A Miracle of Catfish

  Albert had gotten the fishing pole in a snarl and he was down on his knees in jeans working on it, trying to untangle it.

  “Piss fuck cock shit dick,” he said.

  “I done told him they wasn’t no fish in this pond yet,” her daddy said to Mister Toby, who had come back in his overalls and was periodically spitting into a small white cup his viscous liquid tobacco discharges. “But wouldn’t nothing do him but bring the rod and reel. That old thing needs some new line on it anyway.”

  “It’s a beautiful pond, Daddy,” Lucinda said, standing beside him. She’d put on some shorts and sandals and a button-up shirt of Albert’s. All the people had finally gone and there was so much food left over that she’d had a hard time fitting it all into the refrigerator, which hadn’t been very well stocked. Canned biscuits and bacon and eggs and some jelly and some sliced baloney. Now it was crammed with deviled eggs and sliced hams and chicken and dressing and fried chicken and casseroles and even some fried quail.

  “It’s about halfway full,” her daddy said, looking out over the muddy water. “I figure if I get three or four more good rains it’ll fill on up.”

  “I believe it’s deep enough to where you can go ahead and get your fish and put em in, Cortez,” Mister Toby said.

  “How often does the fish man come?” her daddy said.

  “Every month or two in the summer. He was just here, let’s see … this is … He was here third week in July. So he ought to be back fore long. I can find out when I get back to work in the morning for you. I’ll ask Richard. He’ll know.”

  “Reckon how many I ought to get?” her daddy said.

  “I don’t know. The fish guy can tell you, though. Deep as this thing’s gonna be I’d say it would hold a lot. You gonna feed em, ain’t you?”

  “Oh yes, I’m gonna feed em,” her daddy said. “I’m gonna get me some feed the same day I get the fish.”

  He looked over at Albert, still messing with the tangled reel. Then he looked at Lucinda.

  “He gets into something, he just kind of sticks with it, don’t he?”

  “Yeah, he does,” she said. “I don’t know what makes him that way, but that’s how he is. Albert? Why don’t you quit messing with that rod and reel? We’ll come back and fish when it has some fish in it, okay?”

  “Fuck a goat’s ass,” Albert said, but he calmly nodded. He stood up with the rod and reel and walked over to them. He leaned the rod against his shoulder and his head did that jerking motion. Lucinda couldn’t get over how nicely shaped the pond was. Whoever had built it had taken his time and done it right. It was over an acre of water and the banks were gently sloped and smoothly finished. It looked so natural that only the big pile of trees down near the levee revealed what had been here before. Over the fall the remaining trees would layer the banks with shed leaves, and in spring and summer it would be a nice place to come and fish. Sit with Albert and show him how to do it.

  Albert handed her the rod and reel and she took it. She couldn’t wait to get him back home. She was afraid to make love with him here, back in her old bedroom. She knew she was over forty years old and all that, but she just couldn’t do it. She was afraid her daddy would hear them. Especially with the kind of noises Albert made when he got excited.

  She wished now that she’d booked their plane tickets for Tuesday instead of tomorrow. Now that she was here, and the funeral was over, and all the people were gone from the house, it would have been nice to stay around, work in the garden some, bring a blanket and some suntan oil and lie out in the sun beside the pond. And there were so many things she needed to talk over with her daddy. One of them was what to do with all her mama’s things. She knew what he’d do. He’d box everything up and stick it in the barn probably. The wheelchair would be folded up and crammed somewhere. And he would be here all by himself. Maybe she was more worried about that than anything. What he was going to do with himself. What he was going to eat.

  “Where’s Cleve these days, Daddy?” she said.

  Her daddy scratched his ear and then cut a faint fart.

  “Daddy,” she said.

  “He’s still over there in Old Dallas. That girl of his finally come home with some soldier.”

  “How old’s Cleve now?”

  “I don’t know. I think he was in his twenties when he went to the pen the first time. Stayed nine years and then he come back and he was fifty when he went back again. I think he did eight years then. He ain’t been out but three years. I’d guess he’s about sixty.”

  “You think he remembers me?”

  Her daddy nodded and looked out across the water.

  “I imagine he does.”

  “I wish I could go see him.”

  Her daddy turned around and stared at her.

  “What the hell you want to go see him for?”

  He was looking at her hard and it was difficult for her to say what she felt. It always had been, in front of him.

  “I don’t know. I just remember when he used to work around the place. He was always nice to me.”

  “He ain’t nice if you cross him when he’s drunk. That’s how come he did two stretches in Parchman for manslaughter.”

  She stood there, nodding.

  “I just wondered how he was doing,” she said.

  “He’s doing about like he always has.”

  She could tell that was the end of that. And it was getting close to late evening anyway. She’d toyed with the idea of driving across the river for some beer with Albert and then come back and maybe make some sandwiches for supper. There was so much food in there.

  A bat had come out of the woods and was swooping low across the water, not quite touching the surface with its wingtips. It skittered and jerked across the air, returning, flying off, coming back.

  “Well,” her daddy said. “We better get on back before it gets dark.”

  “It’s sure nice, Daddy,” she said.

  “It’s mighty fine, Cortez,” Mister Toby said. “I’ll find out about that fish guy for you in the morning.”

  “Good,” her daddy said.

  The Tallahatchie River bridge was long rusted and the wheels made a rushing sound when you went between the guardrails. It was almost dark and the rental car’s lights were bright. Lucinda hadn’t made a run across the river to the beer store in a long time. It used to be a thing to do on Sunday afternoons, with some of her friends, back when she was going to Ole Miss. She didn’t have any idea where all those people were now. Most of them probably had children by now. At forty-three, she’d realized that the clock had run out for her. Her daddy didn’t mention it anymore, but she knew he was disappointed not to have any grandchildren. She’d failed him. He hadn’t said that, but she knew that’s what he thought. He didn’t think much of her living in Atlanta either, but she couldn’t live her life just to please him. She had a good job modeling. It paid for nice things.

  Albert was asleep in the seat beside her. She guessed he was worn out from everything. She had the radio playing at a low level that maybe wouldn’t wake him up. By tomorrow night they’d be back home, to sleep in their own bed, wear their comfortable clothes, watch their own TV. Daddy hadn’t even turned his on since she’d been home. He’d mentioned how loudly her mother used to play it. But it was all the entertainment she’d had. He stayed outside all the time, working at one thing and another. He didn’t seem to be slowing down a whole lot, even at his age.

  She glanced over at Albert. He was relaxed in the seat, his face turned toward her, his hands composed in his lap and lit by the green glow of the dash lights. Sleeping as peacefully as a baby.

  The traffic was fairly light. She met one state trooper who flashed his blue lights at her because she was speeding. She let off the gas and looked in the rearview to see if he’d hit his brake lights. He hadn’t. She guessed she’d better slow down, especially on the way back. The cops had always been bad on this highway.

  Marshall County. She knew there were dirt roads that
led all through the woods on the other side of the railroad tracks and that little juke joints were scattered all up and down them, places where people gathered on weekend nights to listen to electric guitars and drink homemade whisky and Budweiser. A long time ago she’d gone to Junior Kimbrough’s place one Sunday evening and had heard him play. But there weren’t many white faces in there. Nobody had acted ugly to her, but more than a few of the men had hit on her. That was a long time ago. But she still remembered what it felt like in there, the smoke and the dim lights and the screaming guitar Junior had played, one of his boys drumming for him, another one playing bass, everybody drinking and laughing and dancing. It was another world. And now Junior was dead and his place had burned down. […]

  She started slowing down just this side of the county line and she put on her blinker to turn left, even though there was only one car way back behind her. It had rained over here, too, and the dirt drive she turned onto was still a little muddy, but it had plenty of gravel on it. The tires made a crunching sound rolling over it. She reached out and touched Albert.

  “We’re here, babe,” she said, and he stirred in the seat. He put out his arms straight ahead of him before he opened his eyes and he squinched his face up into a contortion and made a grunting noise deep in his chest and then twined his fingers together and turned them backward and flexed his knuckles so that they popped. Then he opened his eyes and looked around.

  “This the place?” he said.

  “This is it. Best barbecue around. And they got cold beer.”

  The place was called Betty Davis’s and it was a little shack that was perched on a low hill. Rusty roof, beer signs all over. Smoke was always rising from the cooker in back. The clay gravel parking lot was one Lucinda had never seen empty. She drove slowly and a rabbit ran across the road. Oh shit. She stopped just short of the joint to let out a car that was backing up, a black Lexus, new, muddy, what looked like some college students driving it. They had their interior light on and Lucinda stopped to let them do whatever they were doing. Laughing. Getting beer out of the paper sack. They turned and straightened up and went past her, waving as they went. She waved back and eased up the hill into the slot they had vacated, parked and shut it off.

  “You ready to go in?” she said.

  Albert’s head jerked. He was already taking his seat belt off. She hoped nothing would happen in here, but he was starting to blink.

  She got out and put the keys in her pocket and waited for Albert to get out and come around. There was a car parked beside her and a big black kid with a paper sack came out the door, heading toward it. He was dressed all in clean starched denim, a Raiders cap turned backward on his head, tremendous Nikes on his outsized feet. He was boogeying his head to some internal rhythm as he came out, almost dancing as he walked.

  “Whassup?” he said, flashing a big smile, one gold tooth showing.

  “How you doing?” Lucinda said.

  “Suck a duck, Buck,” Albert said.

  The black kid stopped. He weighed close to three hundred. Big enough to be a linebacker at Ole Miss. Might have been.

  “Say what?” he said. He had put a look of concern on his face.

  “Come here, Albert,” Lucinda said to him. “He has something wrong with him,” she said to the big black kid.

  “He gonna have something wrong he don’t watch that mouth,” the kid said.

  “It’s all right,” Lucinda said. “Come here, Albert, and hold my hand.”

  Albert walked obediently between the rental car and the big kid, who was looking at him curiously. His ride was a superclean ’68 Chevy two-door sedan, chrome spoker rims on narrow sidewall tires. He went ahead and got into it. Lucinda took Albert’s hand and opened the front door and pulled him in.

  It hadn’t changed any. There were still packs of pigskins in racks in the middle of the floor and the glass-door beer coolers were on the left. There was a big warmer on the right where they kept the ribs and buns and sauce and pulled pork, and a high counter ran down the length of the room. There was a small dining room in back where you could sit down and eat if you wanted to, behind some nicely sewn curtains.

  A big-bellied black guy behind the counter said, “Hey. How y’all doing this evening?”

  “Pretty good,” Lucinda said.

  “Arm quarm farm,” Albert said. He was blinking a little and Lucinda saw the guy behind the counter see it. A couple of women back there with stained aprons looked at Albert. One said something to the other one.

  “We just need some beer,” Lucinda said, and pulled Albert toward the beer coolers. “And some Cokes if you’ve got em.”

  “Y’all better get you some ribs while you here,” the man sang out. “Fatten him up a little bit.”

  Lucinda turned back to speak to him.

  “We’re gonna eat when we get home,” she said. “I know y’all have some good barbecue, though. I used to come over here when I went to Ole Miss. It’s the best.”

  “Aw yes’m,” the man said. “We feed all them Ole Miss kids.”

  She turned back to the beer coolers and found a six-pack of Bud tall boys and opened the glass door and reached in for one of them.

  “Let me see if we can find you some Cokes, honey,” she said, still holding Albert’s hand. But she dropped it and handed him the beer. “Hold this,” she said, and Albert took it and held it to his chest.

  She saw some Pepsis. Some Mountain Dews. Some Dr Peppers. Down near the bottom she found the Cokes and reached in for a sixer.

  “Okay, sweetie. We’ll just get me some cigarettes and pay for this and we can go.”

  Albert followed her over to the counter, pausing to look at the racks of pigskins. He reached out and touched a bag of Brim’s barbecued.

  “Kwaka?” he said. “Kwaka.”

  Lucinda turned and looked at him. She walked back over there beside him.

  “You want some pigskins?” she said.

  Albert had a puzzled look on his face.

  “Kwaka?” he said.

  “No, honey, it’s not a cracker. It’s pigskins. You want some?”

  “Ate shits?” he said.

  “No, honey, it’s pigskins. They make them out of hogs. They’re like cracklings. Here, let’s get you a bag, you might like them. Let’s get some barbecued ones. They’re the best.”

  She showed him how to pull the bag from the clip on the rack and then they went to the counter. She set his Cokes down and Albert, after watching her, set her beer up there beside them. Then he moved over to a large jar of pickled eggs and studied them as if they were some kind of exhibit in a carnival sideshow. Then his eye caught the pickled pigs’ feet in another jar and he moved to it and stabbed it with his finger.

  “Pig dick,” he said excitedly.

  “We live in Atlanta,” Lucinda said to the big man behind the counter, smiling at him. “He doesn’t see stuff like this in Atlanta.”

  She pulled some money from her pocket and the guy started ringing up the stuff on the register, looking at Albert warily.

  “And let me have a pack of Virginia Slims Lights, too,” she said.

  “Hock his cock!” Albert said, and then he walked over and caught her by the arm.

  “Hold it just a minute,” Lucinda said to the guy behind the counter. Her face was turning red but she went over to the jar with Albert. He kept poking it with his finger.

  “Those are pigs’ feet, Albert. I don’t think you want any of them.”

  “Ain’t nothin wrong with my pigs’ feet,” the man said, offended.

  “Well, no, I didn’t say there was anything wrong with them,” she said, glancing up at the man. “He just doesn’t know what they are.”

  “He act like he want some,” the man said.

  And Albert did. He kept tugging on her sleeve.

  “Okay,” she said. “Can you get him a couple?”

  One of the women came up with a long pair of stainless steel tongs and a little white paper tray. She took the top
off the big jar and reached in for one pig’s foot, holding it and shaking the pink juice from it for a moment before she pulled it out and put it in the tray, and then she got another one and put it beside the first one. She dropped some napkins over them and put the tongs down and put the lid back on the jar and handed the paper tray to the man, who put it in a paper bag and set it up beside their beer. He raised his face to search the cigarette rack above him.

  “How much em pigskins?” he said.

  Lucinda looked at the bag in Albert’s hand.

  “Fifty-nine cents,” she said.

  The man wasn’t having any luck finding her cigarettes. The door opened and the bell over it jangled and two more young black guys came in, wearing denim jeans and jackets, black bandannas on their heads. What happened next happened fast.

  “I done told you two sons of bitches not to come back in here no more,” the man behind the counter said, and the next thing Lucinda knew he had pulled a sawed-off shotgun from behind the counter and thrown down on both of them. One of the women back there screamed. Both of them ducked down. But the young men only backed against the door and stopped. They put their hands up.

  “Hell, Pop,” one of them said.

  “Don’t you Pop me, motherfucker,” the man behind the counter said, and Lucinda could see murder in his eyes. She was frozen and she didn’t know where Albert was. “I’ll blow your goddamn head off.”

  One of them put a surly look on his face and lowered his hands.

  “We ain’t wanting nothing but some Miller, old man. Why don’t you chill your ass out?”

  The man behind the counter cocked the hammer and put his finger on the trigger.

  “Marvis, I swear fore God I’ll blow you and that punkass nigger with you half in two if you don’t turn around and walk out that door right now.”

  Lucinda had to admit they had some balls. Both of them spit on the floor, then one of them snatched the door open and they slouched out, mumbling about jive-ass niggers as they went. She heard a car that had been left running rev up, then the motor noise receded. She was scared to look out the door and turned to find Albert back behind the counter with the women. He was looking over the top at her.