Bill Cheng - Southern Cross the Dog

I started to go to him, but he put his hand up.

I know what you’ve been doing, he said.

What?

What were you thinking?

He reached into his coat and showed me. The little bits of mirror with the mud still on it.

You took them!

You don’t think Stuckey is going to notice? For Christ’s sake!

Then I cuffed him across his mouth.

Don’t say that! You better put those back, I told him. Or else Nan is going to — and he — he—

What?

Put them back! Put them back, please please please…

Dora, you have to leave with me. He’s going to notice what you done. Stuckey’s going to notice. You don’t know him. You don’t know what he’s like. I cleaned them near as I could, but—

He had cleaned them! I flew at him, beating at his chest with my fists. The chickens got all fussed up and started going every which way — flapping around, air full of feathers.

What did you do! What did you do!

Dora, calm down. Calm down.

No no no no no. You’re supposed to black the mirrors. I need to black the mirrors. What did you do!

I started crying and I kept beating on him with my fists.

What! What’s wrong?

You ruined it! You ruined it! Get out! Get out!

Dora, please. You have to come with me. It’s not safe.

Get out! I started screaming.

He tried to quiet me down, but it wouldn’t do no good so finally he left. He crawled out and went under the fence, then he was gone. There were little bits of mirror on the floor and I gathered it up and I kept crying and crying, and the chickens were all fussing around me and I had to knock them away and I didn’t feel bad about it or nothing, I could’ve knocked every last one of them.

By the time I went back into the house, Stuckey was in the living room. His shirt was off and the sweat ran down in streaks. There were gashes all on his side and his back and his stomach, some of it already skinned over, but some of it pink and oozing a little. He looked at me sleepy eyed and I tried not to show anything.

You were feeding the chickens for a long time, he said.

Then he looked hard at me, turned around, then went back into his room. And I wasn’t sure if I saw what I saw, with his eyes all droopy the way it was and me not really wanting to look into them anyway, but maybe his eyes flicked and maybe it was down and to the left, at the one wool gray glove still holding my hand.

THAT NIGHT HE CAME INTO my room and said that he was hungry. It was full dark, and there was only his voice — Dora, I’m hungry, he said. I need to eat. I need to be fed.

And I told him that I’d make him something.

And he said, I’m hungry. I am starved body and soul.

And then he was on me and I could taste the bitter in his mouth. And Nan said, No, and I said, Don’t, but then there was me and the sharp and the hot and he tore me. And I said, Please, and then it was, but then it was, and I said, Please please please, and my jaw would not make the no no and Nan would not say no no and then the mattress was gone and there was the wall and the slats through the boards, and out beyond it, the full dark, trees and swamp and river, and then Nan said, Look, and I would not Look, and Nan said, Look, but I could not would not, and it went through me, and there was not skin enough to hide my eyes and air enough to heavy my scream but there she was standing out in the blackgum, holding under the bits of mirrors that I did not black. Nan Peoria in the moonglow. And she would not could not look at me. And in my head I saw the trees and I saw the glass looking back at the not-looking, and she would not speak and I said I tried and please and please but she would not, held there in the blackgum, held under bits of glass, not speaking.

After that night, Stuckey put the Spirit in me. He knelt naked out in the open air, his breath steaming through his clapped hands. And he said Lord Lord, and the clouds doughed over in a purple roll, no moon no stars, only the Spirit spooling in my gut, the brass of it in my mouth. It hummed and cut. He pulled me down to my knees. He said, Pray for your forgiveness. But there was only my choking and the warm wet down my leg and the cold binding in my throat. And after his praying, he’d go back into his room, and I would wash under the pump, my jaw cinching and my stomach bucking under the cold water.

He came at me night after night. I closed my eyes and the hurt was in the meat of me. It slid and chafed and burned. And in the leavings there’d be blood and in the water there’d be blood, and the hurt would tight and slack and tight and slack; I thought it would snap and I would go with it, like chalk, in two: this a Dora and this a Dora. And times I would wake up in the night and feel the Spirit stitching through me, knitting up my guts so that it hurt to breathe and there was no honey on the bread, and no Good Words and Nan Peoria is down down down the Gulf of Mexico.

WINTER HAD COME AND THE winds howled and smashed against the walls. Leaves and twigs and sand blew in from the swamp, gathering along the side of the house. Stuckey had me run the stove through the night and come morning, the air was gray with ash. It stuck to the floors and chairs and table. It was in the salvage, rimming old pans and flowerpots, setting like a skin over stacks and stacks of books. It was in my mouth and my nose and it stung my eyes, and the only air was outside. I cleared the cull, chopped firewood. When I went to the chicken coop, there was G.D., waiting.

I had not seen him for weeks, not since we’d fought, and he was looking clean and good.

Dora, he said, and I knew that it was me, and he said it, my name, me, the sound dor-a and he held out his hand, reaching for Dora, but Dora did not move. The hens puffed into themselves, clucking, their eyes wet and clear and black in the light. He stood a long time looking at her. The winter light spangled at his shoulders, his breath going white and low.

Where’s your glove? he asked.

And my face came apart.

And when he tried to comfort me, his arms open like a cave, I shrunk. He looked at me, not speaking, the words all clumped in his mouth, pushing on his cheeks. He stepped past me and did not leave out the trapdoor, but out the front, in full view of the cabin.

THAT NIGHT, IT WAS HAILING. Ice came down in a scatter, on the windows, the walls, the roof. It beat against the crossbeams, through the ceiling slats, pebbling and pebbling. They were like pearls slanting in the wind, crashing in the dark. Stuckey sat slumped in his chair, the stacks of salvage towering up behind him. He’d been smoking his pipe, and his mouth hung a little open, with his small breath rustling inside his chest. His eyes glassed looking out the window.

What’s that? he asked. What’s out there?

There was flash and powder and the glass collapsed into nothing.

That was his finish. Poor Stuckey. I sat there and watched the life go out of him. G.D. came in through the door and he let the pistol go out of his hand. Bits of hail twinkled against his cheek. He went about the room and stuffed the pieces of salvage into his satchel bags. When it was time to go, G.D. picked me up by my arms and kissed me. We stepped out into the night and G.D. held an oilskin sheet over me to protect me from the stones. We moved very slowly together through the swamp, the sheet rippling around me, the air full of pearls and us, ghosts.

In Yazoo County sits Panther Swamp: thirty-eight thousand square acres of floodplain, bog grass, nuttail, water oak, black falaya loam. The Yazoo River courses down from an upridge of gray marl. At 32˚47N 90˚35W, the D.C. men chalk a line, 307.65 meters east, then south 683.03 meters, a square of map equaling to fifty-two acres of burrow pits, concrete walls, and a roadway running flank to the railroad line, wide enough to drive in the mixers, the CATs, the drill trucks. The men do math. Surface area by water volume. The wattage of the primary inflow into a catchment area of fifty-two thousand square kilometers. Rate of drainage against mean declivity downstream rejoining the Yazoo.