Shaking the Sugar Tree (16 page)

“And pay no attention to Papaw.”

“Who’s that?”

“My grandfather.”

“And?”

“You’ll see.”

Do you like fishing?
Noah asked, looking up at him.

Jackson looked to me. The word “fishing” was not yet in his sign language vocabulary. I demonstrated the sign for fishing, told him what it was.

I’ve never been fishing. Can you show me?
Jackson signed.

Of course! We’re going to have fun!

We carried our bags to Jackson’s Jeep, then put them in the back. Noah was excited to ride in the Jeep, which was much nicer than our beat-up station wagon. We gassed up, got ice, and were down in Union County by four o’clock.

“Good luck,” I said to Jackson as he pulled into my mother’s long driveway.

“You’re scaring me,” he said.

“How bad could it be?” I asked with a hint of a smile as we got out.

“Bumple!” Noah exclaimed when Bumblebee ran over to greet us and sniff at Jackson’s shorts.

Papaw sat on the porch, dipping and spitting.

“How are you, Papaw?” I asked.

“I reckon I’m still not dead,” he said with a smile. “I know y’all are waiting to get your grubby hands on my safety deposit box, but I would ask you to wait until they put me under the ground and make sure I’m dead and cold and in my grave with six feet of dirt on top of me. It’s not like you haven’t stolen everything else out from under me, you fucking thieves. You still gay, Wiley?”

“Papaw, this is my friend Jackson Ledbetter,” I said, ignoring his question.

“How are you, sir?” Jackson said, putting his hand forward.

“A damn Yankee?” Papaw asked with a grin. “I can tell by the sound of your voice. I remember when we ran you Yankee twats out of here with your tails between your legs. Fat lot of good it did us. So you’re a gay boy, huh?”

“Excuse me?” Jackson said.

“Pay no attention,” I said. “Papaw likes to have his fun.”

“I reckon if you’re a friend of Wiley’s then you like rear deliveries. Am I right? Bend over, take it up the chuff? Ha!”

“Papaw, would you stop?” I asked, exasperated.

“Can’t a man have a little fun?” Papaw asked, bending to spit in the coffee can he used for this purpose. “I remember when gay meant happy. Now it means you get your panties in a wad about everything, a bunch of touchy-feely communist bastards always on the phone to the ACLU and trying to sue the stink off your own poop hole. You got AIDS, boy?”

“I’m sorry?” Jackson said.

“I thought all you gay boys were dying of AIDS,” Papaw said. “Dropping like flies! Christ, we could only hope!”

“Is he serious?” Jackson asked, looking at me.

“Is Mama home?” I asked.

“She’s kicking around here somewhere. How’s the little deaf boy?”

“Don’t call him that, Papaw.”

“He’s as deaf as a post. What do you want me to call him? It’s not like he can hear me anyway, is it?”

I rolled my eyes.

Mama came out onto the porch, her lips twisted into a frown.

“Mr. Light-in-the-Loafers is here,” Papaw announced. “And he’s got a little faggy friend. He’s also a little light in the loafers, if you know what I mean. They’ll probably both be dead of some venereal disease by Christmas so I wouldn’t get attached.”

“Daddy, hush,” Mama said. “We have company.”

“This is Jackson, the guy I was telling you about,” I said.

“Just ignore my daddy,” she said. “He’s a character. Where’s my grandson?”

“I’ll call him, Martha,” Papaw said, sitting forward in his chair and thrusting his face forward importantly. “Deaf boy? Deaf boy!” he bellowed. “Oh! He can’t hear you because he’s as deaf as a post, Martha! Oh, imagine that!”

“If you weren’t my daddy, I’d take you over my knee!” Mama said. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what I have to put up with! Where is that boy?”

“He’s talking to Bumblebee ’cause that boy has sense,” Papaw observed. “He’s going places, that boy. Your son is going to turn him into an interior decorator if you’re not careful, Martha. Or maybe some choice career path like hairdresser. He’ll be a queer eye for the straight guys.”

Jackson shot me another perplexed look.

Noah caught sight of his Memaw and came running.

“Hello!” he squawked.

Mama gave him a hug.

“Jackson works at the medical center,” I said, trying to make conversation.

“You a doctor?” Mama asked, suddenly interested.

“I’m a nurse.”

“He’s a nurse!” Papaw exclaimed. “Did you hear him, Martha? He’s a nurse! And he admits it!”

“Daddy, would you shut up?” she asked.

“Nurses make good money,” Papaw said. “If he wants to be a nurse, let the queer boy be a nurse. Ain’t like you need a PhD to wipe somebody’s ass.”

“We should let him give you a sponge bath,” Mama said acidly.

“He’s welcome to feel me up,” Papaw said. “If there’s anything left down there to feel up, he’s welcome to it. I don’t think it’s worked since the 1970s. After that syphilis thing, they pumped me so full of penicillin I was shitting my own guts. What I wouldn’t give for one more good erection!”

“Oh my God,” Jackson whispered in disbelief, shaking his head.

“Ignore him,” I said.

“The last nurse that came to see me is a thief,” Papaw announced. “A fucking thief!”

“Watch your tongue, Daddy!” Mama said. “And she is not. She’s a very nice woman to put up with your contrariness.”

“She took my fucking teeth, Martha!” he exclaimed angrily.

“Oh, she did not!” Mama replied.

“What does she want with my goddamn teeth? Sell them on eBay? Or maybe it was a souvenir. Maybe she steals teeth from old men just to get her kicks. Well, I’d like to give her a kick.”

“If she stole your teeth, why are you wearing them now?” Mama asked.

“Well, that’s just it. She’s very smart, this one. She steals something; then she puts it back. I think she was just testing the waters.”

“Or maybe she cleaned them for you.”

“Still gave me a fright, Martha. I don’t want people messing with my fucking teeth.”

“Please don’t cuss, Daddy,” Mama said. “I swear I’m going to duct-tape your mouth shut.”

Papaw laughed.

Jackson giggled rather nervously.

“She calls herself a nurse,” Papaw went on. “A nurse! A fucking Nazi is more like it. She said I have three words for you, Mr. Cantrell.
Exercise, exercise, exercise
. I said I’ve got three words for you, honeybunch:
Weight Fucking Watchers
. You’re as big as a goddamn house! If you sat on my lap, you’d break every bone in my body. By Christ, what a tub of lard! Oh, you should see her. When she stands by my bed, she’s got half her ass in Union County and the other half in Lee County. What a fucking whale! I said darling, you really need to get your own zip code, don’t you? They could paint a stripe down your back and use you for a regional airport! The Air Force could hire you as an aircraft carrier!”

“I’m going to tell her you said all of that,” Mama vowed.

“I can see where you get it from,” Jackson observed, blushing as he looked at me.

“You’re a character, aren’t you, Papaw?” I asked.

“You know what she said to me?” Papaw asked, in his element now that he was getting the attention he craved. “You know what she said?
Don’t talk to me like that, Mr. Cantrell
. Well, you know what I said? I said I’ll talk to you any way I please in my own home, thank you very much. I’m not some poor son of a bitch in a nursing home stinking of piss and eating Jell-O and applesauce because he hasn’t got any fucking teeth and no fucking friends. I’ll talk however I please in my own house, thank you!”

“And what did she say to that?” I asked.

“She didn’t answer!” Papaw said dramatically. “I looked up and her teeth were stuck together because she was eating her weight in fucking Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Oh, I never saw such a sight in my life. Just stuffing it all into her great big fat fucking face. Oh, it’s not a sight you want your children to see, Wiley, I’m telling you. Christ, it gave me a scare. Ought to be illegal, scaring people like that. I’ll probably never have another erection as long I live.”

“Honest to God, Daddy,” Mama said in despair.

Papaw cackled in his mad fashion.

“Do you mind I use your bathroom?” Jackson asked.

Mama told me to show him where it was, and we escaped into the house.

“Jesus,” Jackson exclaimed.

“What?” I asked.

“Your grandfather!”

“He’s very funny once you realize he’s just trying to get you wound up.”

Jackson unzipped himself, took a piss.

I leaned over to have a look.

“What are you looking at?” he asked.

“Something I hope to see a lot more of?” I said with a smile.

“So when you talk about nude camping, are you talking about… being nude the whole time?”

I could see he had been worried.

“That’s right. The whole time.”

He didn’t know what to make of this.

“Does being naked bother you?” I asked.

“What if someone sees us?”

“Like who? It’s private property.”

“Some hunter or something.”

“Like
Deliverance
?”

“Exactly,” he said.

“You never know,” I said. “Might have some horny peckerwoods out there waiting for us. Have to take our chances. They might rape us.”

“I grew up in the city,” he pointed out.

“That’s okay. They rape people from the city too. You must have gone camping once in a while.”

“In the Boy Scouts. I hated it.”

“You’ll be fine. Now put the horse in the barn and let’s get on with it.”

“Speaking of, I thought you said we were going to ride horses.”

“We are. Redneck horses. We call them four-wheelers.”

“You expect me to ride a four-wheeler?”

“Against your religion or something?”

“I don’t know how to drive them.”

“What’s to know? You hit the gas, you go forward. You hit the brake, you stop. What else is there?”

His face look worried.

“You’re in Papa Wiley’s hands now. Stop sobbing, city slicker.”

Outside, I drove two of the three four-wheelers from the standing garage where Mama kept them. Jackson seemed highly skeptical.

“Little kids can drive these things,” I said. “Man up!”

He practiced driving in the yard and discovered that it was so simple even a Yankee could do it.

It was pushing five when we finally set off, the four-wheelers loaded and ready to roll. I led the way across Mama’s huge backyard to the trees and hills beyond and we were quickly swallowed by towering pines, oaks, and elms. We followed the path along the riverbank, heading deep into the woods where it was hotter, the air thick with humidity, and the undergrowth out of control.

Noah sat behind me, holding on to my waist. He kept an eye on Jackson to make sure he didn’t have trouble or get lost.

We passed two of the three swimming holes and finally emerged at a large bend in the river where the camping site was located. The far bank was high, like a small bluff. The near bank was clear and somewhat flat, a perfect place for pitching a tent and building a campfire. The river rolled strongly into the bend and suddenly pooled before slowly easing on its way downstream.

I got off and looked around with a broad grin on my face.

Noah and I spent a lot of time at this campsite during the summer. Sometimes my nephews came with us. Sometimes Bill. But usually it was just me and Noah.

The site was secluded, a long way from civilization, peaceful, quiet, calming. A breeze always followed the course of the river and swept by us and over us.

Standing there, the water flowing by peacefully, I felt happy.

“Let’s go swimming,” I said, sweating from the short drive. I peeled off my clothes and waded naked into the water. Noah stripped off his clothes and eagerly followed.

We turned, looked at Jackson.

The look on his face said he was a city boy who had never been skinny-dipping before and wasn’t about to start now.

“Aren’t there crocodiles in the water or something?” he asked.

“We don’t have crocodiles down here,” I said. “Alligators, though, that’s another story. Got us some big-ass gators. They don’t usually bother you.”

“I think I’ll just watch.”

He says he’s going to just watch
, I signed to Noah.

He smiled.

I smiled back.

We charged back to the shore and dragged him into the water with us, hooting and screaming and raising a ruckus.

W
E
PUT
on shorts and sat in the sun afterward, drying off, enjoying the feel of Mother Nature beating down pleasantly on our bodies. We watched Noah, who played on a small sandbar at the edge of the water. He crawled around on his hands and knees, building a castle or a fortress, using smooth, flat rocks to scoop out battlements and whatnot. He was already a soft-brown color.

“You can tell he has stunted growth,” Jackson observed.

“A little bit,” I said. “I like to bring him here, let him get some sun and water therapy. He’ll spend all day playing in the water or playing on the sand, just goofing off. It seems to help him. Both of us, actually.”

“It’s nice,” he said.

I retrieved the sunblock and went to Noah, applying a heavy dose to his shoulders, face, chest, and legs.

Are you hungry?
I signed.

He shook his head, explaining that he was building a high-rise building like the one that Iron Man lived in.

I got him a juice and handed it to him, then watched as he played in his silent world, scraping sand, piling it up, digging trenches, building walls.

I’m going to work on my tan,
I said.

Okay.

Tell me if you get hungry.

Okay.

Drink your juice.

Leave me alone!

I went back to the camp, spread out a towel.

“Can you put some of this on me?” I asked Jackson, sitting in front of him and handing him the sunblock.

His hands on my shoulders felt tender. I closed my eyes.