A Miracle of Catfish (24 page)

A cow bawled down in the pasture and she turned her head to look. She didn't know how many mama cows he had now. Looked like maybe fifteen or twenty. She stood there thinking about him being on the tractor in the winter, in January and February, driving those big round bales of hay around and dropping them off for his cows. He had a plywood kind of a cage he'd built that he could set over the tractor seat in the
winter and get inside it and she guessed the heat from the motor warmed him a little. She didn't know why he was still messing with cows, old as he was. But he'd always done it. She knew it would be hard to give up things even if you were old.

Good God, Albert, are you still peeing?
she thought. She walked on over to the cotton picker and looked at it. Nothing but a great big pile of junk now, but she could remember the day they delivered it from Pontotoc. She didn't know what year it was. Late sixties maybe. She was probably about eight. Thank God her mother wouldn't let him or he would have made her learn how to drive it, too. But that job always fell to Cleve. When he was here and not in the pen. She wondered where he was. It had been a very long time since she'd seen him, but she knew he still remembered her. Besides Queen, he was the only black person her daddy would let her around when she was a kid. She guessed her daddy trusted him. He always called her Miss Lucinda. Even back when she was a little bitty thing. He'd tip his hat to her. Like an old familiar thing he'd been trained to do, automatically, without thinking. He must have been in his twenties when he first worked for her daddy. And then he went away to prison and was older when he came back. And then he went away again and looked much older when he came back that time. But her daddy had always said that Cleve was the best hand he ever had. It was the only praise she had ever heard him say about a black person. He just hated them. But he didn't hate Queen, did he? And he wouldn't talk about her, would he? Oh no. That subject would only get you a cold look and silence. Maybe a little admonition to mind your own business or go do your homework.

Somebody slipped his hands over her eyes and she smiled.

“Now I wonder who that is,” she said, thinking it was Albert. And then she smelled Old Spice and knew it wasn't. He hadn't done that in a long time. She pulled the hands away and turned around and looked at her daddy.

“Hey,” she said. She took a last drag from her smoke and then dropped it and stepped on it.

“What you doing?” he said. He was loosening his tie and unbuttoning the tight collar. He undid the tie and pulled it by the small end until it slid around under the collar of his shirt and came out in his hand. He rolled it up carefully and put it in his pocket.

“I'm waiting on Albert,” she said. “He's going to the bathroom behind the equipment shed.”

Her daddy looked back that way. Then he turned back around to her.

“You all right?” he said. He acted like he was afraid to touch her. He was just standing there watching her.

“I'm okay,” she said. “You gonna go in and eat?”

He put his hands in his pockets and toed at a pebble.

“Yeah, I reckon so,” he said. “Your mama had got to where she didn't cook much no more.”

“I'd think it would be kind of hard to cook in a wheelchair.”

“She said it was easier to use the stove since she didn't have to bend over. She could roll it right over and stick a pan of biscuits in.”

Lucinda saw Albert walking out from the side of the equipment shed and she smiled at him. He smiled back and then he stopped. Her daddy turned and looked at him. Lucinda spoke up.

“It's okay, Albert. Come on over.”

So he did. He'd tried to talk to her daddy a few times when they first got there, but as usual her daddy didn't have any patience with him, which had made him nervous and started his tics up. He looked up at her daddy and stuck out his hand to be shaken. Her daddy looked down at it, and then looked up at him, and then looked at Lucinda, and then slowly took Albert's hand and shook it. But instead of turning loose after the handshake, Albert held on. Her daddy tried to pull his hand back, but Albert just held on.

“You can turn loose now,” her daddy said. Albert smiled at him, agreeing with him, but he didn't turn him loose. His head jerked.

“Lucinda?” her daddy said. “Can you make him turn loose of me?”

“I don't know,” she said. “Sometimes he finds somebody he likes and just won't turn loose. That's how he got me. When we going to look at the pond?”

“After we eat,” he said. “If I can get in the house to eat.”

“Harm quarm farm,” Albert said to him, and then turned loose of his hand.

Albert had gotten the fishing pole in a snarl and he was down on his knees in jeans working on it, trying to untangle it.

“Piss fuck cock shit dick,” he said.

“I done told him they wasn't no fish in this pond yet,” her daddy said to Mister Toby, who had come back in his overalls and was periodically spitting into a small white cup his viscous liquid tobacco discharges. “But wouldn't nothing do him but bring the rod and reel. That old thing needs some new line on it anyway.”

“It's a beautiful pond, Daddy,” Lucinda said, standing beside him. She'd put on some shorts and sandals and a button-up shirt of Albert's. All the people had finally gone and there was so much food left over that she'd had a hard time fitting it all into the refrigerator, which hadn't been very well stocked. Canned biscuits and bacon and eggs and some jelly and some sliced baloney. Now it was crammed with deviled eggs and sliced hams and chicken and dressing and fried chicken and casseroles and even some fried quail.

“It's about halfway full,” her daddy said, looking out over the muddy water. “I figure if I get three or four more good rains it'll fill on up.”

“I believe it's deep enough to where you can go ahead and get your fish and put em in, Cortez,” Mister Toby said.

“How often does the fish man come?” her daddy said.

“Every month or two in the summer. He was just here, let's see … this is … He was here third week in July. So he ought to be back fore long. I can find out when I get back to work in the morning for you. I'll ask Richard. He'll know.”

“Reckon how many I ought to get?” her daddy said.

“I don't know. The fish guy can tell you, though. Deep as this thing's gonna be I'd say it would hold a lot. You gonna feed em, ain't you?”

“Oh yes, I'm gonna feed em,” her daddy said. “I'm gonna get me some feed the same day I get the fish.”

He looked over at Albert, still messing with the tangled reel. Then he looked at Lucinda.

“He gets into something, he just kind of sticks with it, don't he?”

“Yeah, he does,” she said. “I don't know what makes him that way, but that's how he is. Albert? Why don't you quit messing with that rod and reel? We'll come back and fish when it has some fish in it, okay?”

“Fuck a goat's ass,” Albert said, but he calmly nodded. He stood up with the rod and reel and walked over to them. He leaned the rod against his shoulder and his head did that jerking motion. Lucinda couldn't get
over how nicely shaped the pond was. Whoever had built it had taken his time and done it right. It was over an acre of water and the banks were gently sloped and smoothly finished. It looked so natural that only the big pile of trees down near the levee revealed what had been here before. Over the fall the remaining trees would layer the banks with shed leaves, and in spring and summer it would be a nice place to come and fish. Sit with Albert and show him how to do it.

Albert handed her the rod and reel and she took it. She couldn't wait to get him back home. She was afraid to make love with him here, back in her old bedroom. She knew she was over forty years old and all that, but she just couldn't do it. She was afraid her daddy would hear them. Especially with the kind of noises Albert made when he got excited.

She wished now that she'd booked their plane tickets for Tuesday instead of tomorrow. Now that she was here, and the funeral was over, and all the people were gone from the house, it would have been nice to stay around, work in the garden some, bring a blanket and some suntan oil and lie out in the sun beside the pond. And there were so many things she needed to talk over with her daddy. One of them was what to do with all her mama's things. She knew what he'd do. He'd box everything up and stick it in the barn probably. The wheelchair would be folded up and crammed somewhere. And he would be here all by himself. Maybe she was more worried about that than anything. What he was going to do with himself. What he was going to eat.

“Where's Cleve these days, Daddy?” she said.

Her daddy scratched his ear and then cut a faint fart.

“Daddy,” she said.

“He's still over there in Old Dallas. That girl of his finally come home with some soldier.”

“How old's Cleve now?”

“I don't know. I think he was in his twenties when he went to the pen the first time. Stayed nine years and then he come back and he was fifty when he went back again. I think he did eight years then. He ain't been out but three years. I'd guess he's about sixty.”

“You think he remembers me?”

Her daddy nodded and looked out across the water.

“I imagine he does.”

“I wish I could go see him.”

Her daddy turned around and stared at her.

“What the hell you want to go see him for?”

He was looking at her hard and it was difficult for her to say what she felt. It always had been, in front of him.

“I don't know. I just remember when he used to work around the place. He was always nice to me.”

“He ain't nice if you cross him when he's drunk. That's how come he did two stretches in Parchman for manslaughter.”

She stood there, nodding.

“I just wondered how he was doing,” she said.

“He's doing about like he always has.”

She could tell that was the end of that. And it was getting close to late evening anyway. She'd toyed with the idea of driving across the river for some beer with Albert and then come back and maybe make some sandwiches for supper. There was so much food in there.

A bat had come out of the woods and was swooping low across the water, not quite touching the surface with its wingtips. It skittered and jerked across the air, returning, flying off, coming back.

“Well,” her daddy said. “We better get on back before it gets dark.”

“It's sure nice, Daddy,” she said.

“It's mighty fine, Cortez,” Mister Toby said. “I'll find out about that fish guy for you in the morning.”

“Good,” her daddy said.

The Tallahatchie River bridge was long rusted and the wheels made a rushing sound when you went between the guardrails. It was almost dark and the rental car's lights were bright. Lucinda hadn't made a run across the river to the beer store in a long time. It used to be a thing to do on Sunday afternoons, with some of her friends, back when she was going to Ole Miss. She didn't have any idea where all those people were now. Most of them probably had children by now. At forty-three, she'd realized that the clock had run out for her. Her daddy didn't mention it anymore, but she knew he was disappointed not to have any grandchildren. She'd failed him. He hadn't said that, but she knew that's what he thought. He didn't think much of her living in Atlanta either, but she
couldn't live her life just to please him. She had a good job modeling. It paid for nice things.

Albert was asleep in the seat beside her. She guessed he was worn out from everything. She had the radio playing at a low level that maybe wouldn't wake him up. By tomorrow night they'd be back home, to sleep in their own bed, wear their comfortable clothes, watch their own TV. Daddy hadn't even turned his on since she'd been home. He'd mentioned how loudly her mother used to play it. But it was all the entertainment she'd had. He stayed outside all the time, working at one thing and another. He didn't seem to be slowing down a whole lot, even at his age.

She glanced over at Albert. He was relaxed in the seat, his face turned toward her, his hands composed in his lap and lit by the green glow of the dash lights. Sleeping as peacefully as a baby.

The traffic was fairly light. She met one state trooper who flashed his blue lights at her because she was speeding. She let off the gas and looked in the rearview to see if he'd hit his brake lights. He hadn't. She guessed she'd better slow down, especially on the way back. The cops had always been bad on this highway.

Marshall County. She knew there were dirt roads that led all through the woods on the other side of the railroad tracks and that little juke joints were scattered all up and down them, places where people gathered on weekend nights to listen to electric guitars and drink homemade whisky and Budweiser. A long time ago she'd gone to Junior Kimbrough's place one Sunday evening and had heard him play. But there weren't many white faces in there. Nobody had acted ugly to her, but more than a few of the men had hit on her. That was a long time ago. But she still remembered what it felt like in there, the smoke and the dim lights and the screaming guitar Junior had played, one of his boys drumming for him, another one playing bass, everybody drinking and laughing and dancing. It was another world. And now Junior was dead and his place had burned down. […]

She started slowing down just this side of the county line and she put on her blinker to turn left, even though there was only one car way back behind her. It had rained over here, too, and the dirt drive she turned onto was still a little muddy, but it had plenty of gravel on it. The tires
made a crunching sound rolling over it. She reached out and touched Albert.

“We're here, babe,” she said, and he stirred in the seat. He put out his arms straight ahead of him before he opened his eyes and he squinched his face up into a contortion and made a grunting noise deep in his chest and then twined his fingers together and turned them backward and flexed his knuckles so that they popped. Then he opened his eyes and looked around.