Amy Greene - Long Man

“Across the fence? That ain’t nothing but a laurel hell. Can’t nobody camp over there.”

Ellard looked at James without saying what they both knew. If anybody could, it was Amos. James had seen some of the deputies from elsewhere poking around the thicket but he doubted they had ventured far into it, with the poison ivy and copperheads. James and Dale hadn’t even tried to penetrate the laurel whenever they went hunting on the other side of the fence. Only rabbits and squirrels and songbirds lived in it, nothing worth shooting at. He and Dale had preferred bigger game. Pheasants, deer, wild turkeys. Dale had talked over the years about having the laurel cleared but never got around to it before the TVA came to town.

“You sure you want to come with me?” Ellard asked.

“I know I don’t want to stand around here no more,” James said.

Ellard passed James an axe. “If he ain’t lit out by now, we’ll give him a surprise.”

“People say he can’t be tracked,” James said, hefting the handle. “Like he’s a spook.”

“Well, he ain’t a spook. Otherwise he’d have two eyes instead of one. It might be tricky keeping quiet in them briars but we can slip up on him. Pay no mind to the nonsense.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” James said. “Come on, if we’re going.”

James and Ellard set out across the field, ragweed soaking their pant legs to the knees. When they reached the other end they straddled the fence, the mesh of the tree canopy shielding them like an umbrella. A fecund odor rose up from the swamp between the close trunks. The deeper in they walked, the wilder the growth became. Soon they were traipsing through the nettles foot by foot, tearing the bushes aside with their hands. They had the axes but neither of them was prepared for the laurel hell when they came to it, their way blocked by a dense tract of shrubbery stretching what looked like miles in every direction, crowded branches twelve feet high blocking out what little sun there was shining. Hunters and trappers had been known to get lost trying to hack through lesser laurel hells than this one. Though James was sure they were wasting their time he started chopping anyway because his wife would have wanted him to, rooting out a tunnel for himself as Gracie used to do in the snowball bushes on the farm.

He and Ellard labored for what seemed all day to make a yard or two of progress, cutting into the leafy darkness until their shoulders ached. After a while James became so intent on his work that he stopped feeling anything. It was dim enough that he forgot about Ellard being there with him. He chopped on with single-minded purpose, blisters breaking open on his palms, locked in battle with the land he’d come to hate long before this day. He should have already been a hundred miles closer to Michigan. He and Annie Clyde and Gracie would have already stopped along the road to eat their dinner, biscuits and salt pork that Annie Clyde had wrapped in a dish towel. A brown bag of apples for Gracie. He should have already been shed of this godforsaken place. By the time he and Ellard had forged a half mile through the thicket he could hardly move his arms. At first he doubted his sight when he detected a shaft of light ahead, sun filtering into the claustrophobic shade. As he forced a path toward a gap in the laurel, he couldn’t help feeling hopeful. If Amos did have Gracie, if she was on the other side of this thicket, it would be over. When he reached the gap he slung the axe into the bushes and shouldered his way through, ripping aside branches until he stumbled out of the shrubbery.

James remembered Ellard only when the sheriff emerged from the laurel himself. He stepped in front of James, a scratch on his forehead. He brought a grim finger to his lips and James nodded. Dazed and out of breath, James followed Ellard on through a copse of poplars until he saw up ahead the clearing Beulah Kesterson had told Ellard about. He noticed Ellard’s hand hovering over the holster at his hip and wished for his own weapon. If he had been thinking straight he would have kept the axe. With each step closer to the clearing his daughter seemed more within his reach. He fought to bring his breathing under control, to walk with the same steadiness as the sheriff. Ellard searched the ground as they went for fresh-turned earth or perhaps footprints smaller than a man’s. After proceeding for several yards they entered what appeared to be a makeshift camp near the foot of a bluff draped in vines. There was a lantern hanging from a low bough, a lean-to fashioned from birch limbs and a tarp. James’s boots stuttered. Under the lean-to Amos was sitting on a milk crate, bent over a kettle and a smoldering cook fire. He lifted his face, looking up with bland expectation. He seemed unalarmed to have been discovered. James’s first urge was to run and take him by the throat but he saw lying not far from the kettle a rusted machete. He had to think. One mistake could cost him Gracie.

“Hello, Ellard,” Amos said, stirring the swill in his pot with a ladle. “I see you got here the hard way. But you wouldn’t have made it down the bluff in this rain. I nearly fell myself.”

“Hidee, Amos. I was hoping I wouldn’t be seeing you again.”

Amos smiled. “I didn’t mean for you to.”

“What are you doing out here?” Ellard asked.

“Nothing much,” Amos said.

“You know this place is fixing to be flooded?”

“That’s why I came back. I wanted to see it one more time before it’s gone.”

Ellard spat into the drifter’s fire. “You’re awful brave,” he said. “Or dumb.”

Amos blinked at Ellard in the dripping green shade. There was an almost preternatural stillness about him. “I appreciate it, but don’t concern yourself. I won’t let the water get me.”

“Somebody’s liable to get you for trespassing,” Ellard said.

Amos went back to tending his pot. “This land belongs to nobody now.”

“I guess the power company would disagree with you about that.”

Amos turned his attention to James. “Who did you bring with you?”

“This here’s James Dodson.”

“Do we know each other?” Amos asked.

James took the drifter in, his forearms where his shirtsleeves were rolled up crosshatched with cuts. Thin lashes, scabbing but fresh. “I’d say we know of each other,” he said.

Amos considered. “That’s a good way to put it. We all know of each other around here, don’t we?” He sipped from the battered ladle, sampling his dinner. “Are you men hungry?”

Ellard’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t come out here to eat.”

Amos stopped stirring. “What can I do for you then?”

“I came to have a talk with you. But I figure you won’t care if I take a look around first.” Ellard kept his eyes on Amos as he neared the fire and picked up a blown-down branch. He poked with the stick at the charred stones around the kettle, probably looking for signs of bone or tooth. The thought knotted James’s guts. When Ellard seemed satisfied there was nothing to be gleaned from the ashes he ducked under the plinking lean-to eave. After a moment James saw him prodding at a bundle tucked in one corner of the shelter with his foot, something wrapped in a piece of canvas. James held his breath. Ellard knelt and James heard the sheriff’s knees popping over the rain. He unwound the covering and let its contents fall out. It was the drifter’s bedroll, tied with a piece of twine. Ellard pulled the string to unbind it. Rolled inside were the implements a drifter carried. A tin plate, a cook pot, a frying pan. Ellard studied these provisions for a time then got up and walked back to the front of the lean-to with his hands on his hips.

Amos sat back on the milk crate. “What is it you want to talk about, Ellard?”