A Miracle of Catfish (50 page)

She pulled up in front of the trailer and stopped. She looked kind of upset. Jimmy had watched her write a check to the dentist's office and she'd seemed to be kind of worried, but she didn't seem that way now. Jimmy worried about his mama a lot. She didn't seem to be happy. Not most times anyway. She could be reading a magazine and she'd just sigh. But if you looked at her, she'd look up and smile.

“I've got to go back to work,” she said. “I'm running late. I hate to leave you here by yourself, but I don't know what else to do.”

“I'll be all right,” he said.

She reached over and touched his hair. Then she bent toward him and kissed him on the cheek. Gave him one last lingering touch with her hand.

“I know you will. Just watch some TV or something,” she said. “The girls'll be in at three thirty.”

“Okay,” Jimmy said. He already knew that. And that meant he'd be alone with Evelyn and Velma until his daddy came in. He hoped his daddy would come in before Evelyn could do something nasty to him.

“You can fix you a sandwich or something when the feeling comes back. Not before, okay?”

“Okay,” Jimmy said, and got out.

“Bye, babe,” she said, and Jimmy said bye and closed the door. He watched her back out of the driveway and then she turned her car toward
the county road and took off. Jimmy watched the dust roll out behind her and he waved to her. She waved back and then was gone.

The little dogs were all gone somewhere. Sometimes they did that, just left. Jimmy figured they were probably out hunting rabbits. He didn't know why his daddy didn't take them hunting with him.

He went on inside the trailer and it was absolutely quiet. It was different. It wasn't like being alone in it at night, as he sometimes was. It was daytime now, and the quietness made it feel like a strange place. […] He wondered if it would be okay for him to have a Coke. Surely he wouldn't chew a hole in his cheek with a Coke. So he got one from the icebox, and then he set it down and got a glass and filled it with ice cubes and poured some of the Coke over it, then took it into the living room and set it down and grabbed the remote and turned the TV on.

He was still pretty numb, and the Coke tasted kind of funny when he took a sip from it. But the toothache part was over. He was fixed. And he knew he had to go back, but he wasn't scared anymore, just because the dentist had been so kind. And also because the dentist had stuck a small mask over his face and let him breathe through it for about ten minutes before he gave him the first shot in his gum to deaden his tooth. By then, from breathing whatever it was through the mask, Jimmy wouldn't have cared if the dentist had pulled out an old deer horn to work on him. He'd had all kinds of pleasant daydreams about arrowheads and Indians while the drill turned inside his mouth and tooth dust flew out. It was like every bone in his body had turned to Jell-O. He had actually almost enjoyed it. So much for being scared of a dentist. Jimmy thought Doctor Tony was probably the kindest man in town.

[…]

Jimmy thought he'd sit here and watch a little TV, sip his Coke, and he knew he had some M&M's somewhere. He'd sit here and let the feeling come back into his mouth and then he'd fix himself a nice sandwich and get some potato chips and some dip and just lounge around until the girls came home from school. And then he thought he'd walk up the road and look across at the pond and see if he could see Mister Cortez anywhere. He knew he'd gone to the hospital, because he'd still been down at the pond when the ambulance came for him, and had watched them take him away. So he was wondering if he was still in the hospital.
Jimmy had changed his mind about Mister Cortez. He'd decided that he wasn't a mean old man after all. Jimmy knew he shouldn't have been on his land.

It was hard to find much good on the TV in the daytime. They had all those daytime shows and none of it was very interesting, just people sitting around talking. He watched part of a western and then he flipped it around and found a show about bank robbers and watched that. Bonnie and Clyde. John Dillinger. Baby Face Nelson. He sipped his Coke. He could tell that the feeling was slowly coming back. And he was getting a little hungry.

He got up and went over to the icebox and opened the door to see what was in there. His mama had gone to the grocery store yesterday, so he was hoping there was something good to eat in there. But it looked like the girls had already been in there because the pickings were pretty slim. Hot dogs. Some old dried-up pizza still in the box from Pizza Hut. He opened it and looked at it anyway. Old nasty curled-up pepperoni and dry-looking cheese. It didn't look like anything you'd want to eat, although Velma seemed to prefer cold pizza for breakfast over everything else. He closed the box and stuck it back in there. She could have it. He opened one of the bins and looked in there. There was some baloney, but it was old and curled up, turning color. […] So he looked in the cabinets to see what was in there. Spaghetti noodles. Flour and meal. Soup. Did he want soup? There was tomato and chicken noodle. Be hard to chew a hole in your cheek with soup. Nah. He didn't want soup. There were a few cans of tuna fish, but he didn't know how to make tuna salad. There were plenty of vegetables in cans, but he didn't want vegetables for lunch. He needed some meat. There were several cans of pork and beans. Some cake mix in boxes. More noodles. And then he saw some Vienna sausages and got down a can of them. He found some crackers. He got a plate. And then he happened to think to look in the freezer section of the refrigerator to see what was in there, and he found a brand-new unopened half gallon of Rocky Road. He put the plate back and found a bowl instead. And a spoon.

He was lying on the couch watching
The Real World
with his empty bowl on the coffee table and eating M&M's when he heard some gravel crunching out in front of the trailer. He put his candy down and turned the TV down and heard a door slam, so he went to the trailer door and opened it. He was kind of surprised to see Mister Cortez walking toward him. He had his arm in a cast, but his fingers were sticking out the end.

“Hey,” Jimmy said, holding the door wide open.

“Hey there yourself,” Mister Cortez said. “What you doing home from school today? You playing hooky?”

“Naw sir. I had to go to the dentist,” Jimmy said. “I got my teeth fixed. See?” He opened his mouth so that Mister Cortez could look in there. Mister Cortez stood at the bottom of the steps trying to see up inside Jimmy's mouth which was mostly full of melted M&M's.

“I see,” he said. “That looks pretty good.”

“You all right?” Jimmy said.

“Aw yeah. I'm fine,” Mister Cortez said. He held up his cast. “I just got to wear this thing for a while.”

He stood there and looked around.

“Where's all them little dogs at?” he said.

“They took off,” Jimmy said. “They'll be back later. I think they go out and run rabbits. But they don't never bring none home. You want to come in? I'm watching TV, but they ain't nothing much good on.”

“I was wanting to speak to your mama or your daddy, one,” Mister Cortez said. “Is one of them home?”

“No sir,” Jimmy said. “They both at work.”

“I see,” Mister Cortez said, and nodded. “Well. I just wanted to ask em something. I can come back some other time. What time they get in?”

“Mama don't never get in till after five but Daddy gets in sometimes at four. But sometimes he don't come in till later.” Jimmy didn't want to tell Mister Cortez that lots of times it was dark when Daddy came home.

And then Mister Cortez looked over there by the pine tree and saw Jimmy's go-kart. He nodded at it.

“What's wrong with your go-kart?” he said. “I ain't seen you on it in a while.”

“Chain won't stay on,” Jimmy said. “It's done got too loose.”

“Will it run?”

“Oh, yes sir,” Jimmy said, and came on down the steps. He walked over to the go-kart and flipped the toggle switch marked Off/On and choked it, then pulled the starter cord a few times, and it sputtered to life. He mashed the gas pedal with his fingers and revved it up, then pushed the choke off. It sat there running smoothly and the clutch was turning, but the chain was draped over the driving gear like a loose necklace. He shut it off.

Mister Cortez squatted down next to the go-kart and looked at it. He looked up at Jimmy.

“Can your daddy not fix it?” he said.

“I don't reckon so,” Jimmy said.

Mister Cortez was looking closely at the chain by then. He slipped it off the driving gear and looked at the gear. Then he looked at the mounting plate beneath the motor. He looked back up.

“That's all that's wrong with it?” he said.

“Far as I know,” Jimmy said. “Daddy tightened it one time and then he said the chain had got stretched and he didn't know how to fix it.”

“It just needs a link took out of it,” Mister Cortez said. He held it up. It was greasy and it was getting black grease on his fingers, but he didn't seem to care. Maybe he'd been around greasy things before.

“How you do that?” Jimmy said.

“I'll show you,” Mister Cortez said, and he got up and walked over to his truck and lifted what looked like a pretty heavy metal box from the back end with his good arm. He brought it over and set it on the ground, and when he opened it, Jimmy saw more tools than he'd ever seen in one place at a time. Mister Cortez had a lot more tools than Jimmy's daddy, and his weren't rusty, they were shiny and clean. He had wrenches, screwdrivers, sockets, all kinds of stuff. He picked up a pair of pliers that had long slim tips. He looked up again.

“Will your daddy care for me fixing it for you?”

“I don't guess,” Jimmy said, and then he started to get excited. Oh
boy!
If Mister Cortez could fix it, he could start back
driving
it all the time, as long as he had some gas. He could drive it at night, with his flashlight headlight. He wondered if Mister Cortez had ever seen the dead black lady who walked the road crying. But he didn't ask him. He just sat
down in the gravel next to Mister Cortez and watched him as he started fixing the go-kart.

“See this little thing right here?” Mister Cortez said, holding up the chain. Jimmy saw a tiny plate in the links.

“Yes sir?”

“That comes off. It's just like a chain on a hay baler. All we got to do is take it off and cut one link out, then put it back together, and it'll be good as new. Then we'll take them bolts off underneath the motor and put the chain on and add some washers to them bolts, raise that motor until it's tight. I got some washers. Won't take long.”

“Boy,” Jimmy said. It was all he could think of to say.

“You ain't got a brick around here nowhere, do you?” Mister Cortez said.

“Yes sir, I sure do,” Jimmy told him, and walked around behind the trailer and found a couple and brought them back.

“Here's two,” he said, and Mister Cortez took one of them and set it down in front of him. He was being careful with his bad arm.

“One may be enough,” he said.

Jimmy squatted close to Mister Cortez and watched him closely. He laid the chain on its side on top of the brick and then he rummaged around in his tool box and came up with a small hammer with a rounded head on one side and a flat side on the other. And he found a small punch. He put the punch on top of the link in the chain and tapped it gently with the hammer. Then he stopped.

“Let me see that other brick,” he said, and Jimmy handed it to him. He set the second brick down so that there was a gap of about an inch between them, and he put the link in the chain over that empty space. Then he set the punch carefully on top of the tiny plate, and tapped it with the hammer. The tiny plate popped off and fell to the ground. Mister Cortez picked it up and handed it to Jimmy.

“Don't lose that,” he said.

Jimmy took it and looked at it. It was just a little piece of metal that resembled a figure eight, with two small holes in it. Then Mister Cortez put his tools down and worked the chain apart, and he came up with another little piece of metal like the first one, only this one had two pins in it. Mister Cortez handed it to him.

“Don't lose that neither,” he said. “That's your master link.”

Jimmy looked at it.
Master link?
Mister Cortez was rummaging around in his tool box again and he came out with what looked like a brand-new file in a plastic sleeve. He pulled the file from the sleeve and laid the sleeve aside.

“If I had this in my vise I could do it quicker,” he said. “But this'll work. It may take me a little bit. You know how to check your oil?”

Not even an hour later Jimmy was running up and down the road. He was power sliding, cutting donuts, pressing the gas as hard as he could, and the chain didn't come off. He roared down the road and roared back up it, and Mister Cortez stood in front of the trailer and watched him as he put his tools away. Jimmy knew he didn't have much gas, because he'd already pulled the cap off the gas tank and looked inside. And there wasn't any way to get any more until his daddy came home, and even then he might not get any, if his daddy didn't want to go to the store. So he pulled back in front of the trailer and shut it off. Mister Cortez was leaning on the fender of his truck.

“Running pretty good, ain't it?” he said.

Jimmy got off his go-kart and looked down at it, then up at Mister Cortez.

“It sure is,” he said. “I sure thank you for fixing it for me.”

“You welcome,” Mister Cortez said. He stood there looking at Jimmy for a few moments. “I been wanting to ask you something,” he said.

“Okay,” Jimmy said. He already knew what he was going to ask him.

“How come you to see me when I rolled my tractor over?” he said. “Did you just happen to be walking by?”