Sketcher

by Roland Watson-Grant

“What’s that for? Lagniappe?”

  “The hat or the kiss?”

  “The last one.”

  She walked away with her hands in her Levi’s pockets, then turned around and started walkin’ backwards.

  “Nah. Lan-yap is for customers, you’re mon petit chou.” And she broke off runnin’, her ponytail bouncin’, her lanky legs awkward in her blue jeans.

  And when Mai stopped at her gate and smiled, she was even sweeter than when she got mad at me.

  Fourteen

  That night, the kisses were still makin’ me feel giddy-headed. I sat with my mother on the makeshift bench at the back of the house, watchin’ the sky and wonderin’ if Mai was sleepin’, or studyin’ for cram school as usual. Moms hadn’t made a fire, so the bugs were rovin’ around in airborne gangs and stabbin’ at people. Well, we were waitin’ for the stars to come out, so we weren’t budgin’. I slapped my palms together and made “mosquito sandwiches”, as Pops used to put it.

  Then, when the stars came out – ooowee. Sugar sprinkled on a purple plum. And that’s what I should have said. Instead, I asked Moms if she didn’t think it looked like God dropped a planet on heaven’s glass floor and it smashed and all these tiny pieces were gonna sit there until somebody up there got a real bad splinter toe. Well, she just looked dead ahead and told me not to play with the Lord like that. I wanted to explain to her that I didn’t mean any disrespect, but she just said it again and I got mad and asked her why the heck they paid for all those extra creative-writin’ classes with Miss Halloway and sent us to a school with a strong Arts programme if I couldn’t use my imagination any more. I said my pops would understand my imagination. She laughed and stared ahead and said, “Maybe you’re right.” Then she told me she wasn’t tryin’ to stop me usin’ my imagination, but I was gettin’ to be a teenager, so I needed to use it more responsibly and be careful of the things I imagined up.

  “Now go on and imagine yourself ready for bed.”

  So the next mornin’, just as the sun was comin’ up over the Gulf – or as the orange lollipop started stickin’ up out of God’s blue jeans’ back pocket – Moms announced that we all should go look for Pa Campbell, cos he had Parkinson’s. Man, I didn’t see that comin’. He got so wobbly, Tony drove him and Ma Campbell into town a few days before, and the doctors said it was so and it would only get worse. All that gas Pa used to pass was a sign, they said. Moms said we needed to look out for him, cos he’s been a good neighbour to us. Tony gave him that leftover HF-1200 walkie-talkie and told him to put it beside his bed and holler on Channel 14 if we couldn’t hear him across the fence. No need. Every time I lay in bed and heard him cryin’ out all the way across the fence, I remember laughin’ at him and his crazy beliefs and I felt bad. But I wondered why all his life he was so concerned about all those dark things when to me poverty was the scariest thing of all. I still wanted the day to come when, like Pops said, the swamp would move out from under us – when we would go to sleep and wake up in another part of town. Well, maybe not overnight, but over time. I heard Pa Campbell sayin’ that “happy is in your heart”. Yeah. Well, some money in your pocket might help, old man. If he wasn’t puttin’ aside money all these years, there’s no way in hell he could have said that. I say money and power help with the happiness part. Whatever that power might be. Doug said the same thing in not so many words.

  I mean, if I had powers, maan the things I’d do. I’d prob’ly have a superhero name and a costume with pockets to collect contributions and everything. But my brother, he didn’t think like that. Instead he had his mind on a brand-new girlfriend. Yeah, some girl he met from his new school called Teesha Grey, who started comin’ into the swamp all too regularly, sayin’ she needed to do “research on endangered species” and all that. She and Frico were suddenly always out on the bayou in the pirogue. That boy didn’t even like leavin’ land, but all of a sudden he was a fisherman, paddlin’ this girl around, shirtless and sweatin’ bullets while she took pictures of birds.

  Nice girl, though. Sweet-lookin’, with dimples. And large hoop earrings. And short hair. I like short hair on a girl. Mai should’ve cut her hair short. Even though me and Mai were nothin’ like Frico and Teesha. Not to mention Tony and Doug and their girlfriends. Damn, that Doug was sixteen and on the soccer team in high school, and so popular he always had girls’ phone numbers fallin’ out of his pockets, even though he didn’t have no damn phone. Then he was so secretive, and that only made them more curious, so you’d be comin’ from the train tracks after the school bus dropped you a mile up the road and you’d just see all kinds of high-school girls at the entrance of L-Island on a stake-out for Doug Beamount. Usually they wouldn’t find him, cos I’d warn them not to follow me, and they’d prob’ly swear to themselves to come back for ever until they figured out exactly where he lived. Nobody believed Doug Beaumont – or anyone for that matter – lived in this swamp. Some nights, I swear, if I went out into the woods, I’d find girls behind trees waitin’ for that boy. Tony was shy with girls, and we never even knew he had a girlfriend till they got real serious. She was a geek like him – and that’s about all I can tell ya. They were both seniors and in the Science Club at LaVaughn High School, and now that he was drivin’ Pa Campbell’s truck and deliverin’ stuff to Al Dubois’s Fish and Seafood after school, he was in the city more often with her. Some weekends me and Frico, we’d find ourselves abandoned in the back of the truck along the crack in the map, while Tony and his mystery girl would be watchin’ the sunset or walkin’ on a levee or foggin’ up the truck windows, includin’ that rear window, so we couldn’t even see nothin’ from the back of truck. That was OK, cos even though the girl was sweet, I wouldn’t want to see ol’ Tony Beaumont gettin’ domestic – no sir. One day those two rocked that van until I damn near got seasick. That’s when I knew what Frico meant when he said they were just doing “physics and chemistry” all the time. Couldn’t believe they went that far in a ’57 Ford that smelt like Bengue’s Balsam and dead gators, for godssake.

  Now, even though those footprints that appeared on the porch caused Moms to make a rule that we had to get home before nightfall – and that really cramped everybody’s style – she didn’t stop this idea we came up with for a Southern outdoor shindig on L-Island. Even though I wish she did. It was to be an afternoon swamp party for all ages. Frico, he was cool with the idea. He was proud of the new diagrams he did on the house and wanted to show them off too. So we called up the crew, but we didn’t have a tamarind-tree meetin’, cos Tony and Doug and Moms were involved. Furthermore I don’t think anybody wanted to stare at that sinkhole for more than the time it took to cross over the creek. It was bad enough that Pa kept whisperin’ that ol’ Backhoe shouldn’t have left so soon. He reckoned the footprints on the porch belonged to the Benet boys, who dragged themselves out of the muddy hole every night. Two spirits walkin’ around, lookin’ for where their father went.

  Well, soon as we started talkin’, we knew we were all goin’ to pass a good time at this shindig. It was a send-off for Marlon and Belly, but I guess it was kind of a declaration of independence for Moms and a dare to anything that wanted her to leave where she’d lived for nearly seventeen years. She made up her mind when she found out about the whole deal between Benet and Pops. The party guest list was like twenty people: Ma and Pa Campbell, Teesha Grey, Mai, four of Doug’s female fans and whoever else was behind the trees, Tony’s girl, who still had no name, Marls, Belly, Harry T, Peter Grant and his guitar, and any of their girlfriends with parents crazy enough to allow them to go to a Saturday-afternoon party in the swamp.

  Then Moms got too neighbourly and said she was goin’ to invite other people from farther up the tracks. Chain-smokin’ Evin Levine, Miss Gladys and Chanice Devereaux and her girls were OK, but there were some new good-for-nothin’ boys from up the bayou that she invited. Pa Campbell said that was a mistake, but that was after those boys rowed up and dragged one of their pirogues on land and filled it with part
y ice to use as a beer cooler. They brought their own sixpacks and Moms regretted it, cos it wasn’t that type of party. So we got rid of them real quick and they rowed back into the dark sittin’ on the ice, still drinkin’.

  Now, up to the plannin’ meetin’ we hadn’t seen Harry T in a while since he got into scoutin’. That boy was one for a grand entrance, I tell ya. We could hear him comin’ in from the train tracks with a cassette-player boom box strapped to the back of his bicycle playin’ Doug E. Fresh featurin’ MC Ricky D. He flew over the new footbridge, came blazin’ around the corner, squeezed the brakes and sent dust flyin’. Everybody cheered, cos this guy had on the Ricky D sweatsuit and shades and everything. Then it seemed like Doug E. Fresh was the only cassette Harry T had brought, so we heard “La-Di-Da-Di” nearly all evenin’, ’cept when we were tellin’ ghost stories in broad daylight and Tony was tryin’ to tell Cajun jokes like Pops. Only Pops can tell Cajun jokes like Pops. So after Moms rescued him and gave her welcome speech, we were diggin’ in to the crawfish and potatoes and corn and sweet-potato pie when Doug, he brought out a piece of cardboard from Pa’s truck, put it on the ground and started breakdancin’ – or b-boyin’, as we called it. That boy did a windmill and a headstand, and all his girl fans went crazy. Then all of a sudden everybody was tryin’ to do the latest robot dances. They all succeeded in lookin’ silly with all that mimickin’ of machines. Maybe I was just jealous, cos I looked like a duck with wooden wings when I tried it. Tony jumped into the back of Pa’s truck like it was a stage. He couldn’t dance either, so he did a lame rap on the beat. It wasn’t even lyrics. He just said “Sucker MCs!” and then went nuts.

  “Dah to the dah-dah-dah to the dah-dit...”

  Well, everybody started booin’, until Harry T joined in the dah-dittin’ and shouted that Tony was rappin’ in Morse Code. Then suddenly Morse Code was cool and everybody wanted to know how to rap their names in Morse Code. Sigh. That party was full of nerds or sheep, I tell ya. It was a real blast though, and the whole time Mai sat beside me holdin’ my hand until it got sweaty, but I wouldn’t let go.

  Of course durin’ all that fun that hot girl Teesha Grey put Frico to work on the porch, sketchin’ bird pictures from photos and labellin’ them like it was a frickin’ school day. He said he had to help her make flashcards to show younger kids some birds that had disappeared from the State years ago. Great. Real fun stuff.

  Anyway, we didn’t intend to take the party into nightfall, but when the batteries in Harry T’s tape deck were callin’ it quits (and Ma Campbell was thankin’ the Mother of God), Fricozoid took a break from sketchin’ birds and came down from the porch beatboxin’, and the dancin’ and rappin’ continued. Ma Campbell went for Pa in his new wheelchair. The old man could walk, but only slowly and he was bent over. Pa Campbell started riffin’ on his blues harmonica to the beat, and as easily as Frico did the beatbox, Peter Grant, that boy who busted his face at camp, started playin’ jazz chords on his box guitar. The whole thing was fresh. Or def, or whatever Doug always says.

  Somebody stopped the warblin’ cassette player, and it was pretty much jazz ’n’ blues and country and folk music from then on. Moms came down near the fire, and Pa put down his harmonica and started tappin’ a drumbeat on the side of the truck, even though it was difficult for him. We all picked it up and clapped it – and Moms is in a free-flow skirt, and while she’s dancin’ we’re trying to keep up with her moves. She was breathless, but she’s tellin’ us while dancin’ that this is Bomba. Pa wheels over and shouts over the noise that Bomba is African and Spanish and Taino culture, and Moms learnt it on an island called Boriken when she went there. It was a little embarrassin’, but she was pretty good.

  When she got tired and went for a drink, Peter Grant and Pa Campbell were singin’ ‘Just a Closer Walk with Thee’ and we were havin’ a little church.

  Well, ol’ Marlon interrupted to say he didn’t get why everybody got to rap and dance and beatbox and Bomba in the swamps without gettin’ fined, and he still couldn’t sing even at his own send-off. Of course Belly couldn’t pass up the opportunity to tell him the fine he got was for “impersonating a singer”, but since we wanted him to quit gripin’, we’d let him sing one song. Well, he chose one of those corny camp songs that goes on for ever. You sing in rounds until you have a headache. But we all said OK, since he was bein’ a mother hen about the whole thing.

  “Ohhhhhhhh...” Pause. Take a deep breath. “The cow kicked Nelly in the belly in the barn, and the doctor said it wouldn’t do no harm!”

  Now, Southern people know you need to start that song real quiet, almost like a whisper, and then you get louder and louder like it’s Super Bowl Sunday and the Saints just won on home turf, or until the old folks can’t stand you – that’s the idea. And when you get to the end of the first verse, which is pretty much singin’ that same Nelly line four times, you get to the good part. You get to say: “Second verse! Same as the first! A little bit louder and a little bit worse!” – and it’s very important to pause right there and really linger on the “Ohhhhhhhh” before you go back to the cow kickin’ poor ol’ Nelly and what the doctor said and all that. Now, we started in on that song at about sunset, and even when it was pitch black and we made a ragin’ campfire, and Ma Campbell had wheeled Pa back into the house in a hurry and the other older folks had said goodbye, we were still shoutin’ about Nelly in that swamp.

  Well, lemme tell you, when we got to I think it was the fortieth verse or thereabouts and we were there lingerin’ on the “Ohhhhhhhh”, those good-for-nothin’ boys from down the bayou that Moms threw out of the party, they came back in bigger boats and jumped on land and ran up on us full tilt and doused the entire party with gallons of bayou water from a couple o’ fish buckets. The girls got it in their hair and on their clothes and pretty much everybody swallowed some of it – especially Marlon, on account of the long “Ohhhhhhhh”. For the first few seconds we just sat there shocked and drippin’ without sayin’ a word. The boys moved in quickly, surroundin’ us. Their guns came out. One finished dousin’ the fire. Two others were roundin’ up anybody who started runnin’ and put them face down in the grass. Moms, who was sittin’ on the porch, recognized the boys and jumped up and came towards us, then turned back to go grab her gun, but a tall shadow stepped up on the porch and blocked the door. Moms was pushed to the ground and right about that same time, a warnin’ shot exploded in the air.

  Fifteen

  The sound of the gunshot came from out on bayou. We all forgot the thugs surroundin’ us and looked in that direction. A bunch of birds lit out from where they were sleepin’ in the swamp, and the crickets fell silent for a breath. Calvin’s kids went and huddled behind the water tank.

  “Dammit James! I told you not to come in heah no mo’!” Ma Campbell had wheeled Pa back out on his porch. He was shakin’ and fuming like a gas leak.

  The whisper went around the smouldering campfire: “Couyon”. The very tall, pale man in the baseball jacket had the kind of moustache I’d been tryin’ to get for ages. He rode the boat up on the grasses, cranked the shotgun, pointed it down and squeezed the trigger. There was a pop. Like a full stop before he even said a word. The copper shell pinged on the aluminum boat. A jagged tail rose above the edge of the boat, relaxed and fell again.

  “Yep, that be the motherload right there,” said James Jackson, pointing the rifle to the sky.

  He stepped out of the boat loaded with six alligators that he had caught in the night with his gang. Monsters. All prob’ly over ten feet and just as ugly and menacin’ as the guys standin’ around us. He looked at us real scornful.

  “Now, that... is how you hunt dinosaur elligadors with a point-two-seven-o rifle. And by the way, ol’ man, don’t talk to me like you’s my Pa, cos you ain’t. Oh, I borrowed your boat while you were just sittin’ aroun’ doin’ nothin’. Knew you wouldn’t mind.” Pa grunted.

  “Ma, your baby’s here!” shouted James. “What’s for dinner?” His bo
ys laughed.

  And that’s how we were introduced, or reintroduced, to James “Couyon” Jackson, legendary Mississippi Murderer and Ma Campbell’s part-time son. We immediately knew we were in deep trouble. He sent around one of the fish buckets.

  “My apologies for the foul smell of dat receptacle, but um, feel free to deposit all your valuables in it.”

  “Now, ladies and gentlemen – and Pa Campbell... this heah meet’n’ is hereby called to order. I’m James Jackson, and from my left to right are the members of my team. That right theah with the Smiff & Wess’n is Grizzly, my right hand, then that’s Miercoles – cos I rescued him on a Wednesday when he was almost dead in a ditch – and up on the porch...” – he called out – “hey, Shotput, how’s Mrs Beaumont treat’n’ ya?”

  Shotput, a large guy, just nodded. He had a shotgun pointed at Moms, who was now sittin’ on a chair on the porch arguin’ with him. We heard that Shotput was a star athlete who could have gone on to international games if he hadn’t swung that iron ball and knocked his coach into a coma for tellin’ him he was late for trainin’. Got two years for it before he joined up with Couyon’s gang. Then there was another guy who just stood there with his gun holstered. I think he was instructed to do that cos, look, this was the first gangster I ever seen in bifocals, and prob’ly the last thing Couyon wanted was to get shot in a friendly fire accident.

  “Pierre!” – that was the bifocals guy’s name – “Escort all these fine shindiggin’ folks, except for the Campbells and the Beaumonts, onto that there Beaumont porch and hold ’em theah. Anybody tries to run – well, you and Boogers could use the target practice.” Boogers stepped up. He was the youngest in the gang, and I reckoned they called him that cos nobody ever got to see the end of his index finger.

  Two of Doug’s fans broke down and started hollerin’ in fright. Couyon Jackson turned back to his audience and continued the one-man show-off. Pierre, blond as corn silk and wiry and green as the stalk itself, he rounded up everybody and – can you believe it? – while he’s walkin’ them to the porch, he’s tellin’ the girls things like “Come this way please”, “Watch your step” and all that. That boy had no business bein’ bad. Anyway, as I’m watchin’ Mai and Marls and Belly and all the girls walkin’ up to the porch, I’m gettin’ concerned, cos those other thugs have different intentions towards the women. You could see the salivation and the swallowin’, and their eyes lookin’ around for the darkest corner. One guy pulled Frico up from the ground by the collar. Moms stood up. Then she looked like she decided to stay put on that porch to protect those girls that were walkin’ up, and I bet if that gang tried to throw her off she could make herself as heavy as a mountain. Well, I’m trailin’ behind the crowd headin’ for the porch and I can hear Moms already up there threatenin’ the gang with hellfire and sickness if they came near any of the kids. They laughed, but they’d heard she was a conjurer. So I was watchin’ them back away, when Couyon, he comes and collects me and Frico. He grabs us by the arms and points to Ma Campbell’s house with the gun barrel.