Spelldown (7 page)

“I’m looking for owl pellets.”

“Do you mean owl droppings?”

“No, I mean owl pellets.”

“What are owl pellets?”

I can’t believe he doesn’t know about them. “Owls eat their food whole and then cough up what can’t be digested into a pellet that looks like a small stone.” I say it like I’m an owl expert, even though I’ve never seen one in my whole life.

“Very interesting,” he says.

“Come on, let’s go to the bridge.”

“You go ahead,” he says. “I want to look around for a while.”

I make my way up the hill and stand on the bridge. The reservoir looks like a huge topaz mirror. I love this place. Before Daddy’s soul got trapped in a liquor bottle, we used to come here all the time. An image comes to me of a five-year-old girl standing in a blue wooden fishing boat, yelling and jerking on a small cane pole. Her daddy lays down his fishing rod, wraps his arms around her, and helps her land a big catfish. Then he gently removes the hook from the catfish’s
mouth and shows her the tricky fins. She touches the silky smooth skin. Her daddy lets the fish slide into the bucket with the other fish. The little girl looks up at her daddy, then at the fish swirling around in the bucket, thinking about how much that catfish loved the river. After all this time, I still feel that girl’s heart thumpety-thumping inside of me.

“Hey, what you staring at?” Billy Ray appears out of nowhere.

“Damn, Billy Ray, don’t sneak up on me like that.”

He climbs onto the concrete ledge of the bridge, stands up, and looks out at the water, almost as if he’s in a trance.

“Billy Ray, come on, let’s go.” He ignores me and throws his arms out wide, like he’s enraptured with life. A cool breeze is blowing and the water in the reservoir has gotten choppy. Slowly, he turns around and holds his hand out to me. “Come on up.”

I take his hand and scoot up the wall in my Converse sneakers until I’m standing beside him. Goose bumps pop out all over me. “It’s scary up here.”

He holds my hand tight. “There’s nothing for YOU to be scared of,” he says with conviction. We stand there looking up at the lavender sky, our hands absorbing each other’s light.

After a while I manage to speak. “The sun looks like a giant egg yolk about to drop off the edge of the world.”

“Yeah, it does.” He squeezes my hand.

“Don’t you love how dependable the sun is, how it shows up for work every morning, then disappears every evening like a happy servant in a hurry to get home?” Billy Ray doesn’t
say anything, just keeps his hand wrapped around mine. I sigh deep and long, then glance sideways in his direction, afraid to turn my head while standing on the ledge.

He glances sideways and our eyes meet. “You sure are in a poetical mood.”

“It just gripes me how scientists say our sun is an ordinary star, like the hundred billion others in the galaxy. Because when I look at that ball of fire in the sky, I see God’s Eye—and it’s looking at you and me, Billy Ray. That Eye knows exactly where we are right
now—
standing on this bridge outside Red Clover, South Carolina—on the East Coast of the United States—on the continent of North America—on a planet named Earth.” The silky stream of words floats out of my mouth and hangs in the air. We stand there holding hands, bedazzled by the sun.

When the sun disappears, Billy Ray hops from the ledge and holds out his arms. I slide into them and my head fits snugly under his chin. We stand that way, close, but not too close, listening to the Catawba gnawing on its red clay banks.

1: the performance of miracles or magic

As soon as we reach the campsite, Noah runs up and tugs on Billy Ray’s pant leg. “We caught nine fishes and two of them had a bunch of little yellow eggs inside their bellies.”

Then Josh yanks on my arm.
“Kaw-leen
, our tent is about to fall down. You have to fix it.”

“Come on, I’ll help you!” Billy Ray hoists Josh up to his shoulders and carries him toward the saggy tent. Noah skips alongside.

“Hey, Billy Ray!” Crawdad’s sitting on the end of the picnic table with his feet on the bench. “Where in the hell you been?”

Billy Ray turns around. “At the reservoir, watching the sun go down.”

“Well, ain’t that sweet, Teeny? Preacher Boy’s been watching the sunset,” he says to Billy Ray’s mama, who’s sitting on our green metal Coleman cooler.

“Don’t you start on him.” Teeny gives Crawdad a hateful look.

“Leave the boy alone,” Daddy says. A big lantern casts a golden glow on his face as he stands over by the picnic table frying fish in a cast-iron skillet on the camp stove.

“Hell, I’m just teasing.” Crawdad shrugs his shoulders.

“Hey, Chipmunk, just in time to make the hushpuppies,” Daddy says in his hunky-doriest voice, which means he’s been drinking. My heart starts pumping like a motor that needs a couple quarts of oil.
Damn it all to hell
.

“I’ll get the batter,” I say, then walk over to the cooler where Teeny’s sitting with a Schlitz in her hand and a giant bag of potato chips by her side. “Excuse me, Mrs. Jenkins. Mama put the hushpuppy batter in the cooler. I need to get it out, if you don’t mind.”

“Okay, sugar.” She stands up and knocks the bag to the ground.

I bend to pick it up and she tries to help, but sloshes beer all over my back. “Shit, shit, shit!” she yells, and then grabs a handful of paper napkins and tries to wipe my shirt. She stinks of Lucky Strikes, spicy perfume, and Schlitz.

“Never mind, I’ll go put on another one.” I walk over to our tent as Billy Ray and the twins are coming out.

“What’s that smell?” Billy Ray says.

“Your mama accidentally spilled beer on me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. I’m going to change shirts.”

“Here.” He hands me the flashlight. “I’ll wait.”

Later in the evening, I’m sitting beside the river in a droopy tent with a thin blanket wrapped around my shoulders, listening to a train whistling its going-someplace-else song.
The twins are curled up beside each other in a green plaid sleeping bag, their little bellies full of fish, probably dreaming the exact same dream. Just thinking about that kind of sharing makes me feel like Old Lonesome Me. I turn on our transistor radio, and from far away in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on station WOWO, an old song plays with no static at all—a song about finding a thrill on Blueberry Hill. I love the way
hill
and
thrill
and
you
and
true
rhyme. It’s one of those tricky songs that tangle me up in the singer’s feelings.

Cackling sounds come from over by the campfire. I scoot over on my knees and look out the window. The cackler is Billy Ray’s mama, whose eyes look like watermelon seeds when she’s drunk—tiny, black, slippery. I don’t think she’s one bit pretty anymore. Her biggest beauty defect is the half-inch gap between her two front teeth.

She’s trying to get Crawdad to dance, but he’s pushing her away.

Daddy’s lying on a blanket by the campfire with his head resting on a log, crooning away.
Scooby-dooby-do, scoo-doobydooby, Scooby-dooby-do, scoo-dooby-dooby-doooooo. Strangers in the night…
. An image of the Harrisons and me stretched out in front of their fireplace flashes in my brain. I wish I could climb into that glorious picture right this minute.

I should have told Daddy that I didn’t want to go camping. I knew he shouldn’t be around alcohol. But I kept asking him about the trip every day. The reason I wanted to go on this trip is because I’m selfish. Sleeping in a tent by the Catawba with Billy Ray close by beats the hell out of
being at home reading my Sunday school lesson.

Scooby-dooby-do, scoo-dooby-dooby-doooooo
. Daddy’s drunken voice shuffles the notes up real bad. When he’s sober, his voice sounds famous. Daddy loves Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Rosemary Clooney, and Sammy Davis Jr. But Mama’s crazy about country music. The way she talks about Loretta Lynn, you’d think they were best friends. I imagine Mama at home, wearing her lacy lavender nightgown, clipping her toenails, watching the
Porter Wagoner Show
in peace and quiet. Sometimes when I’m bored to a frazzle, I sit at her feet and watch that dumb hillbilly program, rubbing lotion on her smooth legs and bunioned feet. Jergens is my favorite smell in the whole world. Sometimes it smells like cherries, sometimes almonds. Mama knew better than to come camping with us. She can’t abide Teeny and Crawdad being so trashy when they get drunk.

Scooby-dooby-do, scoo-dooby-dooby
. Now Teeny’s giggling and dancing all by herself, and Crawdad’s over by the campfire eating flaming marshmallows. I look over toward Billy Ray’s tent. Not a speck of light. I get my flashlight and crawl out and scoot through the weeds until I see three empty liquor bottles tossed aside. I pick one up and sniff it. Southern Comfort. Smells like orange juice and kerosene mixed together. Fried fish, hushpuppies, and Orange Crush churn inside my belly. I sit on a log by the campfire.

I look across the blazing campfire and see that Teeny has gotten Crawdad to dance with her. Mostly they’re staggering around, holding each other up. Watching them makes me
remember the Harrisons sashaying around the dinner table, singing love songs and kissing each other.

It’s the liquor that makes all of them act like jackasses. Every time Daddy says or does something stupid or hateful, Mama says it’s just the liquor talking. But when liquor gets inside of Daddy, it doesn’t just talk; it sings, cries, stumbles, cusses, spends the house payment, and takes out loans at Liberty Finance without Mama’s signature. Mama says you have to give the devil his due—that he always shows up when he smells weakness. Why can’t the goddamn devil leave my daddy alone? The worst part is, I’m not even supposed to pray about it, because Mama says it’s wrong to pray for anything specific. According to her, there are only four things I should say to God in my prayers:
I need you. Please forgive me. Show me the way. Thanks for everything
.

I belch once and taste the half-digested fish and hushpuppies. I belch again and a tiny bit of puke rises into my throat. I rest awhile with my head between my legs, listening to my heart beat. When I lift my head, Daddy’s standing there looking at me, his face slack, his eyes empty. “What’s wrong, Chipmu-unk?” His words are slurred.

“I’m not your goddamn chipmunk!” flies out of my mouth. Every cell in my body feels like firecrackers popping. I want to jump up and slap his stupid face, but I sit there breathing deeply, trying not to scream again.

“She’s all right, Mr. Bridges,” Billy Rays says, kneeling beside me. I look up into his calm eyes. He wipes my tears
away with his bandana, then stands up. “How about you, Mr. Bridges? Are you okay?”

Daddy doesn’t answer, just staggers toward his tent and crawls inside.

A while later I’m inside my tent, curled up beside Noah and Joshua, exhausted and numb to the bone, but every time my eyes close, I see myself yelling at my daddy. When I do things like that, it’s like someone else is doing them and I’m just observing. It’s like I’m
not the one
who bites my fingernails or pulls my hair out of the crown of my head—it’s a tired little girl inside of me who’s worn out from worrying about tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, and she’s angry as hell.

To keep myself from feeling doomy, I start pondering miracles. Mama says I should never question them, but I need to know the particulars—like how in the world Jesus turned water into wine at that wedding at Canaan. I close my eyes and try to imagine the whole thing in my mind, but I can’t get a picture to come into my head. Instead, I get this deep, rooty kind of feeling as if I’m a sycamore tree overlooking the wedding. There’s a breeze blowing and birds chirping and brassy bells jingling. I stay in this tree trance for a while, until it dawns on me how Jesus turned water into wine. When no one was looking, he cut his finger and let a few drops of his blood fall into the big stone jugs that were already filled with water. It was a damn cinch.

Figuring it out gives me a victorious feeling, like spelling
a difficult word. I’ve pondered that miracle for years—not only the wine part, but also why Jesus talked sassy-like to his mama that day, calling her
woman
instead of
Mother
. No one knows why he was snappy with her, not really. Preacher Smoot says Jesus wanted to let his mama know that he wasn’t
merely
her son, and that he belonged to God. But I think Jesus might have been trying to make Mary understand that she wasn’t
merely
his mother, that she was holy, that she could do miracles too if she set her mind to it—like turning water into wine at that wedding instead of him having to do EVERYTHING HIMSELF.

My brain gets a cramp trying to figure out what kind of mama Mary was or what kind of son Jesus was. No one will ever know besides them. Just like no one will ever know what kind of daughter I am or what kind of daddy I have.

1: marked by deliberate deceptiveness

2: pretending one set of feelings and acting under the influence of another

“God is the author of all our emotions,” some preacher shouts on the radio. “No sirree—ain’t no use whatsoever in running away from our feelings. God made them all. Joy. Sadness. Anger. Hate. Fear. Love. Disgust. Lust. Pity. Shame. Pride. And sooner or later, brothers and sisters, we have to face what’s in our own hearts—the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly.”

Daddy’s driving and smoking Camels like they’re going out of style. I’m doodling jack-o’-lanterns in the margins of my Latin notebook.

“Mind if I have some of that water?” he asks.

I hand him my canteen and he puts it between his legs. Then he reaches into his pocket and takes out three BC powders and chokes them down with a swig of water. I feel an intsy bit sorry for him. His mama dying when he was three years old messed him up bad. I can’t imagine being in this world without a mother. Mama’s course is charted all the way to heaven, and she’s expecting her kids to tag along right behind her, which beats tagging along behind Daddy into a piping hot eternity.