Gone Fishin' (6 page)

‘Shhhh.’ Mouse waved at him.

Dom put both hands to his mouth.

‘You
know we cain’t be yellin’,’ Mouse said. ‘It’s
time. Easy, you an’ Dom go sit on the rocks an’ keep
quiet. You got that sack right, bro?’

‘Yeah,
Ray. I got it,’ Dom said.

‘All
right then! Let’s get us food fo’ the wintah!’

Mouse
rolled up his cuffs to just below the knee. I couldn’t figure
out why he did that, because then he waded into the water up to his
waist. In one hand he had the pistol and in the other he had some
crackers or dry bread that he pulled from his shirt pocket. He
sprinkled the crumbs in the water and stood stock still.

Behind
Mouse stood the half-circle of twenty-odd live oaks. A jury of old
men with gray moss beards. Over them was the glimmer of a weak yellow
sun in a sky that just hinted blue. There was no breeze or sound at
all. Mouse looked like a big man, bigger than life, out in that
water. He was taller than the trees, and the only thing that stood
out from the pond.

‘In
the beginnin’ God made the heavens an’ the lands,’
Domaque said from behind me. ‘An’ there was darkness in
the land and the face of God was on the water…’

Dom went
on and on whispering with his version of Genesis.

Out in the
water, just to the left of where Mouse stood, came a sucking sound
and a droplet of water leaped up into the air. Then to the right, two
droplets, also with sucking sounds.

‘And
God went beyond the waters and he called that heaven…’
Domaque said, while dozens of droplets plopped in the water. It was
the sound of rain under a clear sky. Mouse slowly scattered the last
of his bread into the pond. Then, carefully and slow, like a cat
stalking raising his claws, Mouse brought the pistol over his head,
holding it with both hands so that the barrel pointed at the water;
his thumbs were on the trigger and his fingers were laced around the
butt.

When he
fired, dozens of mallards and pelicans started from behind the oaks.
Dom Jr. let out a yell that started at a low warble and peaked at a
siren’s whine.

Mouse
yelled, ‘Com’on, Dom! Get yo’ sack out here fo’
they get away!’

Dom looped
the sack around his neck with a rope that was stitched around the lip
of the bag. He splashed in, bouncing up and down in the water like a
very small child at the shore.

‘Com’on,
Ease!’ Mouse called. ‘We need some help wit’ all’a
these here!’

He kept on
shouting while I got off my shoes and socks and put them on my
sitting rock. By the time I waded out to them they had turned away,
catching fish with their hands and shoving them into the large burlap
sack. When I was up to my hips in water I saw the unconscious fish.
It seemed like hundreds of them but I guess it couldn’t have
been so many. Pale white underbellies of gar, catfish, carp, and
other fish I had never seen. They shuddered in the water like they
were dead. Mouse told me later that it was the force of the
hollow-nosed soft-lead bullet hitting the water that knocked them
out.

‘That’s
why you gotta catch’em quick,’ he said. ‘Fo’
they come awake an’ slip down ‘tween yo’ legs.’

It was
terrible.

Mouse
lunged one-handed, because he had his pistol held high in the other
hand, going for fish after fish. Dom was yucking and yelling. He was
clumsy and barely got as many with two hands as Mouse did with one. I
didn’t grab any. It was like a bad dream to see all those fish
quivering and half dead. I don’t mind catching a fish or
wringing a hen’s neck, but that slaughter left me sick.

On the
last day I saw my father he took me down to the slaughterhouse. It
was an awful place. They had cows walking down an aisle that came to
a sharp turn. When the cow took the turn she came to a window and a
big man hit her on top of the head with a sledgehammer; she’d
hit the floor shaking just like those fish. From there a conveyor
belt took the body to a man with a curved sword. He caught a
mean-looking hook in her carcass and then had his helpers lift her up
off of the ground. Then he cut her jugular. At first the hot blood
sprayed out; then it slowed to a pumping ooze. When the bleeding had
almost stopped he cut her open from crotch to throat. The blood
flowed down the sides of the killing floor into gutters underneath
the room. The blood and the leavings down there were what made the
room smell rotten. The smell of death by the dozens and by the
hundreds; death so strong that my eyes burned and I gagged, but I
wouldn’t let myself throw up because I was afraid to vomit in
blood.

The
foreman was a white man with great big arms and blood all down his
thick apron. His curved knife was black and pitted, but you could see
it was sharp by the way it cut through the cow’s shoulder
joint; it made a tearing sound as it reaped. He was taller than
anyone else in the slaughterhouse.

My father
stood up straight and said, ‘You said it was seventeen dollars
an’ this here is only ‘bout half that.’

‘I
ain’t got time t’talk to you, boy. You take what you can
git.’

My father
stood up taller as if he was trying to get to be as tall as that
white man; I got behind him and grabbed onto his pants.

‘You
made me a deal, Mr. Mischew, and I want what’s mines.’

‘Niggah?’
the white man exclaimed as he slapped the flat of the blade on his
apron. ‘You want sumpin’? ‘Cause you know I’m
just the man give it to ya.’

If that
white man did much business with my father he must’ve known
that he was always soft-spoken and respectful. But when you cheat a
man and call him nigger — and his boy is standing there too?
Well that was why Mr. Mischew looked so surprised when he found
himself flat on his back on the bloody floor.

Mouse cut
open a fish and handed the limp corpse over to Dom, who scooped out
the entrails and rinsed it in the pond.

I was sick
and ashamed of being sick. My head felt hot.

‘Hey,
Easy. You don’t look too good, son.’ Mouse smiled gently.
‘Why’ont you take a little nap. We get ya when it’s
time t’go Dom’s.’

‘What
you need all them fish fo’, man? We cain’t eat all that.’

‘Put
‘em in the smoker,’ Domaque said. ‘Smoke’em
up an’ we got fish all the time. Go down t’Miss Alexander
an’ trade some fo’drinks in the bar.’ Then he
laughed and Mouse laughed and they kept on pulling guts out and
tossing them in the water.

‘I’ma
go back on t’Houston,’ I said. ‘I ain’t got
no mo’ time fo’this mess.’

‘Com’on,
Easy, gimme a break.’ Mouse’s mouth made a smile but his
eyes were deadly. ‘Dom got a weddin’ gift fo’me but
he wanna go fishin’ first. I tole you in the car we gonna go
fishin’.’

‘How
much longer you wanna be down here?’

‘Just
a couple’a mo’ days. Anyway I need ya t’go out t’my
stepdaddy’s wit’ me.’

‘Why?’

Mouse
pointed a limp gar at me. ‘That man is the devil, Ease. Ain’t
no way I can go out there alone.’

‘Com’on,
Raymond, I ain’t never known you t’be scared’a
nothin’.’

‘I
am afraid of him,’ he said.

‘Abraham
had cattle and silver and gold,’ Dom was saying as he led us
through deep thickets toward his house. ‘An’ Lot was wit’
him an’ so was Abraham’s wife.’

‘What you always sayin’, Dom?’ I asked.

‘Rememberin’ the Bible like Miss Dixon say.’

‘What’s that?’

‘She
say that to know the word you gotta make the Bible yo’ own. You
gotta know the stories just like they happened t’friends’a
yours.’ He laughed and went on, ‘An’ they was so
rich that they built diffrent houses an’ after a time they vied
fo’the land.’

Mouse came
up next to me and said, ‘Dom wanna be a preacher, Ease. He
always readin’ the Bible an’ whatnot. You know he’s
a well-learnt boy, that ole white woman Dixon make him read
ev’rythang.’

‘Who’s
that?’ I asked, suddenly jealous of that freak’s
knowledge. ‘How come she gonna teach him his letters?’

‘Just
a crazy white woman, Ease. She ain’t got no knittin’ so
she take on charities.’

We came to
the clearing after an hour or so.

Dom’s
house was an abandoned molasses shack. It was small and dilapidated
but it was also nice because he had flowers growing all around it.
Sunflowers on either side and golden wild rose bushes along the
pebbled path that led to the front door. There were thick leafy
bushes of pink dahlias at odd places in the yard. It looked as though
all the flowering plants were wild but I knew they weren’t
because there were no weeds to be seen. Sweet pea vines wound up the
loose timbers that shored up the east wall of the shack. Purple
passion fruit flowers knotted through the ash branches that
surrounded the dale. There were other flowers of white and red but I
didn’t know what kind they were, and neither did Dom.

Underneath
the sweet peas was a clear patch of earth that was covered with the
body parts of hard-rubber baby dolls. Arms and feet and heads with
golden and brown hair. Mostly they were white dolls like the
well-to-do white children have but there were some colored ones too.
It looked like a pile of infant corpses washed up from their tiny
graves in a terrible storm.

‘You
got chirren, Dom?’ I asked.

He gave a
high squeal that might have been pleasure and said, ‘Them there
is my chirren, Easy.’ Then he chuckled and Mouse did too.

Dom said
that his ‘room’ was too small for all us guests, so he
went in and came out with three crates for us to sit on. It was very
pleasant to sit out there in his wild yard. A garden as beautiful as
any I’d seen in the rich part of Houston; it was almost like an
inside room or greenhouse only with the sky for a roof. I told Dom
how much I liked it and he smiled.

‘I’m
always doin’ sumpin’ t’make it bettah,’ he
said. ‘I’ma start puttin’ in fruit trees next year
an’ by the time they grows maybe I have me a wife t’share
‘em wit’.’ He looked out over his garden with that
terrible smile and dead eye.

‘Well,
Dom, we got yo’ fish, now what you got fo’me?’
Mouse said in his taking-care-of-business voice.

‘I
got it, Ray, right in the house.’

‘Well
let’s have it. Easy an’ me got some miles t’cover
fo’ we can rest.’

There were
hummingbirds at the sweet peas, flicking in and out of the blossoms
so fast you could hardly tell they were there. I felt funny,
light-headed, but I didn’t want it to change. It seemed to me
that this was the Eden Dom talked about; like he built his own garden
right out of the Bible.

‘Here
you go, Ray.’ Dom handed Mouse a doll that had been burned and
mutilated. It had once been a white baby doll but the hard-rubber
skin was now burnt black and the clothes it wore were the overalls
that a farmer wore. The brown hair was clipped short and the arms
were straight out as if it were being crucified on an invisible
cross. The eyes were painted over as the wide white eyes you see on a
man when he’s frightened and trying to see everything coming
his way.

Mouse
smiled and took the doll from Dom. It seemed that Dom was a little
uneasy about giving away his ugly toy but I knew that it was hard
saying no to Mouse.

‘Thank
you, brother,’ Mouse said. ‘DaddyReese gonna just love
it.’

Mouse’s
laugh filled Dom’s garden until all the flowers seemed to
vibrate with it.

‘What’s
that doll fo’?’ I asked Mouse.

We’d
been walking for miles. He was moody again, the way he’d been
when he and Etta first got engaged.

‘Just sumpin’, man. Nuthin’.’

‘You went th’ough all that fo’nuthin’?’

‘It’s sumpin’, I tole ya!’

It was a
quiet country path, far enough away from water to be light on insects
but dose enough to have trees and wildlife. I was coming down with
something. My hands were cold and the inside of my head felt like
cotton wadding.

‘How
come Domaque make them dolls?’ I asked.

At first I
thought he was going to ignore me, but after a few steps he said,
‘Dom started makin’ ‘em when we was small. Ya see,
Dom got a crazy mad temper. He ain’t slow or nuthin,’
‘cause you know he can read as good as that white woman
teach’im. But he got nerves. Somebody make fun’a him an’
he start to shake an’ the next thing you know he’s actin’
crazy. When we was little the other kids would mess wit’ us,
‘specially when we all get together after Sunday school. One
time this little boy, Bunny Drinkwater, started to rag po’ ole
Dom till Dom was a tremblin’ leaf. An’ that just made all
the other kids join in laughin’. But they didn’t know
that Dom had carried a butcherin’ knife wit’im that day.
He never said why but I guess he was tired’a bein’ the
fool. Anyway he took out after Bunny but Bunny was quick an’
Dom couldn’t move fast t’save his life so we all was
expectin’ Dom t’throw that knife down an’ cry…
But that’s not what happened.’

A red fox
ran out into the road ahead of us. It looked up at Mouse and pulled
its head back like it recognised Raymond. Then it turned tail and
slipped off into the brush. Mouse laughed and seemed to get in a
better mood.

‘Anyway…
Dom went out after Bunny swinging his knife so wild that I half
expected he was gonna cut his own self; but then Bunny tripped. All
the little boys screamed like girls. Dom swung down t’gut
little Bunny but he missed and just kinda cut him on the arm. Bunny
was so scared by that little cut that he was frozen on the ground an’
Dom raised his hand fo’ the kill…’ Mouse stared off
into the woods remembering something. I was afraid to hear the rest.
‘Shit. One’a the big boys runned out and grabbed Dom fo’
he could finish it. You know I always feel bad when I think’a
that; like I’m missin’ sumpin’.’

‘But
what ‘bout the dolls?’