The Schooling of Claybird Catts Read online

  The Schooling of Claybird Catts

  A NOVEL

  JANIS OWENS

  For my goofball brothers:

  the millionaire and the rocket scientist

  Pretty good ol’ boys, both

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  To be perfectly honest, the day my father Michael died…

  CHAPTER TWO

  Now, when I say that my mother is a vampire…

  CHAPTER THREE

  That’s how I came to understand and accept the fact…

  CHAPTER FOUR

  She’d met him at an airport in New York while…

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Maybe even more fascinated, for at least Missy had been…

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER SIX

  When I look back over that long, boring year between…

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Now, the notion that Gabe was gay never would have…

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Once the big announcement was made public, I thought we’d…

  CHAPTER NINE

  Missy used the term to describe the wild and nutty…

  CHAPTER TEN

  The long and the short of it is: after a…

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Now, Grannie was the oldest living member of our family…

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The seeds of a great humanitarian,” he said with all…

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Aunt Candace herself answered the door, not in a nightgown…

  PART THREE

  The Choices of Clayton Catts

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I’ve lived with Aunt Candace for seven months now, and…

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I got my report card in the mail today. Failed…

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I’m going on a date. An actual bona fide date…

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Well, I’ve been here in Georgia two days now, and…

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I’m back in Florida now. Back on Magnolia Hill, where…

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I meant to record yesterday in the comfortable wisteria shadow…

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Well, another big fight has broken out in Grannie’s dining…

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Aunt Candace was the one who told me, came to…

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  It’s late, after midnight, and I’ve had such a strange…

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PRAISE

  OTHER BOOKS BY JANIS OWENS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  PART ONE

  Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age The child is grown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.

  EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

  CHAPTER ONE

  To be perfectly honest, the day my father Michael died really wasn’t the worst day of my life.

  Of course, it has panned out to be the worst, but at the time, it was just the last day in a week of one fun thing after another, all part of what I later learned was a carefully constructed plot to distract us children from the inevitable. Every night my brother Simon and my sister Missy and me were wined and dined by different friends and kin, making for a fast, hectic week that peaked on Saturday, when my best friend Kenneth’s Uncle Lou, who is full-blooded Italian (like Kenneth wishes he was) and very sympathetic to Daddy’s plight, took Kenneth and me to Busch Gardens as he works for Anheuser-Busch and gets free tickets.

  We left early that morning, before five, and got there just as the gates opened, and had a heck of a time except that I puked on the Scorpion, or just after. We’d eaten breakfast at the IHOP outside the park and I must have eaten one chocolate-chip pancake too many, for I got sick as a dog on the first loop, but was man enough to hold my bile till I made it to the bathroom. Other than that, we had a big time. Uncle Lou even bought each of us a copy of the picture they take when you come in the park that Daddy always said was such a rip-off (fifteen bucks) though maybe he (Uncle Lou, that is) got an employee discount.

  In any case, I have the picture on my nightstand to this day and have to say that yes, I look quite the happy boy, not a clue in the world that my father was lying on his deathbed four hundred miles away fighting for his last breath. Just me and that idiot Kenneth grinning like possums, Uncle Lou between us, his arms draped loosely around our necks, very Italian and all, like a good-natured mafioso with his two favorite Godsons.

  By the time we started home, it was nearly dark, all the little tourist towns along US 19 decorated for Christmas, each with its own enticement: mermaids and alligator farms and manatee crossings. We even stopped at some of them as Uncle Lou is divorced and kind of lonely, and all the billboards had these well-matured women in bikinis urging you to drop by. At least, I think that’s why we stopped. It was too dark to see much at any of them, and as the gray December evening gave way to a cold, clear night, I began to get a little antsy with how late it was getting, and Daddy being sick at home.

  I kept thinking about Mama and how worried she’d be if I was late, how she always paced around when Daddy was late from Waycross. It started eating at me, made me curse the traffic lights and silently rejoice when it got late enough that they were turned off for the night, blinking yellow through the little towns in the Big Bend till we finally made Perry, where Uncle Lou stopped for coffee and let me call home on his credit card.

  It must have been something like two o’clock in the morning by then, not the perfect time for a call home, but I didn’t pause for a second because for one thing, with Daddy so sick, our household routine had become hopelessly upended, and for another: my mother never sleeps anyway. I mean, hardly ever. It’s one of her strange old vampire things that we’d all grown used to, never gave a second thought to knocking on her bedroom door at midnight, or calling home at odd hours of the night.

  Sure enough, she answered on the second ring, not at all upset or sleepy, just her calm, matter-of-fact self, asking me where we were; if I’d had fun.

  I told her it was big fun, though I’d almost puked on the Scorpion, and she was the soul of comfort. “Did it make you feel better?”

  I had to admit that it did and she said good, at least it hadn’t spoiled my day, then gave the phone to Daddy, said he wanted to talk to me. I could make out a rustling of sheets and the faint sound of Mama’s voice on the line, calm and rock-solid, catching Daddy up on what I’d just told her, then his own voice, weak but familiar, which was a relief, as everything else about him had become so strange lately.

  I mean, if he wasn’t lying in his own bedroom in his own bed when I left that morning, I wouldn’t even recognize him, he was so awful looking, his face so thin you could count the bones, his hair almost completely gray, and he was only forty-three. Aunt Candace (Daddy’s older sister), who is a nurse, said that’s what pain will do to you, age you, but still, it was very strange, and I was almost glad I couldn’t actually see him, because over the phone he sounded perfectly fine, just a little tired and hoarse.

  “Hey, Clayman,” he said in his thin, kindly voice, for Daddy was the kind of old-school redneck who was constantly churning out terms of affection for the people he loved. He called Simon Sim or Simbo, called our sister Missy Mimi or Red (because of her red hair), and though I was technically named after my great-grandfather Clayton, he seldom (if ever) called me by my given name, but Claybird most of the time, along with Clayman and Big Man and all sorts of variations therein.

  “Hey, Daddy,” I replied, then I stood there at th
e counter and gave him a fast travelogue of the day, telling him the same things I’d just told Mama—about how I’d eaten too many pancakes before I got on the Scorpion, but didn’t realize it till that first loop; how Uncle Lou had his picture taken with a mermaid.

  “Good for Lou,” Daddy said with his old dry laugh, then asked to speak to him.

  I called Uncle Lou to the phone then sat at the counter with Kenneth and drank whatever they’d ordered for me—a milkshake, I think—not paying much attention to their conversation, though I wished I would have now, because I think Daddy told him to get me home fast so he could see me one last time, before they sent him to the hospital.

  He must have, for Uncle Lou didn’t even finish his coffee, just tossed a ten on the counter, then loaded us up and hauled butt down the four-lane through the flat woods. He didn’t even bother to bypass downtown Tallahassee, but just cruised down the parkway doing sixty, slowing down for the lights, but not coming to a full stop, which made for an eerily silent, fast little spin through town.

  I kept thinking a cop would see us and pull us over, but nothing stirred or impeded our progress, Highway 90 winding empty and gray through the tobacco barns and old plantation houses in Gretna and Quincy and finally over the Apalachicola that was high on its banks that time of year, smoking and silent in the darkness of the early dawn.

  I don’t remember much of the trip after the river. After that, I was busy packing my stuff and doing my thanks and giving directions to the various back roads and cutoffs that made for the shortcut home. In no time at all we were turning off the highway into our drive, the woods that lead up to the house pitch black till the motion detectors went off, flickering on just ahead of us, one after another, bringing to light the trees and gravel and frost-stiffened grass till we made it around back to the garage.

  Uncle Lou dropped me off there, as planned, I guess, as Mama was waiting at the back door (or maybe she’d seen the lights and come downstairs). She was wearing the same thing she’d had on when I left that morning, her white winter robe, her face unmade and vampire-pale, her dark red hair kind of spiky and wild, like she’d been in bed, though she didn’t seem sleepy at all, just glad to see me as she let me in with one of her big Mama-hugs. There was no indication—not a smell, not a wink—that Daddy’s illness was reaching what Missy would call critical mass, the house kind of tousled like it always got around Christmas, not as many presents under the tree as usual, Mama too busy nursing Daddy to do much shopping.

  But other than that, everything was just as it should be, and after my hug, I plunked my stuff on the floor and gave her the Busch Gardens picture that she turned over in her hands, smiling at it a moment before she thanked Uncle Lou with the particular graciousness that Gabe would later call her good Louisiana manners. She would have walked him to his car if he’d have let her, but he insisted it was too cold and made his departure at the French door with many profuse thanks and offers of money on Mama’s part, and an equal number of steadfast refusals (for the money) and offers of assistance on his.

  It was like a battle of good Louisiana manners and good Sicilian manners, which made for a lot of vehement protest and proclamations of undying gratitude that I didn’t join in or make much of, hit by a wall of sleepiness the moment I walked in the door. I hadn’t been home much the past week, what with all the wining and dining and gallivanting around. Now that I was back in my own living room with its own familiar smells—coffee and Pine-Sol and damp wood (old-house smells, Daddy used to call them), I was suddenly dead on my feet, overtaken by a fit of yawning.

  With no further ado, I headed up to my bedroom, wanting to climb in bed, clothes and all, though Mama stopped me on the stairs and called that Daddy was awake; that he wanted to see me.

  “I’m taking him back to the hospital,” she said aside to Mr. Lou, then, to me: “The ambulance’ll be here in a minute, baby. Run show him your picture.”

  I just nodded, then headed up the stairs, not at all upset by the news that he was going back to the hospital. He’d been in and out of the hospital two or three times by then, for tests and operations and different little procedures that everyone said were a success, though he hadn’t gotten any better as far as I could see. But the hospital was okay; it was cool. Aunt Candace worked there, and all the nurses knew us and were always teasing me about how I peed in Dr. Winston’s face when I was a baby because this is a small town and a small hospital and everybody remembers every little embarrassing thing you ever did and loves to bring it up.

  So hearing that Daddy was being readmitted wasn’t such a big deal. I just took the steep stairs two at a time, the high-ceilinged old hallway pitch-black that time of morning, and drafty, too, smelling of Lysol and astringent, their bedroom door open, sending out a pale little triangle of light. That’s where Daddy was waiting, sitting up in bed as usual, dressed to go to town in the shiny, satin pajamas Mama had bought him for his first surgery—his hospital pajamas, we called them, because he never wore them anywhere else. He didn’t look any better or worse than he had when I’d left that morning, though he was kind of slumped over, one hand pressed flat against his chest as if he was having a hard time breathing.

  But he smiled when he saw me, called: “Hey, Big Man,” then: “Where’s your mama?” which was also not unusual.

  I’d noticed that in the past few weeks, whenever she left the room, he’d get worried and nervous, so different than he used to be, so unlike him. I knew why: he was scared when she was gone, afraid he couldn’t breathe; afraid he’d die, and nobody could understand that better than me. I mean, I cried for a year when they sent me to kindergarten, I really did. I remember my teacher finally just telling everyone to ignore me while I sat there in my little desk every morning and broke all my pencils into pieces and cried and cried because I wanted to be back home with Mama and not out in that cold cruel world, and there was just nothing anyone could do about it.

  “She’s thanking Mr. Lou,” I told Daddy, crawling in bed beside him and handing him the picture. “Says you’re going back to the hospital.”

  “I am,” he breathed, taking the picture and glancing at it, though he was really too agitated to focus on it, kept looking up at the door, waiting for Mama.

  He was so worried that I shimmied back off the bed, went to see what was keeping her, but she’d finally managed to out-thank Uncle Lou and met me at the door, came back to the bed with no complaint, which was a great blessing. I mean, after six weeks, a lot of women would say: Oh, quit being such a sissy, but not Mama. She’s not one of the reproachers of the world and just climbed back under the covers, robe and all. Once she was there beside him, Daddy was himself again, holding the Busch Gardens picture at arm’s length and regarding it with his old nearsighted squint.

  “My gosh, Kenneth’s getting tall,” he murmured aside to Mama, “his arms are a yard long. Susan needs to git thet boy in baseball.” (Which was what he said of any child out of diapers who wasn’t actually wheelchair-bound: that their parents should get them into baseball, or basketball or something. For Daddy was an athlete by inclination and a competitor by nature, who couldn’t imagine a life that didn’t involve some form of sweating and straining or require the purchase of a protective cup.)

  “I think Kenneth’s more the poet type,” Mama answered with a fond little smile, because Kenneth is my best friend, and everyone, she says, should have a best friend.

  Daddy just made one of his thoughtful little grunts in reply (he was a great grunter, my father was, able to communicate a wide expression of emotion in his various grunts: disgust, regret, bemused agreement) though he didn’t say anything else. He just kept staring at the picture with this quiet, reflective intensity like he was really moved by it, unintentionally creating my last, most vivid memory of him, sitting there in the dim light of the bedside lamp, his face not as bloated and weird as it had been before his last surgery, but thin now.

  Terribly, cadaverously thin, all bones and bright eyes when he seeme
d to come to himself and remember that I was sitting next to him. “Well, I’m glad you had fun, baby,” he said, reaching over and gripping my knee. “It was nice of Lou to take you. Didju thank him?”

  Now, around the Catts house, there was nothing as sniveling as an ingrate, and I went to some lengths to assure him I had. I went on to tell him about the picture and how much it cost, all to underscore what a prince of a guy Uncle Lou was, a sly maneuver on my part as he had offered to take me and Kenneth to Atlanta to see the Braves next summer. Given his reputation for barhopping, Mama was not likely to agree unless Daddy came down big on our side, so I laid it on pretty thick, till Mama quietly interrupted me.

  “They’re here,” she said, lifting her face to a flicker of red light that blinked in a quick little beat against the far wall, signaling the arrival of the ambulance.

  She must have told them that it wasn’t an emergency because they didn’t have their siren on, just that voiceless blink of red that lit the dark wall, unexpectedly striking me with the same undertow of unease I had been touched with on that fast, silent drive through Tallahassee. It wasn’t overwhelming or anything, just this nervous belly-drop of awareness that for all the assurance of Mama’s low-key manner, something quite out of the ordinary was afoot as she maneuvered herself off the bed and went back downstairs.

  Daddy’s breath quickened accordingly, though he tried to make light of it for my sake, his attention back on the Busch Gardens picture he was still holding in his hand. I just lay there against him, too tired to talk, though after a moment, I did ask when I could come see him, because Aunt Candace wasn’t so hot about taking us up to intensive care. It was always good to get an appointment so that if she started making excuses, I could say: “Daddy said I could come on Monday,” or whatever, and then she’d take me.