Even though we had a list from the doctor, this time wasn’t no different. Well, it was a little different, ’cause Pa kept asking Sora what she thought of things, and she kept saying she didn’t have no opinion about nothing, whatever we thought was best. Which was pretty dadgum frustrating, especially when he asked her about macaroni. ’Cause who doesn’t have an opinion about macaroni?
“Well, dagnab it,” I said, “what kind of food do you like? There ain’t a whole lot I know how to cook.”
She cast a sheepish glance to Pa and said, nearly as quiet as a church mouse, “I don’t mind cooking.”
Now, why hadn’t I thought of that before? She was a girl, after all. Even though she was pregnant, cooking was part of her programming.
Pa jumped on that idea like a barn cat onto a cricket and made me put away all them groceries we’d already picked out, including the three bags of potato chips I’d wrangled. Then we followed her around the store and she took to picking out the weirdest ingredients I’d ever seen someone put in a basket. Things like cabbage and ginger and scallions and just about everything else that I never would have picked as fit for eating in that store.
Then we went down the baby aisle and Pa got the darn fool idea in his head that we ought to start buying stuff for the little tadpole before it was even born. I was just about to finally put my foot down when somebody yelled at us.
“Johnny!” It was Martha. She was there with her ma. As soon as she saw Sora was with us, she dragged Mrs. Macker down the aisle and introduced her.
“Oh dear, Martha was right,” Mrs. Macker said, “you’re as skinny as a rail.”
It was like I was the only one that saw her belly. Was folks just getting blinded by the fact she was Korean or something? ’Cause that would be racist.
“Good afternoon,” Pa said, ’cause he believed in keeping the Southern in hospitality. “How’s old Gary doing?”
“Still in Montgomery,” Mrs. Macker said with a sigh. “He told me last night that the men working on the project just aren’t getting it, so he’ll have to stay another few weeks.”
“Montgomery ain’t that far from here,” he said. “Why don’t he just commute?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and her face made it look like she wasn’t too happy with her own answer. “You should ask him that question.”
Pa must have sensed the awkwardness, ’cause he cleared his throat like he only did when things was getting dangerously close to being about feelings.
“Now, you know a lot more than I do on this subject,” he said. “What should we start stocking up on so my grandbaby has everything it needs?”
That was the first time I’d heard him call it his grandbaby. It was actually kind of nice, to tell the truth. Mrs. Macker seemed relieved that the subject had changed too.
“Formula,” Mrs. Macker said. “Lots of formula. Your little bundle is going to be hungry.”
Sora touched her chest. “I thought—”
“Usually they give you a shot of Delestrogen to dry them up, since formula is more consistent with the vitamins and minerals your baby needs,” Mrs. Macker said. All of a sudden she seemed less like Martha’s mom and more like a doctor or something. “As I used to always warn young mothers, there are some side effects, like nausea, headaches, swelling, and changes in your menstr—”
“Mom!” Martha said, her face as red as a tomato. I was glad she’d stopped her, ’cause my ears was burning.
“Sorry, old habits from a life before my own baby was born,” Mrs. Macker said, and patted Martha’s hair, then she went back to being a mom. “You’ll also need to get some diapers. After all, as much as they eat, that’s how much they—”
“Can I go look at the comic books?” I asked.
Pa nodded. He was real intent on listening as they was discussing which diapers was best and all that jazz, and I hurried to get away from there. It had only just struck me that there was going to be an actual crying, pooping baby in our house. And that thought terrified me something fierce.
I went to the rack and looked to find a comic I hadn’t read yet. Which was practically impossible ’cause I read them every single day. So I picked up one I’d already read and tried to see how good I remembered it.
I got to the fourth page when Sheriff Tatum arrived, and it didn’t look like he was there to buy milk or anything. He was looking for Sam, the grocer. They went and started talking in the corner, which was just a few feet from me. And, since the comic book wasn’t very interesting at all, I aimed my ears at listening to them.
“Okay, tell me what’s missing,” Sheriff Tatum said, and he opened his notebook to scribble in.
“Two dozen cans of baked beans, a case of hot dogs, three packs of bread, and a box of cigarettes.”
“And it was all stolen this morning?”
“Yes sir,” Sam said. He wiped his forehead with his apron. “The truck came in from Montgomery and while I was paying the driver, somebody took it.”
Sheriff Tatum grabbed an apple off one of the racks and started eating it. Sam scrunched up his eyebrows but didn’t say nothing, ’cause you can’t never say nothing to the sheriff.
“Sounds like a vagrant,” Sheriff Tatum said. “Probably already moved on, if I had to guess. But I’ll go looking in the woods and see what I can stir up.”
“Will you let me know what you find?”
“If there is anything, sure.” Sheriff Tatum put his notebook back in his pocket. “Otherwise, well, I wouldn’t want to waste your time.”
“But—”
I didn’t get to listen no more ’cause Pa started hollering for me. He and Sora was in the checkout line with two baskets and a buggy full of stuff. I went over to see what he wanted.
“I ain’t got enough cash for all this,” Pa said.
“If you’re aiming to put it all back, you can do that yourself,” I said.
He laughed. “No, just run out and get the spare cash from the truck.”
He kept a couple of fifties under the seat, in case of emergency. I never thought grocery shopping would be an emergency, but I reckon things change when there’s a baby on the way. I went out to get the money.
I went around the block to where we was parked and fished out the two fifties. I started back to the grocery store, but then I saw someone sitting in the alley next to Gorman’s Auto Shop. It was Eddie, and from the looks of it, he was crying.
And you can’t un-see things, no matter how hard you try. I learned that lesson when my grandma walked through the house in just her underwear. Try as you might, some things will stay with you till the day you die.
And, when it comes to folks crying in alleys, once you’ve spied it, it’s on you to do something about it.
After a few seconds of debating, I remembered that he’d helped get me out of hot water in school, so I went over to where he was and tapped him with my foot. Maybe it was a little harder than I intended, but it’s the thought that counts.
“What?” Eddie said, rubbing his leg.
“You all right?” I asked. I noticed that his jaw was sprouting up a real nice bruise from where Bob had socked him.
He sniffed real hard, wiped his eyes, and made his voice sound as tough as he could.
“I’m fine.”
I reckoned that was the end of that, so I turned to walk away. Then something in my gut stopped me. Maybe it was my conscience. Or the potato chips I’d had for breakfast. Either way, I turned back to him.
“You know, there’s a lot of things you deserve, since you’re such a nasty person,” I said to him. “Getting tarred and feathered, boiled in oil, run out of town wearing a dress, just a whole mess of stuff.” Then I took a deep breath, ’cause the next thing I was going to say was going to take a lot out of me. “But you sure as heck didn’t deserve to get punched in the face by your pa. No kid does.”
He nodded.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said. “Ever.”
I went to
walk off, feeling right good about myself. But then he must have felt something in his own gut too, ’cause he stopped me.
“Johnny?” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Have you ever wished you wasn’t related to your own dad?”
Now, Eddie probably thought he was talking about Pa, and the answer to that question was no, I hadn’t never wished that. But I knew the truth, that my real father was that scoundrel Captain Morris. And there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t look in the mirror and hate every part of me that came down from him.
“Sometimes,” I said.
“What do you do about it?”
I had to think about that for a bit.
“Ain’t much you can do about it. Blood’s blood.”
He looked down at the ground again and I got scared he was fixing to cry.
“But,” I said, “just ’cause you got a polecat’s blood in your veins don’t mean you got to smell like him. Remember that.”
He grinned and seemed a little relieved by that.
“Thanks,” he said. He sat quiet for a second, then he looked at me real funny. “Remember back when we used to hang out?”
“Yeah,” I said. Once upon a time he’d been the only friend I had, back before me and Willie got close and such.
“Whatever happened?”
“Life changes,” I said. “People change.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It stinks. ’Cause things don’t ever change for the better.”
There wasn’t no arguing with that. In fact, for the first time in a long time, I remembered how much him and me was alike. Which was a problem.
I kicked him in the leg again just to keep the universe balanced. That was better. I turned and ran off.
I got back to the grocery store, we got it all paid for, and then we loaded up the truck and headed home. When we got there, the other two Caballeros were waiting for us on our porch. And Short-Guy, of course. Or, to keep with the theme, hombre pequeño. Which Carlos told me means Short-Guy.
“We need to have another meeting?” Pa said when he got out of the truck. Short-Guy nodded. Pa turned to me. “Go ahead and unload the groceries.”
Him and them other fellas went into the living room and I started carrying in all the bags from the truck. Sora sat in the kitchen and watched me put everything away.
“Dang, why’d we get so much tuna?” I asked. We must have bought eighteen cans. And they weighed a ton. Oh well, it was getting my muscles bigger, I guess.
“I’ve been craving tuna,” she said. “And macaroni.”
I put all them cans on the shelf, then Willie’s voice in my head slapped me across the face and I turned to look at her.
“Wait, I thought you said you didn’t have no feelings about macaroni.”
She blinked a few times like she was thinking real hard.
“I didn’t. But the baby did, and when you mentioned it, I knew what it was it wanted.”
I wasn’t sure if that made sense or not, ’cause I wasn’t no doctor, so I let it slip on by. I’d ask Willie about it later.
I just about got all the groceries onto the shelf when Pa called me into the living room. He pointed next to him on the couch.
“I really think this is a bad idea,” Short-Guy said.
“I don’t care,” Pa said. “This involves him. And I ain’t going to hide things from him again. I think we all can say that was a bad idea last time.”
My stomach started knotting up again.
“What y’all talking about?” I asked. “You in trouble again?”
They all laughed, but not like they thought it was funny, but like you do when you ask a fella that just got bit by a bear if it hurt. Like you do when you just heard the biggest understatement of the year. And my stomach turned into a double square knot.
“I need you to go to a meeting with me tomorrow,” Mr. Thomassen said. I waited for him to explain, but he didn’t do it.
“When? After school?”
“Actually, I’m going to pull you out of school for it. We have to meet someone in Birmingham.”
My mouth was going dry. I looked over at Short-Guy. As usual, his face didn’t give me no answers.
“What’s going on?”
Pa put his arm around me and I felt a little better.
“You know how we’ve been doing some stuff as the Three Caballeros?” he asked.
Mr. Thomassen stopped him.
“I think it would be better for him to find out at the meeting,” he said.
Pa didn’t look too happy about that, but he was a military man, so he nodded and shut up.
“No worries,” Carlos said. “Everything is under control.”
My mouth was even more dry. Like I’d tried to eat a Sahara pizza or something.
“Can I go get a glass of water?” I asked.
“Sure,” Mr. Thomassen said. “Provided you’ll go to the meeting with me.”
I nodded and headed into the kitchen. Sora wasn’t in there, but I reckoned she went upstairs to her room or something. I grabbed me a glass and tried to think about something besides the fact that my stomach was tearing apart. I looked over at the shelf of groceries and started counting things, just for the heck of it.
I got to the tuna and only counted twelve cans. I went over and moved some things around, but I couldn’t find hide nor hair of the other six cans we’d bought.
I heard the front door slam and them fellas drive away. Pa came in and gave me a big hug.
“I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything more,” he said. “I want to, but I got to trust the men that know better than me about these things.”
Them tuna cans had successfully taken my mind off everything else completely.
“How many cans of tuna’d we buy?” I asked, and pulled out of his hug.
He blinked a couple of times.
“I don’t know, eighteen maybe?”
“There’s only twelve.”
“Oh, then maybe we only bought twelve.”
I looked around at the bags of groceries.
“I think we’re short a bag, too.”
He went and opened the fridge to get himself a Coke.
“Well, we can probably go get it from Sam tomorrow. He’s real good about keeping track of those sorts of things.”
“No, I mean we brought the bag here, but now it’s gone.”
He popped the cap off his bottle and took a sip.
“What are you trying to say? Somebody came in here and stole our tuna?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe Sora took off with it.”
“Johnny,” he said.
“Look, Sam was just telling the sheriff that somebody stole some groceries from him this morning. And now we done had some of ours go missing.”
“And you think Sora stole from Sam, too?”
Okay, that sounded stupid.
“No, I ain’t saying that, I’m just saying it’s a strange turn of events.”
He put down his Coke and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” he said. “You don’t need to worry about this meeting.”
Of course that’s what he thought it was about. ’Cause it would make perfect sense that I was taking my fears about a meeting with Mr. Thomassen and some stranger and taking it out on our groceries.
But I wasn’t. I was ate up over tuna. And over Willie’s voice that was yelling in my head. And over Sora.
And maybe over that meeting, sure.
Definitely over the meeting.
My stomach went back to its square knot.
CHAPTER THREE
ONE IN A MILLION
It was a little before lunchtime and me and Mr. Thomassen was sitting in front of the big window at Nicole’s Diner, which was just on the outskirts of Birmingham. We could see the railroad tracks from where we was, and the train coming through a tunnel that was made for it in the side of a hill. It was real pleasant, almost like looking at a painting or something. Exce
pt that I was jittery and nervous and not sure what to do with my hands at all. So it was exactly like looking at a painting.
Mr. Thomassen was sipping on some coffee and looking over the menu and I was halfway through my fourth Coke. And we’d only been there for fifteen minutes.
“So, when is this fella going to get here?” I asked.
“He’ll get here when he gets here,” he said. That was a waste of a conversation.
“And you ain’t going to tell me even a smidgen of something to prepare me for this here meeting? What if I slip up and say something stupid?”
He tried to hide a smile.
“I have a feeling my chances are better the less you know,” he said. “There’s not very many stupid things you could say right now that would make this whole thing go south.”
Didn’t make me feel no better. I looked around the room and tried to find something that would make me feel less like I was about to nose-dive into the Grand Canyon.
“What’cha think about that wall they built in Berlin?” I asked after I spied a headline. Apparently the Soviets was building a wall and separating Berlin, Germany, into two sides, one that would be for us folk to visit and the other that was just for the Commies. And they did it without warning nobody, so there was whole families that was separated, kids from their parents, brothers from their sisters. Maybe forever.
“It makes sense,” he said. “It’s almost impossible to coexist with your enemy. Especially when they’d very much like to see you dead.”
I nodded. That rang true with history, for sure. Which reminded me.
“Hey, did you know today is the day the Germans beat up the Russians during World War One? It was the Battle of Tannenberg, see, and they was—”
“Oh look, they’re here,” he said, and I forgot all about the Germans.
I could see through the window three black LeSabres with Florida license plates pull into the lot and park. Then a whole mess of fellas in suits, most of them built like battleships, got out and came into the diner. They spied where we was sitting, then they went around and talked to the other folk that was sitting at other tables. Then those folks all cleared out of the diner real quick. Finally it was just me and Mr. Thomassen. And he never stopped sipping his coffee.
The Struggles of Johnny Cannon Page 5