The Catfish hollered from down past the silver camper, the one that looked like a big toaster. He had a long, rolling laugh that he always topped off with a wild yelp of “Whoo-hoo mercy!”
Here comes nothing, I thought to myself. Of course I thought it to myself, how else could I think? You can’t think to somebody else. Our brains are in our own skulls. So if you don’t say it out loud, nobody hears it.
Mother’s friend poured milk into my coffee. I looked down into my cup, watching the milk cloud swirling, knowing it would be the last quiet moment of the day. When the Catfish was on a tear, he kept everybody stirred up. His mood storms could get right scary. Not that he ever hit us; he didn’t. If he ever hit my mother, it’d be the last thing those hands ever did—I’d see to that.
Pretty soon the Catfish came strolling up the path with his new friend, a short, swaggering guy with a chipped front tooth. Nobody was a stranger to the Catfish. He talked to people everywhere he went. Store clerks, traffic cops, even people in other cars sitting at stoplights.
“Angie, doll!” he called.
“I’m not your doll,” the blond woman said flatly, and that did it for me. That Angie was a friend.
“Whatever.” The Catfish brushed on. “I want you to meet an eligible bachelor. And I do mean eligible. This here’s Gus Luna,” he said, presenting his new friend with a sweeping gesture. “He’s a self-made man, like me.”
Gus smiled like he was so glad to be invited around the campfire with us. Hands down, Catfish was the king of the lonely people. (Don’t tell anybody, but that’s the one thing I liked about him.) And Catfish went to knee-slapping and howling “Whoo-hoo mercy!”
“Babe, sweetheart,” he said—Babe was my mother’s name. Short for Barbara. “Did Angie bring enough coffee to offer a cup to my new best friend?”
Apparently, Angie was parked at the campsite next to ours and was sharing her stuff with Mother, because, of course, the Catfish had taken us camping with no equipment whatsoever.
Mother poured both men a cup of coffee. Catfish drank his in a single gulp, wiped his mouth, and yowled, “Ruby Clyde Henderson. I bet you ninety-to-nothing that you think I forgot your special day.” Then he and Gus put their heads together and started to sing me “Happy Birthday.” I did not want to smile, having been dragged halfway around the world without my permission, but I couldn’t help myself. Who could frown through their own “Happy Birthday” song? The Catfish rushed over to the car and got out the cake while he sang, “Happy birthday, dear— What the heck happened to your cake? Oh, well, never mind, forget it.”
He cut the cake with his pocketknife and put the pieces right on our bare hands. While we ate, he went into the car trunk and took out a big gift-wrapped box. “This is part birthday present and part look-to-the-future present, because I know it’s hard for a kid to leave friends and whatnot. But one day you will thank me, Ruby Clyde. Remember this: A self-made man makes his own self.”
I held the gift box in my lap. It was wrapped in pink and green teddy bears, with a huge gold ribbon, big as a cabbage. There was something so exciting about an unopened gift sitting and teasing me to tear the paper. But I never tore birthday wrapping, never.
Catfish was a big kid about my present, squirming and twisting like a puppy.
“Come on,” he said.
“I will,” I said.
“Sometime today, please,” he said.
I ran my fingers around the edge of the box and began to loosen the tape.
“Oh, for crying out loud.” He flapped his arms and said, “Just rip the stupid paper.”
I threw the gold bow in the air, and he snatched at it like a dog with a ball. He tied the darn thing to his head and did the cha-cha for Mother. He could make her laugh, I’ll give him that. That shiny bow kept the Catfish entertained while I enjoyed opening the rest of my present. I got the paper off without a single tear, then folded it flat to save.
I lifted the top off the box, and inside I found a real cowboy hat, real cowboy boots, a lasso, a holster with a toy gun, and rolls and rolls of caps. I was a little old for that getup, but I’m short with not much hair, and frankly, I loved that cowboy outfit. In fact, it may be about the best present I ever got.
But I saw Mother looking at my gun like it was a snake. “It’s okay, Mother,” I said, putting her hand on the plastic. “It’s just a toy.”
Catfish kept on blabbing. “Do you like it, girl? Do you? Does old Carl know how to pick ’em or what?”
I nodded, and as soon as he saw how much I really liked his present, he went on to something else. He was always in such a hurry, like he was swallowing food without chewing.
I put on my cowboy hat and tightened the thingy under my chin, then buckled the holster around my pajama waist and brushed dirt off my feet before stepping into the boots. I couldn’t see myself, but I knew I was looking pretty good.
Angie, with her blond curls and crinkledy eyes, looked me up and down and said sincerely, “Suits you perfectly, kiddo.”
Gus was telling us about his ex-wife and their divorce papers, and who got the car and who got the stereo. Mr. and Mrs. Gus thought they’d find something better if only they could get away from each other, but they never did, so they got back together but then broke up again.
Angie listened to him with her mouth half open, as if she couldn’t believe that the Catfish was trying to match-make her with this guy. She told us that she was a recent widow, driving back to live with her family in Corpus Christi, so it was clear that she was not going to be dating Mr. Gus Luna. Angie was what I call “happy-sad”: she smiled, but her flat blue eyes only made sunbursts of wrinkles from the corners of her eyelids.
Gus was telling us about working his way up from janitor to head cook at the Do-Nut Hole. He stopped and took a deep breath, then said, “Who’d have thunk it? Me, Gus Luna, would grow up to be the best doughnut cutter in Arkansas.”
Catfish beamed like a lightbulb. “See what I told you? A self-made man, just like me.”
So we’re in Arkansas, I thought. Arkansas was a long way from home. I was loading my new cap gun and trying to call up a picture of the U.S. map in my head. I aimed my pistol and shot the coffeepot. Crack! It went way louder than just the cap gun because at the same time the log popped hot sap. Mother jumped out of her skin, which sent the old Catfish into great peals of laughter and knee-slapping and that “Whoo-hoo mercy!” that he so enjoyed. But it wasn’t funny, I hadn’t meant to frighten her, so I put the gun away and held her hand.
“Everything’s okay. Who knew a little toy would make such a noise?” I rubbed my thumb across the top of her hand until she quit her shivers.
Mother didn’t like guns, you know, what with my father getting killed and all.
* * *
I better tell that story now. Here, I’ll tell it fast. It’s a bad story, so get ready. See, my mother was pregnant with me, and she was married to my father, who was a prince of a guy. She always called him a real prince of a guy. And everything was beautiful for them until one day they went to the lake for a picnic, and right there on a bright sunny day, eating chocolate brownies with pecans, they were robbed. And the robber, who was just a jumpy kid, my mother said, shot and killed my father. He took the wallet from my father’s hand, and instead of just running away, he shot my father.
I keep wondering about that shot. A tiny bit of time, a single action that ripped up lives forever and can never be undone. Why on earth did he shoot my father? And why did he not shoot my mother—and me inside of her? I can understand why he might steal wallets—a person can really need money—but what possible good comes from shooting a man? I’ll never ever know his answer to that, because they never caught him. He’s probably walking around like a normal person and nobody knows he’s a murderer. Not only was he a murderer, but he stole part of my life, taking away my father and leaving me with the likes of the Catfish.
But that horrible day at the lake, Mother was so shocked by the violence and loss that I started to get born. I think I was trying to take care of her even then. Between the policemen and the ambulances, she just barely made it to the hospital. I was a preemie in an incubator with lung things, and heart things, and needle things; and six weeks later she took me home in a shoe box. And that was about all she could take of this runaround world.
That’s also why Mother has a little problem celebrating my birthday. It was not a festive day. And birthdays are, by definition, festive. Why, it was six years before I could even get her to tell the day I was born. “Which one you want to know?” she said. “The day you were born, the day you were supposed to be born, or the day you came home from the hospital? ’Cause they were all pretty far apart.”
It sounds like Mother was a careless woman, but she was not. She’s everything I wanted in a mom. Sometimes she would just give me my own day, out of the blue. “This is your day, Ruby Clyde,” she’d say. But never on my birthday. I wouldn’t celebrate that day either, not if I were her. What she’d been through! And she’s never once acted like it was my fault.