Artichoke Stars and Chicken Fried Shark, Chapter 1

Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, October 1980

I turn up the beach road, the cold autumn air whipping my face. With school out, my mind’s on digging my toes in the sand before heading home. The sidewalk bites through my Chuck Taylor’s, making the soreness in my calves worse. Coach put us through our paces yesterday, running the whole wrestling team like dogs in preparation for the December meet.

I trot past the Home Plate diner. It’s the best place for shrimp in town. From the entrance, a buttery aroma smothers my nostrils. Two people, a woman and her young son, step through the front door. The little kid stumbles, nearly knocking me over. The ice cream cone in his hand plops to the concrete.

He levels a finger in my direction. “Hey, pineapple-head. You made me drop it.”

“Did not.” I hold up my hands in protest.

“Did, too!”

He digs his little heel into my foot, sending a jolt up my leg.

“Ow!” I grab the tiny vermin’s wrist.

The woman glares at me. “Would you watch where you’re going?”

“Hey, I’m sorry.”

She drags the little boy away, but not before he turns and gives me the finger. “Up yours, pineapple-head!”

Why do people always make cracks about my hair? “Little boy, you need to learn some manners,” I yell after them, but they ignore me.

Bumping along, they vanish around a corner. Jeez, when I was that age, my mom would’ve read me the riot act for telling off a stranger like that.

A quartet of girls my age in corduroy jumpers and too-tight designer jeans stand in front of a beauty parlor. Their feathered hair billows in the breeze like porcupine needles. They stare transfixed at a pyramid of cans behind the storefront window. Next to the stack an ad reads:

Aqua-Net Blow-Out! Three Cans for Five Dollars!

One girl, a freckled redhead with braces, smacks her gum and blows a huge bubble. “I’m getting me some. Going to dress up like a witch this year.”

Halloween is in a week.

Her friend snickers. “Nadine, you don’t need no spray to look like a witch, hon.”

The other girls laugh. I brush past them, stopping at the corner before crossing at the light. A block up, I shiver beneath the twin chapel spires of St. Adolphus, a rich boys’ private school. It’s a spooky place. The shadows cast by those towers resemble a giant pair of shark’s fins.

At the intersection, traffic blaze past in both directions, separating me from the beach. I step off the curb into the path of a white pickup blowing through a red light, swerving from side to side. I leap back onto the sidewalk, narrowly avoiding the onrushing hood.

A bumper sticker plastered on the tailgate depicts a cartoon picture of Johnny Reb. Dressed in a gray uniform, Johnny lies in state beneath a motto which reads: Save your Confederate money, boys. The South’s gonna rise again.

Just like the little kid, the driver flips me off before zigzagging through traffic. A shiver runs down my spine.

Nothing like a little brush with death to start the afternoon.

I cross the road. Below me, a concrete staircase descends to a chalky sand dotted with plastic bottles and driftwood. The briny stench floods my nose, stopping me in my tracks. I sneeze, and almost trip over a maggoty dead fish. Then, something catches my eye. Fifty yards away, a shiny cabbage-ball-sized object sits at the base of a wooden pylon beneath the pier.

It looks valuable. Okay, maybe not, but from a distance it definitely looks interesting.

The tide rolls in, scattering fingers of driftwood around the shiny object. A couple more waves like that will wash it back into the bay, and it’ll be gone forever. I hesitate, my breath visible in the cool evening air.

Should I grab it?

A raspy whisper growls in my head. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Who leaves anything nice on the beach?

Here come the voices. Again.

It’s just a dumb piece of junk. Leave that thing alone.

Shut up. Maybe it fell off a rich person’s boat. Might be worth a lot of money.

That’s stupid.

Is not.

The surf crashes in. Cramps ripple through my stomach.

Well, if you’re going to do it, stop being such a wimp and go grab the thing.

I’ll grab it when I want.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Just shut up, okay?

I run to the pier. The tide rolls in, soaking my shoes. The thing sits there like it’s waiting for me. It’s about the size of a softball but tapered on one end, and covered with scaly, overlapping leaves that radiate an iridescent, radish-purple hue. Tiny, translucent hairs ring a puckered orifice on top.

A purple artichoke? Maybe. Except artichokes don’t come in that shade. And they don’t have mouths. So, what is it, really? A vegetable? Some kind of sea anemone?

Something about its irregular shape jogs my memory. The UFO magazines I collect always have articles about stuff like this. Unexplained phenomena the government doesn’t want people to know about.

Which totally makes it a prize.

I try to yank it from the ground. The serrated leaves rip my hands. It hurts like crazy. Within seconds, red welts blossom on my skin, itching like a hundred ant bites.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. You’ll never get it out like that.

Fine. I’ll be back.

Along the main road, three blocks away, sits a squat building nestled on a blacktop parking lot. Afterschool, on Fridays, the Jitney Jungle grocery store’s aisles are packed with customers. Matronly housewives pushing stuffed shopping carts fight for position with errant teenagers in search of candy and chips.

The magazine rack tempts me with comics and wrestling magazines, but the image of the artichoke stuck in the sand overrides all distractions. A list of items I’ll need to retrieve the object circulates through my head—pair of rubber gloves, trash bags, aluminum roasting pan.

Navigating the crush of bodies and baskets, I locate the gloves and bags in the household goods aisle. But the pans are down another. A screaming boy clips my thigh on the way to retrieve the last item. This knocks me off course, right in front of a display advertising toaster pastries.

Chocolate Fudge Pop-Tarts. Only $1.99

Searching my wallet, I find a ten, just enough to cover everything, pastries included. Customers clog the checkout lines. One is for ten items or less. A better fit but I avoid it, pushing through to the last lane.

It’s the busiest, but I don’t care. Behind the counter, Katie Sue Carson makes the cash register sing.

Four years older than me, Katie Sue is the most beautiful girl in the world. She’s thin and kind of tall. Long, chestnut-brown hair falls like rain down her back. Oversized glasses frame sparkling eyes set like sapphires in her round face. Full lips curl into an ever-present smile.

“Mickey Finley,” Katie Sue says. “It’s so nice to see you.”

Time stops. My tongue thickens. In my head, I reach across the conveyor belt and pull her to me. As groceries pile up at the end of the belt, we make out like the couple in the Irish Spring commercial on TV.

Katie Sue drags me back to reality. “Mickey?”

“Hey kid,” somebody says behind my back. “You’re holding up traffic.”

Whoops.

“Oh, hi.” I put the items on the conveyor belt. “How’s life in the grocery business?”

“Kind of sucks but it’s college money.” She scans each item. “How’s your cousin?”

“Tommy? He’s alive, I guess.”

Big-shouldered, curly-haired Tommy is Uncle John’s and Aunt Margene’s son. He played football in high school and all the girls adored him.

“Alive? I heard he went into the Navy.” The register chimes like a pet store parakeet. “Y’all must be so proud of him.”

Katie Sue blushes. She used to be one of those adoring girls, which doesn’t fit my plans for us at all.

“Yeah, he’s pretty cool.”

“Well, tell him I said hello. That’ll be nine-dollars and thirty-four-cents.”

The way she tells me the price sounds sexier than Farrah Fawcett selling shampoo on TV. “You got it.” The ten floats out of my wallet.

She stares at my hands. “My word, Mickey. What did you do to yourself ?”

Embarrassed, I stuff them in my jacket. “Slipped on a rock at the beach.”

“We’ve got some hydrogen peroxide in the breakroom. If you want, I could send somebody—”

“No, really, I’m okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, well take care now.” She smiles like an angel. “Don’t run in the traffic.”

A half-hour later the artichoke still squats in the shifting silt, its lacquered leaves drying out as the tide recedes. Cold bites into my knuckles before I put on the gloves. The artichoke shivers and its ugly mouth puckers, spewing purple ooze that smells of rotten eggs.

“Yuck.” I grab the thing by its base and try to yank it out of the ground, but the artichoke’s roots or whatever’s holding it in place won’t give.

“Jeez.” I step backward, a little rattled. This is going to be harder than I thought.

I crouch down and pull, lifting with my legs. The artichoke emits a high screech, but I finally hoist its squirming form into the roasting pan. It spurts a load of plum-colored dust

into my face, making me sneeze. I wipe my nose on my sleeve. The resultant snot is peppered with purple soot.

“Aw great. This thing’s going to get me sick.”

I take stock of the situation. The concrete stairs are fifty feet away. I can leave this thing right here and just forget all about it. But then I remember all those pictures in the UFO magazines. What if I took a snapshot of this sucker and sent it into the editor? Would somebody call the house? Maybe word would get out about my find and reporters would show up, like from the National Enquirer or something. They might put me and the artichoke on the cover, us occupying a space at the Jitney Jungle checkout counter right next to all the famous people in People.

Katie Sue would forget all about Tommy.

I turn and slip the pan with its lumpy burden inside the garbage bag. The sharp leaves shred the plastic. I slip a second bag over the first as reinforcement. My nose itches. I rub it and purple mucus runs from my nostril.

“Aw crap, this thing is getting me sick.” I sneeze a technicolor nightmare, then toss the gloves and throw the bag over my shoulder. The artichoke squirms and erupts in a fury of grunts and growls, but the pan protects my back from its thrashings.

Grabbing the Pop-Tarts, I head home with my prize.

Aunt Margene and Uncle John’s place sits on a quarter-acre lot, a thirty-minute walk from the beach. By the time I get there, the sun burns orange on the horizon. I enter the house through the back door which leads directly into the kitchen.

Inside, a whiff of pot roast smells good in spite of my blocked sinus passages, making my mouth water. I leave the artichoke on the porch, and step inside.

Aunt Margene sits on the couch in the living room, telephone nestled between her chin and shoulder, cord wrapped around her arm. She’s about forty-five, plump with graying hair. I find it really easy to talk to her, and consider her one of my few friends, even going back to before I moved in.

“Aunt Margene. I found this cool thing at the beach—”

She glares at me. “Not now, Mickey.”

“Sorry.”

Frowning, she speaks into the phone. “Alright, Isobel. Now, tell me what happened...really? The officer at the scene said that? What happened to the other driver?”

“Who are you talking to?” I set the bag of Pop-Tarts on the table.

Aunt Margene holds her hand over the mouthpiece. “Mickey, please. This is serious.”

She listens to the person on the other end of the line. I tear into a package of the pastries and breathe in an aromatic chocolate smell. Then I grab a bite. The Pop-Tart tastes unusually bittersweet.

Tears well in Aunt Margene’s eyes. “Oh, Isobel. I’m so sorry to hear about this...yes, I’ll miss her, too. We loved that girl...uh huh, uh huh...she was like family to us, too.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Who was like family? What are they talking about?

“Okay...we’ll be by the church later. Love you, too. Goodbye.” She cradles the receiver. “Mickey, do you remember the Carson girl? Katie Sue?”

“Um, actually, I just saw her like an hour ago.”

“You did?” She frowns.

“Yeah, why?”

“That was Miss Isobel, from church.” Aunt Margene grabs a tissue and blows her nose. “There’s been a terrible accident.”

“An accident?”

“Yes. Katie Sue’s been—” She clutches her chest and closes her eyes.

“Katie Sue’s been what?”

“She’s dead.”

The pastry falls from my mouth. My fingers and toes go numb. The loss of sensation travels along my limbs and stops at my heart, deadening my pulse.

Katie Sue, gone? It can’t be true.

Aunt Margene cries, “Oh Lord. What’s become of this world?”

I wrap her up in my arms and we hug each other tightly.

Outside, the sun slips behind the trees like a hanged man choking on a noose.