A Miracle of Catfish (37 page)

When the water level was down to a foot and a half, and her dorsal fin was sticking out, he put the drain plug back in and picked up two short lengths of rubber hose and got into the tank with her. She was splashing a lot of water and it was hard to get her to stay still, but he finally got down on his knees and held her that way while he slipped the rubber hoses over her side fins. He had it in his head to use them for handles to release her.

He stood up and lowered his sling with the chain hoist way down into the bottom of the tank and bent over her again. He started trying to slip it under her, but she splashed mightily and got him soaking wet. He just ignored that and kept working until he slid the canvas beneath her. She splashed water everywhere. He pulled up the other side and laced the ropes together and pulled the drawstrings snug against her on each end. Her side fins folded back and she was in.

He had to stand there and pull on the chain on the hoist with both hands to make her rise vertically against the side of the tank. She did a lot of flopping and slapping at the wall of the tank with her tail, but she was somewhat restricted in her movements by the sling, and all he had to do was keep pulling on the chain. He hoped nobody from the bank
drove down here and asked him what the hell he was doing. Somebody would have to get told that it wasn't any of their business.

He kept working at it and noticed that it was fifteen till ten. She was almost up to the top of the tank and he eyed the table, judging how wide she'd swing when she cleared the edge. He put one hand against the side of the tank and gave the chain a few more pulls, and she lifted dripping from the tank and swung over the table, swaying gently a few times, wriggling, her big wide tail sticking out, and making a grinding noise with her mouth. He raised her a few more inches and then pulled the table out of the way. It had only been there to catch her just in case he dropped her. But she looked like she was safe. He went back and got on the chain with both hands, raising her ever higher, until she was about a foot or two below the joist. He stopped. He tore a couple of paper towels off a roll that was mounted on the wall and wiped his hands. Then he walked around to the door of the truck and climbed up behind the wheel.

He put it in reverse and looked through the back glass. She was not quite centered over the tank but he could sway her a little either way. He backed up slowly, hands and feet careful on the wheel and the clutch and the brake. The thought crossed his mind that if Audrey could see this shit she'd think he'd lost his mind.

He backed up cautiously, letting the raised lid on the truck tank be his guide. It was brushing her a little, but not enough to hurt anything. He stopped when he thought she was right over the truck tank, and then he put it into neutral and pulled out the hand brake. He got out and climbed up on the back of the truck. Could he lift her out of the tank by himself?

She was a little off center, but that was all right. The chain on the hoist was hanging down the side of the truck, and he reached out for it and got it on the inside of the tank wall. He flipped the trigger to reverse it and started lowering her. The cold water was bubbling in the tank. He wasn't going to feed her while she was in there. He'd take some feed with him. He'd already told the old man to get some feed, so maybe he had. And hell. Once the old man started throwing feed out, she was going to come up to eat, and he was going to see her. He could always tell the old man to feed them at night. That might work. It didn't matter. He'd be gone by then.

It only took a few minutes to get her into the water, and as soon as he did he released the drawstrings front and back. He kept lowering her and when her whole back was under the surface of the water he reached up and unfastened the ropes on the side facing him, and she rolled out, splashed mightily, throwing water up to the joists, and then she was in. Lying there pulling cold water into her gills. Opening and closing her mouth.

He stood there for just a moment, watching her, and then he closed the lid on her tank, latched it, and climbed down off the truck. He got back behind the wheel and pulled the truck out from under the chain hoist and left it hanging. He drove the truck back outside and stopped it again and then went back and shut off all the lights and closed the two side doors. He'd drain her tank, lift her out, set her on the back of the truck.

He didn't waste any time looking at everything that had been his. He just pulled out his cell phone and consulted a little tablet he carried around in his pocket all the time and called Cortez Sharp in Mississippi. When he answered, Tommy told him that he was on his way with his fish. And the eager happiness in the old man's voice was a real good thing to hear. It almost made it all worth it.

But not quite.

Another thing that wasn't fair among all the things that weren't fair as far as school went was all the homework they gave you to do as soon as school started. It was like maybe the teachers had worked on all this stuff all summer long while they were off so that they'd be ready to load you down with enough arithmetic and Mississippi history and science and English and social studies homework to make sure you didn't have time to go out and ride your go-kart any before dark if you had a go-kart. Jimmy couldn't believe how much homework he had the very first night and how long it took to do it, sitting on the living-room couch with his books and his tablets, trying to get it done while the girls talked on the portable phone and watched TV and his mama fixed herself sandwiches and leaned over into the refrigerator for a container of french onion dip and took it and a big bag of potato chips back to her room and lay down on the bed and flipped through the channels looking for something to watch. She was also tugging on those funny-looking cigarettes she smoked sometimes that smelled odd. Tangy. Sweet. He'd noticed that she never did this when his daddy was around, but she apparently didn't mind doing it while Jimmy and the girls were around. He'd asked Evelyn one time what was that stuff Mama was smoking and Evelyn said it was weed. Jimmy asked her what weed was and she said it was boo. He asked her what boo was and she said it was shit. He asked her what shit was and she said it was tea. He asked her what tea was and she said,
Don't ask so many questions, you little rotten-tooth son of a bitch, she's getting stoned.
When Jimmy told her she was calling her own mother a bitch, that shut her up for a while.

Jimmy in his homework had been reading about all the Indians who used to live in Mississippi, mainly Choctaws and Chickasaws. He wished they still did. He liked anything about Indians. Arrowheads, for instance. He had a couple of real good dark red ones he hadn't shown his daddy that he'd found in the fields below the old rotted house where he'd seen the dead black lady, before he'd seen the dead black lady. Some
kid at school, a boy named Herschel Horowitz with big glasses, had told Jimmy during a conversation they were having about arrowheads that his daddy, Herman Horowitz, was pretty crazy about going out and hunting arrowheads and often took Herschel along with him and that the best time and place to find arrowheads was in a field that had just been broken up in the spring, right after a rain. Herschel said what happened was a natural thing, that the rain washed the dirt away from the arrowheads and made it easier to find them. And it turned out that Herschel had been right. Jimmy had gone down in the field below the rotted house back in the spring to see if the men who worked the land had their tractors in the field yet, and he had to go a couple of times, hanging around and waiting on the side of the road, looking for snakes, wishing he could wade in the creek, seeing how many birds he could see, looking for turtles, but eventually he saw a big green tractor plowing the ground and then he just waited for a good rain, which was only two days later, since it was April, and he'd walked out in the muddy field with his tennis shoes getting soggy and had looked for a long time and just saw mud and mud and mud and mud and walked some more and looked some more and just saw mud and mud and walked some more and looked some more, saw more mud, looked and walked and saw more mud and then a point sticking up that was chiseled, Stone Age, handmade, sharp enough to cut meat. He reached and plucked it like a flower and it was not an arrowhead, it was a spear point, a nearly perfect one, and Jimmy had gotten really really
really
excited and had taken it back home to show his daddy, and his daddy had borrowed it to show it to somebody at work and never had given it back, and now Jimmy didn't know where it was. He'd asked his daddy about it a couple of times and the second time he asked him his daddy got madder than he had the first time so Jimmy didn't ask him anymore. He had gone so far as to complain to his mother, but she just said she couldn't do anything with him and that if Jimmy would be good and not cause any more trouble than there already was in the trailer, then maybe the next time Kenny Chesney scheduled a concert for Tupelo
maybe
they could go. Now she was saying they definitely didn't have the money. She was backing out. Crawfishing. They'd already argued about it some, a couple of times. He said he never got to go anywhere and had to stay home all the time
with the girls and she said that she'd only said
maybe
and Jimmy said that school was fixing to start back up and talked a little about how nice it would be if they could all go to a Kenny Chesney concert together and she said they never would be able to get his daddy to go over there because he didn't like to go anywhere except to work and hunting and fishing and riding around drinking beer with his buddies and Jimmy said he didn't think his daddy liked to go to work. He mouthed off a little bit more and even whined some but pretty much gave up when he realized it was a question of money, which was something he could do nothing about. But tonight while he was doing his homework he still had a few questions going through his head. One of them was, How much did big fat sandwiches cost? Another one was, What about those great big bags of chips? And, How come the girls got CDs and he didn't? And, Where was his daddy again tonight? Wasn't he hungry? Didn't he want some supper? How come he stayed gone so much? Jimmy had already eaten some hot dogs. And he had a tooth that was hurting. It wasn't hurting bad. It was just kind of hurting. This had been a problem for a while, his rotten front teeth, and having to look at them in the mirror and be ashamed of them. And he was. Had been for a long time. Jimmy sure hoped he wouldn't have to go to the dentist. He was kind of scared of the dentist after listening to his daddy tell some horror stories about what some dentist had done to him when he was a kid. Jimmy had already decided that he didn't want to meet any dentists.

Jimmy did some arithmetic homework and some science homework and watched part of
Back to the Future
and part of
Conan the Barbarian
and the tail end of
Jaws
while the girls changed channels and talked some more on the phone. His mama came in and fixed herself a chocolate milkshake and got a handful of Oreos and turned to go back to her room. Jimmy raised his head.

“Where's Daddy?” he said.

“I don't know,” his mama said.

“He's off drinking beer,” Evelyn said.

“Or riding around,” Velma said. “In his ragged-out fifty-five he thinks is so cool.”

“Y'all's guess is as good as mine,” Jimmy's mama said, and went on back to her room. She shut the door.

“I'm gonna go take a bath,” Velma said, and got up. She was in the fifth this year. She had hardly any homework at all, looked like. If she had some, she wasn't doing it. She wasn't doing anything except looking at a
Seventeen
magazine and talking on the phone whenever Evelyn wasn't talking on it.

“Don't use all the hot water up,” Evelyn said.

“Oh shut up,” Velma said.

“Don't you tell me to shut up,” Evelyn said, and got up.

“I'll tell you to shut up any time I want to,” Velma said.

“No you won't,” Evelyn said.

“Yes I will,” Velma said.

“You might get the shit slapped out of you, too,” Evelyn said.

“You might shit and fall back in it, too,” Velma said.

Jimmy laughed. Evelyn looked at him.

“What you laughing at, you little fucker?” Evelyn said. “I'll slap the shit out of you, too.”

“I'd like to see you try it,” Jimmy said.

Jimmy's mama came storming out of her room and she was mad.

“All right!” she said. “I heard all that. Evelyn, I'm gonna wash your mouth out with soap if you don't stop talking to your brother and your sister that way! You think I'm kidding, Missy? Try me!”

“He ain't my brother, he's my half brother,” Evelyn said in a pouty way. “And she ain't my sister, she's my half sister.”

“I don't care,” Jimmy's mama said. “Just stop all that. I don't want to listen to it tonight,” she said, and went back to her room.

Evelyn waited until she heard her mother's door shut and then she walked over to Jimmy and leaned down in his face. She had on a V-neck shirt and when she leaned over Jimmy could see part of her breasts, which were growing and already pretty big for somebody who was only in the seventh grade. He'd noticed over the summer that they'd been growing some the same way he'd noticed that his feet were getting too big for his shoes. He figured Evelyn was probably going to be a whore. He didn't know exactly what a whore was but he figured she was a good candidate for being one.

Evelyn said: “You little smart son of a bitch, just wait till they're both gone sometime. I'll call my boyfriend over here and he'll beat the dog shit out of you.”

“No he won't,” Jimmy said. “I'll tell Daddy if he does.”

Evelyn gave him a hateful smirk. “That redneck? What's he gonna do?”

“Don't you call my daddy a redneck,” Jimmy said, and he stood up and put his schoolbook down on the couch.