Jimmy was sitting in the dark, out on the trailer steps, listening to the things in the night. There were plenty of them. He’d been trying to catch lightning bugs earlier, but it looked like a lot of them were gone.
He could sit out there on the steps and be almost hypnotized by the sounds of the crickets in the weeds and the trees, a constant roar of noise after dark that filled him with wonder. He liked sitting out there and listening to that a lot better than sitting in the living room watching TV with the girls and his mama. It looked like all his mama wanted to do these days was watch TV. And eat. She ate all the time. She ate ice cream and hot dogs and pizza she’d brought from town and she ate big sandwiches she made from ham and cheese and baloney and salami and she used thick slices of bread she got somewhere. Large bags of Cheetos. Fritos. Doritos.
He didn’t know where his daddy was. Off somewhere was all.
He stayed gone a lot at night. Even on the weeknights. And Jimmy couldn’t help but wish his daddy would stay home a little more. It was kind of comforting to know that he was home, even if he was back in his room watching his hunting videos. At least you knew he was home. When he wasn’t home, it didn’t feel right. And he thought that was why his mama just ate and ate. And sometimes cried and cried. But he didn’t ask.
You could hear a car coming down the gravel road he lived on for a long time before it got here. And he’d been listening for the sound of his daddy’s car. The sound traveled a long way at night. From here he could hear a car down on the levee crossing the three bridges, because there was something about the tires rolling over the joints that made a distinctive noise. Once you heard it you couldn’t mistake it for something else. Two cars had come down the gravel road since he’d been sitting out here, but neither one of them had been his daddy’s.
He decided he’d just sit here and wait on him. He knew it might take a long time. But he didn’t really have anything else to do, with the go-kart chain all messed up. He hadn’t asked his daddy about fixing it anymore. It was plain his daddy didn’t want to mess with it. But he wished he would. He wished he’d fix it for him so he could run it a little more before he had to start back to school next week.
And he didn’t know if they were going to get to go see Kenny Chesney in concert in Tupelo or not. He’d asked his mama, and his mama had said she was afraid they couldn’t afford it. He wished they could. He’d give anything to see Kenny Chesney. He’d asked his mother why they couldn’t afford it, and she’d said for him to ask his daddy. But he wasn’t doing that. Oh no. He’d learned his lessons pretty well by then.
Then he heard that dead black lady crying again and went on inside.