Adam Johnson - Emporium

“It’s Oklahoma.”

“Certainly, Oklahoma City,” Berlin says. “Do much fishing in Oklahoma, son?”

“I can’t say I got the opportunity.”

Teeg asks, “So, what do they do for kicks in Oklahoma?”

“Terrorism, sir.”

“Oh, boy,” Teeg says and chuckles. “He’s good. This boy’s good.”

“Don’t mind him,” I tell Randy. “He’s pretending he’s drunk for old times’ sake.”

“You know what the problem with the ATF is?” Teeg asks Randy.

Randy casts again, reels, pays great attention to the motion of his lure.

Teeg says, “The problem with the ATF is they eat too much mustard.”

Berlin laughs.

“Boys,” my mother says. She lifts a hand for silence, then squints as she feels the fishing line between her fingers. She cocks her head, eyeing the tip of the rod, before jerking it back to set a hook in the first redfish of the day. I dig through the tackle until I find the balloons and begin blowing up a medium-sized red one.

Berlin lands the fish and pays out six feet of line from his rod. Using the hole from the hook, he carefully feeds the line through the fish’s lip and knots it, so that the fish has a stretch of monofiliment tied to its mouth. On the other end of the line, I tie the balloon and we let the fish go.

“What are you doing?” Randy asks.

I look at him funny. “Fishing,” I tell him.

The balloon wanders haphazard into open water until it falls in with the rhythm of its school, and we watch it slowly backcircle around the lake.

There’s no use casting until the school heads our way. Berlin rattles the ice in his tea. Teeg whistles long and loud for Beau, calling him for the feast of fish guts ahead. I put my hand on Randy’s shoulder. He gives me this look, where, instead of shy, he looks older, like he’s not sure he wants to get caught up in me because I’m only sixteen, like he thinks I’m going to be a lot of work.

When the balloon hunts its way around to the dock again, we know there are dozens of redfish, seventy or eighty, ghosting by under the surface. We all cast in volleys, the fish striking left and right.

Randy loses a lure on the submerged slot machines. He has to cut his line.

He’s a little offended at the ease with which we land fish, I can tell. He keeps swiveling his head when someone’s rod bends under a new weight. Every time a fish is netted and thumped with an oar, he shakes his head.

“What the heck does my line keep snagging on?” he asks.

“Don’t be a sorry sport,” I tell him.

In ten minutes, we have a dozen fish in a five-gallon bucket. Berlin starts cleaning, while Teeg skins, scales flying everywhere like lost contact lenses. I help my mother fold chairs because it’s getting dark.

Randy still holds his pole. He nods toward the lake, where a balloon skirts through the current. “What about that fish?”

We all just look at him.

* * *

The next night, Saturday night, I stand in front of the mirror, upstairs, in my old bedroom. You can smell the old sheets, standing yellowy on the bed. On the walls hang my father’s worn-out flight maps — Cuba, Cayman, the Dominican Republic — places that captivated me when I was younger. In the mirror, my lips are Soft Chenille , my nails, Cosmopolitan-7 .

It’s past seven thirty and still no Randy. I know he never promised 100 percent to take me to the Sadie Hawkins’, and for about a 5 percent chance, I have been to my mother’s boutique in Lafayette, where homosexuals rubbed my scalp and conferred on how long my roots should burn. For maybe 10 percent, I let two Vietnamese women paint my toes, bought polka-dot stockings, and then doused myself — down my neck, along the backs of my arms — with Petit-Chou .

Who knows if there will be a raid tomorrow. Downstairs, I hear my mother loading china into the trunk of her Lincoln for the trip to Aunt Clara’s, and from various rooms in the house come the sounds of Berlin opening all the old wood-frame windows and propping them up with dealers’ canes. I lift the folds of my black skirt and let them fall, watching the sheer silk return to my legs in the mirror. The truth is the side slits point to my hips. I undress, folding everything into a garment bag, and put on a jersey and jeans before going down into the garage to pull the cover off the Super Sport.

Inside, the seats are soft as glycerin, the old leather smelling both sharp and sweet, like the limey mint of a julep. Clipped to the visor is a photo of my mother, young, in Germany, and next to that is the garage door remote, which makes me hear those birds again. I creep out of the garage on idle, and even though I’m just driving around to the front approach, you can feel the thumping pressure of the engine. The SS floats, hood raking, when I touch the gas.

At our front landing, I back up to my mother’s Lincoln so the cars are parked trunk to trunk. She’s loading watercolor paintings into the backseat when I climb out. All her potted flowers have been pulled out onto the porch.

“What am I going to do with these orchids?” she asks me, then realizes I’m in jeans. “Oh, honey, he’s not going to show, is he?”

“Randy’s busy,” I say. “He’s got an important job.”

Mom lifts her eyebrows. “Looks like you’ve picked up the fine art of making excuses for the shortcomings of men. From me, no doubt.”

“Oh, don’t get heavy on me, Mom.”

She throws up her hands, which is twice as bad as rolling your eyes, and we start loading up the Super Sport. As I stack cardboard boxes in the trunk, I realize they’re not filled with china but ordinary junk like cleaning supplies and closet hangers. Then there’s a whole crate of utensils from the kitchen, including a thing of ketchup and mustard.

“Mom, there’ll probably be sauces at Clara’s. I mean, do we really need to take this stuff? It’s not like the ATF is coming here to grill burgers or anything.”

“Would you just pack?” she asks. “Just trust me and pack?”

Berlin comes down and sits on the front steps. His shirt cuffs are unbuttoned, and his hair is dripping wet from the sink, something he does when he has a headache. “I opened all the doors and windows,” he says, then runs his hands through his hair.

“You drive the Lincoln,” she tells me. “Berlin will want to go in the SS, I’m sure.”

There’s a few more boxes standing on the porch, but I can tell Mom has lost her thirst for loading. Without any ceremony, they climb in the Super Sport, Dad sitting shotgun with a flower pot and a painting of a pink flock of roseate spoonbills.

I stick my head in the window, tell Dad to lean the seat back and get some rest.

“It’s no use,” he says. “I won’t sleep again tonight.”

My mother looks like she is going to say something comforting to me because of Randy, and though I know this is how she feels, she only says, “Drive safe. See you at Clara’s.” She puts the car in gear, but every time she even touches the gas pedal, the car leaps forward, tires spinning, sending a shower of gravel onto our porch.

“This car is simply inoperable,” I hear her say, lurching down our shale drive.

When they’re gone, I sit behind the wheel of the ivory Continental and clunk it into gear. Though the sky is clear, the air smells of oak pollen and storm, so that lumbering down the drive, I have the urge to turn on the wipers. Instead, I adjust the rearview mirror, aiming it back at our house, which is black, with a deeper black standing in the open doors and windows, waiting for something big that may or may not come.

I follow our weaving, tree-lined drive, and I know before I hit the parish road that I’m not going to aunt Clara’s just yet. I’m headed to the Black Bayou, to Randy’s oil-recovery vessel.