'Reckon
yo' ma makes the best baked ham in North Carolina,' he said.
And I
knew, I really knew, that me and Nathan Verney had connected on some crucial
childlike wavelength where baked ham and Lake Marion and the smell of mimosa
from Nine Mile Road were the greatest things in the world.
It
was 1952, a year that would see many things that were beyond our ability to
reason or comprehend, things that we would only barely understand years later.
Truman was President, and in June of that year Congress would override his veto
and pass the Immigration Bill. A man from Illinois called Adlai Stevenson would
run as the Democratic candidate and promise equal employment rights for blacks
if he was elected. Marlon Brando would mesmerize the nation as Stanley Kowalski
in
A Streetcar Named Desire.
America was growing up, and in her growing
pains she would feel the threat of riot and revolt skittering somewhere in the
shadows, out there along the horizon like a storm on its way.
We
were six years old, me and Nathan Verney, and the world we were walking towards
would welcome us with open arms.
At
least that's what we believed.
My
father was a railroad engineer. A railroad engineer for the Carolina Company,
and a just man. I can recall the number of times he switched me exactly. Four
times. Just four times in all those years. And each time I deserved it.
There
was a tacit consent between us, always had been, still would be today if he'd
been alive. That consent was an understated agreement that certain things were done,
certain things were not. You did not throw stones into the branches of the
trees beside the church in order to knock down the fruit. You did not fill a
canvas bag with mud and water and drop it off a bridge onto someone's car. You
did not tie half a dozen tin cans to the neighbor's dog's tail and howl with
laughter as he hurtled down the street. And you most certainly did not put a
live fish in someone's mailbox.
The
fish was Nathan's idea. We were eleven years old then, and summertime had crept
around the world to meet us once again. Those first spring shoots, the run-offs
melting and freshening the earth, the smell haunting down off the river, the
geese and flamingo coming up from Florida… all these things were so much a part
of the eternal magic that was summer near Lake Marion.
Nathan's
daddy, a Baptist minister with his own church and congregation and solid silver
collection plate, taught Nathan how to catch fish with a length of bamboo, a
pin and a feather. Nathan's daddy believed that it was well enough to catch
fish, sure well enough to eat them, but to kill another of God's creatures -
namely a worm or a bug of some description - was just altogether unnecessary.
Jesus performed a miracle with the fish, Jesus was a fisher of men, but he caught
fish with nets, not worms. That was the way God wanted it, and so Nathan's
daddy figured a feather would do just fine. Wet a feather it goes slim and
curved, looks pretty much the same, and feathers could be found everywhere when
the summer flocks came down and shed their winter plumes.
So
that's what we did, me and Nathan Verney, with a length of bamboo, some string,
a bent pin and a feather. Nathan said as how you sat still, sat like a stone,
and even when your legs went numb you just had to keep on sitting there until
something came along. If you moved they could see you, and if not you then
they'd see your shadow, and these were no dumb fish, these were smart fish that
came down from Albemarle Sound and Cape Hatteras on the coast.
So we
sat there, Nathan perched like a small dark statue, the bamboo rod jutting from
the middle of his body, the line trailing in the water, and every once in a
while the silver flicker of something moving there beneath the surface.
When
Nathan shouted he near scared me half to death.
My
heart jumped into my mouth, and for a second I couldn't breathe.
'Yo!
Yo!'
He
sounded like some whooping bird, coming up suddenly and nearly losing his
balance 'cause all the blood had been stopped from his knees down.
I
could see him struggling with the rod, the line taut, so taut, and something at
the end that pulled like a wild thing.
I got
behind him, my arms around the sides of his torso to hold onto the rod as well.
Between us we hauled at that line, hauled until I was sure it would bust right
in half and whatever was on the other end would go catapulting down the river
into a memory.
But
hell, if we didn't land that sucker! Hauled that baby right in and up onto the
rocks, and we watched as the silver monster flipped and flopped on the warm
stones like someone had tossed him onto a griddle.
We
were excited, more than excited, and the two of us squatted there and watched
this fish as it jumped and skipped from side to side, its eyes wide, its tail going
like a triphammer.
And
it was Nathan who suggested the mailbox.
'Put
the fish in her mailbox,' he whispered.
I
looked at him askance. 'You what?'
'The
witch… put the fish in the witch's mailbox.'
The
witch of whom he spoke was Mrs. Chantry.
'Are
you completely out of your tree?' I said.
'Scared
huh?'
I
frowned, stepped back. 'Scared? You wanna put a fish in her mailbox and you ask
me if I'm scared?'
'You
are, aren't you? Skeered like a jackrabbit caught in a billy-can.'
'No
way, Nathan. There's no way on God's green earth that you're gettin' me to go
put that in her mailbox.'
I
would look back months, years, decades even, and still see the way his face
looked, and how it sounded, and remember as if it were yesterday the way we
laughed until we flip-flopped on the rocks like someone had caught us and was
set to griddle us too.
Mrs.
Chantry, Eve Chantry, was la grande dame, the matriarch of Greenleaf, the
little town where Nathan Verney and I would spend what would seem like most of
our lives.
Mrs.
Chantry was a widow, and among the children that gathered and spoke in hushed
tones on the boardwalk near the barber's shop she was widowed because she'd
eaten her husband when he returned from the war. The fact that Jack Chantry was
a hero who'd earned the Purple Heart and the Silver Star, a man who gave his
life to save three young men he never even knew, a man who never did come back
from the war in 1945, was hearsay and rumor and undoubtedly untrue. Eve Chantry
was a witch and a cannibal and her house was a gateway to Hades. She appeared
twice weekly, once for church, once to collect groceries, and it seemed that
when she walked from her gate there was never a child to be seen from one side
of the town to the next.
And
Nathan worked on me, worked it good and proper, calling me scared, calling me
chicken, and every once in a while looking at me like I was the one who'd lost
the plot.
And
so it was that Nathan Verney and me decided to put that fish in her mailbox.
I can
honestly say that I don't ever recall being so scared. Scared is an
understatement. I was terrified, stricken, aghast. I remember approaching that house,
feeling all the color bleaching from my skin, as if my blood was sensing danger
and withdrawing even as we neared it.
Nathan
held the fish. We had wrapped it in the same piece of linen in which my ma
wrapped my sandwiches. The fish had been out of the water for a good while. It
was dazed and wriggled weakly every once in a while. But the fish was never the
problem. It was what we intended to do with it that was the source of the
difficulties.
If we
had been caught by Mrs. Chantry we believed we would've been skinned alive and
basted with maize oil and baked for ten minutes per pound. Perhaps served up
with some corn and salad.
'You
take the fish up there,' Nathan said.
'Hell,
Nathan, it was your idea. You take it up there.'
'Yellabelly,'
he sneered. 'No better 'an a girl.'
Had I
felt any less terrified I would have slugged him upside the head.
'You
gotta go,' he said.
'Why
me? Why do I have to go?'
'Because
it'll prove you ain't wearing a streak down your back.'
I
stood there gaping at him, my mouth open, barely breathing. I shook my head,
shook it like it would snap off if I went any faster.
But
Nathan persisted; that was Nathan's special quality, and for a further five
minutes we stood at the bottom of Mrs. Chantry's drive and argued back and
forth in this forced and unnatural whisper.
'You
don't go then I'm gonna scratch your name with a stone on the side of her
mailbox,' he eventually said, and there was a look in his eyes, a look of
determination that turned me cold inside.
The
idea that he would never ever do such a thing didn't seem to enter my mind, and
it was only later that I realized that Nathan possessed another quality: he
could convince you of anything, catch you up in the fever of the moment, and
with those wide traffic-light eyes and the mouth that ran endlessly from one
side of his face to the other, he could tell you a story that was all smoke and
shadows and you'd think it gospel. Later, many times as I now recall, that
quality would both help and harm us.
So I
took the fish.
With
my terror, with my tight stomach and Jell-O knees, with my heart in my mouth
and my pulse racing like a bird- dog, I took one step at a time up that pathway
towards the mailbox. If that fish had been anything other than comatose it
would have wriggled from my grip without resistance. Seemed with every step I
took my physical and mental co-ordination slipped away by degrees, and when I
stood beneath the shadow of that tall wooden structure I could feel the
coolness of the house. Despite the season, despite the bold sun and lack of
breeze, despite the midday high that settled around eighty-five degrees, that
house, the Chantry house, exuded a darkness and a dead chill that seemed to
invade the street, seemed to creep through the earth beneath my feet and start
up through my ankles.
I
glanced back.
Nathan
Verney stood on the sidewalk, and for the little while I was there beside the
mailbox he was as white as I was.
I
could see him trembling. Trembling enough to wriggle out of his skin and run
away.
I
looked down.
My
shoes seemed a million miles from me.
I
felt the weight of the fish. Could feel the texture of the linen, and through
that the smooth silver skin of the creature.
I
looked up, raised my right hand, and with a flick of my thumb I released the
catch and the front of the mailbox popped open. That little door seemed to
spring quickly, and then slow down as it completed its arc. Seemed to slow down
once more and then suddenly gain momentum, and as it approached the post upon
which the mailbox sat it gathered velocity, gathered velocity at such a rate I
believed it would snap right off its hinge.
But
it didn't.
That
door just came rocketing back until its rim connected with the post.
The
sound was like a church bell at midnight.
Like
a man going at a garbage can with a billy club.
The
sound of two cars in a head-on up Nine Mile Road.
I
dropped the fish.
Nathan
screamed and started to move.
I felt
like my bladder would bust right open and soak my shoes.
I
looked down.
The
piece of linen was there between my feet, and within it the fish, stunned now,
suffering another degree of unconsciousness, and it moved ever so slightly from
side to side.
Why I
reached down and grabbed it, why I scooped up that fish, linen and all, and
threw it into the mailbox I'll never know. It was as if a crime had already
been committed. There was the evidence, right there on the path. The evidence
had to be hidden, had to be concealed, and the only place at hand was right
there in Mrs. Chantry's mailbox.