Bill Cheng - Southern Cross the Dog

And if this were all in his head, how did Frankie L’Etang fit inside it? She gained the ground, patiently drawing back the lashweed for him to pass. His thoughts pressed in like gnats around her, chasing heat, wheeling. Every few yards, she would glance back at him. Make sure he was okay. That he could follow. And those last few times. Was she grinning?

Eyes lie. Can’t trust them. Things flashed in the edge of his vision then disappeared. Movement. A rush of color. A distortion of light. He told himself it was the heat on his nerves. This was not real. If only he could have air. If only this heat didn’t squat down on him. He’d suck deep into his lungs and breathe through the poison. He could get his eyeballs to steady, and quiet that hum inside his skull. There were no voices. Not yet. Etta had the voices. She would speak into an empty room and smack her legs with the flat of her hand. Get! Get!

He looked at his hands. Frankie had undone the chains around them. He told his fingers, Flex, and they obeyed. He felt them meet his palms. Felt his own meat resist. This was real.

Was this living? Always having to decide between the two. This is real. This is not. He touched the devil through his shirt. And this? So many square inches of worsted yarn. Inside — rock salt, ash, an Indian head penny. He fingered the loops of twine, lifting it from the damp of his neck. He ran the underside of his finger across the coarse fibers. To mark the years, he had frayed X’s on the twine — one hatch, then another, then another until there were over half a dozen. How many more could he fit around his neck? This is real. This is not.

It had protected him. He did not die. Not in Bruce, by fire. Or drowned in the river. Nor on the thousand night roads like arteries feeding into buckra towns, rope trees, torches, nor those stitches of railroad that fled into the furious cities. He’d been saved where others had not. Billy and Etta and Ellis. And poor Hermalie and all those girls who’d been sucked into the death that gloried around him. And now came the Dog. For what end, he could not be sure. To warn or threaten or to collect upon some soul debt? It did not matter.

He felt something sharp glide through his ribs. He had not felt afraid, truly afraid, in so long that it took a moment to recognize it. To feel his body come alive in riot against him. His heart. His muscles. His brain. His spleen. Every damned fiber of his existence burning for life. And yet, wasn’t this what he wanted? To meet the sumbitch at his eye. To end.

Frankie was looking at him. She held something out between her forefinger and her thumb. Her face was furrowed in concern, and he realized he’d been looking hard at her. Sweat beaded on his face. She made a motion for him to take what was in her hand and he did. The brown greasy plug was in his palm. She gestured her hand to her mouth as if showing him how to eat it, then she turned away quickly so he could collect himself.

What is it?

Medicine. Eat.

They were in a cypress grove, the tall canopies above them holding down the heat. Frankie slung down her pack, then she took off her hat and combed her hair into a tail. Robert watched her fingers travel through the nest of dark hair, airing out its folds, her smooth white neck flushed in the humidity. This was not real. He felt the blood creep across his face and he turned away.

Hold we up a mo’, she said.

Frankie undid her jacket and spread it out on the ground, her shirt soaked with sweat. He bit into the plug. It was hard and bitter, and when he swallowed, warm spread into his chest and face.

Why’re we stopping?

Can’t y’nose it?

Frankie closed her eyes and breathed, her full chest rising beneath her shirt. Robert shuddered. He bit down on his cheek, tried not to look. She was facing the sky, her arms splayed at her side.

It gon’ pour.

THEY SHELTERED UNDER A CYPRESS hollow, Frankie’s jacket draped across the knotted bark to make a lip. They lay side by side, their packs padded underneath them. The storm came sudden and full, hammering down in sheets of silver foam. Around them, the cypresses groaned from their roots. Frankie was asleep. She had laid herself lengthwise under the shelter, her legs crossed at the ankle, her felt hat set careful on her face. Robert gazed out into the frosted air. The earth was beat soft into a pudding. High above the heavens cracked. He saw fire lash down through the trees, strike the earth, and on that spot the ground cracked and hell bubbled forth. He shut his eyes. Opened them again. Rain. Just rain. He looked up. A flock of woodcocks were caught in the storm. They gave call, then broke through the trees, their large wings clumsily grabbing air. The rain had scared up worms and they took to the high boughs and waited.

You wake?

She had spoken through her hat. Didn’t move, her rifle resting beside her. He told her he was.

Since you been here, I been careful watching you. And I sees you. I sees it.

Robert blinked. He could almost laugh.

What you see?

It ain’t my business. All I’s saying is I sees it, she said.

Outside this place, they would beat him, maybe kill him for the way he looked at her — his eyes traveling up the folds of her shirt. He shut his eyes. Swallowed. Tried to calm the tattooing in his brain. She shifted and her sleeve hiked a little. He saw the white band of her wrist, then the long slight fingers. He remembered those fingers in his mouth, pushing a taste across his tongue. Her body warmed the air around her. At the end of his life, he would hold to this image, her face obscured, her body at rest as the world tore itself apart around them. Already the world had turned and the heavens had locked into place, and that massive machinery of gears and weights and counterweights glided into motion. And it was funny, that they call it falling, because that was what it was. The ground giving up underneath you. The surge of air. He did not stand a chance.

Bossjohn and Roan headed south into the corridor, neither brother speaking. Three days, stoving through the gnat swarms and the late-summer rains that came full and sudden and bone-cold. Half a mile out from the run they could smell its water. Warm and heavy and full of moss. They inhaled deeply through their nostrils, into their skulls, trying to draw the taste. When they came upon it, the run was big and beautiful and lash-tongued mean, the waters rollin’ silver down the banks and dam flot ribboned across the surface.

They followed the trim, pitching their traps into the water and laying jaws and snares out in the dense clover. Where the water slowed, Roan built a blind to shoot whitetail or wild hog or anything thirsty for drink.

They made camp half a mile from the run, hanging their packs up in the trees and sleeping in the open air. In the morning they’d scout the country for sign of game. They came to a swath of dirt where the mud had dried. In the dirt was a long smooth groove, where a panther had banked her belly. They knelt above the imprint, clutching strands of dry grass, not talking. They knew that the bugheways were driving the panthers from their prowl lands, but they never expected them to come this way. The corridor wasn’t good country for panther. The grasses were too low and the trees were neat and spread apart. Neither Roan nor Bossjohn could figure it. What they knew, however, was that the panther was either brave or desperate, and by the ridge in the dirt, that she was in foal.

Roan hunted from the blinds, squatting in mud holes behind dense bramble. Chiggers crawled up his legs, on his back, his arms. They traveled up his neck, into his beard. They sucked greedy on his blood. He pinched one free, held it between his fingers. Its tiny jaws clamped the air. He did not share his brother’s concern about the bugheway. Roan had been to Fort Muskethead. He’d seen the bugheway stock — soft and pink and full of milk. Can’t trap. Can’t shoot. Didn’t have the sand to live here in the marsh country, and those fool enough to try would be sucked clean by skeeters. All that was wanted to shuck off the bugheways was strength. He looked down and grimaced at the red speck pinched between his thumb and forefinger, its legs struggling. He squeezed and wiped his hands across his leg.