Every Day After (4 page)

I cleared my throat and tried to make the words as flowing and beautiful as Mama did:

      
“Are you standing at ‘Wits’ End Corner,’

      
Christian, with a troubled brow?

      
Are you thinking of what is before you
,

      
And all you are bearing now?

      
Does all the world seem against you
,

      
And you in the battle alone?

      
Remember—at ‘Wits’ End Corner’

      
Is just where God’s power is shown.”

I must’ve done Mama proud with my voice, because Ben sat silent for a few seconds after I finished. He nodded slowly. “I like it,” he said. “I wish you knew the rest.”

“Me too. Maybe I can find it later. Anyway, that’s pretty much how I feel, but if God’s gonna show His power, I wish He’d hurry up and do it already. Me and Mama need Daddy back home.”

“Awww, Lizzie. I know you want your daddy here, but you’ll make it till he comes back.”

Ben stood and dusted the seat of his britches. He grabbed his slingshot and began mindlessly snapping the band. I pulled at the grass waiting for
the
snap—the snap that came along with some brilliant idea. Well, brilliant coming from Ben.

A few minutes of peace later—
SNAP!
“I got it!” he yelled, his near invisible brows shooting high up his freckled forehead. He snatched my pole off the ground and shoved it into my hands. “Catch him,” he commanded.

I eyed Ben, trying to understand what he meant.

“Don’t sit there like a blasted block of ice. Catch him. Catch ol’ One-Eye. Ain’t a soul ever caught that fish but
you, Lizzie Hawkins, not even your daddy. Do everything you did before, even though he ain’t here this time. If you can do that, you can do anything.”

“That’s crazy. That won’t tell me anything.”

Ben smiled. “Sure it will. Kinda like a sign. I never did tell ya what happened the first time I had to plow after Pa passed. I was too embarrassed to say anything, but it’ll show ya what I mean.”

I nodded.

“Well, I was pretty nervous. I was worried to death that ol’ Jack’d take off and drag me behind the plow or, even worse, that I couldn’t get him hitched up in the first place. So I put an old tin can up on a fence post, pulled out my slingshot, and told myself if I shot that can off ten times in a row from a fair distance, I could plow without Pa. I figured shootin’ that can would be harder than plowing.”

I eased in closer to Ben. “Did you do it?”

“Sure did. Pretty as you please.”

“Did you get the field plowed?”

“Oh, I got the field plowed, all right, but …” Ben’s smile faded.

“Well, you gonna tell me or not?”

He cleared his throat and mumbled, “I plowed off my big toenail doing it.”

I jumped up from my cozy spot in the grass. “Ben! So that’s why you fished with your shoes on back then. Why didn’t you just tell me that before when I asked? And what
are you saying now? That I’ll catch One-Eye again, but I’ll end up with a hook jabbed through my finger?”

“No, I ain’t sayin’ that. Look, I did it, didn’t I? Shootin’ the can was a test. That’s what this is for you—a test. Can’t hurt to try.”

I was shocked at myself for believing Ben’s fiddle-faddle enough to try it, but it sounded right. If I could catch that fish again without Daddy here, I was nearly certain I could do whatever else I set my mind to, including keeping myself out of the orphanage and Mama safe. Then I’d be able to leave Wits’ End Corner once and for all. It might sound pretty in a poem, but it surely was not a fun place to be.

I clutched my locket and pictured Daddy’s face.
Please, God
, I begged.
Please let me pass this test
.

 
Four
 

Luck Follows the Hopeful, Ill Luck the Fearful

I leaned my head back, feeling the warmth of the sun. I squeezed my eyes tight. Colors and light flashed beneath my eyelids. Gradually, the colors became shapes and the shapes became people, forming clear images of me and Daddy on that muggy morning last August.

Daddy insisted it was too hot to fish, but I wouldn’t listen. Christmas, candy, even Goo Goo Clusters paled in comparison to fishing with Daddy, and a little heat wasn’t gonna stop me.

“Please. Just for an hour,” I begged. “The fish’d be good for supper.”

“Oh, all right, Lizzie.” He propped his hoe against the side of the house and sopped his face with his sleeve. “You get the bait; I’ll grab the poles.”

I rushed into the barn for the worms. Mama could get pretty riled up when she wanted something done and didn’t get it, and that day she wanted her vegetable
garden weeded. If Daddy didn’t leave within five minutes, he’d start thinking about the trouble he’d be in when he got back. We were gone within three, tromping through the field to the pond behind our house.

The sweet scent of hay mingled in the air with the pungent smell of freshly plowed dirt, but Daddy didn’t seem to notice. His steps were heavy, his jaw tight. He reminded me of the man in
Pilgrim’s Progress
, carrying his heavy burdens and not knowing how to let them go.

All my life Daddy had been willful and full of fire, but he’d changed the day he lost his job at the steel mill. Seemed to me a lot of folks around town had lost their jobs since the depression came on back in ’29. I guess Daddy had figured he might skirt by. That wasn’t in his cards. He’d been laid off a month and a half earlier, and I’d begun to wonder if he’d ever be his old self again.

“You wait. I’m gonna land the biggest fish yet,” I said when we reached the pond. I shielded the sun from my eyes and studied the water.

“Maybe,” said Daddy, only half listening. “Now hand me those worms and bait up.”

As usual, he was the first to land a fish. He was always first at everything. He tossed it back into the water and it darted away. “That’s one,” he said, holding up his pointer finger.

I shook my head. “Uh-uh. That puny bream didn’t count. He was even too little to keep.”

I jumped up from my fishing spot and jogged out into
the field. On hands and knees I dug and poked through freshly cut hay.

“What on earth are you doing?” Daddy called as he hooked another worm. “You won’t catch anything out there.”

“I’m finding a cricket. We only ever fish with worms and neither of us has caught him yet. Maybe he’s a picky eater.”

“Caught who?”

“One-Eye.”

Daddy shook his head. “Uh-uh-uh.” He cast out his line.

Five minutes later, a juicy cricket dangled from my hook. I tossed it into the water and sat stone still. The only movement came from my heart. Each time it beat, my hands jerked a little. I focused on the motion, trying hard to keep it from happening. Up-down my hands went in barely noticeable rhythm. Up-down, up-down,
OUT!

“I got one!” I shrieked. For a moment, I thought I might’ve hooked a whale. Every muscle in my body, from my toes to my eyeballs, tensed in resistance to the fish’s pulls and jerks. The pole dug into my hands.

Moving faster than he had in weeks, Daddy jumped up to encourage me. “Hold ’im, Lizzie. He’s a real fighter. If you want to see him, you’re gonna have to beat him.” He propped his lanky hands on his knees, straining for a glimpse of the fish as it slapped and splashed in the water.

I took a deep breath and dug way down deep, deeper
than I ever had, and just like Daddy told me to do, I fought that fish. After one last glorious heave, the fish slid onto land.

“Oh, my Lord,” said Daddy, his eyes bigger than Grandfather’s pocket watch. He stared at the conquered catfish as it squirmed in the grass. It had only one eye.

“It’s him,” I uttered. “One-Eye.”

Town legend had told of a one-eyed channel cat living in our pond for more than fifty years. Folks were said to have seen him skimming old bait or bread crumbs off the top of the water, but no one had ever actually caught him. Ben and I had always believed One-Eye existed, but Daddy had insisted the story held as much water as a busted glass. After all, anyone worth his salt knew catfish didn’t live that long, and Daddy had never seen him, and it was
his
pond. Mama said sometimes folks see what they want to see, even if it’s not there.

But Daddy and I weren’t seeing things now. One-Eye was real, as real as could be, and longer than Daddy’s lower leg. I slid my fingers across the perfect smoothness of his charcoal-colored body. He squirmed faster in protest.

“I can’t believe it,” Daddy hollered. “He’s real! My own Lizzie Girl just landed ol’ One-Eye!”

My own Lizzie Girl
. The words hung in the air for a second, then seeped into my soul. Daddy had called me that only a few times in my life. He saved it for those
occasions when I made him extra proud, when he felt like bragging that I was his.

Daddy stood hunched over the catfish with his mouth gaping as though he was gonna say something. Nothing came out. He tipped his hat back off his forehead, revealing the beaded sweat above his brows. For once he didn’t wipe it away.

My spirits soared right with his. I hoped the feeling would last, more for Daddy than for me. I’d never seen him as down as he’d been over the last month and a half. He’d even taken to mentioning leaving to find work. Mama didn’t like that talk one bit. She’d either get real upset or real quiet. One was as bad as the other. But maybe if Daddy stayed happy, he wouldn’t leave, and Mama wouldn’t be upset, and everything could go back to normal again. Maybe.

Daddy rubbed his whiskered chin and grinned. “Wanna keep ’im?”

I could see him sizing up the bragging rights he’d have if we kept him. For Daddy, this was the win of the century, and without the carcass to prove it, no one would believe that I, beanpole Lizzie Hawkins, had actually caught ol’ One-Eye.

One-Eye squirmed on the ground, gasping for air. He was switching back and forth faster now, attempting to find the water. He couldn’t run away, but he wasn’t about to stop trying. Daddy was right—he was a fighter.
He’d been born to win, to survive. Just like Daddy. Just like me.

“Let’s let him go,” I said. “A fighter like him should be free. Besides, I want to see if anyone else can catch him. Maybe I outsmarted him, or maybe he’s just going a little cuckoo in his old age.”

Daddy looked at me, his dark eyes hard and squinted. “You sure? You might not catch him again.”

I shrugged. “Let him go.”

We watched in silence as One-Eye slid back into the water. Unlike the skittish bream Daddy had hooked earlier, One-Eye lingered near the shore for a few seconds before slinking off into the deep. It was as if he was saluting me for being a worthy, and merciful, opponent. On the inside, I saluted him, too.

We caught five more fish between us that day. They made some fine fried fish for supper, and Mama gave me the best piece as a reward for my accomplishment. But as good as that fish tasted, I was prouder of One-Eye. I’d caught the best that could be caught in our pond, possibly the best that could be caught in the whole state of Alabama. Once Daddy had spread the story around town, he had more people than ever asking to fish at our pond. He and a few others tried their hardest to land ol’ One-Eye again, but no one did. After a couple of weeks, people began to doubt it’d really been ol’ One-Eye I’d caught after all.

Ben shoved me, forcing my eyes open. “You gonna try
it or not? ’Cause if you ain’t, I got better things to do than sit around here watching you sleep.”

“I’m going. I just needed a little inspiration, that’s all.”

“Well, you’re takin’ way too long gettin’ it. Ain’t no sense in puttin’ it off.”

“I’m not putting it off. Watch.”

I stomped through the grass to the exact spot I had been at on that day and began to dig. Confidence pulsed through my body. It was me who’d caught One-Eye. Daddy hadn’t done a thing. He hadn’t told me to use a cricket, and he sure as heck hadn’t helped me reel him in. Maybe I was just being childish about needing Daddy, like someone needing a teddy bear or a blanket. Ben was right. I could do it again.