The Essay A Novel

by The Essay (retail) (epub)

  If I ask Ruth Ann to the dance while I’m at school, I risk a repeat of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Maybe I’ll call her at home. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. That way, if she says no it will be less humiliating because I will be able to quickly hang up. Then I will pray to Jesus and all the known saints that she doesn’t tell anyone that I asked.

  Mrs. Wadell said, “Our second-place winner is Catherine Johanessen.” She was a senior and destined to be the class valedictorian. She also was the daughter of the freshman and sophomore English and literature teacher. Second place apparently wasn’t to Catherine’s liking because she frowned all the way to the stage and back.

  If she says yes, how will I get her to the dance? Crap. Dad’s car looks like a rolling landfill, it’s covered with rust, smells like stale beer, and needs a new muffler. I’d be embarrassed to show up in that.

  “This year’s first-place winner of the Alpha & Omega Essay Contest wrote a simply marvelous memoir.”

  Maybe I can get Lenny Ianarino to double-date with me. He’s taking Truddie Walkup to the dance. I’ll bet he’ll let me double up with him. Of course, you have got to ask Ruth Ann first, chicken shit.

  “The judges from Ohio University said this was one of the finest essays they had ever seen submitted.”

  Christ Almighty, I don’t even know how to dance. That’s a problem. God, what if I start to dance with her and get a hard-on?

  “One judge wrote of this essay, ‘This writing displays a maturity and depth seldom seen in a high school student.’”

  I’ve got money saved. I could afford to take her to dinner up in Chillicothe and buy one of those mums that people always have on their coats at homecoming. That would be a nice touch. Yes, a mum, I definitely will have to buy one of those.

  “It gives me great pleasure to present the gold medal to this year’s winner of the Alpha & Omega Literary Society essay contest . . .”

  I’ll still be nervous, even on the phone. What if I get all tongue-tied and I can’t talk? Oh, that would be great. I’ll write myself out a script. That’s it. I’ll have it all written out in front of me and I’ll practice before I call.

  “Mr. James L. Hickam.”

  I’ll do it, by God. I’ll summon up the nerve and call Ruth Ann Shellabarger and ask her to the homecoming dance.

  It became apparent that the auditorium had gone silent, like a church during the stretch of time when the preacher says, “let us pray,” and the actual prayer begins. I’m certain that I heard my name, but it seemed so out of context that it didn’t register. However, as I looked around, trying to process the events of the past few seconds, I noticed that everyone was staring at me. It was not unlike having the teacher call on you in the middle of a daydream. After several seconds, Kip Fillinger, our offensive center, smacked me on the back and said, “That’s you, numb nuts.”

  I jerked upright and after a few more seconds stood to slide my way to the aisle and walk to the stage. There was a smattering of applause and a few audible gasps, and a female voice—I think it was Catherine Johanessen, but I never found out for sure—said, “I absolutely cannot believe this.” Miss Singletary was the lone teacher to stand, and she applauded with great enthusiasm. The principal and the other teachers stared in slack-jawed amazement. Members of the football team began pounding on the arm rests and chanting, “Jim-my Lee. Jim-my Lee. Jim-my Lee.”

  Mrs. Wadell draped the gold medal over my head, shook my hand, then put her arm around my waist and pulled me closer to the lectern. “As is tradition, the winner will read the winning essay.”

  I pulled back a step, “Ma’am?”

  “You have to read your essay, Mr. Hickam.” She handed me my blue notebook. “You should be very proud to do so. It is very good.”

  My heart was about to beat out of my chest. I can’t recall ever being as nervous as when I stepped up to begin reading. Principal Speer stood and stared down the football players until they quieted and settled back in their seats. I flattened out the first page of the notebook, cleared my throat a few times, and began.

  I would like to revisit a muddy stretch of the Scioto River where the oak trees bend in from the banks and meld together high over the water, and the river’s surface is dappled with thin shafts of sunlight that somehow penetrate the dense canopy. Bass leap where fallen trees crowd the shallows, snappers sun themselves on the exposed rocks, and the air is heavy with the stagnant scent of slow-moving water.

  When I last visited this place, I was only nine years old and yet, the soft, slow voice of my Uncle Boots remains clear in my mind.

  “Are you sure you can handle that, padnah?” he asked as I struggled with my end of the canoe.

  “Uh-huh,” I strained.

  With one of his thick hands, he grabbed his end and tried to conceal a grin as he watched me strain to hold my end as I backed toward the river. “Set ’er down right at the edge of the water.”

  We unloaded his pickup truck in the shadow of Mount Logan, along a wide bend in the Scioto River south of Chillicothe. To that point, it was the biggest day of my life. I had never been on a boat of any kind. I had been fishing a few times with my dad and brothers, but those were usually beer-shortened events that ended with my dad cursing at the fish and the river and his tackle box, and we always went home without a catch. Uncle Boots was my mom’s brother-in-law. He was a soft-spoken, pie-faced North Carolinian who had that summer retired after twenty years in the U.S. Army. His real name was Beaumont, and he and my Aunt Stephanie had moved back to Ohio so Uncle Boots could take over the family farm in Scioto County. He had grown up fishing the rivers and streams of North Carolina and had moved north with his canoe, which had a small outboard motor rigged to the side. When he stopped by the house the night before to ask if I wanted to go fishing, I couldn’t believe my luck.

  Once he had unloaded the fishing tackle and his cooler, he instructed me to get into the canoe. He put one foot in the canoe, the other on the bank, and gave us a quick push. We scraped bottom, then headed toward the middle of the river. It was the most incredible sensation to be gliding over the water, the tiny waves slapping at the side of the canoe. I held tight to the sides, mesmerized by the passing water.

  With one quick pull of the starter cord, he fired up the outboard motor. He adjusted the idle, then looked at me and asked, “Want to drive ’er?”

  Oh, how I wanted to drive, but I was paralyzed with fear. “No,” I said.

  He frowned. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “It ain’t rocket science.” He reached out for my hand and guided me to the seat next to the motor. “Grab the handle. You twist that to give it gas. You turn the handle the opposite way you want the canoe to go. Think you can handle it?” I gave him a little frown, and he laughed. “Okay, padnah, it’s all yours. Keep it in the middle of the river and stay away from the snags.”

  Slowly, I twisted the throttle and the canoe seemed to lurch out of the water. I made a big circle in the river and we headed upstream. I couldn’t stop smiling. It was the most grown-up thing I had ever done in my life. Uncle Boots watched for a few minutes until he was sure I had it under control, then he began arranging the fishing poles. After a while, he winked and said, “You’re doing a fine job there, padnah.”

  Two miles upstream he pointed to the little kill switch and said, “Hold that down a second.” I did and the river became eerily quiet. “We’re going to drift fish,” he said. “We’ll cast toward the snags where the bass are hiding. That sound good to you?”

  “Sure.”

  He reached into the bait bucket and produced a minnow. “Watch close,” he said. “If you’re going to fish, you’ve got to bait your own hook.” He held up the hook. “You see the barb on the end of this hook? If you get that caught in your finger, the fishing’s over because I’ll have to take you to the emergency room so they can cut it out. That sound like fun?”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Good, becaus
e it isn’t.” He winked. “Trust me.” He held the minnow between his index finger and thumb and slickly slipped the hook under its chin and through both lips. “You see how I did that?” he asked. I nodded. “You hook them through the lips so they try to swim off the hook and attract the bass.”

  He showed me how to cast and we began to fish, slowly drifting back down the Scioto River. Uncle Boots occasionally took a paddle and gave a couple of strokes to keep us on track. “Check your bait,” he said after a while. It was gone. “Get you a new minnow and hook ’er up.”

  I fished the bait bucket with my fingers until I trapped my unfortunate lure. As I tried to maneuver it between my fingers, it wiggled and I instinctively released my grip. The sliver of silver hit the bottom of the canoe and flopped around on the hot aluminum.

  I could feel the look of panic consuming my face and I found it difficult to keep my lower lip from quivering. It was the kind of youthful infraction that would have sent my dad into a screaming rage. As I waited for Uncle Boots to explode in anger, he calmly reached down, scooped up the minnow and put it back in my hand. “Try it again,” he said calmly.

  We had a wonderful time. We talked in whispers, drank Coca-Colas, ate ham salad sandwiches and potato chips that my Aunt Stephanie had packed, and got sunburned. After we had been on the river a few hours without a bite, Uncle Boots handed me his pole and said, “Here, you try my pole. Maybe that’ll change our luck.”

  No sooner had he handed me the pole than I felt a violent tug. “I’ve got one.”

  Maybe he’d already caught the bass and set the hook before he handed me the pole, but the next few moments replaced driving the canoe as the biggest thrill of my life. I reeled the largemouth bass close to the canoe and he netted it.

  “You caught a monster.”

  It was nineteen inches long and weighed better than four pounds. We caught a few smaller fish before calling it a day, and I was their guest for a fish fry dinner that night. Before we cleaned the fish, Aunt Stephanie took a photo of Uncle Boots and me with my trophy.

  As I look back, it was perhaps the best day of my life. I had a great day with a man I admired. He seemed to enjoy being out on the river with me, teaching me to fish and talking to me as though I was significant. For the first time in my life, I realized that a man doesn’t need to yell to be heard. A man doesn’t have to throw a punch to make a point. And a man who is comfortable in his own skin doesn’t need to constantly prove his worth to the world.

  We went fishing four more times that summer. Each time he let me steer the canoe upstream. We caught bass, joked, and ate ham salad sandwiches from the cooler.

  Uncle Boots died the following spring. He was tilling a hillside stretch of their farm when the tractor rolled over and he was crushed.

  Aunt Stephanie had the photo of the two of us and my bass framed; it’s on the wall beside my bed. I think of Uncle Boots often and wish the two of us could have one more sunny Saturday together, sipping Coca-Colas and drift fishing down the Scioto.

  Chapter Six

  W

  hen I got home that night, my brother Edgel was drunk and slouched in a chair at the kitchen table.

  As I had trudged up the rutted drive from Red Dog Road after football practice, I knew something was going on. Halfway up the drive, I could hear men laughing in our kitchen. This was peculiar as humor was not commonplace in the home of Nick Hickam. As I climbed the steps to the back porch, the heat and smells of the kitchen wafted out the back door, a twisted aroma of cooking meat, biscuits, and cigarette smoke.

  Through the screen door, I could see the Farnsworth twins—a pair of hard-working, hard-drinking boys who ran the auto salvage yard on Taylor-Blair Road—sitting at the table on either side of my dad. Mark had no teeth, the result of poor hygiene and too many bar fights, and his lips surrounded the lip of a beer bottle like a baby nursing at its mother’s breast. Luke had his teeth, but the scarred face of a lost battle with acne. He was a terrible stutterer and didn’t say much. They had killed a case of beer and dozens of cigarette butts had been drowned in the spittle and flat Pabst Blue Ribbon in the bottom of the bottles that covered the kitchen table.

  Edgel heard me coming up the back steps and as I reached for the doorknob he said, “Here comes the football star.” He was seated at the head of the table, a lopsided, alcohol-induced grin on his face and a cigarette dangling from the middle of his pouty lips. He was wearing blue jeans and a gray, pullover sweatshirt, which fit him much better than the saggy prison garb I was used to seeing him wear. “Hey there, little brother, help yourself to a Pabst.”

  “He can’t have any beer,” my mother chimed in. “He’s too young and besides, the coach don’t allow that.”

  “One beer isn’t going to kill him,” Edgel slurred.

  “When’d you get home Edgel?” I asked, anxious to change the subject.

  He stood up and shook my hand, hugging me tight with his left. “They cut me loose this mornin’. Can you believe that shit?”

  My dad seemed more sullen than the others and just sat between the twins, drinking from a bottle.

  “He called me at seven o’clock at the truck stop,” my mom said. “He said to come and get him, and he’d be standing out front of the prison. I drove up there as fast as I could and sure enough, there he was, sitting on the front steps with his duffel bag.”

  Edgel looked at me and shrugged. “They got my ass up at five o’clock this morning and told me my time was up and they were letting me go. I think they’ve run out of room and I was next on the list to be released, so they busted me out a little earlier than expected. Ain’t that the shits? I said that was fine with me. The quicker I could get my ass out of there, the better.” He snorted into his half-empty beer bottle, creating a humming sound like a riverboat horn. I pulled out a chair next to Edgel and sat down. He reached out and patted me twice on my shoulder. “Damn, my little brother ain’t so little any more, is he?”

  “Y-y-you should see him p-play f-f-football,” Luke said. “H-h-he can knock a g-guy’s d-d-dick off.”

  Edgel nodded. “That a fact?”

  I shrugged. “I’m having a pretty good year.”

  Mom set a plate of ham, boiled potatoes and green beans, and biscuits in front of Edgel. He pushed it toward me. “Let’s feed the football player first. He’s the one workin’ up an appetite. I want to see you play Friday night. Who do you play?”

  “Clearcreek Local.”

  “Look out! Them Clearcreek Local boys are always tough.”

  “We’ll take ’em.”

  “Atta boy.”

  Mom took the plate and slid it back in front of Edgel. “You eat that. This is your special dinner for your special day.”

  “Is that what it takes to get my special dinner—nine years in the joint?”

  He snorted a laugh and mom slapped him on the shoulder with the serving spoon. “Hush up and eat.”

  Edgel sank a fork into a boiled potato and popped the entire, steaming orb into his mouth. As my mother dished out plates of food for the Farnsworth brothers and my dad, I wrapped my hands around the gold medal that was in the pocket of my varsity jacket. She handed me a plate, then fixed one for herself and, after hugging Edgel around the neck and kissing him on top of the head, sat down to his right. I said, “They had this contest at school, an essay contest, and you had to write a paper on a place and time you’d like to visit again.” I pulled the medal from my pocket and held it by the lanyard so my mom could see. “And, I won first prize out of the entire high school.”

  “Oh, that is so nice, Jimmy Lee.” She turned her head back to Edgel and said, “Are you getting enough, sweetheart. You’re so skinny. You need to eat.”

  My dad had barely looked my way. I slid the medal back into my pocket and started cutting my ham. Edgel slapped at my elbow and wiggled his fingers, indicating he wanted to see the medal. “Lemme see that, junior,” he said, a little slur to his words. I retrieved it from the pocket and dropped it i
nto his hand. He frowned as he read the engraved back of the medal. “Alpha & Omega Literary Society Essay Contest. First Place. East Vinton High School. James L. Hickam.” He looked up at me and said, “Damn, boy, that’s fine. You got this for writin’?”

  I nodded. “An essay.”

  “Well, hot damn, that’s gotta be the first time in history that a Hickam’s ever won an award for writin’.” The Farnsworth twins laughed. “And this is first place out of the whole school?” I nodded. He continued to inspect the medal, rubbing a thumb over the gold quill and inkwell relief on the front. “What did you write about?”

  “It was about the time Uncle Boots took me fishing in his canoe.”

  “Where is it? I want to read it.”

  “Uh, it’s still at school. Miss Singletary is grading it for class. I should get it back in a week or so.” When I wrote the essay, I had no idea that I would end up reading it in front of the entire school and I had stumbled over the reference to my dad and brothers’ drinking and my dad’s fits of anger. I would have to rewrite the essay and change those passages before I brought it home.

  “Don’t forget,” Edgel said, pointing at me with his fork. “I want to read that.”

  “I won’t.” I thought it odd that my ill-educated, semiliterate brother, who hadn’t made it through the tenth grade, actually wanted to read the essay while neither parent expressed any such interest.

  “That Miss Singletary you talked about, is that Amanda Singletary?”

  “Uh-huh. She said she went to school with you.”

  “She did. She’s as smart as they come, too. You stay close to her. She’s solid; she’ll do right by you.” He looked up and frowned. “Is that other English teacher still there, Gloria Johanessen?”