Chapter One – Introductions
Everybody always wants to hear the whole dang story about how I came into that car. Well, that is a long story and before we get into it, there are some things you ought to know.
First of all, despite what you may have been told, not everything that happens in this story is my fault. Sometimes accidents just happen. You know how it is, something happens and it’s pretty small, and not real bad. But then, no matter what you do, when you start trying to fix things, the situation just gets worse and worse. Before you know it, things can go from a nothing to a dang disaster in no time at all.
That’s what happened a few years ago when I was just a little kid and our house in down in Sweetwater burned down.
Sweetwater is in Mississippi and that’s where we lived when I was little. I remember it like it was yesterday. Dad had bought this really, really, really old house because Mom liked it and it was empty. It was so old that most of the house didn’t have electricity or running water. Dad had an indoor bathroom put in right away, and he was having electricity put in the parts of the house that didn’t already have it. They weren’t quite finished doing that, so in the older parts of the house, we still used candles and oil lamps.
Well, on the day after Christmas, I was sitting in the parlor with my big sister, Sweet Pea. That isn’t her real name, but that’s what Mom and Dad called her, so that’s what everyone called her. She was sitting at piano practicing “Heart and Soul.” I wasn’t doing nothing but picking sock lint from between my toes and watching her play. She’s going to be a big star someday. Last year on the Fourth of July, they crowned her “Little Miss Lady of the Lake” over at Sardis Reservoir and set off a bunch of fireworks because she was the prettiest girl there. Mom has her learning how to dance ballet. If only she could sing, she could be on Ed Sullivan’s TV show or maybe Lawrence Welk.
Anyway, I was getting down to some serious lint picking when I got this big tickle in my nose. I let out a ginormous sneeze. It was so big that it shook the whole house. When I sneezed, I must have kicked out with my foot a little bit because I accidentally kicked the leg of the end table that was beside the couch. The table banged up against the wall. This made the big, old, tall, skinny candle on the table rock back and forth three-or-four times. Each time it would rock, it would pause just a second or so at the peak of the swing, then it would flop back the other way. Each time it swung, it got closer and closer to falling. Finally, it swung just a fuzz too far, and it fell over against the wall. It just leaned against the wall for barely a half a second. The flame of the candle flicked up on that old wallpaper just like a snake’s tongue. Quicker than you can say “Jack Sprat,” I jumped and snatched up the candle.
I blew it out. “Whew! That was close,” I thought. “I almost set the house on fire.”
The wallpaper on that wall was really, really, really old, so it was really, really, really dry. You had to look really, really, really close to see it, but something weird was going on at the edge of the wallpaper. Apparently, that half second was all it took for that snake’s tongue of flame to light the wallpaper on fire just a little, tiny bit right there on the edge.
It was lit just a little at a seam that had come loose between two pieces of wallpaper. There was just a little thin line glowing bright red. I watched it for a second as it slowly ate its way across the sliver of wallpaper. It was the weirdest thing I have ever seen. As the red line crept across the paper, the paper turned black as the red line got close. Then, the red line ate the black wallpaper, and once it finished, the paper had magically turned gray and looked like it was made of ash. It was amazing. I looked over at Sweet Pea. She hadn’t seen a thing. She was still staring at the sheet music and playing “Heart and Soul.”
I looked back at the little red line eating the paper, and I thought, “I’d better put a stop to this before it gets going.” So, I blew on it to blow it out.
That may have been a mistake.
That little red line didn’t go out, it just got bright red, almost white, and went “whoomph.” It wasn’t a little red line anymore. Now it was a little fire. Sweet Pea must have heard that because she stopped playing, turned and looked at the fire and then at me and said in an amazed voice, “You set the house on fire?”
“No!” I hollered. “It was the candle!” but she wasn’t even listening.
She hollered, “Miss Mary! The boy set the house on fire!” And then she turned and looked at me, saying, “You’re gonna get in trouble! You’re gonna get in trouble!” in that sing-songy voice that girls do when they are trying to get you in trouble.
Even though it was a just little fire on the wallpaper about the size of my finger. I panicked. Things were starting to go downhill really fast and I didn’t know what to do, so I blew on the flame real hard trying again to blow it out.
Well, that may have been another mistake.
When I blew on it, the harder I blew, the hotter it burned and the bigger the little flame got! All of a sudden, it started spreading like mad. I blinked twice, and half the wall was on fire. It spread so fast and so hard that it went “WHOOMPH!!” again, and I lost my eyebrows. It did it so hard that it kinda shook all the air in the room.
Quicker than a cat farts, the whole dadgum wall was on fire, and it was starting to spread across the ceiling. The way the fire spread across the ceiling reminded me of how syrup just kinda spreads out when you pour it on a stack of pancakes. The fire was like a blue-and-red syrup spreading across the ceiling. It was amazing. The heat from the fire burned my face and the black smoke was making me cough, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.
Miss Mary, Mom’s helper, must have smelled the smoke just about the time she heard Sweet Pea call out. She came running in and saw the fire. Her eyes nearly jumped out of her head and she started hollering, “Lordy! Lordy! This house is lit on fire! You babies get on out of here! Run chillens! Run!!!”
Sweet Pea started moving right then and started saying, “You’re gonna get your butt beat! You’re gonna get your butt beat!” in that damn sing-songy voice, but I just sat there looking at the fire. I was just frozen watching the syrup eat away at the ceiling.
If you think Sweet Pea is bossy on a normal day, you ought to see her when the house is lit on fire. In just a few seconds, the fire burned a hole through the ceiling and was starting to spread into the room above the parlor. The ashes from the fire were swirling in the smoke-filled parlor like a blizzard of black-and-gray snow.
Sweet Pea was not happy. She picked up her sheet music and got real bossy real fast. She grabbed me by the arm and started giving me orders as she headed out of the house. She mostly dragged me out because I couldn’t take my eyes off of the fire, the smoke, and the snow. Miss Mary ran upstairs through that black, smelly smoke to get Mom and the Goob (he was only a week old). She hustled Mom and the Goob out of the house before it fell in. The fire department came but it was too late. The old house was gone.
In the end, nothing was left but the brick columns out front of a pile of smoldering coals and ashes. That house had been one of two houses in Sweetwater that the Bastard General Ulysses S. Grant did not burn down when he came through Sweetwater on his way from Vicksburg to Memphis, during the War between the States. He used it for a hospital, and that’s why he didn’t burn it. Anyway, apparently, I had accomplished something the Bastard General Ulysses S. Grant failed to do during his stay in Sweetwater. If you want to piss off a whole town, just burn down a landmark and see how that works out for you.
Now, whenever we go back to Sweetwater and someone asks me, “Are you Doc’s boy what burnt down the house?” I look around for a second to see if the Goob is close by, and if he’s not, I always say, “No, sir, that was my brother.” That seems to keep the visit from going downhill.
The second thing you need to know before we get started is that everything is not always how it seems at first glance. Sometimes there’s just this one little piece of information changes everything. You can know all kinds of other stuff, but if you don’t have that one particular piece of information you are liable to make a bad decision. Something that seems entirely reasonable one minute, can suddenly become oh-so-wrong, after you have acquired that one piece of information. There are times when you will be the only one with that one piece of information, and you just can’t get folks to listen to you. They just stick to what they already believe and won’t budge off of it.
The Goob and his “flying” is a good example of this. He used to think he could fly, and he wore his Superman suit to kindergarten every day. He told everyone who would listen that he could fly. Some kids believed him, but I always told him that he could not fly. We used to argue about it. He wasn’t just being hardheaded, he really believed he could fly.
You see, he loved Superman. On Saturday mornings, we’d get early up to watch Superman on Channel 3. It came on at six. Usually, we woke up a little before the show started, so we watched the picture of the Indian they showed on TV until they were ready to play “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Right after the national anthem, they’d show Superman.
After watching Superman every Saturday morning for his whole life, the Goob was convinced he could fly just like Superman could. All you had to do was get the right start so you could get going. On TV, Superman got a little running start and would do a little hop to get going, or he’d jumped out of a window and take off flying before he hit the ground. Sweet Pea and I told him a million times that he couldn’t fly, but he just couldn’t get that through his thick skull. He’d get a running start across the yard and do that little hop just like Superman, but instead of flying off across the sky, he’d just come back down. I used to sit and watch him. He would try for an hour or so, but it never worked. I told him to give up, that he couldn’t fly. He might get tired, but he never gave up. He never stopped believing he could fly.
So, one day we were playing inside because it was raining outside, and he kept insisting he can fly. I told him he couldn’t do it. We were going back and forth, and finally I got tired of arguing with him. I pointed at a footstool and said, “Okay. Prove it! Climb up there and fly off of that stool, you loudmouth little rat!” So the Goob climbed up on top of a footstool and stood there doing the Superman pose. Chest out. Feet apart. Hands on hips. Staring off into the distance. He looked the part. I could almost hear the music.
“That’s not high enough,” I said, thinking he’d chicken out if it were higher. The Goob just glared at me, climbed down and got another footstool from across the room. He climbed back up on top of the two footstools, and again, he struck that pose. His feet had to be two feet off the ground. And I knew, inside his head he could hear that voice saying to him, “Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings with a single bound!”
“Still not high enough! Superman usually jumps out of a window way up in the top of The Daily Planet building,” I said. I was actually pretty impressed he could balance up there on those footstools. They were kind of wobbly. The Goob clambered down and got the last of the footstools and added it to the tower of footstools. The tower, being three footstools tall now, was really wobbly. I had to help him climb up.
Once up there, he tried to strike that pose again, while fighting desperately to keep his balance on top of the three wobbly footstools. He was pretty high up there. His feet were level with my chest. “Look! Up in the sky!” a little voice whispered to me.
“No matter how high you stack them, you can’t fly,” I told him. “You’re not even allergic to kryptonite.”
He ignored me as he struggled to maintain his balance on the wobbly tower of footstools and turned his gaze to the imaginary Metropolis below him. He turned and looked down at me and said, “I can fly.” Once more, we started going back and forth. “I can fly.” “No, you can’t.” “I can fly.” “No, you can’t.” Until I finally had enough and said, “Okay, prove it. Fly off of up there!”
“Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane…” the little voice in my head whispered. “What if he can fly?” I thought.
Well, I’ll be damned if he didn’t do it. He went back to looking off in the distance. His hands were on his hips. His head was held high, his feet apart, and his chest was thrust out. I could tell that he could hear the music too…and he went!!
He jumped off of that stack of wobbly footstools just like Superman jumped out of his office window at The Daily Planet. His arms were out in front and he was stretched out flat. His cape flowed out behind him. He did it just like Superman, except Superman went up. The Goob just went down.
The Goob hit the floor in a perfect belly flop, which knocked all the wind right out of him. It sounded like a thirty-second dog fart and someone dropping a sack of feed on the floor at the feed store at the same time. The Goob wasn’t making any sound at all and started turning blue.
Mom had heard the sound, came running in, and nearly lost her mind. Dad just happened to get home from the hospital right then. He snatched up the Goob like a limp doll and got him to breathe again. I got a hell of a spanking for “nearly killing the baby.”
I am pretty sure that if Dad knew how long and how hard I had tried to convince the Goob that he could not fly, I would not have gotten that spanking. I just couldn’t get anyone to listen. That’s that one piece of information I was talking about earlier.
At dinner that night, the Goob hardly glanced over at me. I was madder than a wet hen on account of the spanking I got. I just glared at him. Finally, he turned and looked right at me. While Sweet Pea was explaining something to Mom and Dad about her ballet lesson that afternoon, he looked me straight in the eye and whispered, “Bullets will bounce off of me.”
Sorry, I’m done. He gets to figure that out all by himself.
So, now you are ready to hear the story.