that I don't enjoy hearing about what the ‘menfolk' decided,” Martha said, “but today's actually the twenty-seventh.”

“I sure hope not, 'cause we'd be missing church if it was Sunday the twenty-seventh. And I don't reckon Willie would be missing church, what with him being the pastor's son and all.”

“Well, I go to mass on Saturdays, and Willie faked a stomachache to stay home,” she said. “Seriously, it's the twenty-seventh.”

I slammed on the brakes and pulled off to the side of the road. The boat yanked against the ropes I'd tied it up with. I didn't care.

“Dadgummit, in the summer it's hard to keep track.” I opened the door and hopped out. I had to find some flowers.

“What are you doing?” Martha said.

“It's the twenty-seventh,” I said. I kept looking, but the best I could find was a mess of dandelions and some purple wildflowers that was probably weeds.

“And?”

“And I need to go by the cemetery real fast.”

I bundled them flowers up and got back in, then I did a U-turn and headed over to Mount Vernon Cemetery.

Martha watched me as I drove and didn't say nothing for a bit. Finally she put her hand on my shoulder.

“Is it a birthday?”

I shook my head.

“August 27, 1954. That's the day the doctors in Havana unplugged all my ma's machines that was breathing for her and feeding her. The last day she ever had breath in her lungs.” I rubbed the scar on my cheek, without really thinking about it. “Today's the day she officially died.”

She didn't say nothing else, but she left her hand on my shoulder, which I was fine with.

We parked outside the cemetery and I got out.

“You going to come?” I asked.

She smiled. “Maybe another time. This seems . . . private.”

“She'd probably like to meet you.”

“Another time.”

I nodded and headed through the gate. Mount Vernon Cemetery was one of the oldest cemeteries in Cullman County, and it wasn't all that popular with living folks 'cause they said it was awful run-down, but it was just the sort of graveyard you'd hope to be in if you was dead. It was surrounded by real tall trees that cast good ghost-hiding shadows no matter what time of day it was. There was also plenty of spiders and beetles in every nook and cranny to keep lonely spirits company, along with a few small animals like rabbits and squirrels and such that they'd enjoy haunting and scaring half to death. And there was a few rocks and downed tree trunks that was perfectly situated to make even the smallest breeze sound like a howl from the depths of hell. So, you know, it was nice.

I made my way through the gravestones, trying my best not to think of all them ghosts that was just itching to haunt my soul for eternity, and I got to the corner that was set up for the Cannon family. Grandma was out there, along with most all of the Cannons that had ever been in Cullman. Tommy's stone was there too, though his body was still in Castro's basement in Cuba, thanks to him crash-landing during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Something about that made his stone seem even lonelier.

Ma's grave was over in the corner of our section that I'd visited the least, which is just another illustration of how messed up the whole idea of happy endings is. 'Cause for most of my life, thanks to me being in the accident that killed Ma, my brain couldn't remember a darn thing from when she was alive. People'd tell me stories, but they was just that. Stories. Like when we studied Hannibal crossing the Alps with his pet elephants. And visiting her grave didn't hurt one bit. It didn't mean anything at all, really. So I never did it.

But then I got my memories back and folks claimed it was a happy ending to the story. These was the same folks who had already grieved for my ma and done mourned her death. But now I was just getting started. And I was having to do it all on my own.

Anyway, I got over to Ma's grave and I put them weeds on her gravestone. I sure hoped she thought they was flowers. I didn't know how good you could see from six feet under, so I tried to position them to where she might not tell. Then I knelt down in front of her stone and tried to think of what to say. Actually, that ain't exactly true. I had plenty to say. Plenty more to cry about, if I wanted to. But I didn't want to. So I had to find something to talk about that wouldn't get me to blubbering. And that was hard to do.

“How's it going, Ma?” I asked, then I cussed. You ain't supposed to ask a dead person how it's going, 'cause if they haven't noticed that they're dead and decomposing under the dirt, it ain't polite to draw their attention to it. They might just think all them worms and such is pets. Or that they're aiming to go fishing. But once they realize they're dead, then they'll figure out what them worms is really there for. And that just ain't right.

“What I mean is, how's the weather been?” Nope, that was stupid too. She didn't have no idea of rain or wind or nothing from where she was lying. Dang, this was a hard conversation. It always was.

“I reckon you know what today is. Well, I actually hope you don't. I sort of hope you don't remember none just like how I didn't.” I thought about that for a second. “Except that might mean you don't remember me none. And that wouldn't be no good.”

I got a lump in my throat, which meant if things didn't change, I'd be sobbing like the time I broke my model car back when I was eight. I said a quick prayer that something would distract me.

I heard what sounded like another car pull up down at the gate to the cemetery. It shook the lump out of my throat for a bit.

“Anyway, if you do or don't remember, it don't much matter. This here's the day you and me got taken from each other. That's why I wanted to make sure I dropped by. So you wouldn't be alone.” That darn lump came back.

Martha started talking to somebody a ways off. Finally, a decent distraction.

“Do you hear that? Maybe you can't from down there, but that's Martha, the girl I told you about. She sort of reminds me of you. I think.”

I heard footsteps coming through the cemetery and I reckoned maybe Martha'd changed her mind about meeting Ma.

“I think she's coming, actually. She's a mite bit soaked and muddy, but I swear it's my fault. Don't go judging her none.”

I stood up and turned to call Martha over, but it wasn't her. Well, it was her, but she wasn't alone.

There was a Chinese girl with her. And, by the looks of it, she had a baby Chinaman in her belly.

Martha pointed her over to where Tommy's gravestone was and then came by me.

“Hi,” she said.

“What's she doing here?” I asked.

The girl was looking at them gravestones one by one, all around where Tommy's was.

“She said she was looking for your brother,” she said.

“Did she say why?” I asked. Martha shook her head.

The Chinese girl found Tommy's gravestone, and she fell down onto the grass in front of it and started crying.

“What in tarnation—” I said. Martha shrugged.

I wouldn't normally get involved with foreigners, but since she was at Tommy's stone, I figured the only polite thing to do was to at least check on her. Plus I wouldn't want her going into labor or something. That'd make for a real bad place to birth a baby. I went over and knelt down next to her.

“Hey, listen, I don't speak no Chinese or nothing,” I started.

“I'm Korean,” she said with snot coming out her nose. She was covering her face and sobbing like there wasn't no tomorrow, so I didn't reckon I'd point out to her that it didn't much matter which one she was, since she apparently spoke English. Martha came over and joined us.

“Is everything okay?” Martha asked.

“Not sure,” I said. “Is it?”

“It's just . . . ,” the Korean girl said. “I was hoping it wasn't true. Hoping . . .” She started sobbing again. “Hoping he was still alive.”

“Tommy?” I asked. “You're this ate up over Tommy?”

She nodded, then she wiped her nose and I finally got a good look at her face. She was pretty, for a Korean. Her hair was as black as a crow's back, her eyes sparkled even though they didn't have no color, and her face was shaped the way them models in magazines' faces are shaped, only she wasn't white, so it didn't look quite the same. If I'd had to guess, I'd have said she was the same age as Tommy. Maybe.

“I'm sorry, I'm being so rude.” She held her hand out to shake mine. “My name is Sora Sa.”

I went ahead and shook her hand and tried to not puke at how slick and snotty it was. I wouldn't want to be rude.

“Well, my name's Johnny,” I said. “And this here's—”

“You're his brother? You're Johnny?” she asked, then she grabbed me and hugged on my neck. “He said you'd be here! Oh, it's so good to finally meet my baby's uncle.”

I was at an awkward angle in the hug, 'cause she'd pulled me over her belly like a chicken on the chopping block. Then her belly punched me in the throat. I jerked away.

“Wait, what do you mean by that?”

“Are you saying . . . ,” Martha said, and her eyes got real big. “Are you saying that your baby is Tommy's?”

Sora nodded and Martha gasped like she'd done seen a Martian come waltzing across the yard or something. And it was a surprise for me, too. But I reckon it wasn't too big of one. Half my life had been spent watching Tommy come home sauced with some girl he'd met at a bar. As soon as I found out storks didn't bring babies, I was waiting for one of his girls to announce that she was.