Sketcher (14 page)

“English!” Mai called out. I was happy she gave him a taste of his own medicine.

“Think today, speak tomorrow.”

As soon as I heard the translation, I decided to go. I realized that was a recipe for gettin' you to shut up for your whole damn life.

“What time is it, Mai?”

“Time for leavin'!” Samadh was shoutin' now.

We walked back past him. I stopped at the door before steppin' out into the corridor and reached into my pocket. I was standin' in front of Mai, holdin' open one of her jeans pockets and droppin' the tamarinds in, when Samadh opened his eyes and caught me. The monk stood up so slowly he might as well have floated like the sweet smoke.

“What that is?”

“Uhm, your eyes?”

He ignored my comment, even though I know I used it perfectly, and he just floated closer, his hands behind him, his face set, his eyebrows cursin', his pumpkin-coloured robe sweepin' the floor.

Mai took the tamarinds from her pocket and held them out so he could see. Her hands shook a little. He stopped in front of us. He was tall as hell.

“Where you get these?” He spoke slowly as he took them from her hands while lookin' at me.

“ From where I live... we have a tree.”

“Then you have answered my prayers, Skeed.” He cracked open the fruit. “Do you have more of these?”

“Yes, yes.” I was relieved. “I can get you some.”

“I need lots of it. How you say in English?”

“Tamarind.”

“Ah, well, I need more...
tamring
... today.”

“Sure. Of course. Gimme half an hour.” Mai was tryin' to teach me something respectful in Vietnamese to say when talkin' to him, but I couldn't catch it. I always learn curse words first.

Anyway, Moms wasn't home yet, so I went in and did a raid on the tamarind preserves in the cupboard. We weren't using them anyway. Then, when I was walkin' back to Lam Lee Hahn, I thought to myself that maybe I should've taken all the seeds out, cos Mai, she might start a whole tamarind farm behind your back if you're not careful. You don't know that girl. Well, when I got back, Samadh was out of his robe and in his work clothes. I handed the goods to him and he looked at me over his glasses, like he knew there had been a heist of some sort. Maybe he was expectin' the fruits in their shells and fresh off the tree. Not stewed and in three marmalade glass jars that looked suspect. He shrugged.

“How much?”

I was happy Mai wasn't there when he asked that, cos I liked her a lot, but she can really muck up negotiations.

“Hmm... let's see.” I scratched my chin and counted on my fingers, startin' with my thumb, and I tried to sound real businesslike.

“Well, we have to include the hazard pay for the tree-climbin', plus labour charges for the reapin' and the shellin' and storage fees for the marmalade jars. Outside of that, the tree was damaged with a chainsaw recently, so...”

“Shree dollah!”

The monk was getting that look in his eyebrows again, so I decided that three bucks was OK. He told me that next time I should talk to Mai about money. Great.

He held the jars to his chest and hurried away down the corridor. I followed him, and he went back into that shrine room and sat on the ground. He opened the jar and scooped some tamarind paste out into his hand. Damn. That old monk was really goin' to sit there in the dark and eat all three bottles by himself. His stomach was goin' to be
so
bubbly. Well, that's what I was thinkin', until he bowed, then crawled over to Kuan Am and started rubbin' tamarind on the statue's face.

“What...”

“Shhh. Look more.”

He took a dust cloth from his pocket and rubbed the face for about a minute. Well, when he moved that cloth, I had to cover my eyes. Kuan Am's bronze face had turned into pure glistenin' gold. The shaft of sunlight was bouncin' around the room from the statue. Samadh's eyes lit up.

“Tamring polish!” he said triumphantly, and tried to high-five me, but it's hard to do that when one guy is too tall and you are both stoopin' down and off-balance.

For the next few days after school I had a job helpin' Master Samadh polish the statue. Well, actually, all I did was hold the “tamring polish” open while he chanted and scrubbed the bronze clean. I reckon I had to demonstrate that I deserved
the extra dollars I was goin' to make that week, so I pointed out that he missed a spot or two around the back of the statue. He shook his head.

“When you clean house, you clean perfec'. OK? Perfec'! But when clean statue, leave dark corners. To make perfec' places show more better.”

Yeah, right. Nothin' like a little ancient wisdom to hide your arthritis. Anyway, by Thursday she was gleamin' bright, and the old man's English wasn't too rusty neither. All the fishermen who came into the shrine room said “Ahhh yehs!” and bowed down when they saw Kuan Am glistening under the slice of sun. Friday evenin', Master Samadh was outside and I was there sittin' in the dimness of the shrine room when I thought I'd look the statue over. I reckoned I could reach those spots he missed and surprise the old guy. Bad idea. Soon as I slapped on the tamarind and started rubbin' the halo thing at the back, a whole section of the halo just broke off Kuan Am and fell to the floor. The sound was sickenin'. I was dead. Immediately, in my head, I saw myself handin' all the money back to Mai to pay for damages. But Frico could fix this, easily. I just had to figure out a way to get him there, into that room and then make him do it...

Master Samadh must have been waitin' at the door. He stepped in and spoke softly.

“What's that?”

“I was... she... the statue... somethin' broke... Master Sam... I can fix it.” It was the first time I called him “Master Sam”, and it felt weird, but somehow I thought it was wise under the circumstances.

“Why did that happen, Skeed?”

“Cos I tried to clean it.”

“Hm.”

Maan, he could call me Skeed all day if he was goin' to be that calm about me breakin' beautiful Kuan Am. But as he sat on the floor and closed his eyes and cupped his hands
together in his lap, I felt so terrible – I just wished he would get angry and chase me out of Lam Lee Hahn, instead of goin' into deep breathin' to keep himself calm. Well, while I was stoopin' there feelin' stupid with Valerie Beaumont's tamarind polish in one hand and the cleanin' cloth crumpled in the other, Mai's mother walked in. She bowed to Master Samadh, then took one look at the statue and spoke softly but firmly.

“Oh, that fell off again Master Sam? I don't know why after all these years we don't just leave that broken part on the floor, where it belongs. It makes too much noise when it falls off!”

And the old monk opened one eye, and he and his eyebrows laughed at me. Loudly. I didn't mind.

Mai walked with me to the train tracks. She was wearin' one of those cone-shaped straw hats to block the sun. It was so huge I could only see her mouth. ‘Sam Pan hat' she called it. We stopped and looked across to where the Benets used to live. Flatbeds and tow trucks had come and hauled away the few remaining old cars from Backhoe's scrap-metal junkyard. I used to like those old, rustin' cars and junk. After school, when I walked into the swamp, as soon as I saw the cracked windshields and the old Esso gas-station sign, I knew I was home, although it was all just broken stuff collecting rainwater and makin' mosquitoes, and I had to be gettin' ready to run from Broadway and Squash. All that junk was there for so many years – I never thought the day would come when I would only see burnt-out rectangles and odd shapes on the nut grass, like those empty spaces inside my house where my father use to fit.

“What's happenin' to your face?” Mai was lookin' at my lower cheek, her eyes concerned. Damn that Frico.

I laughed it off. “I guess I turn thirteen this year!”

“Hmm. Guess I need to give your mother some things to balance you out...
Skeed
.”

“Oh, please don't destroy my name like Master Sam. And don't gang up on me with my moms and all that balancin'-my-energy stuff.”

“Too late.” Mai stood on tiptoes. She took off the Sam Pan hat and put it on my head and laughed at me. Then she held my chin and smooched me right above where the pimples had started to show.

“What's that for? Lagniappe?”

“The hat or the kiss?”

“The last one.”

She walked away with her hands in her Levi's pockets, then turned around and started walkin' backwards.

“Nah.
Lan-yap
is for customers, you're
mon petit chou
.”
And she broke off runnin', her ponytail bouncin', her lanky legs awkward in her blue jeans.

And when Mai stopped at her gate and smiled, she was even sweeter than when she got mad at me.

Fourteen

That night, the kisses were still makin' me feel giddy-headed. I sat with my mother on the makeshift bench at the back of the house, watchin' the sky and wonderin' if Mai was sleepin', or studyin' for cram school as usual. Moms hadn't made a fire, so the bugs were rovin' around in airborne gangs and stabbin' at people. Well, we were waitin' for the stars to come out, so we weren't budgin'. I slapped my palms together and made “mosquito sandwiches”, as Pops used to put it.

Then, when the stars came out –
ooowee
. Sugar sprinkled on a purple plum. And that's what I should have said. Instead, I asked Moms if she didn't think it looked like God dropped a planet on heaven's glass floor and it smashed and all these tiny pieces were gonna sit there until somebody up there got a real bad splinter toe. Well, she just looked dead ahead and told me not to play with the Lord like that. I wanted to explain to her that I didn't mean any disrespect, but she just said it again and I got mad and asked her why the heck they paid for all those extra creative-writin' classes with Miss Halloway and sent us to a school with a strong Arts programme if I couldn't use my imagination any more. I said my pops would understand my imagination. She laughed and stared ahead and said, “Maybe you're right.” Then she told me she wasn't tryin' to stop me usin' my imagination, but I was gettin' to be a teenager, so I needed to use it more responsibly and be careful of the things I imagined up.

“Now go on and imagine yourself ready for bed.”

So the next mornin', just as the sun was comin' up over the Gulf – or as the orange lollipop started stickin' up out of God's blue jeans' back pocket – Moms announced that we
all should go look for Pa Campbell, cos he had Parkinson's. Man, I didn't see that comin'. He got so wobbly, Tony drove him and Ma Campbell into town a few days before, and the doctors said it was so and it would only get worse. All that gas Pa used to pass was a sign, they said. Moms said we needed to look out for him, cos he's been a good neighbour to us. Tony gave him that leftover HF-1200 walkie-talkie and told him to put it beside his bed and holler on Channel 14 if we couldn't hear him across the fence. No need. Every time I lay in bed and heard him cryin' out all the way across the fence, I remember laughin' at him and his crazy beliefs and I felt bad. But I wondered why all his life he was so concerned about all those dark things when to me poverty was the scariest thing of all. I still wanted the day to come when, like Pops said, the swamp would move out from under us – when we would go to sleep and wake up in another part of town. Well, maybe not overnight, but over time. I heard Pa Campbell sayin' that “happy is in your heart”. Yeah. Well, some money in your pocket might help, old man. If he wasn't puttin' aside money all these years, there's no way in hell he could have said that. I say money and power help with the happiness part. Whatever that power might be. Doug said the same thing in not so many words.

I mean, if I had powers, maan the things I'd do. I'd prob'ly have a superhero name and a costume with pockets to collect contributions and everything. But my brother, he didn't think like that. Instead he had his mind on a brand-new girlfriend. Yeah, some girl he met from his new school called Teesha Grey, who started comin' into the swamp all too regularly, sayin' she needed to do “research on endangered species” and all that. She and Frico were suddenly always out on the bayou in the pirogue. That boy didn't even like leavin' land, but all of a sudden he was a fisherman, paddlin' this girl around, shirtless and sweatin' bullets while she took pictures of birds.

Nice girl, though. Sweet-lookin', with dimples. And large hoop earrings. And short hair. I like short hair on a girl. Mai should've cut her hair short. Even though me and Mai were nothin' like Frico and Teesha. Not to mention Tony and Doug and their girlfriends. Damn, that Doug was sixteen and on the soccer team in high school, and so popular he always had girls' phone numbers fallin' out of his pockets, even though he didn't have no damn phone. Then he was so secretive, and that only made them more curious, so you'd be comin' from the train tracks after the school bus dropped you a mile up the road and you'd just see all kinds of high-school girls at the entrance of L-Island on a stake-out for Doug Beamount. Usually they wouldn't find him, cos I'd warn them not to follow me, and they'd prob'ly swear to themselves to come back for ever until they figured out exactly where he lived. Nobody believed Doug Beaumont – or anyone for that matter – lived in this swamp. Some nights, I swear, if I went out into the woods, I'd find girls behind trees waitin' for that boy. Tony was shy with girls, and we never even knew he had a girlfriend till they got real serious. She was a geek like him – and that's about all I can tell ya. They were both seniors and in the Science Club at LaVaughn High School, and now that he was drivin' Pa Campbell's truck and deliverin' stuff to Al Dubois's Fish and Seafood after school, he was in the city more often with her. Some weekends me and Frico, we'd find ourselves abandoned in the back of the truck along the crack in the map, while Tony and his mystery girl would be watchin' the sunset or walkin' on a levee or foggin' up the truck windows, includin' that rear window, so we couldn't even see nothin' from the back of truck. That was OK, cos even though the girl was sweet, I wouldn't want to see ol' Tony Beaumont gettin' domestic – no sir. One day those two rocked that van until I damn near got seasick. That's when I knew what Frico meant when he said they were just doing “physics and chemistry” all the time. Couldn't believe they
went that far in a '57 Ford that smelt like Bengue's Balsam and dead gators, for godssake.

Now, even though those footprints that appeared on the porch caused Moms to make a rule that we had to get home before nightfall – and that really cramped everybody's style – she didn't stop this idea we came up with for a Southern outdoor shindig on L-Island. Even though I wish she did. It was to be an afternoon swamp party for all ages. Frico, he was cool with the idea. He was proud of the new diagrams he did on the house and wanted to show them off too. So we called up the crew, but we didn't have a tamarind-tree meetin', cos Tony and Doug and Moms were involved. Furthermore I don't think anybody wanted to stare at that sinkhole for more than the time it took to cross over the creek. It was bad enough that Pa kept whisperin' that ol' Backhoe shouldn't have left so soon. He reckoned the footprints on the porch belonged to the Benet boys, who dragged themselves out of the muddy hole every night. Two spirits walkin' around, lookin' for where their father went.

Well, soon as we started talkin', we knew we were all goin' to pass a good time at this shindig. It was a send-off for Marlon and Belly, but I guess it was kind of a declaration of independence for Moms and a dare to anything that wanted her to leave where she'd lived for nearly seventeen years. She made up her mind when she found out about the whole deal between Benet and Pops. The party guest list was like twenty people: Ma and Pa Campbell, Teesha Grey, Mai, four of Doug's female fans and whoever else was behind the trees, Tony's girl, who still had no name, Marls, Belly, Harry T, Peter Grant and his guitar, and any of their girlfriends with parents crazy enough to allow them to go to a Saturday-afternoon party in the swamp.

Then Moms got too neighbourly and said she was goin' to invite other people from farther up the tracks. Chain-smokin' Evin Levine, Miss Gladys and Chanice Devereaux and her
girls were OK, but there were some new good-for-nothin' boys from up the bayou that she invited. Pa Campbell said that was a mistake, but that was after those boys rowed up and dragged one of their pirogues on land and filled it with party ice to use as a beer cooler. They brought their own sixpacks and Moms regretted it, cos it wasn't that type of party. So we got rid of them real quick and they rowed back into the dark sittin' on the ice, still drinkin'.

Now, up to the plannin' meetin' we hadn't seen Harry T in a while since he got into scoutin'. That boy was one for a grand entrance, I tell ya. We could hear him comin' in from the train tracks with a cassette-player boom box strapped to the back of his bicycle playin' Doug E. Fresh featurin' MC Ricky D. He flew over the new footbridge, came blazin' around the corner, squeezed the brakes and sent dust flyin'. Everybody cheered, cos this guy had on the Ricky D sweatsuit and shades and everything. Then it seemed like Doug E. Fresh was the only cassette Harry T had brought, so we heard “La-Di-Da-Di” nearly all evenin', 'cept when we were tellin' ghost stories in broad daylight and Tony was tryin' to tell Cajun jokes like Pops. Only Pops can tell Cajun jokes like Pops. So after Moms rescued him and gave her welcome speech, we were diggin' in to the crawfish and potatoes and corn and sweet-potato pie when Doug, he brought out a piece of cardboard from Pa's truck, put it on the ground and started breakdancin' – or b-boyin', as we called it. That boy did a windmill and a headstand, and all his girl fans went crazy. Then all of a sudden everybody was tryin' to do the latest robot dances. They all succeeded in lookin' silly with all that mimickin' of machines. Maybe I was just jealous, cos I looked like a duck with wooden wings when I tried it. Tony jumped into the back of Pa's truck like it was a stage. He couldn't dance either, so he did a lame rap on the beat. It wasn't even lyrics. He just said “Sucker MCs!” and then went nuts.

“Dah to the dah-dah-dah to the dah-dit...”

Well, everybody started booin', until Harry T joined in the dah-dittin' and shouted that Tony was rappin' in Morse Code. Then suddenly Morse Code was cool and everybody wanted to know how to rap their names in Morse Code. Sigh. That party was full of nerds or sheep, I tell ya. It was a real blast though, and the whole time Mai sat beside me holdin' my hand until it got sweaty, but I wouldn't let go.

Of course durin' all that fun that hot girl Teesha Grey put Frico to work on the porch, sketchin' bird pictures from photos and labellin' them like it was a frickin' school day. He said he had to help her make flashcards to show younger kids some birds that had disappeared from the State years ago. Great. Real fun stuff.

Anyway, we didn't intend to take the party into nightfall, but when the batteries in Harry T's tape deck were callin' it quits (and Ma Campbell was thankin' the Mother of God), Fricozoid took a break from sketchin' birds and came down from the porch beatboxin', and the dancin' and rappin' continued. Ma Campbell went for Pa in his new wheelchair. The old man could walk, but only slowly and he was bent over. Pa Campbell started riffin' on his blues harmonica to the beat, and as easily as Frico did the beatbox, Peter Grant, that boy who busted his face at camp, started playin' jazz chords on his box guitar. The whole thing was fresh. Or
def
, or whatever Doug always says.

Somebody stopped the warblin' cassette player, and it was pretty much jazz 'n' blues and country and folk music from then on. Moms came down near the fire, and Pa put down his harmonica and started tappin' a drumbeat on the side of the truck, even though it was difficult for him. We all picked it up and clapped it – and Moms is in a free-flow skirt, and while she's dancin' we're trying to keep up with her moves. She was breathless, but she's tellin' us while dancin' that this is Bomba. Pa wheels over and shouts over the noise that Bomba is African and Spanish and Taino culture, and Moms learnt it
on an island called Boriken when she went there. It was a little embarrassin', but she was pretty good.

When she got tired and went for a drink, Peter Grant and Pa Campbell were singin' ‘Just a Closer Walk with Thee' and we were havin' a little church.

Well, ol' Marlon interrupted to say he didn't get why everybody got to rap and dance and beatbox and Bomba in the swamps without gettin' fined, and he still couldn't sing even at his own send-off. Of course Belly couldn't pass up the opportunity to tell him the fine he got was for “impersonating a singer”, but since we wanted him to quit gripin', we'd let him sing one song. Well, he chose one of those corny camp songs that goes on for ever. You sing in rounds until you have a headache. But we all said OK, since he was bein' a mother hen about the whole thing.

“Ohhhhhhhh...”
Pause.
Take a deep breath. “The cow kicked Nelly in the belly in the barn, and the doctor said it wouldn't do no harm!”

Now, Southern people know you need to start that song real quiet, almost like a whisper, and then you get louder and louder like it's Super Bowl Sunday and the Saints just won on home turf, or until the old folks can't stand you – that's the idea. And when you get to the end of the first verse, which is pretty much singin' that same Nelly line four times, you get to the good part. You get to say: “Second verse! Same as the first! A little bit louder and a little bit worse!” – and it's very important to pause right there and really linger on the “Ohhhhhhhh” before you go back to the cow kickin' poor ol' Nelly and what the doctor said and all that. Now, we started in on that song at about sunset, and even when it was pitch black and we made a ragin' campfire, and Ma Campbell had wheeled Pa back into the house in a hurry and the other older folks had said goodbye, we were still shoutin' about Nelly in that swamp.

Well, lemme tell you, when we got to I think it was the fortieth verse or thereabouts and we were there lingerin' on the
“Ohhhhhhhh”, those good-for-nothin' boys from down the bayou that Moms threw out of the party, they came back in bigger boats and jumped on land and ran up on us full tilt and doused the entire party with gallons of bayou water from a couple o' fish buckets. The girls got it in their hair and on their clothes and pretty much everybody swallowed some of it – especially Marlon, on account of the long “Ohhhhhhhh”. For the first few seconds we just sat there shocked and drippin' without sayin' a word. The boys moved in quickly, surroundin' us. Their guns came out. One finished dousin' the fire. Two others were roundin' up anybody who started runnin' and put them face down in the grass. Moms, who was sittin' on the porch, recognized the boys and jumped up and came towards us, then turned back to go grab her gun, but a tall shadow stepped up on the porch and blocked the door. Moms was pushed to the ground and right about that same time, a warnin' shot exploded in the air.