The storyteller pulled me close to his chair and gave me a good-natured slap on the back. “Now this is a boy who knows a good fish tale when he hears it. Why lookie here,” he said, giving my tie a yank, “he even wears a fish around his neck!” The other old men in the group nodded their approval. They were all wearing Old Spice, and the smell was overpowering. “What’s your name, son?”
Relieved to know I wasn’t going to get yelled at, I spoke up. “Kevin. Kevin Kirk.”
“You’re the boy of the man that runs this place, aren’t you? Well, you’re all doing a fine job. Here, let me give you something.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a purple plastic worm. It was fat and had silver and red sparkles embedded in it. “Cletus always carried bait on him. We called him the Armadillo Angler, ’cause he’d drop whatever he was doin if he thought the fish were bitin’.
You keep this in your pocket too. You never know when you’ll get a chance to cast your line in Armadillo. And you can tell everybody Herb Conrad shared his bait with you.”
“Thanks, Mr. Conrad,” I said, turning the worm around in my hand, making the light glint off the sparkles. I’d never owned a fishing worm before. It was slightly sticky and smelled funny, but in a way it was interesting to look at. Maybe that’s why they were so tempting to the fish.
The other men in the group introduced themselves, and each shook my hand. I wanted to hear more stories, but Mom whisked me away to the kitchen to restock the soda machine.
After the funeral the next morning, the rest of the day was quiet. Mom felt we needed to evaluate our progress, so that night we all sat around the kitchen table to discuss business: Mom in her fuzzy frog house shoes and orange terrycloth robe, Dad in his old gray sweatpants with the hole in the seat and his See Rock City T-shirt, and me in the camouflage pants and Army shirt Granddad had given me for Christmas last year.
Mom licked the last bits of dessert off her spoon and rapped it on the table. “The initial meeting of the board of directors of the Paramount Funeral Home will now come to order. What is the first item of business?”
I wanted to make a motion to change the name from Paramount to the Buzzard Bait Motel. But Mom had not only pulled off her first funeral without a hitch, she’d actually made a good tasting chocolate pie for dinner. I didn’t have the heart to be mean. Still, would it hurt to look out for the employee’s best interest? “How about a raise for your son? Or better yet, when do I get my first paycheck?”
Dad opened up the ledger. When I saw the list of bills they had to pay, I was ashamed for even asking about money. The Swat Team visit—and Dad’s stunned expression from that night—flashed through my mind. The muscles in my chest tightened, and I felt pangs of remorse.
Dad pulled a fifty out of his wallet and laid it on top of the ledger. “We’ve been holding this back for you. Without your help, we couldn’t have done all this. Still, money is going to be tight for a while. Would you feel OK about a savings account in your name, where we can deposit your money and you can withdraw a little on occasions when you really need it?”
“Sounds good to me.” I tried to make it sound positive, but inside I felt terrible. I pocketed the fifty and promised myself I would make it last as long as I could.
“I’ve been thinking,” Mom spoke up. “What if we give Kev a radio, too? We’re always chasing him down. And what if we give him a master list of jobs? That way we won’t have to come up with a new list every time.”
“Motion seconded,” said Dad. “All in favor—”
“Aye!” Mom and I shouted together.
Dad’s tone then turned serious. “Now once school starts, your first priority is homework. Anything you do here comes second.”
“OK, Dad.”
“We do need you, but not at the expense of your grades. You’re too good of a student to slack off,” Mom said.
I groaned. “I know, Mom.”
“One more thing, before I forget.” Mom spoke as if she were in a hurry. “Arlice, President Carter offered to conduct funeral services for people who need a minister but don’t attend any church. I thought that was a good idea, so I told him we’d call on him.”
Dad gave Mom a funny look. “Why’d you do that for?”
“Well, he offered, and you know he doesn’t accept money for preaching funerals.” Mom was trying to pass the conversation off as if it were nothing. “I thought it was a nice gesture.”
Dad looked uncomfortable. Why would it bother him for President Carter to offer help? “I think it’s nice too, Dad,” I spoke up. Now Mom looked at me funny, but I guess she was surprised that I agreed with something she said. She didn’t have to know I was hoping for another chance to talk to President Carter’s daughter.
“Well, whatever,” Dad said. “As far as I’m concerned, this meeting is now adjourned because. . .” His voice trailed off as he looked at his watch, “it’s time for the Twilight Zone!”
Mom rolled her eyes and hugged me goodnight. Dad grabbed a Dr Pepper and a bag of cheese popcorn and headed for the couch.
“G’night, Dad,” I called to the couch.
“G’night, son,” Dad called back, his voice muffled by cheese popcorn and the dee-dee-dee-dee of the Twilight Zone theme.
I went to my room. I used the bathroom and didn’t flush, then brushed my teeth and left the cap off the toothpaste. When I set the tube down, a blob of turquoise gel oozed onto the white porcelain sink. I washed my face, and let my towel drop to the floor. Then I went to bed, and until I got sleepy, I watched through the window as the deer and raccoons fed out in the back lot.
Maybe life in the Buzzard Bait Motel wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
But then, I thought as I rolled over and closed my eyes, school hasn’t started yet.
Chapter Eight
The funeral home was quiet for a few days after Cletus McCulley was buried, which was nice because we all needed a rest. On Saturday, Dad took Mom out to the weekend catfish buffet at the Cow Palace. On Monday, Dad and I checked out the middle school. The building was covered in flaky old bricks that looked like they would crumble if you spit on them. Mrs. Goldwyn had a meeting out of town, so I didn’t get a tour, but Dad paid my locker fees and book fees and I got signed up for classes.
Afterward, we went shopping for school clothes and supplies. I hated buying school clothes, and this year was no exception. I picked out three pairs of plain khakis, three pairs of plain jeans, and four plain shirts. I had no interest in being a walking advertisement, so I purposefully avoided clothes with labels, logos, or tags. I just wanted to look clean.
But when buying school supplies, I couldn’t resist any nifty gadget lurking in the Home and Office Equipment aisle. Buying supplies was always my favorite thing about starting a new school year.
I loved going shopping in August, when the stores smelled like new pencils and crayons and the stacks of loose-leaf paper stood taller than Mrs. Goldwyn’s husband. I hated homework, but I loved organizing it, and was always able to talk my parents into buying all the binders, notebooks, folders, labels, and mechanical pencils I wanted.
On the way home, we stopped at a small bookstore just on the edge of downtown Armadillo. The public rest rooms at the Paramount were in desperate need of remodeling. While Dad searched for books about do-it-yourself tile replacement, I wandered around the Outdoor Sports section. They had hundreds of books on hunting and fishing. The thought of shooting deer for sport never appealed to me, but after hearing Cletus McCulley’s friends talk, I thought fishing might be fun. I bought a book from the bargain bin, A Beginners Guide to Fishing in Arkansas, complete with full-color photographs of native species. The fish on the cover had a mouth big enough to stick your fist into and flat glassy eyes. The caption underneath told me it was Micropterus salmoides, otherwise known as a largemouth bass.
On Tuesday, Dad and I went to the barbershop. Now this was one of Dad’s quirky habits that made no sense at all. Why get a haircut every other week when the on
ly hair that grows on your head is around the perimeter? I’d seen more fuzz on a marble than on Dad’s scalp. For years, I’d watched as barbers would spend thirty minutes or more on Dad’s head, snip-snip-snipping away at nothing, yet still charge him for a full-price haircut in the end.
I sat in the chair first and got my usual cut—short and tapered on the sides and back, the thickness cut off the top and combed down to my forehead. I tried a buzz cut once, thinking I’d look like a Marine, but since I wasn’t old enough to shave yet, I just looked like a stupid kid who’d cut off all his hair. And bowl cuts left my hair too long on the sides. But a fade seemed to work best on my straight black hair, making my cowlick less noticeable, at least until the front grew out.
While the barber worked on me, Dad refereed a debate between two old men about which team was going to win the National League pennant. The barber had just started trimming above my ears when the bell above the door jingled.
“Mr. Kirk,” Herb Conrad shouted, “how in the world are you, buddy?”
“Good to see you, Mr. Conrad,” Dad shouted back. In the mirror I could see Dad get up from his chair and shake Mr. Conrad’s hand. “The boy and I are getting a haircut today. I can’t stand a shaggy head,” he said, rubbing his bald top and laughing.
“Know what you mean, Kirk. Just makes you feel unclean when your hair gets a little unruly. And how’s that son? You think we could make a fisherman out of him?”
Dad pointed at my chair. “Why don’t you ask him?”
Mr. Conrad leaned into my face and winked. “You think I could drag you out onto the lake sometime?”
“Sure, Mr. Conrad.” I didn’t want to sound eager, but it was hard to hold back my enthusiasm.
“Are you still carrying the bait I gave you?”
“Yup.” I reached in my pocket and pulled out the worm. “I also bought a book so I could learn the different kinds of fish in Arkansas,” I added, hoping he would see I was serious about fishing.
Mr. Conrad laughed. “Boy, you don’t learn to fish out of a book.” I was embarrassed then, and worried that he thought I was just another dumb kid. But he soon put me at ease. “A book is helpful, Kevin, but you learn by doing. You can read the books all you want, but the way you really learn is by reading the water, the weather, the time of day, and the surroundings. And even then, you might stay out all day and still not catch nothin. But most of the time, that’s the fun in fishing. You don’t have to catch a fish to have a good time. ’Cause most of the time, the fun’s in just being there.”
Soon it was Dad’s turn, and we changed seats. The barber tied the drape around Dad’s neck and pretended to trim his scalp. I thumbed through a stack of old magazines and pulled out a three-year-old copy of the National Tattler Weekly. On the front was the bold headline, “MYSTERIOUS TWO-HEADED GOAT FOUND GRAZING AT GRACELAND,” with the caption, “Scientists puzzled by amazing goat marked with Elvis’s profile. Full color pull-out section inside!” And there was the goat, with an inky blob on his butt. Both heads chewed on mouthfuls of straw and smiled at the camera. Someone had removed the full-color center section, so I’d never know for sure if that goat bore the Sign of the King or not.
I peeked over the paper and watched the barber trim the back of Dad’s neck. The chair was turned sideways, giving me a good view of Dad’s profile. I’d always been told we looked alike. We had the same pale, easily sunburned skin. We both had dark brown eyes, almost black, and thick black eyebrows, like two fat wooly worms, identically arched. Our ears had the same shape and the same fleshy lobes.
Our faces were similar, but at eleven I was already as tall as Dad, and Mom said that when I reached sixteen I’d be even taller. Dad was stocky and muscular like a football player. I was thinner and built like a runner, more like Mom’s family.
Those weren’t the only differences between Dad and me. Dad was a talker. Yak, yak, yak. He could talk to anyone about anything at just about anytime. Even now, Dad, the barber, and Herb Conrad were having a great time insulting the career politicians in Little Rock who were wasting their constituents’ hard-earned money. Mom was a talker too. Grandma Kirk said once that the reason I didn’t talk much was because between Mom and Dad, I didn’t get much of a chance to say anything.
Grandma Kirk was partly right. Sure, Mom and Dad talked a lot. But that wasn’t the whole reason I was quiet. I liked to listen and observe. I thought about things more than I talked about them—except when I got mad. Like the day of the move, when Mom told me we’d be living in the home, I lost my temper, and before stopping to think, I said things I shouldn’t have. So while I took pride in being a thoughtful person, I wasn’t so proud of being the kind of person who loses his temper so easily.
Dad liked being around people. Mom did too. So I guess the funeral home business was perfect for them. I liked being with friends at school and having them come over occasionally, but I didn’t need a lot of company. I enjoyed having time to myself, and felt grumpy if I didn’t get it. I decided then that Dad’s bi-weekly haircuts were more for his mental health than his personal hygiene. He needed interaction as much as I needed privacy.
But not needing a lot of company wasn’t the same as never having company, which was one of many thoughts that rolled around in my mind that night as I tried to go to sleep. I reached over to the nightstand and picked up the fishing worm that Herb Conrad had given me at Cletus McCulley’s visitation. I looked at it and wondered why a fish would be so dumb as to think a purple plastic worm would be real food, especially a purple plastic worm with a big silver hook stuck through it. Maybe the glitter imbedded in the plastic made it look tasty. It didn’t look tasty to me. But then again, I wasn’t a fish.
I remembered the picture on the cover of my new fishing book. Micropterus salmoides had a mouth cavity that looked ten times bigger than its brain cavity. No wonder it couldn’t tell the difference between a plastic worm and a real one.
I wondered what it would be like to catch a fish and reel it in. Maybe Herb Conrad wouldn’t forget me, and would make a real offer to take me fishing sometime.
I imagined Cletus McCulley sitting in a boat out in the middle of a lake, casting a line. He let it arc gracefully across the bright spring sky until the weight of the hook and bait made it sink, then disappear, underneath the water’s surface.
I imagined the quiet, glassy ripples rolling from one side of the lake to the other. I smelled the blue-green water, scented by the slimy carpet of algae that separated it from the shore. I warmed my skin in the rays of the mid-May sun.
And I was in the boat, sitting beside Cletus. He offered me a can of soda. I popped the top and the fizz sprayed my face, making me flinch. Cletus laughed. I stuck my tongue out to get the drops between my chin and bottom lip. I wiped the rest of it off with the back of my hand. The spray was sticky and cold, but delicious on what was becoming a hot day.
Cletus then fingered through a pile of rods, picked out a sleek, black, graphite beauty, and passed it to me. When I had the reel end in a firm grip, he let go of the pole and scratched his chin. His lips didn’t move, but I heard his voice. Hmm . . . now what should we bait Kevin’s pole with? He groaned as he leaned over his round, basketball-sized belly to reach the tackle box. He rummaged around in the compartments until he found the perfect artificial bait. This spinner looks good. Perfect for catching largemouth bass.
“You mean Micropterus salmoides,” I spoke up. “That’s the scientific name.”
I heard Cletus chuckle in his mind, and I watched his fat fingers thread the line through the loops on the spinner. “It’s too bad we didn’t get to go fishing while you were alive,” I said.
Who says I’m not living? Cletus thought. I’m sitting here beside you, aren’t I?
“I saw you at the funeral home,” I said. “Your granddaughter made me look at your body in the casket. And when was the last time you ever heard of a dead man fishing?”
Cletus finished tying the spinner, and he turned his head towar
d me with a grandfather-knows-best kind of smile. His blue eyes splashed a wave of cold up my arms and across my face. His mouth opened and the words came out as clean and as sharp as a brand-new filet knife: “There’s more to life than what you see.”
My body jerked upright. Had I dreamed? Had I dozed off? I felt like I’d been dipped in a vat of ink. My eyes couldn’t adjust from the bright dream to the black night. I rubbed my hands over my face and looked at the clock. It was three in the morning. I let my head drop back on the pillow and had barely closed my eyes again when the 5:50 alarm sounded.
I got up, dressed, washed my face, and went out to the back lot. I took a folding stool, a new composition notebook, a mechanical pencil, and a resolve to forget the dream I’d had about Cletus McCulley. It was a dream, after all. Only a dream.
After reading the last issue of National Geographic, I’d decided to keep a log of what I saw in the back lot each day and the time I saw it—just like the real biologists. If Armadillo Middle had a school science fair, this would give me a head start on a project. I reached the edge of the parking lot, set up the chair, and settled in. I recorded the date, time, and weather conditions and turned my eyes to the trees and the thick undergrowth.
August 9, 6:14 A.M.
WEATHER: cloudy, slight wind,
drizzle
WHAT I SAW:
Two cardinals
One squirrel, light gray with
short tail (maybe cut or torn off)
One doe, ran from side of
house back into woods
One green snake (don’t tell
Mom, she’ll freak)
Several robins
At 7:14 I closed my notebook and folded my stool. I carried them up the stairs to the second floor deck and through the back door. Dad was at the stove, cooking breakfast. “For you,” he said, “to help you get started on the first day of school.”
The aroma of bacon frying in the hot iron skillet was real. The sweet scent of maple syrup mingled with butter was real too. This wasn’t a dream. Dad was making my breakfast, and the breakfast was real right there, sizzling on the stove. I took the plate he offered me plus the half-empty bottle of pancake syrup and sat down at the table.
My Mom's A Mortician Page 4