Counting for Thunder

by Phillip Irwin Cooper

  Braves Cap waves his hammer in my direction and leans across the top of the door frame below him. “I heard you were back in these parts. You got killed in some soap opera, right?”

  “Yup,” I say, pushing down the familiar shame of failure.

  “What’s that?”

  I clear my throat and say it a bit louder. “I did, yes, that was me.”

  “Well,” he says, painfully earnest. “I suppose one could coast on something like that for quite some time.”

  “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

  “Hey, you’re making me dizzy,” he says, pitching a nail into the side of his mouth for safekeeping.

  “Huh?”

  Braves points his hammer at my still-jogging feet.

  “Oh, sorry,” I say, making a feeble attempt to stand still.

  “So. You don’t remember me,” he says, holding up a level to a two-by-four. “At all.”

  Since my only available sightline consists of a straight shot up the legs of his shorts, I study the row of red-berried nandinas to my left, nudging my memory one last time. “I’m—nu-uh,” I mumble.

  “I was a couple years ahead of you,” he says, removing his cap for a moment, “but I was in public school, and I had more hair back then. We lived on Main Street.”

  I study the carpenter again. He’s more than a bit handsome, still a pretty impressive head of black hair from where I stand, only a few grays in sight. Still drawing a blank on the face slightly craggy from too many days in the sun, I shrug, shaking my head with a half-smile.

  “Still no?” he says, like a disappointed child.

  I shrug again, and he drops the hammer, leaps down from the frame and circles me, dribbling an invisible ball. Heading to the phantom net on the nearby poplar, he jumps, torso twisted behind him. “He shoots, scores! Two points for the Jackson Bobcats!” he hollers, with just a hint of desperation.

  I say it fast like a forgotten mantra: “Irondick Tischman?”

  He laughs, pulling the cap down over his eyes. “Well, there’s a name I don’t hear anymore.” He sticks out his hand. “The name’s Joe.”

  I shake, embarrassed, temporarily lost in the recollection his visual had conjured up of countless Friday nights sitting in the stands, the legion of Bobcats fans chanting the salacious moniker for one of Coach Benton’s golden boys. The origin of said nickname was unknown except to a few seniors who weren’t talking, at least to us pathetic underlings. More than once, Gleason Hadley, the principal, threatened to stop the proceedings mid-game if the licentious chanting wasn’t curtailed.

  “Yeah, sure,” I say, still pumping his hand, “Joe. Right.”

  “It’s okay. Old habits die hard.” He sits on the ground beside me, one of the few folks I’ve seen get more good-looking with the passage of time. “I was sorry to hear, you know, about your mom.”

  “Right. Thanks,” I say, looking up into the branches of the poplar, the underbelly of the emerald leaves silver dollars in the breeze.

  Joe etches nothing in the dirt with a crooked pine stick.

  “So,” I say, pointing to the skeleton of the home in front of me.

  “Oh, this,” he says, turning around. “My folks’ place. They bought it a couple of years ago. Now it’s pretty much a casualty of the last big storm. They’re in Gulf Shores while I do what I do.”

  The endless barrage of hurricanes through the Gulf Coast breeds tornados like rabbits. After the most recent, Garrett had called me in California to brag about standing just outside the cellar door, hanging on for dear life while watching as a series of twisters curled down Blue Cove Road like giant Slinkys.

  “Is that yours?” I say, pointing to a family-sized camp tent pitched under an old chinaberry behind the house.

  “Yeah. Just till I get the walls up. Come on, I’ll give you a tour of the first floor, since that’s all we’ve got yet.” He waves over my shoulder in the direction of the road behind me. “Hey, isn’t that your dad?”

  I turn around to see Garrett staring curiously through the windshield of his pickup at the two of us. No doubt he’s headed to the “coffee-drankin’,” an appointment he’s kept for decades at Joe Brown’s Pharmacy, the insides of which don’t appear to have changed since the war, probably the first one. “That’s him,” I say, remembering I’ve forgotten to grill the tempeh for today’s lunch.

  “So what about that tour?”

  “No thanks,” I say, finding my idling pace again. “You take care.” I round the poplar before making my way back down the driveway to the road below. “Good seeing you.” I wave once over my shoulder, glancing back at the small-time basketball hero before he disappears behind the wall of cedars.

  THE DIXIE

  June 7, 1999

  Out & About

  Alisia Jenks Nabs First Deer of Season

  Alisia Jenks, 6, daughter of Ken and Heather Jenks, killed the first deer of the hunting season. Alisia took down the twelve-point buck with a twelve-gauge, a gift from her grandparents for her fifth birthday. As per custom, the little tyke was paraded through town early Saturday morning, her face painted with the blood of the beast. This marks the second year in a row the first deer was bagged by one of our younger hunters. Last year, Jimmy Connell, 8, took the honors. Come on, old folks, let’s not let the young’uns show us up too bad! Congrats, Alisia!

  14

  “Are you in?” I say as Tina situates herself in the front seat of the Lincoln with a nod. Slamming the door behind her, I go around to the other side and hop in behind the wheel. Already in the back seat, Sis is checking herself in the window’s reflection. Garrett watches condescendingly from the carport. Tina tries her best to ignore him. “Have you ever seen a look like that? Like we’re disappearing into the pages of a Stephen King novel with the witches and the goblins and the headless everybodies.”

  “I’m not so sure we’re not,” Sis says, popping her Juicy Fruit, a newfound habit to replace the smokes.

  I start the engine and turn the air conditioner on full blast. “Just try not to look at him.”

  Tina examines herself in the sun visor mirror and purses her lips. “Well, Fanny says this fellow comes highly recommended.”

  Sis hoots from the back seat. “A ringing endorsement.”

  * * *

  A woman who looks like a “Touch Me in the Morning”–era Diana Ross waves sleepily from the entrance of a narrow dirt road.

  “You can walk in from here,” she says, leaning into Tina’s open window.

  Honest to God, I can see three bats dip just behind her in the summer heat.

  “Are we doing this?” Sis asks sheepishly, the only time to my mind she’s ever asked anything sheepishly.

  “Hellpecker yes,” I say opening the car door, feeling a bit sheepish myself.

  * * *

  The bonfire in back of the ramshackle shotgun house casts a supernatural glow across Tina, prostrate on a long, wooden table next to a grinning human skull and a copy of the New Testament. Scattered items of junk have been fashioned into art around the riverside abode: a mile-high stack of wrought iron patio chairs, clearly inspired by the Watts Towers, peers over the proceedings, while a life-sized aluminum Christmas angel hangs like a lynching victim from a tattered rope in a nearby pine. A pair of African American children playing in a burned-out Chevy make me think of survivors in a TV miniseries I’d seen about the apocalypse.

  Brother Peter, a tall West Indian standing across the table from me, holds his thick, ancient hands out over Tina’s body and motions for me to do the same. He locks his eyes into mine like he’s trying to read my thoughts.

  “Okay, you feel de heat?”

  “Yeah,” I say, definitely feeling something. “I feel it.”

  His gaze suggests I’m in over my head. “Heezzzzzbokmon,” he hisses.

  A cockeyed parrot squawks from its perch just behind my head. Flinching like a whipped hound, I make a gallant attempt to recover.

  “Nooooow,” he says, “to make y
our hands into de wings of a dove.”

  Taking his lead, I fan out my hands in front of me like the feathers of something he’ll find acceptable.

  “HEEZBOKMON!” No hiss this time, more like an outright holler.

  “Bo Skeet—” Sis says from her lawn chair underneath the Christmas angel.

  “Silence, sister!” Brother Peter shuts her down hard without a glance in her direction.

  The parrot squawks, and I hurriedly change the shape of my hands into something less incendiary.

  “Okay now, mooove it to de left.”

  I follow Brother Peter’s giant shadow as we move our hands to the left, his forceful eyes following me from across the table. “HEEZBOKMON! HEEZBOKKK!”

  The parrot dances on its perch, flapping its wings like someone’s trying to kill it.

  “HEEZBOKMON!”

  My tipping point.

  “What are you saying?” I say, downright panicked. “I don’t know what that means, and you keep yelling it at me!”

  Sis whispers behind my ear. “Ease back, man.”

  “What?” I say, wary as hell of speaking to anyone but Brother Peter.

  With her hands on my shoulders, Sis moves me back an inch. “You need to ease back.”

  “Ease back,” Tina whispers, like we’re all on our way to the principal’s office.

  “Oh,” I say, relieved someone finally broke the foreign dialect code. “Ease back. Right.” Still too petrified to look our fearless leader in the eye, I carefully take two steps back, my hands still over Tina’s chest. From my peripheral vision, I can see Brother Peter offering a tiny nod of affirmation.

  “Heezebok,” I say, and this time I mean it.

  * * *

  Brother Peter walks us to the car, no flunky in sight, his hand on Tina’s back. Although he is addressing my mother in soft tones, Sis and I are able to hear every word. “Pray, meditate, whatever it is you do. But do it twice a day. Concentrate on one thing that gives you power. Do this religiously. If you do this thing I’m telling you, the powers of darkness won’t have room to get in. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” my mother says.

  We are now at the car. Brother Peter and Tina are facing each other. He takes both her hands in his.

  “Say that you understand, but use your voice where I can hear it,” he says.

  “Yes,” Tina says, louder. “I understand you.”

  “Say your name. Your first name.”

  “Tina.”

  “Again.”

  “Tina,” she says a bit louder.

  “Again.”

  “TINA!” she says, like a town crier.

  Brother Peter smiles and opens the passenger door. “Every single day,” he says.

  Tina gets in the car. “Tina.” She says it one more time and smiles as he closes the door.

  When we are all finally tucked away in the car, I look over at my mother, who is blushing like a bride.

  “Tina,” she says, glancing out the window at the place where Brother Peter had just stood.

  * * *

  The big blue lights of the Highway 43 Chevron Station signals our late-night return to civilization. Tina has tuned the radio to cool jazz. Sis lies across the back seat, asleep for all we know.

  “Okay, Sis,” Tina says. “It’s time to come clean. Fanny told me.”

  “Told you what?”

  Tina turns around. “You found Brother Peter, not Fanny.”

  I can hear Sis sit up. “Well, no.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “Melanie Pugh mentioned him,” Sis says. “He led a prayer circle for her daddy. So, I mentioned him to Fanny and she said she’d met him a couple of times and thought he was the real deal. So—”

  “You asked Fanny to take the fall in case it turned out to be a bust.”

  Sis looks out the window. “You could say that.”

  Tina holds her hand over the seat for Sis to take. “It wasn’t a bust, Sis.”

  “Well, you just never know,” Sis says, taking her mother’s hand.

  The sense of pride and anticipation in the car is palpable.

  15

  Sis follows me, still sweaty from my run, up the ladder of the remnants of the ancient tree house. Even as an older, albeit misfit teen, I’d often come in from school and climb the ladder, pretending I was Alan Ladd in Shane come to save the sodbusters and their helpless families from Jack Palance and the other evil cattlemen. I’d hold a hand over one eye, like John Wayne’s patch in True Grit, so I could never see what was coming from the left side of my face.

  Although the evergreen paint has since peeled from the ladder steps and most of the walls have fallen victim to Gulf Coast weather, Garrett had the good sense to build the floor out of treated lumber, which is the only reason we could still go into the big, creaking room without taking our life in our hands.

  Sis groans as she climbs the last two rungs. “If I break my neck on some rotten—”

  “You’re not gonna break your neck on some rotten,” I say, pulling her into the house. With a pair of binoculars I’ve taken from Garrett’s gun cabinet, I take a gander across the creek where Joe hammers particle board in the kitchen area of the Tischman house. “Here,” I say, offering Sis the binoculars.

  “What?” Sis swats the air around her, cursing an imaginary fly. “Shit.”

  “Remember Joe Tischman?”

  “Irondick?” Sis squints into the binoculars and gasps. “Is that him?”

  Tina climbs into the house, taking in her surroundings like a kid. “Who are we spying on?”

  Sis says his name like something good to eat. “Joe Tischman.”

  “Two points, Jackson Bobcats,” Tina says under her breath, shrugging her shoulders at my look of surprise at her uncanny recall. She leans her chin on the decaying banister and points the binoculars at the house across the creek. “Now, where’d he go to college? Ole Miss, I think.”

  I take the binoculars from Tina, offering up information like a first-time drunk. “He never went to college. He went to India. And everywhere else you can think of. Hitchhiking, climbing mountains. But eventually he came back here to build houses. He’s very much in demand. He was in a bunch of magazines.”

  Sis gnaws a pine straw. “You heard, though, right?”

  “What?” I say, following Joe’s movement as he measures another particle board for cutting.

  Tina takes back the binoculars. “His parents are in Gulf Shores. That’s all I know.”

  “Janie Wright told me he went crazy,” Sis says. “He lost it over there, went bonkers, whatever. Had to spend some time in Bryce or Searcy. One of those places.”

  Janie Wright’s daddy, the Academy’s only crossing guard, used to shoo imaginary colonies of ants off his feet while he ushered us from one side of the street to the other. Anything Janie Wright says, I take with a grain of salt.

  Tina sits on the floor, hands me the binoculars, and hoists herself over the hatch. “Well, I’m glad you’ll have somebody your own age to play with while you’re here,” she says, climbing back down the ladder.

  Tina disappears down the hole, and Sis barks in pain from a splinter she’s picked up from the wall of the tree house. “Ow, fuckit,” she says, glancing in my direction.

  I take her hand and find the splinter in her palm. It’s a big one, easy to see.

  “She’s so happy you’re here,” Sis says.

  “Well, I’m happy to be here.”

  “You are, aren’t you? I mean, you don’t mind?”

  “No,” I say, lifting the splinter. “It sort of worked out. It was a very good time to leave L.A.”

  “How’s Caroline?” She takes her hand back. “Isn’t that her name?”

  “That’s her name. And we’re pretty much done. Like you, I hear?”

  “Justine decided she wasn’t gay. I was like, after seven years you need a label?” Sis drops to the floor and begins making her way back down the ladder. “People are crazy, aren’t they
?”

  “They sure are,” I say, glancing once more in the direction of Joe’s house.

  * * *

  Tina and I are seated in two identical overstuffed easy chairs. I am attempting to smile reassuringly, something I’m getting really good at.

  A fleshy, sour-faced woman in her mid-fifties shuffles into the chemotherapy ward. Stooped and brittle, she barely acknowledges our presence. “My name’s Rose O’Sharon, and I’ll be your chemo nurse.” I remember the same expression on the face of a rain-soaked possum I’d surprised while taking the trash out late one night. Rose O’Sharon trundles past us to a drawer behind my chair. “Mizrez Stalworth, I’ll tell you what I tell all my stage four cancer patients. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.”

  I take Tina’s hand as if the act of doing so erases the fog of cruelty descending over the room.

  “How’s that grandbaby doin’, Wanda?” she hollers at some unseen presence down the hall.

  “Growin’ like a weed,” invisible Wanda hollers back.

  “I’ll swanee,” Rose O’Sharon says, putting an end to the exchange, shuffling behind Tina’s chair and holding up the bag hanging from an IV stand. “Now, I’ll bring pamphlets,” she says, “to answer anything I don’t.” She plows through her somber speech at lightning speed like she does it a thousand times a day. “This is carboplatin. This drug is particularly tough on the veins. It will eventually begin to eat them away.”

  The tragic excuse for a nurse sits on a stool across from Tina and takes her arm, and the matter at hand is under way before we know it. “It’s also hard on the kidneys, so drink plenty of water. It kills the good blood cells with the bad blood cells, so if you come down with a fever or infection, get to a hospital immediately. It could prove fatal. Germs are now the number one enemy in your camp, so you must do everything in your power to keep them as far away from you as possible. Umph,” she says, rising with a grunt before heading off to Pamphletland.