The Front Porch Prophet (9 page)

Then Coach smiled and said, “Now
that’s
some goddamn football.” Sequoyah went on to lose forty-two to nothing, but Coach Crider didn’t seem to mind. He kept looking over at his boys, benched in disgrace. They reminded him of himself back in the golden days when he, too, had been a warrior, eager for the taste of battle and the sound of leather slapping flesh.

So A.J. and Mayo had history prior to their encounter in Sand Valley. While A.J. was willing to let bygones be bygones, Mayo seemed to feel the need to linger over old times.

“Let him up,” Mayo said to his companions. He pointed to A.J. “That’s the one we want.”

A.J. stood his ground with the shotgun aimed at the crowd. He eased the weapon to his left so it pointed at Mayo.

“You won’t shoot,” Mayo sneered. “You’re afraid you’ll hit him.” He pointed at Eugene, who was clambering to his feet. Mayo was correct in his assertion, but A.J. hoped he didn’t know that he was for certain.

“You’ll get most of it,” A.J. replied, wishing he had stayed behind the depot. Eugene shoved his way past Mayo and asked him how his sex life was these days. Recognition flickered across Mayo’s features when Eugene arrived back at the Lover.

“Start the damn car,” A.J. said tensely. Eugene gave his recent companions a gesture before doing as he was told. A.J. backed up slowly and got in, still holding the shotgun on the group in the street.

“I’ll be seeing you,” Mayo said, eyeing A.J. with raw hate.

“Not if I see you first,” A.J. replied as they fishtailed off with tires squealing. The Sand Valley rowdies made an attempt at pursuit, but the Lover was more than a match for their old Ford Galaxie, and soon Eugene and A.J. were just bad memories in the night. A.J. had acquired a headache during the ordeal and wanted a quiet ride home. Eugene, however, wanted to talk.

“Man, that was something,” he said, shaking his head and smiling. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I didn’t know if you were going to shoot or not.”

“I wasn’t going to shoot,” A.J. said, rubbing his temples. “Shut up and drive.” He was disgusted. All he had wanted to do was take a pee. But, no, Eugene had to run his mouth.

“No, you wouldn’t have shot,” Eugene rattled on. “You didn’t really have the stomach for it.” A.J. turned to Eugene.

“I didn’t have the shells for it. The gun was empty.” He closed his eyes and pressed his eyelids with his fingertips. Eugene absorbed the new information. The Lover slowed to a halt in the middle of the highway.

“You backed those pieces of shit down with an empty gun? Man. A.J. the badass. Man.” There was awe and respect in his voice.

“Just shut up and drive,” was his hero’s reply.

As A.J. thought back to that night long past, a sense of the unreal descended upon him. It was as if he were considering the foolish exploits of a young man in a faraway land rather than walking down memory lane.
What a dumb ass,
he thought. He shook his head and looked about him. The scene on the porch was much the same as it had been the previous week. He noticed the current incarnation of the eternal cigarette was burning in the hubcap. He picked it up and flipped it out into the yard.

“You’re not going to start that shit again, are you?” Eugene asked.

“Absolutely,” A.J. replied. “How do you feel today?” Eugene laid the shotgun across his lap and rocked slowly, reminding A.J. of Judge Roy Bean, Law west of the Pecos.

“I feel like shooting Johnny Mack’s bulldozer with this shotgun,” Eugene said, the old rocker creaking. He looked over at A.J. “I guess you’d rather I didn’t.” A.J. doubted any damage would occur but saw no point to the exercise.

“Johnny Mack’s jacket is behind the seat,” A.J. said. “I’ll hang it up on the Jeep, and you can shoot
it.”
It seemed a reasonable alternative.

“No, that’s okay,” Eugene said sadly, holding up his hand. “It wouldn’t be the same.”

“Maybe later,” A.J. suggested, but Eugene had already moved to another topic.

“I bet you had hell getting the dozer from Johnny Mack,” he said with a little smile.

“You know Johnny Mack better than I do,” A.J. said, shrugging. “You already know about how it went.”

“Come on. You can’t deny a man in my condition. I want to hear about it. Did he throw some Scripture on you? Did he get huffy? Did you have to kick his ass?” Eugene was truly excited, so A.J. relented and told the tale.

He had encountered Johnny Mack down at the Jesus Loves Tater Tots Drive-In, the current week’s name for Sequoyah’s only eating establishment. In actual fact it had no real name and was not a drive-in at all, except for the time that Estelle Chastain misjudged the impact of momentum upon a moving Ford and ended up in the middle of the dining room. Luckily it had been a slow Thursday morning, and no fatalities were reported.

The restaurant appeared to change names weekly due to the haphazard placement of signs in the front window by the firm’s owner, cook, and advertising consultant, Wilson Crab. Wilson preferred to be called Hoghead for reasons unknown and was an extremely pious but nearly illiterate man who liked to letter slogans of a religious bent onto pieces of cardboard and tape them up in the front window of his diner. Unfortunately, he also advertised his weekly specials in the same small pane, and often the close proximity of the two distinctly different types of messages produced unintended results, particularly when overlap was involved.

Thus, at various times the beanery had been the God Will Save Ham-N-Eggs Drive-In, the Jesus Is Corndogs Drive-In, and the infamous The Road to Hell Is Paved with Country Fried Steak Drive-In, to name but a few. A.J.’s personal favorite had been the well-meaning Christ Died for the Best Fried Chicken in the County Drive-In, of which he was fortunate enough to get a snapshot before the signs were personally rearranged by the Reverend O’Neal Tanner. The pastor had stopped by for a cup of coffee and had almost gone on to his reward upon reading of the Savior’s previously unknown weakness for the local delicacy.

A.J. sat by Johnny Mack at the counter and ordered a cup of Hoghead’s foul brew, which he loaded down with as much cream and sugar as the mug would hold. He normally took it black, but Hoghead’s coffee was best when disguised. Hoghead had served twenty-three years in the Navy as a cook, and his wretched, scalding, painfully strong concoction had kept many a sailor alert during the midnight watch. But Sequoyah was not the icy North Atlantic, and it was only recently and with great effort that the coffee drinkers in town had prevailed upon Hoghead to discontinue his practice of tossing a handful of eggshells and a pinch of salt into each potful.

“A.J., how have you been?” Johnny Mack asked pleasantly, stirring the contents in his cup. “Is your family all right?” He placed his spoon on the counter and reached for a homemade doughnut, referred to as
collision mats
by Hoghead and kept handy on a plate.

“Everyone is fine, Johnny Mack,” A.J. replied. “I need to ask a favor. I need to borrow the Cat this weekend. I’ve got a little job I need to do.”

“You can use it anytime you need it,” Johnny Mack said. “It’s already loaded on the trailer and hitched to the dump truck. Just come on out and get it. Angel will be happy to see you.” He took a sip of his coffee. “You getting around to fixing that bank behind your house?” Johnny Mack was not being nosy, much. He just seemed to be interested, and A.J. was of the opinion that it was a bad time for the old man to be developing social skills.

“No,” A.J. replied. “I need to borrow the Cat to clean up the road on the mountain.” There was an uncomfortable silence. Finally, Johnny Mack spoke.

“Are you talking about
his
road?” he asked.

“That would be the one,” A.J. replied. Johnny Mack’s shoulders tensed. His hands formed fists that resembled small hams.

A.J. watched Johnny Mack strive with his demons. It was his theory that every person had a few snakes in the head, but it seemed to him that the Purdue variety was a more evolved breed of reptile. Finally, Johnny Mack’s fists unclenched, but his features were still grim. From the kitchen came the clatter of pans and a high-pitched noise that may have been Hoghead whistling a tune.

“You can’t borrow the Cat,” Johnny Mack said. “Not for him. You know how I feel.”

“I’m not borrowing it for him. I’m borrowing it for me.”

“The last I heard, you boys weren’t getting along,” Johnny Mack observed. “I heard you roughed each other up pretty good at the firemen’s barbecue. Why are you all of a sudden worried about his road?”

“I just need to fix the road. It’s hard for Diane to get the boys up there to see their father.”

“So Diane asked you to fix it?”

“Not in so many words.”

“A.J., you are trying real hard not to tell me something. I’ve known you since you were a boy, and I know when you’re not saying something that needs to be said.”

A.J. opened his mouth to speak but noticed the quiet and immobile form of Hoghead. He had been wiping the counter but was now poised in mid-wipe, listening raptly.

“Hoghead, this is sort of private,” A.J. said, gesturing toward the kitchen while raising his eyebrows. Hoghead looked confused. Then his eyes lost their glazed look.

“You don’t need to worry about a thing,” he said, winking at A.J. and giving him the A-OK sign with his hand. “There’s nobody back there. You go right ahead and tell Johnny Mack what you need to tell him.” There he stood, as immovable as the smokestack of the old
U.S.S. Blackhawk,
aboard which he had served faithfully for many a year. It was no mystery to A.J. why the old cook had never risen to the rank of Admiral of the Ocean Sea. Exasperated, he pointed first at Hoghead, then at the kitchen. Hog got it that time, but he seemed hurt as he shuffled back to his domain, muttering as he progressed that you didn’t need to hit
him
over the head with a board, that was for sure.

Back at the counter, A.J. sighed and waded in. “Eugene is very sick,” he began. “He’s not going to get well. I’ve promised I’ll come see him from time to time, and I need to be able to drive up the road to do that.” It was quiet in the diner. Johnny Mack was staring at the floor. Finally, he swallowed loudly and looked at A.J.

“I’ll let you use the Cat,” he said. “But it’s you I’m letting use it, not him.” There was tension in the words and in the air when A.J. responded.

“Do you understand what I just told you?” he asked. “Eugene is about to be rowed across the river. He’s waiting to catch the big bus. If you were ever planning to get over it, now wouldn’t be a bad time.”

“‘They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.’ Hosea
chapter 8
, verse 7.”

“Johnny Mack, don’t do the Scripture thing,” A.J. said. It was Johnny Mack’s habit to quote the Holy Book during times of stress, but A.J. wasn’t in the mood.

“The Bible doesn’t lie,” the senior Purdue admonished.

“Right,” A.J. allowed. He really did not want to argue with Johnny Mack. He just wanted the keys to the damn bulldozer.

“‘Be sure your sin will find you out.’ Numbers 32:23,” Johnny Mack added. He had been raised a staunch Baptist, and his God didn’t mess around. It was His way or the highway, and that was that. A.J., on the other hand, was a Methodist, and his conception of the Almighty leaned more toward that of a good pal.

“Johnny Mack, don’t do the Scripture thing,” A.J. repeated. He was getting a headache.

“‘For what is a man profited,’” Johnny Mack asked, “‘if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ Matthew 16:26.” A.J. restrained himself from pointing out that inheriting a stolen mountain and opening a beer joint hardly constituted gaining the world, impressive though it was by local standards.

A.J. looked at his watch and saw it was past time to be heading to work. It was just as well. He had secured the use of the bulldozer, and there was no point in continuing to be Johnny Mack’s straight man while he was in the mood to quote King James. It was a venture in futility, a journey to nowhere. A.J. stood abruptly and made for the exit. At the door he stopped and turned. “I appreciate the loan of the bulldozer,” he said. “I’ll be by for it Friday evening.”

“It will be ready for you,” Johnny Mack said woodenly. A.J. nodded his head and left. He could not comprehend an animosity such as that which existed between Eugene and his father. It was foreign to him, as unfathomable as Latin.

“It sounds to me like he whipped you,” Eugene commented after hearing the tale. During A.J.’s rendition he had washed down some medication with a little Jim Beam and was feeling mellow.

“Yeah, he tore me up,” A.J. said. “And I got out while I was ahead. He was about to haul out the big guns. He had that Revelation look on his face.”

“Yeah, that would have been it,” Eugene agreed. “When he gets into that mean shit, no one can touch him. When I was a kid, he used to fill me full of that Pale Rider of Death crap. There was always a lot of smiting going on. On the other side, I had Angel telling me about Jesus loving the little children. I liked her stories much better. I remember once I asked her about Lot’s wife right after Johnny Mack told me the story. Even a stupid kid like me could see she got a raw deal. You know what Angel said? She told me not to worry, because God didn’t do mean things like that to people anymore. I loved that. She and Johnny Mack had a big fight that night after I was in bed. She was hollering at him in French and throwing dishes. He removed himself from my religious instruction right after that.” He lapsed into silence. A.J. smiled.

“I wish I had heard Angel cleaning Johnny Mack’s clock in French,” he said.

“It was something,” Eugene agreed. “One thing’s for sure. She never took any of his shit. She thought he was too rough on me and Jackie, though, and she didn’t like it.” He was quiet for a moment. “If she had known how rough, she probably would have shot him.”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” A.J. said. “The man went to a lot of trouble to get you raised up right, and all you can do is gripe about it. No wonder he won’t loan you the bulldozer. You have no gratitude. Hell, I wouldn’t loan you my bulldozer, either.”

They were silent for a while. The afternoon was strolling casually toward evening. “You know,” Eugene said after a time, “I never understood why Angel and Johnny Mack got married. I understand it from Johnny Mack’s point of view. She was a real catch for a hayseed like him. What I have never been able to figure out is what she got out of the deal. She could have done a lot better than him.”