Virginia Reeves - Work Like Any Other

The sound from him comes from everywhere at once: the suck and yaw of his body, the moan of skin and bone, of hidden guts meeting air, of a body draining. The sound from his mouth is a quiet whisper, barely more than breath.

Hughes looks down. “Shit. Didn’t mean that for you, brother.”

Stevens keeps at his noise, and Hughes looks up at me. I’m waiting for Beau’s gun to fire.

“I’m not looking to shoot you, Books.”

“I’m not looking to get shot.”

The dogs are quiet, their eyes fixed on the barrel. Metal is a convincing master.

There’s no movement, no sound from Beau’s position.

“Where’s the guard that’s with you?” Hughes asks.

“Ran off,” I say, buying Beau more time.

Hughes smiles. “They’re all mice at heart.” He looks down at Stevens. “What’s he saying?”

I push through my dogs and crouch by Stevens’s head, my ear close to his mouth. His side is so different from Jennings’s, and I see clearly that he is dying. I know it by the sound and color. He won’t make nightfall. He won’t leave this spot of ground. He won’t pass Taylor’s horse a few miles back.

“ ‘Lord.’ He’s just saying, ‘Lord,’ over and over.”

I’m more scared of my proximity to it than of the death itself.

Stevens is pale, the ground around him dark.

Where the hell is Beau?

My dogs don’t know what to do. They’re not so used to the smell of blood.

“I can’t go back.” Hughes steps over the mess of Stevens.

I move myself a few feet away from him, opening up a clean line for Beau to fire. He has to do it now.

Don’t, I hear in a voice like Marie’s — she’s here again, among the trees.

Hughes’s gun is back in its spot at his hip. “You best stay right there.”

“They’re going to catch you.”

“That may be, but for now, I’m going. That all right with you, Books?”

I nod.

“You hold those dogs back.”

“All right.”

He runs then, sprinting his long legs in the opposite direction of Beau’s hiding spot. The branches make a ruckus for a bit, snaps and shouts. He won’t make it far.

“Beau!” I shout, but no sound answers me.

Don’t you want him to escape? Marie asks, appearing now at my side.

“No,” I tell her, realizing as I say it that it’s true. Though I know him and have never wished him ill, I want Hughes caught. I want to see him fail in his flight. This is the closest I can come to freedom within the world of my confinement — seeing another man’s freedom captured.

This isn’t a great loss, Marie is saying of Stevens.

“I know.” What does it say that I want Hughes apprehended and don’t so much mind Stevens’s harm? Have I finally and completely cast my lot with the prison, rather than the prisoners? Have I stitched my prison coat to my skin, the fibers fusing to my body, the two things blended so thoroughly they’ll never come free of each other?

Where is Beau?

“Marie, I’m scared.”

Her face is sad, and our woods are full of noise. Sounds arrive from the way we came, pounding feet and shouting voices, horse hooves, more dogs. My own start whining.

The warden himself makes our spot of land first, high up on his chestnut gelding, the handsomest of the prison herd. “Christ. Jesus Christ. What’s this, Martin?”

Tell him it was you, Marie whispers.

“Martin!” the warden shouts.

Marie disappears, but I hear her words still, granting me guilt, handing me the burden of Stevens’s body on the ground. If I take it, I sever my ties with the warden and Taylor, Chaplain and Rash. I become worse than Reed and his knife, than Hicks and Boyd and Vincent, worse than Beau even. If I claim this, I walk myself to a single cell outside Yellow Mama’s room, and I wait to meet her.

Is that where I should go, Marie?

“Martin!” the warden shouts again. “Who the hell did this?”

Me. I did. Though everyone would know I’m lying, know I have no gun, no motive, but still — it was me. Bind my wrists and walk me back to prison. Strap me to Ed’s chair. Bring me my electricity.

I will the words to my mouth. Me. I did this. I’m working with Hughes. We had it planned. And then I say, “Hughes. He was hiding inside. The dogs led us here. Beau had Stevens go to the door.”

Just as I say it, Beau rises from the brush, leaves clinging to the arms of his uniform. “Man turned his gun on me next, sir. It was all I could do to dive out of its range.”

The dogs whine.

“Hush your goddamned dogs,” the warden says to me, and I do.

Beau has become a coward before us, shamed and disgraced.

The warden kneels at Stevens’s white face. The man’s lips still move, but his body has grown quiet.

“You’re not going to make this one,” the warden says. “Take your shirt off, Martin. Cover the man’s insides, at least.”

I pull off my shirt and lay it flat over the shiny mess of Stevens’s stomach. The fabric soaks up the blood, and mosquitoes make quick for my exposed skin. The dog belt digs deeper into its rut in my back. My ribs show too much, my stomach a caved thing under its puckered scar. It feels disrespectful to be standing so naked in front of a dying man.

Guards arrive, and Michaels, winded behind his leads. They stare at Stevens and the warden. They’re as lost as my dogs. Beau still stands half in his bushes.

Taylor finally comes.

“Lucky your horse tripped, old man,” the warden says. “Seeing as you like to deliver the knock, would’ve been you lying here.”

Taylor must know the truth in this; Beau, too.

“Let him lie here until he’s gone,” the warden says to the guards. “Then put him on a horse. It was Hughes that did this. Big fellow. You guys know him. Start that chase again, fellows. Martin, you and this other one”—the warden points to Michaels—“get those dogs back on the scent. I’ll be behind you.” He signals out a young guard. “Head on back to the grounds and let them know what’s going on. And fetch the chaplain, and a crew to take care of that horse.”

“Sir,” the man says.

My shirt has gone red.

Beau comes closer. “I’ll go with the dogs, sir.”

“You’ll stay with this man,” the warden booms. “And you’ll escort his body back to the prison, and then you’ll take a seat on one of those benches outside my office and wait as long as you have to until I’m done with this.”

“Yes, sir.”

Michaels and I step inside the shack to get the dogs’ noses on the smell again — there on that rag, here on the floor. They catch and bray, yipping and pulling.

How is it I am running again? Stevens is dying or dead behind me, and Beau has been publicly shamed, but everything else is as it was. Men leave trails behind them. They run from dogs that only want a chase. Branches bend to our weight, sticks break under our boots. My legs ache and my back, yet I am still harnessed to these beasts, my own and Stevens’s, all five of them. I have lost my stomach and leg to scars, my arm to ruin, my collarbone to a permanent cave.

No matter the changes in me, they will keep me running. Taylor will keep me searching through books for him. Rash will keep me shelving. Chaplain will keep me reading to his flock before their suppers. This place will take pieces of me, chunks and bites, until I am Stevens, filling someone else’s shirt with blood.

IT’Sdark by the time the dogs stop. They’ve led us to a weather-beaten house on the Alabama River, right near its start — the state’s river flowing out of the marriage of the Coosa and the Tallapoosa. The house can’t hold more than a room or two. Lamplight glows from its square windows. The warden climbs down from his horse and guards stake out their positions in the surrounding brush. Michaels and I are told to keep our dogs quiet and out of the way. We separate to keep them calmer, and I find myself alone in the trees.