Bill Cheng - Southern Cross the Dog

It seemed too heavy for her, the barrel bending to the ground, her finger feeling around the guard.

He stepped slowly toward her and she wheeled it on him.

Dora, he said. He realized it was true as he said it. His voice was a dry clack. If she heard him, she made no sign. She stared, not at him, but past him, somewhere far away.

Dora, he said again. Don’t.

She took her hand from the barrel and the thing dropped and discharged into the floor. She jumped and started laughing. Her hands were up in the air shaking. She looked at Robert, covering her cheeks. Her laugh was throaty, stupid. He felt the warm trickle between his toes. Robert looked down. There were splinters in his shins. Blood dribbled down slowly. Dora saw it too and gasped. She grabbed the rag and started soaking the blood from the floor.

It was her. He was almost sure of it. The span of her brow, her lips. He recognized these first, then the eyes, the deep taper at the edges that called out from some place dark and deep and ancient. From there the rest rushed into place. Dora. Dora who had kissed him under the old Bone Tree, who’d slipped her hand into his and put in his palm a question. The name had flown out of him like a dragnet through the dark. It was her. But she was different somehow. In his memory, the girl was sharp and bright as a knife edge. Now she knelt before him, seeing him but also not seeing, her dumb attention on the rag she crushed to the floor.

Robert picked up the rifle and hurried off to the field behind the house. The land was a stretch of dead earth, marked with crows. Along the furrows, where the ground was still soft, he dug himself a shallow. Then he dismantled the rifle and buried the pieces. Blood was pumping through his heart. He could not catch his breath. Seeing her, he felt a claw dredge a fresh stinging trench through his life. He had not thought of her in so long.

In the distance sat what was left of an old plantation house, its walls choked with ivy so that when the wind blew through, it would lift its scales and shudder. It was a grave-head grimacing over the surrounding flats. He walked across what must’ve once been a cotton field. There were faint lines in the dust marking where the earth had been plowed. He came around the back, found the servant’s entrance, and pulled a sheet of vines away from the door.

He passed through the doorway, into the dark and mildewed air. He was inside the kitchen. The walls had rotted and the ceiling sagged down above him. The drawers had been ripped out. Looted. He passed through a swinging door. A shaft of light touched down in the center of the room. He looked up at the ceiling and saw a wound of sky passing through two floors, through the roof.

In the parlor, he could see on the wallpaper where the furniture once was — a full-size mirror on the wall, a bureau, a settee. There were boot prints of ash tracking around the carpet that marched to where a sideboard used to sit and then disappeared altogether, like someone had walked straight through the wall.

He came to a set of stairs and climbed a flight up before the wood started to strain. Something buckled underneath him. He stood still, not moving. If he fell through and hurt himself, no one would ever find him. He looked up the staircase. Just one more landing. He gripped the railing and decided to chance it. He took up the steps, testing the wood with his foot first. When he got upstairs, he saw that the floor was completely rotted, the boards warped, the nails thrusting from their holes. He stepped carefully along the edge of the wall. The hall was long, the walls scorched black. He entered a room on his right and saw the holes in the floor and ceiling.

This had been someone’s bedroom. There was a rocking chair in the corner. Between the ceiling and the roof, he could see where a bird had built its nest, learned itself better, and moved on. In his dizzy and agitated state, the room felt like a puzzle piece that somehow fit with Dora’s reappearance in his life. Robert sat down. He stared up through the space in the ceiling, a cone of dust and sun, waiting for someone to answer.

BY NIGHTFALL, HE HEADED BACK to the house. From the field he could see a man approaching from the road. It was G.D., staggering and weaving, barely able to keep on his feet. Robert ran to him and helped walk him inside. G.D. stumbled into the main room, huffing, gripping hard to Robert to keep his balance. Dora watched as Robert carried him to the couch. G.D. stretched out across the cushions, coat and all, his eyes full of shine.

G.D. looked up at the two of them and smiled wide. Tonight we gonna feast like kings, he said.

From his left coat pocket, he drew out hunks of bread and cheese, and from the right, three potatoes. He offered them up to Dora.

Go ahead and make these up. That’s a good girl.

Without a word, Dora gathered the food into her arms and went into the kitchen.

You all right? Robert asked. Let me get your coat off.

G.D. waved him away. His collar was soaked with sweat, and there was blood rimming his nostrils.

Go help her with the supper. I need a sec. Need to catch my breath.

His head lolled back and he shut his eyes.

Robert went into the kitchen, but Dora made no notice of him. She’d drawn a pail of water and was busying herself dunking the potatoes one by one, trying to wash the soil from the skin.

Dora, he said. You remember me? My name is Robert.

She paid him no mind.

He went beside her and tried to take her hand. She jerked it away back to her work. Robert sighed, took a potato. They were still gritty with dirt. No doubt stolen. He clutched the bulb in his palm and started cleaning.

AFTER DINNER, THEY CLEARED AWAY the table and made some space on the floor. G.D. dug out the wireless and switched it on. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys were performing live from the DeVoy Hotel at WMPS Memphis. Dora seemed to brighten at its sound. The band struck up. Then the horns. G.D. clapped his hands together and she took them in hers. He danced her there on the floor, both of them out of time and sync. Robert was seated in his chair, watching them. G.D. tugged at her hard and she laughed and spun into his arms. He was so much bigger than her. She buried her face into his chest and put her arms around his hips and they swayed a little for a while. When G.D. was danced out, he rubbed his head and sat down.

Okay. No more dancing.

She whined and tugged his arms.

No more. I can’t. Why don’t you dance with our guest?

They both looked at Robert.

I can’t dance, Robert said.

G.D. grinned. Hell, you done worse than dance, I’m sure.

G.D. stood up and steadied himself on the wall. He shook his head and smiled to himself. I need a bath, he said. Then he turned up the dial on the wireless and went into the other room. Robert cleared his throat. He stood up out of his chair, and he walked over to the radio. The music was something different now. The shimmer of fiddles. The slow roll of a horn. He leaned toward her and held out his arm.

Just one, he said.

She looked at his arm, her chin down, trying not to meet his eyes. She took it and they started to dancing, not close but close enough. She kept her head down, watching her feet while Robert stared out past her shoulders. Her hands were clammy. His own were rough. He could hear her dress crinkling, the alien swing of her body off time from his own.

When the song had finished, they both stepped away from each other.

She still would not look at him. Her hands rose protectively to her neck, and she kept looking at the floor. Robert sighed and switched off the music.

Thanks for the dance, he said.

It’s nothing, she said.

He looked at her, startled. A small smile flitted across her face. For the briefest of moments, she looked back at him. Her eyes were brown, large, wounding. Then immediately the moment was gone. She broke away, brushing past him, into the other room, to help G.D. with his bath.