In Memory of Junior Read online

  The boy cracks up. It was pretty funny.

  “And let me tell you, them clubs really won’t worth two cents. Well, I finally get to hitting them pretty good over at the hitting place, and I let go this swing, hit the ball, dribble it off to the side, and the club you know I’m holding up over my head feels real light somehow, and so I look up and there goes the damn club head, sailing through the damn air.”

  I was cracking up too, sipping on a cool one, smoking a cigar, leaning back in my chair, listening to the ocean crash a couple hundred yards away. The life.

  “Well, hell,” the old man says, “now I’m standing there with this pool cue in my hands, right? In front of, you know, forty, fi’ty millionaires.” He’d pulled his chair out from the table, kind of out into the center of the room.

  “Well, I look out across the field and here comes the . . . this guy in the little caged-in green tractor. He’s bringing me the damn club head back—in front of everybody, in front of these forty, fi’ty millionaires. So I took it, put it in my front pocket, and that looks pretty odd, and Merle is about to die laughing.”

  “Then I lose the head to my other wood—same way, fourth or fifth hole—and that bag of clubs looks pitiful. No wood things, just a bag of sticks. I played maybe two, three times since then. You boys ever play any golf?”

  “I played a couple of times,” said Faison. “I ain’t no good, though. I played with my mama one time.”

  Things got quiet.

  “When did y’all play golf?” said Tate. He seemed a little shook. He still hadn’t drunk no beer or nothing.

  “She took me to the Putt-Putt over across from the Taylors’ house. That Putt-Putt they had on Highway Twelve. You remember that Putt-Putt, don’t you? Probably one of the first there ever was. Had that great big WHITES ONLY sign across the front.”

  “I remember that place,” I said. I did.

  Tate says he never knew his mama took Faison to the Putt-Putt. A little family stuff, here.

  “Evelyn was something,” said the old man. “She could plow, do anything I could, growing up. Plowed that little old crooked-legged mule like a man.”

  “She die?” I asked. I didn’t know nothing about this stuff. How was I supposed to know what was coming?

  “She left home,” said Faison, “when I was seven and Tate was about six months old.”

  So I said something about being glad me and Timmy had a good mama and Faison says, “I don’t think she was necessarily bad. She just got tired of farm life, I think. Hell, I did too.”

  “She was a good woman,” said the old man. “It was all kind of sad. She left. Then five years later, I left.”

  “So she was your sister?” I asked the old man.

  “Right. She was a good one, too.”

  “Do you know why she left?” the boy asked the old man.

  It was quiet again, almost like somebody else had just walked in the room. Spooky. I could tell that it was one of those things in families that nobody talks about. Like Timmy’s stuff.

  “Yeah, I do know, but it’s well enough left alone. I took care of it more or less,” says the old man.

  “Did she just leave?” said the boy. Pressing, see.

  “Leave it alone,” said Faison. “What’s the big deal? She left, she left.”

  “I guess it’s a big deal to me,” said Tate to the old man, “if you know something we don’t.” Tate was sort of leaning forward, serious-like, his elbows on his knees, looking the old man in the eye.

  “She left,” said the old man—and he looked right at Morgan—“she left because she was funny, you know, queer, she left so she could kissy-kissy with another woman, some dyke with a English accent. That’s what happened.”

  I’m thinking, hold on, this is too serious.

  Faison kind of laughed. “You’re lying.”

  “So help me God that was it,” says the old man.

  Faison stood up like he was going somewhere, took a couple of steps, turned around, then sat back down. “She ran away with a woman?” he says.

  “That’s right.” The old man was wetting down a cigar.

  “Bullshit. I knew her. She might have been unhappy or something, but she won’t no queer.” Faison looked like he might be a little mad at his uncle.

  “You’re right. You’re right. I don’t think she was either,” said the old man. “That’s the whole problem. What happened was this woman from England talked her into it. She was a smooth-talking dyke that come from England, through New York, and took advantage of her. That’s what it was.”

  So they get to going back and forth, you know, about all this stuff that happened, hell, something like forty, forty-five years ago and the old man tells them they ain’t got nothing to worry about, that he took care of everything—that he paid them a visit and roughed up the one from England enough that she and their mama, they split up for good. I about cold-cocked the kid because he wants to know what’s wrong with being a lesbian. Butts in, asking that shit. I about cold-cocked him.

  So here I am fishing on McGarren Island with some sixteen-year-old weirdo, sitting around the supper table drinking beer, and suddenly all this strange stuff comes out, and Mr. Weirdo wants to know what’s wrong with lesbians. You figure it. So I told him. Anybody with any sense knows you behave the way you want other people to behave—if you’ve got any ethics to you. That’s the bottom of the Christian tradition which is the foundation of America and so you got these homosexuals behaving in such a way that if everybody did, then the human race would peter out so to speak. In other words, we’re talking the elimination of the whole human race, and here’s a sixteen-year-old so-called leader of tomorrow wanting to know what’s wrong with that. You figure it. I didn’t want to waste the breath to try to explain it. His old man didn’t even look at him. He just sat there looking at the wall like he hadn’t ever seen a wall.

  Honour

  I knew about Evelyn’s brother. Evelyn had talked about him often. But I couldn’t have imagined the extent of his . . . his brutality.

  The people I’ve always lived around have been tolerant—in the main. This man was bloody evil. He’d been arrested for something over near the mines and she’d been to visit him in jail and I guess gave him our address, because he came. She had gone into town that afternoon. But he came right on in the house anyway, like he owned it. He sat down on the settee and said, “So you’re the queer.”

  “Pardon?” I said.

  He stood up and screamed at me, language I will not repeat, and had wrestled me to the couch—his pants unbuttoned, and down—when Evelyn came in. Thank god she came in. Furniture was upset and a lamp was broken. It’s with me to this day. And the horror of it all—really the main horror of it all, if you want to know the truth—was that Evelyn, even after that, would not chastise him. She talked to him until he promised he would leave and not come back. And then she hugged him before he left. She hugged him. I was sitting there, shaking, crying, red welts on my arms, deaf in one ear, and she hugged him good-bye.

  After that, Evelyn was not Evelyn, and I was not Honour. There was no bridge back. I packed and said good-bye to Evelyn and my house. There was no choice and I knew I could never return. I’ve left many places, but this leaving was the most difficult. And I haven’t seen her since. My Evelyn. I often wonder how she is, where she is, what she may be doing. We memorized so much about each other.

  Jimmy

  Late that night I stood out in the surf fishing, watching that sparkling stuff, phosphorus or whatever, around my waders, then looking out to the ocean, feeling the pull of that four-ounce weight on the bottom, waiting for a big fish to knock the hell out of it so I could get all that fighting going, dragging and pumping that rascal in.

  The old man had gone to bed—he was washed out—but Weirdo and Faison and Tate were fishing. Lights scare the fish so we were in the dark. We had a little penlight at the bait board. More stars out there than I’ve ever seen anywhere. It’s always like that down there.r />
  Finally the boy went in. He’d already been so tired he couldn’t hardly walk. He probably can’t help the way he is. Faison said he has a weird mama. And he gets all that lesbian stuff from the public schools.

  The going stayed slow, so I finally walked in the surf over to Tate. I was mellowed out a little bit, I suppose. I figured he was getting that way, too. He’d finally started drinking, filled him a flask before we came out after supper. But he hadn’t said much.

  We stood there together holding our rods and reels.

  “Hey,” I said, “if we don’t catch another fish it’s all been worth it. There are a lot of people in the world don’t like to fish,” I said, “but I’ll tell you one thing, a night like this, a surf rod in your hands, a cooler of beer on the beach, a mess of fried bluefish in your belly, it’s the life. Second best thing to pussy.”

  He didn’t say nothing.

  “Yep,” I said.

  “That’s right,” he said. Took a couple of steps away from me. Something having to do with psychology and all that. He tried to say at supper that if his mother was queer, it didn’t make no difference to him. Yeah. Sure thing. You could tell he didn’t mean it.

  “Nothing better,” I said. “You know of anything better?” Seeing if I could loose him up a little.

  “I’d say this ranks right up there,” he said.

  “Yep. Didn’t Faison say you flew fighters in Vietnam?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That must have been kind of like flying a machine gun.”

  “Never thought about it that way, but yeah, that’s right. Kinda that way.”

  “I had a cousin had six machine guns.”

  “That’s a bunch.”

  We fished without saying anything for a while.

  “I’m glad you can go get the snakes for me,” I said.

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  After another few minutes, he reeled in, walked up to our little beach camp. Faison reeled in, walked over. Then Faison said they were turning in. I said I was going to fish till two and if I hadn’t had no bites, quit then.

  Faison

  Me and Tate get back and sit on the porch so we won’t wake Uncle Grove and Morgan. The cabin had a little porch and a couple of lawn chairs. Tate pulled off his waders, then his socks, and shook them out. You could see in the starlight.

  I told him his feet stinked.

  “Maybe they really smell sweet,” he says. “Think about it.”

  I told him he was crazy.

  “No, no, no. Think about it,” he says. “You know the whole existence, the very whole existence exists in our minds and in our minds only. I been thinking about this.” He draped his socks over the railing.

  I said, “You hear Uncle Grove’s snowsuit story?”

  Didn’t faze him. “Wait a minute,” he says. “Listen. I mean all beliefs about everything are in our heads, not out there in the world. Tha’s where everything is and always will be unless we take our brains out our heads, so that means that what somebody believes is their whole world. See?”

  “No, I don’t. What is this? Philos’phy? Psycho’gy?” Tate gets off on this crap sometimes. But I hadn’t seen him this looped in fifteen years. “The difference between me and you, Tate,” I said, “is I know stuff, and you know about stuff. Hit on that, you want to talk some philos’phy. Hit on that.”

  “Shit, Faison. You damn redneck,” he says.

  I had one of my socks halfway off. “You drunk, Tate. I know what it is. Are you talking all this crap because you think it means Mama should get off the hook for being queer? Is that it?”

  “I hadn’t said that. I’m talking something different. Try to think for a change. And listen very carefully to what I’m about to say. And think about it. The way something smells is not in this world. It’s in our heads, because if it was in the world then you wouldn’t have flies landing on shit, because shit would stink to flies too, to everybody, to all living creatures. Why you think a goddamn fly will land on shit instead of a flower? Because a turd smells good to them, that’s why. In his head it’s beauty and in ours it’s ugly . . . ugliness. Who’s to say? Who’s to say? That’s what I say. Who’s to say? And think about this: We see light waves. What if we saw sound waves? We been conditioned by the kind of waves we see. Think about—”

  “I don’t have to listen to all this, Tate,” I said. He was looped. “You talk like a damned atheist. I need a beer.” Then I told him, “You won’t ever get over going to college, Tate, you know that?” I got up, opened the beer cooler, got out a beer. When I had raised the lid to the cooler I had this sudden understanding—this golden thought more or less. So I said, “If the world is in your head, then why can’t you catch a fish in your head? Why you got to come to the damn ocean? Answer me that one.”

  Jimmy came up. “Catch a fish in your head?” he says. “Whoa.”

  “We just talking some bullshit,” I said. “Philos’phy.”

  “That’s a load off my mind,” he says. “Count me out.” He stepped over to the beer cooler. “Who needs a beer?”

  “Not me,” said Tate. “You do any good?”

  “Naw.”

  “I’ll take one more,” I said. “No, wait a min. I aw-awready got one right here. Hell, I’m be up all night pissing.”

  “I’ll piss for you,” said Jimmy.

  Tate laughs, lights up a cigar. And he don’t smoke, either. The glow was bright in the dark.

  “What a day,” said Jimmy. “What a day. Best hour of fishing I ever had in my life. I tell you one thing,” he said, lighting him a cigar, too. He shook out the match. “I tell you one thing.” He blew out a puff of smoke. He pushed a flip-top box of cigars toward me. “Here, have one,” he said. I took one. He drew on his, looking at it, his eyes kind of crossed. “I tell you one thing . . .”

  “Wha’s that?” I said.

  He looked at me, thought for a few seconds. “I forgot,” he says. “Wait a minute, I know what it was. Die ever tell you bout the tie we stayed in a condo?”

  “You told us at supper,” I said.

  “That’s right. I thought I did. Whoa. Who far’ed?”

  “Don’t say fart,” I said, “we get a speech from Tate bout how a fly goes to college.”

  “Eat shit, Faison.”

  “I’ve always been able to whip your ass, Tate. I can do it right here, now, too.” I would too. In a minute.

  But all the time I was talking, I was thinking: Mama was a lesbian. Uncle Grove didn’t have no reason to make up something like that. If I hadn’t known her it would be different. That’s why it don’t make no difference to Tate. He didn’t know her. I had actually known the woman. The first and last lesbian I ever knew, I guess. That’s a hell of a thing.

  Jimmy went in in a minute and Tate was laying on the porch on his back, getting sauced, more sauced. He talked some out of his head and I just kind of went along with him. Then he asked me this—and I could tell from his tone of voice that he’d all of a sudden got real, real mad—he asked me did I know I didn’t say good-bye when I left home thirty, thirty-five years ago. Hell of a thing. I didn’t remember anything about that. I was a kid. Then he asked me if I’d say I was sorry. He was raised up off his back and staring at me. I said, “Sure. I’m sorry I didn’t say good-bye.” Hell, I didn’t remember anything about that.

  Then we were talking about Junior’s footstone and he agreed with me about the name. I was kind of surprised that he actually went right along with my line of thinking about all that.

  “You and June Lee made an agreement, didn’t you?” he said.

  “Right. A promise.”

  “Well, I think that ought to stand. I mean it’s not like you and him didn’t get along. Y’all got along great. And him and his first daddy didn’t get along at all, and so it makes perfect sense that he’d be named after you. What’s on that footstone will be around one hell of a lot longer than you, or me, or June Lee, and let’s face it, this guy was a asshole. And for s
ure y’all would have adopted him. It ought to be Faison Bales, Junior, on there. I’m with you one hundred percent, Faison. You know, Junior was like Uncle Grove too, you know what I mean? I mean you know what I mean? Even though he won’t blood kin.”

  I swear it was hard to talk about Junior out there under that sky, knowing how much he would have loved to be there. “That’s right. And you know, we’re talking about passing something along. You got Morgan. You’re passing something along.” And then I wondered if he’d been expecting me to pass something along to him back when I was a kid.

  And I’m thinking, what if you can’t pass nothing along? See what I mean? About Junior. And see, I knew Junior was this other guy’s son. I mean by blood, right? But I figured by the time I got him going fishing and hunting with me enough, a good bit of me would wear off on him. Enough for a name change, at least. It’d be like he really was my son. And June Lee agreed right down the line. And then in the end she got pissed off cause I hadn’t ever told her I was married before. I mean, that didn’t have nothing to do with it, for Christ’s sake.

  “You know what I wish sometimes?” says Tate. “I mean, deep down?”

  “Wha’s at?”

  “I mean don’t tell nobody this.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Sometimes I deep down wish that Morgan was a little more like Junior was. He ain’t ever been that way at all.”

  “Hell, who knows, just be glad Morgan ain’t dead, Tate, that’s all I got to say. That’s all I got to say. Just be glad.”

  We didn’t talk no more, and when we went to bed finally it was getting the slightest bit light in the east. Just the slightest bit. I reckoned Mama might already be dead and why the hell should I worry about something happened over forty years ago. It’s all history. I can’t do a thing about it. I can’t do nothing about Junior either, but be sure his name stays what it is on that footstone.

  10

  Morgan

  I finally told Teresa the whole story about the cut on my forehead. We were at the lake, parked, talking before we, you know. I held off until then. It was in me like an explosion waiting to get out. The story. It had just happened and nobody hardly knew yet. So I told her.