by Chris Fabry
Dad hesitated. “Johnson. First name is Franklin. If I remember correctly, he lives on Third Street.” He tilted his head to one side, pointing down the street.
The pastor bit his lip and looked down. I thought that was a bad sign. “Son, Franklin passed. It must have been four, maybe five years ago. Had a heart attack over at the Big Bear. Sweetest man I ever met.” He snapped his fingers. “Went just like that.”
“Is that so,” Dad said. He said it kind of soft, almost like a prayer.
“I think that house was sold. Mrs. Johnson moved back to Cleveland to be close to family. A sister, I believe.”
Dad nodded and I stared at him and he just looked at the church like there was something interesting he could see in the bricks. I wondered if that was his daddy.
“Franklin had a brother who lived over in Dogwood, didn’t he?” the pastor said.
Dad nodded. “Henry.”
“Why don’t you hop in and I’ll give you a ride over there.”
“No, thank you. We’ll be all right.”
“Are you sure?” the pastor said. “It’s air-conditioned. Sure would feel good to get out of this heat.”
“It sure would,” I said. I wanted to get in that car worse than anything. Almost worse than getting a dog but not quite. Dad stood there looking away, and I came out from behind him. “How many people go to your church?”
“Depends on whether it’s Christmas, Easter, or some other Sunday,” he said, smiling. “At the peak we probably have a couple hundred. On Wednesday nights it’s a handful.”
“Is it fun being a pastor?”
“June Bug,” Dad said, telling me to stop.
“No, she’s all right,” the pastor said. “I enjoy it. It makes me feel good to know that I’m helping people. And at other times it makes me sad when people get stuck and won’t accept God’s forgiveness.”
“I’m a Christian,” I said.
“I could tell just by looking at you.”
“Really? Is that something every pastor can do?”
He chuckled. “Well, I don’t know if everyone can, but there’s something about the way a person looks sometimes, the way they smile or talk, that helps you tell they know the Lord.”
“Where were you going when you stopped to talk to us?”
“June Bug,” Dad said.
The pastor ignored Dad this time and glanced at his watch. “I was headed for some lunch over at the diner and then on to the hospital to see one of my church members.” He looked at Dad. “But I’ve got plenty of time to take you wherever you need to go. Seriously, I’d count it a privilege.”
I turned to Dad. “Please, can we ride in the air-conditioned car?”
Through the buildings came a siren and Dad looked more like some animal that was cornered than anything else. “I suppose if you have the time, it would be a help.”
The man smiled from ear to ear like we’d just made his whole day. Some people smile when they take your money and others smile when they help you. Right then I thought about Sheila in Colorado and the way she smiled whenever I’d find some new thing in her house. It’s like uncovering a buried treasure when you find people like that. Of course my dad and I have seen a few of the other kind too.
I hopped in the backseat and Dad got in the front. As soon as the pastor started that car the air felt so good I never wanted to get out. The seats were leather, and though they were hot when I got in, they turned cool fast. The pastor reached around and showed me how I could change the direction of the air. There was also this music that came on soft and low and soothing, and I could tell it was church music. Not the kind with the organ blasting and a choir but just one person singing about “the Lamb” or “the Father” and stuff like that. I figured he kept the sound low so we could talk because that’s what he did most of the trip.
We pulled out and Dad said for him not to skip lunch, but the pastor said he could afford to and he patted his belly. He said he went to the diner because his wife had him on what he called the John the Baptist Diet.
Dad didn’t ask, so I did because that sounded like the strangest thing in the world.
“A locust for breakfast, a locust for lunch, and a sensible dinner,” the pastor said. And then he cut into laughing, saying he’d used that joke the previous Sunday and the people in the church got a kick out of it.
I laughed but I guess I don’t know enough about John the Baptist.
We drove through the little streets with the pastor pointing out the houses of different people who attended the church. It seemed to me that a lot of people who went there had either died or were sick because just about every one of them had ailments. The pastor said one woman had surgery for a gallbladder and another man had prostate cancer and in another house the son was killed in Iraq. I was glad to get out of the neighborhood to tell the truth because it was getting depressing, but pastors must think about those kinds of things a lot.
As we drove this windy back road, I could tell Dad was looking at things and noticing stuff, though he wasn’t saying much. “Do they still have the Halfway Market along Route 60?” he finally said.
“You bet they do,” the pastor said. “Expanded it not long ago. They’ll have some of the best sweet corn this side of heaven in a few weeks.”
When we passed it, the pastor slowed down and let Dad look. I wondered why he would ask about it.
“I used to have a job in high school, and I never took anything to eat for lunch. Every day I’d get hungry just before work, so I’d stop in there and buy some chips or a Little Debbie cake.”
We drove on and the pastor showed us the new post office and the elementary school. Dad had gone there when he was a kid, and I couldn’t for the life of me imagine that he was ever as little as me.
The pastor snapped his fingers. “Now I remember. You were in the military, weren’t you? Special forces.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I remember seeing the write-up in the Cabell Record.”
“Then you’ve got a good memory,” Dad said.
The man laughed. “I’m a stickler for details. I can tell you the starting lineup for just about every team in the majors from ’68 to ’75. National League, of course. That kind of attention to detail helped me out when I started memorizing verses and studying Greek. And then remembering names and faces each Sunday.”
We passed a police car with its lights on, sitting behind a beat-up old car with two guys in it. The pastor slowed down to have a look at them and then pursed his lips. “That was one of the Meadows boys driving. He’s been on the prayer chain for one thing or another since he was about twelve. His mother’s going to be beside herself.”
We kept driving, and I tried to pick out the house most likely to have my mother in it. The ones with the white picket fences were my first choice, but there were others that were made out of brick that looked nice. And then there were a few trailers that seemed like a mansion to me because of living in an RV.
“Now if I remember correctly, Henry’s house is up Virginia Avenue and then left toward the interstate.”
Dad nodded and looked to the right and left. “If you wouldn’t mind, why don’t you just pull in here and let us out.”
“I can drive you all the way back there. It’s no problem.”
“I know.” Dad looked out the window again, like he was expecting to see someone he didn’t want to see. “I think it would be best if we walked back.”
The pastor turned left and didn’t slow down, and the veins in Dad’s neck bulged. “I want you to stop now!”
The pastor had his foot on the brake as fast as a squirrel can run up a tree. “You don’t have to shout.”
“I’m sorry,” Dad said. He got out of the car and opened my door while I unbuckled.
“He didn’t mean anything by it,” I said to the pastor. “I think he’s nervous.”
The man nodded and reached down in the middle of the seat for something, then turned around to pat me on the shoulder. He s
lipped a little white piece of paper into my hand that had his name and phone number on it as well as the address of the church. “You take care, June Bug. And if you ever need anything, you call me. You hear?”
I nodded and got out. Before he closed the door, my dad leaned down and said, “I thank you for the ride. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
I don’t know what they said after that because I was taking in all the sights and sounds and smells. There was a horse barn across the street and small houses in a row. Some of them looked nice; others looked old and dingy. The electric wires ran by the road above us and almost seemed like they were sizzling in the sunshine.
As the pastor pulled away, my dad took my hand and we started walking. Just then, the prettiest black dog came out of a house across the street and stood on the top step and barked. You wouldn’t think that a dog barking could make you feel welcomed, but right then it felt like I had set foot in a place that should have been home a long time ago.
Dad can walk really fast when he’s on a mission, but this was about the slowest walk I’d ever been on with him. It was almost like walking through a cemetery only there weren’t any tombstones.
First we walked to the right of the street, and he paused at this little white house. He stared at the mailbox. “My best friend used to live here. Used to ride bikes with him.”
“What was his name?”
“Dale.”
“What happened to him?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. He got married; I know that. I was his best man.”
A little farther along he stopped at another house, and I asked him who had lived there.
“A girl. Connie was her name. She was the smartest in our class by far. While the rest of us were reading Dick and Jane, she was reading Jane Eyre.”
“Who’s Jane Eyre?”
“Just a famous book. I still haven’t read it.”
“Did you like her—the girl who lived here?”
He nodded. “It was impossible not to. She was real quiet, though. I always wondered what happened to her. She could draw pictures so good the substitute accused her of copying her artwork out of a book. She cried because of that.”
I’d never had a teacher accuse me of anything because the only teacher I’d ever had was my dad. My curiosity was getting the best of me, so I headed to the sidewalk. “Why don’t we go see if she’s still here?”
He squeezed my hand and we kept walking toward the end of the road. A sign said Dead End, but it looked to me like it went on forever. To our left was a field that sloped and rolled along a creek.
“I used to work for a farmer who owned this field, baling hay and putting it up in his barn. He didn’t pay much, but it sure was fun riding on that wagon. He had a big house, and every time we’d bring a load in, his wife would come out with a pitcher of the sweetest lemonade.”
I closed my eyes and could almost imagine Dad younger and working in a field with that hay. Maybe with his shirt off and his muscles growing. Him and his friend Dale sweating in the summer sun, drinking lemonade, and working hard. “How much did he pay you?”
“Five dollars for a day’s work. Seemed like a lot back then.”
I thought maybe I could catch him off guard while he was thinking about the past, so I said, “Does my mom live around here?”
He kept walking and looking out at that field with the bark of the dog fading. “We seined for minnows down in that creek and then rode our bikes to the reservoir. Caught crawdads and even a few snakes.”
I didn’t say anything and he finally looked at me. “I don’t know about your mom, June Bug. I told you I can’t answer that.”
It was hot again, and the sidewalk had ended and we were walking along the dirt. The flies had found us, I guess because we were sweating and they could smell it, and then the gnats joined them and swarmed. I tried to swat at them, but they were just as persistent around my head as I was about my mother.
Toward the end of the field on the left there were a bunch of trailers packed in like haulers at a NASCAR race. Some kids were out running and giggling. One little kid with long hair just had a diaper on, no shoes or shirt. At the end of the road there was a fence that kept you from going up to the interstate, and on the right, across from the trailers, was this old brown house that looked like somebody had tried to paint it a long time ago and the paint was peeling off and the roof was sliding down on itself. There was a cracked window in the front, and it looked to me like a kid with a black eye.
Dad let go of my hand and knelt in the dirt by the road just staring at it.
“Is that where you grew up?” I said.
He nodded. “I lived there until I went into the military.”
“Did it always look this run-down?”
“Not like that. There used to be a little birdbath in the front. Rocks around it and some flowers.”
The front yard was nothing but weeds and thistles and dandelions. Either someone’s lawn mower didn’t work or somebody didn’t care. The driveway led out back to a shed that was leaning to one side. A stiff wind could have blown it down.
“Who lives here now?”
Dad pointed to the mailbox, and the word Johnson could almost be seen through the rust. “I’m thinking it’s my dad.”
I stood there looking and swatting while he knelt in the dirt. A truck pulled out of the trailer park and the driver lifted an index finger toward us and my dad waved. Seemed like the least the guy could have done was raise his whole hand, but maybe that’s the way they say hello here.
I put my hands on my hips and stared at him. “We going to go over there or just stay here and collect dust?”
He stuck his tongue in his cheek like he was trying not to smile and squinted at me. “Why don’t you go over there and knock on the door? See what happens.”
“What do I say?”
“I don’t know. Act like you’re selling Girl Scout Cookies.”
I looked at the house and I couldn’t help but feel it was haunted. “Why can’t you go with me?”
“I’ll be along directly.”
He didn’t say that too much, but when he did, it had a bunch of different meanings. Directly could mean two minutes or a whole hour, depending on the situation. But I was so hot and the bugs were so bad that I walked across the road and climbed on the rickety porch. There was one lawn chair outside the door that looked like if somebody sat in it they would fall clear through. Beside it was a Maxwell House coffee can that was full of cigarette butts.
I glanced back at my dad and he was still on the ground watching me, his hands together in front of him as he knelt. I pushed the doorbell, but there wasn’t any sound inside. So I knocked on the screen door, which didn’t have a screen in it, and the thing rattled like some angry snake.
The front door was wooden, and when nobody came, I reached through where the screen should have been and knocked. It made a dull thud like it had gotten wet and wasn’t really supposed to be used as an outside door in the first place.
I didn’t hear anything inside, so I started to leave, but then the doorknob turned and the meanest-looking man I had ever seen was standing there. He had whiskers all over his face, white ones, and there was some brown stuff coming down the corner of one side of his mouth. His hair was all swirled on top of his head like he’d been sleeping, and the white T-shirt he was wearing had big stains under the armpits. He stared at me with the kind of sneer that you would use when looking at worms in your salad bowl.
“Can’t you read?” he said. He almost growled. He pointed at the sign on the side of the house that said No Solicitation.
“I don’t know what that means,” I said.
“Means whatever you’re selling I’m not buying.”
It was a really terrible feeling talking to somebody who did not even want you to exist, but at the same time, I could tell there was something in that voice and in the eyes that reminded me of my dad. Sometimes when you see something awful, you can’t help but stare at
it. I almost wanted to sing a verse of “I’ll Fly Away,” but I didn’t.
“You get on out of here and leave me alone.”
He was about to close the door when I said, “But, sir, do you know a John Johnson? Used to be in the military? Fought in Afghanistan?”
He pulled the door open again, and it creaked at the bottom where it was coming apart. “What do you want with Johnny? He don’t live here anymore.”
“I know he doesn’t. But he used to, right?”
His eyes narrowed.
“You’re his daddy, right?”
He muttered something under his breath about stupid kids in the neighborhood bothering him and started to close the door. Then he looked up over my head, and I felt a shadow engulfing me and a hand on my shoulder.
The old man stared at my dad in a mix of anger and surprise. Then he opened his mouth, and I could see his teeth were either yellow or black. “I thought you was dead.”
“You thought wrong,” Dad said.
“I thought you killed yourself. Everybody did. Thought you’d wash up on some beach.”
“I washed up here. Can we come in?”
“We?” the old man said. Then he looked at me. “This your daughter?”
“This is June Bug. June Bug, this is my dad.”
He muttered something about my red hair before turning around and looking inside. I guess he wondered what he should pick up.
My dad opened the screen door and we walked in. It was dark, even in the middle of the day, because all the blinds were pulled and there wasn’t any light except the one coming from the TV. The sound was off but there was some fishing show on. Newspapers were strewn all over and a couple of bowls that needed cleaning long ago. I wished he had a dog, but then again, I wasn’t sure what would happen to a dog if he couldn’t take care of himself.
The old man wobbled when he walked and just inside the kitchen door there were lots of medicine bottles, the brown kind, with the name Henry Johnson on them. The kitchen wasn’t much better than the front room as far as being clean, and the floor was coming up in different places. There was a funny smell about the whole house, like when you get your socks wet and hang them up, but they don’t dry, and I wondered if it had always smelled like that.