The Struggles of Johnny Cannon (11 page)

She shot me a real suspicious look.

“I don't think that's wise,” she said. “Perhaps you should go to the nurse instead.”

While she wasn't looking at him, Eddie grabbed his pencil and shoved it in his mouth till it tapped the back of his throat. Then he turned and puked all over the floor.

“Oh my gosh!” Mrs. Buttke hollered. “Yes, Johnny take him home. Now!”

I jumped up and grabbed our things. Eddie was acting real faint and weak and he leaned on me as we went out the door. The whole time, Mrs. Buttke was barking down the hall for the janitor to hurry up and how some got on her shoes and all that. I looked at Eddie's face, he didn't even have a smile. He was the best actor I'd ever seen.

Once we got outside and was clear of the door, he stood up off of me and started laughing.

“Come on, let's go to my dad's shop.”

“I ain't so sure that's a good idea,” I said. “Me and him ain't on the best of terms right now.”

“He's not there. He's out buying more fireworks for Monday,” he said. Bob liked to make the folks in Cullman love him by putting on our annual fireworks show, but he did it for Labor Day 'cause he could get the fireworks at a discount if he waited. I used to complain that we didn't have no fireworks on the Fourth of July, but when I said something to Willie, he said he didn't care 'cause it wasn't his Independence Day anyhow. So I reckoned we could all be happy with it on Labor Day.

Eddie took off running down the street and I was amazed at how fast he went. He used to be so tubby and slow. It was like watching a completely different person. Maybe he
was
different. There was only one way to know for sure.

I followed him, running with both our backpacks banging against my butt. We got to the outside of his pa's auto shop and he fetched the key from his back pocket. He opened the door and headed straight through the front into the big garage, which had all the lights out 'cause apparently everybody'd gone to help Bob load up the fireworks.

“Feast your eyes on this,” he said. He flipped on the light switch.

It was like a car hospital in there, there was three cars up on lifts or opened clean up, all of them being worked on or taken apart for parts. There was puddles of oil under some of them, one had a drip of gasoline so bad you could smell it from the doorway. It was real neat, but it wasn't worth puking all over the lunchroom floor.

The next thing I noticed was that the walls was already lined up with stacks and stacks of fireworks boxes. Bob'd be moving them and the extras he was out getting all down to the railroad tracks near Smith Lake on Monday for the show, since no trains ran on Labor Day. Getting to see them all beforehand was neat. And a little scary, since all them explosives was so close to all that oil and gasoline. But still, not vomit worthy.

Then I saw it. The last car in the shop, parked down there at the end. It was cherry red with fancy white stripes. And definitely worth hurling over.

“Is that a Corvette?” I asked.

“It ain't just any Corvette,” he said with a grin. “It's a brand-new 1962 Corvette convertible. 327 V-8 engine, 360 horsepower if you drive it right, and it can get over 100 miles per hour.” That was a lot of numbers I didn't know nothing about, but they sounded real impressive.

“Who in Cullman owns a Corvette?” I asked. “I reckon that'd make the front page of the paper or something.”

“It's my dad's,” he said. “He just got it, and he ain't wanting folks to know about it. He won it in a poker game down in Birmingham.”

I nodded, standing in awe of that beautiful sleek car like I was seeing the face of God Himself right in front of me with custom rims.

“But,” he said, “that ain't what I want to show you. We got to go driving.”

Before I could even process what he was saying, he ran over to the desk and fished out a key chain. Then he went and opened up the garage door that was right behind that Corvette. He headed over to the driver's door, then he stopped.

“No, you know what, this might be the only chance you'll ever get to drive something like this,” he said.

“Wait, what?” I asked. “What you mean?”

He tossed me the keys.

“You drive, I'll ride. We got to go outside of town so I can show you my thing.”

Now, I ain't stupid and I know there's a big difference between driving your own pa's truck to go fishing and driving another man's Corvette to go joyriding, and I know it ain't something you're supposed to do, and I recognize that if I'm ever talking to other kids I'm going to tell them this story different so they don't get any ideas.

But, Eddie had a point. This really
was
probably the only chance I'd ever get to drive one. So I jumped in behind the wheel.

I said a quick prayer that there wasn't no law anywhere around, which I probably didn't need to 'cause Sheriff Tatum had stopped caring since he was going to retire. Then I peeled out of that garage like James Dean and we left a swirling cloud of dust that probably scared some of the folks that had survived the tornado. We both couldn't stop laughing and giggling while I pushed that little car to go as fast as I possibly could while we flew down the road and out of Cullman. I ain't going to say we hit ninety, but I ain't going to deny it either. I also ain't going to deny that I maybe drifted across the road and almost into a ditch one time, which made me drop our speed down to around sixty.

He pointed out which way to go and we drove along until he told me to pull over.

“Wait, you're wanting to show me something here at Snake Pond?” I asked.

He hopped out.

“Yup,” he said. “And it's a Tom and Huck kind of something.” He ran into the trees and disappeared.

Now, not everybody called that place Snake Pond. In fact, I think on the map it's called Fellows Lake or something like that. But all the kids in Cullman knew what it really was. It was too ate up for any fishing and too shallow for swimming, so it didn't deserve to be called a lake. Instead, we all called it Snake Pond. It don't take too many guesses to figure out why we named it that. One time, I counted twelve water moccasins that was having a pool party just in one corner of the water.

I thought about sticking with the car and letting him be the one that died from a snakebite or something, but then I figured if Bob reported it stolen, I'd be spending most of my days in jail, so I'd better leave the scene of the crime. I got out and followed him.

I caught up with him just as he was coming to the edge of the trees.

“Okay, you ain't gonna believe what I'm about to show you,” he said. He led me out of the trees and into the clearing that was right at the edge of the water.

And there it was. And he was right, it was a Tom and Huck sort of thing.

It was a tent. A white pup tent, set up by somebody who either didn't know there was snakes everywhere or didn't care. There was a few other things scattered around too, like some food cans and the remains of a campfire. Also there was a mirror and a razor next to the tent.

Eddie grinned like a possum.

“Cool, huh?” he said.

“Whose is it?” I asked.

“I don't know. I only found it last night and nobody was up here. Maybe the fella that built it is laying off in the woods, dead by a water moccasin or something. Come on, let's look at it.”

We went and looked around the tent, watching our step so we didn't accidentally wake up no snakes or nothing. I looked inside, where there was a sleeping bag and a whole mess of supplies. Like a carton of cigarettes, a mess of baked beans, and six cans of tuna.

“Holy cow,” I said out loud. “I think this is the fella that's been stealing groceries.”

Eddie didn't pay me no never mind and felt the campfire remains.

“It's still warm,” he said, just as excited as a kid at his birthday party. “That means whoever this is was here recent.”

“And might be coming back soon,” I said. His grin got even bigger.

“Yeah, wouldn't that be something?” He went into the tent. “Oh, cool!” He came out and was waving his newest discovery around in the air.

It was a gun.

“Tarnation, Eddie!” I said. “Put that back and let's get the heck out of here.”

“What? If I got it, then he don't.” He went back in and kept rummaging through the things. I went back to feeling nervous and watching my feet for snakes.

I went over to the mirror with the razor next to it. There was also a little can of shaving soap and a bottle of aftershave. Almost without thinking, I sniffed of the aftershave.

Wintergreen. Real familiar wintergreen.

Then I spied the mirror and what was down there in the corner of it.

It was a picture of Sora.

I grabbed that picture and looked at it real close, just to make sure. She looked less skinny in the face. Maybe less pregnant, too. I looked on the back, it was dated 1960.

I started to feel sick to my stomach.

“I think we ought to leave,” I said.

He popped his head out of the tent.

“What? No way, this is our big Tom and Huck adventure,” he said.

“No it ain't. We ain't Tom and Huck no more,” I said. “We're Johnny and Eddie, and we ain't got no business being out here.”

His face soured and he got real mad at me.

“Fine, get on and run. I don't care,” he said as he went back into the tent. “But leave me the keys so I can get home.”

I nodded even though he couldn't see me and I dropped the keys next to the mirror on the ground. I put Sora's picture in my pocket and ran off through the trees to the road. I had to get as far away from there as possible.

I walked about a mile or two down the road to our hill. I was trying my best to stop feeling like I needed to sleep for the next few months until everything blew over when I heard a honking coming from behind me. Carlos's truck passed me and stopped on the side of the road. He hollered out the window.

“¿Qué pasa, amigo?”

“Hey, you headed up to my house?” I asked. He nodded. “Could you give me a ride?”

“Any day of the week, my friend,” he said. I got in and we headed up the road. He whistled a song that I'd heard him play before on his trumpet, in another one of them mental photographs I had in my head, back when he would wear a white suit and a red flower and he had a whole band behind him in Mr. Thomassen's club. And Ma would dance.

“How was school?” he asked.

“I don't know, it was school, I guess.” I eyed his face real good. “How's the Cosa Nostra?”

He grinned like he always did when I started talking about stuff I wasn't supposed to know about.

“They're nervous, I believe.”

“What is ‘Cosa Nostra' anyway, Spanish? It sounds Spanish.” He'd been giving me some Spanish lessons off and on, which was real nice. I still couldn't figure out why there was so many llamas in Spain, but other than that I was catching on.

“It's Italian,” he said. “It means ‘Our Thing.' But it sounds similar to the Spanish. What would ‘Our Thing' be
en español 
?”

I thought for a second.

“¿Nuestra Cosa?”
I asked.

“¡Bravo!”

“But what is it?” I asked.

“Las cinco familias. Los italianos de Nueva York y Chicago,”
he said real fast. Sometimes he forgot that I wasn't like Mr. Thomassen. When they'd get to talking, they'd mix up Spanish and English together all the time.

“What?”

He snapped his fingers in the air for a second while he tried to translate himself in his head.

“The Sicilian Mafia,” he said. “From New York and Chicago. And other places as well.”

“You mean like Capone?”

“Cuh-pown,” he said. “Is that Italian?”

“Yeah, I think he was. He was a gangster from Chicago.”

“Then, yes, like Capone,” he said.

“So you Three Caballeros are fighting against the Mafia?” I asked, and my heart started racing. “Are y'all crazy?”

He laughed and I reckoned maybe he was.

“Nosotros no le caemos bien,”
he said. “We're pains in their butts. We're simply making it as difficult as possible for them to be successful in this country.”

We pulled into our driveway.

“No worries,
amigo
,” he said.
“No se puede hacer tortilla sin romper los huevos.”

I didn't take the time to try and figure that out, 'cause I was too busy being worried. I got out and went inside to maybe lie on the couch and watch some TV or something to get my mind off of things.

But the couch was occupied. Sora and Martha was sitting on it with Willie's tape recorder set up in between them and Martha was holding the microphone.

I'd caught Martha midsentence. She hurried and shut off the tape recorder.

“Hey, Johnny,” she said. “About time you came home.”

“What are you doing?” I asked. She winced when I said it, either 'cause I'd said it really rude or 'cause girls just don't like getting asked to explain themselves.

“I have to interview people for your biography,” she said.

That stupid biography. It was going to be the death of me. Literally.

“So, why you interviewing her?” I asked. “She don't know me.”

This time Sora winced. I was batting a thousand with the ladies. Must have been that Cannon charm.

“You'd be surprised, actually,” Martha said. “Tommy told her a heck of a lot.”

I looked over at the mantel where stupid Robin was perched, like a goblin just laughing at me. Tommy hadn't told her enough.

“Where's my pa?” I spit out.

“In his shed in the backyard,” Sora said. I turned and hurried through the house toward the back door, tripped over a fancy rug that didn't have no business being there, and knocked over a vase I didn't recognize, full of flowers that belonged outside and water that would have been better fit for drinking. Sora must have been decorating. Martha tried to hide a giggle but didn't do a very good job with it.