The Troubles of Johnny Cannon

by Isaiah Campbell

  The road turned right and the tape slid over to his side.

  “Moscow?” I said. “Going to help Che Guevara get them missiles?”

  To the left. The tape was right in front of me again.

  “Yes, that’s the next stop. Then to China, North Korea, maybe into a couple of countries in Africa. It’s like a tour of the world. You’ll learn things, we’ll make Fidel happy. Then we’ll settle down in Switzerland.” He wasn’t expecting the next right turn and the tape hopped across the dash again.

  “And what about Pa?”

  He grunted.

  “What about him? I don’t have time to do anything to him, and without this evidence, he’ll spend the rest of his days in prison.”

  I was trying to think of something else to say, ’cause I needed him to be talking when we got to the highway at the bottom of the mountain. That way he’d stop on instinct and I could hop out. But I was having a hard time thinking, ’cause I could hear something unusual coming from behind us.

  I figured out what it was.

  He came around the last turn, a left one, before the highway. The tape slid across right in front of me. I grabbed it and then I opened the door next to me.

  He slammed on his brakes and I almost busted my nose on the dash. We was about five feet away from the highway.

  “What are you doing?” he said. “You think if you get out I won’t hunt for you? I won’t track you down? Do you honestly think I won’t shoot you? I’m a doctor, I could stop the bleeding.”

  “I’d rather take my chances with you shooting me than with a truck hitting me.” I rolled out of the door into the ditch.

  And I did it just in time.

  Right then, a tore-up pickup with a busted-in windshield that had been parked in our yard slammed right into the back of the Captain’s truck. Him and his truck went flying out across the highway and off the edge of the mountainside, flipped over, and bounced off a few trees on their way down the hill, until we couldn’t see them no more.

  Meanwhile, our pickup came to a stop a little bit in front of me. The driver door opened and Willie climbed out as best he could. I ran over to him.

  “Turns out there’s at least one thing you can do with only one good leg,” he said.

  “Why’d you do that?” I helped him get his balance on the ground.

  “We’re blood brothers.”

  I nodded. There wasn’t nothing more to say or do about that.

  The truck wouldn’t start no more on account of the engine getting banged up as bad as it did, so we knew we’d have to walk wherever we was going to go. It wouldn’t have been nothing more than a walk in the park to go up the mountain, but Willie was worse off than usual, so we walked along the highway and hoped we’d see a car to hitch a ride with.

  After a little ways I was all done telling him about everything that had happened to me. We walked for a bit in silence until a Chevy came around the bend and I hopped in front of the headlights. It screeched to a stop.

  “Johnny?” a voice said from the passenger side.

  I squinted in the lights.

  “Martha?”

  Sure enough, it was Martha Macker and her ma. After a little bit of explaining, they let me and Willie into their backseat. They didn’t even mention nothing about how beat up we both looked.

  “Your hair looks nice,” I said to Martha. Then I realized it was the first time I’d ever said much of anything to her. But it did look nice, like Jackie Kennedy’s hair.

  She blushed.

  “I got it done in Montgomery. Right before we went to hear Dr. King speak.”

  “Dadgummit, I’ve had a real mess with doctors lately,” I said. That was two things I’d said to her. “They ain’t exactly been good for my health.”

  “No, Dr. King is different,” Willie said. “He’s a regular SuperNegro.”

  We was driving down the mountain toward Colony. I was sure thankful the Mackers hadn’t been a part of the invasion.

  We was coming around a bend on the highway and him and Martha was telling me about what this Dr. King fella was doing, and I just about thought things was finally better. Then Mrs. Macker screamed and slammed on her brakes and we all flew off our seats.

  Bloody and all tore up, Captain Morris stood in the middle of the road with his gun pointed straight at all of us inside the car. He looked about halfway to death’s door.

  “Get out of the car, Johnny!” he screamed.

  He wasn’t the only one. Martha and Mrs. Macker was screaming too.

  “Shut up!” He walked over and tapped the window right next to Martha’s head. “Johnny, out.”

  I didn’t move. Didn’t know how to.

  He hit the window real hard with his gun and it shattered. Then he reached in and grabbed Martha by the hair and dragged her out. He held the gun to her head.

  “I said get out, Johnny!”

  I could tell Martha was as scared as she’d ever been in her entire life. I opened up my door and stepped out.

  “Captain, let her go. This ain’t about her.”

  He stepped toward me.

  “You’re right, it’s not. It’s about my son. My son.” He wasn’t letting go of her for nothing. “Why can’t you just accept the truth? Your mother is dead. Your brother is dead. I’m the only real family you have.”

  “Your son?” I yelled. Finally yelled at him. “Your son died. Back in Havana, I died. When my ma died, when you killed her by driving right in front of that truck. You killed us both.”

  He glared at me and I thought I saw tears in his eyes.

  “So, if you’re aiming to put a bullet in somebody,” I said, “put one in me. Finish what you started. ’Cause God knows I’ve already been dead for years.”

  He flung Martha off to the side and pointed his gun right at my head.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said.

  I closed my eyes. If my brains was about to be roadkill, I didn’t want to see it coming. I always said them deers ought to learn how to close their eyes.

  Standing there with my eyes closed, it almost felt natural. The crickets chirping, the breeze hitting me. It was the perfect setting to get sent to Heaven in.

  Then a shot rang out.

  But the Captain hadn’t fired.

  I opened my eyes to see the Captain falling to the ground with a bullet hole right in his chest. I turned around to see who fired.

  It was Pa.

  He and Short-Guy had pulled up behind us a ways. Judging from Short-Guy’s empty holster, I guessed the gun was his. Pa must have grabbed it.

  “Johnny, are you okay?” Pa said as he ran up at me.

  I looked back at the Captain, sprawled out there on the ground. My flesh-and-blood father shot by my pa.

  “Yeah, I reckon I am.”

  * * *

  So it turned out that, while I was sleeping in the car on the way up from Mobile, Mr. Thomassen had stopped at a gas station and called up Short-Guy in Birmingham. Told him we had proof that Pa was innocent and everything. But he didn’t get me no snacks. Still, I reckon he saved my life, so I wouldn’t hold that against him.

  In fact, it was pretty hard to hold anything against anybody after a night that had been filled up with fires and torturing Willie and guns and such. Nothing just seemed to matter too much. Besides that, it ended with three of the best things I’d ever gotten to have in my entire life.

  First off, Martha Macker was so dadgum scared after what happened on the highway that she needed somebody to put their arms around her. And her ma got caught up in telling Short-Guy what had happened before they got there and asking for some explaining, so somebody else had to step up to do it. I was sort of scared to offer at first, but Willie told me if he could drag his burned-up legs into a truck to drive it down a dark mountain, I could offer to hold Martha. I had a b
ad feeling he was going to use that against me for just about everything from then on out. I’d have to draw the line at alligator wrestling. Maybe.

  So I got to hold Martha in my arms and smell her hair. And if Heaven is anything like what that was like, I want to say my prayers twice a day so I can go there. Provided it don’t have a body sitting in the middle of the road.

  The second good thing that came from that night happened after the sheriff got out there. Short-Guy right away flashed his badge and gave him a real detailed account of what happened, except he took the credit for shooting the Captain away from Pa. Which I reckoned was good. Then Short-Guy had the sheriff help him load up the Captain’s body into the trunk of his car, ’cause the folks at his office would want to see the body. He also mentioned something about always getting his man. That made me remember what Mr. Thomassen had said about us rewriting the ending to Short-Guy’s story. It was starting to sound like maybe we’d done it.

  After that, we headed up to the Parkinses’ house to get Willie home and get ourselves some hot tea. Mr. Thomassen and Carlos was up there with Reverend Parkins, and he’d done told Mrs. Parkins about how I’d saved him from the Klan. Then Willie told the story about me getting him away from the Captain. Then Mrs. Parkins came over and gave me a hug. And it might have been one of the warmest, tightest hugs I’d ever felt. For the first time in a long time, I knew what it was like to be hugged by a mother.

  Life was good.

  Right then, the clock on the mantel dinged midnight and we was all super surprised at how late it was.

  “Hey, Johnny, it’s the first of June now,” Willie said. “What’s today’s thing?”

  I thought for a spell.

  “Today’s the day Benedict Arnold was court-martialed, back in 1779. Which reminds me.” I fished the tape out of my pocket and handed it to Short-Guy. “I reckon you need to listen to this.”

  Short-Guy took it and stuck it in his pocket.

  “I’ll have to wait until I get back to the office,” he said. “Unless you have a tape player nearby.”

  “Sure do,” Willie said. “It’s the one I recorded the phone call on.”

  “Wow,” Short-Guy said. “Tapping phone calls and crashing cars. You might just have a future with the CIA, kid.”

  Willie’s eyes got as big as baseballs.

  “Seriously? Dadgum, that’d be cool!” He looked at his mama, and Mrs. Parkins was touching her chest with her hanky, her eyes looking like they was seeing the future ahead of her and knowed how many worries she was in for. But she smiled and nodded at him, and then he gave out a little hoot.

  “Of course, you’ll have to get that tape recorder set up first,” Short-Guy said.

  Willie hopped up and went to get it. He hooked it up and Short-Guy put on the headphones to listen to the tape.

  I sighed. Finally things was coming together.

  “Now if only there was something I could do about our house,” I said. “The auction’s supposed to be coming soon.”

  Pa put his hand on my shoulder.

  “We’ll figure that out together. Maybe I can find a desk job somewhere.”

  Willie cleared his throat.

  “I heard the auction happened yesterday,” he said.

  Well, that wasn’t good.

  “Did you hear who bought it?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, “but I don’t want to say.”

  Me and Pa both looked at Mr. Thomassen. He shook his head.

  “It wasn’t me,” he said.

  “It was Bob Gorman,” Willie said.

  Nope, that sure wasn’t good at all.

  “I reckon we might as well pack up our bags and move,” I said. “That is, if them Gormans haven’t already burned our things.”

  “Well, maybe Bob will be reasonable,” Pa said.

  Mr. Thomassen sighed and touched his briefcase that had all that money.

  “He can be, if the price is right.”

  Carlos saw the look of worry in my eyes. He came over and patted me on the arm.

  “Fear not, chico. It’s like my mama used to always say, ‘El hombre es como el oso, mientras más feo, más hermoso.’ ”

  We all was quiet, waiting for him to finish.

  “That’s real nice,” I said. “What does it mean?”

  “It means, ‘Men are like bears, the uglier they are, the more handsome they become.’ ” He patted me again.

  We was all quiet one more time, processing that.

  “Okay, but what does it mean?” I said.

  He shrugged.

  “I never asked her. It just always seemed to make everything better.”

  Right then there was a knock at the door. Mrs. Parkins went to go answer it.

  “Is Mr. Thomassen here?” I heard Eddie Gorman’s voice say. I got up and followed Mr. Thomassen to the door.

  “What do you want, Eddie?” Mr. Thomassen said.

  “My pa sent me—”

  “Where is your pa?” Mr. Thomassen said.

  “He’s still in the truck,” Eddie said. He cleared his throat and started again. “My pa sent me to—”

  “Why didn’t he come himself?” Mr. Thomassen said.

  “He didn’t reckon he was welcome.”

  He was right.

  “Go on.”

  “My pa sent me to deliver this to you, Mr. Thomassen,” Eddie said, and he handed Mr. Thomassen an envelope. “He said he hopes you two are square now.”

  Mr. Thomassen opened the envelope and pulled out what was inside.

  It was the deed to our house.

  “Yes,” Mr. Thomassen said with a grin. “Yes, I believe we are.”

  Eddie turned and started to jump off the porch, but then he stopped.

  “Hey, Johnny.”

  “Yeah?”

  He took a deep breath.

  “I got something for you, too,” he said, and then he fished whatever it was out of his pocket. “From me.”

  He handed me what I thought at first was a dead snake all wrapped up in twine. Then I held it and realized it was hair. To be more specific, it was a ponytail.

  “Why—”

  “It ain’t right that I have that,” he said. “So I reckoned I’d give it to you.” He thought for a second. “Reckon it’s my attempt at being human.”

  I rolled up Martha’s ponytail and stuck in my pocket. Eddie left without us saying another word, but I had a feeling things was about to start changing between him and me.

  Me and Mr. Thomassen headed back into the living room. Mr. Thomassen handed the envelope to Pa.

  “I think you can check ‘House Payments’ off your list of worries,” he said.

  Pa looked and saw the deed, and then he grabbed Mr. Thomassen’s hand and shook it like a dog shakes a snake.

  “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Mr. Thomassen said. “However, if you’re still interested in a job, I might have some work for you. As thanks for everything else I’ve done for you two.” He said that last part with a twinkle in his eyes.

  Pa looked about ready to pass out.

  “But, we barely know each other. Why would you do that?”

  Mr. Thomassen grinned at me.

  “I know you good enough,” he said. “Besides, us Cuba transplants have to stick together.”

  Willie shook his head.

  “Dang,” he said. “I think I’ve about heard enough about Cuba for one year. When did that darn island even become such a big deal?”

  Everybody looked at me. I almost started blushing.

  “Thought you only cared about science,” I said.

  He shrugged.

  It only took me a couple of seconds to remember the right page from my book.

  “October 12, 1492. That’s
the day that Christopher Columbus, after going sailing west to find a passage to the Indies, landed on that darn island of Cuba.”

  “So, what’s your lesson?” Mr. Thomassen said.

  And that’s when it hit me. The best thing that happened that night.

  As I thought about the lesson, I looked around that room. Looked at all them folks I wasn’t blood related to, from Pa to Willie and all them skin shades in between, but who was as close to family for me as anyone. Then I realized that I had something in common with old Columbus.

  “The lesson is that you don’t always get what you’re hunting for. Sometimes you wind up with something better instead.”

  Everybody got real quiet, letting that lesson sink into their heads. Short-Guy took the headphones off and handed them back to Willie.

  “Good job, kid,” he said. “That tape makes my job a heck of a lot easier. Now, I’ll probably still need a testimony from you, Johnny, but we can get that tomorrow.”

  I nodded, all of a sudden realizing just how tired I was. That nap I’d took in Mr. Thomassen’s car seemed like a million years ago.

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” Willie said. “His rain checks for interviews ain’t worth the paper he writes them on.”

  “Is that so?” Short-Guy said.

  I nodded again. There wasn’t no arguing.

  “Well then, I suppose we could go ahead and record your testimony now. On this junior agent’s tape recorder.”

  I nodded a third time and Willie got the microphone all set up for me. Mrs. Parkins gave me another cup of tea and I woke up a little. Maybe I still had one more story in me.

  Willie started recording, I cleared my throat, and I began.

  “There ain’t much difference between a deer and a dog when you’re shooting, but there’s a world between them when one lands on your plate.”

  Johnny Cannon

  June 16, 1961

  The Bay of Pigs Invasion:

  The Worst Sooey-cide

  Mission There Ever Was

  Mrs. Buttke, this here’s the report you asked me for. I just want to say how downright unfair it is that you made me do this report right in the middle of the dadgum summer. Claiming you’re doing it so I don’t got to be held back a grade doesn’t change the fact that it’s ungodly to make a kid do school in June. Do you know how many fish I could have caught in the time I was writing this thing? Anyway.