First we walked to the right of the street, and he paused at this little white house. He stared at the mailbox. “My best friend used to live here. Used to ride bikes with him.”
“What was his name?”
“Dale.”
“What happened to him?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. He got married; I know that. I was his best man.”
A little farther along he stopped at another house, and I asked him who had lived there.
“A girl. Connie was her name. She was the smartest in our class by far. While the rest of us were reading
Dick and Jane,
she was reading
Jane Eyre.
”
“Who’s Jane Eyre?”
“Just a famous book. I still haven’t read it.”
“Did you like her—the girl who lived here?”
He nodded. “It was impossible not to. She was real quiet, though. I always wondered what happened to her. She could draw pictures so good the substitute accused her of copying her artwork out of a book. She cried because of that.”
I’d never had a teacher accuse me of anything because the only teacher I’d ever had was my dad. My curiosity was getting the best of me, so I headed to the sidewalk. “Why don’t we go see if she’s still here?”
He squeezed my hand and we kept walking toward the end of the road. A sign said
Dead End,
but it looked to me like it went on forever. To our left was a field that sloped and rolled along a creek.
“I used to work for a farmer who owned this field, baling hay and putting it up in his barn. He didn’t pay much, but it sure was fun riding on that wagon. He had a big house, and every time we’d bring a load in, his wife would come out with a pitcher of the sweetest lemonade.”
I closed my eyes and could almost imagine Dad younger and working in a field with that hay. Maybe with his shirt off and his muscles growing. Him and his friend Dale sweating in the summer sun, drinking lemonade, and working hard. “How much did he pay you?”
“Five dollars for a day’s work. Seemed like a lot back then.”
I thought maybe I could catch him off guard while he was thinking about the past, so I said, “Does my mom live around here?”
He kept walking and looking out at that field with the bark of the dog fading. “We seined for minnows down in that creek and then rode our bikes to the reservoir. Caught crawdads and even a few snakes.”
I didn’t say anything and he finally looked at me. “I don’t know about your mom, June Bug. I told you I can’t answer that.”
It was hot again, and the sidewalk had ended and we were walking along the dirt. The flies had found us, I guess because we were sweating and they could smell it, and then the gnats joined them and swarmed. I tried to swat at them, but they were just as persistent around my head as I was about my mother.
Toward the end of the field on the left there were a bunch of trailers packed in like haulers at a NASCAR race. Some kids were out running and giggling. One little kid with long hair just had a diaper on, no shoes or shirt. At the end of the road there was a fence that kept you from going up to the interstate, and on the right, across from the trailers, was this old brown house that looked like somebody had tried to paint it a long time ago and the paint was peeling off and the roof was sliding down on itself. There was a cracked window in the front, and it looked to me like a kid with a black eye.
Dad let go of my hand and knelt in the dirt by the road just staring at it.
“Is that where you grew up?” I said.
He nodded. “I lived there until I went into the military.”
“Did it always look this run-down?”
“Not like that. There used to be a little birdbath in the front. Rocks around it and some flowers.”
The front yard was nothing but weeds and thistles and dandelions. Either someone’s lawn mower didn’t work or somebody didn’t care. The driveway led out back to a shed that was leaning to one side. A stiff wind could have blown it down.
“Who lives here now?”
Dad pointed to the mailbox, and the word
Johnson
could almost be seen through the rust. “I’m thinking it’s my dad.”
I stood there looking and swatting while he knelt in the dirt. A truck pulled out of the trailer park and the driver lifted an index finger toward us and my dad waved. Seemed like the least the guy could have done was raise his whole hand, but maybe that’s the way they say hello here.
I put my hands on my hips and stared at him. “We going to go over there or just stay here and collect dust?”
He stuck his tongue in his cheek like he was trying not to smile and squinted at me. “Why don’t you go over there and knock on the door? See what happens.”
“What do I say?”
“I don’t know. Act like you’re selling Girl Scout Cookies.”
I looked at the house and I couldn’t help but feel it was haunted. “Why can’t you go with me?”
“I’ll be along directly.”
He didn’t say that too much, but when he did, it had a bunch of different meanings.
Directly
could mean two minutes or a whole hour, depending on the situation. But I was so hot and the bugs were so bad that I walked across the road and climbed on the rickety porch. There was one lawn chair outside the door that looked like if somebody sat in it they would fall clear through. Beside it was a Maxwell House coffee can that was full of cigarette butts.
I glanced back at my dad and he was still on the ground watching me, his hands together in front of him as he knelt. I pushed the doorbell, but there wasn’t any sound inside. So I knocked on the screen door, which didn’t have a screen in it, and the thing rattled like some angry snake.
The front door was wooden, and when nobody came, I reached through where the screen should have been and knocked. It made a dull thud like it had gotten wet and wasn’t really supposed to be used as an outside door in the first place.
I didn’t hear anything inside, so I started to leave, but then the doorknob turned and the meanest-looking man I had ever seen was standing there. He had whiskers all over his face, white ones, and there was some brown stuff coming down the corner of one side of his mouth. His hair was all swirled on top of his head like he’d been sleeping, and the white T-shirt he was wearing had big stains under the armpits. He stared at me with the kind of sneer that you would use when looking at worms in your salad bowl.
“Can’t you read?” he said. He almost growled. He pointed at the sign on the side of the house that said
No Solicitation.
“I don’t know what that means,” I said.
“Means whatever you’re selling I’m not buying.”
It was a really terrible feeling talking to somebody who did not even want you to exist, but at the same time, I could tell there was something in that voice and in the eyes that reminded me of my dad. Sometimes when you see something awful, you can’t help but stare at it. I almost wanted to sing a verse of “I’ll Fly Away,” but I didn’t.
“You get on out of here and leave me alone.”
He was about to close the door when I said, “But, sir, do you know a John Johnson? Used to be in the military? Fought in Afghanistan?”
He pulled the door open again, and it creaked at the bottom where it was coming apart. “What do you want with Johnny? He don’t live here anymore.”
“I know he doesn’t. But he used to, right?”
His eyes narrowed.
“You’re his daddy, right?”
He muttered something under his breath about stupid kids in the neighborhood bothering him and started to close the door. Then he looked up over my head, and I felt a shadow engulfing me and a hand on my shoulder.
The old man stared at my dad in a mix of anger and surprise. Then he opened his mouth, and I could see his teeth were either yellow or black. “I thought you was dead.”
“You thought wrong,” Dad said.
“I thought you killed yourself. Everybody did. Thought you’d wash up on some beach.”
“I washed up here. Can we come in?”
“We?” the old man said. Then he looked at me. “This your daughter?”
“This is June Bug. June Bug, this is my dad.”
He muttered something about my red hair before turning around and looking inside. I guess he wondered what he should pick up.
My dad opened the screen door and we walked in. It was dark, even in the middle of the day, because all the blinds were pulled and there wasn’t any light except the one coming from the TV. The sound was off but there was some fishing show on. Newspapers were strewn all over and a couple of bowls that needed cleaning long ago. I wished he had a dog, but then again, I wasn’t sure what would happen to a dog if he couldn’t take care of himself.
The old man wobbled when he walked and just inside the kitchen door there were lots of medicine bottles, the brown kind, with the name Henry Johnson on them. The kitchen wasn’t much better than the front room as far as being clean, and the floor was coming up in different places. There was a funny smell about the whole house, like when you get your socks wet and hang them up, but they don’t dry, and I wondered if it had always smelled like that.
“Where was your room?” I said to my dad.
He pointed down a hall. “Last one on the right.”
“Can I go see it?”
Dad stared at the old man. “Yeah, go ahead. Just watch out for wild animals.”
The floor creaked with every footstep, and that’s saying something because I really don’t weigh that much. I kept waiting for the two of them to start yelling at each other, but it was quiet behind me. There was carpet as thin as sandpaper in the hall. The bathroom to my left had a brown ring around the bathtub as dark as the old man’s teeth.
I got to the door at the end of the hall and pushed it open. There was an old bed in there and a dresser with a couple of the drawers falling off and dust everywhere. I stepped inside and saw a bookshelf, which was just a couple of cinder blocks with a piece of wood between them. On there were a few Hardy Boys books, the blue hardcovers, and several paperbacks.
Where the Red Fern Grows
was one of them, and I knew that was one of Dad’s favorites. A story called
The Old Man and the Sea.
To Kill a Mockingbird.
And a little red book that turned out to be a Bible. I picked it up and opened to the first page. “To Johnny, from Uncle Franklin. Walk with the Lord. December 1982.”
I looked in the closet and there was a uniform in a plastic bag. Black boots stood on the floor with dust all over. I kept looking for any of my dad’s toys or games or maybe an old baseball glove, but there was nothing like that in the whole room.
I heard their voices from the end of the hall, but I wanted to look under the bed. I lifted the cover and found a shoe box. I pulled it out and blew off the dust. When I opened it, I couldn’t believe what I saw, because there was this skinny little boy with the same grin my dad has and I knew it had to be him. There were a whole bunch of pictures thrown in there, and one was of a lady with lots of lipstick holding him and giving him a big kiss. There was only one that had the boy and the old man. They were standing a yard apart and staring into the camera. There was something sad about it, but I couldn’t figure out why.
There were also a few pictures of him in a football uniform and one with a graduation outfit. And then several in a military uniform where his face looked hard as a rock. I shoved a couple pictures in my pocket and took the rest with me into the hall.
“And where’s her mother?” the old man said.
“I don’t have an answer to that,” Dad said. I thought it was interesting that he didn’t call him Daddy or Dad or Pop or even any name.
“Is she dead? Did she run off? Something must have happened to her.”
“You’re right. I’m sure something did, but I don’t know what.”
I just stood there, afraid if I walked they’d hear the floor creaking.
“What did you come back here for?” the old man said. “If you’re looking for money, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. I’ve been on disability since after you lit out, and I can barely get by as it is.”
“I don’t need money,” Dad said. “I need to borrow a car.”
The old man cackled. “If I had a car, I wouldn’t be sitting around here. Truck’s all I got but the transmission went out last month. Don’t have the money to fix it. What happened to yours?”
“Wrecked it. We lost everything.”
“Insurance ought to cover that.”
“Didn’t have insurance.”
The old man groaned. “I raised a infidel.” There was silence for a few moments. “When you came back from the war, where’d you go?”
“I had to say good-bye to a friend of mine. Pay my respects to his mother.”
“And then what? You just went out and got a woman pregnant?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“How’d you get the girl, then? Buy her at Goodwill? If so, I’d say you got cheated. Red hair like that? Ugly as sin.”
“Shut up,” Dad said. “You’ve got no right to talk that way.”
They just sat there not saying anything, and I wondered if this was how it was back when Dad was little.
“Don’t say another word about her,” Dad finally said. “She’s the best thing in my life and about the only thing that kept me going.”