I remembered Junior holding his bloody shirt and running from the bar. Then I thought of what Mouse had said when I tried to thank him.
‘Shit, man, I din’t save you. I just wanted to cut that boy ‘cause he think he so bad... See what he think now...’ And we never talked about it again.
Chapter Two
Early morning is the best time. You’re fully rested but not awake enough to remember how hard it all is. Morning is like being a child again, and morning before the sun is out is like those magic times that you hid under the bed and in between the clothes hanging in your mother’s closet. Times when any kind of miracle could come about just as normal as a spider making her web.
I remember waking up in the dark once when I was very small. I jumped right out of bed and went up next to the screen door on the back porch to see what kind of fantastic thing was going on outside. At first I couldn’t see anything but there was a clopping sound, nickering, and a deep voice that made me feel calm and wondering. Slowly, coming out from the darkness, I saw a gray shimmering next to a tall black pillar. The shimmer turned into a big horse and the pillar became my father holding out an apple and cooing hi his bass voice, ‘Ho! Yeah, boy,’ even though the horse was tame and eating from his hand.
I drifted into sleep thinking that we were poor and didn’t own a horse. When I woke up it was light and there was no horse to be seen. I asked my father about it but he told me that I was dreaming - where were poor people like us going to find big gray stallions?
But there were horse chips behind the barn and hoof-prints too.
I decided that it was a magic horse and man that I’d seen. From that day on I believed that magic hides in the early morning. If you get up early enough you might find something so beautiful that it would be all right if you just died right then because nothing else in life could ever be better.
It was still dark when we made it down to Lucinda Greg’s house. She was Otum Chenier’s girlfriend. I warmed up the engine while Mouse changed clothes and made lunch inside. He came out in gray pants and a gray shirt, work clothes that fit him like dress clothes.
When we drove off it was still way before dawn. Mouse was sleeping against the passenger door and I was driving with the few feeble lights of Houston behind us. It was going to be a warm day but the air still held a light chill of night. I wanted to sing but I didn’t because Mouse wouldn’t have understood my feelings about magic and the morning. So I just drove quietly, happy on that flat Texas road.
People don’t understand southern Texas. They think that the land there is ugly and flat. They take their opinion about the land and put it on the people but they’re wrong on both counts. If they could see Texas in the early dawn like I saw it that day they would know a Texas that is full of potential from the smallest rock to the oldest woman on the farm.
The road wasn’t paved or landscaped. On either side there were dense shrubs and bushes with knotty pines and cherry and pear trees scattered here and there. I was especially aware of the magnolias, their flowers looking like white faces staring down from shadow.
They say it’s like a desert down there, and they’re right - at least sometimes. There are stretches of land that have hardly anything growing, but even then it’s no simple story. Texas is made up of every kind of soil; there’s red day and gray sod and fertile brown, shipped in or strained over by poor farmers trying to make the land work. That earth gives you the feeling of confidence because it’s so much and so different and, mainly, because it’s got the patience to be there not ever having to look for a better place.
But there’s no such thing as a desert down near the Gulf. The rains come to make bayous and swamps and feed every kind of animal and bird and varmint.
As the night disappeared the last foxes and opossums made their way to shelter. Animals everywhere were vanishing with the shadows; field mice and some deer, foxes, rabbits, and skunk.
‘I’ma show you how t’fish while we down here, Ease.’
I jumped when Mouse spoke.
‘Man, ain’t nuthin’ you could tell me. I been droppin’ my line in the water since before I could talk.’
‘That’s all right,’ he said with a sneer. ‘But I show you how the master fish.’
He took a fried egg sandwich from a brown paper sack and tore it in half.
‘Here you go.’
We were both quiet as the sun filled in the land with light. To me it was like the world was growing and I was happy to be on that road.
After a while I asked Mouse how it was that he happened to get Otum’s car just when he needed a ride.
Mouse smiled and looked humble. ‘You know Otum’s a Cajun, an’ them Cajuns is fam’ly down to the bone. They’d kill over a insult to their blood that normal folks like you an’ me would just laugh at. An’ Otum is a real Cajun. That’s a fact.’
Mouse knew how to tell you a story. It was like he was singing a song and the words were notes going up and down the scales, even rhyming when it was right. He’d turn phrases that I wanted to use myself but it seemed that I couldn’t ever get the timing right. Sometimes what he said fit so perfectly I couldn’t ever find the right time to say it again.
‘.. . I always known that a message from his momma would light a fire under Otum. An’ puttin’ out fires is my especiality.’ We laughed at that. ‘So that night I come home from Galveston I stayed over at Lucinda’s, for a weddin’ gift she said. I thought ‘bout how she take care’a Otum’s car an’ how they got a phone down at that beauty shop she work for. . .’
Mouse smiled with all his teeth and put his foot against the dashboard so he could sit back comfortably, ‘You know once Otum got that message from Lucinda he knew he couldn’t take his car down there. The bayou ain’t no place t’drive no good car. So Lucinda tole him that you would start it up for him and look in on it every once an’ a while.’
‘Me?’
‘Well, yeah, it had t’be you, Easy. I cain’t drive no car. Anyway, Otum never did trust me too much.’
We had been going southeast for dose to two hours when we saw two people with thumbs out on the road. A big young man and a girl, maybe fifteen, with a healthy chest and smile.
‘Pull on over, Ease,’ Mouse said. ‘Let’s pick ‘em up.’
‘You know ‘em?’ I asked as we passed by.
‘Uh-uh, but oppu’tunity is ev’rywhere an’ I ain’t passin’ up no bets.’
‘Man, you don’t know what they’s up to. They could be robbers fo’all you know.’
‘If they is then this here gonna be they last stand.’ I shifted the clutch down and put on the brake. As soon as we stopped, Mouse was out with the door open and the seat folded up. He waved at the couple and they came running. The boy was dragging a duffel bag that was bigger than his girlfriend.
‘Come on!’ Mouse shouted. ‘Jump in the back wit’ me, man. ‘Cause Easy got all kindsa dirty rags back here an’ you don’t want no girl in that.’
‘That’s all right. We sit together,’ the young man said in
a gruff tone.
‘Uh-uh, Clifton,’ the girl complained in a high voice. ‘I don’t wanna get filthy! Go’on an sit back there wit’ him.
You can still see me.’
Mouse smiled and gestured for the boy to get in. Clifton did as he was asked to do, but he wasn’t happy about it.
I could see in his face that Clifton hadn’t had a happy day in his life. His jaw was set and his eyes were hard but he couldn’t have been over seventeen. He was what Mouse called ‘a truly poor man.’ Someone who doesn’t have a thing and is so mad about it that he isn’t likely to ever get anything.