Bill Cheng - Southern Cross the Dog

The gall of that whore, Duke fumed. And after he had laid so bare his feelings! His face was burning. She had played upon his weaknesses. Duke laughed sadly at how he had allowed himself to be fooled. Schemes and lies were a part of Lucy’s trade and she’d had years to hone her craft. She’d made this place a trap for men.

He felt the liquor spill through his fingers.

He would’ve shared his life with her. He would’ve offered her greatness. He heaved a sigh.

Now, instead, he would have to teach her humility.

He ended his trail at the kitchen, spilling out the final jug on the tiles and mopping it with his shoes. He took the matchbook with Eli’s name from his breast pocket and lit the cover. The Negro’s name burned quickly in a fang of heat and light. He bent the cardboard down toward the greasy pool. All at once his arm erupted in a hot white sleeve, spreading across his shirt. Duke dashed out into the rain and smashed his burning body against the grass.

The fire spilled in eager sheets across the floor, up the stairs. Bright liquid white, massing and suffusing through the wood. Piece by piece, the hotel would come apart. The glass would burst and the pipes would buckle. Smoke and flame would suck down into the air-filled rooms.

BUT NOW IN HERMALIE’S ROOM, Robert lay in the cool dark. Hermalie’s head rested on his chest, and he moved his hand gently across her crown. Between his legs he was sore and throbbing. His heart pulsed strong and small inside his chest, electric with some unnamed anticipation.

He held the pouch absently between his fingers.

I did this, he found himself saying.

Yes, you did, Hermalie said.

She drew a shape above his breast.

I like it here, she said.

He put his arm around her, placing his warm hand on her bare shoulder.

He liked it too, he thought but would not tell her, suspicious that his words would somehow break this spell.

She burrowed into his side.

Don’t you love when it rains? Makes me think of home.

He did not say anything.

For the time being, he did not see the flames spike and stretch outside her door. Soon the house would fill with smoke and screaming. The eaves would crash, puffing cinders into the rain-filled night. And Lucy and her guests would stand under the storm to watch the smoke rear through the wood-bone frame, oozing through the bursting windows.

But here, in this moment, he could still feel the life inside Hermalie. The blood moving warm beneath her skin, into her bird heart. Breath filling then emptying.

Do you hear that? he asked.

And she moved her head slightly. Hear what?

Robert sat himself up, leaned toward the strange pull in the air.

And behind the crunch and pop of cracking timber, the druggist’s wife would stand on her stoop and laugh and hoot and smash her palms, and her dog would howl and drag its chain — as the whorehouse of Bruce was damned to ash.

But he sat up now, and he listened. There it was, inside the walls. Somewhere someone was singing — my baby’s gone, my baby’s gone.

During those first days when the water was up to the roof, Uncle Reb slept on his deering rifle to keep the wet from the powder. He wrapped it up in our only quilt while me and Nan Peoria shivered and cried, bedded down with nothing but dew and prayer and flood spray. He told Nan Peoria, This here rifle is keeping us from the mercy of God. Then he sighted a bird far upstream and dropped it from the sky. When it floated down to our eaves, there was hardly any meat on it at all.

About a week in, Nan Peoria got the pneumonia and when she died, Uncle Reb just rolled her off her spot, didn’t say no good words or nothing, and that’s how come I remember what he said about that rifle. She rolled away kind of stiff, then the current took her, and that was all there was to Nan Peoria.

After Nan died, I huddled up with Uncle Reb at night, which was all right because he had that quilt, excepting that that old rifle was lumpy and sticking at me in places, and some nights Uncle Reb would press into me and whisper Dora, Dora, and when morning come, he’d tell me it was just my fool dreaming.

THE FIRST MORNING I’D SEEN the boat, the fog was still high. Something was out in the water, sliding slow toward the eaves of the Waller farm. I shook at Uncle Reb but he swatted me away. There was a low thump, and that’s when I knew it was a boat hitting up against driftwood. I heard a man’s voice. He was singing.

Uncle Reb, I whispered. Wake up. There’s somebody out there.

He wouldn’t rise till I pinched him. He stood up and flung the quilt off his rifle. He leaned it toward where I was pointing, swinging the mouth of the thing left and right. The water steamed a little, and a breeze swirled the fog around. There was nothing.

God almighty, he groaned.

We should’ve said Amen Jesus. We should’ve said good words over her.

Uncle Reb stretched up, scratched himself with one hand, then went to the edge of the roof to make water. Turn your head, he told me. When it was okay to look, there were bubbles already running downstream. He knelt down and checked the waterline.

Dropped an inch overnight, he said.

There was something, I told him. It was here then it was gone. I heard singing.

Go back to sleep, he said. Then he spit over the side and stretched out on the quilt. He wrapped the gun up and draped his arm over the stock. Then like nothing, he started snoring.

THERE WASN’T MUCH TO DO during the day except be hungry and be sad. We hadn’t saved much — just some clothes, Nan Peoria’s Bible, and my Sally doll, which Uncle Reb threw into the water and ruined on account of his having a temper. What food we had, we couldn’t mete out more than a week. So I read Nan Peoria’s Bible and I pretended it was Bible times and we was on what they call an ark, and every bird I seen I pretended they was doves till Uncle Reb sighted one up and felled her. And so I didn’t play Bible after that.

SOMETIMES, WHEN UNCLE REB WENT out on one of his swims, I’d put my ear up against the roof tiles, and the house would shift and mumble and groan on like some big belly. I tried to imagine maybe there was fish in there, swimming around my things, little silver ones flapping, going in and out of the cabinets with those tiny yellow eyes, always looking at everything but never got nothing to say. And I thought maybe when the water went down, Nan Peoria could fry them up with a skillet, and Uncle Reb would eat the heads like he showed me one time, eyes and brains and everything.

I ASKED UNCLE REB WHAT happened to Nan Peoria and Uncle Reb said she died.

And I said how come she died.

And he said because the pneumonia got her.

And I said well, where the pneumonia getting her to?

And Uncle Reb laughed and said, Down the Gulf of Mexico.

But that ain’t what Nan told me.

SOMETIMES WHEN I GET MY dreams, Nan Peoria is putting her hands on my shoulder. They’re warm and I can smell that sweet oil she wears before she goes to bed. And I try to turn over and get a look but only she don’t let me. She says to me, You can’t wake up yet.