Virginia Reeves - Work Like Any Other

I am soaked now, my back wet from sweat, the water on my front climbing my sides. I could turn over, make my body a board, my hands behind my head, my feet pointing downstream. The current would spill me into the Alabama River, and I would ride that wide channel all the way to Mobile Bay. A ship could collect me, and I could say, “London,” when the captain asked where I was heading.

I hear dogs behind me, and I crawl from the water, leaving prints of my hands and feet in the mud. The possum oak spreads itself wide over the creek, its branches forking with their spoon-shaped leaves, wide at the tips and narrow at the base. It’s kind enough to offer a few low branches, and I pull myself up to them with a moan I can’t contain. It’s an old man’s moan, and I’m worried to house it. I climb a bit higher and settle myself into the crook of a thick branch about twenty feet off the ground. My breathing is desperately hoarse, a racket for the dogs to catch, and water drips from my boots and cuffs. I can hear the drops hitting leaves, a tick loud enough to be heard over the creek’s slosh and ripple. It’s a warm summer day, but I am cold in these wet clothes, the heat from my race washed downstream. Only that part of me will make it to Mobile.

I take a breath and chance a look down. I’m startled by the girl I see, leaning against the trunk of my tree, her narrow shoulders spread wide against the puzzled bark. She plucks a leaf from the closest branch, peeling the green away from the tendons. She faces the woods, away from the prison, and her hair is a lovely dark brown, like Marie’s when we met. I can’t see her face, but she seems young.

“You listening, Roscoe?” she says.

“What?”

She looks up, then, and the face she shows bewilders me. It is Marie’s face, or a version of hers, younger than I have ever known her to be. A drop of water from the soles of my boots wets the sleeve of her dress, light blue and thin. “Those hounds are so loud. They’re scaring off the birds. There’s a warbler or two in this tree of yours.” My God — to hear Marie talk of birds. “A cerulean, from the sound of it. What I caught of its song, that is, before those dogs got close.”

She picks at the bark, a long finger in a rough vein.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

She smiles at me, and she is young and beautiful, low on the ground under my wet and dirty boots, her sleeve speckled now as if caught in its own small rainstorm.

“The farm is doing wonderfully, Roscoe.”

“Why don’t you write?”

“What would I say if I did?”

She starts moving away, waving as she goes. A dog is in the creek, two smaller ones behind it.

“Wait!” I yell, but Marie is only a rustle of shadows in the brush. A dog has taken her place near the trunk, its nose at the footprints I stomped firm in the ground. A drip taps the middle of its head, and it brings its neck up level with the ground and shakes its giant ears. The thing is slow to sniff the bark, slower still to look up. The other two sniff wildly around it, dashing from creek bank to trunk and back, ears in their faces to shepherd in the scent, as I’ve learned from Hartley. They’re dashing in circles when the big one spots me. It lets out a piercing wail of sound, and the smaller ones chime in. They’ve found me quick it seems, but I don’t know what Taylor expects to happen now. Hartley would have him sitting on some stump a ways back, waiting for a dog to return and lead him to this spot. But if the dogs left, and I were a real escapee, I’d be quick to take off running again.

The dogs have set themselves wide around the base of the tree, holding still as they’ve been taught. One of the pups tries to mimic the older dog’s point, and it comes off-balanced, adolescent limbs outpacing its joints in their growth. The other pup lies down.

Why was Marie here? Why so young?

At least a quarter hour passes before the hooves of Taylor’s horse clomp to a halt on the other side of the creek. He whoas his mare.

“What do you think of that, Martin?”

The big dog whines, and the standing pup copies.

“They found me, sir.”

“Ha!” Taylor shouts, and he clucks his horse through the water. “And you thought your book didn’t have a nose for this type of hunt.”

I fear Taylor’s sense is clouded by his want for answers. If he climbed off his horse and stepped off a few yards, he’d see how foolish the chase was. The hounds may have found me quick, but they left Taylor behind. Without that lead tying them together, he was just a man on a horse, heading toward the possum oak across the creek where he knew I’d be hiding. Untying the dogs from the waists of his boys just makes for more hunting. The dogs track the man, and Taylor’s boys track the dogs, and Taylor tracks his boys.

It’s clearly not my place to tell him this.

“Wait,” he’s saying to the dogs. “Come on down, Martin.”

I climb down to low growls from the big dog and one pup. The other pup lunges toward me in excitement.

“Back,” Taylor roars, swinging down from his saddle. I am taken again with his ease of maneuvering. He swats the pup on the head, thick-handed across the ears. “No,” he shouts. The pup cowers and whimpers, tail tucked, haunches lowered. The other two keep their snouts turned on me. “Goddamn.” Taylor gives the pup one more whack and spits in the soil by the dog’s head. “That was the last chance on this one.”

I want to defend this dog, to at least tell Taylor not to hit him in the ears — Hartley has taught me that dogs need their sense of hearing as much as they need their sense of smell.

Taylor wraps my hands with rope. “Come on then, Martin. We’ll lead you in now. Hup!” he says to the dogs. “Maggie! Dagger! Hup!” I walk past the cowering pup and trudge into the creek. I’m no longer thirsty, and the mud-brown current puts me off. Taylor’s mare splashes heavily into the creek behind me, and the dogs plunge in alongside the horse’s strong-pillared legs.

“Get,” Taylor says.

On the far side, I look back. The chastised pup stands belly deep in the water, whining. The tips of his ears flutter in the current.

“Hup,” Taylor shouts.

The pup whines, and Taylor reins his mare to turn. The other dogs are milling on our side, their noses down, confusion in their snouts. They are losing interest in my capture.

“What do you think’s wrong with that dog, Martin?”

“Fear.”

“Hup,” Taylor shouts at the dog, and slaps his wide thigh.

The pup whines more and dips his head lower, ears half-submerged.

Taylor drums the saddle horn as he did his belly and lets loose a great, painful sigh. “Goddamn it.” He pulls a leather lead from one of his rear saddlebags. “Shake off your cuffs, Martin. You’re gonna have to go get him.”

“Sir.”

I’m tired of this creek, its muddy water and stubborn wet.

“Hey, pup,” I say as I approach the dog, the current sucking at my knees.

The pup turns his head in shame and cowardice. The last time he came toward me, Taylor whipped him. Now, I’m calling him in. Hartley wouldn’t approve of any of this.

“Come here.” I reach for his collar. A small growl is in his throat. “Think you can bite me?”

He answers by stopping his noise, and I clip the lead to the rusty ring in his collar. The other end holds a clip, too. “Fasten it to your belt loop,” Taylor says to me. “It’s strong enough to hold for now.”

Taylor’s dangling that scrap of my cuff from the side of his horse for the other dogs. They sniff it for a second, then run back and forth along the creek bank, whining and yipping, trying to find my old scent. When I climb from the water again, they are ginger in their approach, confused. The big one is Maggie, and she sticks her snout to the toe of one of my boots, lets out a yip, then turns her eyes to the pup, who stands proud and alert at my side. Maggie sticks her nose back to the ground, and the unleashed pup, Dagger, snaps suddenly to a point, singling out the creek for her attention, as though the hunt ends there, drowned in the water.