Creeker

There’s a sink hole in the backyard. It was excavated by his uncle for the purpose of throwing away broken things. The old red checkered couch, which had snapped under the weight of him and all of his cousins, and the coffee table his uncles had thrown out of the trailer when they got too drunk and too rowdy. The small box television that once belonged to him but had toppled off his dresser onto the floor. Old working boots with the soles flopping off and short dresses that belonged to drifters—ladies up the street, ladies down the street, ladies with no names, no faces. Ladies who were only recorded having been by the vague alcohol-soaked memories of good nights and bad mornings. Somewhere in that pile is a rusted scooter that had been submerged in the trash, buried under recklessness, childishness, foolishness. And above all is an accumulation of two months’ worth of drinking: metallic blue cans nearly reach the rim, stinking up God’s green valley with a gross yeasty stench.

His granddaddy sits in a lawn chair, shirtless with his dollar store sunglasses on and a beer in his hand. A small portable radio sits on his shoulder, his ear next to the speaker.

Grabbing a large white bowl, the boy runs over to his granddaddy. When he gets real close, he hears him snoring. His granddaddy’s body is scorched, sweat secreting from his forehead, trickling down the sides of his face, down his neck, and sweat runs down his chest, his sunken belly, and he stinks of humid earth. Instead of waking him, he beep-bops around the backyard picking every blackberry that he can get to. He shimmies around his granddaddy’s chair to grab at the cluster of thorn bushes lining the sink hole. Picking each berry from their spiky vine, he manages to get the bowl halfway full. He runs back to the house and hoses the berries off. Then, he jumps on the porch and into the house to douse them in salt. He runs back to his granddaddy and waits for him to open his eyes and eat with him.

The radio is on the Rockabilly station, playing an older Elvis Presley song. He bops his head to the song and waits. He moves to lay down on his stomach, chin in his hand as he stares down the sinkhole. He reaches in and picks up a beer can, then he throws it back down where it came from. He imagines falling in, drowning in aluminum and spit. How they’d never find him, and he’d suffocate under all their trash. Scooting away from the edge, he hides under the lawn chair to escape the mean Mississippi sun. 

Intoxicated by the warmth, he’s lulled into an in-between. His lids squint across the expansive land nobody wanted. The untamed backwoods, the fresh air, the greenest grass, and miles of the tallest pine, harboring people of sentimental souls with nothing to do but work, pray, and drink.

He falls into a dream where his granddaddy is Elvis and he’s singing at the pulpit. The congregation is a mass of brown and khaki, people with indistinguishable features and lame attire. And they clap with his rhythm as he stands on the front pew in a brand-new white suit. The boy stomps his feet. His granddaddy belts My Boy, and on one knee, he drags out each note, pointing to him. The boy jumps on stage, and his granddaddy grabs him and holds him close to his hip. He finishes the song and then throws him up and into the open arms of the congregation. When they catch him, they sing with his granddaddy, a loud clashing mass of out-of-tune voices that clink and crackle together, and then suddenly they aren’t holding him anymore. He’s sinking into the vat of blue aluminum and above him is his granddaddy, grandmama, uncles, and cousins. They jump in with him.

“Good Lord,” his granddaddy murmurs, his portable radio falling into the tall grass, “What you doin’? Tryna sneak?”

The boy rises out of his sleep. He grabs the bowl and hands it to him. His granddaddy takes it and grabs a few to plop in his mouth. The boy shimmies out from under the lawn chair and then into his granddaddy’s lap. They eat the blackberries, their skin sticking to one another, each stinking like animals, the hot fleshy pulp sticking to the roof of their mouths, the seeds lodging themselves in between their teeth.

His granddaddy sighs, patting the kid’s leg with the beat of the music. He’s looking at the tin can they live in. Staring at that sweetgum that’s growing up under the tin roof, budging the top open. Pink insulation peeks out. He sips at his scalding beer then throws the half-empty can into the sinkhole pile,.

“Up,” he strains, rising to his feet. The kid grabs the bowl. His granddaddy opens the blanket they use as the backdoor and the kid rushes inside, setting the bowl on the countertop.

Tammy Wynnette sings on the other end of the trailer. He stretches and before he can open the fridge, she steps into the kitchen wearing a baby blue blouse and a sky-blue pencil skirt with blue suede heels. Her hair is tall, brown, and done up with a blue hairband. She wears pearls around her neck and in her ears.

“His hair all wild,” she tells him, “Matted. You don’t help the child. You just let ‘em run wild.”

“You do somethin’, then,” he responds, opening the fridge. He tries not to look at her— everything she has on is a gift from somebody else. Every time he has to look her in the eyes, he feels ashamed. “Where’re you goin’ lookin all nice?”

“The church house.”

“It’s Sunday?”

“It’s Tuesday, but it’s revival. The whole week is church days.”

“Yeah.” He closes the fridge without grabbing a drink.

“You should come. Casey comin’. Bringin’ his kids, his wife.”

“Nah, gonna be too many people.”

“Uh-huh.” She latches her silver chain bracelet and pats down her skirt. “I’m takin’ him.”

“Go on. Take ‘im.”

“He needs a bath. I can’t take him when he’s all nasty.”

Granddaddy claps and points to the bathroom. “Come on.”

The boy runs in and his granddaddy’s right behind him. He makes the boy some lukewarm bathwater, then hands the kid a slim bar of soap. Squatting in front of the tub, he grabs the boy’s little button nose in between his index and thumb and dunks him in the water.

Granddaddy was first baptized in the Chonásha creek. He was nineteen and got baptized barefoot, only wearing his Levi’s. Afterwards, he went to work. The next time he got baptized was in Pearl River. He was twenty-two, wearing khakis and a white button up. He’d just got married. The next time he got baptized it was in Ishko. He was twenty-eight, wearing cargo pants and a bright yellow, sweat-resistant t-shirt. He had just gotten off of work.

And if they’d let him, he’d get baptized again and again until he washed away every part he couldn’t stand. To wash away nights where he wasted time on people he couldn’t even name. To wash away things he never knew he had said. To wash away thoughts he didn’t realize were bad. Granddaddy wanted to go under again and again because maybe he needed salvation a little more than everybody else. You go in one man and out another, but that creek water can’t dig deep enough to cleanse all of him. That blackwater ain’t ever done nothing for him. But he keeps on. He continues to drown himself in the water, hoping for a change. But each time he leaves that creek, he looks back at himself and he’s the same man. In the same place. With the same people.

The kid giggles when he pulls him up. He lathers his hair up with his grandmama’s cherry blossom shampoo. He sculpts his hair. One large spike. The kid laughs and shakes his head rapidly for the hair to come down. He plants his large, calloused palm on the kid’s head and twists it back and forth before baptizing him again.

Grandmama busts into the bathroom. “I’ve gotta go, Cheyenne.”

“He’s done,” he says, grabbing the kid out of the tub. He yanks a thin towel from the closet and grabs both ends and dries the kid off. He then grabs the kid’s head with the towel in between the head and his hands and he shakes, shakes, howling, until the kid’s hair is a spiked, frizzy mess. The kid came out flushed and giddy, rowdy and worked up. Before he’s dry, Grandmama grabs the kid and takes him away to get dressed. By the time she’s done with him, his hair is fully dry, and he’s wearing a blue button up to match his grandmama. She’s holding him and he’s holding back tight.

“I’m leaving,” she announces.

“I’ll be here when you get back.”

She leaves before he finishes speaking and he sits on the bathroom floor. There’s mildew on the edge of the bathtub, and there’s water spots on the ceiling, and there’s a rip in the corner showing more of the insulation. The vents don’t work and even if they did, it doesn’t matter because they have no air conditioning. There’s a hole on the floor, sat right next to the border of the wall, and when it’s early evening like this, a swollen golden light invades their home, slipping across their toes. It’s like somebody’s shot through the floorboards. Maybe somebody did. His sons and their kids are always fooling with something. They don’t respect anything, and maybe that has something to do with him.

Cheyenne digs his finger into the hole. The tall grass tickles his fingertip and when he pulls his finger out, the tin scratches and tugs at the skin surrounding his cuticle. He lays on his stomach, pressing his eye against the hole and a warmth floods his pecan eye. The tall grass tries to poke him and his vision floods with green. He gets lost in the ground below, watching mosquitoes flock from one strand to another. And how the sun trickles in between strands of grasslike fingers running through hair.

When he remembers he’s thirsty, he rises and walks to the fridge.

Cheyenne two-times the creek, laying with one half of his body in the water, the other half on the creek bed. Black water creeps up to caress his face, kissing his eyelids. The sun is coming down on him, landing headfirst into the shadowy pine, its light humming over the peaks.

There’s a click, a switch turning on, and he’s able to stand himself again. And he’s back in Alaska. Back to the evergreen. And he’s all alone. Departed from all responsibility. He doesn’t owe anyone anything. Nobody knows him. Nobody needs him. And nobody wants him to get better.

And while he floats across these pink skies, he can want. And he can regret. And he can cry. And he can be and be and think and think as freely as any other. And he can pretend to be every good man and every bad man. And he can kiss each and every pretty face. And he can love every good-hearted person. And he can sing every ballad and dance with every stranger and laugh with those gone and departed. He can be rich and richer and poor and poorer. And he can be comfortable. Content.

There he lays in the creek and dreams dreams that are too far out of his reach. Out of his head. And out of his understanding. Time has fooled him. And his lovers have too. And his children have too. And it’s his fault. He was born with rotten luck, and he’s allowed it to fester, seeping deep within him too far for the blackwater to reach.

“What’re you doin?” he asks the kid. 

“Reading,” he replies, laying on his bed, legs crossed, thumbing through something hefty.

“For school?”

“Nah. Just looked good.”

“You picked that up out of your own volition?”

“Yeah,” he says and places his bookmark inside. His hair has been cut to his ears and his jeans don’t fit. He bathes himself now, and only responds to the name Shannon. He’s grown up only to still be short.  

“Ain’t nobody in this house ever picked up a book cause they wanted to,” he grumbles, eyeing Shannon with his golden curls and soft white birch face and those sad big pecan eyes they share. “Your mama liked to read. She’s a sorry little lady, but she read all the time. Wrote too. Real tenderhearted. She was always thinking. I loved to hear her talk.”

And she would read to him when he couldn’t move. Couldn't get out of bed. And when she had told him she was pregnant, he cried. She had ruined her life. He had given her his bad luck.

“What kinda books you like?" he asks the kid, bending to peek at the title of the book, “You like Grapes of Wrath?”

“Yeah, I like books like that.”

“You like sad books, huh?”

“Yeah, I like books like that.”

“Well,” his granddaddy took off his boots and laid on the bed with him, “Read me this here book.”

“Okay.” And he reads to him and would read to him anytime he got the chance. Whenever the power is out, or the television isn’t interesting, whenever they’re outside sitting next to that sinkhole, whenever he gets back from work, whenever they’re slouching around on the porch, whenever Granddaddy’s crying because sweet Iona left and it’s because he’d given her his rotten luck, or even whenever he’s crying because Grandmama doesn’t find it fit to come home to him, the kid sits beside him and reads whatever is around to read.

Sometimes when Cheyenne is lost in the story, far off into his own self, he can trick himself that Shannon is sweet Iona, and that he’s thirty again and she’s eleven. And her golden curls are cut to her ears and she’s scanning the pages with sad pecan eyes.

It’s Christmas and every present with a tag reading “to Shannon” has “from granddaddy” written on it, while his cousins all receive gifts from Santa.

“And you remember, Shannon, e’ery birthday, e’ery Christmas, e’erything you eat or drink and e’erything you wear, that’s all me. I did that. I have provided for you. You live and breathe ‘cause of me. It might not be the best, but I done all I can for you. Not yer mama. Not yer daddy. ‘Cause they bum. You ain’t gonna be no bum. You gettin’ an education. That’s the only way to get anywhere in this world. You gotta get educated.”

“Yes sir,” he responds, opening his presents. Each present was a new book. The heavier of the books contains a one-hundred-dollar bill in between the pages. Shannon’s eyes widen, but he remains quiet as to not make his cousins jealous for they had only received slingshots, slinkies, and magic eightballs.

“You needa go to school. Any little school. Just go and get an education,” he tells Shannon as he sits at the kitchen bar to write his report for school. “Go anywhere. Just go somewhere.”

Shannon nods and continues what he’s doing.

“You got real good grades,” Cheyenne continues, “You could go anywhere. I had to quit school when I was in the eighth grade ‘cause my daddy died, and me, Carol, and Casey had to go and get a job cause the funeral and the bills got backed up. Mama was just a washer and that don’t pay shit on shit. You prolly know that, though. You always reading. I’m sure you know all there is to know.”

Shannon doesn’t answer.

“Yup, I shoulda read more ‘cause maybe I’d know a lil something ‘bout something. I get older and I’m wonderin’ when I’m gonna get to knowing something. Wonderin’ whens bout the time I start getting wise, but, hell.” He goes to the fridge then walks to the couch, kicking off his boots. He didn’t put on socks underneath or perhaps he had left them somewhere. “‘Cause I didn’t read,” he points at Shannon as if in some sort of warning, “Can’t get wise if you ain’t thinking. And reading gets you thinking. ‘Bout other people’s thoughts and then you go thinking yer own.”

Shannon nods and scribbles some more, but he’s listening.

“When I was in Alaska, I read a bit. When I wasn’t at the pulpmill, I read ‘cause the television there was sucky. And it was cold as all hell and the people were quiet. It was fun, though. Real peaceful,” he reminisces, “And I met some real stand up people. Real good folks. Wish I'd written them back, but time gets away from ya. One of my old buddies from up there, he died, and I wanted to go to the funeral, but couldn’t get off of work.”

Shannon stops writing and sits back. His grandfather continues, “And, well, that happens. When people die, just one of them things. Ain’t fair. Course nothing ‘bout this life is fair. But e’erybody goes through it. E’erybody. Ain’t nothing special ‘bout dying. E’erything does it.”

Shannon rises to grab a bottle of water. He leans on the counter and listens. “You know I was a triplet. And about how Carol died. That’s why you should be lucky to be an only child. ‘Course you got yer cousins, but they ain’t worth a raindrop in hell. And that’s why I went to Alaska, ‘Cause Carol got killed. Really messed me up, but being out there helped. I didn’t talk for weeks. Only if I had to.”

Shannon crosses his arms and looks at his grandfather. Cheyenne looks up and they make eye contact, two pairs of pecan-colored eyes going back and forth. Cheyenne cracks open his drink. “When I went back to work with Casey, I was up in the, uh—I forgot what they used to call it—but I was comin’ down them stairs and somebody had pushed me and I fell down to the bottom, busted my knee pretty bad, so I was fightin’ mad. Just pure dee pissed. And I look up and there’s ole Casey, and he’s laughing his skinny ass off, and I crawled up them steps like the floor was ‘bout to give out and he ran down the hallway and I could hear his laugh e’erywhere I went. And I was tryin’ find ‘im. Course he weren’t there. Made the whole thing up. But I really thought. And I just sat there til I could shake it off, that feeling of being crazy.” He laughs. “I was crazy, boy. Drove crazy. But, yeah, I really wanted to go to that funeral. But it don’t matter. E’erything dies and we only live in memory. I got good memories, Shannon. I’m real blessed.”

Shannon nods and sits beside his grandfather. They sit together in silence with Cheyenne taking good care of his drink and Shannon scribbling in his notebook. Neither look at each other, but the company alleviates the lonesomeness born within these walls.

“I’m gonna give y’some advice before you go out,” he tells Shannon. He was going off to pick up some girl from school. Them and a handful of friends were going to hang out by the creek intending to smoke and drink. “Don’t go and fall in love. It’s the worst thing you can do.”

Shannon nods his head, thinking little about his words. “Yessir.”

“Don’t plant yourself in no heart. Don’t make no home in somebody else. Cause you liable to never move. And you always gotta keep movin’. You can’t stop moving, lil babe. Cause if you stop, you wind up right here. I don’t want you here. Don’t plant yourself in my heart. Don’t make a home in my heart. I don’t want you there. I want you to leave. And I want you to get outta here. So just have that in the back of your mind, okay? No woman is worth your life. No man neither. No lil baby. Not me. Not nothing. You have no place here. I haven’t made it.”

“Yessir.”

“Let people love you. But you can’t go loving them. Let them chase you. Make ‘em move. To you and yer wants.”

“Yessir.”

“Don’t stop moving.”

“I won’t.”

“Go have fun. I love you.”

Shannon runs his tongue across his teeth and then nods. He smiles before leaving.

And if they would let him, he would. Cheyenne would baptize himself again and again. And he’d try to scrub and scrap every single mistake. Every single drink. Every single sorry or worry. But blackwater don’t reach that deep. And he’d be floating in the creek until he shriveled up and cascaded down these winding gold tinted waters forever and ever sliding under the pine and warm wealthy sunshine. And if he could live under these waters, to be as good as any other.

He wades in the black water, the moonlight easing along the inky stream as he flies away on the current of shadows. The quiet hum of the night lulls him into that spot of being, and not. And the silence sucks up all the air. He is detached from himself. Able to live outside himself, independent from any name or face, allowed to absolve his responsibilities. And all the things he’s done never happened because he never was.

“What’re you doing, old man?” Shannon asks, shining a flashlight on the old drunk.

“Baptizing myself in the blood.”

“The vein of the father. You gonna float away, Granddaddy.”

He stomps into the creek water and pulls his granddaddy out. He grabs him first by the arm, attempting to only steady him back onto the bank. When Cheyenne stumbles and falls into the water, Shannon moves fast, grabbing him by the torso and pulling him in close. The water is disrupted by their fury and it rushes up to exorcise them. And Cheyenne tries to pull him in, drag him back down into the blackwater with him, but Shannon’s stronger than the old man now. He roughly hauls his granddaddy to the bank and when they’re on the sand, he eases Cheyenne on his back. He looks down at his soaked body and tries not to laugh.

“You grown up on me.”

“Yessir, I did.”

“You’s big, now.”

“Yes sir, I am.”

He looks at Shannon, gulps, and shakes his head. These clothes fit him all wrong and he feels both foolish and so incredibly happy. And there’s fat tears that roll down his face and walk down the side of his sun-abused, leathered face, and he grins so wide his cheeks hurt and he rubs and rubs at his eyes as though he can get the tears out by force. Shannon rubs Cheyenne’s back and Cheyenne pats his knee. “When I look at you, I feel completed. Like I had finally done it right. You the only thing I’m real proud of. I did it.”

“You should be proud. I’m very happy. I’m blessed.”

“You have blessed me.”

Shannon smiles and rubs his granddaddy’s back. He stares into the creek, the vein of life slipping past him, trailing down the lonesome pine picking up slivers of moonlight, allowing it to ride along the stream. He can’t look at Cheyenne. As much as he’d like to hold him, he can’t look him in the eyes.

A few weeks prior, he had received a late night call from Cheyenne. He was apologizing, but in between sobs, pained like the weight of losing had caught up to him. And he was asking where he was. Asking what he needed to do to make it all right. Asking what time it was. Asking what he could have done to keep Grandmama and sweet Iona. Asking if Shannon would come to visit. Asking how old Shannon was. Asking where Shannon was. And Shannon had no other choice but to catch a flight back home. When he’d set his things down at the tin can, he noticed no one was home, so he drove to his uncle’s place and then his other uncle and then his cousin and then his other cousin and somehow they collectively led him to the right place after hours of investigation and of them asking what he’s been doing and where he’s been at.

“You’re an alcoholic,” Shannon tells Cheyenne.

“I ain’t,” he disagrees, “I’m a drunk. Alcoholics get help.”

Shannon looks up at the moon. “I used to dream that I’d fall into that hole y’all dug up in the backyard. Used to dream of sinking down in all them cans. And you’d just jump in there. You wouldn’t help me, but you’d be there. And we’d sink. All of us. Used to worry me. And before I got on that flight to come see you, I had a dream that you was drowning in them cans. And all them other people jumped in with you. And they all sank. But, I stood over y’all, reaching. And you was the only one to grab at me. You was the only one that wanted to get out that hole.” Shannon runs his tongue across his teeth. “You been givin’ me advice my whole life. Lemme tell you somethin’. Just ‘cause life ain’t been what it should have been, needed to be, you can’t just sit there and die. It didn’t work out, paw. Do something else.”

“What you expectin’ me to do?”

“Come to Wyoming with me.”

“I can’t, Shannon.”

“I already set it up with the Cattleman. You can bunk with me. And you can work. He said he’s got a job for you. You been dying each day, resurrecting each morning. You’re too old to be dyin’. You needa keep moving. If you stop moving, you’re dead.”

Cheyenne shakes his head and looks at Shannon. He’s still got his eyes on the slow-moving water. He grabs Shannon’s shoulders and turns him. Shannon shudders and Cheyenne smiles kindly, embracing his grandson. He can’t help but sob into his shoulder, uttering things drowned by his wails. Shannon pats his back and they sit in the sand, the cicadas roaring while the bullfrogs croak. The pine bristles against one another and the moon is shying away from its highpoint in the sky. Shannon laughs lowly, cupping his granddaddy’s head as though he were a babe.

By the time it’s all said and done, they’re both semi-dry, Cheyenne’s face is swollen, and Shannon’s lost his cap in their melodramatic scramble. Shannon drives Cheyenne back to the trailer. While they pack, Shannon finds the first book he’d read to his granddaddy. The pages are creased and worn and there’s a bookmark in a later chapter. Shannon opens the book and briefly reads it aloud. Cheyenne packs to the sound of Shannon’s voice, older and deeper and no longer sounding like sweet Iona’s. 

Once everything’s loaded in the truck, they drive down the dirt roads and then out into the long stretch of highway. He realizes that Cheyenne had not once opened that fridge. He hadn’t been thirsty.

Lee Johnson is a native Mississippian and undergraduate student pursuing a degree in English Education at the University of Southern Mississippi. His works primarily focus on the rural South and Southern Baptist culture.