Walter Williams - The Rift

Cudgel sat down amid the remaining people, slid the rifle off his shoulder into his lap. He wore a bartered wide-brimmed hat decorated with feathers, and his long hair was so tangled that it hung down his back like a wiry horsehair mat. His beard, spread over his chest, looked like Spanish moss, and his eyes glimmered yellow in the night. He smelled as if he’d been wrapped in newspaper and buried for twenty years.

“How’d you get here?” someone on the committee asked. “How’d you get past the guards?”

“I move quiet, me,” Cudgel said. For all his outlandish appearance, his voice was soft, and he seemed a little intimidated by the presence of all these curious people. “You go hunting, you, you want nice goose pour le diner, you sho-nuff creep that goose. You no let that bull-goose see you, that goose, so you creep him goose.”

There was a moment of bewildered silence. It took Nick a moment to work out that “creeping the goose” was something done while hunting, slipping past the sentinel geese to get within shooting distance of the flock.

“I’ve been in your house!” Jason said suddenly. “Down in the floodway, that treehouse!”

Cudgel looked at him. “I live there sometime, mais oui. In spring I go for crawfish, me, in fall for shooting.” He smiled, yellow teeth flashing in the starlight. “Plenty birds there, come autumn.”

“Can you take some others out?” Nick asked. “Can you take some of the children to safety? Or some messengers who can try to find help?”

Cudgel thought about this for a long moment. “I consider that could be hard, me,” he said. “You got a man can creep the goose for true?”

That looked like to set off an argument about who in the camp was qualified, and who not, and since Nick doubted that anyone in the camp had ever crept a goose or was likely to try, he wanted to cut the discussion before it got started.

“Why did you come here, Mr. Cudgel?” he asked.

Cudgel frowned. “I see them kill, them trash,” Cudgel said. “Down Cattrall’s old cotton field, la bas, by where I go fish sometime in bateau, that sixty acres down by the bayou. They line them up, them black boys, and-” He raised a hand, mimed a finger squeezing a trigger. Made a sound, psssh, like a shot being fired.

There was a horrified cry from Manon. Stifled groans from the others.

“C’est vrai,” Cudgel said. “So I think, why for them do that, them. Saw the Paxton boy, son of the High Sheriff, that Paxton boy, so I knew them be Kluxers. So I come the camp here, me, see what I find.” He smiled again. “Creep the goose, me. Talk you fellas.”

“We need help,” said a woman on the Camp Committee. “Can you help us? You’ve seen what they do. Can you tell someone?”

Cudgel looked thoughtful. “I pretty grand fella, me, down Plaquemines Parish. Everybody know Cudgel there. But here-” He shook his head. “Nobody know Cudgel. I don’t got but ten cents, me. Ain’t nobody listen Cudgel up here.”

The woman persisted. “Can you take someone out to speak to the locals? Or phone for help?”

“No phone here, no,” Cudgel said. “Not since the earth-shake. But someone come out, some fella, come out the camp, I take him where you say, me.”

“The A.M.E. people used to come here, bring food and look after us. Brother Morris and his family, other people from the community. Then they stopped coming. And the- the hateful things- began to happen. Can you get word to Brother Morris?”

“Morris, he dead, that Morris.”

There was another collective sound from Cudgel’s audience, another half-gasp, half-groan.

“They say he been shot, Morris,” Cudgel said. “Say a man from the camp did the shooting, them. But I take a man wherever you say, me. I take him Morris wife, you want.”

“Yes. To Mrs. Morris. Yes, that would be good.”

Nick listened to this discussion with only partial attention. His mind was factoring Cudgel’s presence into his plans, this strange, stealthy swamp man who lived by his wits and by hunting, who carried a rifle over one shoulder and knew the country like the back of his hand.

“Mr. Cudgel,” he said, “I think we may have to fight, whether you get a chance to talk to Mrs. Morris or not. If we don’t fight to defend ourselves, we may have more people taken from the camp and killed before any help can come. You have a gun, you hunt and trap- can you help us fight?”

There was a sudden silence in the small group. Cudgel considered Nick’s words, then nodded. “I do what you want, me. But if you can fight, what for you here? You got guns, you men, why never you shoot a mess o’ Kluxer ’long time back?”

“We only have a few handguns,” Nick said. “Everything else was taken. But I’m making other weapons- claymore mines, if you know what those are.”

“He quoi!” Cudgel said in surprise, and a moment later a sudden broad smile lit his face. He held up a hand, thumb crooked over his fist, and he pressed the thumb down. “Took,” he said, a little falsetto birdlike sound.

Nick realized, to his astonishment, that Cudgel was miming his thumb pressing the button of a detonator.

“I know them claymores, me,” Cudgel said. “I serve in Army, fight them V.C. I fight in Delta, me, I fight in Vinh Long, in Can Tho.” He raised his fist again, crooked his thumb. “Took. No more V.C. I creep them Congs, them V.C, just like I creep the goose. I get my name in Delta, me.”

I get my name in Delta. Realization flooded Nick’s mind as he looked into Cudgel’s beaming face.

“Your name isn’t Cudgel,” he said suddenly. “It’s Cudjo, isn’t it?”

The man nodded. “Cudjo, c’est moi. I get the name in Vietnam, me.”

“That’s an African name,” Nick said. “A warrior name.”

Pride straightened Cudjo’s shoulders, glimmered in his yellow eyes. “C’est vrai,” he said. “I a warrior, me. Get in trouble down Plaquemines Parish, come here to live. Never touch them liquors and drugs no more, for true.”

Astonished hope beat in Nick’s heart. “You can help us fight, can’t you?” he said.

“ Si, with them claymores.” He took the rifle gun from his lap and held it out to Nick. “You take my gun, you. Kill them Kluxers. I help.”

Nick took the gun, looked at it in surprise. “I’m not very good with a rifle,” he said. “But I’ll make sure it goes to someone who can use it.”

“Take these shells, you.” Cudjo dug in the pockets of his old coat, dropped cartridges into Nick’s hand. Little ones, he realized, 22s.

“I don’t want to leave you without a rifle,” Nick said. “I’m sure you can use this better than anyone.”

“That my squirrel gun, there,” Cudjo said. “Only a two-two. When I come back tomorrow, me, I bring my deer gun, yes? Thirty-ought-six.”

Nick was almost blinded by sudden possibility. Even Cudjo’s little.22 would make a difference to the camp. Fired from cover it could make the deputies keep their heads down, if nothing else. And when Cudjo returned with his deer rifle, his.30-’06, he could do a lot of damage from the cover of the woods, and with reasonable safety to himself.

Eagerness seized Nick. “Let me tell you what I’m planning,” he said. He unrolled his entire plan for Cudjo, while the woodsman listened, nodded, and asked questions. Then Cudjo analyzed Nick’s plan, took it apart, and reassembled it in an altered, more perfected form.

“Yes,” Nick said. “Yes, I see.”

“Kill them Kluxers, take them Kluxers out, before you push the people on, yes? You no run them into guns, you.”

“Yes. I understand.”