Sketcher

by Roland Watson-Grant

  Anyway, I caught up with them at the slope: Tony was lying down on that little gradient that goes up to the actual rails of the train tracks, in a jeans jacket and hip boots with one of our walkie-talkies in his hand. Doug was on his belly in the wet dirt, in a zipped-up black sweater and hip boots as well. They had taken a small boat from Pa Campbell and rowed across from our house and come up the side of the bayou. They were scopin’ out the Benets’ place, and I said to myself: “Damn, Skid, you just ran into a full-scale military mission with the big boys.” This was the big leagues, so there was no way I was going to tell them that Moms said to come on home. You don’t tell soldiers their mom says to come on home.

  Well, exactly one minute after that decision I was mad as hell, cos Doug told me they were the ones who sent Calvin over to the Benets “on a mission”. Tony said he had heard Pops’ van comin’ into the swamp, and from up in the tamarind tree they verified that the Ford Transit was parked around the back of the Benets’ house and Pops was inside talkin’ to Backhoe. Somethin’ strange was goin’ on between them since that day with the puppies. So Tony came up with the idea to strap one of the HF-1200 walkie-talkies to poor ol’ Calvin, duct-tape down the microphone key and then take him to the train tracks, turn him loose and let nature take its course. That dog was so hooked on the Benets’ Border collie that he’d dash across the tracks once a chain wasn’t holding him back. So there we were listenin’ to the other doggie-walkie-talkie to see if we could hear what Backhoe and Pops were talking about.

  “Shhh! Skid, keep quiet on the gravel. Doug, where’s Calvin now?”

  “Should be under the Benets’ house. Expecting to hear audio any time soon.”

  It didn’t take long for all of us to agree that that walkie-talkie-Calvin thing was a bad idea. I couldn’t believe these dudes sent my dog into danger like that, but overall this was some cool stuff. And I wish I could call for back-up – but it was too late for Harry T to get down into the swamps and, like I said, gettin’ through to Belly and Marlon took some serious long-distance communication.

  So we were it. The team and the back-up. All we could do now is listen. But all we could hear was dog hair. Yep. See, if those geniuses had asked me, I woulda told ’em that Calvin would be draggin’ hisself on his belly in the mud under the Benets’ house and whimperin’ and pantin’. That’s not a good idea when you’re tryin’ to listen to something. Well, the dogdraggin’ sound continued for about another minute – and then suddenly, as clear as day, we could hear Pops’ voice from inside the house.

  “I told you, Tracey... Backhoe... whatever you call yourself these days... there’s nothin’ over there!”

  “Yew sho’ you checked ag’in?”

  “Yessir.”

  “With all the nec’sary methods?”

  “And then some more.”

  “Now, Alrick, yew owe it to me to keep on lookin’.”

  “I don’t owe you jack... (static) We all ’greed on this a long time ago. Shared ownership of any gas we (static) or take the losses if we didn’t find any – simple.”

  “And I’m sayin’, it’s too early to call it.”

  “We’ve been searching for twenty years, Benet!”

  The radio frequency was actin’ up. To make matters worse, the sky suddenly flashed on and off, and we felt the first drops of the rain returnin’.

  We pressed our heads closer around the walkie-talkie. Backhoe was gettin’ antsy.

  “Look, Al. There’s got to be somethin’ over on your side. Look around and (static) already checked over this side. That side of the swamp is pure Mississippi limestone, there’s got to be some gas pockets under there. Check again or (static) your people off my land and let me get the pile drivers and the drills in here myself. I owe people and we’re runnin’ out of time. Remember, what’s on my land... is mine. And I’m sure you don’t want that to include sweet Mrs Beaumont, do you?”

  We heard a scuffle comin’ from inside the house or under it. Right at that minute, the noise overpowered everything.

  “Tony, there’s too much static!”

  “That’s not static, man: that’s Calvin’s backside.”

  The static turned into a thump-thump that could only mean one thing: Calvin was under the house with Medusa tryin’ to become a daddy again.

  Tony spoke in his nerd voice. “It appears Agent Calvin has gone rogue and is cavorting with the enemy.” We started laughin’ until we realized there was silence from inside the house.

  Then all hell exploded. More raindrops were drummin’ on the Benets’ tin roof. Backhoe heard Calvin thumpin’ through his floorboards and shouted to his sons, who ran around the back. They flung the groin-grabber under the house. Calvin yelped. They hauled him out. He was snarlin’ and growlin’, but we could hear when they ripped off the walkie-talkie and hit him in the head with it. He howled and bit somebody, or maybe the both of them, and they hit him in the head again and again. Then we heard Pops’ van start up and saw him hightailing out of the swamp in the rain with the back doors still open and Backhoe runnin’ behind the Ford Transit with a plank. Backhoe stopped when he saw that Pops was long gone. He put his hand to his forehead, looked at his fingers, then stomped off to go join his boys. I jumped up mad and excited at the same time.

  “I’m goin’ in!”

  “No, you’re goin’ home.” Doug grabbed my collar and turned me in the direction of the house. Right then I heard a zing by my ear. Either it had started rainin’ horizontal, and the drops were balls of fire or... Then there was another sound. Somethin’ you feel through your pores before your ears recognize it. One. Two. Six. Eight gunshots. I made for the tamarind tree and monkeyed up onto it. Calvin came out from under the Benets’ house and bolted across the tracks – ears back, tail under. Then came the whole Benet family, stridin’ after him. They were gun-confident, steppin’ fast across the border, blazin’ shots at our dog in the dark. Hot nozzles coughed out deadly red. Each time the poppin’ lights showed the Benets’ faces for a few seconds before they turned into shadows again. The explosions bounced among the cypress trees like pinball. I couldn’t believe this was happenin’. Doug and Tony dropped flat again and crawled in the mud towards the footbridge a little ways off.

  “Skid!”

  Doug was shoutin’, but I was long gone up in that tamarind tree, and I wasn’t comin’ down. I was watchin’ the whole thing from above, soakin’-wet and scared as hell, but I held on and kept my head down.

  In the flickerin’ from the sky, I saw everything frame after frame. Backhoe swung down the barrel of his rifle and started workin’ the lever, pumping shots as Calvin zigzagged through the trees. That dog was a champion runner. Backhoe was cursin’ mongrels, but somethin’ told me this madness had more to do with Pops than with our dog. Then Moms, who was waitin’ for me the whole time, she heard the shots and came runnin’ and screamin’ at the Benets from the other end of the footbridge – but either they weren’t hearin’ or they were too pissed off to care.

  Backhoe had crossed the train tracks and came chargin’ down the slope, rifle-ready, Broadway and Squash flankin’ him like outriders. They had a six-shooter each, hammerin’ out bullets that cut down leaves and slammed into tree trunks. They blew three rounds each and then fell back to reload without even lookin’ down at the handguns. I saw clearly what they were plannin’ to do next. While their daddy looked around for Calvin, they focused on the footbridge. As soon as Tony and Doug raised up to run across that bridge, those Benet boys took aim at my brothers and started squeezin’ off shots. Their father thought it was the dog and joined in with the rifle. Bullets tore up one end of the bridge. I called out loud, and Moms put her hands up high in the dark at the other end, either callin’ on the Lord or castin’ a spell. Maybe she was just tryin’ to make them see her and her boys, I don’t know. But the smoke in their eyes from all that shootin’ and the water and noise from the sky wasn’t helpin’. There was gunpowder in my throat, and my hollerin’ went silent for a sec
ond, like in those terrible dreams you get when you have a fever.

  As Tony and Doug hurried over the bridge, Broadway and Squash ran after them like it was a feedin’ frenzy. My brothers leapt off the bridge and stood in front of Moms. They faced the Benets. Squash walked up slowly. He laughed a little, then got serious, pulled back the hammer of the pistol and took aim. His eyes grew wide.

  “Squash... Broadway. That’s enough, boys,” Backhoe called out from the dark.

  Squash shouted back: “It’s self-defence, I heard!”

  “No, that’s enough, c’mon, let’s go!”

  Two feet behind him, Broadway was ready to blaze. His voice was lower, but just as menacin’.

  “That’s funny, Squash... huntin’ accident’s what I heard.”

  Moms still had her hands in the air, with her palms holdin’ up the sky. Tony put his five fingers out, as if they could block bullets. His other hand was clutchin’ the walkie-talkie. He was swearin’ and beggin’ at the same time. Doug turned his flashlight towards the hunters. In the shaky beam, the rain was slantin’ into Broadway’s face and drippin’ off his peach fuzz. My bones started rattlin’. His grin turned into a grimace one second before he and his brother squeezed those triggers... hard. I was screamin’ when the nozzles flashed. Stupid words with no meanin’ come out when you’re terrified. Moms brought her hands down at the sounds, maybe to shield her face, but those bullets, they went high. Just before the bullets, there had been a loud crack with a squeak in it, like a heavy door breakin’, and even in the darkness we could see that somethin’ crazy was takin’ place. All of a sudden, the ol’ footbridge broke under their feet. You could hear the wood split and hit liquid. Then came the sound of their bodies droppin’ hard against it. They rolled off the broken bridge and lay there, sputterin’ and lookin’ ’round, frightened as hell, in the creek that was now swollen because of the rain. They picked themselves up quickly and stood waist-deep. They blamed each other, then found their guns and waded in towards the bank, more determined to do damage. But the creek, it bubbled up and the banks where the bridge used to sit just crumbled in and shoved them down into the water again. Things got real muddy, so they put up their guns and tried to hold on to each other in the muck and the downpour.

  “Orville, Herbert, stop yer strugglin’. That’s a sinkhole!”

  Backhoe was on his belly with a big branch stretchin’ out towards his sons and shoutin’ above the thunder. He looked up at Moms but he wouldn’t call for help. Tony and Doug were halfway to helpin’ them and halfway holdin’ back. Then, while they were tryin’ to grab hold of the branch, we all heard it. At first I thought it was thunder, but it was a groan comin’ up from the ground itself. The earth moved and the creek was a big ol’ cauldron comin’ to a boil. That spot where the bridge had fallen in opened up some more, like paper does when a candle burns under it. The shakin’ got worse. I held on tight, and everybody on the ground rocked this way and that. Broadway and Squash started cryin’ out for help, but the sudden sinkhole got angry and boiled up some more. It swallowed up the footbridge. It swirled round and round and when Squash’s hand was just an inch from the branch, the boys both disappeared under the bubbles and the darkness and the noise, sucked down into the earth along with everything else. My eyes and mouth were wide open when the shakin’ stopped. The surface of the creek settled down. Crickets complained and water gently sprinkled the earth, as if the atmosphere had been innocent the whole time. The slender creek now had a big lagoon where the bridge used to be. From up in the tree, it was a great python that had swallowed somethin’ it could never digest. Moms, Doug and Tony stood huggin’ on one side of the sinkhole; Backhoe Benet knelt in the mud on the other side. He was halfway into the creek grabbin’ at water and mud and whimperin’. Then, in the silence, a light flashed right above my head. It wasn’t lightning. It was Frico Beaumont, perched on a branch above me, quiet as a shadow, a cigarette lighter below his chin, the fire flickerin’ in the rain on his glasses, a soaked sketch pad resting on one knee. “Shhh,” he said. And a blue pencil was in his left hand when those boys fell into hell.

  Ten

  Two human beings died that night.

  That’s what my mother said I should never forget. As if I could. We were all there when the squad car came, washing the trees in an antiseptic kind of blue. After the fire truck arrived and the place burned red, the coroner’s vehicle, a sleepy stainless-steel panel van, rolled in. There was no ambulance.

  The coroner’s driver refused to come down the slope for fear of more sinkholes. So they squabbled a bit with the firemen about bringin’ the bodies up to the surface of the sinkhole that was now full, and when they did, the squad car’s fluorescent lamp cut through the dream light of the moon. It streamed across the wet ground and came to rest on that water gateway into the earth. I felt sick.

  Moms took a quick breath and stepped back and called us away from the sight. She just hugged all of us and rocked back and forth and kept whisperin’, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” for some reason. Even with all the water, Broadway and Squash were covered in heavy grey mud, and you couldn’t tell them apart. They tried revivin’ them – and when they couldn’t, Tracey Benet just knelt right there in the mud, goin’ hopelessly back and forth, holdin’ this one’s face and then that one’s head. He slapped their cheeks softly and said words that I couldn’t hear from where I was, like he was tryin’ to say, “OK boys, joke’s over, you can wake up now.”

  Now, when they finally covered them up and carried them to the van, a second squad car came and a lady who looked familiar, she came hurryin’ down the slope and passed the coroner’s van and came up to Tracey, who was talkin’ to the police. Tracey turned around and just stared at that lady for an eternity of seconds – and that was when I heard Moms say: “Pauline”. It was Mrs Benet.

  After a couple of screams and otherwise silent, sad gestures, Tracey hugged her and she punched him, and he hugged her again and then he took her up the slope to the van. I heard the back doors creak open, and the coroner guy who stuck his head inside must’ve been tired or annoyed that he had to undo the sheets that he had wrapped around them, cos he took a while doing it – and Pauline, prob’ly watching him unwind the cloth while those cop lights went blue-blue-blue, she just fell to the forest floor in her decent clothes and screamed and held her belly for a long, long time. And when it was done, the policemen, they questioned Moms, but she told them we weren’t being chased. I don’t think the policemen believed her, cos they took Tracey away to question him some more about what he was callin’ a huntin’ accident. They prob’ly wanted answers about a gun they found in Broadway’s hand and how so many shells were found on the train tracks.

  The second squad car waited until Moms had taken Pauline and given her some herbal tea from her best china in the glass display case. Pauline refused to come inside. She sat on the front porch of our house, and when she spoke between sips of camomile and playful growls from Calvin’s kids, she sounded like Moms just a little bit. She had jet-black hair cropped close at the sides, and the top was frizzy and went up in the air like a pop star’s. She put down the teacup ever so often and took out a mirror to fix her make-up, even though the place was only half lit. She pulled down her cheeks to straighten out the bags under her eyes, then pulled back her cheeks towards her ears as if she was tryin’ to iron out wrinkles that I couldn’t see.

  Pa Campbell, who was out there with his rifle from the first shots that were fired, he went back into his house and took off his bandana and put on a hat, just so he could walk up to Pauline and take it off and say he was sorry for her loss. Pauline looked at him with his hat in his hand and gave him the kind of smile that showed she appreciated every word he said. And when they ran out of words after discussin’ the earthquake again and searchin’ for answers, they all suddenly looked like three little kids who had played too long and now needed to go find their parents. Then one of the policemen, a baldin’ guy, saw that the porch had become uncomfort
able, so he said it was time to go, and when we all trailed behind Pauline and Pa Campbell and Ma Campbell and Moms, we saw that they had put black-and-yellow tape across the creek right around the sinkhole with “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS” repeated on it, as if we needed to be told more than once.

  Then one Fire Department first-aid guy, he said that with all that happened we should prob’ly all get checked out at the hospital. Well, I wanted to ride on the fire engine, but Moms said this was no time for fun and games, so instead they tossed me into the back of the squad car with Pauline and Frico. I didn’t know what to say to her, so I kept my mouth shut. Tony and Doug went with Moms and Pa Campbell, and that whole ride into the city after 10.30 in the night was bizarre.

  First of all I’d never been in a police car before. We rode along in pitch black with only the dull beams of the squad car hurryin’ a few feet in front of us. Then, when the first overpass went slidin’ by and we burst out into the light, I could feel the heat comin’ on, like we were rollin’ into an oven. The broken lines in the middle of the road slid under the car and made me think of those black-and-white keys on a piano playin’ the same notes – the same sorrowful notes, over and over again, like the saddest thing in the world was happenin’. And it prob’ly was.

  Look, I never reckoned Frico would go over the edge like that. I wanted him to stop dilly-dallyin’ and do stuff, but I wasn’t plannin’ on that. I watched him in the cop car rearview mirror, and apart from his eyes lookin’ like he was really tired, it didn’t seem like the whole thing bothered him one bit. Every time we passed a street light, those diamond-shaped shadows from the cage that separates police from prisoner in the squad car just kept sliding across his face. Even in the back of a police car, with his face in a shadow mask every few feet, that boy still looked innocent. But so did those Benet boys when they pulled them out of the earth. I closed my eyes to block out the image, but instead I trapped the whole thing in my head. Frico. Squash. Broadway.