Seagull: A Southern Novel

by Paul, Lawton

  That worked. He let go of me and stood a little taller and shrugged his shoulders.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "The picture of you and the boxer. You were sitting in the back. How come you never mentioned the boxing thing?"

  "Where'd you find the picture?

  "In the living room closet."

  "It wasn't me," he said, his eyes suddenly cold and hard, like the other day when he handled the rich guy at the market. Then Tyler yells at us from the other end of the dock. "What are y'all girls doing down there? The tango?"

  "Your spotlight is aimed all wrong. And watch your tone or I'll come down there and kick some ass," the old man fired back. Then he turned to me, "Go get the gloves and stop talking shit."

  We all knew AJ had mind-probe powers. She always seemed to know what we were up to. But I never realized it until right then, the old man had power too. Most of the time he was all soft smile and slouching in his chair, but then he could flip a switch and suddenly he was bigger and stronger—could put a little fear into you.

  The next morning before school I got up early and went right to the closet. I was going to show the old man the picture of him in boxing shorts and then he'd have to tell me the truth. But under the deer head there was nothing but wooden floor. Freshly swept wooden floor. The boxing flyer and the other papers were gone. Then I remembered, I put the original picture in a book about chemistry.

  But the chemistry book was gone, too. So I had a little tantrum right there in the closet. I looked around for something to break, but there wasn't much there besides the rifle, musty clothes, and the glass-eyed deer, staring at my kneecaps, expressionless and stoic.

  I sat down in front of the deer head: "George, what do you know? Come on, now. I need something here." He was staring at the opposite end of the closet. We had a little moment of silence together. Then a good thought popped into my head. There's a bookshelf on the other end. "Thank you, George."

  AJ always said, everything has its place. So I crawled under the clothes to the bookshelf. The chemistry book was black, with gold lettering. In the dim closet light, all of them looked black so I started grabbing books that were about the same size as the chemistry one. A picture fell out of the first one, but it was of some 70s, light pink, four door, grandma car. Once my eyes adjusted I could start to see titles: Kent's Mechanical Engineer's Handbook, A Textbook of Mechanical Engineering, Pipe Trade Pocket Manual, and on it went, mainly engineering books with technical drawings and long mathematical equations that hurt my brain when I instinctively tried to glean some meaning from the jumble of numbers and small letters.

  None of the books on the bottom shelf were black, so I didn't check there. But when I'd gone through all the other books and found nothing, I put my hand between the top of the bottom books and the shelf and felt around blindly. I didn't expect to find anything, but I instantly felt the edges of a book cover. I pulled it out and it held it up towards the light: gold lettering. I flipped through the pages and out popped a picture. The picture.

  I stood up, held the photo closer to the light. There was the boxer, just like in the poster. And behind him in the shadows a young man was sitting: thick head of hair, front chair legs off the ground, his left elbow resting on the chair next to him, head resting in his hand. I couldn't tell what he was wearing, but I could clearly see the zig-zag line of laces on his shoes: boxing shoes. He was leaning to his left, like he was laying down in the chair. There was no denying it. The young man was Uncle Art.

  The old man was on the end of the dock cleaning traps. Brown moss would grow on the wire mesh of the traps and after awhile the whole thing would be covered and the crabs had a hard time getting in. It was nearly impossible to pull the stuff off wet, but if you sat it out in the sun for a few days, it'd get dry and you could wire brush it off. It was light out and the tide was low. I didn't have to close my eyes when I ran out on the dock, I could see the silty bottom.

  He was poking the wire brush in between the mesh. A few cleaned traps were stacked on one side, the ropes coiled neatly and placed inside the trap so they wouldn't tangle. I stood there and said nothing. He never was one for pleasantries so there was no "Good morning," no "Ready for school, huh?" like most adults did. But it was okay not to speak. I hadn't really thought about what I was going to say. Back in the closet, after finding the picture, I would have said triumphantly, "Now tell me you weren't a boxer!" But right then, he was just the old man, my old man, and I didn't need a victory.

  So I just held out the photo to him. He stopped working, took off his rubber gloves, put the wire brush on top of the trap he was cleaning. He held the photo close and stared into it for a long time. The wind blew and the picture flapped up and down. For a second I thought it was going to fly off into the river, and I imagined jumping into the water for it, but he held on tight.

  "That was a long time ago," he said finally, handing it back to me. "Another life." Then he grabbed a stretch of moss covered rope and hit it with the brush. Dried, brown moss surrounded his feet, floated on top of the water under his spot on the dock, even tiny brown particles hanging in the air around him.

  I watched him finish the trap, coil the rope and set it on the other clean traps. He didn't say anything, and time was running out. If I didn't start running for Matty's house soon we'd both be late for school.

  "Okay, fine. Next time McCready comes around I'll just get on my knees and beg him not to kill me," I said, and started walking back to the house.

  I took about three steps and he said, "You know AJ don't want no fighters, no river rats."

  "Learning how to fight won't make me a river rat."

  "Tell that to her."

  "Why don't you?" I walked back to him. "Look at me," I said, pointing to my black and blue nose. "I don't want to be afraid anymore."

  A few days later I came home from school and Tyler was outside sitting on the porch steps. Tyler never just sat on the steps. He was usually all action: out to the boat with some tool in his hand that I'd seen before but had no idea what it was for, or off painting the side of the garage that faced the street, or some other task that involved him walking with great purpose all over the property. So I should've known something was up. But my mind was elsewhere: there was a grape double-stick popsicle in the freezer that I'd hidden that morning behind a big bag of frozen soft-shell crabs the old man had been hoarding.

  I went up the steps and Tyler grabbed my leg. "Can't go," he said.

  It was early September and at night you could feel the first hints of fall if you stood real still and waited for the breeze off the river to touch your face, but the days were still hot and humid.

  "What are you talking about?" My shirt was wet and sticking to my skin. The sun was beating down. And I just wanted to sit in the air-conditioned kitchen, watch something on the old man's tiny black and white TV and eat my grape popsicle before it was too late. An hour or so before dinner time AJ would declare the whole kitchen off limits while she was cooking, and any kind of snack was forbidden.

  "Nope. Can't go," Tyler said again, still holding out his arm so I couldn't reach the last step.

  I started to get pissed: "Okay, what's going on?" I kicked at his arm to move it out of the way and started for the top step. Then I looked down at Tyler and that's when I saw his eyes. There was something in his look right then that stopped me cold. It was the hospital waiting room look. A little fear and worry. And suddenly the popsicle took a back seat. I sat down next to him.

  "What's up?" I said.

  And then I heard a yell coming from inside the house. I jumped up to see if everything was okay, but Tyler pulled me back down to my seat. And then a higher-pitched return yell. No one ever yelled at the old house. So we waited together. I guess we both had the look then.

  "They've been going at it for about ten minutes or so," said Tyler. Another loud, low voice. I couldn't understand the words, but the low voice was imploring, questioning. Then the higher voice: attackin
g, jabbing. They went back and forth for an extended volley, me wishing I was at Matty's, Tyler gone all quiet and cool. The loud voices gained volume until it was all yelling again.

  And then just like that everything went silent. Tyler and I didn't breathe. Didn't say a word. On the river near the dock a water turkey swam by. You could only see his head, his body underwater, so he looked like some strange snake making his way towards the Halverson's dock. Then suddenly he dove into the water and was gone, nothing left but round ripples growing larger and larger, then melting away until I was just staring at a tiny spot on the surface of the water.

  I started to get fidgety. The hard steps were no good for a long wait.

  Tyler broke the silence: "You got something to do with this?" This meaning all the yelling inside.

  "No."

  "What'd you say to AJ?"

  "Nothin'. Honest." Then I remembered asking the old man to teach me how to box. But I didn't say anything. So we sat there, Tyler with a smirk on his face, thinking that this was somehow my fault, and me hoping the old man would win. I didn't want Tyler to know I started it, so I went for the oldest trick in the book: diversion. It was like in the movies when the good guys needed to sneak past the bad guys but can't get by the guards, so they light a car on fire or something, and all the bad guys run over to put out the fire while the good guys blow up the HQ.

  "My back is killing me," I said. I stood up and rubbed my lower back. Then I shook out my legs like the track runners do before they do a sprint. Then I started doing deep knee bends between the steps and the garage.

  "You're acting funny. Funnier than usual, that is. Yeah, you said something," said Tyler.

  I stopped my knee bends and sat down next to him. Defeated. But still not saying anything. And then AJ opened the door.

  "Ya'll hungry?"

  I ran in hoping to see some sign the old man had won: maybe boxing gloves laid out on the table, or a pair of shiny boxer shorts ready for me to try on. But everything looked disgustingly normal. The old man was sitting in his chair watching Wheel of Fortune and AJ was in the kitchen. Tyler hadn't made it in two steps before she was grilling him about the importance of doing all of his math problems, even if Mr. Zuler had said it was okay to do just the odd ones. The grape popsicle was waiting for me in the freezer but by then I'd lost interest. So in the end I just sat down at the dinner table with Tyler and pretended to do my homework, all the while eyeing the old man in his recliner, watching for some hint of victory that never came.

  boxing

  At the end of September, on a Friday after school I was standing at the fridge with my backpack still on hunting for a snack. There was an empty jar of yellow mustard, some sweet pickles, and some dried-out grapes that would be raisins soon. I could see all the way to the back where the temperature adjust knob was. I slammed the door shut in disgust, turned around and there was AJ.

  "What'd I tell you about standing there with the door open?" she said.

  "I couldn't find anything," I said.

  "I'm going to the store tomorrow," she said, pointing to the kitchen table. A ham sandwich on a paper plate with a glass of iced tea was sitting there. "The boys are already down in the basement."

  "Oh," I said casually. But I didn't have a clue what she was talking about.

  She sat down with me while I ate. She was staring at me and I wondered if she was looking at my almost-healed nose. I concentrated on the sandwich. Then out of nowhere she says: "What're you gonna be when you grow up?" She was smiling, but her voice was a little too happy, too high-pitched. Fear and worry. Why did she worry about that stuff so much, I wondered? So I decided to play with her. It's not often you can get the upper hand in a conversation with AJ.

  "I was thinking I'd just work at the market," I said, and took a big bite of sandwich and looked out the window.

  Her back straightened and she grabbed the edges of the small kitchen table and started in on me, "But Honey! If you work there you won't be able to—" And then she stopped, because I was grinning. I couldn't help it.

  She relaxed her death grip on the table. "Well, I was thinking lawyer… doctor… accountant."

  "I'll keep it in mind," I said, and headed for the basement.

  "One more thing," she said. "Defend yourself. Fight if you have to, but you are NOT allowed to be a boxer." She stood up. "Or a crabber."

  I pointed to my nose. "You don't have to worry about that."

  The basement was our refuge because it was the one place in the house where AJ did not wield power. A few years ago she went down to get a can of corn and saw a mouse. She dropped the can and ran screaming all the way back to the kitchen. We were outside in the garage and came running. Her arm was bloody and she was white faced and sweaty. She said she didn't know where she'd banged her arm, but she was sure she was never going back to the basement again. The old man laid down a few mouse traps and a few days later we caught one little mouse—soft, brown and furry, and nearly squashed in half trying to get a piece of crappy sliced cheese. The rest of the mice must have gotten the message because we never saw another. Occasionally the old man would hint that he'd seen some mouse poop in the corner near the hot water heater, or that an old box looked as though it'd been chewed through just to keep the fear alive.

  I came down the stairs to the basement that day biting into the last of my ham sandwich and there was Tyler holding a pair of big, black boxing gloves. Matty was already there, sitting on a stack of Georgia peach crates sipping a Yoo-hoo. He had a happy, excited grin on his face like he was about to watch Star Wars again for the thousandth time. He just needed some popcorn to complete the picture. The old man was standing barefoot in front of Tyler wearing a pair of JC Penney dress slacks cut off just above the knee and an old crabbing t-shirt. There were stains and holes in the shirt, a few fish scales stuck to the back. I could see the veins in his calves and forearms. He was old and thin but he still had muscles under his pale skin. His glasses were off and I kept thinking, who is this crazy old dude? I started laughing. I couldn't help it. He was unfazed and just motioned me to come.

  One sad light bulb hung from the ceiling, interrogation-room style. There were three windows high up that were actually at ground level outside. If you jumped up you could get a quick glimpse of green grass and the blue river beyond that. Rows of wooden shelves lined the walls, full of file folder boxes, dusty trash bags of old clothes, cardboard boxes marked "Christmas 1 of 3" and "Christmas 3 of 3". Box 2 was God knows where. In the corner were two small outboard motors. One with an old prop, the other without.

  The old man and Tyler put the boxing gloves on me and suddenly I had two balloons for hands. I couldn't hold anything. The end was soft. I put it up to my chin and pushed. Then I turned to Tyler with a big grin on my face: "Can I punch you? I promise not to hit hard!"

  "Y'all ready?" said the old man. He pointed for Tyler to go sit with Matty and told me to stand right in front of him. "What's the most important thing to remember when boxing?" he said.

  "Hey, I thought we were dancing!" said Matty. He and Tyler started giggling.

  "Oh, don't worry skinny boy, you gonna dance real soon," the old man barked. Matty and Tyler quieted down.

  "The feet!" he said. "The feet are the most important thing." I looked down at my feet. "Like this," he said. So I put my right foot back and my left forward like his. He bent his knees, so I did, too. "Both hands up," he said. "Elbows in. Good. Look at that, he looks like a boxer now. Now if I try to hit you in the face I've got to get around your hands, and your feet are under you, ready to move. Now move your head, just a little, side to side. Now I've got a moving target. Much harder to hit than a kid standing stiff as a board with his hands to his side and a bullseye on his face." I wondered if he was talking about me the other day. I did feel good in the boxing position.

  "Ok, go ahead and hit me," the old man said. He gave me a little come here gesture with his right hand.

  "Come on, Uncle Art," I said, stepping bac
k a little. My arms were still up and knees bent, but the gloves were getting heavy.

  "I'm waiting," he said. "Come toward me like this." He moved his front foot forward and dragged his back foot. "Always keep your feet. Always stay balanced. Never let a stronger opponent get you to the ground, or you skinny boys are gonna get killed."

  I moved toward him like he said. So we stood toe to toe and my arms were getting really tired and I just wanted to take the dumb gloves off and drink my tea that was sitting on a dusty shelf next to Tyler.

  I looked into the old man's eyes but suddenly he wasn't there any more. He'd gone cold and scary again like he did on the dock the other day when the rich guy was going to give us grief about spilling crabs on the dock. Out of nowhere he slapped me on the face with a left. A bright red shot of pain surged through my head.

  "Now what'd you do that for?" I yelled.

  "I told you to hit me."

  "I ain't gonna do it," I said, momentarily standing up straight and letting my hands down.

  "Is that what you said to Johnny McCready? That didn't work out too good."

  I started breathing a little faster. I didn't like being hit. Quick as a cat, the old man slapped me in the face again. Another shot of pain and my left ear starting ringing. Little beads of sweat started to slide down the side of my face.

  "Better keep your hands up," the old man said. I put them up and bent my knees.

  "Hey, Uncle Art, is it okay to pop him like that after his concussion?" said Tyler. Finally, someone with some sense, I thought.

  "Don't be a wussy, Tyler. I expected more out of you. That was nothing," he growled. Then he turned back to me. "Hit me or I'm gonna give you something else." He gave me a wild-eyed smile. I didn't want to get hit again. "Come on, Jesse. Let the animal out," he said. We circled each other. "The little girl saw everything, didn't she? She watched you stand there and take it." How did he know about Hailey? Matty and Tyler both let out a long "Ooooh."