Bill Cheng - Southern Cross the Dog

All day and all night there were strange men coming and going from the guest rooms. Sometimes, when he could work up the nerve, he’d sit at the foot of the stairs and watch them as they passed. He’d study their faces and he’d wonder which, if any, had come for him. More than once, Miss Lucy had asked him what was wrong, but he would not tell her. He could not risk her finding out.

So he soldiered on with his weekly duties. On the first of the month, it was his job to go into town with an envelope of money and settle Miss Lucy’s accounts. It took hours sometimes. He was of a mind to rise early and get in before the rest of Bruce had even had their morning coffee. But Robert hadn’t slept well the night before and he didn’t leave the hotel until well into the afternoon. He walked down the lane, along the tall stalks of johnsongrass, his head crowded with buzzing. It was the first cool day in a long time, and the river air swept in from the south and with it, the warm heady musk of linden trees. The light was clean and clear, like after a storm, with the clouds swept off into the shoulders, leaving above him soft blue sky.

He arrived in Bruce and began with his rounds, first to the butcher, then the wigmaker, the dress shop, the locksmith — settling all Miss Lucy’s accounts for the previous month. The moonshiner he saved for last. He walked off the main drag toward the small brick building off Pontotoc Road where the air was harsh and chemical.

Robert always disliked visiting the shiner. There’d been a fire last year when one of the stills exploded and the man’s face had been burned into a smooth pink plaster. Robert paid the shiner for the previous month, then ordered six more cases of corn whiskey and rye on top of Miss Lucy’s usual. After the accident, the man had lost his vision to rotgut and bad jake so Robert counted his money out in singles, guiding the blind man’s trembling hands to the stack of bills. They were cold with flesh as smooth and slippery as an oyster. It took time for the man to thumb through each bill, murmuring the tally in his hoarse slow breath. Robert looked out the window. The sun would be setting soon.

ROBERT STARTED DOWN THE ROAD and it wasn’t till the dusk had passed into a deep black pitch that he realized it was not the road he’d come in on. Somewhere, along the way, the paths had forked and forked again, and now he was lost, tucked in the nook of anonymous country, where the tall loping forms of wisteria passed into the sky, and only the deep chatter of crickets marked the time. One foot in front of the other, he told himself. Just like that. All the way home. And at home the word caught and broke in his mouth, and he could not fight anymore against the wrenching in his gut. He doubled and he spasmed, and the sick rushed out in acid chokes.

For a moment he wanted nothing more than to be still.

There was the beat of blood in his face, the ragged breath, the whirl of insect wings passing in the dark. He braced himself by his knees. The sweat lay like a sheet on his body. He brought his head up to where he thought the road should be. Beyond he could see light birth out from the rise — a warm red halo that danced and stretched across the width of the road.

Robert straightened. There was drumming. A staccato rumble, and he knew that it came from the marching of horses. That the light was torch fire.

He began to run.

Something whizzed by his face and he sped faster. He heard the stones crashing in the dark — smashing through the hedge, beating into the dark road, spinning off trees. Somehow one of his shoes had slipped off. He could already feel the slick of blood pool around his toes. He bounded down to the bottom of the hill and threw himself into the bushes. Something cut him. The skin above his eye and his cheek throbbed. He tried to still his breath. Their light drew closer. He buried his breath into the dirt, puffing the loose soil from his nostrils. He could smell the sour of piss and it took a moment for him to realize it was his own. He shivered and pressed his mouth harder into the dirt as he waited for the riders to pass.

HE WAS EXHAUSTED BY THE time he found his way back to Beau-Miel. He could barely feel his limbs as he went out back and washed himself down under the hand pump. The water was cold but he scooped it over his face, let it run down his body. The cut on his foot throbbed dully. His mind was blank, empty. There was little it would hold on to. He scrubbed off the bits of dirt and grass that clung around his shins, dried off, and walked naked into the house. Inside the small jam cellar, he lay down on his cot and shut his eyes.

He dreamed of his brother — whole again, alive, without his rope-scarred neck and catgut eyes. They were on a shore together, and up the beach was his daddy and his mama calling out to them. They waved their arms, and when he woke, he felt the word again in his mouth. Home.

He got up and put on a fresh pair of trousers and a clean shirt. He stepped out into the empty kitchen. There was no one there. He looked out the window into the backyard and he realized he had slept through most of the day. Lunch had been served and the plates already washed down and put away.

He walked out into the main hall, then up the stairs until he found himself outside Hermalie’s room. He knocked twice and when she opened, he pushed past her into the room. She asked him what he wanted.

Nothing, he said.

He went to the window and pulled down on the gutters like a bar, raising himself up, one leg over, then the other. He half expected her to scream, but she didn’t.

Once he was over, he stood on the roof, straight and tall like a weathervane. No one would see him. There was a lump in his throat and he felt it catch. He sat down on the sloped shingles and looked out toward the town.

He stayed like that for hours. Come sunset, the dogwoods blazed and the sun set moody below the western hills. Out toward Bruce, rows and rows of gabled roofs held the last of the greasy sunlight. He was alone. No mother. No father. He was alone. At the eastern edge of town, he could see the flamekeepers already starting work, moving from lamp to lamp, their torches like bright pinpricks. He shut his eyes and tried to picture the lamp cases, the gas catching and brightening. His face was warm. And above the lamps, in his mind’s eye, there were cables arcing, black and dead, hanging slack from their telegraph poles — untapped, alone. Soon they would go miles, hissing along roadways and cornfields, over riverbanks and rail lines, chasing and chasing, through flat swaths of open country, carrying in their coils heat and light. There! Lines flying over kudzu and magnolia and lantana, over houses and churchyards and markets. Up they go in Mayersville, Jug’s Corner, Crookhand Farm, all through the state, wood struts thrust like crucifixes, high above the river swell and levee walls and flood camps — he felt himself shaking, the slick running down his eyes and nose and cheeks — the tract of dirt where he was born, where his brother lay, bone and ash and worms, the cables crossing and recrossing, a giant hex in the sky, bearing down like a net on the souls beneath it, him and his daddy and his mama and his brother, on Dora and Hermalie and Miss Lucy, down and down. He felt himself standing. His lungs were full of fire, heaving for air. Something snapped under him and he felt himself turning backward. Did he mean to jump? He was not sure. The shingles moved under his feet and all at once there was air.