The Troubles of Johnny Cannon (2 page)

Pa moved upwind so the smoke wouldn't kill him and he pulled out a loaf of stale bread to throw some crumbs to the birds. I went out and grabbed a seat, figuring I could hear some good war stories from those two vets. I always enjoyed hearing old soldiers chew the fat. That was part of why I swept the barbershop floor for a nickel every day. I could probably charge a dime and a half, but them stories was worth selling myself short. I usually skipped the corners anyway.

The Captain spied me watching him and offered me a puff on his cigarette. Pa shot me a look that said I'd be halfway to Heaven before I could even breathe out the smoke, so I turned him down. Pa didn't probably know that I did my own smoking behind the church on Sundays, cause me and the fellas kept that a secret. I traded rabbits' feet and coon tails for two smokes a week. The fellas in town couldn't catch a rabbit to save their lives, and I didn't never have the money to get my own packs. It was a good deal all the way around except for the one kid I gave a pussy willow to and said it was a foot. But he gave me dried ragweed wrapped in paper, so I reckon that was fair.

It didn't take them too long to get to spouting out stories, and I put together a bit of what past they'd had together. Captain Morris had apparently been Pa's doctor after he'd gotten sick in the Pacific, and he'd stuck by him through the whole thing. Even transferred to New Orleans to see him through to the end. Once Pa was let out to go off with Ma and Tommy again, the Captain retired. Said he didn't see no reason to keep at it with the Navy after that, since his favorite person to work on was walking out the door.

Course, all that had happened before I was ever in the picture, which was part of why it was so interesting to me. I was always trying to piece together the story that happened before my first memory, which was stepping off a plane in Birmingham a year after the accident. I blame my grandma for that nagging need to hear about history. She gave me a box of old books, like
Robinson Crusoe
and
The Count of Monte Cristo
, when she found out I didn't have no friends. She told me them stories in there was good for me, so she had me read them all. Then she told me the scars on my face was to remind me of my own story, because it was as important as any of them. But all them scars did was remind me of what I couldn't remember. It made looking in the mirror each morning like reading a German Bible.

Mrs. Parkins came and told us that she'd gotten the table ready for us, and the bobcat casserole was hot out of the oven. We went inside to eat, and Pa asked her to stick around just in case we needed something else. Her face showed that she was antsy to get back to her family, but she stuck it out anyway. The fact that Willie was probably getting inconvenienced by us made me smile to myself, just a little bit. That was what he got for being so rude.

We tore into the bobcat casserole, and it was real good. A little like possum pie, only with more onions. I just knew that Tommy would have thought it was the best, but he never did show up to eat with us. When he said he'd lost his appetite, he must have meant it was gone for the night. I reckoned he'd made his way to the bar in town, cause losing your appetite inevitably makes you thirsty. I wouldn't know, I had appetites to spare.

“Excuse me, Captain,” I said with my mouth half full of a biscuit, “but what are you hunting for Tommy for?”

He stopped mid-chew. “What makes you think I'm hunting for him?”

“Well, you said out in the woods that you was looking for him.”

He swallowed his bite. “I was hoping to see him first because I needed to clear the air between me and him. A grudge that needs to be done with, though I don't recall how it started.”

Pa apologized to the Captain for Tommy running off.

“No worries,” the Captain said. “That's what they train you for in the National Guard. To be an independent thinker. They think it makes their men more effective.”

“Effective,” Pa grunted as he chewed on some more casserole. “That's a word we couldn't use too often back in the war.”

“They still can't, trust me,” the Captain said. He wiped his mouth and glanced at me. “That's actually the main reason why I came here. There's a group of vets doing something I think you'd be perfect for. With radios.”

Pa leaned in like a cat watching a goldfish.

“You mean there's work?” I said. “You've got a job lined up?” I was getting a bit excited.

“Well, not exactly,” the Captain said. He cleared his throat and wiped his mouth. “I think we ought to speak more in private, Pete.”

Mrs. Parkins shot out of there like she'd been waiting for the chance to leave, and Pa told me to head on up to bed. It was a good ways before my bedtime, and I wasn't too keen on getting treated like a little kid, but Pa had his strap handy so I went on up. I could have asked to go out and see my friends, but he would have known I was lying. That was another side effect of them scars on my face. People couldn't stop looking at them long enough to make friends. And Cullman wasn't big enough to have blind kids, so I was sunk.

While I was going up the stairs to my room, I heard the Captain say something about Pa communicating with folks all over the world. I wanted to stop and listen some more, but Pa said he was going to come check on me in a few minutes, so I had to hurry and get in my sleeping clothes.

When I got to my room, I spied Tommy sitting out in the truck with a bottle of beer and five more on the dash, watching the Captain's truck like it was a sleeping snake. I got ready for bed and kept checking to see if he was still there. He stayed out there, best as I could tell, until the Captain left. I wasn't so sure when that was, 'cause I fell asleep looking at my homework and thinking about how much work it would be to actually do it.

I knew Tommy didn't stay out there all night, cause early the next morning he was shaking me to wake up.

“Come on, lazybones,” he said as he was rattling my teeth inside my head. “We got work to do. Time's a-wasting.”

I rubbed my eyes and looked at my alarm clock. It said it was six in the morning. On a Saturday. Dadgummit, he was still drunk. Either that or there was a missile coming at Cullman.

“We ain't got no work to do today. At least, none that's got to be done this early.”

He yanked my pillow from under my head and ripped the blanket off of me.

“We got to run the delivery. Unless you don't want to go with me,” he said.

I shot up. If he was lying, I was going to punch him in the mouth.

“That's today? I thought we was doing it next Saturday. I was going to get a few more turkeys before we went.”

He threw my shoes at me and I slipped them on over my bare feet. I picked a shirt that didn't smell too bad off my floor and put it on. He curled up his nose at me, which was a good sign. When folks puked at my odor, then I knew it was laundry day.

“It was going to be next Saturday,” he said, “but Bob told me yesterday he'd only let us have the bird for three hours next weekend. He can give it to us for five today. Now, come on.”

We went downstairs and out to the wooden shed in the backyard, where we had our deep freezer filled with all the game I'd killed over the last month. He started pulling out the brown-paper-wrapped portions and handing them to me. I filled up some cardboard boxes with them and carried them to the truck. We had to be real discreet about it, cause I had gotten a lot more than what was proper according to the hunting laws. But, when your family needs money, sometimes you got to close your eyes to the rules.

I found a marker and wrote on all them boxes
NOT MEAT
. That'd fool them.

We got the truck all loaded up with the frozen turkeys, rabbits, quails, deers, and squirrels and we left the house. We drove down the mountain and into Cullman, the only hometown I'd ever known. It wasn't a small town, really, cause there was about ten thousand folk that lived there. And we had a good group of different types of people. People that had their roots in Germany, Ireland, England, and a lot of other countries.

Driving through town that early was one of the few good things about prying my eyes open, cause it was quiet and you could really appreciate the town for what it was. Right at the edge of town we passed the sign that they'd put up to ward off colored folk, which told them:
C
OLOREDS—DON'T LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON YOU IN THIS TOWN
.

Pa said that was the rudest sign he'd ever seen, and he was glad we didn't live in the city for it. Tommy said Pa didn't know how things was, and he thought it was a good idea. It kept the colored folk off in their own little place, a village on the other side of our mountain called Colony. Folks in Cullman called it
the
Colony, which I thought made it sound more official.

As we drove into Cullman, we passed the grocery store, where the owner was out sweeping the sidewalk and setting up his signs for the Saturday business. We passed the college, Saint Bernard, with all its trees and pretty sidewalks, where Tommy'd gotten his degree off the GI Bill and where I planned on going if I ever graduated from high school. Didn't know what I'd study. Maybe they had a degree in hunting.

We drove real quick past the Methodist church me and Pa went to on Sundays, probably cause Tommy never could stomach going in there. Not since the pastor'd told him drinking was a sin and Tommy told him being fat was too. Even the pretty white walls and tall steeple couldn't take his mind off that, so he stopped going. The only person who asked about him was Mr. Thomassen, the piano player. But they started catching up at the bar on Fridays, so they was fine.

Finally we went out the other side to where the airstrip was and we met Bob Gorman, the fella who owned the little airplane we was going to take to fly down to Birmingham.

“You're going to pay me when you get back, right?” Bob said.

“Don't I always?” Tommy said as I got to loading all that frozen meat into the plane.

“Usually,” he said. “This was a lot easier back when I just took it out of your paycheck.”

Bob Gorman owned the air show that Tommy'd flown for ever since he graduated from his basic training for the Alabama Air National Guard. That'd been almost three years of flying and showing off all over the South, and Tommy'd loved the fame, attention, and women he got from it. But, for the past three months, he hadn't done none of it. Just stayed at home with us to help get things in order before Korea.

“It was easier for you,” Tommy said. “But you know I'm good for it. Give me the keys.”

Bob fished them out of his pocket and handed them to Tommy. We got into the airplane and I took my spot next to him at the copilot's steering wheel. Tommy started flipping the switches and pulling the knobs.

“You don't let that kid fly, do you?” Bob yelled.

“Do I look crazy to you?” Tommy said, and then he started the engines on the plane. Bob yelled something back, but there wasn't no hearing it over the noise. Tommy drove the plane out onto the strip, we picked up speed, and then he eased us up into the air. I felt my stomach getting sucked up into my throat as we left the ground behind, and almost wanted to close my eyes so I didn't get nervous. But I didn't, cause I would have hated myself if I didn't watch Tommy taking off an airplane. He was an artist, like da Vinci. And when Hank da Vinci painted your house brown, it was the prettiest brown in the South.

The trip from Cullman to Birmingham wasn't a long one to fly, but it was just long enough for him to let me grab ahold of the steering wheel and fly for a bit. He gave me some tips while we was up there, but I didn't ever need them. I'd been practicing flying in my head since the first time I saw a hawk fly in the woods. I strapped a kite on our dog one time to test my ideas. Sometimes I missed Fluffy.

Tommy watched me fly in silence for a few minutes.

“So, what's your beef with Captain Morris?” I said, keeping my eyes straight ahead at the clouds in front of us like he always told me to. Fluffy hadn't done that. Pretty sure that's what went wrong with her inaugural flight.

He pulled out a bag of sunflower seeds from his pocket and chewed on a couple.

“It don't really concern you,” he said. “We got a history that's been bumpy, but there ain't no reason for you to get tore up over it.”

“He don't seem so horrible to me,” I said.

“No, he never does.” He threw another few seeds in his mouth and took hold of the wheel again. “It's time to start landing.”

“Will you let me do it?”

He laughed. “Little brother, I was taught by the legendary—”

“Major Harrison. I know,” I said. I had dreams of someday taking a lesson or two from that fella.

“Trust me, landing is the hardest part of it all. Someday you'll learn it, but until then I'm the man for the job.”

He brought us down to the ground just as smooth as he took us up. There was a whole group of people waiting for us with their ice chests. As soon as the plane was stopped and parked real good, they came and lined up to give us their money and take some of the meat we'd brought. I went to the head of the line and started collecting money, cause that was what I was really good at. Not so much doing the adding or giving out change, but I was real good at convincing them to give us more than what they'd planned.

“You was wanting a turkey and two rabbits? That's three dollars,” I said.

“I thought it was two dollars,” the old lady I was talking to said.

“It was. But we had to raise the price on account of us having to pay the colored woman to come cook for us.”

“Why should I pay more cause your ma can't find time to do her job?”

“I'm sorry, ma'am,” I said. “It really is a shame she died when I was six.”

She got a shocked look on her face.