I KNOW MICKEY MOUSE IS A CARTOON. HIM AND MINNIE AND Tom and Jerry. Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo. Woody Woodpecker and Fred Flintstone. Popeye Bluto Olive Oyl Wimpy and all them.
But the folks that show the cartoons are real. You got Quick-Fire McIntyre in Birmingham Uncle Bob in Tucson Mr. Patches in St. Louis Happy Herb in Indianapolis Fred and Fae in Denver Captain Delta in Stockton Cactus Vick in Little Rock and Lorenzo in Tulsa.
I know radio and TV come through the air but the telephone needs a wire. I know everything costs money plus tax. Ten pennies makes a dime. Ten dimes makes a dollar. So do four quarters. I can pump gas and wash bugs off the windshield. I can drive if there’s not too many curves. I bet I can change a tire.
If you want to win a fight kick a man in the balls. It ain’t real fighting in the movies. They got bottles that break easy. A king beats a queen a queen beats an ace an ace beats everything. If you shake a pinball machine too hard you’ll tilt it.
Stars are cold so’s the moon. The sun’s hot. Hotter than hell. It can cook you just like that. Don’t drink out of cricks ’cause cows shit in them. If your kid has asthma stick a lock of his hair in a hole in a sourwood tree a little higher up than the kid is tall. When the boy grows taller than the hole his asthma’ll be gone.
Some people are sad and some ain’t. Jesse’s sad. He got sad when Claudine got dusted and stayed that way. Daddy was happy most the time. Mama was happy. I’m happy except when the Little Devil starts in. He ain’t happy nor sad nor mean nor nice. All he is is hungry or not hungry. He’s nothing but need and teeth and claws.
I saved a dog once and I saved a man.
The dog belonged to Mr. Sayre. I was hunting crawdads down by the crick and I heard some pitiful howling and whining. I first thought to run home but said to myself, You ain’t yella, and snuck to the noise keeping well hid.
Mr. Sayre’s pup Queenie had one of her paws stuck in a beaver trap. She was crying and thrashing and snapped at me when I come close. I had the idea to use the tow sack I was carrying for the crawdads to cover her muzzle so she couldn’t get at me. She took off when I sprung her and run crying all the way back to Mr. Sayre’s house. He give me a dollar coin and a bag of peppermint sucks for setting her free and said she’d’ve died if I didn’t come along. Her leg was broke too bad to fix but she got around fine on three.
The man I saved was a miner that turned up missing at the end of a shift. A wop named Scalo. The bossman called everybody in to search. Daddy wasn’t none too happy about it. Said, The bastard’s probably drunk in some tavern.
He was pulling on his boots getting ready to go and I was playing with ants on the porch drawing a finger across their trail to watch them scatter when a blackness come crashing down on me. Daylight turned dark and I thought I’d been struck blind but little by little like they do when you go from inside to out at night my eyes started working again. Only I wasn’t on the porch no more I was down in the mine.
Daddy took me into the pit when I was a boy. We rode a car down then got off and walked along a tunnel. We had lanterns but the light from them didn’t do nothing but make the dark darker. Coal dust swirled and water dripped. Daddy told me about blackdamp and whitedamp—poison gases that’ll kill you after one whiff—and the deeper we went the harder it got for me to breathe.
Daddy dropped a rock into a shaft and told me to listen for it to hit bottom. It never did. I got the notion Daddy was gonna toss me down the hole next. This give me a fright and I run off down the tunnel. I didn’t get far before I tripped and my lantern went out and I fainted dead away. Daddy had to carry me back up top.
On the porch I wasn’t scared at all. I could see in the dark as good as in day. And what I seen was the wop. A beam had fallen and trapped his legs. There was his lantern and there was his lunch pail. The lantern had gone out. He banged his pail against the wall and called for help then lay down and prayed in Italian.
When the dark lifted a figure popped into my head: Number 8 Left Heading. I run in the house to tell Daddy. I told him I seen the wop and told him the figure. He grumped and said he ought to whup me for lying.
What is that? Mama asked. Number 8 Left Heading? It’s a drift in the mine, Daddy said. Mama’s eyes got big. You got to take him to tell someone about this, she said. What am I supposed to say? Daddy asked her. My idiot son had a vision? Twenty-two years old and can’t shave himself? Can’t go to the store without getting lost? That was a lie. I knew the way to the store. And if you don’t say something and that man dies? Mama said.
They fought on it a while longer till Mama put her foot down. If you don’t take him I will, she said. Goddammit, Daddy said and me and him set off for the mine.
Daddy talked to the bossman. He was busy telling crews to search here and search there and busy telling guards to keep the townfolk who came to see the commotion back from the adit. Daddy pulled him aside and said, I’m sorry, and, I know it sounds crazy, and, The wife you understand.
The bossman looked at me looked at Daddy and looked at me again. He had a map of the mine in front of him. Number 8 Left Heading, he said tracing it with a finger. That section’s been closed for a year. Still he sent a crew to check. They found the door to the tunnel ajar and the wop pinned by a fallen timber where he snuck in to take a nap.
I saved him but I couldn’t save Daddy. A year later the mine exploded when he was down there with three hundred others. They went looking for survivors and Mama begged me to try again to see into the darkness. Nothing came to me hard as I thought. They brought Daddy’s body up four days later. What was left of it. Barely enough to bury, Mama said.
I know proper is a coffin. I know proper is a stone and flowers. The folks we kill don’t get none of that ’cept for sometimes a prayer. I know one or two good ones.