Bill Cheng - Southern Cross the Dog

There was a book of maps in Miss Lucy’s parlor, and there in its pages he could see the stretch of the Mississippi River, a jagged blue vein from Minnesota to New Orleans, opening south, spilling into the ocean. And off the blue snaking line lay the postage-stamp-sized borders of Issaquena County. On the page, it was only inches inland from Bruce, and not the hundred-some-odd miles of ravaged country he’d traveled. With his thumb, he traced the roads to the hatched lines where his home may have been. It was no use. He couldn’t match the map to the country in his head, the anonymous roads, the bending land.

In Miss Lucy’s book, there was no mark for Crookhand Farm or the twisting mule paths that striated the wilderness, or the dusty straight where he and his brother used to race. Nowhere was the grove of tupelos, and the heady perfume that, in the summer, would wash out from its depths.

They were gone. There was nothing.

The door creaked, and he dropped the book. The new girl stood in the doorway.

She was beautiful. Smooth tawny skin. Large daring eyes.

You the wash boy? she asked him.

Her dressing gown wasn’t sized near enough for her. Her collar plunged and when she swallowed, Robert could see the cords of her neck tighten. She came into the room, barefoot, and he realized she’d just washed. Her hair was matted down and tied back. The gown was wet and clung to her body in places.

Miss Lucy told me you had my dress.

Robert stared at her. Her voice was sticky and had the dull ring of tin in it.

Well, do you or don’t you? That’s a very important dress. It was from the king of Spain. What you do with it?

Robert looked around him.

Speak up, now!

I—

You didn’t use soap, did you?

That—

The girl let out a groan.

You can’t wash my dress like it was just some beat-up pillowcase. Don’t they teach you nothing ’round here?

The—

Well, where is it?

In the yard, Robert managed to say.

She groaned again and grabbed his arm. Come on then. Show me.

She near jerked his arm from the socket, dragging him through the halls. The girl was as tall as Robert, her long legs taking the floor in wide strides. Robert found himself stumbling behind to keep pace. He watched her shoulders flex underneath her blouse, the line of her back and neck diving into her gown. He directed her into the kitchen, and they burst out into the yard.

She found her dress laid out on the grass.

Of all places! she cried.

I wasn’t going to just leave it like that…

Oh, so the boy can talk can he?

She shook the dress open.

Look at this!

She held it up. There were brown spots all down the front.

Let me see, Robert said.

He took the dress and began rubbing at the blob of rust. It wouldn’t come off.

My favorite dress! I swear, you people got your head screwed on wrong!

Robert started to speak, but she snatched the dress from his hands and flung it across the yard. Robert watched after her, her fists tight to her side, stamping back to the house. Robert picked up the dress, looked again at the stain. He touched it gently at the hip. Then the back. He spread the dress neatly and laid it out under the sun. Then he took his rinse bucket to the pump and went on with the day’s wash.

AFTER HE FINISHED WITH THE wash, Robert did the ironing, watered the garden, swept out the stoop. At lunch, he took a little bread, then went straight to dusting out the parlor. All day the women jawed on about the new girl, Hermalie — how Miss Lucy had put her up in the good room on the top floor, how she gave her a Chinese fan and her Portuguese chest — how Lucy was grooming her. They told stories. She was Miss Lucy’s daughter, sent east then come back to run the hotel, that she loved up the governor and now she had to wear her apron high. That she smoked and drank and raised hell, that she was run out of Florida for her deviling, that even the state militia couldn’t keep her knees shut.

The whole day, the women would stop outside Miss Lucy’s room and put their ear up to the door. Then they’d scuttle off with some new gossip burning a hole in their mouths.

Come full dark, Robert locked up the house, went into the kitchen, then down into the jam cellar. He lay on his cot and pulled his blanket over his head. His ears rang, and with his eyes closed, the room felt like a bell — shimmering, sonorous.

He slept uneasily, waking up in a sweat. His jaw was numb and he realized the smooth black stone was in his mouth. He spit it into his palm and dried it on his pajama leg. Then he rousted himself out of bed and lit a candle.

The girl’s dress was sitting on his shelf. He took it upstairs into the kitchen and spread it flat on the table. The stain had gotten worse — little brown islands stretched across the middle. He rinsed it again in a basin of cold water, plunging it and replunging it. It didn’t do any good. He went into the larder for a lemon, peeled the rind and squeezed the juices over the stain, something he’d seen his mother do, before the flood — before Billy.

He massaged it into the cloth, grinding his knuckles into the fabric. He held it up to the candle. The stain seemed lighter somehow, but he was too tired to be sure. He dunked the dress again, squeezing in another lemon. His hand began to sting and he ignored it, working on, kneading his flesh against the cloth, his fingers bright with pain, on and on into the still-dark morning.

It was Miss Lucy who taught him his letters — how to read and write — and every week he’d send letters all through the state, to courthouses and newspapers and homeless shelters and police stations. He’d write page after page, sending for information on Ellis or Etta Chatham. He remembered that night as his father led him out across the field, Miss Lucy waiting beside the open carriage. She took his hand. Why don’t you come riding with me, Robert? she’d said and it struck him as odd that she knew his name. He turned and already his daddy was starting back across the field, clutching his head, speeding across the dewy grass.

He was not sure when he decided, but at some point he knew that Ellis and Etta were dead. Five years had already passed, and he sprouted like a weed, tall and awkward, while the features of his face smoothed into a serious and sullen mask. When he passed by a mirror, it shocked him sometimes, how much he looked like his brother. The nose was flatter and the mouth a little less wide, but it was there in the eyes and cheeks and the small flare in the nostrils.

IN THE BEGINNING IT HAD been difficult. Miss Lucy had tried her best to explain — how his daddy thought he’d be better off here, with a roof over his head and a hot meal every day with plenty of people to look after him. For weeks, Robert cried himself to sleep. Miss Lucy would sit beside him stroking his back, and his muscles tensed against this woman’s touch. This woman who was not his mother, who was not anyone he had ever seen before.

But with time and work, the hot burning in the pit of his gut passed into a dull throb. He buried himself in the duties of the house — sweeping and cleaning and running errands for Miss Lucy’s girls. He came to like Miss Lucy and even some of the other girls at Beau-Miel. He liked seeing them day in and day out, listening to their idle talk and dirty jokes, smoking their fancy cigarettes, chewing their food with their mouths open; the bickering and fussing and making up. It gave a rhythm to the days, the months, the years, smoothing out the rougher edges.

If he let his mind wander, he could almost feel at ease. He would be in Miss Lucy’s parlor, nestled in that big red armchair of hers with the fire going, bone tired and head buzzing, and he’d coast along the gray moonless space between wake and sleep. He’d hear Miss Lucy at her desk with her ledger books and her fountain pen, the warm hum in her throat. It was not home but it was something.