The Southern Cross

by Skip Horack

  Wes stood in the front yard by the satellite dish. He watched Comeaux back out onto the highway, then head for town. Twilight gave way to a cold, dark night as he lingered. Sally howled from her kennel at a far-off siren, and from up high came the faint racket of snow geese, invisible flocks beating their way south just ahead of a front.

  He awoke on the couch with her standing over him. The white orchids on her dress were floating like tiny ghosts in the dim room. Wes reached for her, pulled her onto his nest of quilts until she was lying alongside him. A soft thump, then another, shoes dropping to the floor. She was on top of him now, her dress gathered thigh high as she moved over his body. Wes slid his hand along the inside of her leg, and she gave a surprised giggle. She kissed him lightly, smoothed his hair before rolling away.

  “Slow down, there, tiger.”

  “Sorry.” His voice caught in his throat, and she smiled. She began stroking his stomach beneath the quilt.

  “I looked all over for you,” she said.

  “I called my uncle for a ride. I should have told you that I was leaving.”

  She leaned back against him, her head resting on his shoulder. “So what happened?”

  “It just got to me, being that close to her again. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.” From outside, he heard the double clutch of a rig leaving town. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry.”

  He covered her with the quilt and she nestled closer, one leg draped over his own. In a moment they were both asleep, and at dawn she was gone, leaving only a napkin note she’d clipped with a bobby pin to the waistband of his boxers. Midnight curfew, had to run. Call me. Love, C.

  Wes had been just one night alone at the houseboat on False River before he phoned her. He asked that she miss the funeral and come see him instead. Celia hesitated but then agreed, and after an hour he went outside to wait for her.

  His houseboat was the sixth in a line of ten counting from the southwest end of the oxbow lake. Wes sat on the dock and stared out across the water at the opposite shore. Three hundred years ago the Mississippi had changed course for good, leaving this twenty-two-mile meander cut off and landlocked. A false river. They called the big fist of land between the lake and the river the Island, but it wasn’t really, not anymore. There was a honk, and Wes looked away. Celia’s yellow Mustang was turning off the highway.

  She was wearing old blue jeans and an LSU sweatshirt. He gave her a spare jacket that had belonged to his mother, and they took his johnboat to the South Flats. At the edge of Bayou Jarreau he showed her how to throw the cast net for shiners, and together they baited a little twenty-hook trotline that he ran between two prop-scarred cypress knees. Later Celia told him to relax while she fixed lunch, and he said, Thanks, I need to run and get gas for the outboard anyway.

  The gas station was on the Island. Wes drove east to circle around to the back side of the crescent lake, and on the way he passed a ripe patch of sugar cane, just burned and ready to cut. A battered harvester mowed the standing cane down by the row, and a tractor drawing a high-sided trailer kept time, collecting the blur of billet that dropped from the elevator.

  Wes pulled his pickup onto the side of the road not far from where half a dozen black kids had gathered, sucking sugar stalks and waiting. The boys ignored him, and the harvester doubled back, began to mow the last of the rows. They fanned out along the highway armed with clubs and pellet guns and broken asphalt. Behind the harvester a hundred egrets worked the cut field, chicken-scratching the stubble for field mice and lizards.

  As the fifth row fell, they came. Rabbits—cottontails and swampers both—exploded from the blackened cane, darting across the highway for the shelter of a new green field. The boys went serious and clubbed what they could as the smallest child moved among them, dispatching the wounded rabbits with six pumps on his rusty Benjamin and a point-blank headshot.

  They worked under the orders of an older boy. Shirtless in the chill air, he swung a three-foot length of rebar like a bush hook, sending rabbits tumbling with pendulum-smooth strokes. Great clouds of ash, cold and gray, swirled like dust devils across the highway. In the distance Wes could see coal smoke from Big Cajun II collecting in the oily winter sky. He cranked up the Ford and went on his way, following Island Road.

  When he returned to the houseboat, Celia told him that she had changed her mind, that she wanted to go to the funeral after all. “And I want you to come with me,” she said. “I want us to go together.”

  They were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. She’d made a plate of ham sandwiches on white bread, but neither of them was feeling hungry. “I don’t think so,” said Wes.

  “Because of what happened at the wake?”

  “Sure.”

  “If things get weird again, just tell me. I’ll help see you through it.”

  “Things will get weird.”

  “Then talk to me about it. I can’t help unless you open up some.” Celia stood and circled around the table until she was standing behind him. Her belt buckle pressed against his skull, and he pushed back against it. She put her hands on his shoulders and rubbed them. “Please come with me,” she said. “I have to go.”

  “Why can’t you just stay here with me?”

  “She was my friend, Wes. She was your friend too.”

  “She barely knew me.” He leaned forward, and Celia’s hands fell from his shoulders. “You barely knew me.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Fine. We were best friends, you and me and Sara.”

  Wes heard Celia step away from him. He turned and saw that she was just standing there watching him with glassy eyes. Wes said nothing, and it was not until she drove off crying that he finally became hungry. He ate all of her sandwiches, then spent the rest of the night drinking Old Crow neat, broke down crying himself after he found an old pack of his mother’s menthols, lost between sofa cushions.

  On Christmas Eve, Comeaux came. The screen door of the houseboat slammed, and Wes jerked awake. “Christ, nonc. You scared the shit out of me.”

  “Santa’s here,” said Comeaux.

  “Great.”

  “You look like hell. Solve your problems?”

  Wes shook his stunned head. “No.”

  “Never does.”

  Comeaux went into the kitchen and Wes lay on the couch, listening as his uncle banged around. He rubbed at his eyes, then called out. “So what are you doing here?”

  “Your little girl flagged me down this morning. She’s worried about you, said you were acting funny yesterday.”

  Wes sat up. “Oh.”

  “She’s sweet,” said Comeaux. “You be nice to her.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Black.”

  “Tough guy.”

  Wes rocked forward onto his feet. “What time is it, anyway?”

  “Almost noon.”

  “Damn.”

  Comeaux poured coffee into big styrofoam cups, and they took the johnboat on a slow idle across the lake, back into the stand of flooded timber where the trotline was set. The caught catfish were rolling in the daylight, and the line trembled like a guitar string. “Well, all right,” said Comeaux.

  His uncle kept the hooks clear of the boat while Wes collected three nice channel cats. He slipped them one at a time into a five-gallon bucket, and Comeaux pointed at all the clean hooks. “If you’d have made it out here at dawn you’d have three times that.”

  “I know,” said Wes. He yanked on the pull cord, and on the fourth try the outboard sputtered and then started.

  They tied the johnboat off at the dock, and Wes climbed out. He went into the houseboat to grab a fillet knife, and when he returned Comeaux was standing over the white bucket of catfish. His uncle took the knife from him. “I’ll do it” he said. “Nurse your hangover.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Wes said thanks and sat down on his heels. “I need to tel
l you something.”

  “What’s that?” Comeaux tapped a Winston loose from a crumpled soft pack and lit it off a paper book of matches. He looked over at Wes. “Go on,” he said.

  “That man never came at me or nothing. He just smiled, and I was so scared I shot him.”

  Comeaux lifted an eel-slick catfish by the mouth, then pushed its bottom lip through the timber tie that Wes’s father had nailed into a piling long ago. “I understand,” said Comeaux. “In the war I saw things, did things, that I never thought I’d shake.”

  “That’s kinda how I feel about this,” said Wes. “Like I ain’t never been so scared.”

  Comeaux’s head bounced, and with the knife he made two shallow cuts, one on either side of the catfish’s dorsal fin. “You know, I spent a few months in Korea between tours.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Right on their DMZ. Most beautiful place you ever saw. An Eden, really. We’d go on these bullshit keep-sharp patrols and see all kinds of deer, moon bears. We’d even cut tiger tracks.”

  “Tigers?”

  “No shit. Ain’t but about two miles wide, but it was like you were on another planet. They say it’s still that way.” Comeaux plier-peeled great strips of gray skin from the impaled catfish. “There’s peace to be found in this world, Wes. You just have to look.”

  The channel cat hung naked on the nail, gills still working steadily as Comeaux began to cut out the fillets. Wes watched it suffer and bleed. “I guess,” he said.

  Wes parked at the levee and walked down into the frosted batture. A mourners’ path had formed over the past week, snaking its way around the blowdowns and snags left by Katrina and then Rita. Wes followed fresh tracks through the thicket to the spot where he had found her. The switch cane was trampled flat and littered with cigarette butts. Someone had nailed a tragedy wreath to the side of a sycamore, and flowers were piled high around the base of the tree. Up above, evergreen clouds of mistletoe floated in bare branches.

  He knelt opposite the memorial and tried to forget the shattered girl, remember Sara as he had known her. Trade tape-bound lips for beautiful smiles, heal her torn skin. He stayed as long as that took, and when he quit the moonlit clearing he could almost hear her laughing on a Friday-night tailgate, a wine cooler pinned between her golden knees. She’s teasing Wes, calling him Elvis for his sideburns, swinging her feet as she sips on her bottle and a warm southern breeze pulls at her hair.

  Wes was late for Mass and so he stood behind the last pew, searching for Celia. The congregation passed candles as they began to sing “Silent Night” and finally he spotted her near the front with her family. She turned to kindle her mother’s candle and frowned when she saw him, showed him her back as the lights went dim in the Immaculate Heart of Mary. On a table near the altar sat a picture of Sara. Someone handed Wes a candle of his own, and he sang as best he could. The priest locked eyes with him, and Wes looked away.

  He caught up with her in the midnight parking lot, peeling her away from her family before they all piled into a shiny sedan. She was wearing a red plaid skirt and a white sweater. Her lipstick was darker than usual, the color of oxblood leather. “Can we talk?” he asked.

  Celia cocked her head, half closed her green eyes. “What do you want?”

  “To apologize.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry about yesterday,” he said.

  “That it?”

  “Well, yeah, I guess.”

  Celia slapped him on his arm. “Have a great Christmas.” She turned and began walking to her car, her family.

  “Wait.” Wes grabbed her hand, and she let herself be spun around. “There’s something else,” he told her. “I’m leaving for a while, probably won’t be back until school starts.”

  Celia softened. “Are you crying?”

  “Forget it.”

  “You are.” She put her hand against his jaw. “Where are you going?” she asked. “Tell me.”

  “Florida. To see my mom.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.” Wes kicked at a pebble, and it went skittering across the parking lot. “And you could come with me, you know.”

  Celia laughed. “You see the big man sitting in that car?” Wes looked over and saw that Mr. Trahan had his neck craned around and was watching them. Her father tapped twice on the horn as if he’d been listening in. Celia laughed again. ”Daddy’s kinda expecting me for Christmas,” she said.

  “Right.”

  “He’d catch us before we hit Biloxi.”

  “I know you can’t. I just wanted to say it”

  “And I’m glad that you did.” Celia leaned in and hugged him. A horn blared; she drew back. “I’m sorry too,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “I’ve been thinking. Praying.”

  “Praying?”

  Celia nodded. “You weren’t all wrong. I wasn’t doing the things I was doing for the right reasons.”

  Wes tried then to kiss her on her painted lips, but she put a hand flat against his chest and stopped him. “So what does that mean?” he asked.

  “It means that I want to be your friend,” said Celia. “But for real this time.” She held out her hand and crinkled her nose. “Friends?”

  Wes left at daybreak with Sally spread out next to him on the bench seat. The traffic eased as Christmas settled in, and he made good time. This was his first trip outside of Louisiana since before the storms. He shook his head at the destruction in Mississippi, casino billboard after casino billboard corkscrewed and twisted.

  Somewhere in the pine-tree wilderness between Pensacola and Tallahassee, Wes crossed the broad Apalachicola and entered a new time zone. He pulled onto the shoulder of the interstate for a piss, was unzipping his jeans when Sally bolted out the open door before he could collar her. A minivan blew by, missing the setter by a yard as she disappeared into the thin stretch of pinewoods separating the east and west lanes of I-10. Wes hollered, but Sally wasn’t listening. He sprinted after her.

  This was new country for them both—pine forest, cool and quiet. Sally was quartering for scent when Wes caught up to her, damn near tackled her. They fell in a heap at the base of a gnarled Torreya, that biblical gopher wood.

  Wes lay back on the carpet of pine needles, holding Sally close as she licked at his face. From both sides of the forest came the occasional whine of cars cruising the interstate, tires humming on asphalt. He relaxed and listened, not to the cars, but to the stillness between the cars. He could smell the river, thick and clean, and in the treetops a nuthatch flittered back and forth, afraid to cross that open road, afraid to leave the harmony of the softwoods.

  East Texas

  Colson sipped black coffee at a corner booth and waited for his brother’s wife. Outside, a cold shower fell, flooding the cracked-asphalt canyons that spider-webbed the parking lot of the crowded diner. Broken cigarettes sailed on pothole lakes, dividing diesel rainbows. Colson flinched as a pregnant waitress shouted an order at the line cook. His jeans were wet and he shivered.

  A red hatchback pulled off the highway, and Shannon poured out of the old Geo before Deb could finish parking. Colson smiled watching his niece. She was coltish still—all knees and elbows—but already pretty like her mother. She was wearing the pink jacket he had bought her for Christmas. It was brighter than he remembered, even in the rain.

  Deb was in her supermarket uniform. She shielded her short black hair with a newspaper and hawk-snatched Shannon’s hand. Laughing, they splashed across the parking lot and made their way inside. A trucker said, Hey, mama, and Colson stood to greet them. He hugged Shannon hard, then kissed Deb on the cheek. Her skin was damp and cool. The rain had complicated her cheap perfume, and she smelled like gardenias torn by a storm.

  “Thanks for coming.” Colson slid into the booth opposite Deb, and Shannon pushed in next to him, throwing her arm around his neck like a monkey.

  “Of course.” Deb brushed the hair from her face, exposing a smudge o
f printer’s ink just above her left eyebrow. “So how you liking driving a tow truck?”

  “I like it fine,” said Colson. “I’m on my own for the most part.”

  Deb smiled. “And I imagine that suits you.”

  Colson shrugged as he handed Shannon a dollar. “Go and check out that jukebox,” he told her. “Play us some songs.”

  Shannon scrambled out of the booth and Deb smirked. “I wish your brother was as generous with his money.”

  “I saw him yesterday,” said Colson. “He wanted me to ask that you stop by sometime.”

  “You tell him I’ll never bring my child into that place.”

  “I think he’ll get that. But he’d still like to see you.”

  “I don’t have a say?”

  “I ain’t pretending it’s any of my business.” Colson put his elbows on the table and made twin tornados with his hands. “I just promised him I’d ask so here I am.”

  “Twenty years, Colson. That’s older than you are now.” The rain stopped, and, softer, Deb added, “My job in life is to raise that little girl, not make his time easier.”

  Colson nodded and then fished out the five twenties that were folded in the front pocket of his work shirt. His sister-in-law watched him slide the cash across the smooth table and sighed. “I can’t keep on taking your money,” she said.

  “I want you to have it.” Colson tapped the bills closer and closer until she had no choice but to grab them before they slipped off the edge of the table.

  “Thanks.” Deb squeezed his wrist, letting her fingers linger before she tucked the money into her purse. “It helps,” she said. “It really does.”

  “Course it does.”

  “Cut him loose,” said Deb. “He poisons everything he touches.”

  Colson started to speak but just then Shannon came racing over from the jukebox. Her hands were balled into tiny fists and he could tell that she was angry. “Yeah?” he asked.