Shaking the Sugar Tree Part 25

Where are your clothes? she demanded crossly. she demanded crossly.

He shrugged.

I hurriedly threw on my shorts, grabbed up Noah's, and helped him dress.

Jackson remained in the water, crouching down to hide his nakedness like Adam in the Garden of Eden.

"What are y'all doing?" Mama demanded, looking at me.

"Skinny-dipping, Mama," I said.

"Wiley, you have a child around!"

"I don't think he cares much."

"What will people think?"

I sighed rather heavily.

We caught three fish last night, Noah signed to her. Noah signed to her.

Go play, she signed, her face full of anger. she signed, her face full of anger.

He frowned.

"I'm at my wit's end with you, Wiley," she said, giving me a hard stare.

"It's just skinny-dipping, Mama."

"I don't care what you do when you're by yourself, but don't involve your child in it. What's wrong with you? That man could be a pedophile!" She said this last thing very quietly.

"I doubt it."

"I don't want you exposing my grandson to this... lifestyle lifestyle. I won't have it. And certainly not on my property. G.o.d only knows what else you're exposing my grandson to."

"He's seen my d.i.c.k before, Mama."

"It's a joke to you, Wiley?"

"I'm not sure it's anything more than that."

"Have you no shame?"

"I got over it."

"You're impossible!"

"And you're an uptight prude. But thanks for stopping by."

"I know you and Billy used to come down here skinny-dipping when you were kids," she said, her voice hinting there was more to the story.

"So?" I asked, taking the bait.

"Did it ever occur to you that maybe you're so screwed up now because of that?"

"I'm gay because I went skinny-dipping with Billy when we were ten years old?"

"And you saw things maybe you shouldn't have seen...."

"I saw Billy's p.e.n.i.s. Boy howdy do! Yeah, that's the reason why I'm gay. I saw my brother's little pee pee and the fire was lit."

"That's right, make fun of me like you always do."

"If that's true, Mama, why isn't Billy gay too? He saw my pee pee. We shared a bedroom growing up. Doesn't seem to have affected him much. Jesus, we used to take baths together!"

"Some children can handle it," she said primly. "Some can't. For some children, it's very damaging."

I didn't mean to, but I laughed in her face.

"Laugh it up," she said. "You'll be laughing all the way to eternal h.e.l.l. But I'll be d.a.m.ned if you're going to take my grandson with you."

"You're a trip, Mama. If you could just see how funny you are."

"I am very very serious." serious."

"Oh, I know you are. That's why it's funny."

"I am tired of you mocking our religion!"

"Is that what I'm doing?"

"Your whole life is a mockery of our religion, Wiley."

"I should hope so," I said seriously. "You should live your life in a way that keeps the pope up at night, that's what I say."

"You have not heard the end of this," she vowed, pointing a finger into my face. "If your father, G.o.d rest his soul, was still alive...."

"Well, thank G.o.d for small favors."

A puff of angry air escaped her lips as she turned and marched off.

37) The story of my life

"I HOPE HOPE that doesn't become a scene in one of your books," Jackson said, referring to my mother's visit. that doesn't become a scene in one of your books," Jackson said, referring to my mother's visit.

We were sitting on the rocks, fis.h.i.+ng. I strummed on my guitar while we waited for the fish to bite. Noah stared at the water with a deadly earnestness, as if he could make the fish bite his hook by his stare alone.

"I can think of a more interesting story," I said. "h.o.r.n.y single father meets hot nurse dude from the wild blue Yankee yonder. They make out on the riverbank. They fall in love, adopt eight children, and become the first couple in the state of Mississippi to become legally gay-married. It could work."

"All that from skinny-dipping?"

"I'd have to add the nurse dude has kind eyes. Not squinty, untrustworthy eyes. Not provocative, l.u.s.ty eyes. But kind eyes. Like maybe he's a kind man. He also has a smooth, hot body, as though he does a lot of sit-ups or something, which writers are too busy to do. He also has a gorgeous c.o.c.k. Overall he looks like he might have been an athlete in some other life, one of those Greek guys running around nude in the first Olympics."

"And what would you say about the h.o.r.n.y single father?"

"I'd say he was a bit of a mess. Lonely and looking for something he can't seem to find. Everything he touches turns to s.h.i.+t. He's sarcastic because he's so angry all the time. But he doesn't really know what he's angry about. He's almost thirty-three and it scares him because he feels like a failure. All he has is his kid, but his kid has so many health problems, and sometimes he gets a little tired of taking care of him, but he could never admit that so...."

I fell silent, feeling I had said too much.

"Maybe the nurse guy is lonely too," Jackson suggested. "Maybe he's been looking for someone to spend his life with, to grow old with, someone to honor and cherish. Maybe he feels he'll never meet the right man. Maybe he sort of gave up, but then one day he met a beautiful man, a single father... and something just sort of happened and then they were in love, got gay-married, and lived happily ever after."

"That would make it really interesting," I admitted.

"What are the chances of a story like that coming true?" he asked.

"You left out the part about eight kids."

"Did I?"

"That's the most important part. Don't you want kids?"

"I never thought about it."

"I've always wanted more kids."

"Why don't you adopt?"

"I need to get gay-married first, have a nice house and a career, and something to offer. I need at least one pot to p.i.s.s in."

"And if you had that?"

"Well, I've always wanted a daughter, so we'd have to start with that. Then I think we'd have to adopt eight or nine kids just to round it off a bit. One of them would probably turn out to be gay so we'd pick that one as our favorite and we'd send him or her to college. As soon as they become teenagers, we'd send them off to boarding school because I am not going to put up with the sort of c.r.a.p that I put my mother through when I was a teenager. Then we'd decide which ones to keep. I don't know. Maybe we'd keep them all if they were nice. Or maybe we could sell a couple on eBay and recoup some of our investment."

"Sound like you've got this all planned out."

"That's the problem with me. The things that I want are never going to happen. I always feel like I was born at the wrong time, in the wrong body. I'd make a great mom, you know. I'd love to have a mess of kids, spend my day wiping noses and cleaning up baby puke while my husband went off to work and brought home the bacon. I would have had a great time in the sixties with all that free love-I would have been a huge hippie. I would have walked around San Francisco with a flower in my a.s.s and my d.i.c.k hanging out and been quite happy living in a commune. When I was little I used to daydream about being an Indian boy, riding my pony, shooting a bow, living free under the sun. I always feel like I was meant to be somewhere else, doing something else, being something else."

"What's wrong with right here and now?"

"If other people would let me get on with it, it wouldn't be so bad."

"Why do you let it bother you?"

"Family. Can't kill them with kindness. Can't use a hammer, if only because it's just so G.o.dd.a.m.n messy. It's a real b.i.t.c.h to clean up, and I should know. So you're just kind of stuck with them. Anyway, it reminds me of the difference between a Northern fairy tale and a Southern fairy tale."

"What's that?" he asked.

"In a Northern fairy tale, you start off by saying: 'Once upon a time' and all that. In the South, we start off by saying: 'Y'all ain't going to believe this s.h.i.+t!'"

He laughed.

"Hey," he said suddenly.

His pole was wiggling.

"You got a bite," I said.

"Good deal!"

38) Father Ginderbach

WE HEADED HEADED back Sunday morning on the four-wheelers, making an unnecessary detour through the woods since Jackson had decided he liked riding and wanted more wheel time. back Sunday morning on the four-wheelers, making an unnecessary detour through the woods since Jackson had decided he liked riding and wanted more wheel time.

By ten we were scrubbed and dressed and ready to go to the ten-thirty ma.s.s at St. Francis in New Albany with Mama. Jackson had never been to ma.s.s, so he didn't know what to expect. Papaw didn't go to ma.s.s anymore, having sworn off what he referred to as the "G.o.dd.a.m.n Christless Catholics."

While I had many fond memories of St. Francis, it was the scene of much tortured hand-wringing and endless moral conundrums.

We found an empty pew. Mama sat down on one side, Jackson on the other.

Noah and I knelt on the kneeler for a bit, saying some prayers, being pious. I wasn't really saying prayers, just going through the motions and hoping that whatever G.o.d there was up there was a kind G.o.d, a merciful G.o.d, not the horrible old b.u.g.g.e.r who used to scare the s.h.i.+t out of me and now only bored me.

We got looks. Lots of looks.

My mom was happy to get looks at Noah, and chatted quietly as friends and acquaintances came over to make a fuss about him. She wasn't so happy about the looks she got because of me, with my long hair, my bad att.i.tude, my irreverent ways, and the cute man sitting next to me who was so clearly out of place.

It was common news that I was a f.a.g, which was all the paris.h.i.+oners needed to know. Their imagination and indignation did the rest. The eyes that looked at me seemed to suggest the wish that I could somehow contain myself and stop having s.e.x and stop being a gay boy and stop embarra.s.sing my poor mother and family. Perhaps I was reading more into it than what was there. Perhaps not. There was no denying the way it felt.

The younger members of St. Francis were a somewhat different breed, though, and some of them smiled at me. Some smiles were of amus.e.m.e.nt, or encouragement, or simple friends.h.i.+p. Some were smiles of curiosity.

I was happy to see a fuss made over Noah. We attended often enough that most of the regulars knew him, or were aware of him, or had heard of him. It didn't take a genius to figure out who he is, what with the stunted growth and extra pinkie finger and his occasional honk or hoot. He also had a darkness about his eyes that was unmistakable, like he was not getting enough vitamins or enough sleep or something. When he opened his mouth and displayed those gapped teeth, the doubles along the bottom jaw, all questions were answered.

"Mrs. Oppy told me her daughter calls Noah 'The Boy Who Lived,'" Mama said, whispering to me and frowning with disapproval.

"That's a reference to Harry Potter," I pointed out.

"Still," she said.