Cadeau Kincaid

Well, I've grown up in the south, an hour outside of Macon in a place we all described as middle Georgia to anyone who asked but really it was nowhere. My dad, who also grew up in nowhere, and resented it, but wasn’t anybody smart enough or tactful enough to move out and go to college and live somewhere, he used to say to me that sometimes nowhere can be a real cool place. And I always thought that was really funny because he didn’t believe that at all I thought, and that movie, “Cool Hand Luke”, which was his favorite movie, he watched it once a month or so when he sat in his plastic chair out on the porch with the old cathode tv and bin of VHS tapes, starred fancy Hollywood people who were pretty and just good at pretending like they knew something about nowhere.

My mom named us all. My two brothers and my sister and me. My oldest brother is Luke, because my mom thought my dad would like it, and he did, he liked it a lot except then he realized that Luke was kind of an ominous name if you were thinking about the movie and so we call him L.J. because his middle name is Jefferson. My other brother is Antoine, because my mom is creole and that was her father’s name. I am named Cadeau and my sister, who is my twin, is Analisa after my dad’s mother. I am not exactly sure how my mom came up with the name Cadeau, even though I know it is French for “gift,” because I always thought it was strange that I was named gift because I thought it was unfair to my brothers and sister, whose names did not mean exactly what mine did, and also because it isn’t really a name. They didn’t think so though because most people thought my name was really stupid, including my brothers and sister, and they called me Cad most of the time, it was really only my mom who called me Cadeau, and sometimes my dad if he was angry or sentimental. My brothers all looked like my dad, but my sister and I looked like my mom, and sometimes I was glad for it because she was good looking and sometimes I was disappointed because my brothers were boyish and seemed like they’d turn into men and I was not and did not.

My dad was a good looking guy, and that meant that he and the good looking girls went out, in high school, and I guess he probably dated back in middle school too cause he had all sorts of photos from back then with his golden head of hair and tall, lanky body, and some girl was always lookin at him. They were always starin at him like he was a little bit of magic, and that was probably cause most people down here weren’t so good looking and he seemed like a real fun time. But my dad always told me that he’d take them out and they would realize that he wasn’t so interesting as his looks made them think. They would go out, to a movie and a cheap diner dinner or if they could swing it a bar, which they usually could, and he would sit and listen to all these girls, they were pretty, sure, and he would listen to them talk and talk and they would wait for him to open his pretty mouth and when he did they were always disappointed. That’s what my dad said.

I don’t know if I believe it, cause my mom likes him a lot. That’s the best thing about my family, my mom and dad like each other a whole lot, and they never seem dissatisfied when they’re together. They started dating in their last year of high school when they were in the same English class, I think. My dad thought she was really nice, and beautiful, he said to me all the time, and he doesn’t use too many words like beautiful most of the time, and I always, when he says that about my mom, beautiful, I try and find her if she’s nearby and I look at her and my dad is always right. She has really thick, brown hair, and her face is tan and freckled and her body is the perfect body to hold tightly when something goes kind of wrong in life, at school or at work. She doesn’t mind if I cry, and my dad doesn’t mind what she doesn’t mind.

I cry a lot, or I did as a kid. Man, I cried about everything. I cried if I fell asleep in the car, I cried if I missed my favorite show and didn’t record it, I cried if I went over to a friend’s for dinner and my family had a good meal without me. I remember that as soon as I’d walked into our house, after going down the street to shoot bebe’s with Wynton and eat dinner and watch a cartoon or two, I’d walk in and smell the sweet meaty scent of hotdogs and I’d be crushed because I missed it, and dinners were always happy when we ate hotdogs, and hotdogs made everything alright, and they went down easy and it was all OK and I got to spoon the perfect amounts of mayo and ketchup and mustard and sweet relish and mix it all up to make what I called “Cadeau” sauce. My brother’s and sister would try it and tell me it was gross. After a while my mom stopped making hotdogs if I wasn’t home at night, because I would cry, and cry, and cry, and I was unstoppable until my mom wrapped me up good and tight in her arms and pressed ourselves together and said that tomorrow, tomorrow there might be hotdogs, and at least there’d be hotdogs next week. We always ate hotdogs at least once a week. I would calm down and most of the time after that she’d have me sit down with my dad and watch his VHS tapes, and sometimes that was on the porch in the evening and I’d sit on the dusty wood, and he would sit in his plastic chair and we’d watch “Cool Hand Luke,” but other times we watched old westerns or romance movies, which my dad really liked too, especially with my mom around and they would hold hands and cuddle up next to each other, if we were inside on the couch. Sometimes we watched college football.

I loved “Cool Hand Luke,” but not like my dad did. My dad watched it to exonerate himself I think, from being born in nowhere and having stayed in nowhere, because it was the only movie where he was watching those pretty people on screen from somewhere pretend they were just like my dad. It was also a kind of benevolence too because his family wasn’t really all that good, and for him to watch them on screen was kinder to them than maybe some people thought they deserved. My dad had an uncle in a chain gang, who was released or something like that and then robbed a gas station for 500 dollars and 4 cartons of smokes, and then he got put right back in a chain gang, and then he tried to escape, just like Luke had, and from what I can tell he’s still right where he’s been, or dead. I never met him. And my dad’s older brother, my uncle, got in a shootout with the police, or I think so, that’s what I heard from my grandpa, my dad’s father, and I’d heard that my uncle was a sad boy and that he knew what was gonna happen and he did it so it would. My dad, when he watched Luke, Cool Hand Luke, who cried when his mother died, and played a banjo like, my dad said, my dad’s older brother had, and wore one of those heavy jumpsuits like more people than my dad really wanted to know, my dad’s face became softer than it usually was and his eyes wet and sometimes he would say, “he reminds me of my uncle” or “he reminds me of your uncle” and once or twice, “he reminds me of myself.” But the way my dad loved it was different from the way I loved it because my dad was a really good, upstanding man, and my mom’s side was tame, and so I wasn’t as close up to the reality of all that. I loved Luke, Cool Hand Luke, because he reminded me of myself, because I compounded my errors just like he did, and I imagined that if he went to his friends house for dinner and came back and realized that he’d missed hotdogs he would cry like I had, and maybe do something worse, and that if I vandalized a bunch of stuff and was a war veteran, because I heard that you got messed up when you went to war, I’d probably end up the same way he had making the same mistakes over and over.

I was right about myself and him. Yesterday I came home from school late because I decided to walk the long route, down the Route 280 by the pond with cattails and snapper turtles and once I saw a water moccasin in the middle of the pond thrashing around really like it was angry. I walked that way because I didn’t have homework and I wasn’t going to anyone’s house like Wynton’s, and the day was really nice and warm, it was one of the last days of weather like this I thought because it was October. I had a nice time walking along and peering into the pond edge to see the shadows of fish move around, and bugs were still buzzing around just like summer. I spent a good long time walking home, and when I was in view of our house I saw my brothers and sister and mom and dad sitting around on the porch laughing and having a good time, and I ran to see them and see what they were talking about. My mom waved at me with her eyes smiling and my dad held her hand and looked at me and smiled too. I began to cry, because my brothers and sister walked in the house laughing and talking and I cried because I wasn’t there when they were and if only I had taken the short route home with my brothers and sister because they asked me and I told them no. My mom wrapped her arms around me and she said that all we were talking about was the weather and she asked me about why I was late home. I told her I was walking past the pond. She said how nice it must’ve been! I said it was, and I thought I was too old to be crying because I wasn’t there to have fun with everyone all the time, and that’s what my dad was thinking probably, but all he told me was to get the VHS tapes and we could watch something on TV. I thought of Cool Hand Luke again, and I thought that he had a nice time with all those guys, and I know it was jail and all but he would’ve gotten out, and he had a nice time mostly. I thought of him walking by a pond like me, and looking at all the pretty fish and turtles and I saw him smile as he walked and I only saw him there but I thought he’d cry too. I got my dad’s VHS tapes and we put on an old episode of the Johnny Carson show. I thought of Luke again, and myself, and him walking by the pond angry that he was missing weather talk and the sound of Johnny Carson laughing with my dad filled the last warm day of October.