Читать книгу Another Song For Me - Jean Castaing - Страница 17

Oil Can seemed to have had a personality transplant after Earl told him he could start working. I’d never seen him happy before. We went straight to Wal-Mart where Grandpa said he’d wait in the truck. Oil Can saluted the Wal-Mart greeter, grabbed a shopping cart and quickly filled it with six pairs of black jeans, six black sweatshirts, 12 pairs of black socks, a pair of work boots, and a pair of sneakers. I noticed him eyeing a nice pair of pants and a white dress shirt with black pin stripes. He pressed the shirt against his chest and checked himself out in the mirror. But when he caught me looking at him, he jammed it back on the rack and said he was in a hurry to get home and get his new clothes in the washer.

“Nasty things crawl around in those warehouses,” Oil Can said. “Something might have left a calling card on my new undies.”

I laughed. He sounded more like my mother than a man who hadn’t had a fresh change of clothes in the last three months. I pointed to a relatively short check-out line. We began emptying the basket and I took out the credit card Dad had given me.

Oil Can continued to unload. “Tell your daddy not to worry. I’ll pay him back as soon as I get my first paycheck,” he said, then grimaced at the pile on the counter. “Well, maybe it might take two or three checks. It’s been a long time since I’ve bought new clothes, since I bought anything. You think I overdid it?”

“Hardly. But tell me something. Why is everything black?”

“Because, I don’t have to waste time thinking about what to wear. I can get dressed in the dark.”

The checker, who had been giving Oil Can curious glances since we first got in line, looked him over good, then turned to the pimple faced kid bagging the clothes. “Wonder how much thought he gave to the outfit he’s wearing now,” she mumbled.

Oil Can acted like he didn’t hear the comment and waited patiently while the kid crammed the clothes into plastic bags.

The minute we got home, he went straight to the laundry room. While he was putting his clothes away, I sat at the kitchen table and made a list of questions for our first interview. When we’d talked in the hospital he insisted that we must lay down rules. Fifteen-minute sessions. No more, no less. Everything I wrote down had to be exactly as he’d told it. If he said he didn’t want to discuss a certain subject, it was off limits. “And of course,” he added, “rules are subject to additions and changes.”

When the man in black walked through the door, for a split second I wasn’t sure who it was. I’d never seen Oil Can wear anything other than his ratty black coat and hospital gowns. He smelled like soap, his hair was damp, but combed. He looked like a normal person. It would take some getting used to. “You look nice,” I said.

He rubbed his hands across his sweatshirt, shrugged, and then sat down. I slid a recorder to the middle of the table. He backed away. “No recorders.”

“Why? I just want to make sure I have everything right.”

He turned it off. “No recorders. You never know who might get hold of them.”

“Whatever,” I said, then flipped open my notebook.

Oil Can scratched the back of his neck. “Let’s see. I suppose we should start when I was born. That’s important, because my mama didn’t have an easy time bringing me into this world. We lived on a Carolina sea island.”

I didn’t think the circumstances of his birth were going to be important to my report, but it was obvious I wasn’t going to stop him. He got a far off look in his eyes.

“I started my life in the low country six weeks before I was supposed to. We were a dirt-poor shrimper’s family. Didn’t have a phone, and the closest doc was across the water in Charleston. It took Daddy a while to find a neighbor lady to watch my brother, Alvin, and by the time daddy got Mama on his boat and to a hospital, she’d darn near bled to death. The doc pulled me out with a big old set of forceps and I wasn’t breathing right. Least that’s the story that went around. Daddy used to tell the island folks that those big city doctors caused me to be brain damaged, which accounted for my strange behavior as a child. Every time I heard him talk like that, I wanted to hide. But Mama, she made excuses for him. Said it pained him to think he had a backward son because he surely wasn’t thought of as the smartest man on the island. Before I was born the army had turned Daddy down. Some old gossip got wind of the fact that he’d failed the I.Q. test. He came to be known as The Reject. Then I came along.” Oil Can lowered his gaze. “Another reject.”

I slid my finger up and down my pencil and glanced at Oil Can. He talked with a strange accent and sounded like a completely different person than the crazy nut I knew in the hospital.

“The night before my twelfth birthday,” he said, “Mama had gone to a church meeting. She left a nice dish of lasagna for supper. Daddy had been drinking like he always did when she wasn’t around. Except that night he was meaner than I’d ever seen him. I filled his plate and set it in front of him. He went into a rage. Said he weren’t no Italian and wouldn’t eat no foreign food. He flung that plate across the room. Lasagna slid down the wall. Broken glass flew everywhere. Then, with one swing of his arm, he split the kitchen table right in half.”

Oil Can’s fist pounded the table. I jerked, but he didn’t notice. He kept talking.

“Then Daddy stood up. The ugliest curse words flew out of his mouth. Alvin ran outside. I was too scared to move. I started to cry. Daddy grabbed my arm and squeezed it so hard I felt my blood stick in my veins. He yanked me up.”

Oil Can rubbed his shoulder. “When I tried to break loose the old man laughed. Called me pitiful, a blubbering little fool. He finally let go. Lord, I don’t know where I got the guts, but I remember what I did clear as anything.”

“I’ll show you who’s pitiful,” I said. “Next thing I knew I’d kicked him straight on in his knee. He rocked backwards and his head hit the edge of the table before he crashed to the floor. ‘No one’s ever going to call me a reject, I said.’ By the time I’d come to my senses I was scared to death that man was going to kill me. But he just lay there, rubbed his head and moaned. Figured he was passed out drunk. His arms were spread wide and his head had flopped to the side.”

“I went for the door, hoping I could find Alvin. I heard Daddy mumbling. ‘Go on. Run away you coward. You’ll be running your whole stupid life.’ Those were the last words my daddy ever spoke. My daddy died the next morning, on my birthday. I wasn’t sorry.”

The kitchen was so silent for a minute I couldn’t even hear my own breathing.

Oil Can ran his fingers through his hair. His eyes darted side to side. “I don’t know why I told you that. The part about my daddy, I mean. Never told anyone that story before.”

I swallowed hard. “That’s horrible. You must have hated living there.” I barely whispered those words.

Oil Can looked out the window. A soft smile crossed his craggy face. “Oh no. I loved that island. I can still smell the salt marsh. And, sometimes in my dreams, I see the egrets and herons and watch the sun set into the water behind the river oaks. It was magical,” he said, then shook his head and snapped out of his trance. He pointed to the clock. “Time’s up.”

I tried to ask another question, but he repeated, “times up.”

The magic had ended, at least for now.