In Memory of Junior (19 page)

“Nope. Mostly pond fishing.”

“I used to fly down here,” said the old man, “all up and down this coast before there was much down here. We'd land on the beach and fish out of the surf. Land right on the beach. I don't remember us catching much, but we had a good time landing, usually with a stiff crosswind.”

“I just hope we get in the blues,” I said. “The big ones. Nothing more fun. Course I ain't gone throw back no trout. You, Faison?”

“No
sah.
” Faison turned up his Red, White & Blue. I like old Faison.

I talked to Tate a little while about the snake arrangements—which was for him to meet the snake man in Wilmington at three in the afternoon on Sunday, then fly home with the snakes. The uncle and the boy would be with him.

“You be flying for hire down the line? Anything like that?” I asked him. I sure as hell hoped he wadn't going to come up with a
charge
for this little snake transport. He hadn't said anything about no charges.

“Nothing serious,” he said.

“What I need,” I said, “is somebody to do a snake run fairly regularly, you know, once, twice a year. Think you might be able to do that? Sort of fit it in with your regular flying?”

“Well, I don't know. Maybe so.” He sort of looked at his brother and uncle and I got the feeling he didn't want to be no chicken. Or look that way. You know what I mean.

He asked me what happened to the old snakes, why I had to keep getting new ones.

I told him he'd be surprised how many people will buy them off you when you're doing shows. You talk about snakes in the right way, people will understand they ain't going to necessarily kill you, and they'll be interested in owning one for theirselves, and hell, you can make a little money that way. We talked a little more. You can tell he's a college man. These college people.

I tell you, the stuff I read going on at Duke University. Stuff, people getting eliminated.

I don't usually read about the colleges. I, you know, usually hit the front page, the docket, the sports, the funnies. But I was thumbing through and saw this thing about “dead white males.” And what it said was there was this group of feminists and abstractionists or some such at Duke University who are trying to cut out everything that dead white males have ever done. I said to myself, Wait a minute! Wait a
minute!

Think about that. That takes up everything that's ever been done, more or less. Know what I mean? Think about it. These professors are trying to actually destroy all of civilization—or at least the
history
of civilization.

Now, dead white males are actually when you think about it the very ones that's done everthing that's ever been done that's important. You got Columbus, you got George Washington, you got, hell, I don't know, George Jones. And these bunch of women and fuzzy-headed asshole men want to just wipe them off the map of history because they're number one dead, number two white, and number three men, the very ones who have killed Indians, fought wars, died in wars, been heroes, while, you know, hell, women were at home having babies and cleaning up baby doo-doo and dusting pianos, and men were, hell, out cutting down trees and stuff like that. It goes against all common sense what they're trying to do.

And all this time the yellow people were all eating with chopsticks and plowing rice with these oxes, and the black people—I'm talking over history—were all whooping it up around some campfire in Africa, and you know, the white males were bringing the world up to where it is today.

Now tell me one thing: why don't the colleges work on something like the hunger of little children instead of killing off dead white males?

If they kill off the dead white men, where is that going to leave the live ones—with, I mean, you know, what kind of power base? Answer me that.

I wrote Jesse Helms a letter. And I guarantee you he'll answer it. That is one politician that will give you the time of day. I've wrote him before.

And I don't mean that the problem is, you know, the colleges theirselves. It's the people in them. If somebody would drop the big one in the middle of every kind of college except the agriculture ones, we'd be one hell of a lot
better off as far as I'm concerned. Because in the colleges is where things get written down. And I want my race and I want my sex to have some kind of record in the history books of tomorrow. You know what I mean?

“I'll tell you one thing,” I said to Tate. “There is some people would kill off dead white men, then go out and feed a sea turtle—some people had rather do
that
than feed a hungry child. You look at some of these research projects put up by the government and the colleges.”

He looked at me like I was crazy. So I had to fill him in.

The ferry was slowing down. The dock was a few hundred yards away. It's kind of like a religious experience—coming in over there. Having that dock and everything move toward you real slow. I imagine Columbus and them guys had it all the time, coming up on islands and stuff. The wind wadn't so strong anymore—blocked by the island.

The ferry crew, some high-school student, maybe a college student, I can't tell no more, threw a line to Fox. Fox lives on the island, like I say, because of his legal troubles. He's always tan, and he's got this yellow-white beard. He wears this little camouflage canvas rain hat. He passed the line around a pole and looped it on a bollard. Captain maneuvered the ferry with the engine in forward,
rum-rum-rum-rum,
reverse,
rum-rum-rum-rum-rum,
forward, reverse until it backed up against the loading dock. Fox fastened her to, and then lowered this ramp onto the stern of the ferry, chains rattling and squeaking and all. It's all got in my blood, somehow. “Crank em up,” he said. “Four-wheel drive.”

The first truck, this red GMC, in reverse, bounced its
rear wheels up onto the ramp, then fell back to where it was before. The engine raced and it got up on the ramp—rear wheels, then front wheels. The driver, with his arm up on the seat, looked back through his rear window. Listen. This is funny, now. We were all standing there watching. In other words he wadn't doing a real good job of getting his truck off the ferry. Then all of a sudden this second guy in there, in the truck on the passenger side, this guy that we hadn't seen, sits up. I guess he's been passed out in there or something. He had definitely had a few. Some people come over here to drink instead of fish. Well this guy sticks his head out through the window—his hair was gray and sprayed out in all directions. His eyes were red and brown and wild looking. He started to say something, pulled his head back in partway about time the truck bounced down off the ramp, knocking his head—
bam
—up against the window. Well, the truck turns around and starts off toward the cabins. The passenger door opens. Red brake lights come on. The driver grabs for his passenger, see, but misses. So the man is standing out on the sand, unsteady, looking at the ferry, wild-like, then looking at the ground, around at the cabins off behind him, then back toward the ferry. He staggers, you know, brings his hands to the top of his head and screams, “Where the goddamn hell am I?”

I'll tell you they get all kinds over there.

When all the trucks were off the ferry, Fox backed that old World War II ambulance or utility vehicle or whatever it is onto the ferry, helped us load up our gear, then drove off the ferry and along a sand path toward our cabin. Faison, the old man, and me sat up front with the driver.
Tate and the boy sat on the tailgate. I got a strong whiff of the ocean air—bringing that funny feeling to my chest. I looked at the cabins while we headed toward ours, number 14. They all look like old smokehouses and feed shacks.

Fox helped us unload. It didn't take but a minute.

I put up groceries while the others unpacked.

In the cabin was chairs, a table, a two-eyed gas stove, a sink, two sets of bunk beds, and a rollaway. Good thing we had the rollaway. Hell, I tell you, I won't expecting no family reunion.

I scratched my crotch. “Damn, I caught something,” I said. “If I got the crabs we can fish with
them.”

“I don't want the bunk under you then,” said Faison. “Where you sleeping?”

“I'm on top right there.”

“Hell, I'm getting over here, then. Tate, you'll have to sleep under there.”

Far as I was concerned the boy would have to sleep in the rollaway. “Hell, I'm just kidding,” I said. “I ain't got no crabs.” I scratched again. “I got something though.”

Faison was ready to hit the beach and I was too, so that's what we did. Tate and the old man and the boy stayed behind to finish unpacking or something.

This place was awesome. It was like something you see on TV. There was nothing but sand and these little shacks and the ocean. That's it. That's all there was. Uncle Faison and Jimmy went on down to the beach to
fish. The beach was just beyond these sand dunes that are out behind the back door. They barely took time to unpack. They had all this paraphernalia they were taking with them. The surf-casting rods are
ten to thirteen feet long.
Mine, the one I'm using, is ten feet long. Uncle Faison showed me some stuff about it coming over on the ferry. Uncle Grove said he didn't want to fish.

When Dad, Uncle Grove, and I got to the beach, Uncle Faison was standing in the surf, knee-deep, fishing. All together in a little camp on the sand were these like lawn chairs, tackle boxes, a cooler, buckets, and a bait fish cut into chunks on a wooden board. We bought the bait fish, about fifteen of them—millet or mullet or something—in Beaufort before we drove to Kelly Ford. Jimmy's got a King Cab and I had to sit in my dad's
lap
between Beaufort and the ferry. We'll be flying to Wilmington to pick up some snakes on the way back. Teresa Charles, this girl I been talking to, made me promise to call her when we get back to let her know how it goes. She thinks it's pretty wild. I didn't tell Mom about the snake part of the trip.

Jimmy, when we got down to the beach, was standing with his rod leaning against his shoulder. What was neat was, he held a small whetstone in one hand and a fishhook in the other. Just under his nose he was sharpening the hook. What was funny was the way he was looking at it cross-eyed, sharpening, looking at it, sharpening. He's got like some kind of strange energy, which being cross-eyed made even stranger.

Uncle Grove says to Jimmy, “Most people won't sharpen hooks.” Then he tells him he's sharpened every hook he ever used and they talk about that for a few minutes, and
then Jimmy hits him with this question: “Were you really trying to throw in the towel, do yourself in—you know—with the grave and all?” Uncle Grove sort of looks at him like what are you talking about, and then he said something like, “I was. Then I got to thinking about this fishing trip. You can't fish when you're dead. Besides that, it's a sin to kill yourself.”

Jimmy goes in to talking about if there is and if there isn't a God, and Uncle Grove tells him if he doesn't believe in God he's going to hell.

All I had to do was put some bait on my hook and like cast. I was using a pair of Jimmy's waders. The water's still too cold from winter to wear just a bathing suit.

Uncle Faison hadn't showed Dad anything about his reel like he had me, and as far as I know Dad hadn't ever been fishing—since they were little anyway. So down on the beach there, Uncle Faison starts showing Dad some stuff about the rod and reel and all.

Dad watched, then kind of grabbed the reel.

“No,” said Uncle Faison. “Let me—”

“I got it,” said Dad. “I
got
it.”

“Okay, okay. Some of this ain't so simple though. At least let me show you how to get the bait on there so it'll hold.”

“I can do it. I been fishing.”

Dad didn't want anybody to show him anything.

Uncle Grove sat in a chair and didn't fish. I sat beside him and held my rod and reel. Dad, Uncle Faison, and Jimmy had their rods stuck in these rod holders that were stuck in the sand. We were kind of spread around on the beach. They said I could put my rod in a holder, but I wanted my hands on mine.

Uncle Grove said he just wanted to look at the ocean. He was wearing a sweater with holes in it, and he'd stopped shaving, so he looked kind of ratty, and his eyes were bloodshot. He started talking, talking about his “hot head.” He said his papa had one, said his papa and some guy named Saul Proffitt would get into a fight over a cow or something like that and his papa—who would be my great-granddad—would jump at Saul with a pitchfork or whatever he could get his hands on. He had a pitchfork at Saul Proffitt's throat one time, he said, and gave it a little jerk-stab like he was going to stab Saul—Uncle Grove is sitting there on the beach kind of acting all this out—and Saul jerked his head back real quick like and hit a nail, nail sticking out of a post. Once Uncle Grove starts talking it's impossible not to listen because of the way he talks and tells.

He went on to tell me that after his daddy died, his mama never said a word to any of the children about marrying this Mr. Harper and that when word came that Mr. Harper had whipped his sister Evelyn, my grandma, that's when he went after him. He was boiling, he said—Uncle Grove—when he stepped up onto the step there at the house and old man Harper was inside. Uncle Grove had moved out by then, and he like told Mr. Harper to come on outside. He could see him in there behind the screen. It was dark in there and him sitting, and he wouldn't even get up. Just sat there. These are the kinds of things that Uncle Grove puts in his stories. Looking through the screen and all like that, so that it seems real. He's got all this stuff from way back in the past pulled up close, real close.

So Uncle Grove went in after him, through the screen door, and they had this pushing-shoving-hitting thing around the living room. After that he said he didn't have anywhere to go but to town, and then he said he got in with the wrong crowd and all. And then there were what he called woman troubles, and some kind of car business, and hauling liquor, and the concessions, and this and that and the other.