Lyla, page 7
Mullet set the huge tongs down and removed a little flask from his side pocket. He took a nip, wiped his mouth with his arm, and extended it to me.
I looked at him, unblinking.
“It's whiskey.”
“Whiskey?”
“It ain't that shine your daddy drank. That stuff gives me bad headaches. I don't know how that old bird did it. Nasty stuff.”
He handed me the flask, I sniffed it.
“Boy,” he said. “If you don't deserve a swallow I don't know anyone who does. After these last two years, you're a grown man in anybody's opinion.”
I put it to my lips and took a baby sip. It burned my throat and made me cough. The whiskey was pungent, but pleasant.
“Go ahead, Old Timer, take you a real snort. We both deserve it after having such a good day. It won't kill you.”
I took a swig and handed it back to him.
My body got warmer from the drink. I smacked at the oysters and coughed a little. Mullet smiled at me. It was my initiation into a new club. He sat down next to me and took another pull from the flask before sliding it into his pocket.
He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. My daddy had respected Mullet when he was alive, and that was a rare thing for Daddy to do. Sometimes Daddy didn't even respect himself.
When Daddy died, Mullet hired me to work with him. And so far, I'd worked two summers with him, and one winter. Sometimes we worked on his boat, sometimes on Daddy's old boat. Mullet paid me at the end of every week in big, heavy silver dollars. And every week I asked if he was overpaying me by an extra dollar. He swore up and down that the numbers were right.
I knew they weren't.
I saw Mullet move his mouth, and I wasn't able to read his lips this time.
“Sir?” I aimed my good ear at him.
“Oh, I'm sorry, I keep forgetting about your busted head holes, let's trade sides.”
Mullet walked over to my other side.
He said in a loud voice, “Do you feel that breeze? Feels good don't it?”
It did feel good.
The bay breeze was gentle, but steady. The air smelled like dead shrimp, and mud, and I loved it. The wind is an oysterman's friend. It helped keep the wicked mosquitoes away from the boats on the water. Otherwise, the little bastards would eat a fisherman alive, one nibble at a time.
Mullet cleared his throat. “How's your momma doing?”
“Fine, I guess,” The whiskey had loosened my tongue. “We hardly see her, though. She's always in her bedroom.”
“Sounds about normal to me.”
He tossed an oyster into the basket, picked up another and just stared at it. I watched him sitting there. Mullet was a short man with leathery skin. His brilliant blue eyes looked like crystal, and his legs were little stumps. He had a thick gray beard that made him look like one of Santa's elves.
If Santa's elves chewed plug tobacco.
“She don't want nothing to do with us anymore,” I said.
“Yeah, I reckon that's about normal, too.”
Mullet tossed a shell into the basket.
He changed the subject. “You know what happened to me the other day? I saw a goat in my front yard. A little doe.”
“A goat?”
“Hand to God. I don't know where she come from. And when I goes to the back of the house, you know what?”
“What.”
“There's another goat standing in the backyard too. A stout little billie, just staring at me. Goats got them weird eyes you know?”
Goats did have weird eyes.
“Hell,” he said. “I don't know where they came from. Nobody seems to know where they come from. I don't know anyone stupid enough to have goats.”
I laughed. It was the whiskey that was doing the laughing.
“So yesterday,” he went on. “I spent all afternoon building a damn fence for them little things.” He threw a tiny oyster overboard. “I don't know the first thing about goats. Not the first cotton-picking thing. I don't even know what they hell they eat.”
He took another sip from his flask.
“But I got two of them now,” he said. “Ain't that something?”
Mullet reached underneath his seat and brought out a bag of ripe full oranges. He reached in the bag, picked out a big one, and then tossed it to me. “I brought us some oranges today. God. Your daddy sure did love oranges.”
͠
The green, sticky sweetness of summer accompanies the most content time of year. It ought to be a season about peanuts, cotton, and fishing. Not about sadness. It's supposed to be a time when food is richer, brighter, when gardens show off. When speckled trout jump right into your boat and beg you to eat them.
My skin was dark that summer, not coffee-dark, mind you, but roasted-turkey-dark. Mullet and I had spent enough time out on the water that my skin was beginning to look as leathery as his. I liked to press my thumb on my skin and lift it to peek at the white underneath my thumbprint.
All the girls were dark, too, giving us boys a reason to notice them. As if we needed another reason. The good-looking girls were pretty, the plain-looking girls were even prettier.
All the boys in the baseball uniforms sat on the bench. Rory McAllister sat on the other end of the dugout, with his yellow hat on backward. He was a loud obnoxious boy, who had enough money to buy and sell whatever he wanted.
“It's true,” Rory said, tossing his ball up into the air, and then catching it. “That's what I heard.”
“Naw, Quinn's daddy wouldn't have jumped off a roof on purpose,” another boy said. “No one in their right mind would do that.”
“It's true. Downright sad, if you ask me.”
The dugout was as hot and muggy as an attic. Double-hot if you were wearing a woven cotton uniform with a yellow number on it. The uniform never fit me right.
“I heard his daddy slipped. That's what my paw said,” the other boy said.
“Your paw don't know squat. He didn't see it happen,” Rory said.
“My paw knows stuff.”
“Well, suit yourself, believe whatever you want.”
“Wonder who'll marry Quinn's Momma, she's pretty. My daddy says she's arm candy.”
“I heard his momma was a slut. Heard she used to screw Phillip Sams from time to time while her old man was still alive.”
“Well, I'd marry her anyhow.”
“Shoot, she wouldn't want you. You're a little runt squirrel.”
“I'd marry her a hundred times.”
“You're a dummy.”
“A hundred times a hundred.”
The boys in the dugout didn't think I could hear them talking. They didn't even bother whispering around me; they thought I was practically deaf. The truth was, I was only partially deaf. There's a big difference between the two words–practically and partially.
I turned my head to look at Rory.
“I can hear you fools talking.” I spat on the ground. “Plain as day, I could hear everything you just said.”
The boys stopped their chatter and stared at me.
“I'm not deaf,” I said. “Not all the way.”
As if it made a difference to them.
They exchanged looks with one another, guilty looks.
“Aw, come off it, we didn't say nothing, Quinn,” Rory said.
Then Rory bent his head down and whispered something to another boy.
“I could hear that,” I lied.
“Oh yeah? What'd I just say, then?”
I was silent.
“Hey, Quinn,” another boy said. “It's your turn at the plate.”
He was right, it was up next for batting.
Rory wrinkled his face at me. “You going to get up to bat, or are you going to sit here and moan like a titty-baby?”
“I ain't no titty-baby.”
“You are so.”
“No I ain't.”
“You are so. I'll bet you still got all your baby teeth.”
The other boys bubbled with laughter at such a remark.
I stood up and chose a bat from the pile. I tapped it on the heels of my shoes. The chaw of tobacco in my cheek tasted like sweetened bits of leather. My head was swimming from the nicotine.
I exited the dugout and walked toward the plate. Frazzer, the pitcher watched me from his dirt mound with a smirk on his face. His scruffy, red hair poked from beneath his ball cap. Those big eyes he had followed me like darts as I walked to home plate.
I held the wood slugger high behind my head. My crouching batting stance was one I'd been working on all spring. I held my elbows up high, my legs spread wide apart, feet dug into the dirt. I wasn't a bad ballplayer. I was no Dodger, mind you, but I could hold my own.
Frazzer wound up and threw the ball.
His first pitch was bad.
“Ball,” the umpire said behind me.
Second pitch: I swung as hard as I could and missed.
“Strike!” the umpire said with a wide open shout.
The third pitch flew by me like a rocket. Another ball.
Fourth pitch: I swung so hard I almost fell on my face, but missed.
The umpire threw his hand out to the side and yelled, “Strike two.”
That old umpire was getting on my nerves.
The fifth pitch, I gave it everything I had. I swung so hard that I heard the tendons in my shoulder pop.
The bat and the ball connected with a loud, wooden crack. The baseball sailed through the air like an airplane. It arced over the dusty ball field and bounced over the back fence. I saw it roll through the weeds and into the forest.
“Run!” the catcher behind me waved his glove. “Home run, you dope. Run the bases, Quinn!”
My teammates in the dugout stood motionless in their dusty uniforms watching me. Their hands shoved in their pockets, and their white faces were blank. The brats didn't care to cheer. I was just a partially deaf cracker who'd hit a home run.
Home runs hit by crackers don't count.
I stood there, my legs locked like pine trees. I did not run. I touched my cheek and realized it was moist from my own tears.
The boys started to laugh like clowns.
Without warning, I flung the bat toward the dugout with all my strength. It helicoptered through the air and bounced off the chain link fence. The boys cackled like donkeys, but I couldn't hear them.
Sometimes it's good to be partially deaf.
I ran as fast as I could, lifting my knees high into the air, but I didn't jog around the bases. No. I sprinted off the field, down the street, and just kept going.
͠
I kicked the dirt on the sandy road, swinging my arms as I walked. A puff of dust swirled around me. The wind caught the dust and then carried off to wherever it is that the wind goes to hide. Upward like a small tornado.
I looked into the sky and thought about the whirly-copters that Daddy used to make. He'd use his pocket knife to whittle them out of fresh pine sticks. Then he'd spin them faster than anyone alive could spin them. They'd fly as high as the clouds, and then fall back to the earth, like they'd been licked by the sky.
My heavy baseball uniform was suffocating me as I walked under the wide open sun. I was sure I was going to die a slow death by smothering in it. They'd find me dead, in my silly uniform. Then they'd say, “Quinn sure was a nice guy, damn shame about that hot uniform he had to wear. Killed him dead.” And then some fool would answer, “I heard old Quinn was a titty-baby.” I would haunt that fool for the rest of his natural life for saying such a thing.
Sweat dripped down my legs, under my arms. Only a few weeks earlier, I'd begun to notice that my clothes smelled horrible. Like old rotten onions. I'd never smelled quite that bad before. My body was changing for the worse, I smelled as pungent as a clam whenever I broke a sweat. I only prayed that some girl out there liked the smell of oyster stew enough to marry me.
I sniffed the arm of my shirt and it gagged me.
I kicked up another cloud of dust with my foot and watched it get tangled up in the wind again.
I thought about my home run. It felt good to smash the baseball with my bat, to feel the power of the wood in my hands. It would be the first home run of my entire baseball career. If you can even call it a career. I thought about retiring from the sport altogether. I didn't care if I ever saw Rory McAllister's sorry face again. Our coach, Tater, treated Rory like royalty because the McAllisters had money. It didn't seem fair. In fact, I was pretty sure it wasn't fair.
Still, our coach Tater was a nice man. He used to be friends with my Daddy when the two of them were boys. Tater owned the hardware store. His daddy, Mister Taylor, left the store to him when he died, and now Tater was modernizing things.
He had washing machines for sale in the front window. God help us. Washing machines. The things looked like something from another world. The young boys in town pressed their faces against the glass to look at them on display. However, the little boys were more interested in the advertisements than the washing machines themselves. The advertisements featured a busty blonde using the washing contraption. It was the closest thing to seeing a peep show you could get in our town. The Methodist women pitched a fit about those advertisements. They insisted that the ads were smut, and the coach finally took them down. All that, over a washing machine. I wonder what would've happened if he ever started selling women's bathing suits.
I looked forward to the day.
I felt embarrassed. I shouldn't have ruined the coach's game like that, throwing a tantrum. I was almost a grown man who ought to know better.
I don't know what part of my body that outburst had come from. I wasn't prone to pitching fits like that. Mother always said that I'd been the calmest baby she ever saw. She said I never made a noise at all when I entered this world. My sister, on the other hand, screamed like the devil had her by the ankle.
I saw a large shadow approach me from behind. I stepped to the side of the road to let the vehicle pass.
“Quinn,” a voice said behind me.
I turned to see a dingy, red truck with a stuffed gator head mounted on the hood. It was driving next to me at a snail's pace. Mullet's head craned out of the truck window. The side of his cheek poked out with tobacco.
“Hop in slugger,” he said throwing the passenger door open. “I'll give you a ride.”
͠
Mullet draped his arm out of the driver's window as he drove. He spoke in such a quiet voice that I couldn't hear him over the whir of the engine.
I didn't know Mullet, not well. Few people did. The only thing that people knew about him was that he was different. That was reason enough for folks to avoid him. And avoid him they did. Strangely, my daddy liked Mullet. It was something about the man's directness that Daddy appreciated. Daddy liked people who had the gumption to speak their own mind. Daddy also liked people who nipped at the bottle now and again.
Mullet did both.
I looked around the cab of Mullet's truck. Little swirl marks and floral designs decorated the truck from floorboards to ceiling. A mirage of paintings and drawings connected to each other, like an enormous tattoo. There were drawings of flowers, trees, fish, naked women, and numbers. My eye followed the trail of one picture into the next picture, and then the next. Before I knew it, the strange maze of art had me mesmerized.
“Hey.” Mullet tapped me. “Don't you hear what I'm saying to you, Old Timer?”
“Sir?” I aimed my good ear at him.
“I said,” he yelled. “Why didn't you whoop those boys' tails earlier? They had it coming.”
“Sir?”
He yelled louder.
“No,” I said. “I can hear you fine, I just don't understand what you mean, exactly.”
“The hell you don't. You threw that bat at Rory McAllister like you was trying to knock his block off.” He spit into an old cup.
“You were at the ballgame?”
“Of course I was there. I go to every game.”
That surprised me. No one came to our games except the wealthy parents who didn't have to work. And even they were slim pickings. Our little bleachers were lucky to have nineteen or twenty people.
On a good day, twenty-two.
“I ain't never seen you there,” I said.
“Well, I don't exactly announce myself to the world.” He chuckled. “I watch from over the back fence usually.”
“But, why?”
“Well, that's a downright ignorant thing to ask.” He turned to me. “Because I like baseball, that's why you dummy.” Mullet wiped the brown spit off of his whiskers. “I used to play back in Columbus. Long time ago.”
“You played ball?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Were you any good?”
“Don't change the subject.” Mullet shook his finger at me. “You should've made good on your threat and knocked old Rory McAllister sideways.”
“Rory's a hateful wretch.”
“All the more reason.”
“He said cruel things.”
“You should've made him take them back.”
“Things about Mother.”
Mullet was silent.
“Rory said that she was a slut. Said she was messing around with Phillip Sams while Daddy was still alive.”
Mullet poked out his bottom lip and spit into his cup.
“Rory said things about Daddy too.”
“Is that right? What'd that shit say 'bout your old man?”
“Said that Daddy jumped off the roof, fell on purpose.”
Mullet slammed the brakes. The truck slid on the dirt road kicking up dust in front of the windshield. I flew off the truck seat, and into the naked lady painted on the glove box. The truck whined as he muscled against the steering wheel. He turned the truck in a wide circle.
“Well, now,” he said. “Rory McAllister's going to have to pay for remarks like that.”
͠
The McAllister house was a gracious estate plopped right on the bay. It was steaming with wealth. A grove of blooming bushes and white magnolia trees surrounded it. The home's pristine lawn that looked as tight as a military haircut.
