Free The Floatplane Notebooks by Clyde Edgerton Page A

couldn’t figure it. He knew I could bust his ass. “What did you do that for, Meredith? What the hell did you do that for?” Something had snapped in his head or something.
    â€œWhy did you ask me about taking so long?” Then he screamed, “What did you ask me that for?” His fists were balled up, his chin sticking out.
    â€œWhat are you talking about?”
    â€œDon’t you see, goddamn it to hell? You damn shit. That’s what Papa would ask if I almost drowned. ‘What took you so long? What took you so long?’” Then he screamed in my face: “‘What took you tho long?’ I almost drowned, Thatcher.”
    Hell, I left him alone and let him walk on up to the house. It was crazy. He just went out of his head.
    The damn truck was in so deep you couldn’t even see any part of it. We had to find it with a long pole.
    Papa got it all figured out how to get out, of course. Came up with the idea of being a frogman again. A wild idea. But it worked. I give Papa that much credit.
    We needed a bulldozer. My foreman asked Mr. Durham if we could use one of Strong Pull’s and he said yes, if we could get the newspaper to cover it. I’d just started working for Strong Pull Construction.
    So we got the newspaper to cover it. Papa walked in the pond with a cinderblock tied around his ankle and the water hose in his mouth so he could breathe and hooked a chain around the rear axle of the truck. Then I pulled it up out of the pond with the bulldozer. Papa saved the damn newspaper clipping and the last time I looked it was stuck in the notebook—the floatplane notebook, the new one he’s started.

THE VINE
    Caroline came onto the back porch holding the bundle. She came on out and down the steps. She was wet to her elbows and her face was red and full of worry and her hair around both ears was matted red and wet from listening against the baby’s chest. She walked across the yard to the kitchen and laid out the baby on a chair just inside the kitchen door. Mrs Saunders’s slave woman Easter who was helping out came onto the back porch saying She’s getting up Miss Caroline. She’s getting up.
    Caroline met Vera on the porch.
    Vera was the color of hay. I want to see it Mama.
    Don’t make no difference honey. He was just born dead. No heartbeat at all. It happens. It just happens. You need to lay down.
    I want to see it that’s all said Vera. She held to Caroline’s shoulder. Let me lean on you.
    On the way back into the house Vera said I want himburied out there with the field hand and the others.
    That’ll be a good spot. It’s pretty out there.
    Oh Mama. Vera stopped in the yard. When I wrote Seaton about Isaac he said we could
    I know honey.
    Â Â Â name him Isaac if it was a boy and then poor Seaton and now I can’t even name him Seaton. There’s not going to be a Seaton or a Isaac in the whole world.
    Come on in and lie down now. You need to rest.
    While the preacher prayed at the infant’s graveside little Jenny Carmichael came running around the side of the house saw the ceremony in progress broke her run down to a fast walk and with red spots on her cheeks walked right on past the others up to Caroline whose head was bowed for the prayer. She pulled at Caroline’s sleeve. Caroline opened her eyes and bent her head down to listen. Caroline broke ranks and walked sometimes skipping into a run past the house and out to the road. As they passed the porch little Jenny said Aunt Emma said you can see the head like a hairy fist coming out.
    Late that afternoon Jenny told Ross how the baby boy had six fingers on each hand and how as Caroline cut off the two extras tiny stubby matchsticks tears were dropping off her nose and cheeks onto her hands and wrists.
    Caroline brought the fingers home in a bottle of alcohol and put the bottle behind the clock on the mantle where it stayed and was talked about by the