A Miracle of Catfish (32 page)

An hour later he was still there. He could see his watch just fine and it was six thirty. […] Nobody had come down the road in all that time. He'd been hoping that maybe some kid would come rolling down the road in one of those big pickups, but there hadn't been a soul. He'd been hoping that maybe one of those caravans of four-wheelers would come down the road, but they hadn't come by either. Now his hands just felt dead. There wasn't much feeling in them at all. He was surely going to lose both of them.

By then he'd gotten to wondering if he was going to die. What if he had a heart attack while he was sitting here so stressed out? He wouldn't even be able to get loose to go inside and call 911 for an ambulance. They'd find him here, dead, when they came in from shopping at Tupelo, and he could imagine how Jimmy would cry. He knew Jimmy loved him. And he loved Jimmy. He told himself one thing. If he got
out of this alive, he was going to start treating Jimmy a lot better. Hell. How long would it take to take the chain off the go-kart and find a small-engine shop and get another chain? It wouldn't take very long. He knew how much Jimmy loved driving that go-kart. And no wonder. What else did he have to do around here? Watch TV? Hang out with the girls?

Yes sir. A thing like this could make a man take a look at his life and see what all was wrong with it. And he'd been doing that already. Only now he was doing it a lot harder. He could do better. He could cut back on his beer drinking. It cost the shit out of him anyway. It was an expensive habit. You smoked about twice as many cigarettes when you were drinking. Burned twice as much gas because you were constantly riding around. Which wore your tires out quicker. Made you need an oil change sooner. Things snowballed on you.

Man, what he'd give for a cigarette. They were right there in his pocket. Not even six inches away from his chin, but they might as well have been on the moon.

Inside the trailer, the phone rang. It was probably Seaborn or Rusty. It was probably one of them calling to see what he was doing.

“I can't come to the phone!” he yelled. It kept ringing. It rang and rang. Maybe it was one of the girls' friends. They had friends who called them on the phone. But they never came over. Jimmy's daddy had made it plain that he didn't want a bunch of kids over at his trailer drinking up all the Cokes and messing the trailer up and talking on the phone to other kids and all that shit. Jimmy's daddy liked peace and quiet. But maybe if he got out of this okay he should lighten up a little there, too. Jimmy's daddy's daddy and Jimmy's daddy's mother never would let him have company over when he was growing up. They just didn't allow it. And Jimmy's daddy never did get to go home with a friend and spend the night like other kids he knew did. What would that have hurt? The phone stopped ringing.

Jimmy's daddy thought maybe something was happening to his brain to help him deal with his situation. The pain had eased, numbed itself, really, he guessed, and he was more peaceful than he would have thought he'd be. He guessed he'd accepted it. He'd had to. He'd shit on himself, yeah, but it wasn't the end of the world, was it? It probably happened to people every day. And how long did the circulation have to be
cut off before you'd lose one or more of your fingers? He had a little feeling in them, just not a whole lot. So that was probably a good sign. That probably meant that there was still at least a little bit of blood circulating through them. Maybe.

If he could have just gotten one hand loose, he could have done something. He could have at least smoked. This way he couldn't do anything but sit here and hope for somebody to come along. And it didn't look like anybody was going to come along.

And then somebody did. He heard the gravel crunching under the tires long before he saw the car, partly because it was going so slowly, partly because he couldn't see past the fender of the '55. So he waited. He got ready to give out a really big yell just as the car or truck or whatever it was passed the trailer. He didn't care who it was. He didn't care that he'd shit on himself and was sitting in it and that somebody might see it. He just wanted some help.

The gravel kept crunching and it got louder and he wondered why the person driving was going so slowly. He turned his head toward the gravel road, waiting, getting ready to suck in a big breath of air so that he could yell plenty loud, and he waited. And waited. And then the nose of a Mercury nosed past the front of his '55 and he saw Lacey looking out at him from behind the wheel of the car. She grinned and waved. She was creeping at about one mile per hour. Maybe two.

“Stop!” he screamed, and she slammed on the brakes.

“Hey!” she said gaily, leaning her head out the window. She lifted a beer and took a drink. “What you doing?”

Jimmy's daddy closed his eyes and shook his head. Could she not see what he was doing? Could she not see that he had shit on himself?

“Come here and help me!” he yelled.

“What about your wife?” she said. “She not home right now?”

“Get your ass over here and jack this fucking car up off me!” he screamed, and damn near fainted when she backed up and stopped and then pulled on in and got out to help him. She set her beer on her fender.

It almost hurt worse when it came back up. Lacey seemed pretty expert at setting up jacks because she took the base of the jack and scraped away the loose gravel down to hard ground and set it on that, and then
she hunted around until she found a chunk of wood and set it behind the other rear tire to keep it from rolling. Then she jacked it up. Jimmy's daddy winced as he felt the rough metal slowly releasing his hands, and it was such a relief that he almost cried again.

“Oh God,” he kept saying, over and over, and he looked back at Lacey to see that she was almost crying, too.

“Hold on, baby,” she said, pumping on the jack, her big boobs swinging. The fender well lifted off his hands and Jimmy's daddy slammed himself backward, flat on his back on the gravel, and he was afraid to look at his hands. They felt all crabbed up. Finally he looked at them. Both his palms had tire tracks printed in them. They looked swollen. They were slightly purple. But miraculously, nothing seemed to be broken. He could wriggle his fingers.

He dragged himself backward, away from the car, and he rubbed his hands together. His thumbs felt numb. But in them there was starting up that little tingling feeling like a thousand needle points sticking him, just like it did when his legs went to sleep on a deer stand from not moving for so long. When he felt that, he knew he was going to be all right.

“Help me up,” he said, and she did.

She waited in the living room while he cleaned himself up in the bathroom. He was a nervous wreck because he knew he had to get her the
hell
out of here before Johnette and the kids came home. Hell. He'd just say he didn't know who in the hell she was but that after she'd been good enough to stop and get the car off him, he'd invited her in for a beer.

His underwear and his pants were lying in the bathtub and he got some clean shorts from the drawer in his bedroom, then pulled a clean pair of jeans off a hanger in the closet. He walked into the kitchen and went to a cabinet at the side of the stove and opened the cabinet door. He got a Hefty garbage bag with yellow ties and looked at Lacey where she was sitting on the couch, having a smoke and drinking a fresh beer that she'd gotten from her Mercury. She looked pretty comfortable. Would she tell anybody that he'd shit on himself? He sure hoped not. They hadn't talked about it. She'd seen what had happened to him. Couldn't help but see. But she hadn't said anything about it. Thank God.

“You got a nice trailer,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said. “I'll be done in a minute. Then we got to get you the hell out a here.”

“I know it,” she said. “If she comes in while I'm setting here, just tell her you don't know me from Adam and I just happened to come by.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Jimmy's daddy said, and took the garbage bag back to the bathroom and put the soiled underwear and pants inside it, rolled it up tightly, turned on the water in the tub and washed out the inside of it, then took the rolled-up garbage bag back to the kitchen and put it inside another garbage bag that was inside the garbage can. Then he bagged up the trash and took it outside and stuffed it down inside one of the metal garbage cans he kept out there and closed the lid over it. What the hell did she mean coming by here? And how in the hell had she found out where he lived? He was going to have to have a talk with her. But not today. And damn sure not here.

When he stepped back inside the trailer she was sitting there looking at some pictures of the kids and just generally checking everything out in the living room. She looked up at him and smiled.

“Let me get my boots on,” he said.

“I ain't in no hurry,” she said.

“Yeah, but I am.”

He went back to the bedroom and put his boots back on and got his cap and went to the bathroom and popped a couple of Imodium from a bottle Johnette kept in the medicine cabinet. Then he went back out to the living room. But Lacey wasn't in there.

“Lacey?” he called.

“I'm back here,” her dim voice called. Where the hell was she?

Holy shit. Was she in the back bathroom? “Back here in the bathroom.”

Back in the
bathroom
? Fuck! What if Johnette came in now?

“What are you
doing
?” he yelled.

“Taking a leak,” she called. “That dang beer runs right through me.”

“Well, hurry up,” he called. “You got to go!”

“I know it,” she said, and he heard the toilet flush.

Jimmy's daddy's hands were feeling better now, but they still had the tire tracks on them. They looked like they'd been imprinted on his skin.
He'd already tried washing them and it wouldn't come off. He didn't know what he was going to tell anybody who asked. What was he going to tell Johnette if she asked? Who was he going to say got the car off him? Some passing kid in a big truck? Maybe so.

Lacey came up the hall, smoothing her black pants over her hips, straightening the bottom of her flowery blouse, and she walked up to him and stopped. He opened his mouth to say something and she raised one of her hands and placed her fingers over his lips.

“I know already what you're gonna say,” she said. “I know I ain't supposed to be in here. But I'm glad I come by when I did.”

“I'm glad you did, too,” Jimmy's daddy said. And he really was.

“Don't be mad cause I come driving by,” she said. “I was just out riding around, having a few beers. I wouldn't have got you in no trouble. I'm heading home now. I'll see you tomorrow at work.”

“Okay,” Jimmy's daddy said. He could see love in her eyes for sure now. And he could see the hurt in her eyes, too. He didn't know what it was from, only that she had it. She leaned a little closer.

“I'd give anything to kiss you right now,” she said.

Jimmy's daddy stood there. He didn't say anything because he didn't know what to say. But he didn't want to kiss her here. He was afraid he might not be able to stop himself from going ahead with her right here. Or taking her down the road somewhere. And maybe getting caught.

“But I know I got to go.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy's daddy said. “I guess you'd better.”

“I don't need to be here when your family comes in,” she said.

Then you better get your ass in the road
, he thought.

“Bye,” she said, and she opened the door, stepped down the steps, then closed the door. Jimmy's daddy sat down in a chair. He heard her open her door, heard the door close, heard the car start, heard the car pull out, heard the car go on down the road until the sound of it died away. He got up and went to the door and opened it. Lacey had put the wheel back on while he'd cleaned himself up. She had even put the jack and the lug wrench away. It looked like nothing had happened except for his tire-tracked hands.

Cortez got up early in the morning like he always did and shaved carefully like he always did. He made some coffee and he made pancakes from a box of Aunt Jemima mix and poured some Johnny Fair syrup all over the stack and sat down alone at the kitchen table and ate while the birds sang outside the screen windows. Since his wife died, Cortez had raised all the windows and had kept the air conditioner turned off most of the time. It got warm sometimes in the afternoons and he ran it then if he was in the house, but he liked to sleep with the windows up at night now since he was alone and could do whatever he wanted to at long last. It was kind of like having a brand-new life. He guessed he could even date now if he wanted to.

But who would he date? He'd probably have to go to church to find somebody, and he didn't want to go to church. All the old women he knew around here his age looked like they were all dried up. If he
did
decide to date somebody, he might want somebody a little bit younger. Say maybe somebody who was about sixty-five or so. Somebody who still had some meat on her bones. He wasn't sure he could still do it, but he was thinking about finding out. He knew he still thought about it. Even more so now that he'd been watching those dirty movies on the TV. They had kind of recharged his batteries.

He washed his dishes after he got through eating so he wouldn't have to do it later. He'd been keeping the house clean, too. Dusted one day, swept and mopped another. He put his rubber boots on and went up to the barn and then he closed the lot gate and turned the heifers out into the north pasture where the grass was belly high and left them there. He got into his truck and drove down past the equipment shed and opened the gate there, drove through, then got out and closed it behind him.

The sun was bright on the dew in a million points of light and he could see the sun striking the droplets of moisture on the fresh webs of spiders strung here and there, knitted overnight. The cows were down in
the bottom pasture and he started blowing the horn when he saw them. They started walking toward him and he turned around and stopped to see if they were coming on. They were. It was a wonder. If there was anything dumber than a cow he didn't know what it was. They had to be the dumbest animals God ever put on the face of the earth. He blew the horn a few more times and then drove on up behind the barn and parked the truck and got out and opened the south gate and left it open. He walked into the barn and got a bucket and filled it with some sweet feed and carried it back out. The cows were starting to trot toward the trough and he dumped the sweet feed on the rough boards, spreading it in a long row. The cows hurried forward, and he went around the edge of them and waited for the old Brahman to get herself in and then he shut the gate, leaving the rest of them and their calves out there bawling to get in. […]