The Troubles of Johnny Cannon

by Isaiah Campbell

  I didn’t know quite what to make of that, so I apologized.

  “He’s started talking about changing the world again,” she said. “Because of you. Because you’ve become his new superhero. He got hope that he could do more than the average man, that he could actually save people’s lives and futures.”

  “I don’t know where he came by that,” I said. “I ain’t putting them thoughts in his head.”

  “No, he’s trying to put them in yours.”

  I hated to admit that he’d been pretty successful.

  “Oh well, so what if he’s got hope. What’s wrong with that?”

  “He’s a crippled Tigger from Alabama. He doesn’t have any hope.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  “Sorry ain’t enough. You’ve got him all tied up in your affairs, and in the affairs of folks that are bigger than you. And that kind of attention, that kind of mess isn’t going to leave my boy in good shape. So you need to stay away from him. Leave him out of it all.”

  What she was saying was sinking in right to the middle of my heart, and it was hurting. I’d spent my whole life without a friend and I hadn’t cared none. But now the only friend outside my family I had was getting taken away, and it hurt worse than a broken nose. I was used to not belonging in Cullman, but I didn’t know what to do now that I didn’t have no place in Colony either.

  She stood up.

  “I’ll still cook dinners for you and your pa. But you leave my boy out of your life, you hear me?”

  I got up and I wanted to tell her what I thought, but it wouldn’t have been any different from what she’d already said. She was right, I was bringing more trouble than I was worth into everybody’s life around me. It was better for Willie if we stopped being friends.

  Still, as I went up to my house, I couldn’t help getting mad at her. And mad at Pa. And mad at the whole dadgum world that Willie felt needed changing. Why did everything and everyone have to be so unfair about everything? Why was I stuck holding everybody else’s secrets? And why in tarnation was it such bad luck for me to get friendly with anyone?

  When I got to my house, I was so mad I needed to tear something up. And it struck me that the best thing to tear up was sitting up in my sock drawer still, that dadgum map that had caused so much trouble. If it was a dog I’d shoot it dead.

  So I went and dug the map out, took it to the back, and I nailed it onto our shed, right over the big X. Then I got my hunting rifle and had me a little target practice.

  I sat up and took my time aiming, at first, and I shot it right through the center. Then I shot it again. And again.

  I ran out of ammo before I ran out of anger, so I went in and dug Pa’s pistol out of his closet. Went back out and unloaded it at the map, filled it so full of holes there wasn’t no way you could see what the truth was about it.

  When I was done, I wiped my forehead from the sweat I’d just done put out. I started feeling a bit better ’cause I’d actually accomplished something with my time. I went to pull the map down and reckoned I’d burn it in our fireplace next. I turned around to head inside.

  Short-Guy was standing there.

  “So, you are hiding something from me,” he said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  HOME RUN

  I needed to think fast. Faster than I’d ever done in my life.

  “Uh,” was all I could muster. He even gave me a second to come up with something. “Uh,” I said again. My brain must have been stuck in the mud.

  “That’s the same map I showed you, isn’t it?”

  “Uh,” I said, “I don’t know. Is it? I ain’t no cartographer.” Dadgum my brain. It could think of the word cartographer but it couldn’t come up with a decent lie.

  He came over and pointed at Cuba, which I’d put two bullet holes in.

  “It doesn’t take a cartographer to recognize that.”

  “Huh. Well I’ll be darned.” My wheels was spinning faster than a semi-truck. “I found this in the trash. Down by Eddie Gorman’s house.” I finally caught some traction in my head. “Come to think of it, there was some fancy equipment there too. You don’t think maybe he’s the fella you’re looking for, do you?”

  I didn’t wait for him to answer, I hurried up and walked away.

  “Where are you going? We’re not done talking,” he yelled at me.

  “I got to go to the bathroom real quick.” That was my go-to lie. Got me out of everything. Nobody didn’t ever follow you to the bathroom, and you could spend as long as you wanted in there. The longer you was in there, the less they usually wanted to be around when you came out.

  But he followed me.

  I walked through our back door to head upstairs, and he didn’t even let the screen door slam before he was inside with me.

  “What you doing?” I said. “You ought to go over to the Gormans’ and dig around in their trash.”

  “Not until we’re done talking.”

  “Well it might be a while,” I said as I went into the bathroom. “I had a big lunch.”

  I closed the door and sat on the bathtub. Pa had a collection of books in there, mainly Charlie Brown books and such, and I reckoned I could spend the next hour or so reading them. I could wait out anybody.

  After about ten minutes, I heard the screen door slam. I went ahead and flushed the toilet, just to make it seem realistic, and I came out. Sure enough, he was gone.

  I went up to my room, relieved and worried all at the same time, and figured I should stay holed up for the rest of the day. At least he’d be off bothering Eddie for a while. That made me feel a little better.

  When I walked into my room, I realized that I wasn’t nowhere near out of the woods with Short-Guy yet. He’d been in there, and he’d taken the liberty of going through my things. My drawers had been rummaged through, my closet was dug open, and my clothes was picked up off the floor. It almost looked like I’d cleaned, which was the creepiest look my room had ever had.

  Then I realized something that took me from being creeped out to feeling like I’d gotten kicked right between the legs.

  He’d taken some of my stuff.

  Specifically, he’d taken my surviving history notebook, the history book Mrs. Buttke had given me, and the article about my accident from my desk. And one of my jackets. I reckoned he’d felt chilly.

  I ran over to my window, hoping he might still be outside. Maybe if I offered to go with him to Eddie’s house he’d give me back my stuff.

  But he was gone.

  Dadgummit, I’d been robbed by the government. And it wasn’t even Tax Day.

  I wasn’t quite sure what to do, and the hole I’d punched in the wall before stood there making fun of me, so I punched it again. Then I screamed, on account that I just about busted my knuckles in half.

  I sat on my bed, feeling like there wasn’t no place in the world I could hide from nobody. Then I saw the silver dollar Tommy’d gave me sitting on my desk. In all Short-Guy’s cleaning and robbing, he must have dug it up, I reckon he wasn’t interested in taking my money, only my valuables. I picked it up and went outside to our backyard. I stared up at the moon that was coming out, rubbing that silver dollar between my fingers. It seemed like the whole world was crumbling around me.

  After a while of sitting and listening to the crickets that was starting to come out, I got up and went around the house to see if there was any lightning bugs I could catch. I hadn’t caught no lightning bugs yet that year, and it seemed like a darn shame at that moment. I chased a few and put them into a jar. I took them up to my room and watched them all, lighting up and bouncing off the lid.

  After a few minutes, I started to feel bad for them. Here they was, with all that light to spread, and I was keeping them tied up in my room. I opened my window and let them go.

  The next morning, I went downstairs and
got myself some breakfast. I looked out on the porch. Pa was sitting out there, whittling a stick. At first I thought about going out the back, but then I realized how dumb it was that he and I wasn’t talking. We was family. He was the only person on the planet who wouldn’t never leave me. I went out and sat down next to him.

  “I reckon you deposited that check?” I said after I took a bite of my cereal.

  He nodded. “Yeah, but they only let me get a hundred out right now. We’ve got to wait before the rest goes on our account.” He put his knife down and fished a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket. He handed it to me. “Here, I reckon I owe you this for all you’ve had to do lately.”

  It was blood money. I couldn’t bear to look at it. I stuck it in my pocket.

  “So, that means we’re still in a heap of trouble with our house?”

  “No, I checked. We should have the money to pay it off before the auction.”

  “That’s good.” I tried to think of something else to say to keep the conversation going civil, but there wasn’t nothing. So I finally decided to take the conversation to honest instead. I was done with secrets.

  “Wonder why they didn’t make the check out to WX5RJ,” I said.

  Pa stopped whittling.

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “That was your call sign, right?” I said.

  “Yes, but I don’t recall ever telling you that.”

  “You didn’t,” I said. “The CIA agent did.”

  “Boy, that ain’t funny,” he said.

  “No it ain’t,” I said. “It also ain’t funny that he told me how you made that money, by selling secrets about the invasion to the Cubans. And it ain’t funny that, after you spouted off about God and country, you went and did a dadgum thing like that and made me dadgum glad that Tommy ain’t coming back from Nicaragua.” I caught it right when it came out, and I tried to stop it. “I mean, Korea.”

  Pa’s voice got real quiet.

  “Why’d you say Nicaragua?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. Then I took a deep breath. If I was done holding on to secrets, I might as well be done with them all.

  “Korea was a lie,” I said. “He told me that the night he left. He had a secret mission in Nicaragua to attend to. Not sure what, but I reckon that’s where he crashed at.”

  His eyes got big and his hand started trembling. “A secret mission? In Nicaragua? Did he say what kind?”

  “No, he just said a whole mess of people was counting on him to help them out.”

  He clutched at his chest. “Oh God. Oh dear God. And the CIA is investigating. That means we were involved. Oh dear God, Tommy—”

  “Well, now, don’t get no heart attacks.” I reached over and patted his back. “There ain’t nothing to worry about that CIA fella. I reckon I’ve done got him barking up a different tree.”

  He got up, still clutching his chest. He headed inside.

  “I have to make a phone call,” he said.

  “Don’t use the living room phone, something you did in moving it made it not work right,” I yelled after him. He went and used the phone in the kitchen, and I could hear him barking at every person he talked to, trying to get connected to a certain number. I was plumb tired of the whole thing, so I blocked his voice out of my head. But, I had to admit, it felt good to finally get all that stuff out in the open.

  After a bit, a station wagon drove up to our house. Mrs. Parkins pulled into our driveway and right up next to our porch. She didn’t get out, but Willie did. He was carrying his tape recorder.

  “ ’Lo,” he said to me.

  “Hi,” I said. Mrs. Parkins was watching me like a hawk. “I thought you and me wasn’t allowed to be around each other no more.”

  “We ain’t,” he said, looking over his shoulder at his ma. “At least, not as friends. But Pa wants me to interview all the players from the team before tonight’s game in Cullman. So that makes this business.”

  I couldn’t help but smile.

  “So, you’re finally going to get that interview you was wanting?”

  “Yeah,” he said, then he made a big deal about moving around the porch and listening to the air at all corners. He said, real loud, “There’s too much noise out here. We’ll have to do the interview inside.” He looked back at the car, and Mrs. Parkins nodded at him. We went inside.

  As soon as the door was closed, he started talking.

  “I’m so sorry, Johnny,” he said.

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For telling my ma.”

  I’d figured he had. Hoped he hadn’t, but figured he had.

  “Why did you?”

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” he said. “Finding out that about your Pa, it was just the sort of thing she always said we wasn’t supposed to get into.”

  I couldn’t hold that against him.

  “What’s done is done, I guess. He still says he’s innocent. I reckon I’m supposed to believe him,” I said. “Do you think she’ll keep quiet about it?”

  “Are you kidding me? She’s been grilling me every fifteen minutes that I need to forget the whole thing. She’s terrified of people finding out that we know.”

  Just then, Pa got to yelling again in the kitchen.

  “And you thought it was loud outside,” I said.

  He grinned. “Well, there ain’t no going back out there to record. We best find a decent spot in the house.” He looked around. “How about over on the couch?”

  We went over and I took a seat. He went to set up his microphone stand on the little table by the couch. When he did, he bumped the telephone, and the part you hold fell off the table.

  “Dadgummit, Johnny!” Pa yelled from the kitchen. I hurried and hung that phone back up and put it back on the table.

  Willie turned on his tape recorder.

  “Here, let’s get some test questions done. What’s your name?” he said.

  “Johnny Cannon,” I said.

  He stopped the recorder and rewound it. He put on his headphones and listened.

  “Dang it. I can hear some other voices in the background.”

  I bent over the table and listened.

  “Yeah, it’s coming from the phone. Pa messed with it when he brung it back inside from his shed and it won’t hang up good. I’ll have to fix it once Pa’s off the line. Do you want to wait?”

  “No, let’s just get this interview done,” he said. “You got a habit of never cashing a rain check.”

  He had a point. “All right, let’s do it.”

  He started his tape recorder again.

  “Johnny Cannon, you’re the pitcher for the— Oh no!” he said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This is Pa’s sermon tape from Sunday.”

  I looked at the reel that was spinning around. Sure enough, it was labeled Reverend Parkins, May 14.

  He hopped up and ran to the door.

  “I need to go get a new tape,” he said as he went to the porch.

  His tape recorder was still going. I didn’t want to mess with it ’cause my luck had been so bad lately, so I went and followed him.

  “Can I come with you?” I said.

  “I don’t know. I got to go all the way into town,” he said.

  Mrs. Parkins got out of the car.

  “What’s wrong?” she said. I think she thought I’d gotten her son into the middle of another CIA mess.

  “I need a new tape. We got to go into town,” Willie said.

  “Can I come along?” I asked. She seemed to hesitate. I stuck my hand in my pocket and felt that twenty Pa’d just given me. “I’ll pay for the tape.”

  “We don’t need you to pay for the tape,” she said.

  “Ain’t it the least I could do?”

  She thought for a bit.r />
  “Fine. But this is only for the baseball team. That’s all.”

  We went into town and it felt good to be hanging out with Willie. Even though Mrs. Parkins was watching us like a hawk, we was able to sneak in some fun. He picked up his tape that he needed and we also got some Butterfingers and MoonPies, and then we went back to the house. Pa was gone when we got there, so the house was good and quiet. Willie changed out the tape and we did the interview.

  After the interview, Willie had to go so he could catch the other players before the game. I decided to take my time and do all the chores around the house. I even did some of Pa’s usual too. I wanted there to be nothing hanging when it came time for the game. There was still a part of me that wanted to see Pa in the stands. To see him proud.

  After a while, it was time for me to go and Pa still hadn’t come home. I got into my cleats and my ball cap, grabbed my glove, and wrote him a note telling him where and when the game was.

  I decided to stop by Mr. Thomassen’s shop first ’cause I hadn’t stopped by in a couple of days. I hoped he wasn’t upset about that.

  When I got to his shop, the front door was locked and the lights was out. There was a sign up that said CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

  I peered into the window. I noticed a light coming from under a door, way in the back.

  I went around to the back side of the building, where his dumpster was. He had a door at the top of some rickety wooden steps that led into his back room. I headed up them steps to try the door. I accidentally stepped on a cat’s tail. He went squawking and ran off to Lord knows where.

  It was a good thing I wasn’t trying to be sneaky.

  I got to the door and reached down to turn the knob.

  It opened before I touched it.

  Mr. Thomassen peeked out and saw me, then he slammed the door in my face.

  It almost hurt my feelings, but I could hear him talking to somebody inside, saying something about “those pesky possums tearing into stuff,” and I heard the racket and rattle of a bunch of bottles getting tossed into a trash bag. Next thing I knew, the door opened again and Mr. Thomassen came out with two big trash bags full of beer bottles. He closed the door behind him.