SCREAMING WITH THE CANNIBALS

Thirty-Eight

284 Thirty-Eight “One of the funniest sights I ever did see,” Jason said, laughing , leaning his ass back against the boat. He was using the movieNegro voice again. He sounded like some black man in an Abbott and Costello film. “He go past me like a shot, me standing on the side of the road trying to hitch me a ride down to Myrtle, that big old Ford car just rolling, the soap coming out the windows, Deputy Pork with his head out the window ’cause he can’t see from the inside—everything covered with soap! Put my thumb out but, for some reason, he never stop!” The other men were listening, some of them grinning, some laughing out loud. But some of them not. I wondered about that. “And then the whole thing, the car, it just come to a stop, just cough and fart a couple times, maybe a belch in there somewhere, then it just roooollll down to nothing and stay there, dead. “He jump out the car and start screaming, start dancing around in the road, waving his arms. And then he pull out his gun. Don’t know what he was going to shoot, but I figure right then I be in the wrong place. I take out through the woods, get the hell out’a that scene!” We were at a rickety boat dock on a slough somewhere up near Murphy Beach. The boat looked like an overgrown rowboat, longer, heavier. I couldn’t tell how long it was, maybe twenty feet, maybe more. It was pulled up on the sand near the dock, the men, all from Homeplace, gathered around holding oars, ready to go to work, ready to go fishing. John Three came down to the boat, listened to Jason for a minute, then started folding up a large fishing net. Usu- 285 ally, it took two or three men to pick up the net, but when John Three was finished, Jason picked up the net by himself and set it in the end of the boat. When we were in the boat and rowing out of the slough toward the open water, one of the men started singing and we rowed to the cadence of the song, oars dipping in the water in perfect rhythm. When we got out of the slue, to the beach, a couple of the men jumped out of the boat, grabbed the end of the net and started pulling it out of the boat. It was folded so they could do that, just grab the end and play it out over the end of the boat. We rowed in a large arc out through the surf, curving back toward the beach again, the net running out behind us. When we got back into shallow water we shipped the oars, jumped out of the boat and grabbed the net, the whole crew pulling it in to the beach. Sometimes the net had fish in it, but usually it was empty. We did that all day. It was one of the hardest jobs I ever did in my life. Problem was, no one would hire me to do anything. Of course, I couldn’t really do anything; I wasn’t a carpenter, I wasn’t a plumber . . . I was just a big hillbilly kid who didn’t have the sense to go home—or at least just get out of town—once the summer was over. I was clutter. There was no place for me here. I spent another day or two in Myrtle, hitch-hiking back to Cherry and sleeping on Rosalind’s back porch each night, being careful not to let the neighbors know I was there. I thought about asking Yvonne to stay at her place, but just couldn’t bring myself to do it. The first fishing boat I saw was just north of Cherry, these black guys rowing, sweating, straining against the sea and the net. Some of the boats had more men in them than others and I figured the 286 crews didn’t work regular, just took on whoever came along to work that day. Hell, I thought, I can do that. No one would hire me. I talked to the men who ran the boats; maybe they owned the boats, maybe they didn’t, I don’t know. All I know is the crew would point...