A Miracle of Catfish (44 page)

Jimmy's daddy had to be in court over there on October 15. That was a weekday and he'd have to take off from work. Collums would want to know why he was taking off. The plant manager would want to know why he was taking off. The trooper had told him that the fine for having beer in a dry county was probably going to be about two hundred dollars. And he'd had to listen to Johnette bitch about it all the way home. With Jimmy sitting in the backseat just listening. And finally just lying down out of sight on the backseat. That had been a bad day. […]

The sun was bright and it was hot. Damn birds weren't going to fly in the middle of the day like this. And the sons of bitches were so hard to hit if they did fly. This time last year he'd sat in a field and fired seventy-nine times and didn't bring down a bird. That was three boxes of shells. He had decided there was something wrong with his gun and
had traded it off for this one, and it wasn't doing any better. He didn't know what was wrong. Maybe he needed to get one of those clay-pigeon shooting rigs and practice up some with that. But a clay pigeon didn't swerve and twist in flight the way a mourning dove did. So what good would it do to shoot at some of them?

[…]

He had plenty of cigarettes for a change. He wasn't going to run out of them. He stuck one in his mouth and pulled out his lighter and realized it was the same one Lacey had given him, and that it was still working somehow. He lit his smoke and put the lighter back in his pocket. He didn't know what in the hell to do about her. He was scared and he was sick and he was worried. But he damn sure couldn't sit around the trailer. No way. It was like being in jail. At least out here you had sunshine and air and nature. You weren't cooped up the way you were five days a week inside a concrete box.

He had replayed it over and over in his mind like one of his hunting videos that he could rewind or fast forward with his remote: Lacey coming up to him, right there in the break room, in front of everybody, and telling him she had to talk to him before lunch break was over. There was a look on her face. It was part happiness, part pride, part worry. And he'd known what it was before they'd even stepped outside to sit down in his car for a few minutes so that she could tell him her news. She was pregnant. And it was his since she hadn't been with anybody besides him in three months.

Sitting there on the hot seat with her, knowing the time was ticking away on lunch break, and having to come up with an answer about what they were going to do. Not that she was so worried about that just yet. She mainly wanted him to know that he was going to be a father. Jimmy's daddy had told her that he didn't want to be a father again. And that was where he'd messed up. He hadn't been prepared to see her bury her face in her hands and start crying. And talking to her did no good. She just kept on. A few people walked by and saw them. Nosy sons of bitches. And it had gone on and on. Until almost time for the buzzer that always called them back to work. He hadn't even gotten to finish eating. And her with her face red from crying, and him following her, people leaving the break room and going back into the factory looking
out at them, wondering what was going on. A plant romance where everybody knew. The last thing he'd wanted.

Hell. There weren't but two choices, were there? Either have it or not have it. Either have it or have an abortion. He couldn't tell Johnette. And how could he have a kid that would be running around in Water Valley one day? A kid who would be Jimmy's half brother.

If he just hadn't gone down there that first time, he wouldn't be in this mess now. And he'd only gone down to see her three times altogether. He'd used rubbers both other times. But the one that had stuck was the first time. That was five or six weeks ago now. She hadn't been to the doctor to get it confirmed yet, but she'd gotten a pregnancy test from Wal-mart and had tried it three times, and three times it had turned blue. She'd said there was no doubt about it, she was knocked up.

He sat there and sipped his beer and wondered what he was going to do. Get divorced from Johnette and marry Lacey? Hell no. He was already tired of her, of her wanting to be with him all the time, and wanting to eat with him at work, and he was tired of the hurt glances she gave him when he wouldn't just fall all over himself to acknowledge her at the Coke machine or in one of the aisles while he was working. Get divorced and stay divorced? Maybe. He wished he had somebody to talk to about it. He'd thought about telling Seaborn and Rusty, but neither one of them had ever had any experience dealing with something like this, and their first reaction would probably be to make some joke. It was no joke and he didn't want to hear any jokes about it. He believed she meant to have it. […]

So what did that leave? That didn't leave but one thing. Talk her into getting rid of it and take her to Memphis. Find one of those abortion clinics. He couldn't take care of another kid. He could barely take care of the ones he had. And only one of them was his. And Evelyn. The little whore. Sucking off boys on the school bus. He wondered what kind of white trash her daddy had been. Or what kind Johnette was.

He wondered what Jimmy was doing at home. Hell. He should have brought him. Kids his age didn't have to have a hunting license. He could have iced him down some Cokes and sat him down beside him on the folding camo stool he hadn't used yet. He could have talked to Jimmy instead of sitting here worrying over what he was going to do about Lacey. But he couldn't stop thinking about it. In a few months
she'd be showing. If she kept going to work, everybody at work would know it. And he knew how people talked. It wouldn't be any secret. The word would get out that it was his baby she was going to have. And then what was he going to do? What if she did have it? Was he going to show up at the hospital and wait around in the waiting room like a dork? Would there be a baby birth announcement in the paper? What was it going to say? Hell.

[…]

He heard a flurry of shots across the way, and he saw a dove fall. Somewhere over there close to Rusty and Seaborn. And then he saw Rusty coming across the field with his gun in one hand and three or four dead birds in another. He probably wanted some beer. But he was going to scare all the birds off coming across the field in the wide open like that. He wasn't even crouching. He was just walking.

Jimmy's daddy sat there and waited for him. He wondered if he could tell him. Maybe ask Rusty for some advice, even if he'd never had to deal with anything like this before. He needed to talk to somebody. He'd even thought about going and talking to his daddy. He hadn't talked to him in about six months.

Rusty was grinning when he walked up, wearing his shooter's glasses and carrying a nice 12-gauge Beretta semiauto. About an eight-hundred-dollar gun. All Jimmy's daddy could afford was this Mossberg pump. But it was still a damn good gun. He just needed to learn how to shoot it. Or maybe he needed to get a double barrel.

“Hot damn,” Rusty said as he sat down beside him. “Open that cooler and give me one of them cold beers.”

Jimmy's daddy raised the lid on the cooler and got him one out and Rusty took off his game vest and started stuffing the dead birds into it. He looked up.

“You killed anything?” he said, and took the beer Jimmy's daddy handed him.

“Nothing but some time,” Jimmy's daddy said. “Y'all sound like y'all tearing their ass up over there.”

Rusty popped the top on the can and stretched his lanky frame out on the ground and propped his head up with one hand and sipped from the beer.

“I think we got fourteen or fifteen,” he said.

“I ain't killed shit,” Jimmy's daddy said. He sat there and sipped his own beer. It was starting to get warm and Jimmy's daddy wished he'd remembered to bring one of his little foam Koozies. But they were all in the trunk of the '55 or inside the trailer.

“How many times you shot?” Rusty said. He sat up and crossed his legs and lit a cigarette.

“Five,” Jimmy's daddy said. “I had one coming straight at me and missed him head on and then he turned and I must not have led him enough.”

“You got to lead em about three foot,” Rusty said. Then he looked out across the field. “How come you didn't bring Jimmy?”

“I don't know,” Jimmy's daddy said. “He ain't got no gun.”

“Well shitfire, I can get him a gun. I got a four ten I ain't used in twenty years in my closet. You oughta said something. He don't even need a license at his age. We could a got him some shells.”

“I know it,” Jimmy's daddy said, and he decided he'd just go ahead and bring up his problem to Rusty while he was here. While it was just the two of them sitting here in the dove field.

“All right,” Rusty said, and he stood up. “Let me have a few more of them beers and I'll take a couple to Seaborn. He's about to go nuts over there without one.”

So Jimmy's daddy just opened the cooler for him so he could reach in and stick four beers in his game vest next to the dead birds. Then he walked back across the field. And disappeared into the corn.

After just a few minutes, the shooting started up again. It sounded like they were having a really good time.

It was already dark when Jimmy's daddy got in. Johnette and the girls were gone to a skating party at Skateland in town and Jimmy was watching TV in the living room by himself in his pajama bottoms.

“Hey Daddy,” he said.

“Hey Little Buddy,” he said. He'd been trying to use more terms of endearment with Jimmy lately. He'd always used Hot Rod but now he'd added Little Buddy. Sometimes Sport. He hadn't whipped Jimmy for letting the beer can roll out from under his seat, which was partly what caused him to get gagged by the Union County cops, and he thought
he'd shown pretty good restraint there. He could have blown up once they got back home, but he didn't. Maybe he was improving.

He carried his gun to the closet and put it away. He dumped his shell vest and his shells and then he had to go back outside for his folding stool and he dumped it in there, too. Then he sat down on the couch beside Jimmy and took off his cap. He opened a beer he'd brought in.

“Is your mama still at Skateland?” he said. Her car was gone. The '55 was sitting out there, but if he wanted to ride around in it any tonight, he'd have to get out there and change that flat with a flashlight. He didn't know if he wanted to do that or not.

“I don't know,” Jimmy said.

“I thought she took the girls to Skateland,” Jimmy's daddy said.

“She did,” Jimmy said.

“Well, I guess she's still at Skateland then,” Jimmy's daddy said. He put his feet up on the coffee table.

“That's a lock-in,” Jimmy said.

“What's a lock-in?”

“The skating party,” Jimmy said. “It goes on all night and they lock em in. They can't get out.”

Jimmy was watching a show about bears, but he suddenly switched it over to one about lions. A whole pride was killing a baby elephant. It was horrible. Jimmy's daddy didn't know what Jimmy was talking about.

“What do you mean they can't get out?”

“It's a all-night skating party, Daddy. You can have one for your birthday. Invite all your friends over and skate all night long.”

“All night long?” Jimmy's daddy said.

“All night long,” Jimmy said.

Oh yeah? Well well. He sure didn't know you could do that. It sounded more like all-night babysitting. Right up Johnette's alley.

“You want to do me a favor, there, Sport?”

“Sure, Daddy,” Jimmy said.

“Flip it over there on CMT and see if old Jeff Foxworthy's on. I like the shit out of him.”

“Okay,” Jimmy said, and started running through the channels on the remote looking for CMT.

“Well, why do you think your mama's not still at Skateland?” Jimmy's daddy said.

“Cause. She was going to a movie after she dropped the girls off.”

Hmm. What damn time was it? Jimmy's daddy looked at his watch. It was only nine. Lacey would still be up.

“Oh yeah? And the skating party goes on all night?”

“Yes sir,” Jimmy said. He had it on CMT, but they were showing a Shania Twain video where she was dressed like a leopard.

Then where in the hell was she going to be for the rest of the night? Jimmy's daddy wondered. A movie only took two hours. Maybe two and a half if you got there real early and got you some popcorn and a big fountain Coke and then watched all the credits at the end of it and kept sitting there until they turned the lights on.

“What time was she going to the movie?”

“I don't know, Daddy.”

“You know what she was gonna see?”

“No sir. She didn't say.”

“I got you.”

He sat there and drank some more beer and told Jimmy to just watch whatever he wanted to, and Jimmy told him thanks and switched it over to
Wild on E!
and they watched that for a while. It was mostly about a bunch of young people getting drunk down in Mexico from people pouring liquor down their throats at some beach resort and girls grinding and dancing in skimpy swimming suits. Then they ran a commercial for
Girls Gone Wild
. Jimmy's daddy kind of perked up when that came on. He sat there next to Jimmy and watched college girls with their chests censored out flashing their boobs at various locations around the country. It showed a couple of them kissing each other. Some naked and squealing in a shower.

“Gross,” Jimmy said, and changed the channel. Jimmy's daddy started to tell him to turn it back but thought better of it. He sipped his beer and lit a cigarette. He was about to get in another hunting funk from not having killed anything again. He'd imagined a nice dove fry at home tonight, plucking the birds he'd shot from the sky in the gravel behind the trailer, pulling off their heads, cutting off their feet, heating some oil in a skillet and washing the birds at the kitchen sink and then rolling them
in some flour and frying them up. Nice and crisp. Jimmy could have had a few. But he hadn't killed a goddamn one. And had only gotten to shoot his gun seven times. Seaborn and Rusty had shot over four boxes of shells apiece. The doves had started flying pretty steadily later on in the evening, and he'd swapped places with Seaborn and Rusty, at his suggestion, and then all the birds had started flying directly over them, in the place where he
had
been sitting, and should have stayed, and Rusty and Seaborn had wound up with fifty-three birds between them, and they'd offered Jimmy's daddy some of them, and he'd thought about taking them and telling Jimmy that he'd killed four or five of them, but by then, just at dark, standing in the field, almost out of beer, he'd decided he didn't want to mess with cleaning a bunch of damn dead birds and would just make a sandwich probably. And had asked them to just run him to town so he could get some more beer before he ran out. Which they had. And then dropped him off at home. Where he was now. Sitting in the goddamn living room watching TV with Jimmy. Big night. Hell of a lot of fun. Barrel of laughs.