Issue 22 - 1992

Coe Review • Issue 22
He didn’t like me saying that which was fine by me because
I didn’t like him telling Daddy to sit under the tree. Not even Granny
tells him what to do.
“We need a warrant,” the other man said. “Nothing that kid
says will do us any good.”
He smiled at me the way I’ve seen teachers smile when they
think I done something bad and they’re pretending it ain’t bad so I’ll
talk about it and they can give me a paddling. I got twelve licks once.
Six for saying thank you when the teacher said I was wise, and six
more for laughing after the first six licks. It hurt so bad it was laugh
or cry. I had to laugh because I couldn’t cry in front of everybody.
Daddy said river rats never cry.
The men who weren’t cops had that look on their face, like
they wanted to give me a paddling but didn’t have the reason yet.
“How long’s this car been here, son?” the smiling one said.
I looked at him and then at the car and could hear Little Elvis
singing, police car squashed my daddy.
“I ain’t your son,” I said.
The other man grinned and shook his head.
“That’s my car,” I said. “I’m putting it together. Daddy ain’t
helping or nothing. We’re aiming to dune buggy it on out of here.”
One man laughed but the second one got that teacher look
again, like he finally had his reason for a whipping.
“There’s not a dune for a thousand miles any direction from
here,” he said.
When I told the funny-talked lady all this she said that’s what
she meant about precocious, how telling the cops that lie was
precocious. I didn’t like her knowing right off it was a lie because
when Daddy heard me say it, he said it was the pure truth. The bald
cop pulled out handcuffs and the short one said, “Not in front of his
kids.” They made Daddy get in the back seat of the police car and
drove away, right through the yard to the road, leaving big tracks in
the grass and I wrecked my bicycle trying to catch up, bent the rim
bad. I pushed it back to Little Elvis who sat with his bike in a big
mud hole. When I couldn’t get him to come out, I sat down with him.
We smeared mud all in our faces and planned to break Daddy out
and they’d not know who done it because of the mud.
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