Work Like Any Other

by Virginia Reeves

  We go to the closest pen, the dogs leaping up at the sight of their master.

  “They think they’re going on a run,” Taylor says. “Best not disappoint them.”

  “Sir?”

  “Might be something to this off-lead business. We damn sure slow the dogs down.”

  Taylor rubs one of his thick earlobes between his thumb and pointer, pressing the color out of it. When he lets go, I watch it fill back in, red as his nose. He spits in the dirt. “Let’s give it a shot.”

  “Sir?”

  “You’ll push out through the north fields and into the woods there. After a bit, you’ll come to a creek. I want you to go ahead and cross that. On the opposite bank there’s a big old possum oak—you can’t miss it—and I want you to climb up in the canopy there. Kick up the soil at the trunk before you start climbing. Don’t want it to be too difficult the first time. I’m going to set our girl Maggie on it, with two of the new pups.”

  “Sir?”

  “Jesus, Martin. You’ve done the chasin’ bit. Now’s the time to be chased. It’s the other side of the job.”

  Taylor had told me about this the first time with Jennings, but I hadn’t swallowed down the actual practice of it. It’s obvious, though, standing here now. Hartley trains his dogs on squirrel and woodchuck and finally the coons they’ll keep after. Of course Taylor trains his dogs on men.

  I can see excitement growing in him. “Off lead,” he says again, the thrill shaking him, his cheeks wiggling along with his weighty chin. His fingers drum on the great ball of his belly, as though he were playing scales on a piano. “Bet that’s Atmore’s trick—setting the hounds loose.” He claps his hands down still and flat on his stomach and shouts, “Go, Martin!”

  I still have Hartley’s book in my hands. Taylor sees it and grabs it. “North!” he shouts. “Across the creek and up into that possum oak.” He shoves my shoulder, and I start walking north out of perplexity and fear.

  “Martin!” he yells, and I turn. “You get it in your mind to run past that oak, and the rest of your time here will be painful as I can make it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now get a move on! Men don’t usually walk when they’re running! And leave a stitch of clothing at the edge of the corn. Nothing else though.”

  I run, and I am sure the guards in the cornfield will shoot me dead before Taylor’s dogs are even free of their pens. The men on the rows are all in stripes, and they’re sowing manure in among the hip-high stalks. Only trustees pick the ripe ears, high as the crops get during harvest time.

  The men hoot as I go past.

  “Where you going to in such a hurry?”

  “You finally breaking out?”

  “Martin!” I hear, a stronger voice. “You doing what it looks like you’re doing?”

  It’s Beau. I wish they’d keep him in one spot—the southeast tower or the sixth-floor row or the yard or the corn—so I’d know where to expect his lurching face. He’s leveling his rifle in my direction.

  “Best stop!” he shouts.

  I’m near to slowing when I hear Taylor. “Easy, Beau. We’re just doing some dog work.” Taylor has got himself up on a horse in what seems just a few seconds. “You pass it down the line,” he shouts, then yells in my direction, “Call that running, Martin? Slow as a lame heifer.”

  The corn shakes with laughter, men in stripes and guards in their denim.

  I’m ripping the cuff from my sleeve—is this what Taylor wants?—leaving it for a dog to sniff out. And then I’m pouring myself into woods that could easily be the woods of Marie’s land, woods I’ve stamped through in my freedom. I’m running to a large possum oak on the far side of a creek so that I can be treed by dogs. I’m doing this because George Haskin was ignorant enough to get himself killed on the transformers I’d so carefully built to run current to a dying farm.

  My scars throb, angered by the exertion. All the moisture is gone from my mouth, and I feel the sweat on my forehead gathering itself into drips down the sides of my face. My hands sting from scratches, these spiny-branched bushes and trees plucking at my skin and clothes as I push myself past. I know the names of these plants, but I can’t name them now. Holly? Buckeye?

  Here is the creek, high and muddy from the rains we’ve had. I splash into it gratefully, the water to my knees, soaking my boots and socks. I bend at the waist to scoop a handful of brown water into my mouth. I don’t mind the silt, the rich-earth flavor, and I go to all fours to lap at the creek like a dog.

  I am soaked now, my back wet from sweat, the water on my front climbing my sides. I could turn over, make my body a board, my hands behind my head, my feet pointing downstream. The current would spill me into the Alabama River, and I would ride that wide channel all the way to Mobile Bay. A ship could collect me, and I could say, “London,” when the captain asked where I was heading.

  I hear dogs behind me, and I crawl from the water, leaving prints of my hands and feet in the mud. The possum oak spreads itself wide over the creek, its branches forking with their spoon-shaped leaves, wide at the tips and narrow at the base. It’s kind enough to offer a few low branches, and I pull myself up to them with a moan I can’t contain. It’s an old man’s moan, and I’m worried to house it. I climb a bit higher and settle myself into the crook of a thick branch about twenty feet off the ground. My breathing is desperately hoarse, a racket for the dogs to catch, and water drips from my boots and cuffs. I can hear the drops hitting leaves, a tick loud enough to be heard over the creek’s slosh and ripple. It’s a warm summer day, but I am cold in these wet clothes, the heat from my race washed downstream. Only that part of me will make it to Mobile.

  I take a breath and chance a look down. I’m startled by the girl I see, leaning against the trunk of my tree, her narrow shoulders spread wide against the puzzled bark. She plucks a leaf from the closest branch, peeling the green away from the tendons. She faces the woods, away from the prison, and her hair is a lovely dark brown, like Marie’s when we met. I can’t see her face, but she seems young.

  “You listening, Roscoe?” she says.

  “What?”

  She looks up, then, and the face she shows bewilders me. It is Marie’s face, or a version of hers, younger than I have ever known her to be. A drop of water from the soles of my boots wets the sleeve of her dress, light blue and thin. “Those hounds are so loud. They’re scaring off the birds. There’s a warbler or two in this tree of yours.” My God—to hear Marie talk of birds. “A cerulean, from the sound of it. What I caught of its song, that is, before those dogs got close.”

  She picks at the bark, a long finger in a rough vein.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  She smiles at me, and she is young and beautiful, low on the ground under my wet and dirty boots, her sleeve speckled now as if caught in its own small rainstorm.

  “The farm is doing wonderfully, Roscoe.”

  “Why don’t you write?”

  “What would I say if I did?”

  She starts moving away, waving as she goes. A dog is in the creek, two smaller ones behind it.

  “Wait!” I yell, but Marie is only a rustle of shadows in the brush. A dog has taken her place near the trunk, its nose at the footprints I stomped firm in the ground. A drip taps the middle of its head, and it brings its neck up level with the ground and shakes its giant ears. The thing is slow to sniff the bark, slower still to look up. The other two sniff wildly around it, dashing from creek bank to trunk and back, ears in their faces to shepherd in the scent, as I’ve learned from Hartley. They’re dashing in circles when the big one spots me. It lets out a piercing wail of sound, and the smaller ones chime in. They’ve found me quick it seems, but I don’t know what Taylor expects to happen now. Hartley would have him sitting on some stump a ways back, waiting for a dog to return and lead him to this spot. But if the dogs left, and
I were a real escapee, I’d be quick to take off running again.

  The dogs have set themselves wide around the base of the tree, holding still as they’ve been taught. One of the pups tries to mimic the older dog’s point, and it comes off-balanced, adolescent limbs outpacing its joints in their growth. The other pup lies down.

  Why was Marie here? Why so young?

  At least a quarter hour passes before the hooves of Taylor’s horse clomp to a halt on the other side of the creek. He whoas his mare.

  “What do you think of that, Martin?”

  The big dog whines, and the standing pup copies.

  “They found me, sir.”

  “Ha!” Taylor shouts, and he clucks his horse through the water. “And you thought your book didn’t have a nose for this type of hunt.”

  I fear Taylor’s sense is clouded by his want for answers. If he climbed off his horse and stepped off a few yards, he’d see how foolish the chase was. The hounds may have found me quick, but they left Taylor behind. Without that lead tying them together, he was just a man on a horse, heading toward the possum oak across the creek where he knew I’d be hiding. Untying the dogs from the waists of his boys just makes for more hunting. The dogs track the man, and Taylor’s boys track the dogs, and Taylor tracks his boys.

  It’s clearly not my place to tell him this.

  “Wait,” he’s saying to the dogs. “Come on down, Martin.”

  I climb down to low growls from the big dog and one pup. The other pup lunges toward me in excitement.

  “Back,” Taylor roars, swinging down from his saddle. I am taken again with his ease of maneuvering. He swats the pup on the head, thick-handed across the ears. “No,” he shouts. The pup cowers and whimpers, tail tucked, haunches lowered. The other two keep their snouts turned on me. “Goddamn.” Taylor gives the pup one more whack and spits in the soil by the dog’s head. “That was the last chance on this one.”

  I want to defend this dog, to at least tell Taylor not to hit him in the ears—Hartley has taught me that dogs need their sense of hearing as much as they need their sense of smell.

  Taylor wraps my hands with rope. “Come on then, Martin. We’ll lead you in now. Hup!” he says to the dogs. “Maggie! Dagger! Hup!” I walk past the cowering pup and trudge into the creek. I’m no longer thirsty, and the mud-brown current puts me off. Taylor’s mare splashes heavily into the creek behind me, and the dogs plunge in alongside the horse’s strong-pillared legs.

  “Get,” Taylor says.

  On the far side, I look back. The chastised pup stands belly deep in the water, whining. The tips of his ears flutter in the current.

  “Hup,” Taylor shouts.

  The pup whines, and Taylor reins his mare to turn. The other dogs are milling on our side, their noses down, confusion in their snouts. They are losing interest in my capture.

  “What do you think’s wrong with that dog, Martin?”

  “Fear.”

  “Hup,” Taylor shouts at the dog, and slaps his wide thigh.

  The pup whines more and dips his head lower, ears half-­submerged.

  Taylor drums the saddle horn as he did his belly and lets loose a great, painful sigh. “Goddamn it.” He pulls a leather lead from one of his rear saddlebags. “Shake off your cuffs, Martin. You’re gonna have to go get him.”

  “Sir.”

  I’m tired of this creek, its muddy water and stubborn wet.

  “Hey, pup,” I say as I approach the dog, the current sucking at my knees.

  The pup turns his head in shame and cowardice. The last time he came toward me, Taylor whipped him. Now, I’m calling him in. Hartley wouldn’t approve of any of this.

  “Come here.” I reach for his collar. A small growl is in his throat. “Think you can bite me?”

  He answers by stopping his noise, and I clip the lead to the rusty ring in his collar. The other end holds a clip, too. “Fasten it to your belt loop,” Taylor says to me. “It’s strong enough to hold for now.”

  Taylor’s dangling that scrap of my cuff from the side of his horse for the other dogs. They sniff it for a second, then run back and forth along the creek bank, whining and yipping, trying to find my old scent. When I climb from the water again, they are ginger in their approach, confused. The big one is Maggie, and she sticks her snout to the toe of one of my boots, lets out a yip, then turns her eyes to the pup, who stands proud and alert at my side. Maggie sticks her nose back to the ground, and the unleashed pup, Dagger, snaps suddenly to a point, singling out the creek for her attention, as though the hunt ends there, drowned in the water.

  I can see that this hasn’t been a successful training venture. The hunting of men aside, we’ve violated any number of Hartley’s rules.

  Taylor reluctantly slides from his horse and pulls a couple more leads from his bag to hook up the others. “Might as well strap them up with that junk dog. See if they’ll fall in behind the horse.”

  I look away as he climbs into the saddle.

  He digs his heels into his horse’s flanks and clicks it forward. The mare starts into a quick walk, then a trot, then a gallop, and the dogs follow, pulling taut their leads. My wet clothes hang on me, leaden and demanding, and my lungs heave up coughs as soon as I start running. The pointed pain in my stomach returns, and the creek boils up in my mouth, silty and sharp. Again, the brush and branches swat at my face and arms, pricks that bead with blood. The dogs heave my hips forward, and my body follows of its own accord.

  “Marie?” I say, my voice a lost thing amid the winded dogs and horse, the leads and chains.

  “What’re you saying back there, Martin?” Taylor turns his head over his shoulder.

  “Talking to the dogs.”

  He chuckles. “I think you may just be cut out for this, now.”

  I don’t know what it means if that is true.

  THE day after the run to the possum oak, Taylor comes to the barn to announce that I am being reassigned to the dogs. “Martin’s one of the best workers I have in this place,” Bondurant says. “And he’s my main trainer on the new men. Find someone else to run your dogs.” Though I am a decent enough worker, I believe it’s personal dislike that’s fueling Bondurant’s fight.

  “You don’t want to work the dogs, do you?” Bondurant asks once Taylor is gone.

  “I have grown quite used to the barn, sir, but I don’t imagine it’s my choice.”

  TAYLOR’S back the next day with the warden himself.

  “You’ll keep Martin through the rest of the summer months,” the warden says, Taylor a bucket of gloat at his side. “And then he’ll move over to the dogs. He can do more good for the prison over there than in the barn.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bondurant replies.

  I continue with my milking and mucking, delivering jars of fresh milk to Rash every Friday, though I know he’d get me my reading requests without the favors now. I exchange other jars for cigarettes—a new supplier was not difficult to find after Jennings—which I smoke in the barn or the yard, the guards turning their heads. This is new, and I appreciate it. Some moments, in the barn especially, this feels like a real life—smoke in my lungs, a summer day outside, stalls to clean. I could be a farmer going about his daily work, Marie and Gerald waiting for me at home.

  I think often of that young version of Marie I saw in the woods. I know she was from my imagination, running loose of its tethers, the strain on my body clouding rational thought, but still I want to see her again. Some days I pass over meals and take too many shifts in the sun in an attempt to bring her back, to get my brain to that same place. Though she refused to share it, I know she must have something to say to me, some message from the real Marie.

  Ed is still missing. The warden had to know he’d never return, but we still hear him talking about the hope of Ed’s capture.

  I assume that Wilson is still in a
coal mine, though I prefer to see him back on Marie’s land. Maybe this is what the young version of Marie can tell me—that Wilson has escaped and come home. I see him with his family around the table in the big house, dining with Marie and Gerald, back where he belongs. I see him working the farm, as he should, that land more his than anyone else’s. He’d worked so hard for himself and his family—Marie and her parents included—and he’d allowed a space for me in his life on that land when he had no reason to provide it. In return, I’d led him to the coal mines, feeding him all those electrical dreams, firing that interest, getting him caught with a dead body. I want my young Marie to give me word of Wilson. More than the real Marie or Gerald, Wilson’s the person it would do me best to know is all right.

  The young Marie doesn’t visit me in the barn, though, and fall comes too fast. I say good-bye to Bondurant and the other men, good-bye to the milk and the cows, the smells and sounds. The loss feels similar to my departure from Lock 12 and Alabama Power, the shedding of a favored job for one I don’t want.

  I keep seeing Ed in his small boat on that big ocean. Some nights he’s coming this way, those waves crashing through the oak grove to Kilby’s front doors. Other nights, I see him rowing about the streets of London. Everyone knows him by name, though he’s been gone from that city seventeen years. “Mason,” they shout. “You building boats now?”

  I see Wilson laying down his pick. I see him shaking off the coal dust, see the whites of his eyes. They’re white still, not sallow like those of the men around him. He’s walking home now. Moa is waiting for him. She’ll have cooked a large meal. “Papa,” his children will say, “where’ve you been?”

  But then I tell myself to stop. I have already dreamed these dreams. Their futility is contemptible, loose and wicked as the roaches in the mess.

  I report to the dogs in the morning.

  CHAPTER 15

  When Roscoe T Martin entered his first building on the grounds of Kilby Prison, he was ordered to strip down bare. The other men who’d arrived with him, making twelve in all, were given the same command. Upon losing their clothing, they put their hands instinctively to their genitals—cupping out of protection, covering out of dignity. They were marched to a tiled area and sprayed down with a hose of cold water, their hands forced away, every bit of them exposed. They were treated for all possible pests, then they were injected with a variety of needles.