Jebediah Bilodeauby
John Knapp |
Chapter 1
|
|
Chapter 1 - An Unexpected Visitor
I remember that Friday as if it was yesterday – a hot, humid, sleepy afternoon in late August; the year, 2005. Back then we called it “Ought-five.”
I had finally finished feeding Pappy’s chickens and was tired, sticky and dirty, so I decided to steal a much needed nap in his rocking-chair on the front veranda. Pappy’s chair was absolutely taboo when he was home, but he was away and I worked hard doing my chores.
It was a peculiar day. A light, brownish-gray dust was all over the orchard, the back garden, the house, everywhere; dust that arrived about a week earlier with the winds coming in on the fringe of Katrina. Here, in Georgia, we missed the actual hurricane, but we had a massive deluge of rain that last week, followed by those hot dry winds that blew the dust everywhere. Now it was humid again, sticky, and hot – so hot! Like I said, “It was a peculiar day,” – very still, very quiet. One of those days when you felt something was going to happen.
Four days earlier, young Marly came running down from Brown’s General Store, up in Coopersville, to give Pappy this phone message. So Pappy jumped in the flatbed and stormed out of the yard, up Dinkins Road and away, not telling me anything except, “Don’t fergit to feed ’n water them chickens. Lots o’ water. It’s real hot.”
Nothing more did he say, like where he was going, or when he was coming back. He went so fast he even forgot to take young Marly back to Brown’s, but that was okay. She and I were friends and played on the same volley-ball team. Besides, it was only half a mile and she liked the walk. Don’t know why I called her ‘young Marly’ – she was the same age as me.
I heard nothing for the next four days, until that Friday. There I was, half asleep in Pappy’s chair when I heard this rumbling noise, looked up and saw a large dust-ball rolling down Dinkins Road, travelling like the wind. I could tell by the sound it was the flatbed, and Pappy always drove like he was being chased by a horde of locusts. It was time to get out of that chair.
Not three minutes later, the flatbed came to a screeching halt about two feet from where I stood.
That truck! That rusty, old, weather-beaten flatbed was an ancient Ford from the last century, probably twice as old as me. It was Pappy’s pride. He worked on it all his spare time, and kept it in tip-top condition, purring like a kitten.
The cloud of dust settled and out of the driver’s side jumped Pappy, spry as a new colt. Then, more slowly, from the passenger side, down stepped this long, thin, scarecrow of a boy, eyes wide open like big round saucers, spitting image of a frightened cat. Like me, he was just a kid, but a really tall one.
Maybe I shouldn’t have prejudged him but I couldn’t help it. That was my first impression – curly hair, really tall, and skinny as a rail. All he did was stand there in the dust beside the truck, not moving, just looking down at me with what looked like a sneer on his face.
Pappy sauntered over, pulled his ancient fedora down nearly covering his left eye. With his face no more than two inches from mine and lips drawn taught, he squinted and said, “Z’at you I seen in my rockin’ chair, Son?”
Nothing wrong with his eyesight. And, before I could answer, “This here’s yer cousin, ‘Jeb’. Best make friends. He’ll be bunkin’ with us a spell.”
Pappy never was one for long sentences.
He jumped back in the truck and tore off at full speed, leaving ‘Cousin Jeb’ and me standing in the dust, staring at each other under the hot sun.
Cousin Jeb and I spent what seemed like the next twenty minutes, both saying nothing. He just stood there. I slowly wandered around him, looking him up and down, checking him out. He scowled, or maybe just squinted in the sun but I thought he scowled. He didn’t like what he saw. I could tell. And I didn’t like what I saw.
The fingers of his right hand were tangled around a cord leading up to a lumpy old duffel bag hanging from his shoulder. A toke-sack was tied to his belt and his left hand gripped a small accordion. He was wearing what looked like one of those pro-baseball team shirts. It was basically white with thin grey stripes – pretty clean too. Over his shirt, he had a kind of brown leather vest with lots of pockets in it – a bit like one of those fishermen’s vests. On top of his stack of light brown curls, balanced a baseball cap, visor pulled down over his right ear. Guess he thought that cap made him a cool dude. Yeah, okay. I thought it looked cool, too. Probably, the cap was meant to go with his shirt. They both had the logo of the Chicago White Sox.
His jeans were a joke. They were faded – I mean, really faded – old faded – full of holes and about four inches too short for those long, skinny legs. Popping out well below his jeans, was this magnificent pair of shiny, new, black leather boots. Those boots made him look ridiculous – a bit like a clown standing on a pair of stilts.
Nope! I didn’t like what I saw.
I know my actions were a touch aggressive and unfriendly, but let’s face it, he just stood there with his face hanging out, doing nothing, saying nothing. And he was slowly getting a little angry. I could see it in his dumb looking, big, blue eyes.
Maybe I should have been the one to speak first, but I didn’t. Why should I? Eventually he got up the nerve, sighed audibly, and with a disgusted look, said, “So what’s your name, Kid?”
A mite aggressive, I thought. “Caleb! Caleb Jackson,” I replied, belligerently. “What’s yers?” Okay. So I drawled it out with a bit of a sneer of my own.
“Jebediah Bilodeau. That’s Je-Be-Die-Ah Bi-Luh-Doh!” He said it calmly, with a bored look, without a smile.
“Why d’ya pr’nounce it real slow like that?”
“Because nobody gets it right.”
I just grunted. “It’s a hard name to pr’nounce. Guess I’ll call ya ‘Cousin Jeb’.”
I was getting braver, my voice getting a little louder. “I’m fifteen and a half. How old are you?”
“Seventeen, in October.”
Me, even louder, a touch too belligerent perhaps: “Yeah? If yer just sixteen, how come yer so tall? What are ya – seven foot?”
As my speaking was getting louder, Cousin Jeb was staying fairly calm and that was really upsetting me for some reason.
“Don’t know why I’m so tall. Just started growing about six months ago. Must run in my family genes, I guess. Pa’s quite tall, but Ma’s just an average height.”
A pause, possibly waiting for me to respond, but I didn’t. He was beginning to boil a little and I liked that.
After a long pause, he zinged me. “So if you’re fifteen, how come you’re such a runt, Kid?”
Oooh! I just about exploded.
“WHAT? I AIN’T NO RUNT! AH’M FIVE FOOT EGG’XAC’LY AND NEARLY THE TALLEST KID IN MY CLASS. IF I COULD SEE THAT FER UP, I’D GUESS YOU WAS A HAIR OVER SEVEN FOOT. BUT YOU AIN’T NOTHIN’ BUT SKIN AND BONES. RECKON AH COULD TURN YOU ON YER HEAD IF I’D A MIND.”
I thought that would set him straight.
A long period of silence, accompanied by the soft plop of his duffel bag dropping to the dust, told me that maybe I’d gone too far. A very soft, barely audible hiss, came from Jeb, “You want to try?”
My heart was racing, and suddenly those skinny arms looked full of muscles. He was flexing his fists and I was getting scared. Slowly, slowly now! But don’t admit you’re frightened. Time to back pedal a little.
“Huh? Try? Well…Naw…Not just now…Mebbe later.”
So, rethinking my attitude, I asked, “How come Pappy brought you here? Where’s yer home?”
Jeb stooped, picked up his duffel again and said, “I don’t have a home…anymore. I come from about twenty miles west of N’Orlins and I’m here because your Pappy brought me here. Ma and Pa were killed by Katrina when that big wave came right over the Bayou.”
“What? Jeez, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
I paused again, and noticed how clean his hands and fingernails were, compared to mine. You notice odd things when you’re tense.
“New Orleans, huh? What’s it like?” I said it a little more pleasantly, with a tiny smile on my face. I was squinting in the sun; not sneering.
“It’s just another big city. And it’s not New Orleans, the way you said it. It’s N’Orlins. That’s how we pronounce it on the Bayou.”
“N’Orlins, huh? How come you don’t say y’all? You Cajun? You my real cousin?”
“Yeah! I guess I’m Cajun. Not everyone in Louisiana says y’all. Your mother and my Pa were sister and brother so that’s why you and I are cousins. The hurricane didn’t get me because I was up in Baton Rouge when it hit.”
“What’ya doin’ up there?”
“The ‘White Sox’ ball team sponsors a camp in the summer for kids who show promise. I have a pretty good pitching arm. Pa bought me these new boots and sent me up to Baton. By the time I got back it was all over – our home on top of the Bayou completely gone. No sign of Pa or Ma. All I had was these old clothes, and all I could find was this beat-up old squeeze-box of Pa’s. It was lying in the mud where our home had once been.”
“Cousin Jeb, I feel real bad. I shouldn’t have needled you like that. My Mammy died when Hurricane Erin – I think it was Erin – came through here a few years ago. I was only four and don’t hardly remember Mammy now. ‘Cept sometimes at night I dream about her. Everyone said it was the hurricane that took her, but Pappy told me later that she really died of heartbreak. He said that Mammy grew up in a big city ‘with all them lights’ and she just couldn’t get used to the slow life here in Coopersville. Reckon that big city was New Orleans, I mean N’Orlins. As I said, I’m real sorry I rattled you.”
“That’s okay, Kid.”
“It kind of looks like yer goin’ to be here fer quite a while. C’mon. Let me show you ‘round and get you settled a bit. I hear Pappy in the house bangin’ and sawin’ and stuff. Wonder what he’s doin’.”
Then I remembered the boots.
“Oh yeah. ‘Bout them fabulous boots of yers. I ain’t never seen nothin’ so pretty. But there’s folks here in Coopersville that’d cut your legs off at the knees, just to get at them boots. You’d best find a good hidin’ spot and don’t tell a soul you got ‘em. We’ll find an old pair of Pappy’s shoes that’ll probably fit you okay.”
So we crossed the dusty yard and every few steps Cousin Jeb stopped to wipe the odd, invisible speck of dust off his boots. I don’t know why; the dust didn’t really cling to them for some reason.
Inside the house, he stopped and took a long look around. There wasn’t much to look at. We didn’t have separate rooms except for two bedrooms and a bathroom. The rest was just one big room. Jeb saw a couple of easy chairs and a sofa in one corner, with an old fashioned TV nearby – at least it was colour. Behind us, a couple of windows looked out on the front veranda; windows that were still framed by some grubby old curtains that hadn’t been washed since Mammy died.
My old guitar, missing three strings, was still hanging on the wall. Our big, heavy, round table and chairs sat in the middle of the room where we ate all our meals. A picture of Mammy, Pappy and me was hanging on the far wall. Jeb went over to look at it but said nothing.
Straight ahead, looking north, under the long strip of windows at the back, was our kitchen – fridge on one side, big old wood burning stove on the other, sink and cupboards and stuff in the middle. We cooked on that stove and it also kept us warm in the winter if we needed it. Off to the left were the two bedrooms and bathroom. Through the kitchen was the door out back. That was it. Small but comfortable.
“Cousin Jeb? Over here’s my bedroom. Guess it’s our bedroom now. And here’s where Pappy’s doin’ all his bangin’. What’s goin’ on Pappy?”
Pappy puffed away, “You’s in the upper bunk now Caleb. Gotta extend this lower one to fit Cousin Jeb. Just how tall are ya Jeb? Quit growin’ yet?”
“I’m six foot five, Pappy. And I sure hope I’m done. Somebody here thinks I’m seven foot and nothing but skin and bones. Wants to ‘turn me on my head,’ I think he said.”
I just winced, “Aww! I didn’t mean it. I was angry.”
Pappy sometimes didn’t hear too well and muttered to himself, “What’ll I use fer a mattress? Where’ll I git blankets that long?”
I watched Jeb as he unpacked his duffel bag. “You ain’t got much stuff, Cousin Jeb? Just a few clothes and that toke-sack. What’s in there?”
“That’s private, Kid. I don’t want anybody looking in my toke-sack. All of my clothes, except for a couple of old jeans and a shirt, disappeared in the wave that destroyed our home. This is all I have.”
Jeb stopped and turned to look at me.
“Say, Kid! Just where in the world are we? I’m sure we’re still in the States, but I slept most of the way up from N’Orlins, and all I know is we headed east.”
“Okay, Jeb. Tuck them boots away somewhere and put on these shoes – they’re Pappy’s. I’ll take you out back and show you ‘round the farm. Then we’ll go up to Coopersville and maybe meet some of my friends.”
Jeb asked, “Does that mean you and I are going to be friends?”
“I reckon we are. I’d like that.”
“Me, too!”
As we headed out the kitchen door onto our back porch, we both smiled at each other – for the first time.
I had finally finished feeding Pappy’s chickens and was tired, sticky and dirty, so I decided to steal a much needed nap in his rocking-chair on the front veranda. Pappy’s chair was absolutely taboo when he was home, but he was away and I worked hard doing my chores.
It was a peculiar day. A light, brownish-gray dust was all over the orchard, the back garden, the house, everywhere; dust that arrived about a week earlier with the winds coming in on the fringe of Katrina. Here, in Georgia, we missed the actual hurricane, but we had a massive deluge of rain that last week, followed by those hot dry winds that blew the dust everywhere. Now it was humid again, sticky, and hot – so hot! Like I said, “It was a peculiar day,” – very still, very quiet. One of those days when you felt something was going to happen.
Four days earlier, young Marly came running down from Brown’s General Store, up in Coopersville, to give Pappy this phone message. So Pappy jumped in the flatbed and stormed out of the yard, up Dinkins Road and away, not telling me anything except, “Don’t fergit to feed ’n water them chickens. Lots o’ water. It’s real hot.”
Nothing more did he say, like where he was going, or when he was coming back. He went so fast he even forgot to take young Marly back to Brown’s, but that was okay. She and I were friends and played on the same volley-ball team. Besides, it was only half a mile and she liked the walk. Don’t know why I called her ‘young Marly’ – she was the same age as me.
I heard nothing for the next four days, until that Friday. There I was, half asleep in Pappy’s chair when I heard this rumbling noise, looked up and saw a large dust-ball rolling down Dinkins Road, travelling like the wind. I could tell by the sound it was the flatbed, and Pappy always drove like he was being chased by a horde of locusts. It was time to get out of that chair.
Not three minutes later, the flatbed came to a screeching halt about two feet from where I stood.
That truck! That rusty, old, weather-beaten flatbed was an ancient Ford from the last century, probably twice as old as me. It was Pappy’s pride. He worked on it all his spare time, and kept it in tip-top condition, purring like a kitten.
The cloud of dust settled and out of the driver’s side jumped Pappy, spry as a new colt. Then, more slowly, from the passenger side, down stepped this long, thin, scarecrow of a boy, eyes wide open like big round saucers, spitting image of a frightened cat. Like me, he was just a kid, but a really tall one.
Maybe I shouldn’t have prejudged him but I couldn’t help it. That was my first impression – curly hair, really tall, and skinny as a rail. All he did was stand there in the dust beside the truck, not moving, just looking down at me with what looked like a sneer on his face.
Pappy sauntered over, pulled his ancient fedora down nearly covering his left eye. With his face no more than two inches from mine and lips drawn taught, he squinted and said, “Z’at you I seen in my rockin’ chair, Son?”
Nothing wrong with his eyesight. And, before I could answer, “This here’s yer cousin, ‘Jeb’. Best make friends. He’ll be bunkin’ with us a spell.”
Pappy never was one for long sentences.
He jumped back in the truck and tore off at full speed, leaving ‘Cousin Jeb’ and me standing in the dust, staring at each other under the hot sun.
Cousin Jeb and I spent what seemed like the next twenty minutes, both saying nothing. He just stood there. I slowly wandered around him, looking him up and down, checking him out. He scowled, or maybe just squinted in the sun but I thought he scowled. He didn’t like what he saw. I could tell. And I didn’t like what I saw.
The fingers of his right hand were tangled around a cord leading up to a lumpy old duffel bag hanging from his shoulder. A toke-sack was tied to his belt and his left hand gripped a small accordion. He was wearing what looked like one of those pro-baseball team shirts. It was basically white with thin grey stripes – pretty clean too. Over his shirt, he had a kind of brown leather vest with lots of pockets in it – a bit like one of those fishermen’s vests. On top of his stack of light brown curls, balanced a baseball cap, visor pulled down over his right ear. Guess he thought that cap made him a cool dude. Yeah, okay. I thought it looked cool, too. Probably, the cap was meant to go with his shirt. They both had the logo of the Chicago White Sox.
His jeans were a joke. They were faded – I mean, really faded – old faded – full of holes and about four inches too short for those long, skinny legs. Popping out well below his jeans, was this magnificent pair of shiny, new, black leather boots. Those boots made him look ridiculous – a bit like a clown standing on a pair of stilts.
Nope! I didn’t like what I saw.
I know my actions were a touch aggressive and unfriendly, but let’s face it, he just stood there with his face hanging out, doing nothing, saying nothing. And he was slowly getting a little angry. I could see it in his dumb looking, big, blue eyes.
Maybe I should have been the one to speak first, but I didn’t. Why should I? Eventually he got up the nerve, sighed audibly, and with a disgusted look, said, “So what’s your name, Kid?”
A mite aggressive, I thought. “Caleb! Caleb Jackson,” I replied, belligerently. “What’s yers?” Okay. So I drawled it out with a bit of a sneer of my own.
“Jebediah Bilodeau. That’s Je-Be-Die-Ah Bi-Luh-Doh!” He said it calmly, with a bored look, without a smile.
“Why d’ya pr’nounce it real slow like that?”
“Because nobody gets it right.”
I just grunted. “It’s a hard name to pr’nounce. Guess I’ll call ya ‘Cousin Jeb’.”
I was getting braver, my voice getting a little louder. “I’m fifteen and a half. How old are you?”
“Seventeen, in October.”
Me, even louder, a touch too belligerent perhaps: “Yeah? If yer just sixteen, how come yer so tall? What are ya – seven foot?”
As my speaking was getting louder, Cousin Jeb was staying fairly calm and that was really upsetting me for some reason.
“Don’t know why I’m so tall. Just started growing about six months ago. Must run in my family genes, I guess. Pa’s quite tall, but Ma’s just an average height.”
A pause, possibly waiting for me to respond, but I didn’t. He was beginning to boil a little and I liked that.
After a long pause, he zinged me. “So if you’re fifteen, how come you’re such a runt, Kid?”
Oooh! I just about exploded.
“WHAT? I AIN’T NO RUNT! AH’M FIVE FOOT EGG’XAC’LY AND NEARLY THE TALLEST KID IN MY CLASS. IF I COULD SEE THAT FER UP, I’D GUESS YOU WAS A HAIR OVER SEVEN FOOT. BUT YOU AIN’T NOTHIN’ BUT SKIN AND BONES. RECKON AH COULD TURN YOU ON YER HEAD IF I’D A MIND.”
I thought that would set him straight.
A long period of silence, accompanied by the soft plop of his duffel bag dropping to the dust, told me that maybe I’d gone too far. A very soft, barely audible hiss, came from Jeb, “You want to try?”
My heart was racing, and suddenly those skinny arms looked full of muscles. He was flexing his fists and I was getting scared. Slowly, slowly now! But don’t admit you’re frightened. Time to back pedal a little.
“Huh? Try? Well…Naw…Not just now…Mebbe later.”
So, rethinking my attitude, I asked, “How come Pappy brought you here? Where’s yer home?”
Jeb stooped, picked up his duffel again and said, “I don’t have a home…anymore. I come from about twenty miles west of N’Orlins and I’m here because your Pappy brought me here. Ma and Pa were killed by Katrina when that big wave came right over the Bayou.”
“What? Jeez, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
I paused again, and noticed how clean his hands and fingernails were, compared to mine. You notice odd things when you’re tense.
“New Orleans, huh? What’s it like?” I said it a little more pleasantly, with a tiny smile on my face. I was squinting in the sun; not sneering.
“It’s just another big city. And it’s not New Orleans, the way you said it. It’s N’Orlins. That’s how we pronounce it on the Bayou.”
“N’Orlins, huh? How come you don’t say y’all? You Cajun? You my real cousin?”
“Yeah! I guess I’m Cajun. Not everyone in Louisiana says y’all. Your mother and my Pa were sister and brother so that’s why you and I are cousins. The hurricane didn’t get me because I was up in Baton Rouge when it hit.”
“What’ya doin’ up there?”
“The ‘White Sox’ ball team sponsors a camp in the summer for kids who show promise. I have a pretty good pitching arm. Pa bought me these new boots and sent me up to Baton. By the time I got back it was all over – our home on top of the Bayou completely gone. No sign of Pa or Ma. All I had was these old clothes, and all I could find was this beat-up old squeeze-box of Pa’s. It was lying in the mud where our home had once been.”
“Cousin Jeb, I feel real bad. I shouldn’t have needled you like that. My Mammy died when Hurricane Erin – I think it was Erin – came through here a few years ago. I was only four and don’t hardly remember Mammy now. ‘Cept sometimes at night I dream about her. Everyone said it was the hurricane that took her, but Pappy told me later that she really died of heartbreak. He said that Mammy grew up in a big city ‘with all them lights’ and she just couldn’t get used to the slow life here in Coopersville. Reckon that big city was New Orleans, I mean N’Orlins. As I said, I’m real sorry I rattled you.”
“That’s okay, Kid.”
“It kind of looks like yer goin’ to be here fer quite a while. C’mon. Let me show you ‘round and get you settled a bit. I hear Pappy in the house bangin’ and sawin’ and stuff. Wonder what he’s doin’.”
Then I remembered the boots.
“Oh yeah. ‘Bout them fabulous boots of yers. I ain’t never seen nothin’ so pretty. But there’s folks here in Coopersville that’d cut your legs off at the knees, just to get at them boots. You’d best find a good hidin’ spot and don’t tell a soul you got ‘em. We’ll find an old pair of Pappy’s shoes that’ll probably fit you okay.”
So we crossed the dusty yard and every few steps Cousin Jeb stopped to wipe the odd, invisible speck of dust off his boots. I don’t know why; the dust didn’t really cling to them for some reason.
Inside the house, he stopped and took a long look around. There wasn’t much to look at. We didn’t have separate rooms except for two bedrooms and a bathroom. The rest was just one big room. Jeb saw a couple of easy chairs and a sofa in one corner, with an old fashioned TV nearby – at least it was colour. Behind us, a couple of windows looked out on the front veranda; windows that were still framed by some grubby old curtains that hadn’t been washed since Mammy died.
My old guitar, missing three strings, was still hanging on the wall. Our big, heavy, round table and chairs sat in the middle of the room where we ate all our meals. A picture of Mammy, Pappy and me was hanging on the far wall. Jeb went over to look at it but said nothing.
Straight ahead, looking north, under the long strip of windows at the back, was our kitchen – fridge on one side, big old wood burning stove on the other, sink and cupboards and stuff in the middle. We cooked on that stove and it also kept us warm in the winter if we needed it. Off to the left were the two bedrooms and bathroom. Through the kitchen was the door out back. That was it. Small but comfortable.
“Cousin Jeb? Over here’s my bedroom. Guess it’s our bedroom now. And here’s where Pappy’s doin’ all his bangin’. What’s goin’ on Pappy?”
Pappy puffed away, “You’s in the upper bunk now Caleb. Gotta extend this lower one to fit Cousin Jeb. Just how tall are ya Jeb? Quit growin’ yet?”
“I’m six foot five, Pappy. And I sure hope I’m done. Somebody here thinks I’m seven foot and nothing but skin and bones. Wants to ‘turn me on my head,’ I think he said.”
I just winced, “Aww! I didn’t mean it. I was angry.”
Pappy sometimes didn’t hear too well and muttered to himself, “What’ll I use fer a mattress? Where’ll I git blankets that long?”
I watched Jeb as he unpacked his duffel bag. “You ain’t got much stuff, Cousin Jeb? Just a few clothes and that toke-sack. What’s in there?”
“That’s private, Kid. I don’t want anybody looking in my toke-sack. All of my clothes, except for a couple of old jeans and a shirt, disappeared in the wave that destroyed our home. This is all I have.”
Jeb stopped and turned to look at me.
“Say, Kid! Just where in the world are we? I’m sure we’re still in the States, but I slept most of the way up from N’Orlins, and all I know is we headed east.”
“Okay, Jeb. Tuck them boots away somewhere and put on these shoes – they’re Pappy’s. I’ll take you out back and show you ‘round the farm. Then we’ll go up to Coopersville and maybe meet some of my friends.”
Jeb asked, “Does that mean you and I are going to be friends?”
“I reckon we are. I’d like that.”
“Me, too!”
As we headed out the kitchen door onto our back porch, we both smiled at each other – for the first time.
