Page 8 of The Big Catch

My eyes rolled up in my head when I heard a key unlock my front door. I didn’t have to look to see who it was. “Hi, Daddy,” I greeted without turning around.

When he came into my view, the scowl that sat on his face led the way.Here we go with the bullshit.“Little girl, what is wrong with you? I just don’t get you.”

“Daddy, what are you talking about?” The past few weeks had been the most that I’d ever heard my dad fuss at me. Normally, it was my mother.

He sat on the ottoman that was in front of where I sat on the couch. His dejected expression bothered me. I felt like a little girl under his stare. “Baby girl, I feel like I didn’t love you right or some shit. Since you were younger and you showed disdain for who you were, where you were from, I told your mother that you would probably grow out of it. It just got worse as you got older. You became a person that I love but don’t like.

“Do you know how crazy of a feeling that is to not like the child that you raised? I always wondered where the entitlement came from because it wasn’t something that ya mama and I instilled in you.” When the tear dropped from his eye, one dropped from mine. “Gunner’s father told me what happened when you went to get a puppy. You are so damn disrespectful.”

I dropped my head. To hear that my father loved but didn’t like me was another blow to my spirit. “Daddy, I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful. How was I supposed to know that the puppy wasn’t a mutt?”

“Adabelle, I told you that the puppy was from one of the damn litters that he bred. Why the hell would a breeder breedmutts?” His arms flailed in the air. “Make that make sense like you young people say. I’m too old for this dumb shit.”

My face stoned over for a moment before I burst into laughter. “Daddy, you act like you’re so old. You’re only what, fifty-three?”

He glared at me for a minute before he joined me in laughter. “I may be young in body, but I’m old in mind, lil girl.” We laughed together for a second more. Once we both calmed down, his face turned serious. “Belle, something gotta change, baby girl. The number of people that I’ve had to check since you been back because of something they said about you makes no sense. I defend you every time, but the reality is that most of them were telling the truth about you.”

“Daddy, what are people saying about me?” I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I wasn’t sure why I cared about what people said about me. I never had before.

My father told me about all the negative things that the people around here were saying. They talked about my business that my mother made available for pass around. A lot of what people said wasn’t exactly the truth. It was like the game telephone. The tale of my life had changed drastically from the tale my mother told. I wasn’t sure where it came from that I was in a polyamorous relationship. Small town gossip was hell.

“Baby girl, I need you to apologize to Gunner. That man was doing me a favor by giving you one of his puppies. He could have sold that puppy for up to eight hundred dollars, but instead, he offered to give it to you for me.” That made me feel bad. Not enough to necessarily want to apologize though.

I kissed my teeth. “Daddy, he slammed the door in my face after he cussed me out,” I whined. “If I owe him an apology, then he owes me one too.”

“Belle, that man had every right to cuss your ass. I personally would have cussed you more. That man loves his dogs like I loveyou.” My dad extended his hand. “Come on, lil girl. We gonna go over there and see if he still got that puppy after you apologize.”

I took his hand to let him pull me from my seat. “Daddy, I really don’t think I need to apologize. I missed the part about you saying he bred dogs. This is the country. You know most of the people around here have a bunch of mutts.”

“You got me there, but no, not Gunner. That man hunts on the professional level. All of his dogs are purebred hunting and hound dogs.” My dad should have led with the fact that he was a hunter. I still remembered that hunters were serious about their dogs.

My mind went to my dad telling me a little earlier that he didn’t like me. It reminded me of when Carson told me something similar. “I can admit that I barely like you.”In a moment of uncertainty, I asked the question that pierced my heart. “Daddy, am I really that unlikable of a person?”

With softened eyes, he cupped my face in his hand. He sighed before he responded. “Yes, baby, you are.”Leave it to Jessie Cory Lee to be bluntly honest.“You don’t have to be though. You have to make the decision to want to change. If you don’t change, I can promise you that when you’re alone, old, and gray, you’re going to wish you had.”

My heart knew my dad was right, but I’d been me for so long. I never thought about whether I was an unlikable person when I was in California because I had enough money to not give a fuck. The stark reality was that money couldn’t buy likes. Now that I was in a place where I no longer had the money, I would have to earn my likes the honest way.

“Damn,that shit is crazy, cousin. You did better than me because I would have taken My Boy out there to pee on the seat of her car. Stupid bitch,” my cousin Toolie fussed.

Toolie was the person in my life who didn’t give a damn about anything or anyone if it wasn’t family. He considered his true friends as family. Toolie was Tink’s older brother, and he instilled a lot of his craziness in her. We’d been tight since we were toddlers. He was also my best friend and charter captain when I was fishing. He made sure I stayed focused when I competed by ensuring I had everything that I needed to succeed. In competitions where the charter captain’s catches were added to mine, he showed off his fishing skills.

I chortled. “Boy, what! How the hell was I going to do that shit? I wanted that girl to get the fuck off my porch. See what happens when I try to be a nice person.”

Miss Adabelle, fuck that Belle shit, pissed me off the other night. I was real life offended when she called My Boy a mutt. There were three things that I took very seriously in life: myfamily, my money, and my dog babies. I spent thousands to make sure that I was a reputable, humane, and loving breeder.

I’d seen breeders who had their dogs in kennels outside and in conditions that were horrific. Nah, that wasn’t me. In addition to the inside kennel that I built onto my home, I had another stand-alone building. There were times when I had to keep my different breeds separated because they were in heat. My personal babies that I didn’t breed or were finished breeding were all fixed. All in all, I had a lot of dogs that were taken care of better than some humans.

“I told you about being nice. Half these hos don’t deserve your niceness. The only time I’m nice to a bitch is when she’s on this dick. That ain’t even me being nice, that’s this dick,” Toolie said with a titter. “Once they get off my shit, they need to get out my shit.”

I shook my head because I’d heard stories about how he dismissed girls after he fucked. My daddy told him that he needed to sit his ass down before he had a basketball team of children like his father. Tink and Toolie were two of eight kids from three baby mamas. Their daddy and mama were married.

“No one is trying to be out there like you. I was nice because my daddy asked me to. Hell, after her and Tink got into it earlier that day at the store, I ain’t think I’d see her ass again. You would think that her ass would be chill with her situation being out there like it is,” I said.

My father asked me the morning after how it went with Adabelle. I told him what happened, and all he did was laugh before he called her daddy. Her daddy, Jessie, was mad as hell. It was known in town that Mr. Lee was not a loud and boisterous person, but on that phone call, his ass was loud as hell. It was fucked up when your child brought out the worst in you.

Toolie snickered. “Yeah, that shit is crazy. I will say this though: Her ass is fine as hell. She still grits thick too.” I couldn’t disagree with him. She’d always been a beautiful girl.

Toolie and I were sitting in my backyard, watching some of my dogs play in their dog park. I had a company from Birmingham come out here to build me a fenced in dog park on my land. People in town that I fucked with or who had bought a dog from me came through sometimes to let their dogs socialize.

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