The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove (6 page)

Catfish's Story

Was 'bout fifty year ago. I was hoboing through the Delta, playin juke joints with my partner Smiley. He called Smiley cause he don't never get the Blues. Boy could
play
the Blues, but he never
got
the Blues, not for a second. He be broke and hungover and he still always smilin. Make me crazy. I say, “Smiley, you ain't never gone play no better'n Deaf Cotton, lessin you feels it.”

Deaf Cotton Dormeyer was this ol' boy we used to play with time to time. See, them days, bunch of Bluesmen was blind, so they be called Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie Jackson—like that. And them boys could play them some Blues. But ol' Cotton, he deaf as a stone, a little bit more of a burden than bein blind iffin you playing music. We be playing “Crossroads,” an' ol' Deaf Cotton be over on the side playin' “Walkin Man's Blues” and a-howlin like a ol' dog, and we stop, go down to the store, have us a Nabs and a Co-Cola, and Deaf Cotton just keep right on playin. And he the lucky one, 'cause he can't hear how bad he is. And didn't nobody have the heart to tell him.

So, anyway, I says, “You ain't never gone play no better than ol' Deaf Cotton, lessin you get some Blues on you.”

And Smiley say, “You gots to help me.”

Now Smiley, he my friend from way back—my partner, see. So I says I will get the Blues to jump on him, but he got to promise not to get mad how I do it. So he say okay, and I say okay, and I sets to sic the Blues on him so we can go to Chicago and Dallas and makes us some records and get us some Cadillacs and so on like them boys Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker and them.

Smiley, he had him a wife name of Ida May, sweet little thing. He keep her up there in Clarksville. And he always sayin how he don't have to worry 'bout Ida May when he on the road cause she love him true and only. So one day I tell Smiley they's a man down Baton Rouge got him a prime Martin guitar he gonna sell for ten dollars, and would Smiley go get it for me cause I got me a case of the runs and can't take the train ride.

So Smiley ain't out of town half a day before I takes me some liquor and flowers and make my visit on little Ida May. She's a young thing, ain't much for drinkin liquor, but once I tells her that ol' Smiley done got hisself runned over by a train, she takes to drinkin like a natural (in between the screamin and cryin and all, and I had my own self some tears too, he being my partner and all, God rest his soul). And before you know it, I'm givin' Ida May some good lovin to comfort her in her time of grief and all.

And you know when Smiley get back, he don't say a word 'bout my sleepin with Ida May. He say he sorry he can't find the man with the guitar, gives me my ten dollars, an' say he got to go home 'cause Ida May so happy to see him she been doing him special all day. I say, “Well, she done me special too,” and he say that okay, her being sad and me being his best friend. That boy was greased to the Blues, and they just wouldn't stick to him.

So I borrowed a Model T Ford, drove over to Smiley's, and done run over his dog, who was tied up in the yard.
“That dog was old anyways,” he say. “I had him since I was a boy. Time I get Ida May a puppy anyways.”

“You ain't sad?” I say.

“Naw,” he say. “That ol' dog had his time.”

“You hopeless, Smiley. I gots to do some ponderin.”

So I ponders. Takin me two days to come up with a way to put the Blues on ol' Smiley. But you know, even when that boy standing there over the smokin ashes of his house, Ida May in one arm and his guitar in the other, he don't do nothin but thank God they had time to get out without gettin burnt up.

Preacher once told me that they is people who rises to tragedy. He says colored folk gots to rise to tragedy like ol' Job in the Bible, iffin they gonna get they propers. So I figures that Smiley is one of them who rises to tragedy, get stronger when bad things come on him. But they more than one way to get the Blues on you. Ain't just bad things happening, sometime it good things
not
happenin—disappointment, iffin you know what I mean?

So I hears that down Biloxi way, round 'bout one of them salt marshes on the Gulf, they is a catfish big as a rowboat, but nobody can catch him. Even a white man down there will give five hundred dollars to the man bring that big ol' catfish in. Now you know people be trying to catch him, but they don't have no luck. So I tells Smiley I got me a secret recipe, and we gonna go get that catfish, get that money, and go up to Chicago and make us a record.

Now I knows they ain't no catfish big as a rowboat, and iffin there was, he'd be caught by now, but Smiley need him a disappointment iffin the Blues gonna jump on him. So I spends the whole ride down there buildin up that boy's hopes. Cadillacs and big ol' houses ridin on the back of that catfish. We ridin in that ol' dog-killin Model T Ford, two hundred feet a rope and some shark hooks in the back with my secret catfish recipe. I figure we get
us some bait on the way, and sho' nuff, I accidentally run me over two chickens got too close to the road.

'For dark we down on the bayou where that ol' cat spose to live. Them days 'bout half the counties in Mississippi got signs say:
NIGGER, DON'T LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON YOU IN THIS COUNTY
, so we always plan to get where we goin' 'for dark.

My secret recipe a gallon jar of chicken guts I keep buried in the backyard for a year. I takes that jar and punches some holes in the lid and toss her out in the water. “A catfish smell them rotten guts, they be there lickety-split,” I tells Smiley. Then we hooks up one them chickens and throw it out there and we sits back and has us a drink or two, me all the time talkin trash 'bout that five hundred dollar and Smiley grinnin like he does.

'For long Smiley doze off on the bank. I lets him sleep, thinkin he be more disappointed if he wake up and we ain't caught that catfish. Just to be sure, I starts to pull in the rope, and 'for I got it pulled in ten feet, somethin grab on. That ol' rope start burning through my hand like they's a scared horse on t'other end. I musta yelled, cause Smiley woke up and goes running off the other way. “Watch you doin?” I yells, and that old rope burnin through my hands like a snake on fire.

Well, that it, I think, and I lets go of the rope. (A Bluesman got to take care of his hands.) But when the rope come to the end, it tighten up like an E string and make a twang—throw moss and mud up into my face—and I looks round and see Smiley crankin up that Model T Ford. He done tied the rope on the bumper and now he drivin it back out the bayou, pullin whatever out there in the water as he go. And it ain't comin easy, that ol' Ford screamin and slidin and sound like it like to blow up, but up on the bank come the biggest catfish I ever seen, and that fish ain't happy. He floppin and thrashin and just bout buryin me in mud.

Smiley set the brake and look back at what we catch, when that ol' catfish make a noise I don't know can come out a fish. Sound like woman screaming. Which scares me, but not as much as the noise that come back out the bayou, which sound like the devil done come home.

“You done it now, Smiley,” I says.

“Get in,” he say.

Don't take more than that for me, cause somethin risin up out the bayou look like a locomotive with teeth, and it comin fast. I'm in that Model T Ford and we off, draggin that big catfish right with us and that monster thing coming behind.

'For long we got us some distance, and I tells Smiley to stop. We gets out and looks at our five-hundred-dollar catfish. He dead now, dragged to death, and not lookin too good at that, but in a full moon we can see this ain't no ordinary catfish. Sho, he got his fins and tail and all, but down on his belly he growin things look like legs.

Smiley say, “What that?”

And I say, “Don't know.”

“What that back there?” he say.

“That his momma,” I say. “She ain't happy one bit with us.”

It has the soul-sick wail of the Blues, the cowboy tragedy of Country Western. It goes like this:

You pay your dues, do your time behind the wheel, put in long hours on boring roads, your vertebrae compress and your stomach goes sour from too much strong coffee, and finally, just when you get a good-paying job with benefits and you're seeing the light at the end of the retirement tunnel, just when you can hear the distant siren song of a bass boat and a case of Miller calling to you like a willing truck stop waitress named Darlin', a monster comes along and fucks your truck and you are plum blowed up. Al's story.

Al was drowsing in the cab of his tank truck while unleaded liquid dinosaurs pulsed through the big black pipe into the underground tanks of the Pine Cove Texaco. The station was closed, there was no one at the counter to shoot the bull with, and this was the end of his run, but for a quick jog down the coast to a motel in San Junipero. On the radio, turned low, Reba sang of hard times with the full authority of a cross-eyed redheaded millionaire.

When the truck first moved, Al thought he might have been rear-ended by some drunk tourist, then the shaking started and Al was sure he was in the middle of the bull moose earthquake of the century—the big one—the one that twisted cities and snapped overpasses like dry twigs. You thought about those things when you towed around ten thousand gallons of explosive liquid.

Al could see the tall Texaco sign out of the windshield, and it occurred to him that it should be waving like a sapling in the wind, but it wasn't. Only the truck was moving. He had to get out and stop the pump.

The truck thumped and rocked as if rammed by a rhino. He pulled the door handle and pushed. It didn't budge. Something blocked it, blocked the whole window. A tree? Had the roof over the pumps come down on him? He looked to the passenger door, and something was blocking that one too. Not metal, not a tree. It had scales. Through the windshield he saw a dark, wet stain spreading over the concrete and his bladder emptied.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”

He reached behind his seat for the tire thumper to knock out the windshield and in the next instant Al was flaming bits and smoking pieces flying over the Pacific.

A mushroom cloud of greasy flame rose a thousand feet into the sky. The shock wave leveled trees for a block and knocked out windows for three. Half a mile away, in downtown Pine Cove, motion detector alarms were triggered and added their klaxon calls to the roar of the flames. Pine Cove was awake—and frightened.

The Sea Beast was thrown two hundred feet into the air and landed on his back in the flaming ruins of Bert's Burger Stand. Five thousand years on the planet and he had never experienced flight. He found he didn't care for it. Burning gasoline covered him from nose to tail. His gill trees were singed to stumps, jagged shards of metal protruded between the scales of his belly. Still flaming, he headed for the nearest water, the creek that ran behind the business district. As he lumbered down into the creek bed, he looked back to the place where his lover had rejected him and sent out a signal. She was gone now, but he sent the signal anyway. Roughly translated, it said, “A simple
no
would have sufficed.”

Molly

The poster covered half of the trailer's living room wall: a younger Molly Michon in a black leather bikini and spiked dog collar, brandishing a wicked-looking broadsword. In the background, red mushroom clouds rose over the desert.
Warrior Babes of the Outland
, in Italian, of course; Molly's movies had only been released to overseas theaters—direct to video in the United States. Molly stood on the wire-spool coffee table and struck the same pose she had fifteen years before. The sword was tarnished, her tan was gone, the blonde hair had gone gray, and now a jagged five-inch scar ran above her right breast, but the bikini still fit and muscles still raked her arms, thighs, and abdomen.

Molly worked out. In the wee hours of the morning, in the vacant space next to her trailer, she spun the broadsword like a deadly baton. She lunged, and thrust, and leapt into the improbable back flip that had made her a star (in Thailand anyway). At two in the morning, while the village slept around her, Molly the crazy lady became, once again, Kendra, Warrior Babe of the Outland.

She stepped off the coffee table and went to her tiny kitchen, where she opened the brown plastic pill bottle and ceremoniously dropped one tablet into the garbage disposal as she had every night for a month now. Then she went out the trailer door, careful not to let it slam and wake her neighbors, and began her routine.

Stretches first—the splits in the high wet grass, then a hurdler's hamstring stretch, touching her forehead to her knee. She could feel her vertebrae pop like a string of muted firecrackers as she did her back stretches. Now, with dew streaking her legs, her hair tied back with a leather boot lace, she began her sword work. A two-handed slash, a thrust, riposte, leap over the blade, spin and slash—slowly at first, working up momentum—one-
handed spin, pass to the other hand, reverse, pass the sword behind her back, speeding up as she went until the sword cut the air with a whistling whirr as she worked up to a series of backflips executed while the sword stayed in motion: one, two, three. She tossed the sword into the air, did a back flip, reached to catch it in midspin—a light sweat sheeted her body now—
reached to catch it
—the sword silhouetted against a three-quarter moon—
reached to catch it
and the sky went red. Molly looked up as the shock wave rocketed through the village. The blade slashed the back of her wrist to the bone and stuck in the ground, quivering. Molly swore and watched the orange mushroom cloud rise in the sky over Pine Cove.

She held her wrist and stared at the fire in the sky for several minutes, wondering if what she was seeing was really there, or if perhaps she'd been a little hasty about stopping her meds. A siren sounded in the distance, then she heard something moving down in the creek bed—as if huge rocks were being kicked aside. Mutants, she thought. Where there were mushroom clouds, there were mutants, the curse of Kendra's nuked-out world.

Molly snatched the sword and ran into her trailer to hide.

Theo

The shock wave from the explosion had dissipated to the level of a sonic boom by the time it reached Theo's little cabin two miles out of town. Still, he knew that something had happened. He sat up in bed to wait for the phone to ring. A minute and a half later, it did. The 911 dispatcher from San Junipero was on the line.

“Constable Crowe? You've had some sort of explosion at the Texaco station on Cypress Street in Pine Cove.
There are fires burning nearby. I've dispatched fire and ambulance, but you should get over there.”

Theo struggled to sound alert. “Anyone hurt?”

“We don't know yet. The call just came in. It sounds like a fuel tank went up.”

“I'm on my way.”

Theo swung his long legs out of bed and pulled on his jeans. He snatched his shirt, cell phone, and beeper from the nightstand and headed out to the Volvo. He could see an orange corona from the flames in the sky toward town and billowing black smoke streaking the moonlit sky.

As soon as he started the car, the radio crackled with the voices of volunteer firemen who were racing to the site of the explosion in Pine Cove's two fire engines.

Theo keyed the mike. “Hey, guys, this is Theo Crowe. Anyone on scene yet?”

“ETA one minute, Theo” came back at him. “Ambulance is on scene.”

An EMT from the ambulance came on the radio. “The Texaco is gone. So's the burger stand. Doesn't look like the fire is spreading. I don't see anyone around, but if there was anybody in those two buildings, they're toast.”

“Delicate, Vance. Very professional,” Theo said into the mike. “I'll be there in five.”

The Volvo bucked over the rough dirt road. Theo's head banged on the roof and he slowed enough to buckle his seat belt.

Bert's Burger Stand was gone. Gone. And the minimarket at the Texaco, gone too. Theo felt an empty rumbling in his stomach as he pictured his beloved minimarket nachos going black in the flames.

Five minutes later he pulled in behind the ambulance and jumped out of the Volvo. The firefighters seemed to have the fire contained to the asphalt area of the Texaco and the burger stand. A little brush had burned on the
hill behind the Texaco and had charred a few trees, but the firemen had drenched that area first to keep the fire from climbing into the residential area.

Theo shielded his face with his hands. The heat coming off the burning Texaco was searing, even at a hundred yards. A figure in fire-fighting regalia approached him out of the smoke. A few feet away he pulled up the shield on his helmet and Theo recognized Robert Masterson, the volunteer fire chief. Robert and his wife Jenny owned Brine's Bait, Tackle, and Fine Wines. He was smiling.

“Theo, you're gonna starve to death—both your food sources are gone.”

Theo forced a smile. “Guess I'll have to come to your place for brie and cabernet. Anyone hurt?” Theo was shaking. He hoped Robert couldn't see it by the light of the fire and the rotating red lights of the emergency vehicles. He'd left his Sneaky Pete pipe on the nightstand.

“We can't locate the driver of the truck. If he was in it, we lost him. Still too hot to get close to it. The explosion threw the cab two hundred feet that way.” Robert pointed to a burning lump of metal at the edge of the parking lot.

“What about the underground tanks? Should we evacuate or something?”

“No, they'll be fine. They're designed with a vapor lock, no oxygen can get down there, so no fire. We're going to have to let what's left of the minimart just burn out. Some cases of Slim Jims caught fire and they burn like the sun, we can't get close.”

Theo squinted into the flames. “I love Slim Jims,” he said forlornly.

Robert patted his shoulder. “It'll be okay. I'll order some for you, but you can't tell anyone I'm carrying them. And Theo, when this is all over, come see me at the shop. We'll talk.”

“About what?”

Robert pulled off his fire helmet and wiped back his
receding brown hair. “I was a drunk for ten years. I quit. I might be able to help you.”

Theo looked away. “I'm fine. Thanks.” He pointed to a ten-foot-wide burned strip that started across the street and led away from the fire in a path to the creek. “What do you make of that.”

“Looks like someone drove a burning vehicle out of the fire.”

“I'll check it out.” Theo got a flashlight from the Volvo and crossed the street. The grass was singed and there were deep ruts cut into the dirt. They were lucky this had happened after the rainy season had started. Two months earlier and they would have lost the town.

He followed the track to the creek bed, fully expecting to find a wrecked vehicle pitched over the bank, but there was nothing there. The track ended at the bank. The water wasn't deep enough to cover anything large enough to make a trail like that. He played the flashlight around the bank and stopped it on a single deep track in the mud. He blinked and shook his head to clear his vision, then looked again. It couldn't be.

“Anything over there?” Robert was coming across the grass toward him.

Theo jumped down onto the bank and kicked the mud until the print was obliterated.

“Nothing,” Theo said. “Must have just been some burning fuel sprayed out this way.”

“What are you doing?”

“Stomping out the last of a burning squirrel. Must have gotten caught in the flames and ran over here. Poor guy.”

“You really need to come see me, Theo.”

“I will, Robert. For sure I will.”