The Troubles of Johnny Cannon (10 page)

Well, if he felt that science was on his side, who was I to argue? If it was the only way, it was the only way.

“If you want some white kids, we can't be having it at your church, or anywhere else in the Colony.”

“It's just ‘Colony,' ” he said. “It ain't ‘the' Colony.”

“I ain't going to remember that. Anyway, it's got to be somewhere in Cullman.”

“Then you won't have any black kids come.”

Well, I thought the fight was probably dead right then and there, but that was when I got the only good idea I had that day.

“Mount Vernon Cemetery,” I said. “It's at about as equal a distance between Cullman and the Colony,” I caught myself, “I mean, Colony. And it's also about the same distance from here. It's about as neutral as it gets.”

He liked that idea, and we spent the next hour or so making a list together of names and how we might go about talking them into betting a lot of money against me. Willie said he'd play it up that he was going to record the fight as a sportscaster, which would probably make the kids want to do it even more. He was a lot smarter than I ever thought he was. I stayed down there at their house for dinner and everything, and it felt real good to be in a family again.

Even if it wasn't a white family.

When I went home later, I went out to the shed so I could apologize to Pa for what I'd said before. After all, it was my job to take care of him, not the other way around. It wasn't fair that I'd put all that on him.

But just when I was about to knock on the door, I heard him talking on the phone.

“Let me make sure I've got it down. Number of troops, estimated dates and times, and a preparedness ranking.” He stopped and listened. “No, that's fine. I got my son's old Spanish textbooks to help me do that.” More listening. “And you're sure it will be here before the date I told you?”

What in tarnation was he talking about?

“No, I just appreciate you giving me this opportunity. It'll help ease Johnny's—”

He must have gotten interrupted, 'cause he stayed quiet for a good spell.

“No, I understand. Can't tell nobody. Loose lips and all. That's fine.”

I tiptoed away from the door, 'cause I didn't want him to catch me outside. Besides, all my plans of apologizing and making peace needed a window to fly out of. 'Cause now, while I was busy trying to save our dadgum home, he was busy getting tangled up in another project. A secret one, at that.

A project I was afraid had come straight from the lion's mouth.

CHAPTER FIVE

RAIN NEVER HURT NOBODY

M
e and Pa hardly spoke at all for the next couple of weeks. I was too busy, what with planning the big fight and all, and picking up as many odd jobs as I could around town, and doubling my hunting orders and such. Which was both me doing my best to make more money and also me doing my best to stay away from Pa.

Pa was powerful busy too, and he was spending a whole lot more time out there in the shed. He wasn't sleeping very much, either, and it was showing in his forgetfulness. He was leaving notes around the house that I reckoned wasn't meant for my eyes. Notes that said things like

1,000 there. 230 in transit. Eight birds ready. Preparedness equals low.

Another one I found said

Target changed to Playa Girón in Bahía de Cochinos.

And that was how they all was. I couldn't make no sense of them, partly 'cause I didn't want to try. All I knew was that Pa was staying busy and we was burning through coffee so fast I had to pick up the big can at the store. Willie suggested filling up the old one with some potting soil from his front yard, since there wasn't no way you'd taste any difference, but I reckoned it'd smell different, so I went ahead and spent the money.

That was about the only suggestion Willie made that I didn't listen to. Every step of the way in planning the fight, I did it all just like he told me. I was learning that he was about the smartest kid I'd ever met, black or white. Except maybe for the kid in fifth grade who faked a bladder infection so he could sneak into the school office every thirty minutes and set the clock ahead, that way they rang the bell a whole hour early. That kid was a genius.

But Willie was making a pretty good argument for being even smarter than that. He'd already worked out a bracket for the fight, like the college basketball tournament, and he was going to give folks their slots based on their shoe size. He said that physics showed a fella's foot gave him the leverage to pound another fella's face in, and the bigger the foot, the bigger the pounding.

Considering Tommy'd always said I had water skis for feet, that meant I was going to be ranked number one. And Willie was already working a plan to make sure I made it all the way to the final fight. It was just going to be up to me to win it.

There was one thing I was getting more and more concerned about with the tournament, besides the fact that my face might get refigured. In spite of Willie's brain for science, I had a feeling that getting paired up across the races wasn't going to sit well with either side. But Willie said it might be just what the world needed, a chance for both sides to wallop each other with a referee involved. Of course, we didn't have no referee picked out yet. But he didn't seem too worried about it.

Still, I went along with the plan and invited every boy at school that was big enough to be high on his own boxing skills. I didn't have to talk to very many, either, 'cause word started spreading on its own. Something about the winner winning a fat load of money made the fight a pretty popular talking point for most of the fellas at school. And the fact that we was keeping it as secret as we could from the grown-ups, that helped out too. But the biggest secret of all was that the winner was going to be me. Hopefully.

Me and Willie took to training for the fight every chance we could get. We went down to his pa's church and I'd box the big tree about a dozen times a day. Got to where I almost liked how bloody my knuckles was getting. Then he'd string one of his pa's preaching robes over a branch and wiggle it around, and I'd duck and dodge just like Floyd Patterson. I got to where he couldn't even touch me with a sleeve. I was pretty dadgum impressive, even if I did say so myself.

Every once in a while we'd ride with his pa to go visiting somebody that was a shut-in there in Colony. I'd sit out in the station wagon while they'd drop off a casserole or some groceries at one of them rusted trailers them folks called homes. It was so much different from how things was in Cullman, it was almost like being in a different country. Maybe even more than that. Based off the pictures I'd seen from when we was there, Cuba wasn't nearly as different as Colony.

When we wasn't in Colony and I had time to kill, we spent it in Willie's room and I'd read his comic books while he'd record another radio show about his SuperNegroes. It wasn't really like we was becoming friends or nothing, but we was becoming business partners of a sort. And anyway, I didn't want to spend no time at my house. My cooking wasn't nearly as good as Mrs. Parkins's. She found out how much I liked okra, so she cooked it every time I showed up on their porch. Plus I got to try something called hoppin' John, which was the dadgum tastiest way to make black-eyed peas I'd ever had.

I don't know how the fact that I was hanging out with Willie got found out at school, but the fellas all started acting funny about it. Where they used to didn't ever talk to me, now they would say things to me every time they passed. Mean things, sometimes, or just statements that they was worried about my choice of friends. Which was maybe the worst, 'cause it rang in with the part of my brain that was worried about it too.

The one fella who was really showing me his true colors was Eddie. It hadn't been enough that he'd done what he did to Pa's disability check. I'd sort of gotten over that when the VA office said they'd tack it on to the next month's, provided it didn't get cashed or nothing. So I was ready to forgive and halfway forget.

But Eddie kept making trouble. He started taking it on himself to point out to anyone that would listen that I was so poor I couldn't afford real friends, so I had to settle for the castoffs from the other side of the mountain. He did his best to say it loud in front of Martha, too. She didn't act like she was listening, but that's the sort of thing that girls talk about when they're powdering their noses. Combining that with the ponytail incident, and it was starting to make me think Eddie wanted to ruin my chances with her. I didn't even punch him for that. We wasn't friends enough anymore.

On the day of the race he tapped me on the shoulder at school. I didn't pay him no attention. I figured he had some stupid thing to say about me and Willie, especially since we was talking about the Civil War.

I was busy copying down that day's history fact, which was that Abraham Lincoln had been shot on that same day back in 1865, just about a hundred years before. Mrs. Buttke was telling us the story, all about how the fella, John Wilkes Booth, had busted into the president's box and shot him right behind the ear, and then jumped down onto the stage yelling a Latin phrase.

“
‘
Sic Semper Tyrannis,'
he yelled,” Mrs. Buttke said. “Which means, ‘Thus always to tyrants.' Can someone tell me what a tyrant is?”

Martha raised her hand. She'd gotten a new haircut that was short to her head, and as far as she was concerned, I was twice dead, buried, and rotting in the afterlife. Her ma had tried to talk to Pa a few days after, but he hadn't been available. I thanked the Good Lord.

“A tyrant is a terrible ruler. Like a king,” she said.

“That's good,” Mrs. Buttke said. “Was President Lincoln a tyrant?”

“No, he freed the slaves.”

“And that's one of the biggest reasons Booth thought he
was
a tyrant,” Mrs. Buttke said. “Booth couldn't stand the idea of Negroes being citizens with rights. He thought it would take power away from the white landholders in the South.”

“That's what happened, ain't it?” one of the fellas that was going to be in my fight said. “Seems like every year the coloreds get another law passed to take more of our rights away.”

I heard Eddie ripping up some paper behind me, but I was too interested in the discussion to pay him no attention.

“Are they taking away our rights?” Mrs. Buttke said. “Or are they getting some for themselves?”

“My cousin was a bus driver, but he lost his job during the bus boycott in Montgomery five years ago,” he said. “And that was just 'cause they didn't want to give up their seats for folks that needed it. I reckon he lost his rights from that. Maybe Booth was right.”

A spit wad hit me in the neck. Eddie leaned up behind me.

“
Sic Semper Tyrannis
,”
he said. I turned to look at him.

“What do you want?” I said.

“I heard about your fight. I want in.”

I couldn't help but look down at his belly that was squeezed into his desk like an eighty-pound pig squeezing into a two-foot hole.

“You want to enter the fight?”

“Not in it. I want to bet on it.” He glanced up at Mrs. Buttke, then reached into his pocket and fished out a wad of bills. “Fifty dollars. Is that too heavy for you?”

My jaw must have bounced off the floor.

“Where'd you get that kind of money?”

“What do you care?” he said. “Can I bet it?”

“Sure, I don't care how much money you lose.”

“Or how much I win,” he said. “I already know who I'm picking to beat everybody.”

“Who?” I said.

He grinned.

“That's my secret. I'll tell you at the fight. Is it right after school?”

“And after I sweep up Mr. Thomassen's shop, yeah. At Mount Vernon Cemetery. Willie Parkins is going to sportscast it.”

He got a funny look on his face.

“The Tigger boy that lives on your mountain?”

Him saying that made the hair on my neck stand up.

“That ain't right to say, that word.”

“You sound like Mr. Thomassen now,” he said. “Speaking of which, could you tell him that I'm offering fifty dollars to your fight?”

“Why? He don't know nothing about it.”

“I told him about it. Of course, I lied and said you was having a race, but he told me I better throw some money in,” he said, then he sat up real innocent-like and I realized that the whole room was stone quiet.

“Are you two done?” Mrs. Buttke said. I just about died. Martha shot me a look that said she wished I would.

After school I went to Mr. Thomassen's, really hoping that there wouldn't be too much to do so I could get ready for the fight. That wasn't what happened, though. Instead, he had fellas sitting and waiting for his chair, and his floor looked like he'd been cutting and trimming all day long.

“Dadgum, you've been busy,” I said as I hurried with the broom.

“There's a big storm coming,” he said while he shaved the fella in the chair. “All these farmers are getting their business done in town before it hits.”

I hadn't even paid no attention to the clouds outside, but come to think of it, they did look pretty treacherous. I hoped it'd wait till after the fight to start raining.

“Oh, Eddie told me to tell you he's giving fifty dollars to the fi—I mean—to the race.”

“Good. Bob will be glad to hear it,” he said.

“Why was Bob concerned about Eddie giving me money?”

He took a long swipe through the shaving cream on the fella's face with his straight razor.

“Since I convinced him to be,” he said. Then he shot me a smile. “I'm looking out for you, Johnny.”

I'd never noticed how skilled he was with a blade until right then. Just as skilled as he was with the piano. Something about that gave me a chill.

“How'd you convince him?”

He took another swipe at the shaving cream.

“Grown-ups talk things out in our own ways. Don't worry yourself about it.” He turned to the other side of the fella he was shaving and left me to my own devices. I went back to sweeping and tried real hard not to be freaked out by the nicest fella in town. I was getting paranoid, that was all.

I was almost all done and ready to run out the door when I saw a car pull up that I recognized, though it took me a bit to remember from where. Then I saw the Florida license plates and I realized it was the car that had been at the airfield in Birmingham. The same short guy that had hurried the lady away from Tommy came in.

Mr. Thomassen almost dropped his razor when the fella opened the door.

“Sam Thomassen?” the short guy said, his voice about five times lower than anyone I'd ever heard before. He didn't bother taking off his sunglasses, either, even though the sky was dark enough that you wouldn't hurt your eyes at all.

“Can I help you?” Mr. Thomassen said.

“I'm looking for someone. I don't have a name, but he is an amateur radio enthusiast. May have just come into a lot of money as well.”

Mr. Thomassen shook his head. Everyone else in the room was quiet. Like I said, we don't cotton to strangers in Cullman.

“I haven't heard of anyone like that,” he said.

“I need you to think. Anyone at all. Recently acquired radio equipment, perhaps? Spending a lot of time on his own.”

“That could describe just about anybody that lives in the hills and valleys around this town. I couldn't begin to guess,” Mr. Thomassen said, and went back to shaving. “Why do you think they're here, anyway?”

The man pulled his wallet out and showed a badge that said “CIA” on it.

“I have my reasons,” he said.

Mr. Thomassen stopped shaving and wiped off his hands. He took the badge and looked closer at it.

“What's your name again?”

The short guy told him, but I honestly don't remember it. I just called him Short-Guy in my head from then on.

Short-Guy looked over at me.

“What about you? You heard of anyone like that?” he said.

Now, I'm pretty sure it's against the law to lie to a CIA agent. Pretty sure it's even more against the law to cover up the fact that the fella he was looking for was my own pa. Except for the coming-into-money part. We was still as poor as Job's turkey. So maybe it wasn't Pa. I worked off of that.