Bill Cheng - Southern Cross the Dog

Ihear my black name ringing.

HERE, THROUGH THESE LOWLANDS, A basin full of sky and aching. Here, through the towns I’ve worked and bled and danced and loved. Here, I hear my black name ringing. In the fields and levee camps and steel mills, in the out-turned churches and shotgun shacks, my black name rings. Bright and searing as the day.

Outside, the grasslands plunge. I see where my mama was born, an earth cabin where the ground comes up to the walls. There’s clothing on the line and the jumpers catch the wind, dancing, personless. And down the way is the creek where they baptized me, where I killed my first fish and I told a lie to feel a girl beneath her skirt.

They razed the town and we built again. For months the trees were full of ash.

Here are the notches on the boughs.

Here is where I stole. Here is where they stole from me. Here, my mama closed her eyes and rested her head on a pillow of hair. Here is a coin in my hand.

And still the country rages on, sad full — a cape of blue raised high over spruce and elm and hillocks, the villages and shantytowns. I danced in every hall, I beat my hands against the walls — the country rages, I rage.

The sun rises. I pass Leland, Indianola, and Moorhead, where the Southern cross the Dog. She roils and laps and foams. And through the air are the long slack ropes that carry spark and light. And I will follow her down, past the watering station, the grain elevator, a grove of Warren pears, at last into town, down a road to a high building made of brick and mortar. They’ll put me in a suit and pomade my hair and I’ll make my bracelets shine. And there I will stand and meet that man in a long black robe. And for you I will sing and dance and stomp my feet to beat the Devil.

This book would not have been possible without the generous support and confidence of a great many people. To these people I am forever indebted. Thank you to my parents, Betty and Peter, and my brother, Ben, and the great sea of Chengs and Paks behind them; to my editor, Dawn, her confidante, Shanna, and all the hardworking supporters at HarperCollins; to my agent Nicole and her crack team, Christie Hauser and Duvall Osteen, for pulling up a seat for me at the grown-ups’ table; to fellow travelers Jeanne Thornton, Anton Solomonik, Kevin Carter, Miracle Jones, and Tim Miles, with whom I would proudly march toward Bedlam; and of course, to my wife Olga.

To the great giants of Hunter College and my brothers-in-arms — Scott Cheshire, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Sunil Yapa, Carmiel Banasky, Brianne Kennedy, Tennessee Jones, Phil Klay, Katie Vane, Sarah Goffman, Lauren Holmes, Vernon Wilson, Victoria Brown, Alex Gilvarry, Liz Moore, Jess Soffer, Noa Jones — thank you for the hours, for the blood and sweat and tears.

Thank you to Jonathan Landsman and Elyse Orecchio, who were there before the beginning, and thank you to Erin Propersi, who will one day finish this book and find her name here.

Thank you to Dina and Alex Pester and Zina Shturman, and thank you to Roz Bernstein of Baruch College, who has guided millions of lost lemmings away from the cliffs.

Most of all, a heartfelt thank you to P and N and C, whose names, while not cited here, have already been written large and in full upon this book and life.

And to the ghosts of Big Bill Broonzy, R. L. Burnside, Reverend Gary Davis, Honeyboy Edwards, Son House, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mississippi John Hurt, Skip James, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson, Robert Junior Lockwood, Blind Willie McTell, Charley Patton, Pinetop Perkins, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Bukka White, and all the late great bluesmen who have given me so much and whom I shall never have the privilege to meet except by way of your music and your words and your stories — this book is for you.

BILL CHENGhas received a B.A. in Creative Writing from Baruch College and is a graduate of Hunter College’s MFA program. Born and raised in Queens, New York, he currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife. Southern Cross the Dog is his first novel.

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