Bill Cheng - Southern Cross the Dog

Non. No French since mon Pierre L’Etang come down from Snakebite Creek to trap Yazoo. Pierre he go up’n down every hook ’n crook a this river. Thirteen year he work the beaver run. Wash the French clear out ’a him.

Bossjohn was grinning. Robert could almost admire this man, his insistence. The spider fought inside the walls of his fingers. He felt two sharp stings and he let it go on the grass. He squeezed his hand till four red dots pooled on the skin of his finger. He looked up. Bossjohn was staring at him now, his eyebrows forced together. The little devil had come free from under his shirt.

What’s that?

Robert hooked his thumb under the twine and shoved it back under his shirt. He didn’t answer him.

The Yazoo don’t wash nothing, Robert said, waving him away. It’s a dirty river like all the rivers in this place. It puts a slick on you that you ain’t ever get clean of. All that waste and want and hurt just gums on.

The man looked at him, his eyebrows slanted together, the corners of his mouth tugged back in confusion.

A man can’t wash out his own blood, Robert said.

Bossjohn shook his head. He looked up past the tree line, to where the sky was getting darker, coloring like a bruise. He took the pipe from his lips and sighed softly. The moon was white and faint over the rise.

Come, he said, standing. His voice was soft, almost rotten in his mouth. Tomorrow you gon’ get to work.

THAT NIGHT ROBERT LAY ON his roll, not sleeping. Over and over, his mind bent toward the strange woman who was among his captors. When she had aimed her rifle at him earlier that day, it wasn’t death that made him pause and cross back into the house. He knew his devil would not let him get run through with shot any more than it had let him drown in the Yazoo or burn in Bruce. He could not count the times he’d come so close to death only to be thrown violently again into life.

He saw her muscular arms train the barrel to his chest. Her eyes were tensed and full of white, the blood flushed into her ivory skin. She would’ve shot him dead. He thought this, alone in the dark room, atop the pallet she had prepared for him. She would’ve shot me dead. And so he stepped, not away but toward her, into the hot white cone of her blast. Her shoulders were squared. Her finger was taut on the trigger. She had no anger. No fear. And suddenly he felt the very real dimensions of his own body, the sheaths of muscle tugging along his bones. There were his arms, his heart beating in its cage, his tongue in his mouth. There were his feet, and the hard earth against his soles. He was here, made solid before her eyes, bright and full of blood. She could obliterate him.

This was why he stayed. The fluid redirected in his head. I am staying.

And had his brother said this too? I am staying. Did the same regions of his brain engorge with blood, did the nerves flame and blister in the same pattern? He could almost hear his life snap into place. For a moment, he wanted to be outside, looking up into that yawning maw above him, the blighted moons and bad stars, to face again that invisible judgment.

Through the night, he listened for her breathing, for their voices catching against each other. But for their part Bossjohn and Frankie were quiet in the other room. Their bodies shifted, their limbs reassembled around each other. Robert would drift in and out of sleep, waking with a start, his heart in his throat. But there was nothing. There was no one. His skull ached with dreaming. A terrible thought hummed behind his eyes. He touched the pouch, almost instinctively. He did not know how he knew, but he knew. The Dog was coming.

BOSSJOHN TOOK HIM TO THE tanning shed behind the dugout. The shed was small and drafty, with pins of light coming through the boards. Coon and muskrat pelts were stretched flat and nailed onto the wall. At the center was a chair and a beam to stretch the skins. He sat Robert down and stretched a bolt of possum hide along the shaft. Then he handed him a dull blade. For hours Robert grained fat and meat and vein from the underskin.

For weeks, he worked in the tanning shed — sometimes with Bossjohn, sometimes alone. There were jars of piss and dung, and he soaked the hides in them to make them soft, to give them give. The skulls he smashed against a rock to scoop up the spongy mounds. They were boiled into a soup and massaged into the pliant hides. The smell was unbearable, suffocating in the noontime sun. Out in the heat, flies would catch the scent and mob around his eyes and hands and the lobes of his ears. Sweat gathered in fat drops along his brow, his own skin blistering and welted.

He thought often about escaping, but where could he escape to? He was in a low sparse country at the outer ring of the swamp, what they called the Flats. They were hemmed on all sides by tupelos, and swamp oak and black willow, and at its edges lay broad miles of rough uneven earth. For those who weren’t used to mucking, it made for hard travel. But a L’Etang could step through a thicket and disappear down a deer trail and follow the streams and arteries that fed in and out the Yazoo. Robert looked out into the dense rim of trees at the edge of the Flats. Beyond it were sinkholes. Bear traps. Deadfalls. During the summer floods, forests of bald cypress would become infested with mosquitoes, and whole sweeps of land would become uncrossable. He could see no escape.

And soon a month had passed into the peak of the hot season and Robert realized that no one had come looking for him, not even to drag his poor damned body from the river. He came outside the tanning shed after a long morning in the stifling heat. His hands were raw from tanning. He did not know what day it was, nor what month exactly. The thought occurred to him that he might’ve had his twenty-third birthday recently. That outside the swamp, he was a year older, but here, within, time had no meaning. Not the past, nor the future. He looked up at the clear cloudless sky and squinted at the bright burning center. He waited for a sign.

HE WAS SHAKEN AWAKE, AND he opened his eyes and saw the man, Roan, above him. It was early still, the light dim inside the dugout save for the two silver dollars of Roan’s eyes bearing down upon him. Across his arms lay his rifle, the stock nuzzled into the crook of his elbow. How long had he been watching him? Rise up, he said. With the toe of his boot, the man pushed roughly against his ribs. Robert rolled over and the man hoisted him to his feet. He walked him out front, keeping the rifle trained on his back. It was morning, in the yolky red hour just after the dawn. The air was cool and sticky with dew, and he heard the noise of birds clamoring in the wild.

Are you going to shoot me? he asked.

Roan stepped around him and then he saw the tin basin. It’d been drawn full of water.

Strip, the man said.

Robert passed his shirt over his head and stepped out of his trousers. He stood before him, naked, his chest rising and falling.

That’un too.

He gestured to Robert’s neck.

Robert touched the stiff leather of the pouch. He paused for a moment, then let his hand fall.

No, he said. It stays on.

The man seemed to think for a moment, and then he shrugged.

Okay, Roan said. Bon. Now get you in.

With the rifle, he gestured into the tub.

Slowly, Robert climbed into the icy water. It was electric. A bolt of cold shot through him. He wanted to cry out, but he clenched down and shuddered weakly. The nerves jumped inside his legs, and he had to brace the sides of the basin to keep from falling over.