A Miracle of Catfish (21 page)

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, and he heard a girl laugh behind him. He didn't look around, though, because he didn't have any way of knowing if they were laughing at him not being able to get a Coke out of the machine or not. They might be laughing at something they were talking about. Hell, they might be laughing about something that happened last summer. Or at the senior prom. His face turned red anyway and he felt it. Damn it, he
hated
for his face to turn red!

He waited until his face turned back to not red and pushed the Coke button and nothing happened again. So he pushed the button for the
coin return. Nothing happened. Son of a bitch! He whammed it pretty good a couple of times with his fist.

“That old machine don't work half the time,” somebody said behind him, and he looked around to see who was talking. It was one of the dumpy girls. She was sitting beside the new girl, and both of them were turned around looking at him. The new girl was chewing, and she looked at Jimmy's daddy with what he saw as thinly veiled disgust. […]

“It won't gimme me my money back,” he said, looking at the new girl while he said it. She was still chewing, and then she swallowed. Then she turned back around. The dumpy girl got up and came over. Jimmy's daddy wasn't sure what her name was. She worked down in Porcelain, kept a mask over her face most of the day, and sprayed liquid porcelain on stove interiors that were coming by hanging on hooks. He saw her down there pretty often since he had to walk all over the plant to work on this or that.

“It took my money last week,” she said. “But the Coke man'll give you your money back if you leave him a note.”

She looked up at Jimmy's daddy. Her hair was kind of frizzy and long and she had a wide face that was powdered heavily. She looked like she had painted her lips on.

“I got a pen in my purse. You want to leave him a note?”

Jimmy's daddy cut his eyes past her briefly to see if the big-tittied heifer had turned her head to listen to their conversation, but she hadn't. She didn't appear to be interested in what was being said between Jimmy's daddy and the dumpy girl. But the dumpy girl was smiling up at him in a way that made him wonder if she was the one they were talking about who had given somebody the blow job in the parking lot. How the hell would he find out? And would she be able maybe to introduce him to the heifer? Because he saw now that her beauty was so great that he wouldn't be able to work up the guts to just nonchalantly walk up to her and toss off some bullshit. He needed an introduction.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Jimmy's daddy said.

The dumpy girl never had stopped smiling and she stepped back over to the table and said something to the other girls and they giggled, the heifer, too, then the dumpy girl picked up her purse and brought it over and started digging through its contents. Jimmy's daddy was looking
over the top of her head at the back of the new girl. She was still eating and now she was listening to some story the other dumpy girl was telling, and nodding a lot, and saying, “Um hum,” and picking up some cookies and biting into them. She had a box of milk. She had a blue purse with red and yellow cloth flowers sewn onto it. She had tight blue jeans and sandals. Maybe she was a college woman.

“Here's the pen,” the dumpy girl said, and pulled out a black-and-white Bic missing the cap. She handed it to Jimmy's daddy and he stood there watching her paw through her purse.

“I need to get on and eat,” Jimmy's daddy said, and the dumpy girl looked up while still pawing.

“I got a piece of paper in here I know,” she said. “I see you around the plant a lot,” she said. “You used to be in Spot-Welding, didn't you?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy's daddy said. “I'm in Maintenance now.”

“I know,” she said. “I see you working on them Towmotors and things. I bet you know a lot about lubrication. That sure was bad about John Wayne Payne, wasn't it?”

“Yeah, it was,” Jimmy's daddy said. He wished to hell people would stop mentioning it to him, about how bad it was. About fifty people had already said something to him about him accidentally crushing John Wayne Payne, although almost all of them said how they understood that it wasn't totally his fault. But none of that made a shit. By then he was wishing to hell he never had come over here and gotten into all this. She was still looking through her purse and pushing things aside.

“He gimme a lift one time,” she said.

“Do what?”

She looked up. “Gimme a lift. On my Mercury. I had a flat at lunch one day and he drove his lift right out in the parking lot and picked it up while some fellers changed it for me. Ate his baloney sandwich with one hand. I know I got a piece of paper in here.”

“That's okay,” Jimmy's daddy said, and tried to hand her back the pen. “I got to go eat before my lunch break gets over.”

She stopped pawing through her purse and took the pen back and stuck it in there.

“What about your fifty cents?” she said. “Don't you want it back?”

“I'll just get it from the Coke guy next time I see him,” Jimmy's daddy said, and started to turn away.

“Well,” she said. “It was nice talking to you.”

And then she stuck her hand out.

“My name's Lacey,” she said. “I already know your name.”

“Aw yeah?” Jimmy's daddy said. He shook her hand and then dropped it. “How'd you know my name?”

“Asked somebody,” she said. “I live down at Water Valley. You ever get down there?”

“Well, naw,” Jimmy's daddy said. “I don't get down there much. I went to the Watermelon Festival one time back when I was a kid. Did you ever go to it?”

“Shoot. My sister Loretta was Watermelon Queen one year. I live on Church Street,” she said. “One eleven Church. I always have some cold beer around if you ever down there and want to come by for some.”

Some what?
Jimmy's daddy wondered. “Uh. Well,” he said.

“My house is easy to find. It's on Church and if you going up from Main Street it's the fifth house on the right.”

“Oh yeah?” he said. Damn. She wasn't shy, was she?

“I'd be glad to draw some directions. If I could find some paper.”

She grinned. She had a few teeth missing, but the ones she had were okay. Jimmy's daddy didn't have a whole set of teeth himself.

“We could drank five or six beers.” She giggled slightly.

“Well, uh,” Jimmy's daddy said. Did she say
111 Church
?

“I stay up late,” she said.

He would have talked to her some more, but he had to go eat.

“Specially on the weekends,” she added.

“Okay. Well. Maybe I'll see you sometime,” Jimmy's daddy said.

“I sure hope so,” she said. She wasn't making any effort to move. Then she said, “But I'll let you go eat your lunch. I wouldn't want you to get hungry and go all weak on me.”

“Okay. Take it easy.”

“You, too.”

By the time Jimmy's daddy got back to the table where Seaborn and the Tool-and-Die guys were sitting, he figured his chili was cold and he still didn't have a Coke. He was kind of pissed off. He sat down and
looked at his watch and saw that he only had seventeen minutes left on his lunch break.

“What the hell you doing?” Seaborn said.

“Aw, the damn Coke machine,” Jimmy's daddy said, and picked up his spoon. He stirred his chili a little and dipped his spoon in and took a bite. It was barely warm. Some orange grease was standing in tiny puddles in there. And now three or four people were standing in front of the microwave, maybe warming up pies they'd brought from home. Some of the ladies in the plant did that, brought cakes or pies from home and warmed the pies up in the microwave and shared them with the other ladies in the plant who worked in their sections, or even just people they knew. He didn't think it was worth getting in line and waiting all over again.

“Looked to me like you's over there tryin to get you some,” Seaborn said with a grin, and the Tool-and-Die guys grinned across the table, too.

“I don't think so,” Jimmy's daddy said, and took another halfway warm bite of his chili. He was about to get pissed off now. If he had a goddamn wife who'd get up and fix him some lunch, he wouldn't be going through this shit right now. But hell naw, she couldn't do that. She had to go back to bed for another hour after she got the kids off to school. And they weren't even in school now. So she didn't even get up as early as she did the other nine months of the year. She just slept later all summer, like she was doing now. Didn't have to be at the bank until nine. So she stayed up later. Watched HBO and Showtime and Cinemax and he didn't know what all else. He had to go to bed. But she didn't. Couldn't get up and fix him a nice lunch that he could sit down and enjoy. Oh no. He had to get some chili from a machine. In a can about big enough to feed a small dog. And chili just wasn't good if it wasn't hot. It didn't taste the same.

He sat there and ate it anyway. Seaborn was telling the Tool-and-Die guys the story about the skunk causing him to knock his front teeth out, and he wished to hell he had a Coke. A glass of lemonade. Water. Anything.

It looked like most people had already finished eating. Lots of them were throwing their empty lunch sacks into the garbage cans and pushing
open the double glass doors to go outside in the parking lot and sit in their cars for a few minutes or smoke or talk to people. He looked down at the little can of chili. He didn't even want the shit now. Cold as hell. The whole damn thing was about to put him in a bad mood. And he hated to get in a bad mood at work. If he got in a bad mood at work, it always meant he'd be in a bad mood when he got home. And he hated to be in a bad mood when he got home. It messed everything up. […]

He didn't finish his chili. He just dropped the spoon in the can and wiped his mouth with one of the napkins and reached into his pocket for a cigarette while reaching for one of the butt-strewn ashtrays sitting nearby on the table. He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and pulled his disposable cheapo lighter from his shirt pocket and struck it, but it didn't light. He struck it again. And again and again and again. It didn't light.

“Son of a bitch,” he said. This son of a bitch ought not be out of lighter fluid already. He'd just bought it down at the store the other day. They'd had a whole plastic bucket of them sitting on the counter for fifty cents apiece. It was one day when he'd come by and there weren't over two or three vehicles sitting out there, no delivery trucks, and he'd turned in just to grab some smokes without having to go to town. He'd grabbed one while he was getting some smokes and a cheeseburger. Last weekend was when it was. Oh. It was right before he went and picked up Seaborn and Rusty. Just before they'd taken Jimmy swimming.

He struck it again. Son of a bitch. He held it up and looked at it. It still had fluid in it. He could see it. Why wouldn't it light then? Off-brand son of a bitch probably. Made in fucking Japan or somewhere probably. People would work for thirty-seven cents an hour over there. He'd heard Rusty talk about it. He said it was why everything in the world now was made in China. […]

Jimmy's daddy looked around, wondering where in the hell he could find some matches. What he ought to start doing was carrying two lighters, a used one and a new one, so that he'd always have a spare. And as soon as the used one ran out, go get a new one. That way he could be perpetually replenished in lighters.

The Tool-and-Die guys started laughing when Seaborn finished his
story, and Jimmy's daddy waited for a moment and then said: “Y'all ain't got a light have you?”

They shook their heads, still grinning, and started getting up from the table.

“Don't smoke,” one of them said.

“I can give you a chew,” the other one said.

“Thanks,” Jimmy's daddy said, and he turned to Seaborn. “You ain't got any matches on you, have you?”

“Naw,” Seaborn said, and rolled up his lunch sack into a ball like he did every day. Most days he'd shoot it like a basketball into a garbage can that was sitting about twenty feet away, and most days he'd make it. He'd always wait until the lunch crowd thinned out somewhat, like now, then shoot it, which is what he did. It arched up and bounced off the back of the Coke machine and hit the floor.

“Shit,” Seaborn said, and got up to go get it, but some lady walking by saw it and picked it up for him and dropped it into the garbage can and he did a wave of thanks toward her and walked back to the table and sat down next to Jimmy's daddy, who was getting up.

“Where you going?” Seaborn said.

“Get me a light,” Jimmy's daddy said.

“You ain't got but about five minutes,” Seaborn said, as Jimmy's daddy was walking away, looking for somebody who might have a light. Just about everybody had cleared out now, except for the big-tittied heifer and her buddies, who were sitting back there smoking. He stopped. He could see a pack of cigarettes and a lighter lying right beside the elbow of the dumpy girl who wanted to drink some beer with him. Hell. It didn't sound like that was all she wanted.

The dumpy girl, Lacey he remembered her name was, looked up and saw him and smiled real big at him. He smiled back and went over there with his cigarette held out in his hand.

“Could I get a light off you?” he said.

He'd figured she'd just probably smile and nod and hand him her lighter, but she didn't. She got up and came right up to him and got real close.

“Course you can,” she said, and struck the lighter for him.

Jimmy's daddy put the cigarette in his mouth and leaned over toward
the fire, and for just a moment, as he leaned his head down to it, he looked over at the big-tittied heifer, who was watching him. Holy shit, what a set. Then he had to turn his eyes back to what he was doing, which was getting his cigarette lit. He did. He puffed.