The Schooling of Claybird Catts

by Janis Owens

  I just shrugged again, offered no opinion, though there had been a certain amount of speculation among Mama’s kin that he had been just that. Knee-walking drunk, they called him, out of earshot of Grannie, of course (who would have thrown them off the porch if she’d have heard it).

  A more sensitive soul would have realized that I didn’t care to discuss the matter, though Miss Cassie just plowed on ahead, plugging in her electric shears and raising her voice to be heard over the buzz: “Yeah, old Gabe—me and him go back a long way. Too long, if you know what I mean.”

  I didn’t, but she didn’t pause for a reply anyway, just took long, even swipes at my head with the shears, talking the whole time. “Went to school together, you know, graduated the same year. He was valedictorian and what an idiot speech he made. Hightailed it north first chance he got, never saw much of him after that.” She finished with the shears and turned them off, added with a contemptuous snort: “Wore a ponytail to his daddy’s funeral.”

  For a few minutes she busied herself shaping what was left of my sideburns, then stood back to survey her handiwork. She must have found it satisfactory, for she tossed her scissors on the console, concluded in a flat, sure voice: “Yeah, none of us ever thought he’d amount to much. Old Gabe was a big talker, but when it come right down to it, he wasn’t nothing but a smart-mouthed little faggot— all he’s ever been, you ask me.”

  “A what?” I breathed, though Miss Cassie just glanced around to make sure Mama hadn’t strayed within earshot, then whipped me around to the mirror so I could check out my new hairdo.

  “Too short?” she asked brightly, and I knew that was the end of it. That no matter how much of a history they had together, Miss Cassie wouldn’t dare cross Grannie on such a thing and who could blame her?

  “No ma’am,” I answered, staring in the mirror at my newly shorn head, my fat little face wide-eyed and a tiny bit smug, because now it all made sense: Uncle Gabe was gay. That’s why he took off north first chance he got, why he never came home. That’s why Mama’s old redneck uncles were so hostile about him, why she was so reluctant to discuss him. She was being discreet and protective, as was Daddy, with his careful words, his halting deathbed description (“—kind of a strange personality. Not bad strange, you understand. Just—diffrent”).

  I mean, I didn’t really know what gay was back then, just that it meant he was—you know—sissy and sensitive and into garden design and House Beautiful and wearing clothes that matched, maybe have a lisp. I also knew that in the Baptist circles we traveled in, it was just the secretest, most shameful thing, which would explain Grannie’s face that day in the kitchen when I’d first brought him up, her pensive, grieving words. (“Gabe—he knows where I live.”)

  So I was more smug than shocked when Miss Cassie dropped her bombshell, and long after that day, in the face of just a truckload of evidence to the contrary, my perception of Gabe was colored by this sense of his difference, of him being the unwilling bearer of a secret, painful burden, a powerful moral dilemma that was maybe beyond his power to control. Someone to be pitied, really; to be lovingly sheltered, protected from the Pharisees and the intolerant—the Miss Cassies of the world.

  Which is all to explain why Missy’s hints and nods went straight over my head that night in September, leaving me with more than a little trepidation on the cold December morning, not six weeks later, when Uncle Gabe did indeed return. Not with the parting of the eastern skies and the sound of the trumpet, but in the lowest key possible, just walking into my life at, of all places, the Riverside Cemetery.

  It was coincidence I was even there that day, for I hardly ever visited Daddy’s grave anymore. Maybe Grannie’s disapproval had squelched my enthusiasm, or maybe I’d finally realized that for all the charm of the ancient cedars and the history of the old tombs, basically everyone at the Riverside was dead and there just wasn’t much anyone could do about it. I mean, a few things changed over the course of the year: the Seven Sister roses Mama planted took hold and bloomed profusely, and almost every week another grave was dug somewhere down the hill, and the striped funeral-home tent was pitched and the site covered in flowers, but even that small glimmer of life didn’t last long.

  Soon, the tent would be struck and the flowers would wilt and the family would come and get the plastic vases and stuff them in the garbage barrels at the gate. Then a shiny new tombstone would be erected and new grass would fill in the orange dirt, and it wouldn’t look much different from any of the other graves that spotted the hill, unless you knew who they were, of course. Unless you knew their stories.

  Only a creature of the twilight like Mama could continue to be entertained down there, day in and day out; I only went on special occasions, for say, a holiday or an anniversary, or on that particular morning, a combination of both. For it was the Saturday before Christmas, a year to the day I’d last seen my father alive, though I didn’t realize it at the time, our whole household overtaken by a sudden flurry of holiday plans, Missy leaving that morning for a four-day trip to north Georgia with the Chapins, Sim packing up his tent and sleeping bag and going on a camping trip with a group of men from Welcome. Carlym had made a point of inviting me, too, but I didn’t much like the idea of camping in the cold, preferred to sleep in my own little bed and go fishing locally with Curtis, who only got off Lori’s leash once a week, and had promised to pick me up at the house at ten for a quick run to the Dead Lakes.

  So I wasn’t particularly paralyzed by grief or anything, but percolating a little holiday high, rolling out of bed at seven and getting my fishing stuff together before I piled in the car with Mama, who stopped by Hardee’s on the way to town and bought biscuits for me, coffee for herself, to wake her up, she said, which was strange, because she still slept a lot, all the time. You’d think she’d be rested by now, after a year in the sack, but she wasn’t, her eyes gray-ringed and exhausted as she made her way up the winding path through the cedars, stopping at a little marble bench halfway up, letting me go the rest of the way alone like we always did. It was just too sad to go up there together and look at each other across the grave, alive and well, with Daddy there between us, not growing and never changing, his tombstone already losing its glitter, lines of weathering beginning to streak the marble, giving it a sad, forsaken look.

  I never stayed long, and didn’t that day, just pulled a few weeds, maybe cried a little, though not much, my mind on my fishing trip and how late it was getting; how the fish wouldn’t be biting if we didn’t get a move on. I finally kissed the tombstone good-bye (which is another reason I liked to go alone: I always kissed him good-bye) then headed back down the hill a little quicker than usual because it was kind of nippy that day. Not frostbitten, but clear and breezy and sharply cold, the kind of day that creeps up on you in Florida, catches you outside in your shirtsleeves—and that’s basically how I met Gabe.

  He didn’t walk into my life, as they say, but I walked into his, beating my way down the path in a chilled little gallop when I heard the unmistakable sound of voices below—a woman’s, which would be Mama—and a man, who for a sharp, strange moment sounded amazingly like Daddy. Just like that, I slowed my gallop instinctively and broke into the circle of cedars to find Mama sitting arm in arm with a stocky man in a big winter coat, who I recognized on sight, though he didn’t seem to recognize me. Or at least his face didn’t light up with welcome or anything, but was kind of blunted and grief-stricken, red-nosed and red-eyed, blinking like an owl as he came to his feet.

  Mama stood, too, and introduced us with her good Louisiana manners: “Clay? Baby, this is your uncle Gabe. D’you remember him? From the funeral?”

  I hastily made the adjustment when he offered his left hand for a shake, kind of speechless and weirded out, though Mama acted like it was the most normal thing in the world, coming upon a family ghost in the graveyard on a bright December morning. Once she’d made her introductions, she left almost immediately to go up to the grave, and I must say I hat
ed to see her go, for it left me standing there at his side, racking my brain for something intelligent to say. With Missy’s warning about his hand still ringing in my ears, I was trying like heck not to look at it, or seem to want to look at it, or get within a mile of it, my arms across my chest, my hands under my armpits, my eyes anyplace in the universe but his hand, which, as you can imagine, was pretty stifling as far as conversation went.

  I was also flipped out by the strange and unavoidable fact that this man was gay. This was my gay uncle Gabe, though in what furtive little glances I managed to shoot at him, he didn’t look particularly feminine or well dressed, everything about him dwarfed by that big gray overcoat, the same one he’d been wearing at the funeral. I’d never seen such a coat on anyone but the low-riding pimps you see on Hill Street Blues, and really and truly, that was my first impression of Uncle Gabe: as a con man, a pimp, a foreigner from the North and nothing remotely related to me and Mama and the Riverside, and Daddy’s grave on the top of the hill.

  Only in his grief did he seem connected to us at all—that and a strange, familiar fatigue about him that reminded me of Mama for some reason; had the flavor of her old vampire exhaustion. It made them seem very much akin from the beginning, Mama coming back from the grave almost immediately, looping her arm through his and smiling at him with an abandon that was rare in most people, practically nonexistent in my mother.

  “Well, Gabriel?” She laughed. “What’s got into you? You used to tease me all the time.”

  He just blew his nose on a handkerchief, muttered something about losing his sense of humor, though I didn’t have a clue in the world to what they were talking about, just tagged along behind them to the car and climbed in the backseat, wishing to God that Missy was home. I was thinking that if he’d just wait around till Wednesday, then she’d be home from the mountains and could take charge of this thing, but when I finally got up the nerve to ask how long he was staying, he just glanced in the rearview mirror, said: “I don’t know. Depends, I guess.”

  He didn’t say what it depended on, and to my annoyance, Mama didn’t ask, just kept chattering on about Grannie and how much she’d missed him. I didn’t want to sound pushy, just nodded politely and turned back to the window, though Gabe apparently wasn’t finished with me. “So where are you going fishing?” he added.

  Being the youngest child in a family of talkers, I wasn’t used to being plucked out for attention, didn’t realize he was speaking to me at first. I kept looking out the window at the shops around the courthouse that were all decorated for Christmas, the streetlights hung with red bells, the bank festooned with garland, when I realized there was a pause in the conversation, that he was waiting on my response.

  “Dead Lakes,” I hastened to answer, turning and meeting his eye: “Curtis has a boat.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, just met my eye evenly, much as he had at the funeral, his face absorbed and intent and strangely familiar. After a moment, he must have realized he was staring, for he dropped his eyes, murmured: “Oh, yeah, the Dead Lakes. We used to go there when we were little—me and Daddy and Michael. Had to rent a boat.”

  I just nodded, then returned to the window, struck by the way he said Michael with such close familiarity, such casual ease. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I really believed Daddy even had a brother till that moment, then I knew it just absolutely—knew that they’d grown up together on the Hill, walked down to church every Sunday at Welcome, shared a bedroom, maybe as close as Missy and me.

  I had never in my life thought of Daddy in such a way, was sitting there trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together when suddenly, with no warning at all, Gabe let out this sharp little bark of laughter, then turned and faced me again, his voice no longer dim with grief, but suddenly alive.

  “And one time”—he laughed—“one time when I was eight, Daddy somehow got a week off work, got it into his head that it was time we had us a vacation, like real Americans had, like people on TV. God, I don’t know how he came up with the money, but he was set on it, took me and Michael down to the Dead Lakes and rented a cabin. Boy, we thought we were special.”

  Just like that, Daddy was conjured before my eyes as a child on the Hill: poor, but ambitious; proud in the same goofy way he was when he was grown. The very familiarity made me grin, suddenly and sincerely, which was all the encouragement Gabe needed to press ahead, his eyes alive with his story, hypnotizing in their intensity: “Trouble was, we went down there in the middle of August, hadn’t ever been on a vacation before, didn’t know no better, and hot? Was it hot? Gawd, I bet it was a hundred and three in the shade, and the mosquitoes—there were scads of them. You could hold out your arm and count fifty, but there was nothing you could do. There weren’t any air conditioners—hell, I don’t think the place had screens, just a dirt floor and a refrigerator and a sink, and something was running that week, I don’t remember what. Maybe reds—”

  He paused, as if it was important that he remember the exact name of the fish, then shook it off and returned to his story: “—anyway, we must have caught forty pounds of fish that first night, filled up the freezer, then slept all day and went out the next night and they were running again, but there was no place to put ’em. The freezer was full, and there was nobody to give them to, so we had to throw ’em back, then go back to that hot, stinking cabin and try to sleep. Well, I was already foreseeing a week of horror, but Daddy knew I was a whiner, had made me swear on a Bible I wouldn’t say a word. By Tuesday, I was about to lose my mind, so was Michael. He was this skinny little runt back then, covered in spots, looked like he had the measles—”

  He threw his head back and laughed at the memory, we all did, able to see him as clearly as if he was standing before us: skinny and perplexed and determined. And covered in spots.

  “—but he was a fighter, Michael was, didn’t say a word, kept going out there night after night, and baiting them hooks, catching them reds and tossing them back, till finally—it must have been Thursday morning, right in the middle of the day—we were all laid out in our underwear, trying to sleep, when Daddy suddenly sat on his pallet and looked at his arm—” Gabe paused then, laughing too hard to speak, finally wheezed: “—and I bet there were fifty damn mosquitoes lighting there. He just stared at them a minute, and God, his face—it was like: the Death of the American Dream. Finally, he looked up, said: ‘Pack it up, boys, we’re heading home.’”

  We laughed all the way to the house, for it was impossible to resist the spell of one of Gabe’s stories: the snapping eyes, the sharp, nutty glances aside to make sure you’re following him; the bursts of hilarious, unexpected laughter when he comes upon some just-remembered absurdity, so infectious that you’re laughing your butt off before he even gets to the punch line. Mama calls it his magic, his Gabe magic, so powerful and affecting that by the time we got to the house that morning, I was no longer conscious of his bad hand, hardly remembered he had one.

  I wasn’t even flipped out about him being gay anymore, or the least bit aggravated when a nail in the trailer tire ended me and Curtis’s fishing trip before it had hardly begun. I was just too keyed to Mama and Gabe and wanting him to stay and worried he wouldn’t, and God in heaven, I wasn’t any good with this sort of thing. How and oh, how could I keep him entertained till Missy came home Wednesday night?

  So I just played the part of the mature adult with Curtis, assured him it was all right that he didn’t have a spare, had him drop me off at Grannie’s when we got back to town, where I took her porch steps two at a time, bursting into her living room, shouting: “Grannie! Grannie!”

  She immediately appeared at the kitchen door in her usual Saturday-morning attire: curlers and an old housecoat, a half-peeled potato in one hand and a paring knife in the other.

  “Uncle Gabe’s here!” I announced in a big, ringing voice. “He come back this morning! He’s with Mama, I saw him!”

  Grannie didn’t so much as blink at this extr
aordinary news, just made a little noise of interest in her throat, then went back to the kitchen sink that was piled high with red potatoes, me following behind.

  “Well, he ain’t there no more,” she informed me in a dry little voice as she went back to peeling her potato. “He’s laid out in the front bedroom, sound asleep.”

  “Here?” I asked in the purest amazement, though Grannie just offered a little sigh.

  “Yessir—come strolling up this morning like he never was gone a day. Got him a good job in New York teaching school, driving a nice car.” She pointed the tip of her knife to the window, where, sure enough, a square-shaped, silvery car was parked under the sweet gum tree.

  “Well, where’s Mama?” I asked, hoisting myself to the counter for a better look.

  Grannie didn’t answer for a moment, just concentrated on her potato, then let go another sigh. “Well, they must of had a fight,” she confided in a low, sorrowful voice. “She was always one to pick a fight, was Myra, with men. Got thet from her deddy. Thet red hair.”

  She said this with a regretful little shake of the head, as if it summed up the whole thing in a nutshell. I must say I was annoyed, and my face must have shown it, for when Grannie happened to glance at me, she was quick to make amends. “And Gabriel,” she added, “well, he can be an aggravation, I’ll grant you thet. Everbody always said I spoiled thet boy,” she admitted with another shake of her head. “I’m beginning to b’lieve they’se right.”

  It was so strange, hearing her talk about him with such exasperated affection, as much a shock as it had been when Gabe said Michael with that casual ease, that illuminating love. I knew then why Missy was so intent on bringing Gabe home: because no matter what other strange and alien things he had become up north, he was also family, he was kin. But at that point, I wasn’t at all sure that her fairy-tale scenario of him marrying Mama and living happily ever after would play out, neither was Grannie.