A Miracle of Catfish (20 page)

He guessed he'd have to get used to being alone now. But it seemed like he'd been pretty much alone ever since Lucinda moved to Atlanta. And how many years had that been? About fifteen, probably. He could count on his fingers and toes all the times she'd been home since then. And it was fine whenever she came home by herself. But then she started bringing that dirty-mouth retard with her, and that made things different. He didn't feel comfortable sitting around talking about his tomatoes in front of somebody like him. Who was sleeping in the same bed with his daughter. And mostly they just sat around and watched TV. And he didn't care anything about that. They never showed
The Untouchables
anymore, hadn't for years.

He started to get up and get his flashlight and go out to the barn and get his gun and just shoot it. Just shoot it for the hell of it. Just to listen to it. Just to feel it kick. But what good would that do? He'd just have to come right back in here and lie down beside her again.

Maybe he ought to just call the funeral home now. They probably had somebody who sat up and took calls at night. Somebody who was just sitting in a chair waiting for the phone to ring and say that there was somebody dead somewhere who needed to be brought to the funeral home. But the more he thought about that, about calling them now, the more he worried about what they were going to say about her being so stiff and dead for so long. What could he say? Could he say that he'd found her sometime this afternoon and just couldn't bring himself to call until now? Would they buy that? They might. He hadn't done anything criminal. Not to his wife anyway.

He could hear the chains on the swing on the front porch creaking. But why? Why would they be rattling? It was probably Queen. She hadn't been around in a while, but maybe now she was going to come back. Make him pay some more. Stand out there and rattle the chains on the swing and moan through the windows again. His wife never had heard it. Or claimed she hadn't. He'd asked her about it a couple of times, had asked her the next morning several times if she'd heard anything
during the night, when he had, and she'd said no, she hadn't. Maybe he was the only one who could hear it. Maybe he was the only one meant to hear it.

Shit. He'd just call them early in the morning. Tell them he hadn't been able to do it last night, and what would it matter anyway? There was plenty of time. But he had to call Lucinda. That was the thing he was dreading the most. Telling her. She was probably going to take it hard, even though she and her mother hadn't been that close. Not in these last years.

Boy. It looked like stuff could go right in your life, but a lot of times it didn't. He wondered if it was like that for everybody. Probably so. It was probably tough for everybody. Even those people down the road in the trailer. What was it going to hurt if those kids came on his land? Would it hurt one thing? Probably not.

And then he thought about the pond. About the rain that had fallen into it. He was dying to know how much water it had in it.

So he got up. He didn't turn the light on in there. He went up the hall and turned the light on out there and got his rubber boots from the closet and found his flashlight and turned the porch light on and went out, through the front yard, up the hill toward the new pond. Lighting his dim yellow way. The little hidden wet frogs cheeping. His boots slurping in the fresh mud. A big cow bawling to a little cow baby and a hoot owl hooting harmony backup,
Hoot hoot, who, who?

Jimmy's daddy was standing at the vending machine getting his lunch since he hadn't gotten up early enough to fix a baloney sandwich, which is what he sometimes had. He'd noticed that lots of people at the plant ate baloney. Sometimes Vienna sausage and crackers. Or sardines and crackers. Potted meat and crackers. You had to switch it up so you didn't get burned out like a dog eating the same kind of dog food 365 days a year. […] He was about to go sit down with Seaborn and some guys from the Tool-and-Die Department when the new girl down on the line walked in with two other girls, both of them kind of short and to his way of thinking
dumpy.
He'd heard that one of them had given somebody a blow job in the parking lot one day, which was pretty interesting, but he didn't know which one since they looked pretty similar.

He tried not to stare at them, so he just kind of watched them out the corner of his eye to see where they were going to sit while he was digging his change out of his pocket. The break room was pretty filled up with people, but there were always a few open tables, since they'd expanded it. It looked like they were heading toward the back. Jimmy's daddy got out some quarters and dimes and shoved some of them into the machine and punched R6 for a small can of Castleberry's chili, and he watched a metal arm slowly push it off a shelf, where it rattled down through the machine and hit a little door at the bottom. Jimmy's daddy reached in and got it. He ate it pretty often, since it was easy and quick, which helped him smoke a few more cigarettes before he had to get back to work. […]

He couldn't remember how many times he'd begged his mama to make him some chili. But she wouldn't do it. She always said she didn't know how to make it. Then she'd make some more of that fucking meat loaf. Shit. He could think about it now and almost get indigestion.

He leaned to one side and looked past Hootie Pearson, who always had a baloney-and-cheese sandwich that he had to microwave, to see if he could see where that big-tittied heifer and her buddies were sitting.
He couldn't see them. Maybe they were behind the Coke machine. Sometimes some of the girls and women sat back there and grouped up and gossiped.

He wished the damn line would hurry up. He looked to see who was up front. It was Garson, who worked down on the line, had some glasses that looked like they were about half an inch thick, and he was evidently roasting his lunch, because the microwave had been running for about a minute at least, because that was how long he'd been standing in line, he figured. He looked toward the back of the break room again and just then saw the new girl walk across the room, throw something in the garbage, and walk back. She was wearing a tight light blue T-shirt with
LYNYRD SKYNYRD
written across the front of it and he didn't know they still had a band. He got a pretty good look at her breastworks as she made her way back to the table. Then, while he was watching her, not noticing that Garson had gotten his turkey pot pie from the microwave steaming hot and had turned away with it, carrying it on a pot holder he had evidently brought from home, and let the next guy up to the microwave, which caused Hootie to take another few steps forward, leaving a gap between himself and Jimmy's daddy, she turned and looked straight at Jimmy's daddy and gave him a look that was definitely not friendly. It was actually a look that let Jimmy's daddy know that she knew he was looking at her breasts when she caught him. She stared coldly at him for a few seconds while she was walking and then disappeared back behind the Coke machine.

Damn. She didn't look too friendly, did she? Kind of looked at him like she was thinking,
Eat some shit and die!

“Come on, we ain't got but twenty-seven minutes left,” somebody said behind Jimmy's daddy, and he turned around to see who it was. It was Snuffy Smith, who worked down on the line, wrapping insulation around stove liners all day long, and he was holding what looked like a damp and thawed-out Lean Cuisine of beef tips and noodles in his hands. Jimmy's daddy turned back around and saw that there was about six feet between himself and Hootie Pearson, who was just sticking his baloney-and-cheese into the microwave, and Jimmy's daddy knew that he only warmed it for thirty seconds. Every time. Dependable as clockwork. He had it down to a science. Jimmy's daddy closed the gap
between them and when Hootie finished, Jimmy's daddy walked on up and stuck his chili in and twisted the dial over to get it piping hot.

While his chili warmed, Jimmy's daddy stuck the spoon in his mouth and held it there, his fingers slipped into his front pockets. He looked over at Seaborn and them. They were talking and eating. He knew that Seaborn was probably telling them some lie. He'd been knowing Seaborn for a long time and knew that he'd rather climb a tree and tell a lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth.

Forty-five seconds later the bell dinged on the microwave and Jimmy's daddy reached in for it. It was hot, so he had to hold it gingerly and he set it down on the edge of the counter for a moment while he grabbed some napkins from a dispenser and wrapped them around it.

“Now I got twenty-six minutes left,” Snuffy Smith said, standing there watching his watch and waiting for him to get out of the way.

“She's all yours, Snuffy,” Jimmy's daddy said, around the plastic spoon, and scooped up his chili and made his way over to where Seaborn and them were sitting. They'd left a hole for him to sit in and he set his chili and napkins down with the spoon and told them he had to get a drink and then walked over to the Coke machine. He could see the back of the big-tittied heifer's blue shirt and her long light brown hair, and he dug down in his pocket for some more change. Shit. He didn't have but thirty-seven cents left. He had to step over to the dollar changer then. First he had to root through his billfold and look among the crumpled and sweat-soaked ones to try and find one that might be accepted by the machine. This one here in the break room had gotten to where you had to have a pretty dadgum smooth dollar bill or it would spit it back on you. Sometimes you had to put one down on the counter and try to smooth some of the wrinkles out of it, and this was the case with the one Jimmy's daddy pulled out. He worked on it for a while, unbending the corners, flattening it with his hand and running his hand over it, and by then, when he finally got it to looking a little better, somebody else had already stepped around him and stuck a bill into the machine, which promptly spit it back out. It was Miss Cricket, from down on the line, who put screws into stove parts all day long, hinges and self-cleaning door covers mostly. She was tiny and white haired, couldn't possibly have weighed over sixty-five pounds and looked mummified.
She had a high, nasal voice like somebody on helium. Smoked the hell out of some cigarettes, worked with one in her toothless mouth, blew the fumes out her nose like a small dragon. Favorite footwear: slip-on tennis shoes.

“Cheap son of a bitch,” she said, and looked up at Jimmy's daddy. “Why don't y'all fix this piece a shit?”

“I don't know how to fix it,” Jimmy's daddy said. This was true. Jimmy's daddy didn't know how to fix anything much. Collums could probably fix it if he stared at it long enough.

The old lady worked on her bill some, straightening it in her veined and knobby hands, smoothing it, stretching the wrinkles from it. Then she looked back up at him, her watery blue eyes enormous behind her glasses.

“Why not? You in Maintenance, ain't you?”

She stuck the bill back in the machine.

“Yes'm,” Jimmy's daddy said, “but I don't know how to fix no dollar changer.”

The machine spit the bill back out. Jimmy's daddy looked up and saw the big-tittied heifer eating a spoonful of what looked like maybe vegetable soup. She chewed and then laughed at something one of the dumpy girls was saying. He wondered how long they'd all known each other.

“Have you got change of a dollar?” Miss Cricket said. She was looking at Jimmy's daddy with a hopeful expression.

“Not me,” Jimmy's daddy said. “If I had change of a dollar I wouldn't be standing here in line to get change of a dollar.”

“Well shit,” she said. “Have you got a good dollar bill you can swap out with me?”

Jimmy's daddy held out the one he was holding. It was pretty sad.

“This one's about the best one I got. And it ain't good.”

Miss Cricket leaned over and looked at it. She examined it closely and then looked at hers. Then back again.

“Dang, looks like somebody's wiped their ass with that one. I'll just go get fifty cents from Doris.”

She stuck her dollar in her pocket and hurried away. Jimmy's daddy walked up to the dollar changer and very carefully started threading it
in. The whole idea, he thought, was to keep it good and flat until the rollers kicked in and caught it and pulled it on in. He felt the pull. He held on to it for a second, just to put a little tension on the bill while the rollers were pulling on it, and then he turned loose. The bill rolled right on into the machine and it spit four quarters back out. Jimmy's daddy grinned and got them in his hand and walked around the corner to the Coke machine, which happened to be directly behind the big-tittied heifer who was now laughing and telling some story that sounded like it was about a picnic. Jimmy's daddy didn't look at her this time. He wasn't going to stare at her this time. He was just going to listen to her. He put two of the quarters into the coin slot and stood there for a few moments, acting like he was trying to make up his mind what kind of drink he wanted and listening to the new girl.

“And so we went up this dirt road, and it had all these funky-looking … I don't know what they were. Buildings,” she said, and laughed again. “But I'm telling you, I was glad to get the hell out of there.”

Jimmy's daddy wondered who
we
was and wondered if she had a boyfriend and heard the two dumpy girls laughing and he pushed the button for a Coke. Nothing happened. He pushed it again. Zero. Piece of shit! He looked at his watch. He'd already been in the break room for almost ten minutes and now he only had about twenty-something minutes left to eat and smoke and shoot the shit with Seaborn and them. And his damn chili was getting cold.

He mashed the button for the coin return and his two quarters rattled down into the plastic tray. He instantly put them back in, like a sucker feeding a slot machine. He pushed the button for a Coke and nothing came out.