Gradle Bird

by J. C. Sasser

  “Say something, Tadpole, so she knows you’re for real.”

  Ceif hurried his pace. His bad leg tripped in the vine. He fell to his knees, and his Bible sailed through the air and landed at the girl’s feet.

  “I have this book,” she said. She picked up the Bible and bent to Ceif’s aide.

  “He can get up on his own,” Sonny Joe said, motioning her to step back. “Let the weak help themselves.”

  Ceif untangled the vine from his cane and pushed himself up. “My name is Ceif Walker.” He removed his black and dirty tam hat and held out his hand. “He calls me Tadpole when he’s feeling insecure.”

  “I’m Gradle Bird,” she said.

  “You gonna come with us?” Sonny Joe asked. He snatched the cigarette from behind Ceif’s ear, lit it, and took a drag. “Give you a chance to work on your social skills.” He wiped his mouth with the front of his shirt and flaunted some naked skin, hoping it would distract Gradle from the intensity of Ceif. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

  “I need to tell Grandpa where I’m going,” she said.

  A loud boom came from the side of the house. The porch light lit up, its bulb popped, and sprinkled smoky shards of glass on the floor.

  “Piss!” a man’s voice hollered out.

  There was a shake and rattle of aluminum and then a thud, like a sack of potatoes had been thrown down from the roof.

  Sonny Joe followed the girl around the side of the house and found an old giant with white shoulder-length hair and a mustache to match flat on his back. He had a pair of wire cutters in his hand that must have been the tool that had clipped the metal ring around the electric meter. The old man was trying to pull power, and it had gotten the best of him.

  “Grandpa,” Gradle said. She held her ear up to his mouth, shook his shoulders, and blew on his face. His eyes were still as stones, fixed on the thundercloud above.

  “Is he dead?” Sonny Joe asked.

  “No,” she said. “He stares off like this all the time.”

  Ceif hobbled around the corner, knelt by the old man, and placed his palm on the man’s forehead. “He looks like Moses,” he said.

  The old man cut his eyes into Ceif like a couple of switchblades. He got up to his feet and situated the ladder back under the electric meter. Sprigs of hair rose up all around his head like a globe of dandelion seed. He climbed the ladder, removed the meter’s face, and performed some kind of surgery on it before he put the meter’s face back on.

  The electricity surged. Lights inside the house popped on, and a TV blasted the sound of a Franklin Chevrolet car commercial two windows down.

  “These boys just invited me to go mess with a crazy man,” she told her grandpa. “I’m gonna go with them.”

  Sonny Joe was surprised at her honesty and moreso her boldness. If it were him, he would have at least lied a little bit. He figured there wasn’t a fat chance in hell that old man was going to let his granddaughter go off with a couple of strangers to go mess with a crazy man.

  “He isn’t that crazy,” he said to the man in an attempt to help her chances.

  But the old man just stood there still, staring at the electric dial spinning round and round. He’d frozen up at the sound of her voice, as if it had thrown out ice.

  “Does he talk?” Sonny Joe asked, pulling on the cigarette.

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t have much of a vocabulary,” Gradle said.

  The old man came down from the ladder. He gave Sonny Joe the once over and spent a lot of time on his fish tattoo. The man’s eyes were dark and mean, borderline badass. He gave Ceif the once over too, and spent most of his time on Ceif’s cane and the ratty Bible in his hand. It was times like these Sonny Joe was fortunate Ceif’s looks demanded a certain amount of pity.

  The man held up the wire cutters and snapped them shut as if to say he’d have no problem cutting off their balls, crippled or not. He walked up to Sonny Joe, snatched his cigarette from his mouth, and took a drag. The cigarette cherried and burned into a long cylinder of ash. He handed what little was left back to Sonny Joe, grabbed his ladder, and walked past Gradle without looking at her even once.

  “Was that a yes or a no?” Sonny Joe asked.

  “I never ask for his permission,” she said. “I just tell him what I’m gonna do.”

  The screen door snapped loud behind the old man, and he disappeared into the house. Sonny Joe shifted his pants, trying to harness his excitement.

  Gradle sat on the benchseat between the two boys, not quite sure how to act. She fiddled with her gold-cross earring while Sonny Joe reached behind her neck and pressed the play button on the Panasonic. The scent of his underarm, like overripe fruit, excited her, as did the aggressive drumbeat that stuttered out of the jam box’s speakers. He cranked the truck, threw it in drive, and slung up mud as they fishtailed out of the alley and onto the wet asphalt street.

  “What brings you to town, Gradle Bird?” Sonny Joe asked, turning down the volume a notch. He shook a Marlboro Red from a soft pack of cigarettes, and it sucked up to his lips like they were magnets.

  “My grandpa,” she said. “And that old house I guess. He’s trying to save it from getting torn down.” She liked to believe there was something more to it, that it wasn’t just about the house, that maybe it also had something to do with her. That maybe he was trying to save her from getting torn down, too.

  “Welcome to the neighborhood,” Ceif said, as his sticky yellow fingers struggled to roll a cigarette.

  “What happened to your lip?” Sonny Joe asked.

  “It got busted,” she said, rubbing her finger over the scab.

  “And what’s the story with this?” Sonny Joe asked, flicking his fingers through the grey streak in her bangs. “You stressed out or something?”

  “It’s a birthmark,” she said.

  “You know crazy people grey early,” he said.

  “I guess I’m crazy,” she said. “You got any greys?” she asked, hunting through his peroxide blonde and rain-jeweled hair. The color was unnatural but natural on him, like the cigarette that hung precariously from his mouth as if it completely trusted his lips, like the fish tattoo swimming underneath his shirt that was thin as egg skin and a size too small. He was cool and unusual, beautiful actually.

  “Would you leave her the hell alone?” Ceif said.

  “Who gave you permission to talk?” He gave Ceif’s ear a hard thump and pulled the truck into a drive-thru liquor store with a neon sign advertising LIQUOR and a smaller statement written on cardboard in black ink: WE DON’T SELL TO MINORS.

  The tires ran over a hose and the air bell rang. A man with a lazy eye and a hammer-like head slid open the glass window and spat a shot of chewing tobacco juice from a pair of crooked lips.

  “Hey Hammer,” Sonny Joe said. “Two half-pints of Southern Comfort, a couple Mello Yellos, a sleeve of Black Cats, a pack of Marlboro Reds, and some Midnight Specials.” He pulled out a wad of dollars thick as a brick from his jean’s pocket and flipped through the bills.

  “You got I.D.?” the man said real slow, as if he had a hard time lifting the words. “GBI’s been up here.”

  “You know I ain’t got I.D., Hammer.”

  The man surveyed his surroundings from the sides of his eyes. “She want anything?”

  “What kind of fun do you want?” Sonny Joe asked. “Something fruity. Fuzzy Navel? Bottle of Hill?”

  “I’ll take a Budweiser,” she said.

  “Six pack, twelve pack, or a case?”

  She lifted her skirt to air out the heat between her thighs. “You sell it by the can?” she asked the man.

  The man nodded and slid the window shut.

  “That’s a pretty dress,” Ceif said. “Green your favorite color?” His fingers shook and tore the paper while he struggled to roll the same cigarette he’d started a couple of miles back.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Thirteen and a half.”

  “He’s fast for hi
s age,” Sonny Joe said. “Don’t treat him like a child.”

  The drive-thru window slid open. “Twenty even,” Hammer said.

  After Sonny Joe and Hammer made their exchange, he threw the pack of Midnight Specials at Ceif’s head. It knocked the half-rolled cigarette out of his fingers and sent loose tobacco in a skid across his Bible.

  “He’s trying to impress you,” Ceif said.

  “Is it working?” Sonny Joe asked, turned up the half-pint of Southern Comfort, and chased it with Mello Yello. He threw the truck in drive and peeled out of the drive-thru leaving a trail of rubber and smoke.

  She didn’t know if it was working or not, all she knew is that she couldn’t keep her eyes off him–how sweat lacquered his veiny arms and fish tattoo, how his upper lip flared like a flower petal, how the hole in his jeans looked rough. He was wild and dangerous and a little bit sad, like an animal separated from its mother too young. And there was this charge about him, a force that dominated everything in his vicinity. The music. The air. Ceif. Her.

  “You might want to try harder,” she finally said after Sonny Joe caught her staring. She turned up the can and gulped down half of the coldest Budweiser she’d ever had. She was thirsty, hadn’t had much to drink since they got there except a little bit of rain water she’d collected in a bucket out in the yard.

  They passed the Piggly Wiggly, Dixie Hardware, Main’s Five-n-Dime, and the County Jail, and when they rode over the railroad tracks, Ceif lifted his feet, kissed his fingers, and made the cross.

  “What’s that for?” she asked. She took a swig of beer.

  “When I get to know you better I’ll tell you,” he said, lighting his cigarette.

  “He believes in ghosts,” Sonny Joe said, as he made a turn down an empty highway bordered by two fields of silking green corn.

  She smoothed the lap of her dress and looked down the highway’s long tongue leading into the darkness of an oncoming storm. “Do you believe Annalee Spivey’s got a ghost?” she asked.

  Sonny Joe tossed the butt of his cigarette out of the window and turned down the music. “You in the mood to be creeped out?”

  “Sure. What’s her story?” Gradle asked.

  “She died in that house,” Sonny Joe said. “They found her in the attic. When they found her, she was holding on to a portrait of herself and had a diamond ring sitting on her tongue. Use your imagination.” He ran his fingers through his hair and shook it in place. “They say when you go past there at night, you can see her looking out of the attic window.”

  “What’s she looking for?” Gradle asked.

  “Her long lost love,” he said, his canine resting on his smile.

  Gradle took another swig of beer. “How’d she die?”

  “Suicide,” Sonny Joe said. Smoke funneled out of his nose, and he gave the truck all it had.

  As they approached the city limits sign, Sonny Joe snapped his fingers at Ceif. Ceif hunted the floorboard and handed an empty half-pint of Southern Comfort to Sonny Joe. With a flick of his wrist, Sonny Joe threw the bottle out of the window. It hit the sign with a loud bang and added to its collection of dents. Sonny Joe turned up the radio, and after Axl Rose screamed out all he had to sing, Sonny Joe made a turn on a dirt road pebbled with little orange rocks and flanked by tobacco fields.

  They went on down the road for miles it seemed. The tobacco thinned out and turned to dirt striped with rusted barbed-wire fences. He slowed the truck and rolled to a stop in front of the county dump’s plywood sign. A pack of mangy dogs nosed through the trash and tucked-tail in all directions when he revved his engine to a scream.

  “If Delvis ain’t here, he must be home,” Ceif said, nodding Sonny Joe onward.

  Ahead, a cowbird flew against the storm-dark sky. The tobacco came back higher and greener but got choked out by honeysuckle and shade as they traveled farther down the road. They came to a mailbox rusted and padlocked shut. Written on its side were the words:

  NO TResPass-N. FoR FaNS aNd ReaLTrUe

  FrieENds ONLY. ReTuRN to SENDer if NoT.

  D-5 Delvis MiLes The LoNe SiNger

  Rural RoUTE 1 BoX 56-B

  “Is that the crazy man’s mailbox?” she asked.

  “Yeah, but believe me, Delvis don’t ever get mail.” Sonny Joe slung his bottle out of Ceif’s window and knocked the mailbox spinning off its head.

  “That was mean,” Ceif said, as Sonny Joe fishtailed and turned down a drive mohawked with weeds.

  Gradle slid to the edge of the seat and pulled her glasses down. The man’s shack sat on cement blocks and had a severe lean to the right, and it would have fallen over if it weren’t for the enormous oak that had grown into its side. Boards covered up all of the windows, and resurrection ferns grew in cracks of the rusted tin roof. Nailed to the porch walls was a hand-drawing of the cross, flyswatters, aluminum pie pans, a badminton racket, four thermometers choking at different degrees of heat, and a homemade sign that read:

  NO PichtER Tak-IN

  Flytape hung from the porch’s awning along with baskets of bright coral geraniums and a Coke can whirligig that caught the wind and spun like a flower on fire. Clawfoot tubs without the feet, refrigerators without handles, rolls of barbed wire, sheets of tin, birdbaths, washtubs, reflectors, animal traps, bicycle frames, stacks of bricks, pink plastic flamingos, water hoses, rooster teepees, and six gutted cars all with the hoods open and labeled UsED, littered the yard. A doghouse with a bowl at its door sat under the oak. The dog was nowhere in sight, but there were freshly dug holes around its house.

  Gradle took a sip of beer and surveyed the man’s garden that sat off to the side. Corn, tomatoes, peas, and several rows of sunflowers were ready to pop. Five scarecrows, each with a dead crow strung around their neck, held signs that warned:

  SCARE! CRow!

  “How crazy is this man?” she asked.

  “He’s off his rocker,” Sonny Joe said. He put the truck in park and grabbed the packs of Black Cat firecrackers.

  He and Ceif got out of the truck, and she stood by them and looked over the crazy, junked-out yard.

  “I bet he’ll come out after five firecrackers,” Sonny Joe said.

  “I bet three,” Ceif said. “Winner pays for the next game of pool at Frank’s.”

  “Why don’t you just go up and knock?” she asked.

  “You’ll see,” Sonny Joe said, as he unraveled the firecracker’s daisy chain.

  Ceif limped toward the house and drew a line in the dirt with his cane. “Don’t go past that line,” he said, tilting his tam hat at her.

  After the words came out of Ceif’s mouth, Delvis’s mongrel dog bolted out from under the shack with a mouth full of foam. Its brindled haunches rippled as the dog ran toward them, too focused to bark. Gradle started to run, but Sonny Joe grabbed her wrist and made her stay put. The dog kept coming, then suddenly, inches before crossing the line, the dog was yanked back by its chain. It got off its back, lunged forward, and barked as if it had gone mad.

  Gradle broke free from Sonny Joe’s hold. “Jesus Christ,” she said.

  The two boys laughed.

  The dog snorted and crawled back underneath the shack where he continued to complain.

  Sonny Joe handed her a firecracker and lit its fuse. “Throw it!” he yelled, and threw one of his own at the shack’s front door.

  She threw the firecracker and it exploded mid-air. She laughed and covered her mouth, startled by the sound it made. She couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed out loud.

  The front door flew open and Delvis bolted out of his shack like he’d been slung from a slingshot. He danced around a pack of Black Cats exploding at his feet, jumped off the porch, and landed crouched on the ground. He wore a dirty undershirt, powder-blue pants cinched with a silver-buckled belt, and a bright white cowboy hat. His feet were bare, but his knuckles were decorated with brass, and in one of his oversized hands he gripped a gun.

  “I known it! I known it wasn’t stars
burstin’ in the sky!” His eyes, chlorine blue, were frenzied, as if he couldn’t quite manage what was going on in his head. “You outlaws! Outlaws tryin’ to make my life a livin’ hell!” He shot the gun in the air and placed it in a holster by his side.

  The gun’s crack startled the mongrel dog from under the shack. It bolted toward Gradle and the two boys, who were both frozen by the gunshot. The dog kept coming. Its chain snapped, and it crossed the line Ceif had made in the sand.

  “Run Gradle!” Ceif yelled, as he limped toward the truck as fast as he could.

  She couldn’t move except to open her hand and let the firecrackers fall. She watched Delvis perform strange variations of kung-fu moves in his yard and didn’t even flinch as the dog ran past her and attacked Ceif’s bad leg.

  The dog shook and wrestled Ceif to the ground. His cane flew through the air and landed on the dirt out of his reach, but its distance did not stop him from reaching for it, and when he did, the mutt bit into his outstretched arm and shook it like a dishrag.

  Sonny Joe grabbed Ceif’s cane and beat it against the dog’s back. “Get up, Ceif!” he yelled, grabbed Ceif’s arm, and tried to drag him away, but the dog kept fighting. He kicked the dog’s ribs and used everything he had to try and keep it from killing Ceif.

  A shot sounded. The dog let out a yelp, and an eerie silence absorbed the air as the gun’s echo cracked through the dark grey sky. The dog had stopped fighting, but Sonny Joe kept on kicking and beating it with Ceif’s cane.

  Ceif grabbed his cane in a downswing and jerked Sonny Joe. He rolled the limp dog from his chest, threw his arm over Sonny Joe’s shoulder, and leaned on him while he helped him to the truck.

  “Get in the truck!” Sonny Joe yelled at Gradle.

  Her dress blew through her legs and her hair whipped, as she stood paralyzed and stared at the Coke can whirligig screaming and going ballistic in the wind. Sonny Joe grabbed her by the waist and yanked her out of the trance. He threw her into the cab, slammed the door, and gunned the truck down the long dirt drive.