The Sharecropper Prodigy (20 page)

             
Without saying a word, Johnny flipped backwards off the boat and hit the water with a loud splash. He took a deep breath and ducked under the water, swimming down in the direction of where the line had been tangled. After he had gone down what he judged to be ten or maybe twelve feet, he felt what he thought were the roots of an old tree trunk. It must have been a big tree, because the roots ran on for several feet and were large in diameter. Johnny figured it was a tree that had once stood at the waters edge and had finally given up to years of erosion when the winter and spring rains flooded the river and overflowed the banks. He was careful not to get himself tangled up in the elaborate maze of roots that he couldn’t even see. He kept blindly groping his way around until he finally found the tree’s trunk and started feeling his way up the slimy, decomposing bark. When he had held his breath as long as he could, he swam back to the surface, doing his best to swim straight up so he wouldn’t lose his location.

             
When Johnny reached the surface and located Pete and the boat, he saw that they were several feet away.

             
“Bring the boat over here,” Johnny yelled to Pete, with labored breath as he treaded water.

             
Pete picked up his oar and paddled his way hurriedly toward Johnny. Johnny grabbed the side of the boat to rest himself, breathing heavily.

             
“Did you find anything?” Pete asked.

             
“I found a tree,” Johnny answered, gasping for air. “I thought whatever it is must be hung up on that tree. A few more feet and it would have gone off the edge into the main channel of the river. It would’ve prob’ly been gone forever then. As soon as I catch my breath, I’ll go back down.”

             
“Be careful down there and don’t get yourself tangled up. If it was up to me to save you, you’d be a goner,” Pete said, laughing.

             
After another minute of resting, Johnny took another deep breath and disappeared beneath the brown water. He tried his best to fight what little current there was and go straight down. He found the tree trunk quickly and once again started feeling his way along, in the opposite direction of the roots. He tried to find a hold so he could pull himself along easier, but the bark was as slick as glass. Just as he was about to resurface again, his elbow bumped something that was hard. He put his hand on it and could tell it was some kind of metal. He had no time to investigate further. His lungs felt like they were about to explode, so he did his best to swim to the surface again in as straight a line as possible. After another brief rest at the boat, he submerged himself again and was lucky enough to swim right to the object. This time he found something he could hold onto, and was able to pull himself around, using his sense of feel to try and identify the mysterious hunk of metal. One thing was for sure. It wasn’t a washing machine. He could feel what he thought was probably the side view mirror of a car, and then what he was sure was a door handle. He pushed himself away and swam back up for the last time. He found the boat and grabbed hold of the side, exhausted.

             
“Well, did you find it?” Pete asked him, with excited anticipation in his voice.

             
Johnny held up his hand, indicating he needed a minute to catch his breath before he could answer. Pete quickly grabbed his arm and pulled him back in the boat. Johnny laid down flat, breathing hard. His heart felt like it was trying to fight it’s way out of his ribcage. When he finally caught his breath enough to speak, he told Pete to row to shore. They needed to get in touch with the sheriff.

*****

              It wasn’t the first time McClain’s Wrecker Service had pulled a car out of the Coosa River. It wasn’t even the tenth time. Rayford McClain was an old hand at this. People who needed money desperately and didn’t mind bending the law a little to get it, found the Coosa River the ideal place to make a car disappear and claim it had been stolen. Then, after a little haggling with the insurance company, they would collect a check. The only problem was that sometimes they would get snagged by a sandbar, a rock, or maybe even an old tree before they got out into the deep water. Then those pesky fisherman or swimmers would find them.

             
Rayford had a heavy-duty Peterbilt wrecker that had a winch on the front and back. If it could be moved, Rayford could move it. The diesel engine whined, the twin exhaust pipes blowing big puffs of black smoke in the air as the sheriff and other onlookers waited impatiently to see if they would recognize the automobile that was about to emerge from the muddy waters of the Coosa River.

             
When Rayford’s latest catch finally came into view, the sheriff saw that it was a Chevrolet pick-up. Part of the truck was covered with a muddy film, including the license plate. One of the deputies walked over to the drivers side door and pulled on the handle. The front fender was slightly bent into the door and the handle was jammed from being submerged in water so long.

             
“Hey Carl,” the deputy yelled to one of the onlookers who he knew well, “come here and help me get this door open.”

             
The sheriff was busy wiping the mud away from the license plate as the deputy and Carl struggled with the door. Rayford saw them and got a long pry bar from behind the seat of his wrecker. He walked over and wedged the bar between the door and the bent up fender.

             
“Now pull on it,” Rayford said, straining.

             
The deputy and Carl gave the door a hard yank and it flew open, making a metal-on-metal, moaning sound, as if it were angry it hadn’t been left alone in its watery resting place.

             
“Oh shit!!” Carl screamed, jumping back from the door as if the cab of the truck was full of snakes or some other horrible creature.

             
The crowd of onlookers all rushed toward the truck, wondering what ghastly sight Deputy Stevens had just discovered. The sheriff pushed his way through the crowd of gasping men and women and almost stepped on a human skull that had broken loose from the rest of the skeleton when it hit the ground.

             
“Back up,” the sheriff shouted to the crowd. “Back away, and nobody touch  nothin’.”

             
“It fell out as soon as we opened the door,” Deputy Stevens told the sheriff, his face as white as a piece of loaf bread.

             
“I know who it is,” the sheriff said. “This truck has a Jones County license plate. Even if it didn’t, I would’ve recognized it, anyway. This truck belongs to George Winston. And that pile of bones is Ned Higgins.”

*****

              There were days I wished I had let them gone ahead and taken my leg. Today was one of them. It felt like a giant toothache from my knee down to my toes and I grimaced every time I moved. When I was threatening the doctors with their lives if they amputated it, the only thing I was thinking about was Rachel. I was afraid she wouldn’t want a man with a prosthetic leg limping around, following her like a whipped puppy. I guess I didn’t know her very well. She let me have it good, when she found out how close I came to dying. In fact, if it hadn’t been for penicillin, I probably would have died. I found out later I was one of the first soldiers ever treated with the relatively new antibiotic. Thank God for miracle drugs. But Rachel was still furious.

             
“Why would you lay there and nearly die when all they had to do was take your leg from the knee down,” Rachel had said. “Do you think I am so shallow and superficial that it would have changed the way I felt about you?”

             
I took the admonishment with an inward smile. It was then I realized she truly loved me. When I was finally sent home, she stayed at my house for a week, only returning to her own house to bathe and get fresh clothes.

             
I had gotten in touch with Max McGee, who was the foreman that gave Ben and me our first job in Atlanta. It turned out that he was now a superintendent for a big construction company that had a government contract on a huge project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He said he couldn’t give me any details until I got up there for security purposes. The project had something to do with the war effort and was apparently supposed to be a secret. I told him about my injury and that I would probably be limited as to what I could do.

             
“You can tell other people what to do, can’t you?” he asked me. “I don’t need you to tote lumber or lay bricks. I need you for what you know, not what you can do. I’ll make you a foreman as soon as you get here and get clearance.”

             
I had managed to put back a fairly nice nest egg from my job in Atlanta and the money I was paid by the army. Me and Ben had always lived very frugally in Atlanta, our only diversion to work being reading and discussing books with Abby and maybe playing chess or a few card games. I refused to go see any picture shows, because Ben would have been forced to sit in the balcony with the rest of the black folks. So besides the little bit of rent we paid Abby and the money I sent home to my aunt and uncle, I had tucked away almost all the rest. Still, I knew I had to earn money. I was never one of those who was satisfied with just getting by, and besides that, I had to be busy. I had detested idleness since I was old enough to remember. I knew there was no way I would be able to find a job close to home that paid anywhere near what Max told me I’d make in Tennessee, so I didn’t have much choice. There was just one thing I had to take care of first, and if that didn’t happen I wasn’t going anywhere. I had to marry Rachel. I had told her I loved her and she returned the favor, yet we’d never even been on a picnic or to a picture show together. I had immediately had to leave after making my feelings known and travel half way around the world to get blown up by a French cannon. I wasn’t about to light out again unless she was by my side.

             
It had taken more nerve for me to tell Rachel how I felt that night than it did to hit the beach in Algiers. I didn’t figure it would take any less to ask her to marry me. I planned on adhering to the proper protocol and asking her papa for her hand, after I’d asked her, of course. But that was only going to be a formality, because I really didn’t care what his answer would be as long as hers was satisfactory. As far as I could tell, her papa liked me and seemed to be satisfied with me as a suitor. But a suitor was one thing and a son-in-law was another.

             
I got into Uncle Lee’s truck and started the engine, looking in the side view mirror to make sure my collar was straight and my hair wasn’t too disheveled. I had always had a habit I couldn’t seem to break of running my hand through my hair. I felt the same way I did the last time I borrowed Uncle Lee’s truck to go to the Winston house. My pulse was racing a mile a minute and my fingers and face were numb. Breathing took a conscious effort and it seemed like the world, or at least Jones County, suddenly had a shortage of oxygen. When I saw that my appearance was tolerable and came to the conclusion that I would be able to breathe well enough to keep myself alive, I backed the truck out of the driveway.  

*****

              Rachel looked beautiful as always. She had on a dress that left her shoulders exposed and was low cut in the front. Her creamy skin hadn’t been tanned by the early summer sun yet, and was flawless. I had a sudden urge to kiss her neck and shoulders, but of course kept it in check, because I was sure her papa was lurking somewhere just around the corner. She had put her auburn hair up in some kind of way that left just a few tender strands resting incongruously on her shoulders and partially covering the perfect skin on the nape of her neck. She never wore much rouge or other cosmetics that I couldn’t name. She didn’t need them. She wore just enough to give definition to her prominent cheekbones and accent her lively, blue eyes, that were like looking into soothing pools of sparkling water. I stood in the doorway, not yet having crossed the threshold, speechless. At that moment I was the luckiest man on earth to be the one to behold the beauty that was before me.

             
After Rachel snapped me out of my trance by telling me to come inside for the third time, I finally found my voice that I thought might have been lost forever.

             
“Ah…can you come outside for a minute, Rachel?” I asked in as bold of a voice as I could manage. I had learned from the last time that getting right to the point was the best way, or at least I hoped it was. Besides, I couldn’t have eaten a bite of the supper Lizzie was cooking if I had to keep this bottled up inside me the whole time.

             
Rachel came outside with me and we walked through her yard toward the orchard. I took her hand and looked into her eyes, trying my best not to be intimidated by their beauty. I knew she was too good for me, but she was too good for anyone else, too. I just blurted it out. “Rachel, I’ve got to take that job in Tennessee. It’s just too good to pass up. But I can’t stand to be away from you again. I can’t even stand to be away from you a day. So…what I would like is…would…would you consider marryin’ me?”

             
I closed my eyes like I was expecting a blow to the head or something. I felt like if she didn’t say yes, I would just melt into the earth and become a permanent part of the Winston fruit orchard.