Little Altars Everywhere

  We polished off the cookies and turned off the TV. I went to my room, got undressed, and climbed in bed. I could smell the Tide on my pillowcase and feel how it was sort of crackly from drying on the line outside. Bibi Crowell had chosen me, and man, life was sweet. I laid back in my bed and smiled at the ceiling.

  Mama came out of her hole after I’d been in bed for fifteen minutes or so. She walked in and sat on my bed. I made myself be perfectly still so she’d think I was already asleep.

  How was the dance, Little Shep? she said, like I was about five years old.

  I thought, Not tonight, Mama. Not tonight.

  She said, Now don’t you try and play possum with me. I know you’re not asleep.

  I rolled over and looked at her. She had on that pink cotton nightgown with the tiny flowers embroidered on the collar. I could make out those gargantuan breasts of hers hanging underneath. I know those breasts and I hate them.

  She looked at me and whispered, Give me a hug, Little Shep. Give me a hug and a kiss.

  Automatically I sat up and hugged her. She squeezed back real hard and I could feel those breasts against my chest. I felt like throwing up, and then the tingling at my temples that comes just before a headache starts up. Out of nowhere I thought: I hate her. I hate her guts. The thought was sharp as a piece of glass. It felt great. Made me excited, like doing a cut-away off the high dive for the first time. I broke the hug and laid back down. The bitch stared at my chest.

  She said, My God, before long you’ll be getting hair on this chest.

  Then she reached down and started to rub her hand across one of my nipples.

  She said, You are so beautiful, Shep. Sometimes I can hardly believe you’re mine.

  Then all the thoughts went out of my head. It was simply my body doing exactly what it wanted to. I clamped my hand over her claw. At first she thought I was being affectionate, that I actually wanted to hold her fucking hand. But then when she tried to move her fingers, to continue her rubbing, I tightened my grasp over her hand as hard as I could. At first she looked confused. Then she giggled. I kept squeezing as tight as I could, like I had one of those fist-grip exercisers in my hand. I stared straight at her.

  She tried her whining like a little girl. Little Shep, she said, Let go of my hand. Pretty please.

  I squeezed even harder. I was hurting her, I could tell.

  She said, Quit it! That’s too rough.

  I said, Then get off of my bed, Mother. Go back to your own bed. Get out of my room and don’t ever come back here unless I say you can.

  Man, I couldn’t believe I was saying that! Something just got into me. I’d thought it before, somewhere in the back of my mind, but I’d never said anything like that out loud. It was the power of Bibi Crowell. It was the tiny little bit of down on Bibi’s cheek. That light little dusting of soft blonde hair on her skin, like on a peach. Like the sun had kissed her and left this little blonde fuzz behind. I’d deliberately brushed my cheek against hers during “Eleanor Rigby” so I could feel it.

  Mama said, Don’t you ever speak that way to me again as long as you live, Shepley Abbott Walker.

  I let go of her hand and got up out of the bed. She looked at me in shock. All I had on was my Jockeys. I opened my bedroom door and said, Get out.

  Daddy wasn’t home yet. Lulu and Baylor were already asleep. Sidda was gone. No one could hear us. I was twelve fucking years old. At first Mama didn’t budge from the bed, but when she did, she moved quick. She lunged for me and landed a punch against my rib cage.

  I didn’t hit her back. If I’d of hit her once, I would of never stopped. I would of killed her, I would of gone all the way.

  She swung her hand back and smacked me hard in the face. Man, I didn’t even feel it. It was like I had something protecting me. The slap threw her off-balance long enough for me to get out of the room.

  I didn’t go far. Just down the hall to the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator and poured a glass of orange juice, like I was somebody else’s kid in some other house. I could see the refrigerator light spilling on the tile floor. Just come in here, you bitch, I was thinking, just try one more thing with me. I could hear her going into the bathroom. Great, she’s taking a pee before she gets out the belt.

  Then—I couldn’t fucking believe the timing—the old man’s truck pulled up. I could hear the gravel crunch and the way the sound changed the minute the tires hit the concrete driveway. I stood there with the refrigerator door open, staring at a plate of fried chicken covered with wax paper.

  The old man stumbled in, drunked-up as usual. I could smell the Jack Daniels and cigarette smoke on him. I heard Mama open the bathroom door. She must of heard the old man too, because she went straight into her bedroom and slammed the door. I could hear her jam in the lock button all the way down the hall.

  I said, Hey Daddy, you want some juice? Man, I knew the bastard didn’t want any juice, I just couldn’t think of anything else to say. I was tired. I’d done enough for one night.

  For once he didn’t start anything. He just said, Son, you oughta be asleep by now.

  Yessir, I said, that’s where I’m headed.

  Back in my room, I could still smell my mother. I opened the window and turned my pillow over to the cool side.

  Yessir, I should of said, Why don’t you kick in the door of the blue bedroom that used to be our schoolroom and screw your wife so good she’s exhausted, laying back with a stupid silly grin on her face? Why don’t the two of yall have a car wreck off a cliff in Acapulco?

  I made my bed up and slept on top of the covers. I didn’t sleep on those sheets again till Willetta washed them. And I dreamed about Bibi Crowell.

  God, Bibi Crowell was perfect. I love my wife, but she’s no Bibi Crowell. Bibi Crowell was a sixth-grade goddess. I still dream about her. She was my protector in my room in that brick house on the bayou. That stinking bayou of thick brown water that didn’t move. Stagnant water that was full of shit you couldn’t see, couldn’t guess at, didn’t even want to know about.

  Catfish Dreams

  Baylor, 1990

  1.

  Used to be, when Sidda’d call collect from New York City and ask me what I think I’m doing living back in Thornton, I’d tell her: It’s simple, I moved back here because I’m a lemming. Because moving back to their hometown is what lemmings do. I’d tell her, I moved back here because Thornton is such an exciting, progressive, multicultural metropolis bursting with endless potential for everyone, regardless of gender, creed, or color. I moved back here so I could be close to the Pecan Grove Mental Farm. I moved back here because every person in this town knows who my grandfather was, and I don’t want to live like a fucking cockroach in a place like New York City. I moved back here because Willetta can help raise my twins. I moved back here because I’m going to make six figures this year. I’m the first person in our goddamn sicko family to become a lawyer and I like rubbing their noses in it. And every single day when I go for lunch at the Theodore Hotel, they know who I am. And they bring me my Baton Rouge Daily Advocate folded up just right and set it next to my pink linen napkin.

  But now I tell her: Because there’s nothing in the world that compares to the goings-on in the “Gret Stet of Loosiana,” like the Cajuns call it. This is a place apart. Man, politics and theater simmer in the same pot here, and the gumbo that results is mixed up with the past in a way that I’ve been hooked on since the day I was born. Where else are you going to find a place that’s one-third black, one-third Cajun, and one-third Bible Belt Baptist? And Thornton’s right smack in the middle of it! I mean, if Louisiana’s shaped like a boot, then Thornton is the instep. We’re the dividing line between the South Louisiana liberal Catholics and the North Louisiana conservative Baptists. So we party like South Louisiana and wake up with the guilt hangovers of North Louisiana. I love it and I hate it and I couldn’t leave it if I tried.

  You just name me one other state in the Union that had “The Kingfish,” Huey Long, who
would have become president if you ask me—if that damn dentist hadn’t shot him down in the State Capitol Building. You name me one other state that had a Governor Earl Long getting off planes wearing paper bags over his head so the media wouldn’t recognize him with Miss Blaze Starr. Hell, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reporters used to say, Governor, why are you wearing a paper sack on your head again? And do you think it was easy for the man to act as governor while he was in a Texas mental institution?! Another thing: You just try and name me one other state that’s had a governor who’s also in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Shit, Jimmie Davis can still flat-out sing “You Are My Sunshine.”

  And I need not even mention that we are the only state who can boast that we have a former Ku Klux Klan leader as one of our state representatives.

  And I moved back here because of catfish!

  Our honorable bigot of a mayor, Wascomb Belvedere, has proclaimed that it’s high time Thornton became Financially Revitalized. Now this is truly a novel idea, given the fact that this burg has been in a slump ever since the Reconstruction.

  According to Belvedere, the whole key to our new prosperity is going to be—catfish. Yeah, baby, catfish. The mayor claims catfish have a brand new image now. Tells anyone who will listen that when fried catfish was served at the Williamsburg Summit Conference back in 1983, there wasn’t a single scrap left on anybody’s plates. He predicts catfish will become as trendy as blackened redfish, coveted by four-star restaurants from coast to coast. Uh-huh, those trailer-trash fish are gonna swim uptown and Thornton isn’t gonna be caught napping when they arrive.

  Now we’re talking the lowlife fish that I was raised to believe was a lazy man’s fish, a poor man’s fish, a black man’s fish. Mean old feline-looking bottom fish with whiskers. Some of them so butt-ugly they look like their heads got smashed in a car door. Chaney used to work the banks for them with a cane pole, sinker, and worms.

  Before Chaney’s little brother Lincoln was sent to get his jaw blown off to keep the world safe for multinational corporations, he used to tell us stories about a cousin of his who caught a catfish big as a car. He’d get all excited and stutter, Fish was b-b-b-big as a Ch-Ch-Chevrolet!

  Willetta used to batter and fry those catfish up and serve them swimming in catsup, with hush puppies and coleslaw. Man, that was their idea of a party. Mama wouldn’t allow catfish in our house, but I ate them down the lane at Chaney and Willetta’s, and that meat was as white and flaky and tender as it gets.

  Well, His Honor the Mayor closes down City Park Pool, where Mama used to teach Red Cross swimming classes if her hangover wasn’t too bad. Belvedere has big plans to convert the pool into the Thornton Municipal Catfish Farm. He calls it Catfish Plan for Revitalization—or “CPR.” The man comes on the radio a hundred times a day with this corny-ass public service announcement and says, “CPR is a kind of resuscitation for the whole community.”

  People all over town are getting this crazy flash of hope in their eyes. The guys down at Rotier’s where Daddy drinks get a swagger in their walks when they discuss the Rebirth of Thornton. Even the old man himself has a “Thornton: The Catfish Miracle” bumper sticker plastered on the back of his Suburban.

  The mayor and his people go and drain all the old water from the City Park Pool, and fill it with new. Then they put together this big ceremony for the dumping of the first load of fish. They actually spend taxpayers’ money to build bleachers so people can witness this historic event in comfort. Everyone starts calling the mayor “Catfish” Belvedere, and he plays it to the hilt. The fearless leader shows up at the ceremony with a huge pair of scissors with handles shaped like catfish. He snips a ribbon in half, and hundreds of catfish pour from a holding tank into the pool. About two hundred Thorntonians are there and they give the fish a standing ovation.

  As for the reception afterward, well, it rivals anything you could experience at Gallatoire’s in New Orleans. The head of the LSU-Thornton Home Ec Department was commissioned to create all the uptown catfish recipes she could come up with, and let me tell you, you have never lived until you have eaten catfish amandine.

  Oh yeah. Things are really changing. There hasn’t been this much excitement in Thornton since Ardoin’s Potato Chip Factory opened in 1959. I was little, but I remember it clearly. I don’t forget anything. Every time Thorntonians ripped open a bag of chips back then, they said: These potato chips are made right here in our very own town! Like it was a fucking miracle. You learn to take your thrills where you can find them in a dump like this.

  Well, the whole town goes ape-shit over the damn catfish. It’s on the local news every single evening. When people from out of town come to visit, Thorntonians take them over there and make them pose for pictures in front of the hurricane fence that rings the pool. Yep, we’re gonna make millions trucking those fish to processing plants where they’ll get shipped all over the country. I tell Sidda she could possibly even end up with a Thornton-raised catfish on her plate right up there in midtown Manhattan! Then she can brag about where she’s from. What pride, what rich ancestry, we children of catfish!

  This catfish enterprise is assuming mythic proportions. The old man actually said he thought Charles Kuralt should do a show on Thornton’s Catfish Miracle. Said he thought the rest of the country would enjoy seeing “how one little old town pulled itself out of the swamp without sucking one single dollar from the federal guv’ment.” You know something’s really cooking when the old man gets that positive.

  2.

  Something’s gone wrong. Every damn time I go by the Municipal Catfish Farm now, there are more dead fish. They’re floating belly-up, their eyes bulging like they’re looking for some message in the Louisiana sky. But nobody talks about it. The mayor’s office says, There are just a few sick ones that need to be weeded out. But every single day, more of those fish are dead. The stench of dead fish is getting so bad I can hardly stand it.

  One night I wake up in a cold sweat from one of the drowning dreams. Mama and Daddy and all of us are fishing in a small boat back in the canal that borders Pecan Grove. The boat turns over and the canal becomes the ocean. Everybody’s going under. Dead fish are so thick in the water, it’s like soup. I try holding onto the fish like life preservers, but Sidda yells: Bay, don’t! Dive under! Dive under with me! There’s an air pocket down here, dive under!

  I wake before I dive under. Melissa’s so used to my nightmares, my thrashing around doesn’t even wake her up. I walk into my study and light a cigarette. We’re five miles from the damn City Park Catfish Pond, and I can smell those dead fish in my study.

  Melissa wakes up and comes to the door. You okay, sweetie? she asks me.

  You smell it? I ask her.

  Smell what, Baylor? she asks.

  The dead fish.

  No, she says. It’s just another nightmare, Bay. Come on back to bed.

  I’m going to stay up and work for a little while, I tell her. Then I get up and give her a kiss.

  Thank you, she says.

  For what? I ask her.

  For the kiss. You never usually kiss me after a nightmare.

  I sit in my study and smoke cigarettes.

  Work, eat, smoke, sleep, scream at claims adjusters, take depositions in podunk parishes, try not to drink so much, try not to smoke, keep playing with the twins, try to make love to Melissa. Barbecue, plant a hibiscus in the yard, try not to go crazy.

  Sidda says that sometimes she’ll just be going along, and then—out of nowhere—she’ll smell the exact odor of the inside of Mama’s purse when we were little. She says it makes her chest close up and she has trouble breathing. She says she feels like she’s a veteran of a war that doesn’t have a name.

  I miss Sidda. Melissa doesn’t even notice the absurdity of this Gret Stet. Neither does anybody else I know. I’ll try to catch someone’s eye at a political function when I see something wacko going on, and they don’t even pick up on it. Sidda and I always caught each other’s eyes when we witness
ed that nutsoid shit, and later we’d crack each other up, doing imitations of what we’d seen.

  I liked it when I had Sidda around. I remember when just the two of us lived together at LSU. In that big old stucco garage apartment by the lake. Must’ve been a thousand oak trees surrounding that place, and all those camellia bushes. I always loved the way the apartment smelled inside. Like citrus and linseed oil. Those old hardwood floors.

  All I did that semester was read. I read Lanterns on the Levee by William Alexander Percy. All about the Great Flood of 1927. Man, that Mississippi broke free and flooded 26,000 square miles of land, drove about 700,000 people from their homes, and killed 214. I listened to Randy Newman’s Good Ole Boys album about a thousand times, listened to him sing “Louisiana.” That song still breaks my heart into slivers on the floor. I read and re-read The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy, the finest writer to come out of this state. His daddy’s cousin was the same Percy who wrote Lanterns on the Levee, and Walker was raised by the man. Shit, no wonder old Walker could write like he did. That river was in his blood. I cried like a baby when he died this year. I mean, Walker Percy fucking knew about being haunted. He knew about being honorable. I’m not talking bogus Southern Gentleman honor. I’m talking honor that doesn’t wash away.

  I quit going to classes. I ate vanilla wafers and drank Dr. Peppers all that semester, and all it did was rain. People were going to classes in pirogues. LSU went nuts. They pulled couches out of the fraternity houses and just sat out in the rain and drank gin. Half the school was drunk the whole time.