Bill Cheng - Southern Cross the Dog

IT WAS EVENING THE SECOND time I heard the boat. We’d both of us heard it, moving across the water, a man’s voice humming. Uncle Reb was already up. A mist rolled thickly across the water plain. He stared out toward the neighbor’s house, his rifle against his leg, his fingers kind of loose in his grip, like it was a hand he was holding. Flies buzzed all around his ears and his eyes, but he didn’t swat them. He was just watching.

There were rings in the water widening out toward us, and I could hear the spilling coming off a pair of oars. It slapped soft, and bumped the boat and spilled again, moving closer and closer. Uncle Reb put the rifle up against his shoulder.

Ho there, he called out.

His shoulder jumped and there was smoke.

Ho, he said again.

Whoa, a voice answered.

Who’s that?

The man drifted out from the mist, his hands up so his long coat came down almost like a pair of wings.

Easy, brother. I bring peace.

The man turned a little sideways, and there were little canvas bundles on the other end of the boat.

You come on easy there, Captain, Uncle Reb said with his rifle still up. That your salvage?

It’s salvation, brother.

Uncle Reb let the rifle down an inch so he could look over the man’s goods.

Bring it over here, Uncle Reb said.

The man paddled over till the boat bumped up against our roof. Uncle Reb put one foot down on the boat floor, anchoring it.

All right now, I’m the one with this here rifle. Just you remember that.

From your mouth to God’s ear, the man said.

Now get on over to that far end there.

The man moved to the back of the boat, his arms still raised. Uncle Reb went on board, aiming his rifle to the man’s chest. Balancing the gun with one arm, Uncle Reb started untying the bundles with one hand and emptying them on the boat floor. There were cans mostly, but also some bread and what was maybe jugs of clean water. The man looked at me and winked.

When Uncle Reb was bent down low, reaching one arm deep into a gunnysack, the man kicked the side of the hull, rocking it. Uncle Reb near fell over excepting that he put one hand down on the boat edge. And quick as anything, there was a pistol in Uncle Reb’s face.

The man said, Easy, brother, easy.

The rifle passed out of Uncle Reb’s hand and lay flat on the boat floor. Uncle Reb righted himself.

The man said, Now let say you invite me aboard your lovely home.

HE MOORED TO OUR ROOF with a length of rope, and when he crossed, he bowed deep and said his name was Pat Stuckey. He went through our things, but there wasn’t much to begin with. Uncle Reb’s box of shells and a tin of rolling tobacco. He flipped through Nan Peoria’s Bible, holding the cover open and rattling the pages. Uncle Reb sat down beside me, his arms crossed over his knees, not looking at neither Stuckey nor me.

Roll it, he said to Uncle Reb, handing him the tobacco.

Paper?

Use the book.

Uncle Reb tore a page cleanly from Nan’s Bible and started to roll. I bit my tongue.

Stuckey took a match from his breast pocket and lit the hand-rolled. He drew on it, then passed it over to Uncle Reb.

What’re you going to do with us? Uncle Reb said.

They sat together cross-legged on the quilt.

Haven’t puzzled that out yet.

COME SUNDOWN, IT DIDN’T LOOK like Stuckey was going to quit us. He took a coffee can from inside his jacket and set it down on our quilt. He matted the bottom with a fist of dry peat. Then he took Nan Peoria’s Bible and started tearing up pages, crushing them down into the can bottom.

You can’t do that, I said.

Uncle Reb hushed me.

Now how do you figure on that, miss?

You can’t use those. Those are the Good Words.

Uncle Reb ripped up a few more pages, then took a match to them. Stuckey took a small gunnysack from his boat and drew up two skinned rabbits. He cut a slice with his knife, then laid a strip out on the flat of the blade.

He held the flat over the can.

Meat commendeth us not to God. For neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither are we the worse.

The can smoked and a tongue of flame licked up and out toward the blade. The fat started dripping down the edge. We hadn’t eaten in days except maybe the heel of some stale bread. I couldn’t remember the last time I had meat. It sizzled on the knife blade, sweetening the air. Something pinched at my stomach. Uncle Reb stared at it, his eyes wide, his mouth pooling up with his spit.

When it was all cooked up, Stuckey held the knife out to me.

Careful, it’s hot, he said.

No, thank you, I said.

Stuckey smiled. He held the blade to Uncle Reb. Uncle Reb didn’t waste no time; he plucked up the meat and put it in his mouth. It steamed out of his mouth, it was so hot. He sucked his fingers and his eyes watered and Stuckey laughed. Stuckey cut up another strip and started cooking, and Uncle Reb and Stuckey went on like that all night, feeding my uncle on little bits of rabbit, so’s that my stomach was fussing me all night and come morning, there wasn’t nothing left but a pile of bones and two little rabbit heads.

NAN SAID, WAKE UP, AND I did.

Then Uncle Reb said, How much?

And Stuckey said, How much for what?

You take a man’s livelihood, you’re taking the whole man.

I pretended I was still asleep. There was a long quiet, just the water babbling all around, and there was a hawk screaming about something. The dew was cold on my skin.

Then Uncle Reb said, The girl. How much you give for the girl?

And that’s how Uncle Reb got his rifle back.

STUCKEY ROWED I DON’T KNOW for how long, over places he told me what used to be Hollandale and Rolling Fork and Silver City. There wasn’t nothing left but a sheet of water. Little crosses stuck out where the churches were, and little roof islands, empty except for maybe a blanket here or bits of straw there. There was something under the water by the penny cinema in Silver City, all cloudy and covered in what looked like little yellow hairs, I couldn’t make out what.

Where are we going? I asked.

Your new home.

We went on and on, till there wasn’t no town at all, no houses or building or nothing — just bits of treetop sticking out with the leaves all stripped. By dusk, we were drifting toward a forest of blackgum. Weeds and roots scraped the boat bottom as we came into the shallows. We found ourselves in a great swamp. The gums came up like bars over the mossy water. Stuckey brought the oars in and steered us through by hand, managing us forward through the marsh grass.

There were bits of mirror nailed to the trees.

What’re those for?

Keeps away the ghosts, he said. Ghosts don’t like mirrors. Can’t stand the sight of them.

And I didn’t say anything more after that.

WE STOPPED WHERE THE GROUND was soft and flooded. Up above, branches blocked out the sky. The air was hot and still. Nothing moved. Stuckey dragged the boat up a mud bank and tied it off.

Rest of the way we go by foot, he said.

The water came up to my ankles. Stuckey made me carry one of the smaller satchels and he shouldered up the rest.

Don’t dawdle, he said. We don’t want to get stuck here come nightfall.

He marched ahead. The long tail of his coat floated behind him as he pushed across the swamp, a cloud of mud rising around his boots.

We’d gone some time before it began to darken. My toes were numb in the water. There was screaming coming from the trees. We looked up and saw a line of crows flying away from where we were heading. Stuckey started singing: Old black crow, old black crow, did the farmer pluck where your feathers don’t grow.