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Six

Catfish’s Story

Was ’bout fifty year ago I was hoboing through the Delta, playin juke joints with et 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 sone 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"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 hione play no better than ol’ Deaf Cotton, lessin you get soots to help me"

Now Smiley, he et the Blues to juet mad how I do it So he say okay, and I say okay, and I sets to sic the Blues on hio and Dallas and et us some Cadillacs and so on like them boys Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker and them

S 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 Sot hionna sell for ten dollars, and would Sot 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 , ain’t much for drinkin liquor, but once I tells her that ol’ Sot hisself runned over by a train, she takes to drinkin like a natural (in between the screamin and cryin and all, and I hadmy partner and all, God rest his soul) And before you know it, I’ood lovin to corief and all

And you knohen Set back, he don’t say a word ’bout my sleepin with Ida May He say he sorry he can’t find the ot to go ho him special all day I say, "Well, she donesad and reased to the Blues, and they just wouldn’t stick to him

So I borrowed a Model T Ford, drove over to S, as tied up in the yard

"That dog was old anyways," he say "I had hiet Ida May a puppy anyways"

"You ain’t sad?" I say

"Naw," he say "That ol’ dog had his tiots to do some ponderin"

So I ponders Takin me two days to come up with a way to put the Blues on ol’ S there over the suitar in the other, he don’t do nothin but thank God they had tiettin burnt up

Preacher once told edy 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 Ser when bad things coet the Blues on you Ain’t just bad things happening, sos not happenin - disappointment, iffin you knohat I mean?

So I hears that down Biloxi way, round ’bout one of the as a rowboat, but nobody can catch hiive five hundred dollars to theol’ catfish in Now you know people be trying to catch hiot et that o andas a rowboat, and iffin there was, he’d be caught by now, but Sonna 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 et us some bait on the way, and sho’ nuff, I accidentally run ot too close to the road

’For dark n on the bayou where that ol’ cat spose to live Thens say: NIGGER, DON’T LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON YOU IN THIS COUNTY, so ays 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 suts, 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 S Smiley doze off on the bank I lets him sleep, thinkin he be ht that catfish Just to be sure, I starts to pull in the rope, and ’for I got it pulled in ten feet, soh my hand like they’s a scared horse on’t’other end Ioff 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 Bluesot to take care of his hands) But when the rope co - 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 coest 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 e catch, when that ol’ catfish make a noise I don’t know can co 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 coin that big catfish right with us and that ot us soets 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 ot 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"

Seven

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 ti roads, your vertebrae co coffee, and finally, just when you get a good-paying job with benefits and you’re seeing the light at the end of the retire of a bass boat and a case of Miller calling to you like a willing truck stop waitress na and fucks your truck and you are plu 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 aof hard times with the full authority of a cross-eyed redheaded ht have been rear-ended by so started and Al was sure he was in theone - 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 hi in the wind, but it wasn’t Only the truck was et 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 So blocked it, blocked the wholeA tree? Had the roof over the puer door, and so that one too Not h 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 fla over the Pacific

A reasy flame rose a thousand feet into the sky The shock wave leveled trees for a block and knocked out s for three Half a mile away, in don Pine Cove, ered and added their klaxon calls to the roar of the flahtened

The Sea Beast was throo hundred feet into the air and landed on his back in the flaer Stand Five thousand years on the planet and he had never experienced flight He found he didn’t care for it Burning gasoline covered higed shards of , 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 hinal anyway Roughly trans-lated, it said, "A simple no would have sufficed"

Molly

The poster covered half of the trailer’s living rooer 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 sas 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 hs, and abdo, 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 , while the village slept around her, Molly the crazy lady becaain, 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 ceree disposal as she had every night for a month now Then she went out the trailer door, careful not to let it slaan her routine

Stretches first - the splits in the high wet grass, then a hurdler’s ha her forehead to her knee She could feel her vertebrae pop like a string of muted firecrackers as she did her back stretches Noith dew streaking her legs, her hair tied back with a leather boot lace, she began her sork 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 ht 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 severalwas really there, or if perhaps she’d been a little hasty about stopping her meds A siren sounded in the distance, then she heard soe 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 twohad 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 aled to sound alert "Anyone hurt?"

"We don’t know yet The call just came in It sounds like a fuel tank went up"

"I’s out of bed and pulled on his jeans He snatched his shirt, cell phone, and beeper frohtstand and headed out to the Volvo He could see an orange corona fro black s the moonlit sky

As soon as he started the car, the radio crackled with the voices of volunteer fire to the site of the explosion in Pine Cove’s two fire engines

Theo keyed the uys, this is Theo Crowe Anyone on scene yet?"

"ETA one minute, Theo" came back at him "Ambulance is on scene"

An EMT froone 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 one too Theo felt an e in his sto black in the flames

Five minutes later he pulled in behind the ahters seemed to have the fire contained to the as-phalt 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 fro into the residential area

Theo shielded his face with his hands The heat co, even at a hundred yards A figure in fire-fighting re-galia approached him out of the smoke A few feet away he pulled up the shield on his helnized Robert Masterson, the volunteer fire chief Robert and his wife Jenny owned Brine’s Bait, Tackle, and Fine Wines He was sonna 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 eency 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 hiet close to it The explosion threw the cab two hundred feet that way" Robert pointed to a burning lu lot

"What about the underground tanks? Should we evacuate or soned 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 ht fire and they burn like the sun, we can’t get close"

Theo squinted into the flames "I love Slim Jims," he said forlornly