A Miracle of Catfish (25 page)

“This the place?” he said.

“This is it. Best barbecue around. And they got cold beer.”

The place was called Betty Davis's and it was a little shack that was perched on a low hill. Rusty roof, beer signs all over. Smoke was always rising from the cooker in back. The clay gravel parking lot was one Lucinda had never seen empty. She drove slowly and a rabbit ran across the road. Oh shit. She stopped just short of the joint to let out a car that was backing up, a black Lexus, new, muddy, what looked like some college students driving it. They had their interior light on and Lucinda stopped to let them do whatever they were doing. Laughing. Getting beer out of the paper sack. They turned and straightened up and went past her, waving as they went. She waved back and eased up the hill into the slot they had vacated, parked and shut it off.

“You ready to go in?” she said.

Albert's head jerked. He was already taking his seat belt off. She hoped nothing would happen in here, but he was starting to blink.

She got out and put the keys in her pocket and waited for Albert to get out and come around. There was a car parked beside her and a big black kid with a paper sack came out the door, heading toward it. He was dressed all in clean starched denim, a Raiders cap turned backward on his head, tremendous Nikes on his outsized feet. He was boogeying his head to some internal rhythm as he came out, almost dancing as he walked.

“Whassup?” he said, flashing a big smile, one gold tooth showing.

“How you doing?” Lucinda said.

“Suck a duck, Buck,” Albert said.

The black kid stopped. He weighed close to three hundred. Big enough to be a linebacker at Ole Miss. Might have been.

“Say what?” he said. He had put a look of concern on his face.

“Come
here
, Albert,” Lucinda said to him. “He has something wrong with him,” she said to the big black kid.

“He gonna have something wrong he don't watch that mouth,” the kid said.

“It's all right,” Lucinda said. “Come here, Albert, and hold my hand.”

Albert walked obediently between the rental car and the big kid, who was looking at him curiously. His ride was a superclean '68 Chevy two-door sedan, chrome spoker rims on narrow sidewall tires. He went ahead and got into it. Lucinda took Albert's hand and opened the front door and pulled him in.

It hadn't changed any. There were still packs of pigskins in racks in the middle of the floor and the glass-door beer coolers were on the left. There was a big warmer on the right where they kept the ribs and buns and sauce and pulled pork, and a high counter ran down the length of the room. There was a small dining room in back where you could sit down and eat if you wanted to, behind some nicely sewn curtains.

A big-bellied black guy behind the counter said, “Hey. How y'all doing this evening?”

“Pretty good,” Lucinda said.

“Arm quarm farm,” Albert said. He was blinking a little and Lucinda saw the guy behind the counter see it. A couple of women back there with stained aprons looked at Albert. One said something to the other one.

“We just need some beer,” Lucinda said, and pulled Albert toward the beer coolers. “And some Cokes if you've got em.”

“Y'all better get you some ribs while you here,” the man sang out. “Fatten him up a little bit.”

Lucinda turned back to speak to him.

“We're gonna eat when we get home,” she said. “I know y'all have some good barbecue, though. I used to come over here when I went to Ole Miss. It's the best.”

“Aw yes'm,” the man said. “We feed all them Ole Miss kids.”

She turned back to the beer coolers and found a six-pack of Bud tall boys and opened the glass door and reached in for one of them.

“Let me see if we can find you some Cokes, honey,” she said, still holding Albert's hand. But she dropped it and handed him the beer. “Hold this,” she said, and Albert took it and held it to his chest.

She saw some Pepsis. Some Mountain Dews. Some Dr Peppers. Down near the bottom she found the Cokes and reached in for a sixer.

“Okay, sweetie. We'll just get me some cigarettes and pay for this and we can go.”

Albert followed her over to the counter, pausing to look at the racks of pigskins. He reached out and touched a bag of Brim's barbecued.

“Kwaka?” he said. “Kwaka.”

Lucinda turned and looked at him. She walked back over there beside him.

“You want some pigskins?” she said.

Albert had a puzzled look on his face.

“Kwaka?” he said.

“No, honey, it's not a cracker. It's pigskins. You want some?”

“Ate shits?” he said.

“No, honey, it's pigskins. They make them out of hogs. They're like cracklings. Here, let's get you a bag, you might like them. Let's get some barbecued ones. They're the best.”

She showed him how to pull the bag from the clip on the rack and then they went to the counter. She set his Cokes down and Albert, after watching her, set her beer up there beside them. Then he moved over to a large jar of pickled eggs and studied them as if they were some kind of exhibit in a carnival sideshow. Then his eye caught the pickled pigs' feet in another jar and he moved to it and stabbed it with his finger.

“Pig dick,” he said excitedly.

“We live in Atlanta,” Lucinda said to the big man behind the counter, smiling at him. “He doesn't see stuff like this in Atlanta.”

She pulled some money from her pocket and the guy started ringing up the stuff on the register, looking at Albert warily.

“And let me have a pack of Virginia Slims Lights, too,” she said.

“Hock his cock!” Albert said, and then he walked over and caught her by the arm.

“Hold it just a minute,” Lucinda said to the guy behind the counter.
Her face was turning red but she went over to the jar with Albert. He kept poking it with his finger.

“Those are pigs' feet, Albert. I don't think you want any of them.”

“Ain't nothin wrong with my pigs' feet,” the man said, offended.

“Well, no, I didn't say there was anything wrong with them,” she said, glancing up at the man. “He just doesn't know what they are.”

“He act like he want some,” the man said.

And Albert did. He kept tugging on her sleeve.

“Okay,” she said. “Can you get him a couple?”

One of the women came up with a long pair of stainless steel tongs and a little white paper tray. She took the top off the big jar and reached in for one pig's foot, holding it and shaking the pink juice from it for a moment before she pulled it out and put it in the tray, and then she got another one and put it beside the first one. She dropped some napkins over them and put the tongs down and put the lid back on the jar and handed the paper tray to the man, who put it in a paper bag and set it up beside their beer. He raised his face to search the cigarette rack above him.

“How much em pigskins?” he said.

Lucinda looked at the bag in Albert's hand.

“Fifty-nine cents,” she said.

The man wasn't having any luck finding her cigarettes. The door opened and the bell over it jangled and two more young black guys came in, wearing denim jeans and jackets, black bandannas on their heads. What happened next happened fast.

“I done told you two sons of bitches not to come back in here no more,” the man behind the counter said, and the next thing Lucinda knew he had pulled a sawed-off shotgun from behind the counter and thrown down on both of them. One of the women back there screamed. Both of them ducked down. But the young men only backed against the door and stopped. They put their hands up.

“Hell, Pop,” one of them said.

“Don't you Pop me, motherfucker,” the man behind the counter said, and Lucinda could see murder in his eyes. She was frozen and she didn't know where Albert was. “I'll blow your goddamn head off.”

One of them put a surly look on his face and lowered his hands.

“We ain't wanting nothing but some Miller, old man. Why don't you chill your ass out?”

The man behind the counter cocked the hammer and put his finger on the trigger.

“Marvis, I swear fore God I'll blow you and that punkass nigger with you half in two if you don't turn around and walk out that door right now.”

Lucinda had to admit they had some balls. Both of them spit on the floor, then one of them snatched the door open and they slouched out, mumbling about jive-ass niggers as they went. She heard a car that had been left running rev up, then the motor noise receded. She was scared to look out the door and turned to find Albert back behind the counter with the women. He was looking over the top at her.

The man behind the counter was watching through the window glass as the car with the two young men left. She watched him put the hammer back down and rest the butt of the gun on the counter beside her beer. His face was intent, peering out the dirty glass past a neon
schlitz
sign.

“Raymond,” one of the women said, and nodded her head toward Lucinda. It was only then that the man seemed to remember where he was.

“Punkass,” he said, and put the gun away under the counter. Then he looked up at Lucinda.

“Sorry about the language. But them two thiefs right there —”

“Hush, Raymond,” the woman said. “Don't you get your blood pressure up. Go on and ring their stuff up.”

“Yes, thank you,” Lucinda said, since she didn't know what else to say. She was hoping Albert wouldn't say anything. And for once he didn't.

“Yes'm, let's see now, where was I?” the man said, and he looked at his machine as if he didn't know what it was. Then he looked up at Lucinda and pointed toward the window.

“You see them two fools right there?”

“Yes sir,” Lucinda said. She could see now that he was older than he looked. There were twinges of gray hair on the side of his head.

“That one on the left, one I was talking to, that's my cousin's boy. Raised in Chicago. Him and that other one, they robbed Mister Jones
up here four years ago and beat him with a pistol. Now they done home from the pen and running loose again.”

“I'm sorry,” Lucinda said.

“Hell, I don't know what I'm doing,” the man said, shook his head, and turned away from the register. He went back behind the warmer and somewhere in the back and he didn't come out again. The woman who had been talking to him walked over to the register and reached up for Lucinda's cigarettes and handed them to her. She finished ringing their stuff and Albert walked up and looked over her shoulder as she worked. He had opened the pigskins and was eating some, crunching them happily.

“Albert, I think maybe you'd better come back from around there,” Lucinda said, and pulled a twenty-dollar bill from her front pocket. Her fingers were trembling just a little. The woman must have seen it.

“It's all right,” she said. “That's twelve dollars and forty cents.”

Lucinda gave her the twenty and Albert took his time wandering out from behind the warmer. The lady gave Lucinda her change and put the beer and Cokes in a paper sack and dropped the pigs' feet in on top of them. She pushed the sack toward Lucinda.

“Y'all come back,” she said. “We sorry about the trouble.”

“Yes ma'am. Thank you,” Lucinda said. “Let's go, Albert.”

She got him out the door and back in the car and then locked the doors after she got the car started.

And late that night, long after supper, long after Albert was asleep beside her, snoring very gently, she was still lying awake, the last empty can on the bedside table, having a cigarette before she turned in.

She turned on her side and took the last drag from the smoke, then dropped it in the Budweiser can. It made a slight hiss.

She rolled over onto her back and put out her hand to find Albert's. It was partially stuck under his leg and she rubbed his thumb with her fingers. He was warm beside her and he smelled very clean. When they got back home they would rent some movies and buy some steaks and cook them on the grill on the patio and they would resume their lives. She would call and check on her daddy often. She wouldn't lose touch with him the way she had with her mother. She'd been trying to hold it in, but now, with a six-pack in her and Albert sleeping beside her, in a
bed she was afraid to make love with him in because she thought her daddy might hear, she began to cry, very softly, shaking the bed gently, not wanting to wake him up, because he was sleeping so peacefully, curled on his side, his fingers clenched in hers.

[…]

Jimmy was sitting in the dark, out on the trailer steps, listening to the things in the night. There were plenty of them. He'd been trying to catch lightning bugs earlier, but it looked like a lot of them were gone.

He could sit out there on the steps and be almost hypnotized by the sounds of the crickets in the weeds and the trees, a constant roar of noise after dark that filled him with wonder. He liked sitting out there and listening to that a lot better than sitting in the living room watching TV with the girls and his mama. It looked like all his mama wanted to do these days was watch TV. And eat. She ate all the time. She ate ice cream and hot dogs and pizza she'd brought from town and she ate big sandwiches she made from ham and cheese and baloney and salami and she used thick slices of bread she got somewhere. Large bags of Cheetos. Fritos. Doritos.

He didn't know where his daddy was. Off somewhere was all.

He stayed gone a lot at night. Even on the weeknights. And Jimmy couldn't help but wish his daddy would stay home a little more. It was kind of comforting to know that he was home, even if he was back in his room watching his hunting videos. At least you knew he was home. When he wasn't home, it didn't feel right. And he thought that was why his mama just ate and ate. And sometimes cried and cried. But he didn't ask.