The Troubles of Johnny Cannon (11 page)

“No sir, I ain't seen nobody like that.”

He stared at me for a few seconds, like he was trying to give me a telepathic lie detector test, and then he took his badge back from Mr. Thomassen.

“If you hear anything about anyone like that, would you give me a call?” He gave him a business card.

Mr. Thomassen put the business card next to his cash register. The agent left in the car, and I wondered how in tarnation he was connected to the lady that had given Tommy the envelope. I finished sweeping up and decided to put it out of my brain so I could focus on the fight.

By the time I left Mr. Thomassen's shop, the sky was already thundering and getting dark. It was mighty hot, too, and muggy as a locker room. I hurried and made the trek out to Mount Vernon Cemetery and met Willie. He was looking at the clouds too.

“I hope we can get the fight in today,” he said.

“We will as long as all them fellas get here on time,” I said.

He got his tape recorder set up so he could do the sportscasting and I started working on roping off a square for the boxing ring. We was in there with all them headstones and dead bodies, and I was trying real hard to not think about them grave folk casting their own bets on who was going to win.

“I sure hope the spirits don't get too tore up over us being here,” I said.

“You talking about ghosts?” he said. “There ain't no such thing.”

I was surprised by that.

“You
don't
believe in ghosts? I thought all—” I stopped myself.

“You thought all black kids was scared of ghosts? Heck no. Science, Johnny. I believe in science.”

I didn't say no more about it, but I wasn't as sold on science as he was, so I kept getting the creepy crawlies.

The first of the boxers to come around was some of Willie's friends, including Russ. He didn't say too much to me, but they all went over and started joking around with Willie.

“When we going to get the fight started?” Russ asked. “I've been practicing on a car tire for three days.” A car tire. That was a good idea.

Willie told him we was waiting on a few more people to come. Didn't tell them they was white people. I hoped he was right that it wouldn't be a big deal.

The clouds was getting even darker, and I started smelling the rain coming. I was beginning to think none of the fellas from my school was going to show up. The air went from hot to cold, just like it does when you are about to get haunted real good. I looked around for any graves getting busted or any headless white ghosts coming walking through the yard. Instead, all them white boys from my school showed up in a group.

And I wished they hadn't.

As soon as they all got there and they saw Willie's friends, and as soon as Willie's friends saw them, it was plain as day that I'd been right to be concerned. They all got real quiet and just stared at each other for a few seconds. Eddie was leading the fellas from my school. He came over and spoke to me extra loud to make sure all Willie's friends could hear it.

“It ain't often you see spooks in a cemetery. Are the Tiggers leaving or staying?”

Before I could tell him to keep quiet and not say that word, especially when they was right there, Russ came over and stood up real tall over Eddie.

“I'm going to give you a chance to rethink that question,” he said.

“Back off, Sambo,” Eddie said. “We were invited here for a boxing match. So y'all need to find another place to loiter at.”

“We're here for a match too,” Russ said, then he gave me a look. “The same match? You invited them to our match?”

“Well, it's really all of our boxing match,” I said, and I could tell that didn't sit too well.

Willie came over to try to clear the air. Which was good, 'cause I had a feeling it was going to be filled with raindrops pretty soon.

“We invited all of y'all to fight each other.” When he put it like that, it didn't sound as fun. “There ain't no reason it should turn into something about color, is there?”

Eddie looked at Willie, then back at his friends.

“Well, this one's a cripple. You know what they would have done with a crippled Tigger back in the good old days?” he said.

Russ didn't give him no time to finish his joke. He shoved him into his friends.

“Shut your mouth and go home,” he said.

Eddie brushed himself off all over his porky little body.

“Did you just put your hands on me, boy?” he said.

“I'll put more than that on you if you don't get out of here,” Russ said. “Don't much matter to me which white boy I wallop today.”

The fella that was mad about his cousin losing a job five years before stepped in between them.

“You're all the same, ain't you?” he said to Russ.

“If you mean that we can all whip your—”

Thunder clapped real loud and drowned out the end of Russ's sentence, but I think we got the idea. I hurried and tried to push them away from each other. I probably shoved them both harder than I should have. Russ lost his balance and crashed into a real big tombstone and cracked it a little. The other fella tripped over a root and went rolling down the hill into a fence.

And that was all the spark them two groups needed to start fighting. And not in a civilized manner that would win me some money, either. Nope, this was more like Gettysburg all over again.

They was swinging and shoving and swearing at each other, kicking and scratching and acting like they meant to do some real damage. Some of the white fellas saw Willie's tape recorder and grabbed it, talking like they was going to smash it. I ran over and punched one of them in the ear, then took the tape recorder and put it under a broken gravestone.

One of the fellas had knocked Willie down and was kicking him. Russ ran over and swung a stick at him to get him off. The fella grabbed Willie's crutch and swung it back at Russ.

More thunder clapped and I felt a raindrop.

The fella I'd knocked into the fence ran back up the hill, and he was winded. Which meant he couldn't do much damage with his fists. He picked up a rock and tried to throw it at one of Willie's friends. He ducked and the rock busted the wing off an angel statue.

The rain started pouring down, and the wind started to pick up. I looked for Eddie, but he'd already run off. I had to hand it to him, at least he knew he wasn't no good for a fight.

I got in there and threw a few solid punches to try and make a good point that civilized folk shouldn't be fighting, and I took a couple myself, though I wasn't completely sure what point those ones was supposed to make. Willie got his crutch back and went looking for his tape recorder. I didn't have no time to tell him where I'd stuck it, 'cause my mouth was getting battered at the moment.

One of the fellas from my school was on Russ's back, choking him. I went and pulled him off and we went rolling halfway down the hill. A big stream of mud had already started flowing, and we both got covered in it. I bit his shoulder to get him off of me, and he went running. He didn't stop at the top of the hill but kept going from there.

I'd gotten a big glob of mud in my ears and couldn't hear nothing, though I wasn't really paying no attention. I was too busy dodging a tree branch one of the other fellas from my class was swinging at me. Knocked my legs out from under me and then was going to bash my head in, I reckon. But then Russ clobbered him and helped me up. He said something to me, and that's when I realized I wasn't hearing. I cleaned out my ears and finally heard the sheriff's car coming up on us real fast.

I was sure he was there to run us all in or something, and I think any other day he would have been, but instead he was yelling at us all to get on home. He said the storm that was coming our way was a real bad one, and if we got caught in it we might get hurt from debris. I didn't bother to point out that we was already hurt from debris we'd made ourselves. Didn't seem like the time for jokes.

All the other boys had already taken off to go back up to Cullman and Colony, and it just left me and Willie. One look at Willie's face told me that he was hurting real bad, so I didn't tell him that I'd seen this whole problem coming but hadn't said nothing 'cause he was so smart. Which really made it all his fault, 'cause I would have said something if he hadn't been so smart.

The sheriff gave us both rides up the mountain to our houses, and Willie didn't say nothing the whole way. I reckoned he was trying to figure out how he was going to explain the bruises and bleeding he had going on his face and, I was pretty sure, around his ribs. Or maybe he was worried what would happen when his pa found out we'd caused the biggest race fight in Cullman County history. There'd been a bigger fight once, but that was called the Civil War. Which was about states' rights. And maybe a little about race.

After a bit in the car, I leaned over and asked Willie what was wrong.

“I left my tape recorder at the cemetery,” he said, looking out at the rain that was starting to come down real hard.

“Maybe it'll be all right,” I said. “I covered it up with a gravestone.”

“If it gets wet, it's ruined,” he said. “Ain't no gravestone going to change that.”

There wasn't no consoling him on it, and when the sheriff dropped him off at his house, Willie got out and went in as fast as a kid with a crutch can go. I felt real bad for him, but there really wasn't nothing I could do.

The sheriff drove over the mountain and let me out at my house. I peeked around back before I went in and saw that Pa was in the shed. I went inside the house.

It took me a few seconds to realize that the phone was ringing. I almost went for the one in the living room, then I remembered that it was outside, so I ran into the kitchen and picked up the set in there. Willie whispered at me.

“I'm going back to get my tape recorder.”

“How you going to do that?” I said. “Somebody going to take you?”

“I was hoping you would,” he said.

I couldn't help but laugh at him.

“You want me to carry you or something? In the rain? I ain't up to that.”

“You told me that you drive your pa's truck when you go fishing, didn't you? Drive me back to the cemetery.”

“I don't care if you don't believe in them or not, I ain't going back to see them ghosts trying to clean up their resting places after we done busted them up. They ain't going to be happy about that for nothing. Plus I don't never drive in the rain,” I said.

“Johnny, please,” he said, and it sounded like he was about an ant's tail away from crying. “I can't lose my tape recorder. There ain't no way I could buy another one. I'm begging you.”

Now, there's a lot of things I've been okay with in my life, but making a cripple beg wasn't one of them. I agreed and hung up. I went to the washroom where Pa kept the truck keys hanging on a hook and took them, then I went out and started the engine.

It was raining so hard I almost had to turn the wiper speed all the way up just to see in front of me. I put it in reverse and looked over my shoulder. Why didn't they put wipers on the rear windows? Plus there wasn't no headlights back there. Still, thanks to the fact that I knew our driveway about like I knew my own room, I was able to inch out onto the road and go down to Willie's house.

He came out of the back and got in.

“My ma thinks I'm in the bathroom,” he said. “Let's make this fast.”

“She's going to think you're unloading a week's worth of meals, even if we go as fast as a delivery truck. And I ain't going that fast,” I said.

“I can always apologize to her later,” he said. “I need to get my tape recorder.”

There wasn't no arguing with him, and I was already in too deep to get out, so I put the truck into gear and started on down the road. The rain was falling even thicker than before, and I wasn't as used to driving on the road to the cemetery as I was going out to the lake, so I had to move slower than I'd planned.

There was a good number of times that I had to stop as we was going, 'cause I was afraid the sheriff was coming up behind us. But it was usually just somebody trying to get home in the rain, and after a while we got to the gate that said
MOUNT VERNON CEMETERY
. By the time we got there, it was coming down like a cow peeing on a flat rock, and there wasn't no way Willie could get out and run to get his tape recorder, if it wasn't washed away or something, so I jumped out and ran back to where I'd stuck it under the gravestone.

It took me a bit to find it 'cause it had slid down the hill in the mud, but the stone had slid with it and wedged onto some rocks so it was somewhat protected from the water. I was trying real hard to not look around, 'cause the last thing you want to do is make eye contact with a ghost. I wrapped the tape recorder in my shirt, though I don't really know what good it did, and I slopped through the mud back to the truck. I could have sworn I stepped on a few arm bones and such on my way, but I said a prayer every time, so I don't reckon they'll be able to come into my dreams or nothing.

As soon as I got into the truck, Willie grabbed the tape recorder and started wiping all the gunk off of it. I got us turned around and headed back home.

“It don't look like the inside got too mucked up,” he said. “It might still work.”

I didn't say nothing back. I couldn't, I was too busy focusing on the road in front of us through the window that was starting to get all fogged up, I reckoned 'cause the ghosts was breathing on it. I was trying to figure out how to drive without getting the both of us killed. All the wipers was doing was tossing the water into the air off the sides of the windshield, but they wasn't clearing enough for me to see nothing. And the wind was starting to blow too, so hard that I thought we was going to get knocked off the road.