by Howard Owen
“We’ll call him Littlejohn,” he told Momma and them.
They said Momma only asked him one question: “One word or two?”
I reckon after Lexington, Concord, Cerrogordo, Century and Marquis de Lafayette, she didn’t think Littlejohn Geddie McCain was all that bad a name.
Aunt Mallie delivered me. She was ninety-seven years old, and she had delivered Daddy, too. She was living in the same old slave cabin her husband, Zebediah, and Captain McCain, who was my granddaddy, built over sixty years before, right after the captain married into the Geddies and got his land and slaves. She lived to be 104. Two days after her funeral, Daddy and them went down to the cabin, and all her family, nieces and nephews and what-all, had left. They never come back.
Aunt Mallie read fortunes. Momma didn’t hold to such foolishness, but all us young-uns sneaked away at one time or another to have Aunt Mallie look at our palms and tell our futures. Century and Lafe sneaked me down to her place one day when I was five, so I reckon she was 102 years old.
She still dipped snuff, and I can remember the whole cabin smelling like it. She took my palm in her big old wrinkled hand and studied it real hard. She shook her head while Century and Lafe giggled behind her. She was about deaf, so I don’t reckon she minded. I never forgot what she told me.
“You got a hard road, boy,” she said. She spoke so low I couldn’t hardly hear her. “I see real bad times, but then I see a whole lot of happy times. Don’t be giving up on the good times. They be coming. The Lord Jesus is got some surprises in store for you, to be sure.”
I don’t reckon anybody ever give Aunt Mallie enough credit.
CHAPTER FIVE
June 27
Granddaddy is praying. I can hear him right through the wall between his room and mine. I can’t tell what he’s saying, but the sound of his voice wakes me up every morning at 7:30. If I ever live to be that old, I’m going to sleep until noon every day.
I’ve been here three weeks now, and this part never changes. Next, he’ll go to the bathroom, wash and shave, then he’ll start fixing breakfast. He sings while he cooks, and he cooks the same thing every day, almost. There’s fried sausage and scrambled eggs, along with the biscuits he takes out of the freezer for us every night and heats up in the oven the next morning. We have apple jelly and peach preserves—or we did until we ran out this week—and milk. For some reason, Granddaddy puts ice in his milk, and it forms a little skim at the top. I’ve finally gotten him to serve me mine without ice.
He and I clean up the dishes. I watched him wash them the first two mornings I was here, and then he handed me a cloth and said, “Here. Time you earned your keep.”
He finishes getting dressed, then goes out on the back porch, where the overhang keeps out the morning sun, and he reads the local paper. It’s called the Port Campbell Post, and it has about the worst sports pages I’ve ever seen. Nothing about anything out of North Carolina except for the major-league baseball box scores and a couple of paragraphs on every game, and they don’t even have the West Coast night games. But he reads every word. He’s a Minnesota Twins fan, because the Twins used to play in Washington, something I didn’t know, although Dad might have told me once. Granddaddy reads all the world news, commenting on an earthquake in Bolivia or the Russians in Afghanistan, and then he turns to the obituaries.
“Oh, Lord,” he’ll say, “Abel Bullard’s dead,” like I might ever have known or cared to know Abel Bullard. And then he’ll explain to me that Abel Bullard, on the outside chance I didn’t instantly know, was the brother of Miss Hattie Bullard, who used to sing in the choir at church, about a thousand years before I was born.
Granddaddy isn’t completely out of it, though, not by a long shot. It took him about three days to see through that scam I cooked up about wanting to come visit him. I guess he knew the number of times I previously had wanted to come visit him amounted to approximately zero.
It turns out that the Carlsons went apeshit when they found out I had run away. They called all over town, even had the police looking for me. Mom, naturally, hadn’t told them where Granddaddy lived, and all Trey knew was that we had relatives somewhere in North Carolina. Also, Mom, the scatterbrain, didn’t bother to tell them where Dad and the lovely Beverly were staying. Trey knew they were going to South Carolina, somewhere. I was counting on Trey’s failure to comprehend geography. But I guess his parents would have been a little embarrassed to tell Mom that her pride and joy had been misplaced. Not that she’d care. Also, she didn’t give them any addresses in Europe. She didn’t give me any, either.
But Granddaddy had insisted, unknown to me, that Mom give him the Carlsons’ address and phone number. He always wants her to tell him everywhere she’s staying when she travels, but she never does, and it pisses her off that he keeps asking.
Anyhow, he calls the Carlsons after he sends me to the store for groceries, and they tell him what’s been going on. By this time, the store detective and the Montclair school system have filled them in on all the gory details, and they, of course, tell Granddaddy everything. He tells me the jig’s up, an old expression of his, when I get back, and says he’ll give me one minute to come clean or he’s sending me back to Virginia on the first bus out.
It all started when Mom told me she was going to Europe and that I could stay with the Carlsons, like this was some kind of great favor she was bestowing on me. You didn’t even like Europe the last time we took you, she said when I pitched a bitch. That was three years ago, I said. I was a child. You were happy enough to stay with friends the last two times we went, she said, and then she went on about how I was trying to mess things up between her and Mark the Narc. I call him that because Mom never found the dope I keep hid in my room until she started dating him, and I’m sure he put her up to looking. Hell, he might have even searched my room himself, in which case I would never forgive Mom for letting him. Mark the Narc wants me in Fork Union, wearing a smart little uniform and standing at attention, so bad he can taste it. Then he can move in. I tell Mom this, and that she can go to China with him if she wants, just forget about me, and she accuses me of laying a guilt trip on her. We didn’t talk much the last two weeks before she left.
The day of finals in English, I skipped. I meant to go, and I had studied about twenty minutes, which is massive for me, the night before, because I was very close to flunking and facing the heartbreak of summer school. Mom acted like they’d take her job away or something if I flunked English, like if she was a minister and they found out her son was a Satan worshipper or something.
I went to school that day, or got as far as the parking lot, at least. It’s only a six-block walk, one of the reasons Mom moved to the town house after she and Dad split, she’s always reminding me, like this is a great sacrifice or something. But as I walked through the parking lot, here come Tony Linhart and Kyle Waters in Tony’s new red Sunbird his dad bought for him; bastard’s so rich there ought to be a law. And they’ve both passed out of exams, so they have the day off.
“Goin’ up to Washpon,” Kyle says. “Want to come along?”
I guess I’m easily led. Washpon is this lake at the bottom of the Blue Ridge, where everybody from Montclair goes to party. I got in, and English was history.
I forged the grade to a D and got Mom to sign the report card just before she left, and I swear I had every intention of signing up for summer school and having the whole thing straightened out by the time Mom got back.
But then Marcia and I went over to the university two days after Mom left to find this guy we hoped would sell us an ounce. He works in the campus bookstore, and I wanted to find out when he’d be home, so I could come around. While I was waiting for him to take care of a couple of customers, I saw this pair of shades on the rack about halfway down the aisle that I really needed. We’d been doing a little lifting here and there, and it had gotten so it almost seemed like they must know we were doing it, we were so obvious. So, I slipped these shades off their little holde
r and into the big pocket of my Army surplus jacket. Marcia was standing next to me. She’s a fox, blond page-boy cut, bedroom eyes, body that won’t quit, real tough for fourteen. All of a sudden, there’s this old guy I’ve never seen before, short hair and a white shirt with sweat stains under both arms, clip-on tie, a real dork, and he’s saying, like, come with me, please, except he doesn’t say please the way somebody does when they’re asking. The way he says it, “please” translates as “or I’ll break your arm.”
He also hustles Marcia along, and she’s cussing the guy, telling him to get his goddamn hands off her. He takes us into a room at the back of the store, and there’s this closed-circuit TV where he can see the whole store. He just sits there all day, I guess. Like maybe he gets a bounty for every desperado he brings in.
I’ve got to tell you, I kind of lose it. I beg him not to arrest me, tell him my mom is at Sloan-Kettering in New York being treated for cancer. Marcia cuts me a look, like, what the hell is Sloan-Kettering and where did you dig that one up? He makes us both sweat, insists that Marcia is in on it, too, for about thirty minutes. Then he tells us he’s going to give us a break, but somehow, looking at this guy, I don’t think this is going to be quite as good as winning the lottery. He won’t have us arrested, he says, but he insists that we both bring our parents in so he can talk with them about our little crime spree. I tell him, again, that my mom isn’t home, and that my dad is out of the state. Who am I staying with? he asks. When I tell him, he tells me I’ll have to bring the Carlsons in. He has our names and addresses by this time, and he’s checked the phone book to make sure we’re not shucking him, so we’re caught.
I really feel bad for Marcia, because she’s got to face both parents and deal with this right now, and her folks are so tight they squeak. They will ground her until she graduates and forbid her to see me until she’s like fifty. I also feel bad because I’ve begged and whimpered in front of my girl, in addition to getting her into more trouble than she thinks she can handle right now. I also am not looking forward to telling the Carlsons that their house guest for the next six weeks is an apprehended if not convicted shoplifter. Christ, at that point they didn’t even know they had to help me register for summer school because I didn’t really pass English.
So, faced with a future of being straightened out at Fork Union after being ostracized by polite society and, much worse, Marcia and all her living relatives, I split. I went home that same Thursday afternoon, packed everything I thought I could carry in my backpack, took most of the money out of my account that Mom left there for my summer fun, wrote the Carlsons this spaced-out note about taking a little time to get my head together and left. Trey had been at a job interview or he’d have been in it as deep as Marcia and me.
I’m dumb, but I’m not terminally stupid. There have been kids from here who went to New York and were never seen again. I just wanted to get away, not commit suicide. I wasn’t sure about the best way to thumb to Granddaddy’s, but he was the only one who came to mind for some reason, the only one I thought might take me in, no questions asked. I figured he’d be so out of it, he wouldn’t mind.
I bought a road map at the Exxon station and sat down on the corner to read it. Route 35 would take me south almost to the state line, it looked like, and from there I’d have to take a bunch of dippy little state roads to get to East Geddie. But it was cheaper than taking the bus, and there wasn’t one going that way from Montclair for five hours, the guy at the station said. By then, they’d have my picture on the post-office wall.
So, I walked the mile down to the bypass and stuck out my thumb. It went real well for a while. Two coeds going down to Sweet Briar picked me up and got me almost all the way to Lynchburg. Then a construction worker in a pickup, not as friendly as the college girls, but a ride nevertheless, drove me all the way past Danville.
By this time, it was getting late, about seven, I guess, and I must have stood there, watching rednecks in white T-shirts drive by giving me the fish eye for like an hour and a half before this bubba stops, asks me where I’m going. I tell him East Geddie, North Carolina. It obviously does not compute. I mean, this guy’s probably never been out of the county. It’s a wonder they let him out of the house.
“Don’t know that one,” he says, “but I’m goin’ down to Zion Springs.”
I don’t know Zion Springs from bedsprings, but anything beats standing, so I get in this car you have to open from the inside. We go about twelve miles, just far enough to be away from everything, when he puts on his turn signal, and I see the sign, ZION SPRINGS 8, pointing to the left. I ask him to let me out there, and he gives me this snaggle-toothed grin as I get out, ’cause he knows there’s no way in hell anybody else is going to pick me up out here, especially now that it’s almost dark.
I stand there for two hours. I’ve thumbed a lot around Montclair, and there’s a theory I’ve got about it. You have to believe you’re going to get a ride in order for a car to stop. If you believe you’re not going to get a ride, that you don’t deserve a ride, that you’re not worthy to ride in that fine Buick coming toward you, the driver gets the message sure as hell. When you get to that point, you might as well start walking.
The trouble was, I was still more than a hundred miles from Port Campbell, which is like another six from East Geddie, the best I could add up the little numbers between towns on the map. And the next town south of where I was standing was nine miles away.
So I’m standing there, walking awhile, thumbing awhile, and it’s like eleven o’clock. I get to this white-trash store that’s just closed, but there’s a Coke machine outside, and somebody has thrown an apple, with only one bite out of it, in the trash can. It’s just sitting there on top. I must be pretty hungry, because I take it out, try to pull the skin and meat away from the part that’s been bitten and eat it. That’s supper, and breakfast looks like it might be a long way down the road. I’m kicking myself for not having the construction worker just let me out at a McDonald’s we passed back in Danville. I can taste a Big Mac.
There’s not much left to do but climb the twenty-foot embankment on the side of the road and try to sleep. Even in June, it gets cold as a bitch outside late at night. I put the backpack down for a pillow, take out another shirt and put it over my shoulders, roll a joint and smoke it all. It probably takes me like ten seconds to fall asleep, I’m so wasted.
I dream we’re at the big Fourth of July celebration they have at Michie Park back home, the one we used to go to when I was a little kid. All the fireworks are going off up above us, and I’m sitting between Mom and Dad, who are sitting close enough together that I can feel and smell both of them. I’m kind of scared, and Dad looks down at me and smiles and says something, but I can’t hear him because of all the noise.
And, of course, the way things have been going lately, I wake up in the middle of Bambi, Part II. You know, the one where six raving rednecks freeze a deer with their truck’s headlights alongside a deserted highway at three in the morning, then get out and calmly blast him to Swiss cheese. There aren’t any houses around, but these guys act a little nervous, anyhow, and I hope they don’t see me. Winding up as a road kill is not my life’s burning ambition. They drag the deer over to the truck and manage to lift and push him into the back. Before they roar off, I can see the dark spot on the side of the road, staining the white line, where the deer fell. Then they’re gone, and I’m wide awake, shaking like a bitch, partly from the cold. I wish I was back in Montclair, hassles and all, and I damn near decide to turn my ass around and start thumbing north, although I know by now that it would not be smart to stand alongside this road after dark, at least not without a sign that says NOT A DEER.
About two years later, the sun finally comes up. It’s beautiful from my spot up over the road, but I realize I must have picked the coldest place for miles, because I’m on top of an exposed hill where I can see east for just about ever. I stumble down the embankment, feeling froggy as hell and sore and tir
ed and very, very hungry. In less than five minutes, before I wake up and realize I don’t deserve a ride, an old man, looks almost as old as Granddaddy, stops and takes me all the way to Durham, lets me out right in front of a Burger King. I order a couple of those croissant things, along with a large Pepsi. The croissants make me think of Mom, because on the last trip the three of us took to Paris, she must have spent fifteen minutes with me one morning at our hotel teaching me how to pronounce it, so I could order breakfast for all of us. What I want to know is, why do the French put all those letters in their words if they’re not going to say them?
It takes me until almost lunch to get to Granddaddy’s. One guy is going as far as Benson, another one takes me to Port Campbell, right to Highway 47, and then another one drops me off at a place called the Hit ’n’ Run, right in Geddie. From there, I walk to his house.
He looks older than I remember him, but maybe I just haven’t been paying much attention. I’m already thinking, damn, he needs help worse than I do. He’s obviously got me mixed up for somebody else at first, and when we go inside, I see he’s got notes on everything. There’s a note telling him to turn off the oven, except he’s spelled it “trun”—Mom said he’s had trouble spelling all his life—one telling him how to warm stuff in the microwave, instructions on the washer-dryer on how, step by step, to do the clothes. These seem to be in Grandma’s handwriting, and the paper is kind of yellowed.
But he has his own way of doing things, and as long as nothing gets in the way of his routine, he’s usually all right. Guess that makes me a welcome addition. He gets my name wrong like about half the time, usually calls me Lafe, which was one of his brothers’ name, the one that got killed in a hunting accident, I think. Sometimes, he’ll start off with Lafe, then go to Mom, before he finally gets to me, like “Lafe … I mean, Georgia … I mean, Justin!” After I’d been here two weeks, and he’d done that about a million times, I went to my room, got a sheet of notebook paper out, wrote JUSTIN on it in big red letters and taped it to my forehead. When I came back in the dining room, which is also where the TV is and where visitors sit in cold weather, he looked at me, kind of surprised, with his mouth open a little more than it normally is. Then he said, “Son, if you ever live to be as old as me, you’ll be happy if you can just remember your own name.”