To Come and Go Like Magic (10 page)

On the heels of the royalty float the Shriners buzz by,
big men scrunched up in minicars wearing boxy hats with tassels.

A fancy black convertible car comes by with the mayor in the front seat and two strange men wearing suits in the back. A wide white banner taped to the side of the car says
GIBSON-CARTER COAL COMPANY—MERCY HILL’S ROAD TO THE FUTURE.
All the men are waving little American flags and smiling at the crowd.

“The road to destruction!” Uncle Lu calls out, but there’s too much clapping for the men to hear.

Momma shakes her head at Uncle Lu.

“You’re one hundred percent right about that, Lucius,” Benny Moss says, edging his way through the crowd to stand beside Uncle Lu. “That bunch would be worse than the Matlocks.”

Will Epperson taps his cane on the sidewalk to get people to move over and slips in beside the other two men. “We don’t need strip miners in Mercy Hill,” he says, holding up his cane and shaking it at the fancy convertible.

“What are they talking—”

“Watch the parade,” Momma says.

The men in the black car keep smiling, waving their flags, and looking straight ahead.

And then comes the Reverend I. E. Fisher Jr., riding with the South Creek Baptist elders on a float with four pews and a huge wooden cross. The reverend
poses with his Bible open like he’s ready to start a sermon any minute. One black pants leg has been cut up the side to accommodate the cast he’s been wearing since he fell during the monkey sermon.

The “church on wheels” barely gets by before the Jellico Springs band comes dancing down the street, doing a routine to “Locomotion.” The trumpet players are screeching on the high notes and the whole front row is out of step.

“That’s a snappy tune,” Uncle Lu says. He doesn’t know the words, doesn’t know it’s rock and roll. Nobody does. The preacher and the elders look back at the band and smile, nod, thinking this is just another marching tune.

The loser float comes at the tail end of the parade. All fake flowers and no thrones. The girls sit around the edges dangling their legs over the sides like they’re on a fancy hayride. All the losers wave and smile except Priscilla. She just sits there, her pink dress lost in the rainbow around her.

People know when the show’s over and start to fill the street behind the last float. I see Willie Bright come pushing his way through the crowd and head toward us, and Momma offers him a ride home.

“I thought Priscilla’s dress was prettier than Melody’s,” he says.

“They’re the exact same,” I say. “Identical.”

“But two dresses the same look different on different people,” he says.

Sometimes I think Willie Bright’s too smart for his own good.

C
onfessing …

“Chileda!” Pop’s voice is a round, cold stone thrown hard to hit its mark.

Twelve steps down the stairs, then the landing and four more. Maybe ten steps to the living room. I wish it were a million.

Pop’s stretched out in the La-Z-Boy with his after-supper mug of Sanka, waiting for Walter Cronkite. The minute I look at him I know what’s coming.

“Who broke the light shade?” He’s pointing toward the ceiling but looking at me.

I can’t lie. If Pop catches me in a lie, the punishment will be double. I could say Lenny did it and that would be a fact, but not the whole truth. Pop would keep digging until he got to the whole truth.

“We were having a show,” I say. “Lenny and me.”

“A show?” Pop frowns, looks up. “Who broke the light shade?”

“It was thin glass,” I say. “It just fell apart.”

Pop pushes in the footrest and sits straight up in the chair, his face red and his eyes wild. “WHO … BROKE …”

“Lenny hit it with Uncle Lu’s walking stick.”

Pop’s face forms a puzzle. “Now, why would he do that?”

“He was dancing in—”

“LENNY!” Pop shouts so loud it hurts my ears.

That blue light shade cost fifty dollars at the antique fair. They don’t make light shades like that anymore. A naked bulb hanging from a chain like that looks stupid. He wants to know—did we break it today? Yesterday?

“Last month,” I say.

Pop chews on his lip like he’s going to bite a hunk out of it.

“Get your money,” he says, pointing to the stairs, where Lenny’s now standing with his hands in his pockets. “And don’t ever let me catch you dancing in this house again.”

We rush upstairs and empty our banks. I have five dollars and eighty-five cents and Lenny has eight dollars and forty cents. I was going to buy a paperback at the Rexall on Saturday. Lenny had enough for the movies and a milkshake. We had plans.

We pool the coins—pennies, nickels, quarters—and
dump them in a brown paper bag. Not nearly enough to pay for the light shade.

When we get back downstairs, Pop’s gone. The car’s gone. Walter Cronkite’s talking to himself in the living room.

“Sorry you can’t dance anymore,” I say to Lenny. I set the paper bag of money on the La-Z-Boy.

“I can’t stop dancing,” he says.

“You have to.”

“We have to be more careful, that’s all.”

“You heard Pop.”

“Nobody will know.”

“You have to tell the truth,” I say.

“Only if you’re asked.”

Lenny seems sure about this. The facts are one thing, the truth is another, and the whole truth is something else. And it’s not entirely a lie to stay quiet if you’re not asked.

I’ve been in bed awhile when I hear the back door slam. The metal stepladder opens with a loud squeak.

I slip out my bedroom door, stand at the railing, and listen. Pop’s toolbox is open at the bottom of the stairs. He comes to the doorway and places the bare bulb and chain from the living-room ceiling onto the hallway rug and takes a plain white light shade from a cardboard box. The living room goes dark except for flashlight rays that
shift and stop and shift again. Finally, the new light in place, the room explodes with the brightness of a hospital hallway. No more spotlight and shadows.

L
ures …

I’m sitting at the kitchen table helping Uncle Lucius sort his fishing lures. Today he wants to use the bluish green ones only. No reds or orange or yellow. No solid colors. He’s going after sunfish, he says, and they like the blue-greens.

“How do you know what they like?” I ask.

“You have to learn to think like a fish,” he says.

He’s brought two tackle boxes to the table and each one has a whole bunch of little compartments full of plastic lures and rubber worms. Some of the lures look like tiny fish with feathery tails and fins. The worms have segments on their bodies like real worms, except they’re purple and pink and every other weird color you can imagine for a worm. I’m careful not to hook my fingers as I separate the blue-green lures and worms and line them up on the table.

The house is quiet. Everyone gone. I remember the
May Day parade, the mayor riding with those strange men, and Uncle Lu and his friends getting angry over that coal-company car being in the parade.

“What’s strip-mining, Uncle Lu?”

“Scalping,” he says, looking at me from across the table, his glasses sitting lopsided on his nose.

“Scalping?”

“They scrape away the trees and blast off the tops of the mountains.”

“Why?”

“To get to the coal,” he says. “It’s cheap and easy that way.”

“Are the strip miners coming to Mercy Hill?”

“Nope.” He laughs and shakes his head. “They’re just wishing and hoping.”

“How do you—”

“The Mahoneys own this mountain,” he says. “Your momma, that is.”

“So …”

“Everything aboveground; everything below.”

“Could we be rich if—”

“Doubtful,” says Uncle Lu. “This land’s not worth much except for the coal, and that mountain was not meant to be torn apart. It’s been passed down through your momma’s family.”

I remember what Will Epperson said at the parade
and figure my uncle must have answers. “Why are the strip miners worse—”

“Look at this!” Uncle Lu holds up a set of keys and dangles them in front of me. The key ring has some kind of wooden whistle attached to it.

“What’s that?”

“A duck call,” he says. He puts the whistle to his lips and makes a strange sound like a hoarse bird trying to sing. “I used to hunt duck,” he says. “But now I’m more
like
a duck.”

“What do you mean?”

“I hunt fish.” Uncle Lu laughs like this is the funniest joke anybody’s ever told.

I hand him three pretty blue-green worms from my box that look almost like candy.

“Why are the strip miners worse than the Matlocks?” I ask, finally getting it all out.

“They bring destruction,” he says. “They’re all alike.”

“Are these the same Matlocks as Miss Matlock who lives down the road?”

“They’re all alike,” he says again.

“But …”

Uncle Lu jumps up from the table and dangles those keys in my face again. “Now I know what these fit!” he says. “They’re the keys to my boat.”

“You don’t have a boat anymore, Uncle Lu.”

“It’s red and white and it’s hooked up down at the
river,” he says. He turns and starts for the door. “We’ll take out the boat….”

“Aunt Gretchen sold it,” I say. “Last summer. Remember?”

He comes back to the table with a puzzled look on his face, takes off his glasses, and sits back down across from me.

“I remember Gretchen,” he says. “She was a pretty woman.”

“But we were talking about the Matlocks….”

He waves his hand to shush me. “I don’t want to talk no more,” he says.

C
aught in the Wind …

Our water pump broke and the plumber says it’ll take a week to get the part we need, so we go to Aunt Rose’s house in town to get water. City water comes from the Cumberland River and Pop says it’s nasty and tastes like chemicals. He’d take our well water any day, he says, even though it’s full of iron and sulfur and turns the white clothes yellow.

Rose’s wringer washing machine is sitting in the
middle of the kitchen floor taking up all the room. She washes and starches and irons shirts for the better men in town while their wives polish their nails and play cards.

We duck beneath a line of wet shirts and pants and boxy underwear to get to the sink. Momma and Jack fill their jugs first and Rose follows them to the front porch while they take their jugs to the car. I fill mine while Lenny waits in the doorway.

“That’s the preacher’s blue shirt,” I say, pointing to the only blue amongst the whites and yellows.

“I think you’re right,” Lenny says.

“It’s the one Zeno’s little brother threw up on,” I say, recalling how the preacher had picked up the baby and patted him on the back so hard his milk came up all over that blue shirt. It had small gray lines in it, almost invisible from a distance. “I’d like to put that shirt on a monkey.”

Lenny laughs so hard he has to hold his belly. He’ll laugh at anything I say.

I’m turned around watching him when Aunt Rose walks back in the kitchen.

“Look at that!” she shrieks, and points to the sink. “You know better than to waste water.”

The faucet’s on full blast and water is pouring over the jug. I turn it off, but Aunt Rose’s face is aflame. She wipes off the counter even though it didn’t really splash that far.