Shaking the Sugar Tree (5 page)

“You don’t even go to mass anymore,” Mama said, offering Bill a disapproving look.

“Can we talk about something else?” Shelly suggested.

“It’s a sin to miss your Sunday obligation,” Mama said.

“I’m a Baptist now, Mama,” Bill said.

“Well, at least you go to church,” she said.

“I go to church too,” I said.

“Fat lot of good it does you,” Mama said.

“I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe in that nonsense.”

“And look where that’s got you,” she said. “You and your
lifestyle.
”

There was quiet.

“Mama, why don’t you just sew up a Scarlet H and glue it on my forehead?” I asked. “H for the happy homo. Can’t we have one conversation that doesn’t involve my penis?”

Eli snorted a mouthful of mashed potatoes halfway across the table.

Shelly was aghast.

Bill smiled ruefully.

“Wiley Cantrell!” Mama exclaimed. “I ought to wash your mouth out with soap!”

“You started it,” I replied.

“Don’t talk that way in front of the children!”

“At least the homo is honest,” Papaw said.

“On behalf of the intrinsically disordered,” I said, “let me say that this fried chicken is really quite good, Mama.”

“You’re impossible,” Mama said.

“What’s an intrinsic order?” Josh asked.

“You hush,” Shelly said.

“I’m just asking!”

“Shut it,” Bill said.

“I’m just asking! Jeez!”

“Now look what you’ve done!” Mama exclaimed in outraged tones.

“Can we go swimming after we eat?” Eli asked.

“You have to wait thirty minutes,” Bill said. “And someone has to go with you.”

“Will you go, Uncle Wiley?” Eli asked earnestly, knowing his father would not, and his mother didn’t like being out in the sun. He turned to look at me. “Noah can swim with us,” he added to sweeten the deal.

How big of you
, I thought.

“We’ll see,” I said.

“Please?” he begged.

“I’m intrinsically disordered. I can’t swim.”

“Is that what it means?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “It means I’ll drown if I try to go swimming. Then my body will explode and my brains will go splattering to the four winds.”

He laughed, then stopped, unable to decide if this was true.

“Hush,” Shelly said.

It wasn’t clear to whom.

“How do you like the new pope, Mama?” I asked.

“I think he’s wonderful,” she said, her face taking on a glow. “He named himself after St. Francis.”

“Yeah, but he’s a Jesuit,” I pointed out. “I thought you hated those liberal Jesuit bastards.”

“He’s the pope now,” she said. “He used to take the bus to work.”

“Never trust a man who wears a dress,” Papaw offered.

“They say his poo-poo might actually smell,” I said. “The curia is
double-checking.”

The boys laughed.

“Must you always provoke me?” Mama asked. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but you’re like a stone around my neck!”

“I’m just saying,” I said.

I glanced over at Bill to see if he was picking up on the fact that Mama and I couldn’t stand each other.

But of course he wasn’t.

T
HE
BOYS
changed into their swimming trunks and I walked with them through Mama’s massive backyard, heading for the swimming hole in the bend of the river.

Funny how you can never be too intrinsically disordered when other people want you to babysit their kids.

“Noah’s going to hell,” Eli announced.

He was twelve and knew everything.

“Who said that?” I asked.

“Mrs. Parson.”

“Who’s that?”

“She’s our Bible study teacher. She says Catholics are going to hell.”

“Hell is other people,” I said.

“Catholics worship Mary,” he said knowledgeably.

“Do they?”

“That’s what Mrs. Parson says.”

“Good for her,” I said.

“Who’s Mary?” Josh asked. He was ten and much brighter, I thought, than his brother. Or, at least, he was calmer and not so quick to offer blustery Baptist nonsense.

“She’s the mother of God,” I said.

“Jesus’s mother,” Eli said. “She got pregnant with the Holy Spirit. She’s the Whore of Babylon, though.”

I rolled my eyes.

At the swimming hole, the boys laid their towels on the grass and barged in. I stripped down to my underwear and waded after them.

The water wasn’t that deep. The swimming hole had seemed huge when I was child and Bill and I went skinny-dipping here. Now it was no more than a small bend in the river with a nice sandbar to sit on.

“Which of you little shits should I drown first?” I asked, advancing on them.

They laughed. I grabbed Eli, hefted his scrawny ass into the air, and tossed him into the deeper water. Josh shrieked with glee and tried to flee, but he was next. Noah was not spared. We played serious dunk for a while, laughing and roughhousing, and it wasn’t long before they learned they had to work together if they wanted to dunk me.

I looked back at the riverbank, saw that Shelly had wandered down from the house and was no doubt “supervising.” Everyone knows that gay men can’t wait to get their hands on helpless prepubescent boys.

While I was distracted, they piled on top of me and dunked me right and proper.

“You’re worse than the kids,” Shelly observed when I finally waded ashore.

The way she glanced at Noah seemed to indicate that she had nothing but pity for him, stuck with such a half-assed father as he was, bereft of the multifarious benefits that stem from self-righteous, uptight heterosexual parenting.

I dried off with my shirt.

“It’s hot, ain’t it?” I said to her.

“You ain’t kidding.”

“You might feel better if you cooled off,” I suggested.

“I ain’t swimming in there!”

“I didn’t say anything about swimming, sister-in-law.”

“Wiley Cantrell, you keep your hands off me!”

Being the intrinsically disordered person that I am, I, of course, could not do that. I dragged her from the shade of the tree and pushed her pretty ass into the water, spiffy clothes and all.

The kids screamed with delight.

O
NE
OF
my first customers the next day was a shy Hispanic man with the most amazing brown eyes. Soulful, like a deer, wide, open, trusting, yet filled with a strange caution. He was dressed simply in a T-shirt and shorts, had beads around his neck like the kind you get when you go down to the Gulf Coast and swim in the ocean. His elfin features were a pleasing brown. Soft curls of black hair were a riot on his head, hanging in his eyes, climbing down over his ears, which poked out of them disobediently.

“How ya doing?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

“Do you bring your FoodWorld card?” I asked.

He lifted his eyes to me in confusion and shrugged.

It was a look I knew well.

Do you have a F-o-o-d-w-o-r-l-d card?

Those amazing brown eyes lit up and he smiled.

No.

Would you like one?

Yes! You know sign?

My name is W-i-l-e-y.

My name is J-u-a-n. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you, J-u-a-n.

Not only was he deaf, but my gaydar was beeping something awful, and something told me his was too because of the way he kept smiling at me.

When I handed him the change, I allowed myself to hold on to his hand for a moment—the cashier’s love touch. That touch might linger a little longer than it should if there are some unspoken things that need to be said. Mine lingered as I pretended to fumble the coins, as though I wanted to make sure they didn’t spill from his hand and I had to keep it steady. Gave me the perfect excuse to hold his hand for a few moments.

He smiled as he put the change in his pocket. Then he fished around and handed me a slip of paper, which said:

My name is Juan. I am deaf. I can work for cheap. My number is (662) 822-1152.

Below that, the same message was written in Spanish.

I gave him an application for a FoodWorld card. He filled out his name and address and phone number. He pointed out the phone number to me, lifting his eyebrows as if to say,
Make sure you use it!

On a piece of paper, I wrote down my own number and address and handed it to him, knowing he must have access to a TTY phone system.

I want to have a friend,
he said. The way he signed the word “friend” suggested he had something more in mind than watching football games.

He added,
I’m lonely.

He looked at me frankly, his need, his loneliness written plainly in his eyes, across his face.

Why do you know sign?
he asked.

My son is deaf.

You have a son?

Yes.

Wow.

A lady with two kids pushed her cart up to the line. She began to unload her things.

It’s nice to meet you,
I said.

Please call me,
he said, biting at his lip.

He turned quickly, grabbed his bags, and walked away.

I watched him for a long moment. He was such a sweet-looking guy, handsome in that Latino way, but he walked as though the weight of the world was on his shoulders and he didn’t have a friend to his name.

There are many Hispanics in Tupelo. All throughout the South, actually. No doubt a great many are illegal, a fact that enrages many of my Tea Party neighbors. That Juan gave me a card indicating his willingness to work cheaply suggested he was one.

What would it be like to be an illegal immigrant who was not only deaf but gay? Talk about three strikes against you.

He didn’t give me that ants-in-the-pants feeling that Jackson Ledbetter did, though I was certainly willing to give him an opportunity to shake the sugar tree and see what might fall out.

T
HE
NEXT
day was Tuesday and Noah and I got up early to make the long drive to Pearl, home of the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, the only prison in the state that houses female prisoners, including those on death row. Noah’s mother had spent the last five years of her life at this facility after her boyfriend’s meth lab got busted down in Monroe County. She was set to be released at eight o’clock that morning sharp.

We had visited the prison exactly once during those previous five years, the first Christmas after Kayla’s incarceration. After making the drive and getting his hopes up, Noah’s mother refused to see him and we drove home disappointed. Noah was four at the time. I’m not sure how much he remembers.

The guard at the main gates directed us to a special parking lot where inmate releases were “processed.” Kayla’s parents were already there, standing by their sleek SUV. I parked my old station wagon nearby and Noah and I got out.

I was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and had my camera on a strap around my neck. I wanted to take a picture of Noah with his mother, which would be precisely one more than he currently had.

Noah wore the new suit given to him by Cousin Eli. He had washed his hair and asked me to put gel in it so he could comb it back off his forehead the way he liked. His friend Keke down the street told him it looked cool that way. She’s the girl who once put cornrows in his hair so her judgment was not always reliable.

Mrs. Warren looked at Noah and a hand went to her throat.

I approached warily.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Wiley,” Mr. Warren said.

Then he said no more.

“Hello,” Noah said nervously, loudly, refusing to be ignored.

“Hello, Noah,” Mr. Warren said, looking down at him.

Do you remember your grandmother and grandfather?
I signed.

He shook his head, but smiled hopefully.

“How is he?” Mrs. Warren asked.

She wants to know how you are,
I signed
.

“I fine,” he said to her, smiling and showing his mismatched teeth, the gaps, the doubles, the hell that his dentist patiently tried to soothe.

“He’s gotten so big,” she observed.

She looked at her husband as if to judge how to proceed. The determined set of his jaw and the hard flint in his eyes were palpable. She lowered her gaze and said nothing further, deferring to his judgment. Mr. Warren was very good at judgment.

I put my hand on Noah’s shoulder and pulled him close.

“He
is
your grandson,” I pointed out quietly. “No matter what you think of me.”

“I believe I made our feelings quite clear to you, Wiley,” Mr. Warren said, staring at me as if defying me to look away. “Since you refused to give up custody of Noah so that he could be raised in a decent, proper home—
our home
—a Christian home, you left us no choice. Raising the boy in a homosexual environment… but let’s not get into
that
.”

The last time I had seen Mr. and Mrs. Warren, they were standing on the other side of an incubator, looking at the pathetic, scrawny little thing that was their grandson, born a month too soon, addicted to crystal meth thanks to his mother, cursed with various and sundry birth defects. They came to announce that their daughter Kayla had run off and would not be coming back, and that they had decided they would take care of Noah themselves if I gave up parental rights and disappeared into the background. Clearly they had given the matter a great deal of serious thought. Had even talked to their lawyer.

They seemed surprised when I refused.

They had come up with what they considered, in their business-like minds, the only possible solution to the problem that was their grandson. They were genuinely upset when I told them I would not disappear, that Noah was my son and I would take full responsibility for him, no matter what, even if I was gay and not a very good person. I was not going to cut and run like their daughter. They were welcome to help and be part of his life, but I was not going to be chased off.