33 Snowfish (12 page)

I hear scratching at the front door. I got the baby curled up next to me so we can make a huddle and use the heat from each other’s blood to keep warm.

We’ve been here like this all night and my stomach feels all small and shriveled, like there ain’t nothing inside it but a old rusty penny.

So much snow has blown through the windows it’s like we ain’t even in the van. It’s more like we’re under one of them old trees outside.

Me and the baby is making a good huddle, though. Our breath is still smoking, which is good cuz that means our blood is hot enough to make us live.

At first I think the scratching is that big black turkey Curl kept talking about, like it’s rubbing up against the door with one of its long, skinny turkey toes.

For some reason I look over at Curl again. I ain’t been looking at her as much cuz for some reason it just makes me hungrier. I think it’s cuz of the way her arms is all stretched out and skinny and how naked she is and how her little titties is all swollen and pointy like they never growed right. It’s like her bones got longer since she died. Like God and Jesus and the devil himself pulled everything they could get out of them.

And even though she’s dead I’m like, “Hey, Curl, that turkey’s here. Should I let him in?”

Her skin is even whiter and her hands are turning kinda blue and there’s frost on her eyelashes. She looks like some little wack granny.

I go, “Should I give that turkey your heart, Curl?” and I say all that shit out loud, too, like them homeless, bummy suckers from Renfro Park get when they start talking to the bushes.

Then I hear Curl’s voice go,
Open the door, Custis. I ain’t afraid of no big black turkey. Not no more.

So I get out from under the curtains. It’s so cold it’s like I’m walking in a giant refrigerator. I put the baby under Curl’s sunflower dress and then there’s a knock at the door, but it ain’t no scratching this time, and it don’t sound like no turkey toe.

It’s the kind of knocking that knuckles make.

And there it is again, going
tat-tat-tat
.

And now I’m walking toward the door all slow, and I can feel the baby’s heart beating on my chest like a toy with a motor in it, and I step over the stop sign table and I step past the driver’s seat and I reach my frostbite hand out toward the lever for the door and then there’s that knocking again,
tat-tat-tat,
and I can see my frostbite hand shaking and I can see the veins in it curling like little blue snakes and I can see the black crawling on my fingers, and then I feel that metal lever in my hand and it’s so cold it’s like I can taste it in my teeth, and I pull it and the door creaks open and a bunch of snow flies in my face and just for a second I think if it ain’t that big black turkey with the umbrella wings coming for Curl’s heart then maybe it’s
Boobie,
but when I open my eyes it ain’t the big black turkey and it ain’t Boobie neither. It’s that old creaky nigger who made me clean his yard and he’s standing on top of the snow like a giant and he’s wearing this big old raincoat and he’s wearing tennis rackets on his feet, and behind him that blue light from the moon makes him look blacker than a house that gets burnt down and he’s just staring at me with his white eyes, and he’s leaning on a long knobby stick, going, “Oh, my gracious light. Oh, my gracious light. . . .”

The old nigger’s name is Seldom and he’s been living on the Itty Bitty Farm for
forty-some year
s, so he says. In the backyard there’s a old burnt-looking forest. And them trees look
superblack
cuz of how white the snow is.

Sometimes you can see animals running between the trees, like rabbits and foxes and these little things that look like smashed cats.

Seldom moves around the house real slow and he’s got to crouch low so he don’t hit his head in the doorways. He says a hump started growing in his back cuz of crouching all them years, but he says he’d rather have a hump in his back from crouching than standing up straight and not having no house.

He’s gotta stop a lot and hold his side, too, cuz he says he got kicked by a mule when he worked on his pops’s farm in North Carolina when he was a kid. And even though his back got busted he says he fought in like forty-seven wars and shit. He said most of them wars didn’t have nothing to do with no army or no other country or nothing like that. He said most of them wars was about his property and how the highway people was trying to run him off of it so they could build a two-lane road right through his living room.

Seldom always rubs his shins, too, and he says a lot of shit I don’t understand like, “Good Godfrey,” and “Watch your buttons,” and wack stuff like that. I think he’s like skeighty-eight years old or some shit but he won’t tell me his age cuz I won’t tell him my name.

Bob Motley says if you tell a nigger your name that he’ll steal it and use it if he gets busted by the pigs, and he says that if that happens
you’ll
be the one stuck making license plates in the penitentiary.

So at first Seldom called me Mr. Nowhere, but now he calls me Jimster and he calls the baby Little Jimster and I call him Seldom but I still don’t know how old his lopsided ass is. But that’s cool with me. The last thing I need is for him to get busted fucking a dog or some shit and then give the pigs
my
name. Bob Motley says that all niggers fuck dogs and sheep and that their dicks got hooks on the end.

Me and the baby sleep under the kitchen table cuz that bed in the extra room is so big I kept waking up feeling like I was falling off a cliff and shit. And there ain’t nothing else in there but this old creaky baby crib that’s got a bunch of old coats stacked in it. Seldom wanted to put the baby in it, but I was like, “You ain’t puttin’ him in that old skanky thing!”

So now Seldom lets us sleep under the kitchen table. The floor’s old and sometimes you wake up with splinters in your hands, but it ain’t too wack. It’s better than looking at that old spooky baby crib, that’s for sure.

Me and the baby was gonna try sleeping in the chicken coop cuz it had a good corner to sleepstand in, but Deuce — that wack little chicken I tried to steal — kept staring at me with its doll’s eye, and Seldom kept laughing and telling me Deuce would just peck a bunch of holes in my clothes and that I wouldn’t never got no sleep no ways.

It’s easier for me to sleep
under
shit anyways.

Seldom gave us some blankets that smell like the fireplace and he gave us a couple of old skanky pillows, so it ain’t really wack at all. And the tablecloth hangs down kinda low so it stays dark. The baby just sleeps in the TV cuz he’s used to it. Every time Seldom tries taking him out and putting him on the floor he starts crying.

I like counting all the lines in wood on the bottom of the table. Curl used to say you can tell how old trees is by counting them lines.

When we first got here Seldom made me a big plate of mashed potatoes and gravy and I swallowed it so fast I almost got a migration headache. I kept giving my plate back and he just laughed and heaped on more. I had so much food in my mouth I could hardly breathe. My stomach got so full you could almost hear it stretching.

Seldom gave the baby some smashed pinto beans cuz he said he needed protein, and I showed him how to feed him with the back of your thumb. At first I wasn’t so sure about that long, bony, nigger thumb going into the baby’s mouth, but I guess the way Seldom kept smiling and laughing made it seem cool.

When I was finished with them mashed potatoes Seldom asked me to put my dishes in the sink and I did and then we took a big metal garbage can out back and started a fire to melt the snow and make the ground soft. He kept rolling the can around and before you knew it you could see the grass. It was all brown and hard-looking. Bob Motley would’ve been surprised, seeing a old creaky nigger being smart like that.

Then Seldom went inside and came back out holding two shovels and he handed me the smaller one and we starting digging this deep hole, like so deep you could
disappear
in it and shit. And we was all slipping and trying to not-slip, and my frostbite hand kept catching cramps, and some of that dirt didn’t get softened by the fire and it was hard to go deeper and we had to keep at it with our shovels, but we did it.

You could hear Seldom breathing them long, slow nigger breaths and you could smell how old he was cuz his breath smelled like leather shoes and dirt, and he had to stop a bunch of times to hold his side and rub his shins and go, “Good Godfrey,” and “This durn old back,” and shit.

I had to stop a couple of times to check on the baby. Once I had to change his diaper and give him some warm milk. Seldom showed me how to throw some milk in a pan and light the stove so I didn’t have to ask him to help me every time the baby started crying.

Whenever we stopped digging we sort of stared at them flames sawing in the garbage can, and it was like the flames got inside of us, like they warmed up some vitamins in our bones and gave us energy to finish making the hole.

At the end we was all wet and folded over, but we eventually got it dug.

Then Seldom pulled out this big jug of water and we drank it down, and it tasted sweet like it had sugar in it and all you could hear was our breath slowing down, and after we rested for a few minutes, he gave me a pair of tennis rackets and strapped them to my Pro Flyers and we walked back to the van through the snow with this big burlap sack.

The sky was all gray and wack-looking and it was hard walking on top of all that snow, but I started to get the hang of it. It was like we was walking to the North Pole and shit.

When we got to the van Curl was all white and blue and glassy-looking. That little fish even looked glassy on her cheek.

We had to push her arms down and they was real stiff. And they wasn’t just stiff the way clothes get stiff when you leave them on the laundry line. Them arms was stiff the way a
table
is stiff.

While Seldom was fitting Curl in the sack I found Boobie’s book. It was wedged next to the driver’s seat. I held it in my hands and just stared at it for a minute. I was gonna open it but I couldn’t do it. I don’t even know why. Something about it just felt all wack, so I stuck it under my puffy red coat.

We carried Curl back to the Itty Bitty Farm. She was pretty heavy cuz of them death juices but we managed it pretty crisp.

When we was carrying her it wasn’t like we was really carrying Curl. It was more like we was carrying a big sack of rocks or potatoes or some shit.

I tried picturing her in the sack, but I couldn’t see her face. I couldn’t see her nose or her lips or that froggy heartbeat and how it froze in her eye. I couldn’t even picture her arms or her legs. I could only see them rocks and potatoes.

Me and Seldom didn’t say nothing to each other the whole time. He had to walk real slow cuz of his side and his shins. I just kept moving and concentrated on lifting them tennis rackets over the snow.

The sky was going darker and that purple started creeping over them dirty clouds. For a second I wondered if Boobie was staring up at the sky, too. I wondered if he was warm and had enough food.

When we got back to the Itty Bitty Farm we put the sack in the hole and we pushed all the dirt back in and packed it down hard with our shovels. Then we both just kinda fell down and sat on top of it for a while.

Seldom took this little Bible out of his pocket and started saying some of these wack prayers and I just kinda looked off and stared at the sky.

It took a while for him to say them prayers and I don’t think he could read too good or maybe them words was real big and shit, cuz he had to stop a lot and put his finger in the Bible like he was squashing bugs.

Even though Seldom kept saying them prayers, I thought maybe God wouldn’t let Curl into heaven cuz he’s such a sucker; like she would walk up to that check-in station or that holy tollbooth, and some angel with big black boots would come out and kick her in the ass and throw her off the cloud.

And I thought about Boobie again and how they probably wouldn’t even let him on the cloud cuz of what he done to his parents, how they would just throw a bunch of lightning and shit at him.