Counting for Thunder

by Phillip Irwin Cooper

  “Are you all high on dope?” he says to me and no one else.

  Tina is suddenly serious. “I am.” She points to me. “He’s not.”

  Garrett pitches the bag on the chest of drawers. “Bo Skeet, can I see you for a moment?”

  “What’s the matter? Of course you can see me. You’re seeing me right here!” I say, concerned I might pee the bed.

  Garrett is unmoved. “I said now. And now means now.”

  The fact that Garrett has interrupted the first pot buzz I’ve had since college tempts me to ignore him and the pall he’s brought to the proceedings. Setting the cake plate aside, I make a valiant attempt to haul myself off the bed, stepping over a still-sleeping Sis until I come face-to-face with his gaze of judgment.

  Tina hollers groggily. “Gaaaaaarrett. You have a halo aaaaaall around your head.”

  Garrett rolls his eyes and walks away.

  “You’re high, too.” Tina giggles.

  * * *

  Garrett leans against the support pilaster on the front porch, looking out over Blue Cove Road like a watchtower fireman. I stay close to the door, attempting to conceal the brownie half I’m still holding in my left hand. “Is that Marv Tischman’s boy I saw doing that work on his mama and daddy’s house?”

  “Yeah,” I say, realizing my paltry answer sounds more like a question than a statement.

  “Well, that’s about as near-a-next-to-nothing as you’re gonna get.”

  Garrett has used this phrase every since I can remember, always in reference to the worst of its lot. “Why do you say that?”

  Garrett makes a face that doesn’t answer my question.

  I go again, but I suspect it’s a bad idea. “What does the face mean?”

  “Listen, I don’t know what you’re trying to pull here.”

  My debilitating case of cottonmouth has more to do with Joe than it does with the dope. I know Garrett saw us talking the other day, but surely he has no idea I spent last night there. Or that the reason I had to was because I wasn’t minding my own business. “What are you talking about?”

  “What you’re doin’ in my house is illegal.”

  I am more than a bit relieved we’re leaving the subject of Joe and getting back to the felony at hand.

  “Doctors write prescriptions for this stuff out in California all the time,” I say.

  Garrett rolls his eyes at the mere mention of the freewheeling state. “Well, I don’t doubt that. Now, I haven’t said a word about any of this tofu crap, but I’m drawing the line right here. You got me?” He folds his arms across his chest like he’s the Chief of Everything.

  I’ll get anything he wants me to if I can just get a glass of water down my rusty pipes. “I got you. Just don’t—”

  Garrett raises a threatening eyebrow.

  “I got you,” I say again, ducking back into the house.

  18

  The Tischman house has seen substantial growth since I was last here, its exposed frames and open lofts replaced with walls and doors, giving the place an impenetrable air. The past several weeks have been jam-packed between doctor visits, shopping, and the preparation of three macrobiotic meals a day. For the first time in ages, I’m asleep most nights before eleven.

  Having finally gotten the whole thing down to a science, I’ve decided to broaden my horizons and head back to the scene of the crime. A crime I’ve relived many times during my rare free time. Although the incident left me too bruised to brave any further embarrassment with another visit, I’ve decided to throw caution to the wind.

  I can make out Joe’s lopsided smile in the late afternoon sun all the way from the creek trail. I allow myself a few extra seconds of unnecessary maneuvering amidst the brush and brambles to soak in that feeling of anticipation one carries, light as a feather, on their way to meet someone who has caught their attention. Joe sips a bottle of beer in a wrought iron patio chair and squints curiously as I advance the steps.

  “I thought I was going to have to send a messenger,” he says.

  “And what would said messenger have said?”

  Joe smiles, waving goodbye to a pair of weary-looking Latino carpenters lobbing their toolboxes into an old pickup truck in the driveway. “How ’bout some contraband?” he says, holding up his near-empty beer. “Well, guess I can’t call it that anymore, can I?”

  “Nah, you can’t. And I’m good, but thanks.” I truly am, feeling now more than ever the Gospel According to Justin and Marsala. My body is humming from an early dinner of millet and seitan, while my mind buzzes with limitless possibilities. It suddenly dawns on me Joe’s tent was no longer pitched under the chinaberry. “Where’s your tent?” I say, swatting a no-see-um, wondering if the bug is any relation to the pest that got me into this situation in the first place.

  “We got walls now. I moved in,” he says, pointing his thumb over his shoulder at the house. “How ’bout a beer and that tour?”

  “What?”

  Joe ambles into my personal space. “You seem nervous.”

  Wow. Am I about to meet the crazy Sis talked about? “Who, me? Nervous? No, I’m not nervous. Why should I be?”

  “There’s something on your neck,” he says, squinting just above my collar. “Some flying something.”

  “What? Get it before it bites. Everything down here bites.”

  “All right,” he says, placing a hand aside my neck. “I’m lying. I just wanted an excuse to touch you, but I didn’t want to wait for a perfect moment in the conversation. So. I’m just gonna leave my hand here for a while.”

  I can feel my heart beat in my neck underneath his big sweaty hand. I can look everywhere but in his eyes, which is a shame as that’s probably the only place I should be looking, just in case he is nuts. But he doesn’t feel nuts. It feels like he’s trying to soothe the heartbeat in my neck with his cool, calm energy. I suddenly feel scared and sleepy at the same time.

  “So. Since you haven’t coldcocked me yet, does that mean I can kiss you?”

  “You…” I say, only now beginning to wrap my head around what’s actually about to happen.

  “Otherwise I’m gonna look like an idiot with some dumb-ass bug ruse.”

  “Well, I haven’t coldcocked anyone in a mighty long time. I usually try and keep my violently short temper in check.”

  Joe kisses me once, quick. I’m thinking maybe it’s too quick, but he comes in for another. This time he stays a couple seconds longer. The top of my scalp is tingling. As he pulls away, he smiles the tiniest of smiles, moves his hand to the side of my face, and pats it gently.

  Stuffing my hands in my pockets, I take in the Tischman house behind us, trying to think of something to say.

  “How ’bout that tour?” Joe says, tilting his head back as if to get a better look at me.

  “How ’bout that beer?” I’m stalling what I feel sure is inevitable.

  “Is that a beer and a tour, or a beer instead of the tour?”

  Abruptly robbed of all pretenses, I take a seat, if only for a moment, in Joe’s vacant chair.

  * * *

  “So, wait,” he says. “You’ve never kissed a guy on the lips?”

  “Nope. And it’s not the stereotype from pulp novels where the straight guy says, ‘We can do everything else, but I don’t kiss.’ I’ve been with guys—well, a couple, and just briefly.”

  “But no kissing.”

  “Crazy, I guess. I’ve just never thought about it before.” I give Joe’s waist a tug. “So what does it feel like to have not an ounce of fat on your body?”

  Joe doesn’t answer. He plays with a lock of sweaty hair on my forehead.

  I’m thinking how insane it is to realize I’ve never lain side by side facing a girl the way I’m presently lying with Joe. This in and of itself, I suppose, means nothing. I’ve collapsed above and below a lover, spooned, even chatted head to toe and toe to head. It’s just a simple observation. In a sea of blankets tossed about a futon on this sawdust-covered floor, th
e fact that Joe’s leg is thrown over mine in a most familiar way is making an indelible impression. It’s definitely a day of firsts. “Personally,” I say, “I’ve been able to pinch way more than an inch since I discovered beer in college.”

  “You’re fine.”

  “You’re a nice guy for saying so.”

  “Now, that’s true. I am a nice guy,” he says as a mockingbird trills enthusiastically outside the bedroom window. “Isn’t that something?” Joe tilts his head up toward the window where the mockingbird is aping a jenny wren like a champ. “How a mocker can do that? I mean, how does he even know to try and take on someone else’s song? I heard one mock a cat once. About dusk one day. Scared me half to death.”

  “Do you know that until I was about thirty years old, I didn’t know that mockingbirds actually mocked other birds?”

  “What? No.”

  “I was out in the boat one day with Garrett, and he said, ‘Listen at that bird mocking a robin’ and I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’”

  Joe’s shoulders rise and fall with laughter under the blanket as he takes in the ridiculous confession. “So, why did you think they called them mockingbirds?”

  “I’d never really thought about it. I just thought they had a rich and varied playlist,” I say, cackling, my face red with embarrassment.

  Joe presses his erection against my calf. “You are one crazy shaigitz.”

  I press back with my leg even harder, like it’s a contest.

  “What was it like to be the only Jewish kid in town?”

  “Was I?” he says, a fake look of shock on his face.

  “You were. And I remember thinking it was so cool. But some of the old people at church thought you were going to hell.”

  “I think because my father wasn’t made it okay with some of ’em. And we had a tree at Christmas. But the menorah thing, and the fact that we didn’t go to any church was unacceptable.”

  “One of our gurus in Tennessee is Jewish,” I say, sounding alarmingly like my mother.

  “Gurus?”

  “Story for another day. Where’d ‘Irondick’ come from?”

  “I have no idea.”

  I give him a look that says I don’t believe him.

  “I’m a hundred percent serious.”

  “Well,” I say, feeling around under the covers. “A very reliable source tells me you came by it honest.”

  “Oh, and who is that?”

  “Me,” I say, pulling his cock forward and letting it slap back hard on his stomach. “But I have to do more research.”

  “You won’t do, boy,” Joe says.

  “How’d you come to building houses?” I love the fact that when two people are together, they can do one thing and talk about another.

  Joe scratches my lower back lightly with his fingernails, an action that causes every hair on my body to stand at full mast. “Spent a summer with Habitat for Humanity. Got hooked. Then I decided to find out how the other half lived—you know, the folks who live and die thinking only of themselves.”

  “And how’s that working out for you?” I say, wondering if I should be doing something to him to make his body feel as good as mine does.

  “I love it. I’m trying to live as selfishly as I possibly can for as long as I can possibly stand it.”

  I find myself wondering if this is when he’s going to add they had to bring him home in a straightjacket. Quite honestly, I can’t pick up one speck of nervous in this guy’s staunch demeanor. My heart double-times, that place where you nod off and wake yourself in the same split second. “Go to sleep. We don’t have to talk,” he says softly.

  “No, I just…what was India like?”

  “Beautiful. Dirty. Crowded. Amazing. Every fantastic and terrible thing you’ve heard about India is true, to the tenth power.” He moves his chin to my shoulder. “Hey. You want a drink? A beer, water or—hey,” he says, looking back over his shoulder, “what are you doing back there?”

  “Aren’t there supposed to be, like, thirty-two vertebrae?” I say, my lips softly calculating as I move my hand slowly down the middle of his back.

  “I guess.” Joe stays perfectly still, closing his eyes, a hint of smile crossing his leathery, sunburned face.

  I continue to tally, quiet, intense. “Wow, they go so far down,” I say, playing the upper ones like some crazy xylophone with my other hand.

  Joe giggles and flinches. “Do they?”

  “Am I tickling you?”

  “Sort of. It’s okay,” he says, putting both arms around the top of my shoulders, pulling the leg that’s already over mine in tighter. “Is that better?”

  “Yep,” I say, pulling him even closer. “Yep.”

  * * *

  RRRRRRRRRRRoooooooooowwwwwwwww. The piercing wail of a troubled cat calls from somewhere in the distance as I snake down the creek trail, briefly catching the silhouette of my father standing under one of the water oaks at the top of the hollow.

  RRRRRRRRooooooowww. The cat sounds worse for wear as I squat next to the creek, covertly tossing water on my face and under my arms, a poor attempt to generate nonexistent jogger’s sweat.

  “You must have gotten off early this morning,” he says, squatting to tie his shoe.

  Pulling the cap down over my forehead, I attempt to ignore my father’s unintentional double entendre while I conceal my face.

  “You check any o’ them crawfish traps?” Garrett asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, referring to the tiny boxes he rigs on the creek beds to catch the mudbugs he uses for bait. “Not a lot going on.” Louisiana may hold the crown for quantity, but Alabama has more species of crawfish than any other state. Bass love to see them squirming on the end of a hook.

  “What, couldn’t sleep?”

  “Nope,” I say, attempting to make my way past him, as if he can read my mind like a sideshow psychic.

  RRRRRRRRRRRRRRoooooooooooooowwwwwww. It seems highly probable this yowl could be the anguished mystery cat’s final call.

  “What the devil…” I say.

  “You gotta see this thing,” Garrett says, heading toward the swimming pool. “Come on.”

  I follow my father into the sunlight where he produces a remote control from his pocket. He aims it at a black cube the size of a shoebox near the carport. “You know all the trouble we’ve been having with crows?” he says.

  “What trouble?” I wasn’t aware crows caused strife of any kind.

  “Well, you know,” Garrett says, screwing up his face, “a crow’s just a crow.”

  RRRRRRRRooooooooowwwwwwww.

  “This is a predator call,” he says, pointing the remote at the box and flipping a switch, excited as a kid at Christmas. “Now, see, this is a house cat in distress. And when that crow hears that house cat, he’s gonna come a’ flyin’. And I’m gonna be waiting for him with my .22 rifle. No, wait,” he says, pulling the instructions out of his pocket, scanning them. “The coyotes are gonna come for the distressed house cat.”

  “What coyotes?”

  Another click, this time a cock-a-doodle-do.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “That would be,” Garrett says, reading, “the pleading chicken. And that attracts—lemme see—that attracts the coyotes, as well.”

  “Gonna be a pretty tough day around here for coyotes.”

  Baaaaaahhhh.

  “Let me guess,” I say, “pleading sheep?”

  “Bleating billy goat.”

  “Attracts?”

  “General predators. Gray foxes, barn owl, what have you.”

  The lunacy of my father and I actually having such a lively, illuminating conversation about a subject of such grisliness strikes me as peculiar.

  “What else you got?” I ask, feeling less and less than ever like the shamed nine-year-old who pulled the trigger on the turkey gobbler.

  BBBBBBwwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaahhh. Something between a shriek and a squawk.

  Garrett grins from ear to ear. “Whini
ng baby cottontail. Probably caught on a fence or something and can’t get out.”

  I make a face and ask for another, my eagerness to continue the discourse overriding the guilt I feel in this twisted game of Darwinism.

  Squeeeeeeaaaaaakkkkkkk.

  “Distressed rodent?”

  “Field mouse!” my father says, nodding. “And what predator would we be calling?”

  “Ah, hawk?”

  “A hawk would go ape shit for a field mouse,” he says, pleased as punch.

  I pull my pants up tight around my waist and ask for another.

  THE DIXIE

  October 28, 1999

  Headlines

  Alcohol Sales Begin in Jackson

  The first beer and wine in Jackson’s history has now been sold at three area stores. For some who led the attempt to keep the city free from alcoholic sales, like the Rev. C.C. Tompkins, it was not a time of celebration. “As a pastor, I think it is now time for our churches to begin to set our sights on ministering to folks that are going to be affected by the inflow of alcohol.” Those who felt differently, like Walker Springs Grab and Go (now Walker Springs Beer Barn) owner Kristy Kelp, cheerfully heralded a new day for businesses. “First weekend sales have been unbelievable. I’ve hardly even had time to sit down and smoke,” Kelp said. “I think things will settle down in a few weeks, but I think you can see that the people are definitely going to come to Jackson now that we have beer for sale.”

  19

  Billy Wade is driving on an untamed country highway during that unpredictable time of day when the last blip of sunset is giving itself over to darkness. Patience sips a beer and navigates next to him. In the back seat, Joe slides his big right foot up next to the side of my left one while I’m wrestling with reception on my cell.

  “I don’t know when I’ll be back…Frances, listen…I know it seems there’s no way you can make it without me, but—”