“The first word is ‘smash,’ ” I said, “and the second one is ‘the.’ ”
He grinned at me.
“Good job, see, I knew you’d get it eventually,” he said. “Okay, so the last word is KQUZT. K is R, Q is O, U is B, Z is I—”
“ ‘Smash the Robin,’ ” I said. “What in the heck is that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged.
“Maybe another code, or—”
I jumped up and hollered.
“That dadgum Robin statue!” I smacked myself on the forehead. “Tommy knew I’d want to smash it anyway. He probably did this code as a last resort, just in case I didn’t.”
He hurried and put on his shoes.
“Let’s go smash the Boy Wonder, then,” he said. “And then I can tell you about something else Short-Guy and I figured out.”
We went and told his ma where we was going, though I don’t think she really paid no attention on account that she was still yelling at whoever she was on the phone with. Then we went and hurried as fast as we could over the hill and back to my house.
We got to my porch and we was both all set to bust in through the door, but then I remembered that Sora was bad off, so I told him we had to be as quiet as church mice. Then he reminded me about them rats we caught at his church back in July that was squealing and carousing like a couple of drunk sailors home on leave. In Texas, which is where the loudest drunks live. But I told him they was rats, and I said mice, so we was having a wasteful conversation.
I gently pushed the door open and tried my absolute hardest to keep it from creaking, which was a stupid thing to try and do, ’cause that door had creaked ever since my great-grandpa had been running booze up into Chattanooga during Prohibition. But still, we tiptoed in and we was pretty sure we was in the clear. Sora wasn’t on the couch no more, so I reckoned she’d done gone up to bed.
Willie spied the Robin on the mantel and grabbed it. He turned it over and under, and then he shook it.
“Yeah, there’s something in there, definitely,” he said. “Dang, it’s a real shame to have to break it. I mean, look at this craftsmanship, and the way they got his eyes just right.”
I’d heard enough. I grabbed the statue and slammed it down on the ground in between us. Robin’s head exploded like the Joker had stuffed a grenade in his ear, and I felt real good about myself. Even if there wasn’t anything inside that darn statue, it was still plenty worth it.
But there was something in there.
It was a reel of tape, like what Willie used in his recorder. He bent over and picked it up.
“Will you look at that!” he said. “Look at this label, it says ‘For Johnny’s Ears Only.’ ”
“Well, my ears is itching to hear what’s on it, that’s for darn—”
There was a bloodcurdling scream that shot out from behind us. We both spun to see what it was. It was Sora. She hadn’t gone up to her room after all, she’d only been in the kitchen.
And I reckoned she was real mad that we’d just broke the one thing she and Tommy ever bought together.
“Oh, gee, I’m sorry, Sora. But it ain’t what it looks like,” I said.
She screamed again. She grabbed the doorjamb around her and bent over a little bit, probably to get her breath in order for another scream to come popping out.
“Listen, if you’d just stop screaming,” I said, and I went to get closer to her, thinking it might get her to quiet down a bit.
It didn’t. She screamed even louder.
“Hey, look, you gave it to me, and I can do with it what I want,” I said. Had more to say too, but I slipped a little when I got close to her and it made me forget what I was going to say. I looked down to see what was so slippery.
There was a puddle on the ground right underneath her.
She screamed again.
“Oh, dadgum, did you just pee yourself?” I asked. “Hey, it ain’t nothing to get this worked up over, we all do it sometimes.”
“No, you birdbrain!” she hollered, and her face was contorting up like a spasmodic banshee. “I’m having my baby!”
Willie dropped the tape. I just about dropped some poop into my pants. There’s a lot of things they teach you in school, but what to do when a girl has just peed herself and she’s having a baby? They must save that for senior year.
“Here,” I said. “Let’s get you onto the couch.” Actually, I screamed it. Not so much ’cause she was still screaming herself, but ’cause that was the only volume that felt about right. “Willie, call the doctor.”
Willie was already on it. He grabbed the phone and called up the doctor, but there wasn’t no answer.
“They must still be messing around with folks from earlier.”
She was still screaming, her whole body was tensing up, her legs was kicking at me. I tried to get away from her, but she grabbed me by the wrist and her nails started trying to draw blood.
“Call your ma, then,” I yelled.
He nodded and dialed his home number.
“Dang, it’s busy.”
“Oh my God!” Sora hollered. “Do something!” Then she screamed again.
“Hey, do you still have that book of medical facts I gave you?” Willie said.
“Yeah, it’s up in my room, keeping my desk level.”
He ran up the stairs and, after a second, came back down with the book that was three times the size of the Bible, which I always thought was wrong but didn’t never say it.
“Okay,” he said while Sora kept on screaming, “let’s see, let’s see. How are babies born? Uh, page two hundred seventy-five.”
“Hurry!” Sora and I screamed at the same time.
He flipped through them pages real fast and found the section.
“Okay, here goes.” He cleared his throat. “When a man and a woman love each other, and they’re ready to spend the rest of their lives together—”
“Dadgummit, Willie, skip to the end!”
He nodded and flipped another couple of pages.
“Um, it says to get to the doctor right away,” he said.
I was just about ready to start using some cusswords I’d sworn off of, both ’cause I was afraid Sora was going to cut my wrist with her nails so bad I’d die in my own living room and also ’cause I was afraid she might join me if we didn’t do something for her.
Right then, the phone rang.
Willie answered it.
“Hello, Cannon residence,” he said. “Oh, hey, Ma! I was just trying to call you.”
Sora screamed again and then I heard Mrs. Parkins holler into the phone.
“Yeah, she’s having her baby,” Willie said.
There was more hollering from Mrs. Parkins.
“Oh good, you’re gonna come on up?” Willie put the phone to his chest. “It’s going to be all right, my ma’s going to come up. She’s birthed about a hundred babies, including her own kids. We’ll be fine.”
Sora screamed again, but this time it was so panicked, and so loud, and so right on the edge of heaven and hell that it made all the other screaming she’d been doing seem like she was singing Christmas carols or something.
“It’s happening!” she said. “It’s happening, the baby is coming now!”
“Any chance you could hold it in for just a little longer?” Willie said. “Ma’s on her way.”
Another scream that made him turn just about white, which was a real feat.
Willie went back to the phone.
“Ma, she says the baby is coming right now. And she ain’t going to wait, no matter how nice I ask.” He listened for a bit. “Okay, I’ll put him on.”
He put the phone to my ear and I held it with my shoulder, ’cause my hands was occupied with getting ripped off my arms at that exact moment.
“Johnny, you’re going to have to listen to me and do exactly as I say,” Mrs. Parkins’s voice said.
“Okay, how soon you going to get here?” I asked.
“I’m not. I’m going t
o talk you through this. You’re going to have to deliver this baby.”
I was about to protest that I didn’t know nothing about birthing no babies, but I reckoned that’d get me slaughtered like a pig, so I agreed.
Now, I got to tell you. There’s some things that you do in life and you talk about it forever after. You brag about the part you played and how neat it was. You always make sure you remember every single detail so you can tell your story for the rest of your life.
This wasn’t one of those things.
Mrs. Parkins was in my ear, telling me what to do. To get my hands down there and grab the head, which was apparently already turning Sora inside out or something, from the looks of it, ’cause there was blood and all sorts of nasty stuff happening under her skirt. And then I had to hold on to it while she kept pushing, and that was real hard, ’cause the baby was the slipperiest thing I’d ever held in my entire life, including bullfrogs.
Sora kept screaming, and I wanted more than anything else to just pull that baby on out of her, but Mrs. Parkins kept telling me not to. So I held on to its head and waited while Sora looked at me like she hated me for not pulling on it. But Mrs. Parkins was older, so I listened to her.
The baby started turning on me, and I at first tried to hold it steady, but Mrs. Parkins told me to let it turn if it wanted to, so I did. Then Sora screamed another good one, and she kicked me right in the belly button, and the next thing I knew, I had a whole baby in my hands, from head to toe.
“Get something and start rubbing it. Get it warm and make sure it’s breathing.”
I pointed for Willie to hand me my work jacket off the back of the door. He handed me my church jacket instead, but I didn’t reckon it was time to start splitting hairs. I used my nice coat to get the goo and disgusting jelly off that little baby, and that’s when I realized what exactly it was.
“It’s a girl,” I said. And then, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if I didn’t start to cry.
Mrs. Parkins was crying on the phone, too.
“Good job,” she said. “Good job, Johnny. Make sure her mouth is clear, wrap her up, and let Sora hold her baby. I’ll be up there in a few minutes.”
The little girl still had her extension cord on her tummy, but I didn’t reckon I wanted to try cutting it, so I handed her over to Sora as she was. And then Sora started crying herself.
I looked over at Willie. He was blubbering like an idiot. Or like me. Either way, he was crying.
Sora kissed the little baby girl on her chest.
“What you going to name her?” Willie said.
“I don’t know,” she said. Then she looked at me. “What’s her name?”
It took me a second to realize she was asking me to give her baby a name, and I tried hard to not freak out. Then I realized what her name was. What it ought to be.
“Tammy,” I said. “If that’s all right with you.”
She nodded.
“Tammy Jane,” she said.
Mrs. Parkins and her daughter got there right about then and started hustling and bustling, got the cord tied off and cut, and got Sora to start letting the baby feed off her and such, even after I pointed out that wasn’t what Mrs. Macker would have said to do. But Mrs. Parkins told me even doctors don’t know everything. And then she told me how proud she was of me. It felt real good.
“I’ll tell you, you sure are lucky Johnny was here, aren’t you, Sora?” she said while she wrapped the baby up in a better blanket than my suit jacket. Sora didn’t say nothing. “Sora?” Mrs. Parkins said.
Sora’s head dropped to the side. Mrs. Parkins handed me Tammy Jane and checked Sora’s pulse.
“She’s passed out,” she said. She looked at the bloody mess that was Sora’s skirt and my couch. “She’s lost way too much blood. We need to get her to the hospital.”
I jumped up.
“Okay, let’s get going.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t have our car. Is your pa’s truck here?”
I ran and got the keys.
We hurried and got Sora loaded up in the back and Mrs. Parkins made Willie and the baby get in the front. She told Willie to hold her steady for the ride.
“You want me to ride in the back with Sora?” I asked. “Keep her steady?”
“You’re exhausted. You’ve already done a good job. Now stay here and rest. There’s nothing more you can do.”
I didn’t like that too much, but you just don’t argue with Mrs. Parkins, so I went and sat on my porch.
“You know where my tape player is, don’t you?” Willie yelled out the window as she backed our truck up to take off. “Go ahead and listen to the tape. I won’t mind.”
They went off in a cloud of dust and left me all by myself. I reckoned he’d done forgot what he was going to tell me that he and Short-Guy figured out, but it didn’t seem near as important now. It dawned on me that everybody I knew was at the hospital right then, except for the Three Caballeros, who was looking for them keys. And there I was, just watching the world go by on my porch. It was the biggest letdown I’d ever had.
After a little bit of staring down the road, I headed back inside. There was still blood and birthing mess and junk everywhere. Somebody was going to have to clean all that up. Maybe I could leave it for Sora when she got back, considering she made most of it. I went over and got the tape we’d found in the Robin, and then I headed back over to the Parkinses’ house.
I popped the window open in Willie’s bedroom and climbed inside. I got his tape player ready to go, loaded up that tape, and then I strapped on the headphones so I could listen.
There was some noise at first while he must have been working on figuring out how to work the recorder. And then, for the first time in six months, I heard Tommy’s voice.
“Hey there, little brother. If you’re listening to this—”
I clicked it off for a minute. I was probably really tired and worn out, and that’s why I was crying like a girl again.
Which I didn’t honestly mind. I was finally starting to realize that doing things like a girl wasn’t the worst thing you could do. In fact, sometimes it was the best thing.
Finally, after a bit, I got myself put back together and got ready to hear the rest of the tape. I backed it up, flipped a switch, and started it over again. While I was listening to it, I started imagining what it must have looked like when he was recording it. Tried to imagine the room, the air he was breathing, everything. It wasn’t as hard as it sounded, since I could hear some things happening in the background and such. Best as I could figure, it went something like this.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE TAPE
Tommy sat in his room on the base down in Mobile. It was late, the clock in the room chimed midnight. He cussed at it, ’cause he’d always hated clocks that chimed. Especially when it was late. And especially when he was drunk. Which he was. That’s why he accidentally hit the microphone with his glass that was half full of whiskey. He cussed again.
He put his feet up on the table, grabbed hold of the microphone, and held it while he took another sip of his drink. The ice clicked around in his glass, which must have worked to make him feel a little less frustrated and a little more focused. He cleared his throat and then he began.
“Well, little brother, if you’re listening to this, then I reckon I’m as dead as Grandma. I also reckon this fool’s mission we’re sending these poor folks on failed, just like most of us think it will.”
He sighed and looked around the room. He spied the Superman action figure I’d given him just a couple weeks before. He got up and grabbed it, then he sat back down.
“I’m holding on to that Superman you gave me. Since you don’t remember nothing from before Ma died, I don’t reckon you remember when I gave it to you. It was the day I left you all in Guantánamo, down in Cuba. You was begging me not to go, begging me to tell why I was leaving, and I couldn’t do it. I’d promised Ma I’d keep my trap shut. So instead I gave you th
is. Thought, somehow, it’d make it easier on you.”
He coughed as the memory started making his heart hurt something fierce. He wiped at his eyes.
“When they told me about the accident, I was sitting in my room in Grandma’s house, where we live now, and the first thing I asked about was this dadgum toy. I don’t know why, but I wanted to know if he was with you. They told me he was, and somehow I felt better. Like you wasn’t as alone as—like I hadn’t abandoned you when you needed me the most.”
He sighed and tossed the toy onto his bed. Superman bounced a couple of times, which made him let out a chuckle.
“Anyway, turns out, I’m doing that exact thing right now. Abandoning you when you probably need me more than ever before. And I’m sorry about that.” He coughed again. “So, so sorry.”
He poured himself another glass of whiskey. He took a sip and let it settle in, then he went on.
“Anyway, as I hope you’ve figured out by now, you aren’t Pa’s son. You’re the son of that coward, Captain Morris. I’ve known that since before you were born, ’cause Ma was dating Morris in secret while Pa was in the hospital. And she let slip to me that she was pregnant when there wasn’t no chance it was Pa’s baby. But she promised me she’d break it off with Morris if I’d keep it secret. Which is why I ain’t never told you. Out of respect for her.
“Of course, then after we was all a nice little family in Guantánamo, I found out she was still seeing that scoundrel. So I left you behind, and I’ll always be sorry for it. Left you to stay with her, to look up to him, and to not have a single person around that would tell you the truth about nothing. Nobody to keep you out of trouble.
“But now, whether you know it or not, you’ve got trouble. ’Cause it turns out Captain Morris wasn’t just a coward and a scoundrel. He was also working for the Trafficante family, one of the biggest Mafia groups in Havana. And he screwed up. He messed up on a dosage for Nell Bianca, Santo Trafficante’s mistress, and she died. And Santo loved Nell more than he even loved his own wife, and he was heartbroken. Couldn’t accept that it was an accident, he was convinced Morris killed her on purpose. So he swore a blood oath that he’d have revenge on Captain Morris, and even on his children.
The Struggles of Johnny Cannon Page 19