How’d she know all that?
My face must have shown how confused I was ’cause she reached across the table and grabbed my hand.
“I know, it’s a real shock. But I’m sure he would have wanted you to know,” she said. Then she smiled. “He always said you weren’t just his brother, you were his closest friend.”
And that did it for me. Got me right in the throat. I couldn’t listen no more or else I’d make a danged fool of myself. I got up and left a perfectly good hot dog waiting to get eaten.
“I got to run my pants to Mrs. Parkins,” I said, then I went upstairs, changed into my jeans, and carried my folded-up pants out the front door as fast as I could.
I got down to the Parkinses’ house in time to catch the tail end of dinner, which was good ’cause I was still powerful hungry. There was only one problem. They had company. Specifically, they had the Mackers over. Well, Mrs. Macker and Martha. Mr. Macker was still in Montgomery.
Sitting next to Martha was a little like President Kennedy sitting next to Nikita Khrushchev. It was cold and quiet between us, even though the whole table was talking to each other and laughing as hard as ever. We was in the middle of a Cold War.
After everybody got done eating, I asked Mrs. Parkins if she’d mind getting my pants good and clean. Mrs. Macker looked sort of funny when I asked that and said it was time for her and Martha to head on home, which was fine by me, ’cause I was getting tired of straining my ears to hear if Martha might eventually apologize or something. Which she didn’t, by the way.
Mrs. Parkins took my pants to go wash them, and me and Willie went to work on some SuperNegro stories in his room. He wanted to talk about the letter, or about the Gormans, or about Martha or something. But I wasn’t up to it. I needed to get away into the world of Mercury and them aliens he was hunting.
After a little while, Mrs. Parkins knocked on the door right at the best part of the story just like she always did and Willie had to turn off his tape recorder.
“Doggone it, Ma,” he said. “What do you need?”
She opened the door.
“Johnny, this was in your pants pocket. I don’t reckon you want me to wash it, do you?”
She handed me that letter. There was a great big purple stain on it from the grape juice.
“Oh, thank you, ma’am,” I said. I took the letter and tossed it over by the tape recorder. She left us alone ’cause that’s what a good ma knows to do when your boys is working on something important like a SuperNegro story.
Willie picked up the letter.
“What’s this?” he asked, and pointed to the purple stain that was at the bottom.
“Oh, some grape juice spilled on me. Ain’t nothing.”
“No, not the stain,” he said, and he held the letter out closer to me. “This.” He was pointing at the edge of the stain where there was some letters that hadn’t been there before. They was bright white against the purple of the grape juice. They said:
solitary fort is
“What in tarnation—” I said. He looked at the letter again.
“Oh, of course,” he said, and he slapped his forehead. “Invisible ink.”
“Huh?” I asked. “That’s a real thing?”
“Sure, you just mix up baking soda and water, then you write your message with like a toothpick or something, and it don’t show up unless you heat it up. Or paint it with grape juice.”
He hopped up and went to his kitchen, then he came back with a bottle of Welch’s. He poured it on a rag and wiped it all over the letter. And, sure enough, a whole nother message came shining through.
If a solitary fort is a Scottish lake,
Then what is its resident?
JVSJN IND KQUZT
Me and Willie stared at that message for a bit, both of us trying to make heads or tails of it.
“You think it’s the first letter thing again?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“No, it don’t work out. Plus that last line is obviously a cipher.”
“A what?” I asked.
“A cipher. A code where you substitute out the letters in your word for other letters.”
A lightbulb turned on in my head.
“Like the decoder rings?” I asked. “Tommy was always into that kind of stuff. He had the Captain Midnight decoder ring, the Little Orphan Annie decoder ring, even the Ovaltine decoder ring. He loved them things, collected them since he was four.”
The way them decoder rings would work was that there was a little disk with the alphabet on it, set to turn inside of a rim that had the alphabet on it again. You’d turn the ring around and then make your message by substituting the letters on the inside for what you had on the rim.
“Then it makes sense that’s what he’d do, don’t it?” he said.
“It shouldn’t be too hard to figure it out,” I said.
Boy was I wrong.
We spent the rest of the day working on that line, substituting letters this way and that to make it work. But it just wouldn’t do it. We literally used all twenty-six letters as the substitute for A, but no matter which way we did it, it didn’t make no sense. Finally, Willie snapped his pencil in half.
“We’re doing this all wrong,” he said. I looked over at the paper he was working on. He’d only been doing the middle section of letters, the IND.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s only so many three-letter words,” he said. “So I’ve tried every single one I can think of to get a hint of what the substitute would be. But it don’t work out. If I say the IND is ‘and,’ so I equals A, it don’t let it stay as ‘and.’ Same as if I do ‘but’ or ‘the’ or any other three-letter word.”
It was getting dark outside and we was both tired, so I didn’t feel up to pointing out how silly he was sounding.
“So, what does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Short-Guy gave me a book about cryptography. Maybe I’ll look and see what it says.” He let out a great big yawn. “Tomorrow.”
I looked at his watch. It was well after eleven. I didn’t have to get up early ’cause of the holiday, of course, but Willie told me his ma decided to make him get caught up on some of his English assignments. Willie always said that doing your school at home was the worst thing that could happen to a kid. And he’d had polio, so that’s saying something.
I went home and thought about reading a comic or two, but my brain wasn’t too keen on letting that letter sit by itself. Instead, even after I got washed up for bed, while I was snug as a bug in a rug under my covers, I couldn’t fall asleep. Them letters from that coded message was swimming in my brain and begging for me to work on it. And I tried to not do it, but after a couple of hours of staying awake staring at my ceiling, I couldn’t take it no more. So I got up and started trying to break the code again.
It wasn’t no use, of course. I didn’t have the brainpower I needed, especially that long after midnight. But I couldn’t fall asleep, either. Finally, I had one of them ideas that you really only get after midnight when you’re still awake but you shouldn’t be. I decided to go ask Tommy.
The whole house was asleep when I went down and got the keys from the back room and took off in the truck to the cemetery. All the way down there, I was praying that the ghosts would have maybe taken the night off since it was a Sunday and all. I really just needed to talk to Tommy alone. Even though he wasn’t there. So maybe it was just about being alone myself.
When I got to the cemetery, I realized that wasn’t going to happen.
CHAPTER SIX
CAMPING BUDDIES
There was two trucks and a car parked outside the cemetery when I got there. And when I say they was parked, I mean that whoever’d driven them there had enough sense to keep from hitting each other and to put their trucks in park before they got out.
When I got out of my truck, I could hear some voices coming from inside the gates, singing at the top of their lungs. And not the pre
tty kind of singing like you’d get at church or on the radio. They was singing the kind of songs that only came bubbling from the bottom of a bottle of Jack Daniels. I knew, ’cause that was the only kind of singing Tommy used to ever do.
Now, it probably would have been a good idea for me to turn around and head on back home. Try to get some sleep or something and let them fellas mess themselves up alone. But of course that ain’t what I did. Instead I snuck into the cemetery, hoping to find whatever fools was raising the ruckus and keeping them poor dead souls from resting in peace.
As I made my way around some of the bigger tombstones, I finally figured out that them crazy fellas was having a party in the graveyard and they was having it over in the Cannon corner. I wondered if they knew they was drinking over my grandma. She’d probably appreciate them pouring some out onto the ground for her.
I made my way over to where I could see them fellas and where they was at, and when I did, both of those facts stopped me dead in my tracks. ’Cause them fellas was having their little party over at Tommy’s grave. And them fellas was Mr. Braswell, Ethan Pinckney, and—
It took me a second to figure out where I knew the last guy from, and then I realized. It was the fella that had driven Sora to the graveyard. I looked back at the car. Sure enough, it was a gold Buick LeSabre.
I stepped out into the moonlight ’cause I couldn’t quite see if there was anybody else up there with them. Then Ethan spotted me.
“Hey!” he hollered. “Hey, there’s the—the—uh—” Then he took to giggling.
Mr. Braswell turned and saw me. He cussed.
“Johnny Cannon, what in the”—he cussed again—“are you doing here? You’ve got school in the morning.”
“No I don’t, tomorrow’s Labor Day,” I said. That set Ethan to giggling real hard.
Sora’s driver looked at me.
“Hey,” he said, and he swung the bottle of Jack in the air. “You’re the kid that gave my girl”—he hiccuped—“my friend a ride out of this place, aren’t you? Come on over here. I never got the chance to really show you my appreciatitude.”
I wasn’t scared of drunk fellas, thanks to all them times with Tommy. I’d learned that they was real easy to push over if you needed to. Or if you just needed a good laugh. I walked up to Tommy’s grave.
“What are y’all doing here?” I asked.
“Having a reunion of the All-Winners Squad,” Mr. Braswell said.
Ethan hiccuped and nodded.
“The what?” I asked.
“Ah, not so good at history as you thought, huh?” Mr. Braswell said with a sneer. “Well then, let me educate you. After all, that’s my job, right?”
“And my job is to administer the sacraments,” Ethan said, then he started crying again. Sora’s driver went over, patted him on the back, put the bottle of Jack in his mouth, and tilted his head back to help him drink. After a long gulp, Ethan coughed up half of it, then nodded and said, “Thanks.”
Mr. Braswell went and put his hand on Tommy’s tombstone.
“When me, Tommy, and Ethan were kids, we found a box of my dad’s comics in my attic. And in there, we found the greatest two comics that have ever been created.”
“Action Comics number one, the first appearance of Superman?” I asked, getting real excited. “Or Detective Comics number twenty-seven, the first appearance of Batman. Or both, oh my gosh, you guys found both, didn’t you?”
“No, idiot,” Mr. Braswell said. I wondered how many times he’d felt like saying that when he was teaching and sober. If he was sober when he was teaching. “We found All Winners Comics numbers nineteen and twenty-one.” He grinned like he expected me to wet myself or something.
“Never heard of them,” I said.
He groaned.
“See, this generation has no clue about the important things in life,” he said. “Those were the comics that had the greatest superhero team ever created, the All-Winners Squad. Captain America, the Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, Whizzer, and Miss America.”
“Human Torch was my favorite,” Ethan said. “He was a robot.”
“How could he be the Human Torch if he was a robot?” I asked. “Shouldn’t he be more like the Robo-Torch or something?”
“Anyway,” Mr. Braswell said. “We read those comic books over and over and over again together. And we decided we were going to be the new All-Winners Squad.” He patted Tommy’s gravestone. “Tommy was Captain America. I was the Human Torch.”
“I was Whizzer,” Ethan said. I looked at his soiled pants. Yeah, that nickname made sense.
“And we were as thick as thieves,” Mr. Braswell said.
I glanced over at Sora’s driver.
“Apparently so,” I said. “Was this here stranger the Sub-Mariner?”
Mr. Braswell stumbled over and put his arm around the fella’s neck.
“We didn’t know him back then,” Mr. Braswell said. “But we do now. This man is Rudy.”
Rudy gently pushed Mr. Braswell off of him and pulled out his hanky to wipe off the sweat that Mr. Braswell had left behind. He reached out his hand to shake mine.
“Well, I’m Johnny Cannon,” I said. “Captain America’s little brother.”
“He’s his sidekick!” Ethan hollered. “He’s Bucky!”
“No, I ain’t nobody’s sidekick,” I said. “I’m just Johnny.”
“Well, Just Johnny,” Rudy said, “it’s nice to finally meet Tommy’s brother. And nice that Captain America brought this team together.”
Ethan and Mr. Braswell both nodded like he’d just said something profound. I waited a second to see if it would sink into my brain, but it didn’t.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
“Your brother,” Rudy said. “He connected us. Just like good ol’ Scott Rogers—”
“Steve Rogers,” I said.
“Right, just like Steve Rogers, Captain America himself, did for the All-Winners Squad.”
Ethan stumbled forward and embraced Tommy’s gravestone.
“Thank you, Cap,” he said. Them other fellas laughed.
I wasn’t laughing.
“You’re saying you was mixed up with Tommy?” I asked Rudy.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “We became friends in Mobile last year. Drinking buddies, even.”
Mobile. Why was everything coming up from Mobile?
“Why was you in Mobile?”
“I was checking on a military operation for my father’s business. Tommy was involved and we quickly became close.”
“A military operation?” I asked.
“The Bay of Pigs invasion!” Mr. Braswell blurted out. “Our own Captain America flew in the Bay of Pigs invasion.”
“And he died doing it,” Ethan said, rubbing the gravestone like it was a dog or something. “Can you believe it?”
Of course I could, but I couldn’t let on.
“Really?” I asked. I tried to get my sad eyes on. It was easier since it was so late.
“Oh, gee,” Mr. Braswell said. “That’s a lot for you to take, isn’t it?” He grabbed the bottle of Jack from Rudy and came over to me. “Here, have a sip.”
He shoved the bottle in my mouth and tilted it up in the air, and before I knew it, my mouth was full of that disgusting, burning, halfway-to-poisonous junk.
Worst. Teacher. Ever.
As soon as his back was turned, I spit it out all over the ground. And my shirt. Rudy noticed but didn’t say nothing.
“So,” I said, and wiped my mouth off. Wished I had some water to drink or something. “Why was the Bay of Pigs invasion any of your pa’s business?”
“Let’s just say he has a professional interest in seeing Cuba liberated,” Rudy said. “But I’d really rather not talk about it. I’m done working for him, and I’m not about to get involved again.”
What was that supposed to mean? I tried to move past it.
“Then why are you here?” I asked, hoping them other two fellas didn’t notice. They
was both singing again in front of Tommy’s stone. Something about all the girls they’d loved before or something. “Keeping tabs on her?” I pulled out that picture of Sora I’d found at the tent by Snake Pond and showed it to him.
He looked really shocked and grabbed the photograph.
“That’s a really long story,” he said. Then he put the picture into his back pocket, pulled out a flask, and took a sip. “But right now? Right now I’m helping the Whisper over here—”
“The Whizzer,” I said.
“Right, the Whizzer . . . forget about his troubles and see that he’ll live to pray another day.”
Ethan fell back against the ground, covered his eyes, and groaned.
“Ugh, I screwed up the sacraments,” he said. “Y’all don’t have any idea how big a deal that is. I mean, I’m probably cursed now. And not just me, but my kids, too. It’s like Deuteronomy 5:9 says, God visits ‘the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.’ So even my grandkids are screwed.”
“That’s a lot like what my father says,” Rudy said. “ ‘The children shall pay for the sins of their fathers.’ That’s his motto, I believe.”
“That’s a pretty creepy motto,” I said. “I hope he didn’t say it while he was holding you in the hospital.”
“My father is a pretty creepy man,” he said. “However, thankfully, he wasn’t around when I was born. So I at least had a few months before I inherited his brand of creepiness.”
“God, I hope that verse isn’t true,” Mr. Braswell said. “My grandfather was arrested for public lewdness. I’d hate to get pinned for that myself.”
I think Rudy was about to say something, but right then, Ethan puked all over Tommy’s gravestone. Mr. Braswell started laughing like a maniac. He pulled Ethan up to his feet once he was all done.
“Well, you hurled first, so that means you’re driving,” he said. “Let’s get going. I have to make an appearance at the Labor Day shindig tomorrow and my hangover’s already going to be worse than death.”
Ethan mumbled something and his eyes started drooping. Mr. Braswell slapped his face a few times.
“Come on, wakey-wakey.” He grabbed the flask from Rudy’s hand and poured some into Ethan’s mouth. Ethan’s eyes jerked open. “There we go,” Mr. Braswell said. “Down the ol’ rain pipe.”
The Struggles of Johnny Cannon Page 11