Bill Cheng - Southern Cross the Dog

Duke saw the man and he realized what it was he was after. Proof. Evidence that all a man was allotted in this world was what he could steal or scam or hard-bully.

He would carve out his piece of this life, leave a mark that ran harsh and deep and jagged. He would loose this Elijah Cutter out into the world, have him sing and dance and fool. He would be rich, yes, but that was not his main concern.

He wanted what was his.

He learned in time that there was an Elijah P. Cutter doing time in Wayne County. Duke tracked him down to the prison farm, where he found a scarecrow of a man in a secondhand suit. Eli was shy, Duke remembered, as he drove him out into the field. Quiet and unsure of himself.

But he set him down in front of the organ. He watched the man roll up his sleeves and unbutton his jacket. Eli rested his hands against the keys, his body bending forward as if magnetized. Duke heard the roaring chord and all at once, the man had become transformed. He watched the hands move, the sound erupting fast and full and driving.

Duke smiled.

He had done it at last.

DUKE REACHED BENEATH HIS SEAT and nipped from the flask. He followed the canal, the engine humming in his ears. The shantytown spread across an acre of raw black earth along the water’s banks. He made his way down toward the sheet-iron houses and canvas canopies. The fire pits were still smoldering from the night before, and all through the camp, he could see braids of smoke washing skyward. Duke cut his engine and a group of hoboes swarmed around the car. They crushed against him as he climbed out, tugging on his sleeves and the hem of his coat. They were lice-ridden and filthy and he pushed past their open palms.

When they saw he had no money to give, they dispersed back to their business.

A small black boy was squatting in the dirt, busying himself with digging up the earth with his hands. The boy glanced up and Duke reached into his pocket. The boy’s face shifted. Duke made his way over and squatted down beside him. He showed the boy the crumpled bill.

I’m looking for salvage, he said.

The boy pointed down the lane and Duke slipped the dollar into the boy’s small dirty hands.

Good boy, he said.

Toward the water, he could hear the nag of pelicans as they hunted along the garbaged shore. Along the shanties, shadows shifted behind the sheets of corrugated iron. They were watching him, nervous and cagey from hunger.

He came to a patchwork of canvas canopies bound and staked into the ground. The salvage man, a filthy-looking Negro, was sitting on his prize, a dirty old settee. The man was old, his hair gone from his head and a grizzled beard knotted into hard mash-flecked kinks. He was smoking a pipe and resting his right foot on top of a soap crate. There were sores on his shins and ankles, and the toes of his left foot had gnarled together into a palsied club.

Behind him were the junk piles, a crumbling structure of pillaged miscellany stolen and trawled from the surrounding country. Taken as a whole, the heap was a junkman’s trove — gray and black and rust-colored treasures. Duke let his eyes narrow, saw the individual pieces caught under the weight of the rest. There were jewelry, picture frames, old books and clothes — the strange intimate effects of people he would never know. A woman’s comb. A rusty shaving razor. The spiral of a watch chain.

I’m looking for something, Duke said to the man.

That so?

There was disdain in the man’s voice. The man eased forward in his seat. From behind one of the piles came two small children — a boy and a girl. They were barefoot and poorly dressed in their sackcloth clothes. The girl was chasing after the boy, swerving around the furniture piles. There was a crash and the noise of crying. The boy had knocked over one of the piles and was now sitting in the dirt whimpering while the girl looked on.

Eunice! the man barked.

At the sound of his voice, a woman materialized from within the tent. She was tall and slim with small firm breasts and hips that belled out like a tulip. Duke stared at her. Her inky hair lay heaped in a wet mop atop her head. She let her eyes fall on Duke and then to the man.

Yes, Pa?

She spoke slow, calm, watching Duke as he watched her, her large doe eyes opening and closing. A heat rose in his throat. He let his gaze travel across her skin, young, nubile, vital, the sun trapped under the small hairs of her arms, the thin band of dewy sweat on her lip. Duke coughed to hide his excitement.

Control those young’uns, the man said.

Yes, Pa.

She walked off and gathered up the boy.

Is that your family? Duke asked.

The man leaned forward and narrowed his eyes.

What’s your business here, stranger?

Duke told him what he was looking for — a piano or some such instrument. He was ready to pay, he assured the man. The man listened and nodded.

This way, he said.

He hefted himself up, supporting himself on the crook of Duke’s elbow. One leg was shorter than the other and he swung it as he walked, rolling out his hips and shoulders. They walked out among the heaps to where the furniture had been freshly salvaged, still stinking from the mud beds it’d been trawled from. From across the lot, he could see the woman Eunice cradling the boy in her arms, whispering into his ear.

The man guided him through the stacks. He was talking, going on and on about the history of each piece, how it’d belonged to someone way far back in his family, but Duke had not been listening. He wished he had brought his flask along with him. His throat was dry and he was finding it hard to concentrate.

They came at last to a large cabinet underneath a canvas sheet. The man pulled off the sheet.

It looked like a piano but smaller, with a skeleton of reeds set across its back. He ran his finger along the edge of the body, tracing the warp of the wood. Duke lifted up the fall board and pressed a key. Sure enough, a note thunked inside the thin wood body. Duke looked at the man and the man shrugged, wiping his nose across the back of his arm. Duke bent down and studied the row of reeds, picking at the small brass teeth along its spokes.

They settled on a price and the man helped him rope the beast across the top of his car. When they finished, he shook the man’s hand, and he reached underneath his seat for his flask. You have a cup? he asked the man. The man went off and returned with a small tin cup. Duke poured the rye and he toasted to the man’s health. The man said nothing, swallowing, then returning to his tent. Duke sat in his car, watching him limp up the lane. He tried to catch a glimpse of the woman Eunice, but he did not see her.

As he drove he could feel the new weight — the strain on the axles, the strange friction on his tires. On his way to Bruce, he managed to turn off the wrong road and got himself lost. It took forever to reorient himself. He managed to find the canal again and continued along its straight.

A few miles outside of Bruce, Duke finished off the rye and he pulled off the road. His head was buzzing and a warm feeling came over him. He trudged across to the canal edge and unzipped his trousers. It was evening, and he felt triumphant. The air was cooling and the stars were starting to make their show. His penis was in his hand, raw and sticky. He thought of Eunice. He thought of Eli. The rest came easy.

Robert told no one about that afternoon at the creek. He woke every morning with a hole punched through his chest. He could almost feel it, right there, the air escaping across the nickel-shaped opening beneath his collar. He was excitable and jumpy and he could not set his mind to any one task. Loud noises startled him. A knock on the door. A car on the street. Everywhere he went he felt he was being watched. In town, running errands for Miss Lucy. At the grocer’s or the dressmaker’s or a quick run across the street to Percy’s Pharmacy for polish or wax or tablets. That uneasiness followed him inside, into the halls and parlors and guest rooms of the hotel. Even alone in his room, he’d wake up in the middle of the night, his sheets twisted around his legs. He would stare out into the dark, certain that someone was there.