Bill Cheng - Southern Cross the Dog

HE CAME TO AND THE pain came slow, sleep lifting like the tide going out. It prickled at the edges somewhere under skin and meat. Already Robert forgot his dream — like it’d fallen out of his head, and in that skull-space something was hot and pulsing. Piece by piece, the world returned, first his body, skin and eyes, mouth, hands. Then his name. He opened his eyes, and his brain turned over. He let out a moan and shut his eyes again. He tried to lift the blanket over his face, but his arms were too weak.

How you feeling?

Robert tried to turn but his ribs sent up a flare of pain.

He wanted to ask where he was but already his eyes were adjusting. The mildewed ceiling. A vein of daylight played against the wall. He could hear the curtain fluttering on the other side of the parlor.

I fell. I remember I fell.

The voice laughed.

Robert lifted his head up and he saw the man named Eli sitting on Miss Lucy’s desk. He was in his shirtsleeves, the front of his shirt drenched in sweat. Next to him was a pitcher.

The man filled up a glass and brought it to him. He sat down on the arm of the couch.

My arms hurt, Robert said.

All right, the man said.

Robert felt the damp sheet lift off his body. His shirt was gone and his chest was wrapped in gauze. Sitting above his heart was a small flannel pouch. He tried to bring his hand up to it, but it still hurt too much.

What’s this?

The man tilted the glass into Robert’s mouth. Robert swallowed the cool water.

I want to tell you two stories. Just sit quiet and listen.

Once upon a time, God told the Devil, Devil, you been fooling around this place too long. I’m tired of you going all over Creation, causing trouble, making men drink and tell lies and chase women. So I made you this place, what they call Hell, and that’s going to be your place and you do what you want there and leave my stuff alone. And the Devil said, Well, I don’t know. Why don’t you take me around and we’ll have a look. So God took the Devil down to that place, and he showed him where he’d be staying. And it was all dark and full of fire and there wasn’t nobody around except the most wicked of folks. But the Devil, he’s no fool, he says, That don’t look too good to me. I reckon I’ll keep doing what I been doing. Then God said, Too bad, and wrassled him down, and he got him by his tail and he says into his ears, There’s only one boss around here. This is my show so out you go! And that’s how come the Devil come to live where he lives, and God lives where he lives. And they’ve been splitting souls between them ever since, like playing cards, and there is and ever will be but one boss, forever and ever amen.

Now the other story goes like this. It goes that there ain’t no God and there ain’t no Devil, just a lot of Bad blowing through this world. Sometimes that Bad will come up on people, find them out like a length of lightning. It fix its eye on you and dog you worse than God or the Devil or just about anybody. It rides around with you, hanging from your neck there, all through your days. It tell you lies to make you mad, or tie up your feet and make you fall. A kind of Bad that don’t ever come off. You understand?

Near everybody’s got a devil. Some folks got two or three. That one in that bag? That one is yours.

The man was silent for a time.

You don’t understand.

No, Robert managed to say. The boy was wheezing. Little beads of sweat had formed on the faint hairs above his lip.

You are bad crossed.

Crossed?

Crossed worse than the blackest jinx. Bad and trouble is set to follow you through this earth, you understand me?

He patted the pouch with two fingers.

And this’ll keep you safe.

He produced an Indian head penny from between his fingers.

Open your mouth, he said.

Eli placed the penny on his tongue, and Robert could taste the warm metal. Eli untied the pouch. He widened the opening large enough for Robert to peer down. There was salt in the bottom and what looked like a small walnut.

Spit, he said.

Robert spat out the penny, sending with it a glob of saliva, and Eli cinched up the pouch.

You see this little string here? You put it around your neck like this, and you don’t let anyone ever take it away from you. Don’t ever take your devil out, because he might not let you put him back in. Don’t lose it, don’t show it to nobody, and don’t you play around with it. This is your devil, see. You’re tied to it and it’s tied to you. And it don’t make too much sense now, but trust me, Robert, you gonna need each other.

After some silence, the man went out the door, closing it gently behind him. Robert closed his eyes again and let his head settle into the pillow. He worked his arms through the pain and brought his hand over the pouch. He ran his thumb along the stitching. He squeezed the soft flannel and felt the contours of its insides rise to his fingers.

During his stay in Bruce, Eli burned his money on drink and women — fifteen for a girl and three for a handle of gin. All night, he barrelhoused at the jukes, scamming cards and doing the Texas Tommy Swing. He came to be a mainstay at the hotel. There were times he’d get drunk and hire out two big-boned girls and have one on each side when it came time to help him up those stairs and into bed. He liked it at Beau-Miel. The sheets were soft and the girls were warm, and when he woke up, two or three in the afternoon with the weight of God stomping on his head, there was always a little cold breakfast set aside for him by the hotel’s proprietress.

Miss Lucy was a sexy woman — plump and heavy bosomed with a voice that rang deep and sooty. In her eyes he could still see the traces of her younger self — the rude arrogance sparking in those warm honeyed halos. Eli would lose days in her establishment. He’d drink from her stores of bootleg liquor and watch the world dissolve into a blur of sheets and sweat and grabbing limbs.

There were mornings he’d wake up still submerged in a cloud of whiskey and sex and the day would pass easy like a nail traveling a groove. He was outside of himself, looking down. He could see the strings. He could see the hammers as they struck, every man and woman and child a note waiting to be sounded.

In the evenings he’d go out onto the porch and have a cigarette in the open air.

It was good here. Sitting alone on the stoop, the sun going down. He’d let the ember crawl to his fingers as he watched the light die above the horizon. Some evenings, he’d stay and witness the stars gathering in the wide black sea. He’d look up at their mute light and at times, he’d feel nothing. Just cool air, the sear of smoke in his lungs. He could almost feel free.

A low and lonesome mood would descend upon him and inevitably, his mind would track back through the years to the levee camp, to Homer Teague, and his sister, Emaline. In the past, he would touch these thoughts and his gorge would rise and an all-consuming rage would overtake him. But now he felt nothing. No regret nor longing nor sadness. It was something that had happened and that was all.

How capricious this place, this world. She’d been alive and now she was dead and no flannel pouch could change that. He recognized that at any given moment, the world could turn itself on its head — all could be taken, all could be returned. One moment we are free, and alive and full of blood, and in the next we are cold. Inert. Passing into history.

What were the rules?

He wasn’t sure anymore. He could not be certain that he ever knew.

He looked up. A bad moon. An evil wind. Down the road were two headlights slicing apart the dark air.

Soon there would be a reckoning.

Duke had not been back to Beau-Miel in years. The hotel stood in his memory as a place of pause and peace — a temple where he could seek respite in between the long months of crossing and recrossing this country. He would arrive on Lucy’s porch, his head full of dust and road, the ends of his fingers tingling. Everyone needed something to go back to. A hot meal. A bed for the night. It was like coming home.