News of the Spirit by Lee Smith

Author:Lee Smith [Smith, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101581087
Publisher: Berkley Books
Published: 2012-07-03T04:00:00+00:00

WE FELL INTO A ROUTINE. I’D GO FISHING WITH DADDY, and I’d shop or sun or watch the movie stars with Mama. This way, I got to have plenty of everybody’s undivided attention, though I kept wishing my parents would do more things together. Sometimes they did, though Daddy always looked like a man fulfilling a duty, even after Mama started wearing flowers in her hair.

I loved those rare nights they went out without me. I’d swim in the pool or run errands for Mr. Rudy or smoke Mama’s cigarettes or hide in the shrubbery by the pool in order to keep up with several romances I had taken an interest in. Then, of course, I would have to do a lot of good deeds to make up for all that. Then I’d read East of Eden, which somebody had carelessly left by the pool (I had finished Bridey Murphy), and then I’d have to read my New Testament to make up for that. I was really busy, and was often completely exhausted by my efforts.

I couldn’t tell whether or not the good deeds were working. My parents were endlessly cordial to each other now, but so far they had never slept in the same bed. I knew this for a fact. I checked their room every morning.

So I doubled my efforts—buying more candles, cleaning more graves, using up all Mama’s Kleenex on Cary Grant’s hubcaps, donating a jar of her Noxzema to the Havana Madrid girls. But we seemed to have reached a stalemate. Entranced by the stars, Mama was becoming herself again. But would this ever be enough for Daddy? Could it be? I knew that Frank Sinatra still loved Ava Gardner right now, even though she was now in Spain living with a bullfighter. The bullfighter meant nothing to Frank. He was peanuts; he was toast. Frank would always love Ava.

I prayed it would not be so for Daddy and Carroll Byrd.

It was hard to stay mad at Daddy, however. His lawyerlike quality of paying close attention was flattering; he was winning me over again. I especially liked our fishing trips. Once we got up at four a.m. to drive up the Keys and go out with a one-eyed man named Captain Lewjack who gave me a mug of black coffee and a jelly glass of brandy and strapped me into a fighting chair and kept chanting, “C’mon, baby, c’mon, baby, hootchie-koo,” when I hooked a dolphin.

“Not a dolphin!” I cried out at first, though Daddy and Captain Lewjack assured me it wasn’t that kind of dolphin but the other kind, a game fish. Still, the dolphin was so beautiful that it took my breath away when it leaped out of the water for the first time, its lovely colors like a rainbow in the sun. It turned iron gray the instant Captain Lewjack hit it on the head with a hammer after I pulled it in, with Daddy’s help.

This was the same day Daddy caught a

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