Roy and Jesse exchanged a glance.
Roy reached toward The Armless Marvel, but Jukey shot back up before Roy could touch him. He stood straight and tall. “And now I shall take my leave.” He nodded once at Roy, once and Jesse, and walked unsteadily away.
Jesse moved closer to Roy, so close they were sharing Roy’s seat. Her scent was jasmine. She was with him publicly and openly. Mortal fear mixed with inordinate pleasure in Roy’s guts. At any moment he expected a fist to the back of the head. He saw himself on the ground looking up at her and Samson, his head aching from the blow. It might be the last vision of his life.
When she turned to face him her hair graced his skin at the open collar. Against his scales it was more a sting, less a tickle. He closed his eyes to the sensation, letting it spill across him like water. When he opened them he saw the intricate tattooed patterns on her flesh. Skulls and flowers, devils and dragons. They came alive for him, shared their secrets with him.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
Her eyes thinned down. “Don’t say that.”
“But you are,” Roy said, “you’re the most beaut-”
“Stop it,” she said. She turned away. “It makes you just like the rest. Don’t be like the rest.”
This is not how it’s supposed to go, Roy thought. The hero is supposed to tell the woman she’s beautiful and the woman is supposed to swoon. After that they live happily ever after, right?
Jesse wasn’t swooning. Roy was at a loss.
She picked up a used shot glass and turned it on an angle to well the few drops of whiskey that remained. She brought the glass to her lips and licked the inside clean.
Roy averted his eyes to the wet ring the shot glass had left behind. The circle was nearly perfect, save for a small break at the upper left side.
“Why do you say I’m beautiful?” Jesse said. She carefully set the shot glass back down, directly on the broken ring. “You don’t see me like the rest do, so why do you say the same things they say?”
“I don’t know how to say what I mean.”
“Well,” she said, turning to face him, her drunken eyes blinking slowly, “now’s your chance to try.”
Roy sighed. “You’re with him.”
“That’s not what you want to say.”
“Makes it no less true.”
She studied Roy’s face. Her chest began to heave with deep breaths. She appeared primal, intense. After a moment she said, “He thinks I’m beautiful.”
Roy said, “I think you’re in pain.”
Her face contorted. He thought she might throw water. Instead she threw both arms around him and pulled herself in tight. She drew up her legs like a bride and nuzzled into his collarbone. Without looking up, she pointed to the rooms-for-rent upstairs. Inked in hard black lines from her shoulder to her hand was a spiraled snake. Its split tongue extended to lick her fingertip.
Roy carried her upstairs, having forgotten a strong man named Samson ever existed.
In the room she moved quickly, turning Roy’s dime novel romance into a rush job. Her experience unnerved him. He couldn’t help but blurt that he was a virgin. The words just burst forth as she peeled down a dress strap. He stood there dumbly. She pulled him close.
Back in the forest, Roy holstered the gun and folded his arms over his chest. He stretched out his legs. Fatigue gripped his muscles and bones. Sleep came with no warning, and for once it was dreamless. They could have found him and killed him in that position, and when they pulled back his black hat they’d find the happiest man death had ever touched.
9
Roy Pellerin learned reading and handwriting at his mother’s kitchen table. He learned all she knew about numbers by dragging Indian-head pennies and three-cent nickels across the battered wood, one pile to the other and back again. For six hours a day Roy kept his head down to the hard work, sliding the coins right for addition, left for subtraction, and up and down for multiplication and division. Handwriting was difficult and the math was misery, but reading was a joy and a reward for the day’s effort.
Once he could read at a decent pace, Roy read aloud. His mother would listen while she cleaned and swept the house or prepared dinner. Roy would go on for hours this way, occasionally peeking up to catch the smile on her face, the dimples on her cheeks.
Roy read anything his father brought home—newspapers, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and even advertisements for yeast powder, toilet soaps, and billiard tables that wouldn’t have fit through the door of their home. His mother made him read the clothing advertisements over and again, sighing to hear words like overskirt and bustle as she scowled and tugged at her stained apron. From the pictures Roy saw, he couldn’t decipher why overskirts or bustles were an improvement over her current clothing, but he determined that he would one day go out into the world and bring some of them back to her.
Roy especially enjoyed the dime novels his father said were sweeping through cities and towns like plague. Besides his parents, dime novel characters were the only people Roy knew, and he loved them dearly. They lived on horseback or in frontier towns with saloons that had doors you could kick and no one would be upset. They were gunfighters and gold-rushers roaming the untamed west. They spent days on the trail, tracking Indians or villains in black hats. They panned for gold in rushing mountain streams. They did as they pleased and answered to no one. Some were on the right side of things, some were on the wrong, and those on the wrong always found their end.
Davy Crockett and all the other heroes wore his father’s face, of course, and every bad guy—whether Indian or black-hatted scoundrel—wore the face of the schoolhouse teacher, Mr. Cairn. The face of a fool. Young Roy dreamed of one day going into the world to deal with such fools. He dreamed of a life in the west, a life on the trail, tracking scoundrels by day and camping by night. He dreamed of a hard life, a true life where good deeds were rewarded and bad deeds punished.
“I’m proud of you,” his mother would say intermittently throughout his reading.
Her approval always made his stomach flutter. He knew she wanted him at the schoolhouse, but this was the best they could do. Later in life, Roy believed his mother would have been proud to learn that he painted the words on his own sideshow banner, counted money well enough to ensure that he wasn’t getting railroaded, and had developed a signature with the swoops and whirls of a king.
A few months after Roy’s tenth birthday, his father lost his coal passing job. He came home on a Friday with darkness on him. It looked like someone had softened his bones. He said, “Who needs the bastards, anyway? To Hell with ‘em.”
Roy didn’t think his father’s strong words agreed with how he really felt. He’d brought home no new dime novels or newspapers, only a brown jug.
“To freedom,” Thomas Pellerin declared, yanking out the cork and holding the jug high before taking an impossibly long drink. He brought the bottle down and winced like he’d just swallowed embers. He shook his head and smiled. “To freedom,” he said again, his voice now lowered to a whisper. The second drink was half that of the first.
That night Thomas Pellerin sat on the small dock in front of his bayou home, singing a slurry version of I Wish I Was in Dixie and yelling at things that weren’t there. He sang praises to the crawdads and shook fists at the water and the stars.
When the singing and yelling was done, he stumbled back into the house and into bed, where he snored through the night and deep into the morning.
That next afternoon, a bleary-eyed Thomas set away from home. “I’ll find work,” he said, “don’t worry.”
A week later he came back with another jug. His eyes were reddened, his face was in need of a shave, and his shoulders were slumped, not just down, but forward, like he was a drying leaf curling in on itself.
Roy’s mother looked her husband up and down, fists on her hips.
Thomas shrugged. “No dice.”
The drunken days that followed worked very much like the first, bu
t often times Thomas wouldn’t make it back into the house. Roy and his mother would go out after dawn to find him sleeping on the dock or somewhere in the marsh. On the marsh days a worried look would come to Verna’s face as they searched, and she would sigh with great relief when they discovered him face up instead of down.
As the days grew into weeks and months she’d less often sigh, more often kick her husband awake and leave him to come back on his own.
Thomas’ hunting became fruitless. He declared the wretched river void of gators. Young Roy was no expert, but he believed his father’s lack of success might have more to do with his stumbling and sour smell.
No gators meant no meat, no leather, and no extra money, which wasn’t considered extra anymore. The Pellerin’s survived on crawdads and water. Their shoes were run through and the nights were cold on their feet. There was no milk or salt. Worst of all, for Roy, there were no new books and no candles. He had to reread old material by the light and heat of day, which meant slow progress because he had to take breaks to wipe his watering eyes. They were down to pennies. Roy’s mother sat at the window with her hands in her lap, whispering prayers.
Eventually God answered.
It was an exceptionally pretty morning on the bayou when the gray man arrived. Sunbeams reached through the trees to lift steam from the river and throw it into the sky. It was warm and animals were chattering. It was as though the gray man pushed daylight before him, but dragged the night behind. He was on a muscular white horse and wore a gray coat, a hat with a white feather stuck in it, and a yellow sash. There were gleaming metal parts all over his horse and his clothes. His mustache had loops on each end. Occasionally he’d pull and stretch the loops only to have them snap back into position.
Roy watched the man from the windowsill, wondering if God himself had come down from Heaven to grant his mother’s requests.
Verna had to get Thomas out of bed. She did so by slapping him all over. Roy thought it was lucky it hadn’t been a marsh morning, or they’d be dragging his father from the muck in front of Jesus’ Dad.
Thomas Pellerin came out to meet the gray man with his hat in his hand. “Help you, sir?” he said with a froggy voice and squinted eyes.
“Will you join?” the gray man said.
“I don’t rightly know what-”
“You know damn well what I mean, son.”
The two men stared at each other. Roy thought it was like one of the gunfighter standoffs he’d read about, only without the guns. He guessed his dad lost when he blinked and looked down. “I never had any quarrel with the Federals,” Thomas said, eyes on his worn-through shoes.
“It matters not. It is your duty.”
“I ain’t never owned a slave.”
“A patriot would die for the cause,” the gray man said, “and for his country. Are you a patriot, or a coward?”
Thomas clenched a fist. “I’m no coward.”
“Seven dollars a week,” the gray man said, “and a rifle you can keep.” He looked at Verna and smiled. “His wages can be sent home.”
Thomas stood for a long moment, eyes returning to his shoe-tops. Finally, he turned to his wife. “There’s nothing for it. The gators are gone, the money’s gone, and…”
“Take today to say your goodbyes,” the gray man said. “Be at port tomorrow morning.” He turned his great horse and trotted away.
The next morning Roy’s father prepared to leave. He gave Verna a short smile and a long hug. She tried not to throw water, but no dice. After their embrace Thomas knelt down to Roy’s height. He gripped his son’s shoulders. “You’ve seen me hunt gators. Seen how it’s done?”
Roy poked out his chin and nodded, yes.
Thomas put the knife into Roy’s hand. Roy turned it over slowly. It had a long blade, sharpened so many times it seemed thin and brittle, but Roy knew it was strong. T. Pellerin was etched into the thickest part of the metal. The etching must have taken a long time because the letters were dead straight. The handle was wrapped in a leather strap, wound around many times. Roy gripped the handle. The knife seemed to pulsate in his hand.
“Did your mama ever tell you how you got your name, son?”
Roy shook his head.
“We named you after your great grandfather, my grandfather, Roy G. Pellerin, who served under Jackson in The War of 1812.”
“He must be pretty old,” Roy said.
Thomas snickered. “I reckon so. Did I ever tell you he fought in the Battle of New Orleans alongside five thousand men? They went up against fourteen thousand Brits. Grandpap said the battle lasted less than an hour, and he reckoned the Brits lost two thousand that day, while our side only lost seven.” Thomas looked back at Verna, who was wiping water from her cheeks. “Funny thing is, neither side knew that the war was already over. All those men died for nothing.”
“How come they didn’t know?” Roy said.
“I reckon that’s the way God wanted it.”
Thomas stood and wiped his hands over his face, put on his hat. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, and I’ll make sure they send the money every week.” He slung a sack over his shoulder and walked across their small yard to the road. When he got to the bend he turned and looked back. Roy waved and his father tipped his hat. Then he was gone.
Every day for the next three weeks Roy hunted gators while his mother netted for crawdads. Roy tied his father’s knife to a straight pole he’d carved from a cypress branch. All day and night he crouched and scanned the water for bumpy eyes or snouts drifting behind the reeds. He tried to remain still like his father would, but his back and leg muscles throbbed and quivered. Mosquitoes ravaged any exposed skin. In most places the bugs couldn’t pierce their needle-noses through his scales, but eventually they found the cracks and gaps. He couldn’t help but slap at them, and then curse himself for moving. He figured all his fidgeting must have scared off every gator in the bayou.
His mother’s luck was no better.
Their food supply dwindled and his mother spent the last of their savings. “We’ll figure something out,” she said, “we always do.” She prayed by the window more often than before.
One morning Roy woke to find his mother out in the marsh. He watched at the window as she boarded the skiff and launched into the water. She began casting. By now she had the motions down perfectly. If not for her motherly shape Roy would swear he was looking at his father.
As day broke, Roy climbed the hill beside the house and moved up to the roof to watch her. Verna saw him. “Watch this, Roy!” she said, tossing out the net and snapping her fingers as it splash landed. She’d grown strong over the weeks. Her arms moved mechanically as she dragged the net in, and by God if she didn’t drag in one of the biggest bundles of crawdads Roy had ever seen.
Verna Pellerin looked at the writhing bundle in shock. After a moment she thrust up the bundle proudly, turning toward Roy to display her bounty. Roy jumped up and down, cheering, until his eyes caught the knobs that had appeared near his mother’s feet.
Roy's knees gave out. The world slowed. The only sound was droning cicadas. A thousand pounds of death slid beneath the surface toward his mother’s exposed flesh, and she was just standing there, smiling. One crawdad had wriggled free of the net and was falling in slow motion, circling through the air, both claws open.
The gator exploded forth in flash of green scales and white water. It clamped its jaws on Verna’s ankle. Her smile transformed into terror. Her hands opened. The net hung in mid air.
The gator rolled. Roy saw the scar that tracked across its nose, heard the crack of his mother’s shinbone. The netted crawdads fell as Verna came down to one knee. They bounced across the skiff and skidded over the gator’s yellow belly as it turned.
Roy leapt down from the roof, breaking both ankles on impact with the ground. He bit back a scream. His mother did not. Her shrieks pierced Roy’s ears and drove him forward. She turned to her backside and strained against the gator’s weight, but the effort w
as in vain. The gator pulled her to the skiff’s edge, tilting the opposite end up like a dinner plate to a starving mouth.
Roy crawled toward the riverbank, where his pole-knife leaned against a dock post. He snatched it up. His mother struggled against the beast, but the gator flipped her over and over. Roy kept crawling. The brown water turned red. The gator flipped her again and pulled her off the skiff. Roy called for her. She disappeared under the water and came back up, gasping. Roy came to the end of the dock. He stuck out the blunt end of his pole for her to grab. It fell short. She went under once more. He stretched the pole out to the extent of his reach. It quivered under his muscle strain.
But she never came back up.
Roy stayed in place, pole outstretched, while the skiff spun in a lazy circle, splattered with blood and crawdads struggling in the stickiness.
An hour passed.
Still lying on the dock, Roy looked at his reflection in the still water. His eyes were swollen to the size of walnuts. His ankles thumped. She was gone. There was nothing for it.
Roy slid into the water and swam out to the skiff using one hand to propel himself while the other held the pole-knife. He climbed aboard the skiff to see the gator resting along the bank on the other side. Its nose was painted red with his mother’s blood, much of it pooled and congealing in the scar his father had once given it. There was a patch of his mother’s apron caught in its teeth. The beast had a fat, satisfied look in its eyes.
Roy rose to his knees.
The gator didn’t move. Having taken its revenge, maybe it no longer cared to live. Or maybe it saw Roy as a son, a being that would never harm it.
Roy lifted the pole high above his head, held it for a chilling moment, and then plunged his father’s knife between the gator’s eyes, breaking through the stony skull.
The gator’s body jerked. Its eyes searched in different directions.
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