We ate at Hardee’s.
After lunch, me and Charles traded car seats. His idea.
Now. You would think Charles could ride to the beach without disagreeing with Aunt Naomi right there in the back seat. But oh no. It was over a very simple matter.
Aunt Naomi goes to our church but she lives out in the country, close to Hillview Baptist—not a Free Will, and while we rode along she told all about them having to let their preacher go.
“After it all got out they didn’t have no choice but to let him go,” says Aunt Naomi. “They say it started out with him praying regular with this woman whose husband got killed in a car wreck. I didn’t know her—or her husband. She hadn’t been around long. I think they were praying every Wednesday night after prayer meeting. She up and moves to Charlotte and nobody thought anything about it until Tim Hodges, who’s the treasurer, noticed these regular phone calls on the church phone bill. One was over thirty minutes. He told Lloyd Womble, the head deacon. I guess they kept a eye on things and one Friday after the preacher said he was going to see his brother in Franklin, they checked up on him. Called his brother. His brother hadn’t seen him and won’t expecting him. Well.
“Saturday, when the preacher got back, Tim and Lloyd paid him a visit. Asked him where he’d been and he said to see his brother. And of course they had him. Just plain had him.”
“They certainly are a trusting bunch,” says Charles.
“Well, yes,” says Aunt Naomi, “they trust in the Lord, of course.” She was looking straight at the back of Charles’s head. “Now the funny part was that Emily, the preacher’s wife, didn’t get mad at the preacher—that I know of. She got mad at Tim and Lloyd because they wouldn’t believe it when the preacher said he was sorry. She said she believed he was sorry. But what else would the man say—caught red-handed. Tim and Lloyd felt obliged to bring it before the church and the church voted him out. He had to move.”
After a minute, Charles says, “It’s possible that Jesus would have forgiven him. After all, he forgave a prostitute.”
That took the cake. I’ve been going to church since I was born and I don’t remember anything about Jesus forgiving a prostitute.
Besides that, a prostitute is not married like the preacher was.
Aunt Naomi just looked out the window, then hunted through her pocketbook for some chewing gum and said, “Well, I don’t know about that.”
We stay at Mr. Albert Douglas’s cabin at the beach every summer. He rents it to us at half price and it’s only two blocks from the ocean. We found the key on the nail in the stumpy tree beside the back door and let ourselves in. Everything had been left in order. We opened all the windows to get rid of the closed-in smell. There was a nice breeze.
Uncle Nate took Norris and Mary Faye for a quick look at the ocean while the rest of us unpacked. I insisted me and Charles get the couch to sleep on since we’d probably be staying up later than anybody else.
We had barely got settled when Uncle Nate’s asthma started acting up. It usually does at the beach. He sat down on the couch and said he’d sit there for a spell. He was breathing fast, pulling back with his shoulders on each breath, and giving a little wheezy cough every minute or so. His hair was slicked straight back with Vitalis and he was wearing a starched white shirt as usual.
Norris and Mary Faye came in begging Charles and me to take them to the boardwalk. I kind of wanted to go to the boardwalk myself. I like the hubbub. So Charles and me took them. We all got a ice cream cone as soon as we got there, but before Norris took the first bite, his scoop fell out. Vanilla—he won’t eat nothing but vanilla. He started to pick it up.
“Stupid,” said Mary Faye.
“Norris,” I said, “ask the lady for another scoop. Don’t pick that up off the boardwalk.” He already had most of it up. He let it drop back. The lady saw what happened and had him another scoop ready when he reached up his cone. I got some napkins and wiped off his hand.
We walked along the boardwalk. I looked back to check on Norris. He was walking along, looking back over his shoulder at this little boy with a stuffed giraffe. His ice cream cone was tilting more and more.
“Norris, don’t drop your—”
That scoop fell between the planks and left just the slightest bit up top. Norris squatted down and looked.
The lady made us pay this time. I guess she was worried about going out of business.
Charles bought me a necklace from one of those little jewelry stands. I told him it was too expensive but he bought it anyway and had “Love, Tiger” wrote on it. He does little things like that, that a lot of men never think about. I tried to get him to ring the bell with the sledge hammer, but he wouldn’t. Norris wanted to but I wouldn’t let him. He would have been disappointed. I did let him and Mary Faye ride the bumper cars three times. They got the bottoms of their feet so black Aunt Naomi made them wash them off with soap at the outside shower before she’d let them come in the cottage.
We had pimento cheese and monkey meat—that’s luncheon meat—sandwiches and potato chips for supper. Then after supper while Daddy was unfolding the card table for Rook, Aunt Naomi wanted to know how thick the niggers had been down at the boardwalk.
“Not very,” I said. “They hang out mostly over at Wright’s beach.” That’s the nigger beach. “I don’t think I saw over one or two.”
“I saw a whole car load,” says Norris.
“They’ve got as much right as anyone else to walk on the boardwalk,” says Charles. Charles has this thing about niggers. For some reason he don’t understand how they are. Or at least how they are around Listre and Bethel. Maybe his Johnny friend is different. I can only speak for the ones around Listre and Bethel.
“Well, son,” says Aunt Naomi, “I agree they got a right. The Constitution gives them a right. So that’s settled. There’s no question about that. No argument at all about that. The problem comes with where they want to spend their time. And so long as they’ve got their beach, like Raney says, then I don’t understand to my life why they don’t use it—why they have to use ours. In Russia they wouldn’t have their own beach. But our constitution does provide that they can have their own beach. I agree. It’s just that they need to stay in their own place at their own beach just like the white people stay at their own place at their own beach.”
Nobody else said anything—Uncle Nate was asleep on the couch—but you could tell we all agreed except Charles. He walks through the screen door on outside.
“I don’t understand where he gets some of his attitudes,” says Aunt Naomi. “What’s trumps?”
Monday morning, Mama and me cooked eggs, bacon, grits, and biscuits. After breakfast, Daddy, Uncle Nate, and Charles took Mary Faye and Norris fishing at the pier. Me, Mama, Aunt Naomi, and Aunt Flossie cleaned up the dishes, put on our bathing suits, got towels and suntan lotion, and walked to the beach. We were all planning to meet back at the cabin for lunch.
About the time we got settled on a nice even spot, along came this Marine with a woman who had a blue lightning bolt tattooed on the inside of her knee. They sat down on this white towel—too little for both of them—beside some college students. The waves were crashing, so I know they couldn’t hear us talk.
“I declare I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman with a tattoo,” says Mama.
“Where?” says Aunt Naomi.
“On the inside of her knee.”
“No, where? Where are they?”
“Oh. Right over there.”
“He looks like a soldier.”
“He’s a Marine from Camp Lejune,” I said. “I can tell by the way his hair’s cut.”
“I don’t see no tattoo on her,” says Aunt Naomi.
“Wait a minute and you will,” says Mama.
“There it is,” says Aunt Flossie.
“Well, I’ll be dog,” says Aunt Naomi. “Don’t that beat all? A blue lightning bolt. Do you reckon she drew that on there with a ball point pen?”
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�Not unless she can draw mighty good,” says Mama. “Course a lightning bolt ain’t all that hard to draw. I remember from school.”
“Now can you imagine,” says Aunt Naomi, “Some woman walking into a tattoo parlor with a bunch of men standing around, hiking up her dress and saying I want a blue lightning bolt tattooed right here on the inside of my knee? Can you imagine that?”
“Well, I sure can’t,” says Mama. “But she looks like she’s been in plenty places like that. I mean she looks like she’s spent a good deal of her life indoors in some back room.”
“Well, she could be a you-know-what,” says Aunt Naomi.
The woman was pale and skinny with black hair stringy wet from swimming. She lit a cigarette and when she pulled it out of her mouth she laughed smoke at something the Marine said and I could see some of her teeth were rotten.
“Young people nowadays will go to almost any length,” said Aunt Naomi. “I don’t know what it’s all coming to. Who ever heard of so much burning, beating, and stabbing, and my Lord, I can’t imagine what Papa would done to me had I come home with a blue lightning bolt tattooed on my kneecap. Why he would—”
“It’s on the inside of her knee,” says Mama.
“Why he would have skint me alive.”
Up walked Charles all of a sudden and said we’d better come to the house, that Norris had a fish hook hung in his nose. He said that on Mary Faye’s first cast, Norris was walking behind her and the hook caught him, as clean as day, in his left nostril—with the worm still on the hook. We followed him to the cottage. I couldn’t imagine.
We walk in and there sits Norris in a straightback chair, crying, with Uncle Nate down on his knees trying to see in Norris’s nose and Norris trying to hold his head still but not being able to on account of crying.
Norris rolls his eyes to look at us when we walk in. Standing there beside him is Mary Faye, holding a rod and Zebco reel with a line leading to Norris’s nose where the hook is stuck in his nostril with a live worm half in and half out. It won’t bleeding though. Daddy is standing behind Uncle Nate, watching.
“I say we ought to take him to the hospital,” says Charles.
“Wait a minute,” says Uncle Nate, “if the barb ain’t in we can pull it right out.”
“If the barb ain’t in, it would’ve fell out, wouldn’t it?—with that great big worm on there,” says Aunt Flossie. “He must weigh half a pound.”
“You don’t need that much worm to catch a fish,” says Aunt Naomi.
“I think we ought to take him to the hospital,” says Charles.
“I agree,” I said. In many ways Charles is very clearheaded.
“Well, if I can just—” said Uncle Nate, reaching up toward Norris’s nose.
Norris lets out this short yell and puts his hand in front of his face.
Uncle Nate stands up and looks around at everybody.
“Take him to the hospital,” says Charles.
“I don’t think so,” says Uncle Nate.
Tears are dropping off the worm. A drop of blood appears.
“It’s bleeding,” says Charles. “What’s wrong with taking him to the hospital?”
“That’s the worm bleeding,” says Uncle Nate.
“How do you know that?” asks Charles.
“Cause it’s a blood worm. They’re supposed to bleed. That’s what it’s called: a blood worm. That’s what it says where you buy them on the pier: blood worms, $2.00 a dozen.”
“Gosh, they’ve gone up,” says Aunt Naomi.
“Well, suppose it is the worm,” says Charles. “What can you lose by taking him to the hospital?”
“The worm or Norris?” says Mary Faye.
“Norris,” says Charles.
“If Norris goes, the worm goes,” says Aunt Naomi.
“To start with,” says Uncle Nate to Charles, “you’re going to lose about fifty dollars. Second, you’re going to lose a chance to do something for yourself instead of some overpaid doctor doing it.”
Charles walked out the door. Again.
Then Daddy took over. “Now, wait a minute,” he said. “Everybody sit down. No. No, not you, Mary Faye. You stand right there and hold the pole, honey.” He pulled a chair in front of Norris’s chair and sat down. “You all go on about your business. I want to talk to Norris a few minutes. Let me have the rod and reel, Mary Faye. Now, Mr. Norris. I’ll bet that nose hurts, don’t it?”
Norris nodded his head.
“Why don’t you stand up real easy.”
Norris stood up, stretching his neck out and holding his head still like a dog smelling a dead snake, his hands hanging down by his sides with his fingers spread like he was afraid of touching something gooey—or like he had touched something gooey.
“Okay,” said Daddy, “I’ll tell you what let’s do—do you want to get that old worm out of there?”
Norris nodded his head up and down, easy.
“Now the first thing I want you to do is give me your hand.”
Norris reached out his hand and Daddy took it in his hand and massaged it around and around. “Now you just relax. We’ll get that old worm right out of there in no time flat. You think about that little sting as a mosquito bite.”
Norris nodded his head up and down. A tear dropped.
“Now you take holt of the line right here—that’s right. Right there. That’s good. Now you just move your hand up along the line until it gets up to that little hook. Okay. Now. You relax and I’m going to wrap my hand around your hand and help you out a little bit.”
Norris nodded up and down, slow. His eyes were getting bigger.
“Hold your head real still and we’ll—”
Daddy nudged up and then down, and that hook came right out—as pretty as you please. Aunt Flossie went over and hugged Norris and he started bawling and his nose started bleeding but we put some cold towels on it. Mama got a little alcohol on some cotton up in there and then some Vaseline. Norris cried with the alcohol but calmed down with the Vaseline.
We ate banana sandwiches for lunch. Then me and Uncle Nate went along with Daddy and Charles to watch them surf fish. First we stopped by the fish market and bought some fish to cut up and use for bait; then we drove to this spot where Daddy said the blues might be biting.
They’d cast far out with a piece of dead fish on the hook, then stand there for ten or fifteen minutes before winding in the line to check the bait, which was smoothed down and considerably smaller than when they first threw it out. Charles said the sand and current did that. He let me hold his rod for a while, then he asked Uncle Nate if he wanted to hold it for a while, but he said no, and at about three o’clock Uncle Nate left—said he was going to walk up to the boardwalk and try to find a newspaper. We fished until about five and caught one fish. Daddy caught him but he was too little to keep.
When we got back to the cottage, Mama and the others had been swimming. Everybody was sunburned except Daddy. He wears all his clothes at the beach, all the time, every time we go.
Uncle Nate didn’t turn up for supper and I could tell Mama was worried. We had cold fried chicken left over from the trip down, tomatoes, hot snap beans, and fresh hot biscuits, and had finished and been sitting around talking for a while when in walked Uncle Nate: drunk. But I didn’t think he was terribly drunk because he looked decent, except he had one sleeve rolled up and the other rolled down and unbuttoned.
“Nate,” Mama says, “what in the world have you gone and done?”
“Nothing, Doris, nothing in the worl’ but been fishing.”
“I declare,” says Mama, “you’d think you could come to the beach with your own family and behave yourself.”
Daddy walked out on the porch with his oatmeal cookie.
Charles was over on the couch reading a Time magazine. Uncle Nate went over and sat down beside him.
“Where’d you go to school, boy?”
“Atlanta.”
“They teach you the stays and capols?”
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nbsp; “The what?”
“The stays and capols.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so? You don’t think so? Wha’s capol of Missesota?” He was drunker than he looked.
“Missesota?” said Charles.
“Minnesota.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know! You don’t know! St. Paul. Hell no, they di’n teach you no capols.” Uncle Nate looked around.
“Nate,” says Mama, “there’ll be no cussing in this beach cottage. You have done enough damage getting drunk in front of these children. It’s bad enough without you cussing in the very cottage Al Douglas has been nice enough to rent us at half price.”
Uncle Nate looked at her and then turned back to Charles. “Montgomery Alabama, Phoenix Arizona, Little Rock Arkansas, Sacramento California, Denver Colorado. Hell, I know ‘em every one.”
“Nate,” Mama says, “now I have told you—”
“Name a stay,” Uncle Nate says to Charles.
“Florida.”
“Tallahassee. Ha. See? Capol T-a-l-l-a-h-a-s-s-e-e. We had to learn to spell them too. How come you din have to learn the stays and capols?”
“What good is it?” asks Charles, pushing up off the couch with his hands and slipping away.
“What good is it? What good is it? Why, hell, if you’re traveling through Miss’ippi and somebody says ‘what’s the capol of this stay?’ you say ‘St. Paul.’ You know something about the stay you’re in. What good is it? What good is it? Hell, why come you learn anything?”
“Nate,” says Mama.
“Well,” says Charles, “I’m just thinking why not write it all down on a piece of paper, put it in your billfold, and then spend all that time learning something else. Then when somebody wants to know a capital, pull out the piece of paper and read the answer.”
“Read the answer. Read the answer. Shit, when I went to school—”
“Nate!” Mama says. “I said I was not going to have it and I mean it. If you want me to call the law you just keep it up. I’ll do it. I’ll do it right this very night.”
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