The Southern Cross

by Skip Horack

  Morgan keeps on. “I’ll be dead straight with you,” he says. “There’s nothing you have that I really need. But I buy you out, that’s one less competitor for TGI.” He kicks at the fence and seems embarrassed. “Just think about it, okay?”

  “Yessir,” I say. “I’ll think about it”

  “That’s all I ask.” Morgan points at the muntjacs. “Watch that guy.” The buck has won the battle over the rat. A naked tail is still sticking out from between his tusks when he runs over and starts trying to mount the tiny doe. Morgan laughs. “They really are something.”

  Randall is stacking firewood when I make it back to the house. Daddy has joined him outside and sits on a stump watching. I walk up behind my father and put a hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t even flinch, just rolls his head back and smiles as if he’s been expecting me all along. The old man truly does live a life without surprises. Most days we have that in common.

  “How goes it?” says Randall.

  I decide to come clean and tell him about Morgan. He piles pecan until I finish talking, then wipes the sweat from his face with the front of his shirt. “So what do you plan on doing for a living, Jake?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know,” I say. “This and that, I guess. Like you.”

  Randall picks up a loose piece of wood. “It’s not as easy as it looks,” he says. “This and that.”

  “Maybe.”

  Randall laughs. “How about that, Daddy?” he says. “Jake’s thinking about helping Glen Morgan corner the market.”

  I tell Randall to shut his damn mouth. Deer dogs strike up in the distant timber, and I rub our father’s big shoulders until he goes on back to grinning.

  In the evening, I sit down in the kitchen with Daddy and watch him eat some of the stew that I’ve heated up. He’s getting it down pretty good on his own, but every now and then I have to lean over and wipe off his chin for him.

  One of Randall’s pretty girlfriends stopped by right before dark, and I can hear music and laughter coming from his trailer. I think maybe Daddy hears the music too because he’s tapping his feet on the linoleum and, far as I can tell, keeping good time.

  My aunt always told me that he was a dancer—that there was a time when my parents would drive over to a club in Tallahassee every couple weeks. Still, I never saw any dancing out of him before now. It could just be the Alzheimer’s.

  The bear bile’s still in my pocket and I get to daydreaming, imagining that it actually works—that I slip it into his milk before bed and wake up the next morning to the smell of bacon cooking. Daddy’s in the kitchen waving a spatula and giving Randall shit. But he smiles when he sees me. He says, Good morning, son, and asks how many eggs I want for breakfast. Later, we leave my brother to clean the dishes and head out to the bee yard. Daddy inspects the hives real carefully, then slaps me on the back, says I did a real good job taking care of everything while he was away. We put in a long, hard day together—me and Daddy getting the bees ready for winter—but the work isn’t quite as hard nor near as lonely as it has been without him.

  It’s a silly thing to hope for—a child’s dream, really. In the end, all I do is hide that little glass vial in my sock drawer, knowing that it will stay there forever, that the bear bile will still be sitting next to my stacks of Playboy when spring comes, the tupelos bloom, and I am alone in the river swamp, working my father’s bees.

  Winter

  Borderlands

  His setter found her in a cold canebrake, half-buried in the loam, her mouth sealed with duct tape. Wes saw that it was her, Sara Champagne. Three fingers had been cut from her right hand, two from her left. She was naked to the waist, and a thin red tear ran from the base of her throat and then down across her belly.

  Wes whistled soft for Sally. She bumped the steaming corpse with her nose, then gave a sad whine before coming to heel. The breeze died and a hawk screamed; something moved in the thicket. Through a break in the switch cane Wes saw a lank man in beaded buckskins rise and begin to move away. At fifteen yards the pale stranger turned and flashed a guilty smile. Wes fired both barrels of his 20-gauge, then ran for the levee with Sally clipping at his heels.

  “Look” said Comeaux. “Duck cop.”

  Wes sat in his uncle’s city-police cruiser, and together they watched a line of parish deputies come fishtailing down the gravel road that ran alongside the levee. Trailing behind them all was a game warden in a green Dodge Ram.

  Comeaux tapped at the steering wheel while the deputies parked and piled out. “So,” he said to Wes, “just one more time. That man came at you, right?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Don’t say nothing else. Understand?”

  Wes nodded.

  “Hell of a Sunday morning.” Comeaux sighed and then opened his door. “Let’s go.”

  His uncle knew most of the parish deputies and had a good ten years on even the oldest of them. They gathered around as the game warden produced a map of the batture, that stretch of land that ran between the levee and the Atchafalaya. Wes showed the spot as best he could, and then a deputy handed him a cheerleader-on-one-knee photograph, a pretty girl smiling. Wes flinched. “I already told y’all that it was Sara Champagne” he said. “I knew her”

  Before long the sheriff himself arrived in a red Z71. The tall man was still in his church clothes, and they waited as he swapped his loafers for a pair of rubber knee-boots that he kept in his diamond-plated truck box. He nodded at Comeaux. “Hey, Pistol Pete”

  “Hey,” said Comeaux.

  The sheriff shook Comeaux’s hand and was introduced to Wes. The deputies all stepped aside as the sheriff looked him over. “How old are you, son?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “You in school?”

  “Yessir. I’m a senior at Livonia.”

  “You’re a big kid. You play football?”

  “No, sir.”

  The sheriff pointed at Comeaux. “Did you know he was my center back in high school?”

  “No.”

  “Tell him, Petey.”

  “It’s true,” said Comeaux.

  The sheriff studied Wes. “You should have played ball.”

  “All right.” Wes saw Comeaux narrow his eyes, his way of telling him not to be a smart-ass. “Yessir,” Wes added. “A lot of people say that.”

  “I bet.” The sheriff tucked the cuffs of his gray dress pants down into his LaCrosses, then rose up again. “So you were bird hunting?”

  “Yessir. Woodcock.”

  “Using what? Eights? Nines?”

  “Seven and a halfs.”

  “For woodcock?”

  “Sometimes we jump rabbits down there.”

  The game warden laughed. “You’re gonna ruin that bird dog,” he said. “Make a beagle out of him”

  “He’s a meat dog,” said Wes. “He gets it.”

  The sheriff sliced his hand through the air, and they quieted. “How far away was he?”

  Wes pointed over at Sally, asleep in the sun. “Maybe me to her.”

  “And what are your chokes in that side-by-side?”

  “Improved, then modified”

  “Where’d you aim?”

  “I don’t really remember,” said Wes. “I might not of aimed.”

  The sheriff let his head roll back as he thought all that over. “Okay,” he said finally. “Stay put for now.”

  A call was sent out, and soon backup came steadily pouring in along the gravel road that led from the highway. More parish deputies and more game wardens, city cops like Comeaux from Livonia and Fordoche, Morganza and Krotz Springs. State troopers, even. Wes watched them load riot shotguns and AR-15s, then space themselves out along the levee for as far as he could see. One man every fifty yards or so. The sheriff stood atop his truck box and shouted orders. He hollered down to Comeaux, said that boats were already patrolling the river in case their killer went a-swimming.

  They waited more than an hour for the dog team from the state penitentiary to arrive, th
en turned the Angola bloodhounds loose next to a van one of the game wardens found parked near the railroad tracks. Men fanned out into the batture, and later Wes listened as the sheriff shared a cigarette with Comeaux and talked. “We came across him laid out in the cane,” said the sheriff. “Face so full of birdshot it looks like God cursed him”

  “Dead?”

  “Oh yeah,” said the sheriff. “A couple of pellets clipped his jugular. You should see the fucking blood, Petey.”

  Wes saw a young deputy standing alone atop the levee. He had puked down the front of his uniform and was cleaning himself off with a towel. Wes stared at him until it clicked. He remembered that same man circling their house holding divorce papers last summer, his father screaming that he’d never open the door.

  Comeaux took a long drag, then whispered to the sheriff through his fingers. “Find a gun?” he asked.

  The sheriff shook his head. “Just the biggest knife you ever saw. Chef knife. Sharp as a gar’s tooth.” He smiled. “Don’t worry. The boy did right.”

  The sheriff ambled off, and Comeaux looked over at Wes. “You okay with all this?” he asked.

  “I guess so,” said Wes. “I’m not in any trouble?”

  “Hell, no. You’re a hero.”

  Wes waited for his uncle to laugh, but he didn’t. “Do me a favor, nonc?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t tell my mother about none of this, okay? I’ll tell her myself. I’ll tell her when I’m ready.”

  She rang him at dusk. She’d do that when she knew his father wasn’t home to answer. Wes was short with her and didn’t mention finding Sara, killing a man. She paused, regrouped, asked if he’d been studying for his exams. He told her that school had let out for Christmas, that she’d know that if she hadn’t left.

  His mother went quiet, and Wes slipped the heavy phone into its cradle. He stayed in the kitchen waiting for her to call back, but she didn’t and so after a while he stepped outside to watch the day fade.

  Sally bounced around her kennel like a dancing bear, whining for another hunt. Wes ignored her and wandered to the back of the lot. He looked out over the neighbor’s pasture. A herd of Brahma-crossed swamp cows lazed in the darkening ryegrass, and in a far corner an oil well older than Wes kept at its seesaw rhythm, sucking on that muddy field like a great steel mosquito.

  What media came looking were blocked by Comeaux. He told them that the boy was gone, had up and moved away. In the end they kept his name out of the papers on account of his age, but no secrets last in Livonia. Wes lay low for a few days, then, Wednesday morning, ducked into Penny’s for coffee and toast. He saw that the poster of Sara had been taken off the back of the cash register. The missing girl had been found.

  A stir in the diner: nods, sad smiles, and winks. Wes turned to leave and there was Celia Trahan, strawberry lips asking if he planned on making the wake. Wes glanced down at his worn jeans, his flannel shirt. “We’ll see,” he said.

  Celia caught his meaning. “You have some nice clothes, don’t you?”

  “I guess.”

  “Great.” She bit down on her bottom lip. “Maybe you could ride with me, okay?”

  Wes hesitated, then brushed his shaggy hair out of his eyes. “Sure,” he said.

  “You live right there off the highway, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “By the tire yard?”

  “By the tire yard.”

  “Good. I’ll pick you up at five o’clock”

  Celia kissed his cheek, and he felt his ears go red. She backed away, then a pool of girls absorbed her like a bead of mercury. As they went bubbling out the door, some asshole in a booth clapped. He was an out-of-town trucker, didn’t know the score. An old waitress hushed him and said, You be quiet, them poor kids just lost one of they friends.

  LAKE CITY: THE GATEWAY TO FLORIDA. A dog-eared postcard addressed to him by way of Comeaux. No return address, but Wes already had that memorized, saw it on the papers that the deputy had finally managed to serve on his father. Wes flipped the postcard over. Thinking of you. Things are crazy now, but you’ll understand one day. Have a wonderful and blessed Christmas. Love, Mom.

  Sally went to barking as Wes pulled on his father’s only suit. He heard a knock, then the front door opening. Wes cursed. “I’ll be right there,” he said. “Just give me one second.” He ran a wet comb through his hair, stepped out of the bathroom with a tie slung across his shoulder.

  Celia was waiting for him in the living room. Her black dress was printed with white orchids. “You living here by yourself?” she asked.

  “Half the time. Daddy works fourteens offshore.”

  “I’m sorry about your mama.”

  “Thanks.” A stray drop of water escaped from Wes’s damp hair and ran down across his face. He wiped it away with his hand.

  Celia grinned at him. “Think I could have a beer?”

  “Yeah, sure. There’s some in the icebox.”

  “I figured”

  “Right. Sorry.” Wes led her into the kitchen and winced at the dishes piled high in the sink. He opened two High Lifes with the front of his clean shirt and handed her one.

  “What was it like?” asked Celia.

  “What?”

  “Finding Sara, shooting that fucker?”

  Wes shrugged and tried to wiggle his toes inside his father’s black shoes, a size too small. “I can’t really say.”

  Celia frowned but told him that she understood. She tilted her beer toward him. “To Sara,” she said.

  “Sara.” Their bottles clicked, and they both took a long pull.

  Celia set her beer on the kitchen table and lifted the tie from his shoulder. She placed it around her own neck. “Come closer,” she ordered. He shuffled to her and she grabbed hold of his lapels, began to struggle with the top button of his dress shirt. “Damn, big guy, when was the last time you wore this?”

  “I ain’t never wore it.”

  “Well, you’re too big for it,” she said. “You’ll just have to wear it open, without a tie.”

  “That all right?”

  “Absolutely,” she told him. “That’s what all the celebrities are doing now anyways.”

  The smell, that biology-lab smell, it stunned Wes like a slap. He stepped back, and Celia caught him by the elbow. She led him to the coffin as teenagers whispered. A boy named Chris he’d hated his whole life stepped forward to touch Wes on the arm, tell him good job.

  Sara’s dress was crushed velvet, ink black with lace frills. A broad white ribbon had been tied across her waist, and makeup cracked at the corners of her mouth. Wes studied her: the lipstick different, the bangs wrong. Her hands disappeared into a spray of roses resting on her lap. He remembered missing fingers and shivered like a rabbit when Celia squeezed his own sweaty hand.

  Wes sat outside Gene’s Hardware watching feral cats battle over trash. They screamed like devils, and so he bounced an old battery off the dumpster to quiet them. He’d taken off the black shoes and his thin socks, was massaging his swollen feet when Comeaux’s cruiser finally pulled up. His uncle leaned out the open window. “Well” he said. “You coming?”

  Wes stuffed his socks into one of the shoes and picked his way barefoot to the cruiser. “Sorry, nonc. I didn’t have anyone else to call.”

  “No problem,” said Comeaux. “Hop in.”

  Wes folded himself into the passenger seat of the Crown Vic. “Thanks,” he said.

  “Sure.” Comeaux made a wide turn in the parking lot, and they headed back toward Livonia with the sunset off their left shoulders. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he said.

  “I ain’t ashamed.”

  “Looks to me like you’ve been beating yourself up a little. Maybe I’m wrong.”

  “I’m just mad I ever agreed to go in the first place.”

  “Celia Trahan is a pretty girl.”

  “Yes, she is.” Wes leaned his head against the cool window. “They both were.”


  “True enough.” Comeaux punched the cigarette lighter. “And so where’s she now?”

  “Still inside, I guess.”

  Comeaux grunted and followed the highway along the bayou. A woodcock flew low over the road, leaving the shore thicket to night-hunt earthworms in open fields. Wes lost it in the horizon, then turned and caught Comeaux watching him.

  “Your mama called me today,” said Comeaux. “She wants to talk to you.”

  “Got a funny way of showing it”

  “She had to leave. You know that”

  “No, I don’t”

  His uncle told him to settle down and listen. “My own mama married two very different men” he said. “The first one—my daddy—he was nice, maybe even a little weak” Comeaux glanced over at Wes. “He died when I was about your age.”

  “And then came Paw-paw.”

  “That’s right” said Comeaux. “The second one—Sidney, your grandfather—he was a mean motherfucker.”

  “Yeah,” said Wes. “I remember that about him.”

  “Well, your daddy takes after Sidney in a whole lot of ways that I’m not so sure he can help.” Comeaux shook his head. “I didn’t do a very good job looking after Bones when he was a kid.”

  Wes shrugged and kept quiet until they pulled into his gravel driveway. “Thanks for the ride,” he said.

  “He still on the rig?”

  “Till Sunday. Christmas.”

  Comeaux spit into an empty Coke can. “Just think about calling her. All I ask.”

  “Yessir.” Wes grabbed the black shoes and turned to his uncle. “You mind feeding Sally for a couple days?”

  “Where you going?”

  “The houseboat, maybe.”

  “Go get your mind right. I’ll take care of her.”

  Wes opened the door of the cruiser and hesitated. “You killed, right? Back when you were in the army?”

  The police scanner squawked, and the cherry of Comeaux’s Winston went bright in the final moments of dusk. “Yeah” he said, “a few.” He stared at Wes for a long while before exhaling. “None of them deserved dying as much as that son of a bitch you shot did. Remember that, okay?”