by Russell Hill
The line of men faced the voice and the ringleader said, "Sheriff, we come out here to say hello to the son of a bitch who put a bullet in Billy's head. It's just a social call."
"I got a dog that's smarter than you, Emmett. He knows better than to piss on himself. Which is what you were about to do."
"There's ten of us and but one of you, sheriff."
"Like I said, Emmett, my dog is smarter than that. The rest of you!" He called out to the others. "You know me. If that man in there had anything to do with that bullet in Billy's head, you know I'll take care of him. Emmett's got himself carried away in the heat of the moment and probably you all got a little help from what you been drinking. If you get back in your vehicles and go on back home I don't believe I'll be able to remember who was here. But if you don't, then I got a memory like an elephant and it will go down hard."
There was a shifting of bodies. It was darker now, the headlights of the sheriff's car illuminating the outlines of the men and they began to drift off. I heard trucks start and headlights came on.
"You, too, Emmett," the sheriff said.
Emmett turned back toward the house and shouted, "Birdman! You ain't seen the last of me!"
The sheriff's car remained where it was, headlights on, while the others left. Suddenly all I could hear was the rising and falling of the cicadas. The solitary dark figure of the sheriff was outlined in the headlights.
"Mr. Hamrick," he called out. "I'd appreciate it if you would come out onto the porch where I can see you."
I leaned the .22 against the wall, opened the screen door and stepped out into the light. The Sheriff came to the bottom of the steps. I couldn't see his face.
"I don't have any direct evidence to connect you with the shooting of Billy Galloway, but a whole lot of things point a finger at you. However, I don't cotton to a bunch of drunken men beating you to death. They won't be back this evening, you can put money on that. But I can't babysit you around the clock, so if you have something you want to tell me, it might make a difference in your well-being."
"What do you want me to say, Sheriff? That I shot him?"
"If you was to say that, I would take you into the County seat and put you in jail, and a bunch of drunks with axe handles would not show up at your door. And your wife would be able to go up to Chicago to see her sick mother."
"I told you, that's where she is."
"Well, I know you told me that, but unless she's walking to Chicago, I doubt if you told me the truth."
"And you'd charge me with trying to kill that man?"
"That would be about it."
"And some of those men who stood here would sit on the jury?"
"That's possible."
"I didn't shoot anybody."
"I'll be back out tomorrow, Mr. Hamrick. You and your missus talk it over." He turned and went back to his car. The lights went off, the engine started and the lights came on again. I watched as he turned the car toward the road, and then there were only the cicadas, their constant chorus rising and falling. Robin came out and put her arms around me . Her body was hot, as if she had a fever.
17.
We slept outside again, but I took the mosquito net down to the woods and we made a bed away from the house. I took the rifle and the box of cartridges, the wrapped-up skin of the ivory bill, two bottles of water and a flashlight. We lay awake listening to the night noises, the cicadas that never seemed to cease, owls, sometimes a far-off dog. Eventually we slept, waking only when the sun touched us. It was well past sunrise.
I heard the car approaching and we stayed in the woods until I was sure that it belonged to the sheriff. He parked next to the porch, opened the car door, but stayed behind the wheel, waiting. Robin and I came up through corner of the corn field to the back of the house, and then came around the side nearest the car. She took my hand, gripping it tightly.
The sheriff heaved himself out of the seat and stood, resting one arm on the open door of the car.
"This must be Mrs. Hamrick?"
"Not exactly.
"Exactly who is she?"
"She might as well be my wife. We live together."
He smiled. "There's a whole lot of folks in the same boat, young man. Nothing to be ashamed about."
"We're not ashamed. Of anything."
"You thought over what I said last night?"
"We have."
"And what did you decide?"
"I didn't shoot anybody."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"You're sorry I didn't shoot him?"
"No, I think you did shoot him. I'm sorry to hear you deny it."
He shifted his weight. There were already dark sweat circles on his brown shirt under his arms and a patch on his belly.
"You deny that your lady dressed up like a Lord God bird and climbed into a tree in the Big Woods?"
"Yes."
"You mind telling me, miss, why you got your head shaved like that?"
"I got nits. My hair was long and I tried kerosene but in this heat it was awful, so I just shaved it off. You ever see kids in school with their heads shaved, sheriff? I'll bet you had nits when you were a kid."
"No need to get uppity, miss." He looked at me. "You find that rifle of yours, Mr. Hamrick?"
"No. Like I said, it's somewhere in the water out in the woods."
"Last night you told Emmett that you'd put a bullet in his head if he came closer to the house. Were you going to throw it at him?"
"It was a bluff."
"Mr. Hamrick, I'm beginning to lose patience with you. I got folks in town who want me to find the person who put a bullet in Billy Galloway's head. I think you're the right one. All I have to do is make a little trip after dark over to the other side of the county on some errand and you'll get that same bunch of drunks with axe handles only I won't be coming down the road in time to save you. You'll save the county the cost of a trial and the worst part is that your little bitty friend here would be at the mercy of a bunch of drunks with blood on the brain, and that's not something I think you want to happen."
"You want me to confess to something I didn't do or you'll let them beat me to death and then sic them on Robin?"
"I got enough to charge you and in this county it wouldn't take but about ten minutes for a jury to say yes. You had a gun, same caliber as what scrambled Billy's brains, you got a wife the size of the woman up in that tree, she's got her head shaved so we can't see how she had it all red like a woodpecker. You admitted you were out in the bayou the same day, you got some vested interest in the Lord God bird and Billy killed one. Might be something to get your back up, that's for sure. And I'll bet if I look long enough and hard enough, I'll find that dead bird."
"It's all circumstantial."
"You practicing law now, boy? You're an outsider in this county. Folks here tend to close ranks when one of their own gets hurt."
I said nothing. I think that if Robin had not been gripping my hand so hard, I would have given in.
He looked at my car, lying on its side a few yards off.
"It would appear that you aren't going to drive off any time soon, boy."
I was no longer Mr. Hamrick. There was coarseness to his voice and I wondered if he would arrest me, but he continued to look at my car and then he settled back into the seat behind the wheel, closing the door. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands.
"You change your mind, you go on up to Buster's farmhouse. He's got a telephone. I'll come and collect you. Your lady can stay with them. Nobody will do anything if she's there, you can count on that."
18.
Robin said there was no way she would let me admit to shooting Billy Galloway.
"If you do, they'll put you in jail for years."
We couldn't drive off. The car remained on its side and although Robin and I tried to rock it up, it was, of course, hopeless. The only answer was to try to make a run for it on foot. We decided that we would go through the neighboring woods at dark, come out t
he other side and go across the fields until we came to Louanne, four miles off. It was a short hike from there to where the boat was and we would go into the Big Woods in the dark, go as far as we could, and then the next day try to work our way through, hoping to find some way to exit the woods closer to Louisiana. The sheriff would look for us, and he would, no doubt, look for the boat. And they would have boats with outboard motors and they would know the woods well, having hunted and fished in them. We would be blindly feeling our way, but there seemed to be no other way out.
I tied the legs of a pair of pants together and stuffed one with two cans of beans, four hardboiled eggs, two jars of water, the mosquito net, the rest of the kangaroo juice for mosquitoes, an extra shirt for Robin and one for me. I folded the feather cape as best as I could, and shoved it, along with the skin of the ivory bill down the other leg. We would carry the .22 and the flashlight.
There was a haze at dusk, and the sun became a red ball, like the door of a furnace left open when we went into the woods. We kept the sun at our right so that we would continue south. I knew these woods were shallow, in a low swale between fields and we would come out into corn fields. We could follow the long aisles of corn from field to field and not be seen. We sweated in the heat and I thought of cottonmouths in the brush at our feet . We were only about a half hour into the woods when the light began to fail. That was when we heard voices. We stopped, listening. Behind us were shouts, faint, and then, rising above the trees was a black column of smoke, sparks spiraling in the evening air. They had come and they had set the house on fire. Whether or not they had thought we were in it made no difference. They would know, eventually, if not at that moment, that we had gone, and they would be looking for us.
When we broke out of the woods it was dark. We went into the first corn field, and the sharp leaves cut at us as we walked. The light of a farmhouse was a beacon that we followed, going into a field, coming out, making sure we were still moving south. Soon the lights of Louanne were to our left, only a few yellow windows and then we came to the road that led into the Big Woods.
"Do you think they went to the boat?" Robin asked.
"Maybe. That bunch of drunks probably doesn't know where it is. If the Sheriff knows by now that we've hightailed it, then he might."
But there was no one there when we reached the end of the road and it dipped down into the water.
The woods at night were another world. We pushed off into the dark and almost immediately it was a velvet black, the darkness so complete that I could not see Robin opposite me, nor could I see anything. I held my hand in front of my face and blew on it and I could feel my breath, but when I did not blow, only held my hand upright inches from my eyes, there was no sensation of anything there, only emptiness. Robin climbed past me into the bow and turned the flashlight ahead and I rowed, slowly, each stroke a careful push as she guided us between trees, the water as black as tar. Occasionally she said, "Look," and aimed the flashlight at a blaze I had made on a tree.
I thought, God must be close to us in this place. He will not let them find us. There were serpents in the swamp and strange birds that could see us even though we could not see them. I imagined them sleeping in trees above us, their heads tucked under their wings, but aware that we were passing beneath them, ready to fly at the least movement. We slathered the kangaroo juice on our exposed skin but mosquitoes flew up my nostrils and if I breathed with my mouth open, I felt them on my tongue and against the roof of my mouth.
I rowed silently until we began to hear birds and I knew we would soon have light. Behind us the faint wake of the boat became visible, and then the shadowy grey of tree trunks and more birdsong, trills and yells and squawks. There was the constant drumming of a woodpecker, not an ivory bill, but a smaller bird, its throbbing beat echoing among the now visible trees.
I stopped rowing and we drifted.
"We should keep going," Robin said.
"I need to rest."
"I can row."
It seemed like we were close to where the ivory bill had been shot, or at least it looked like it, but every long drift between the trees resembled the others. We could easily have gone in a circle in the night. Perhaps the road to Louanne was only a few hundred yards away. But the light in the tree canopy ahead of us told me that was the east and if we paid attention to the light as it rose overhead, then we could keep ourselves in a straight line. South, I thought, toward Louisiana.
Robin rowed and I sat in the back of the boat facing her, watching her thin shoulders bend to the oars. Her naked head shone and I wanted to touch it, hold it in my hands, feel the smoothness of her skin, trace the bones of her face with my fingers.
We wandered through long avenues of water between the trees, turning first one way, and then another, but always toward the south. The sun lit the canopy overhead and the heat became fierce and Robin rowed, slowly, leaning forward, catching the oars in the water, leaning back with each stroke, and then I took over, rowing steadily while she told me, "turn this way," pointing over my shoulder. "Turn there," and we threaded our way between moss-covered three stumps.
The water courses narrowed, and we searched for channels that might take us farther, but there were none and we came to places where the oars caught on the grasses and heavy growth on either side. We were running out of water. But there had been no sound of pursuit, no outboard motors, no voices, nothing but the incessant whine of mosquitoes and the chatter of birds.
We stopped in the early afternoon, ate a hard boiled egg, drank the last of the water and then Robin began to row again, but it was almost useless. The boat kept bogging down in masses of submerged grass and roots and finally we gave up. We took off our clothes and tied them into bundles. I looped the legs of the stuffed trousers over my shoulders and we went over the side into the green water. It was waist deep and we waded and it became deeper, the soft mud on the bottom sucking at our feet. I was almost chest deep when I realized that Robin was nearly submerged, the water coming to her chin, and I hoisted her onto my back, with her arms clasped tightly around my neck, our clothes and shoes stuffed into the legs of our pants, along with the trousers that held the ivory bill skin looped over Robin's neck.
We worked our way to an island and when we climbed onto it, there was spongy ground covered with grass and it was dappled with light. The canopy was thinner and ahead we could see more ground, the water courses dwindling. In another hour we were among huge stumps and spindly trees. It had been logged, and the dark avenues of water were gone, the clouds of mosquitoes had disappeared, and the only sounds were crows somewhere ahead of us, and once, a barking dog. We froze at the sound, waiting, but it was an intermittent bark, and it stopped. We put our clothes back on, and our shoes, and we walked again until the woods gave away to a field, and there was maize and scraggly cotton, and a shack of a house at one edge. A dirt road ran along the field.
There seemed to be no one near the house but when we had passed it and I looked back, there was a small black child behind the house and the child was looking at us.
We followed the road until it came to another small clump of woods and we went into the woods and there was a creek, only a trickle, but it was enough.
We drank from it and we took off our clothes and lay in the shallow water, washing off the mud and sweat and we washed our pants and shirts and laid them out in the sun to dry. We lay on the leaves in the shade and I took the ivory bill skin out and stretched it in the sun. It was damp and I knew that I would have to find more borax or at least some salt. As I watched, ants began to collect on it, tearing away tiny bits of flesh and that was good. They were bright red ants that glowed in the sun.
Robin and I lay on the leaves and we fell asleep and when I awoke, the sun was low through the trees.
I watched Robin's body rise and fall as she breathed and I reached out and ran my hand down her back, caressing the smooth curve of her thigh. She turned so that she faced me and murmured, "My shoulders and my arms-they hur
t,"
My fingers touched the gently curved bone of her skull above her eyes, and felt the shape of her skull and found the flat bone that was her clavicle and the sinew that stretched on the inside of her leg, how hard it was, stretched tight, and I pressed the edge of her shoulder blades and the ridges of her backbone. I could feel them just under the skin and I searched for the muscle that ran across from shoulder to shoulder, and when I found it she cried out and I lifted it with my fingers, kneaded it gently, tried to imagine what it looked like beneath her skin, where it was tied to the bone, how it wrapped around under her arms and I worked my fingers across her jaw, sliding them up under her chin, trying to pull the muscles taut, stretch them so that when I let go they would relax and the tension would dissolve.
I thought of skinning the ivory bill, how the muscles and flesh had peeled away from the tough membrane that held the feathers tight; how I had lifted the mass of it out, the heart and the lungs and its gut, and how somewhere in that inert mass there had been a voice that called out in a nasal shout for another ivory bill.
When it began to get dark, we dressed and rubbed the last of the kangaroo juice on our hands and faces. I opened the can of beans and we ate it and the other two hard-boiled eggs and then I stretched the mosquito net over us and we waited in the woods. No one came.
At first light we packed up. I shook the ants off the ivory bill skin and wrapped it in the feather cloak, stowing it in the pants legs along with the mosquito net, our change of shirts and the .22. We came out of the woods as the sun rose above the field, and followed the road, keeping the sun on our left so that we knew we were still going south. I don't know what made me so sure that a southerly direction would be safer. Perhaps it was the idea that if we could get into Louisiana the sheriff would lose his jurisdiction, but I knew that he wouldn't be terribly concerned over the niceties of a state border. We passed another shack, but saw no one and then we came to a clearing where there was a church.
It was a small wooden church, unpainted, and when we stepped inside it smelled of oiled floors. Dust motes floated in the band of light that came from a single window behind the altar. There were no pews, only wooden chairs, a mismatched collection, some painted, others sturdy kitchen chairs.
