The Mighty Miss Malone (13 page)

Mother said, “Now to the Genuine, Gentle Jumpin’ Giant, Jimmie. What was your day like?”

Jimmie told about working for Dr. Bracy, about finding coal along the railroad tracks and about how unbelievably fast trains go through Gary.

“They’re like rocket ships on wheels! They make your whole body shake!”

Me and Mother held our breaths when he said that. I could see cut-in-half slices of Jimmie flying through the air after he got the speed of a train wrong, but we both kept quiet.

Saying anything would make my brother do something insane to prove he wasn’t scared of trains.

Jimmie and me said together, “What about you, our Marvelous Mammalian Matriarch, how was your day?”

Mother told us about what was going on with the Carsdales, how things were so bad in the country that even
he
might lose his job as president of the bank.

“The poor dears might have to cut back to three vacations this year!”

Jimmie said, “Oh, no! They aren’t going to have to sell one of their rocket ships, are they?”

Mother started to answer, but before she could we all froze.

Father was standing in the dining room door, looking like a ghost. A skinny ghost with a plate in his hand.

Mother said, “Roscoe Malone! What on earth are you doing? You should’ve asked. We’d’ve helped you down.”

We all rushed to him and guided him to his seat at the table.

He said, “Thank you, I jutht needed to get back where I belong.”

Jimmie said, “Great, Daddy, you had perfect timing! It’s your turn to tell about your day.”

Me and Mother gave Jimmie a dirty look.

But Father said, “What did I do today? Firth I thlept, then I thlept thome more, then I got up to take my nap, then I ended up the day by thleeping a little more before I finally went to thleep for the night!”

We all laughed.

“I’ve got to let you know what happened on Lake Myth Again.”

“Roscoe, don’t you think you should just relax and have your—”

Father said, “All I know ith that I
have
to tell what happened out there.”

“Roscoe. Maybe you’re—”

“Peg, I really need to talk.”

Mother looked at him hard. “Children, go outside until your father and I are done talking.”

Father stood up. “No! I need to tell all of you.”

Mother stood up and put her hand on his arm. “Roscoe, you’re just going to—”

Father snatched his arm away. “Don’t worry, Peg, I’m going to tell the truth, I won’t lie.”

Mother’s 1-1-1 lines popped up and she sat very slowly back in her chair.

She picked up her fork and started pushing around the carrots Jimmie’d brought home.

Father said, “No one’th to blame, we had bad luck from the jump. It went wrong right away but we couldn’t do anything about it, how can you thay who did what wrong?”

He stared down at his plate.

I looked over at Jimmie. He was just as scared as me.

Mother pointed at us, then the door.

We were happy to leave. Seeing Father like this was worse than seeing him out cold in bed.

I got up, leaned down. “Kisses … kisses … kisses make you stronger.”

He wrapped his arms around me and Jimmie. “Thank you, Detha, Jimmie. Thank all of you for everything. I apologithe, Peg.”

We went into the living room and Mother helped Father up. As she passed us on the couch she told Father, “Back to bed for you, buthter. Kids, I’ll be right back.”

Jimmie reached over and held my hand. “Lockjaw. He’s got to fight off lockjaw.…”

“No, Jimmie, Father doesn’t have tetanus, it’s something else.”

“Naw, sis, I didn’t mean he has lockjaw for real. It’s like what Daddy told me. Remember? He said that some of the time you get through whatever hurt you and you think you’re all healed up, but there’s still something inside that can come back and kill you. Daddy beat Lake Michigan but now there’s something inside he’s still got to beat. He’s not done fighting yet. Almost like he’s got lockjaw.”

I didn’t know whether to be scared about what Jimmie said, or amazed that he was making so much sense.

Clarice was early. I was sitting on the couch reading when she tapped on the door.

“You ready?” She had her books in her arms.

We hugged and I said, “Just a second, Clarice.”

“Take your time, I want to read this last chapter once more anyway.”

I ran up the steps to my room to get the books I had to return to the library.

Me and Jimmie had started taking turns staying with Father.

I’d go to the library with Clarice every other day and Jimmie would go over to Dr. Bracy’s and out to the fields to get wild vegetables on the days it wasn’t his turn to watch Father.

I started to stick my head into Mother and Father’s room to say goodbye.

Jimmie and Father were whispering. Whispers grab hold of your attention like nothing else.

Me and Father never talked about what happened on the lake, so I was surprised to hear him say, “There we were on Lake Myth Again, pulling in fith right and left.”

Jimmie said, “Perch?”

“Perch, walleye and bluegillth. We notithed a fog bank further out on the lake and thomeone thought we thould head back, but we thtayed a little longer.” He stopped.

I held my breath waiting for what he was about to say, but Jimmie said, “Why’s it called a fog
bank
, Pa? It’s not like you could get a loan there, or like you could rob it or nothing.”

Father said, “Not a bank in that way, Jim, more like a mound, an area higher than what’th around it.”

I bet he was staring over Jimmie’s shoulder, trying to get deep into his story. I stuck my head into the room. I didn’t really want to hear this.

“Goodbye, Father, I’m off to the library.”

“No! Detha, you come in and lithen too.”

Jimmie said, “Pa’s telling what happened out on the lake.”

Father said, “We weren’t out there for half an hour before the fog rolled in.”

Father was talking, but he wasn’t talking to us.

“I’d never thought about what a thtrange phrathe ‘pea thoup’ ith, but when that fog covered our boat I got it. The fog felt like it had weight, that you had to puth it away to even breathe.”

There was a long pause and I held my breath, hoping that Jimmie would be quiet too.

“We dethided to get back to thore, but when we pulled on the anchor rope we found the anchor wath gone and we’d been drifting. No one knew for how long.

“Then the thip came. Then everything happened.”

His voice changed, sounding like he was fighting to catch his breath, sounding wild and scary. “We’d drifted into the thipping laneth and the wake from a huge freighter hit uth and knocked everyone out of the boat.

“I was in such a thtate of thock that I didn’t even realithe I’d been hit in the mouth and all of my front teeth were gone, or how badly I’d been cut. Fear will do that to you, it will make you think about only what’th important, and all that wath important to me wath to get back to my family. That’th all I could think of. Truly.”

Most times when Father tells about how his day went he talks like he’s painting a picture, but this time there was no picture, just fog. If he was himself, Father would’ve said something like, “The fog was so thick it should’ve been spelled with two ‘G’s!”

But there was something more missing.

Father can’t open his mouth without a joke falling out and this story didn’t have any.

Maybe it’s because the story is so sad. But Father always tells us, “There’s a thin, blurry line between humor and tragedy.” When he was working regular at the mill he’d told me and Jimmie, “I’ll give each of you one whole nickel for every joke you find that isn’t cloaked in pain or tragedy.”

We’d tried as hard as we could to earn that nickel but couldn’t come up with a single joke that didn’t have someone
getting killed or hurt or made fun of or embarrassed or mocked.

Father told us, “And the more tragic something is, the more jokes you’ll find about it.”

I couldn’t think of anything more tragic than what happened to those poor men out on Lake Michigan, yet Father’s story didn’t have one smile or laugh in it.

And no alliteration. Something wasn’t right.

Father said, “The boat wath upthide down and they all were gone. I tied my writht to the boat with the anchor rope and hung on. That’th the way that thip found me and took me to the hothpital in Thicago. When I came to, they brought me to Gary. That’th the whole truth.”

There was another long pause. “That’th everything.”

Jimmie leaned his head on Father’s chest. “It’s OK, Pa, we’re all together now.”

Father didn’t sound like his heart was in it when he said, “You know, Jimmie, when it looked like I wouldn’t live, the thing other than my family that I thought about mithing would be theeing Joe Louith knock Max Thmeling back to the fatherland!”

That stupid fight! Father started blabbing about Joe Louis, and Jimmie blabbed right along with him.

I said, “Yuck!” And left them laughing and joking.

Finally Father made the bug about the fight grab hold of my heart. The big day had been postponed to the nineteenth because of rain and that made everything even more exciting.

Since the lake, Father had acted like he was listening when we’d talk about our days during Chow Chat, but we knew his mind wasn’t all the way with us. Just two days before the fight, something came alive in him.

We looked at Father to see if he was up to talking. Jimmie saw something that me and Mother didn’t. He said, “And what about your day, my Fine Friendly Father Figure?”

Father seemed surprised. “Not much happened.” Then he gave us his scary jack-o’-lantern smile. “But I have noticed my
Dar Dawt, the Gorgeous, Gregarious, Glamorous Deza, hasn’t found fit to form the flimsiest conversation concerning the coming fisticuffs.”

Alliteration! A ton of alliteration! It was like all of the consonants he hadn’t used for the past weeks were exploding out of him.

Jimmie laughed. “Wow, Daddy!”

Father said, “So, if none of you mind, I think I’ll use my time to explain to the Mighty Miss Malone what’s going on that she has so little interest in.”

He looked right at me. The first time in a long time he looked any of us in the eye!

“So, Dar Dawt, why aren’t you on the bandwagon about Joe Louis?”

“Clarice and me—”

Mother said, “I, Deza.”

“I and Clarice—”

“Not funny, Deza,” Mother said.

“Clarice and I don’t think there’s anything about two grown, old, bumpy-muscled men in their underwear trying to kill each other with big, fat, puffy, ridiculous red mittens that’s good or important or even worth talking about.”

Father put his face in his hand and shook his head.

Jimmie said, “And I thought you were smart, Deza. Even white people are saying they’d vote for the Brown Bomber to be king of the world after he whips Smelling.”

Father moved his hand from his face and stared over Mother’s shoulder, another real good sign because that meant he was settling into a story or a lesson.

“Deza, this is so much more than just a fight, this is one of those rare occasions where we’ll be alive to witness history.”

He smiled at me and stuck his left hand out. I put both of mine in it and he covered my hands with his right one. I was surprised at how soft Father’s hands felt. They used to be rough like sandpaper or even a hunk of wood, but since the lake they’d got soft as mine.

Father looked real close at our hands and said, “My, my, my. Wasn’t it only yesterday that I could close my fingers on yours like this and your whole hand would disappear?”

He was right, my fingers were poking out of the other side of his hands. He brought our hands to his face and kissed my fingertips.

“Dar Dawt, you know you and I are different, right?”

“Of course, Father, you’re a man, I’m a girl, you’re old and I’m young.”

Jimmie said, “Yeah, Pa, plus Deza’s got regular teeth and you got them summer teeth.
Some are
in your mouth,
some are
on the bottom of Lake Michigan,
some are
still in the hospital!”