Damned in Dixie

by Ron Shiflet

  When I saw the strange truck by the side of the house, my perspiration just chilled my skin. Still, I didn’t want to jump to no unwarranted suspicions.

  I creeped up to take a closer look at the truck, trying to recall if Caleb drove a Chevy pickup.

  As I came along the side of the house, I heard a low moaning. My heart just about went out of me then. The sound was coming from the open bedroom window.

  I stole up to it and peeked inside. A breeze stirred the curtains, giving me brief glimpses, off and on, of them in the bed together. Golden candlelight reflected off their naked bodies. Lorelei moaned again and he gave a series of grunts.

  If I could have burst right through the wall, I would have. I tore away and headed for the front door. Even then I wasn’t mad. It was like I was grieving inside, like I’d come upon Lorelei’s body, cold and dead, instead of flush and sweaty.

  As I threw open the door I realized that Lorelei couldn’t be doing that of her own accord. I knew that he had forced himself upon her, even though she had been on top of him, straddling his hips, her long hair draped over her face.

  “Lorelei!” I yelled out. I heard a commotion back in the bedroom. I was at the door in less than a minute.

  Lorelei cowered on the far side of the bed, wearing only a shirt, the buttons undone. “Oh, god, Billy,” she said, her voice nothing but a squeak.

  It was Caleb all right, lying in the bed, propped up on his elbows, grinnin’ like a fool. He hadn’t even taken off his boots. I saw his pants and his underwears all bunched up around his ankles as he swung his legs off the bed.

  He stood up, yanking his pants at the same time. I jumped forward and swung my fist at his ugly smirk. He put up his hands and stepped to the side, quick again, like a cat. Only his jeans slid down his legs so his feet got all tangled up and he pitched sideways. The side of his head smacked the corner of the nightstand and there was this gruesome crunch. He didn’t move after that.

  I looked at Lorelei. She was backing away her hands held out in front of her, saying, “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.”

  I wanted to tell her that I knew he had forced her. I took a step toward her. She went pale, like she’d seen something monstrous in my face. Before I could speak, she bolted out the door.

  I took after her, but everything blurred and my vision doubled. I couldn’t believe how dizzy I felt. The walls seemed to press in on me. I made it to the front door in time to see her disappear into the swamp woods, wearing just that shirt and no other clothes. I heard an echo of her words, I’m sorry I’m sorry, but I didn’t know if it was in my ears or in my head.

  Suddenly a sharp, crisp call filled the moonlit air. “Sorry, sorry.”

  I looked up and saw it: a great dark bird flying across the face of the moon. I’ve heard it said birds trace their lineage back to the dinosaurs. Seeing that awful creature, looking more lizard than bird, I can believe it.

  It cried out again, only this time it sounded more like, “Zorry, zorry.”

  I fought back a primitive fear. All the tales my granny spun about the zurry bird came home. She’d sit in her rocker in front of the fireplace with all us children at her feet. She’d cackle through toothless gums and tell us the secrets of the world.

  “Don’t hark to the zurry bird’s cry. It’ll lure you into the swamp where it waits to eat you. First it’ll preen about with its plumage. If you stare at it for long enough, it drives you into a passion. That don’t mean nothing to you now, but you’ll learn those wicked ways soon enough. When the passion subsides, the zurry bird’s prey don’t have ne’ er enough strength to defend itself.”

  Then she’d cackle like an old hen until my pa would yell at her to shut up.

  Maybe it sounds crazy now with daylight streaming in through the window. But that night beneath the full moon, the hot air so thick you almost choked on it, what happened made perfect sense. It had been the zurry bird’s spell that had set Lorelei to coupling with another man. She hadn’t had any control over her passions.

  And now she was alone in the woods, helpless.

  I ran into the trees where I had seen her vanish. I bellowed her name into the darkness. Branches and bushes tore at my hands until I was cut and bleeding. I listened for sounds of Lorelei’s passage, but all I could hear was my own thrashings and the sound of my labored breath.

  Up ahead, I heard a sad plaintive cry. “Zorry, zorry.”

  I came to the creek, stumbled into a clearing along the edge where the tree line fell away. Lorelei stood in the moonlight as still and perfect as though she had been sculpted from Greek marble. The moonlight gleamed across the perfect curves of her body with an alabaster sheen. Her shirt lay in a heap, sloughed like an old skin.

  Beyond her, the zurry bird waited, fixing her with its stony gaze. I was amazed at how big it was, easily eighty pounds. All I could think was, how could a thing that big fly?

  Its long head rested on a fat round body. It had tail feathers fanned out like a turkey at courting time. Its beak was long, and hooked at the end like a vulture’s. It opened its mouth and cawed, “Zorry, zorry.” Sharp wicked teeth gleamed in the moonlight.

  It turned its stare on me. Its eyes were black pools of ancient wisdom. Slowly it stretched out its wings. They seemed to extend forever. Bright, rich blue feathers covered the underside of its wings. The depth of their color riveted me. They swelled and filled my vision until all I could see was their allure.

  Then Lorelei was standing in front of me, her face inches from mine. I saw in her wide, round eyes the same dullness that must have been in mine.

  We moved together at the same moment. Lorelei clawed at my clothes like crows at road kill. My blood pounded like a torrential flood.

  The world fell away. What happened next was carnal and not something I want to talk about. But while we went at it, my mind repeated again and again: This is how she felt. This is how she felt. This was the mad compulsion that drove her into another man’s arms.

  I must have blacked out for a spell. I fought to open my heavy eyes. I could barely turn my head.

  The zurry bird stood at the crick bed like a lonesome sentinel. Lorelei crawled slowly across the loam. How she found the strength to move, I couldn’t imagine, I felt like some fly paralyzed by a spider’s bite. A crazy jealousy passed through me that the zurry bird had chosen her first, before me.

  The jealousy drained away to disgust as Lorelei crawled tortuously across the clearing. Finally she collapsed before the dark bird, rolling onto her back. It hopped forward, poking its beak at her as though sniffing her. My mouth went dry when I saw the zurry bird more clearly.

  I remember Granny, rocking faster and faster in front of the fireplace. She reached out to us with her gnarled fingers.

  “The zurry bird,” she whispered, “don’t have talons like no regular bird. The zurry bird got human hands at the end of its legs.”

  I just wanted to cry at the sight of those hands that the zurry bird hopped on. It reached Lorelei’s feet and clambered up on her. Those hands walked their way up her legs, clutching and squeezing. I felt belittled.

  I did cry then, big silent tears that rolled down my cheeks and across my lips. It perched on her chest, those hands clinging to her.

  My chest heaved as I sucked in great gasps of air, but still I couldn’t move. The zurry bird looked back at me, like it was saying you’ll get your turn.

  With a savage twist of its beak, it tore open her throat. I screamed and squeezed my eyes shut. The sounds broke the spell I was under—those horrid slurping sounds as it fed on my Lorelei.

  I struggled to my feet, zipped up my jeans, not daring to look at the dark bird. I studied the ground for a stick or a rock. The cold shame came on me that even if I found a weapon, I wouldn’t have the courage to face that devil bird.

  When the feeding sounds ceased, I nearly pissed myself.

  I dove away into the haven of the woods. I couldn’t save Lorelei; she was dead. All I could gain maybe was re
venge.

  I ran, praying I was heading in the right direction, praying some stray branch wouldn’t rip an eye out. I lost a shoe to the mud but abandoned it, as I had Lorelei.

  I fell onto my driveway, gravel biting into my knees. I thrust myself to my feet and ran into the house. I didn’t remember Caleb until I burst into the bedroom.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, scarlet blossoms of tissue paper held to the side of his head. He might have made some smartass remark, but whatever he saw on my face persuaded him to keep quiet.

  I reached for the shotgun behind my bedroom door and hugged it to my chest. I gave Caleb a long, hard look until I saw fear creep into his eyes.

  I wanted to shoot him. I considered it mightily. Now, I wish I had.

  Caleb says I killed my wife and that’s just not true. When they find her body, you’ll see she wasn’t shot. I know Caleb heard a shot. I did fire the gun. Just let me finish.

  I stared Caleb down until I couldn’t stand the sight of him. I turned my back on him and ran out the house. My greatest hate was for the zurry bird.

  I started to run down the driveway when I was brought up short. I could scarce believe my eyes.

  Lorelei was crawling out of the woods, her head bobbing along the ground. The thing hadn’t killed her. The moon lit her pale face like she was some angel.

  She struggled forward slowly. Her face was all sorrow and her jaw hung slack in pain.

  I ran toward her, the shotgun loose in my arms.

  Without warning, huge blue wings erupted from the sides of her head. They flapped with mighty beats and her face rose into the air. As she disappeared into the night sky I heard her whisper, “Sorry, sorry.”

  My fists clenched in frustrated rage, one finger still on the trigger. A pointless explosion rocked the night and a load of shot sped through the brush, finding no target save shrubs and saplings.

  Granny had never told us that part of the tale: how the zurry bird skins its prey and wears its face for a mask.

  EMANCIPATION

  JOHN HUBBARD

  Louise and Prentiss Tartabull played tag with the darkened slave children under the watchful and baleful glare of their tutor Miss Evangeline Swilley. The girls were too young really to have learned the distinct line that was drawn between owner and slave. One of Miss Swilley’s hopes was that they wouldn’t learn of that great divide until the last possible moment. On break now from their studies, as was the norm, they had gone outside of the library to get a little physical activity during the transition from Math to History. The Tartabull children loved to play tag and the little slave children seemed to enjoy these moments as well when the walls of social hierarchy fell away in high pitched gleeful yelping as the youngsters ran to and fro amidst the manicured lawns and ornamental ponds, between the hedgerows aside the main house of Mr. Sawyer Tartabull’s cattle plantation, Providence Gardens.

  A cattle plantation in Georgia was rare enough but Mr. Sawyer, as he was called by everyone on earth beside his children and wife, also had small field allotments of peanuts, peaches, pecans, apples and even a good brood of pigs. In this day and age when the majority of the larger plantations sank or swam on the backbone of their staple crop, Mr. Sawyer had coordinated the layout of Providence Gardens so that its survival was assured, even if one or perhaps two of the crops had failed. He had originally been seen as a bit of a maniac but was now universally viewed as a genius, especially now that the War Between the States seemed imminent and the Confederacy would be needing lots of beef and pork for the soldiers.

  Miss Swilley had been brought on as a tutor for the Tartabull children six months prior and while she enjoyed the beautiful home and surrounding landscape, she lived in constant fear of Mr. Sawyer’s legendary temper, and while she had not suffered his wrath as of yet, she had seen it in the flesh the third week she had arrived as he returned triumphantly with the body of a twelve year old slave boy strung across his saddle like a spring sow. “Run…and you will die,” he had said to the large group amassed around the front steps, as he cut the rope binding the young boy to the horse, and he fell dead in the dust in front of his fellow damned kin. “Do not try to escape because you can’t,” he added as he turned and trotted his palomino to the adjacent barn some three hundred yards past.

  It was because of that misplaced anger and utter disregard for the value of life that was encased in any bindings other than white skin that she always felt a bit nervous when Prentiss and Louise played tag with the slave children. If discovered, it wouldn’t have gone over very well. Thankfully Mr. Sawyer traveled extensively and was only home about ten nights per month, and so he was not likely to find out about these impromptu games. It wasn’t only Mr. Sawyer that she was scared of however, because alongside the estate ran a track of houses, only slightly nicer than the slave quarters, elevated because of the ever present threat that the creek bottom would flood, and in those houses lived the most evil men Miss Swilley had ever laid eyes on. They were simply called “The Gang” and they were made up of white dirt poor families: husbands, wives and children; and the men of the houses worked for Mr. Sawyer on a free land/lease basis. They were provided housing and a small portion of land to farm enough for their own tables, but in turn they sold their souls to Mr. Sawyer. The governing, hunting, maiming, and execution of the slave population was their bread and butter and while there was no need for their services the majority of the time, they were still greeted with a wide berth and their prowess at their unsavory tasks was so legendary that other plantation owners paid a rental fee to Mr. Sawyer in times when The Gang’s services were needed elsewhere. It was a task for which they were well suited and they took no pretense to hide their elation when called upon to work.

  Another of The Gang’s chores was to make sure everything ran smoothly at the plantation when Mr. Sawyer was absent. Miss Swilley was always craning her neck and checking her flanks to make sure that one of the brutes wouldn’t walk up on her, silently, and catch the Tartabulls playing with the slaves. Unfortunately that was about to happen.

  “You niggas go on now and scatter. If you ain’t got enough work to do then I’ll make sure that Mr. Sawyer knows what you been up to. Those pecans won’t pick themselves.”

  The slave children shrieked in terror and ran back behind their momma’s skirts as Marlowe DuBois spoke up from his hiding place on the porch. He was the unofficial leader of The Gang and many a slave had met their maker at the end of his boot. He now stood grinning at Miss Swilley as he walked down to the ragtag group. He slowly made his way over to one of the petite slave girls and grabbed her around the meat of her bicep. “I suppose you ain’t got enough chores to do little one?” he asked as he pulled her closer to his body and kneeled to look into her frightened eyes. “Why don’t you ask yo momma or yo daddy to tell you what happens to niggas that don’t do their part?”

  A woman, who may or may not have been the little girl’s mother, stepped forward and pulled the little girl back into the folds of her skirt. Her eyes were sorrowful and they seemed to plead with the angry white man in front of her.

  Marlowe DuBois was in his mid-forties but he was fast and lithe from years of itinerant labor and he rose off his knees fast as lightning and landed a vicious left hook to the stunned woman’s face, knocking her down into the dirt.

  “Nigga, you stay put and don’t interfere. I wasn’t talking to you, was I?”

  While this was going on, an immense midnight black form had begun to make its way, quietly, over from the covered area where the men ate their lunch. He was a slave and one of the hardest working men on the plantation. His name was Luther and he had been on the plantation longer than any other slave. He was a hair over six feet but he carried an immense girth of close to two hundred and fifty pounds. The muscles in his forearms had the appearance and durability of a horse’s leg and he had a quiet presence about him that demanded respect, even, sometimes from The Gang. DuBois noticed his approach.

  “Luther, you know who this
woman belongs to?”

  “Suh, I suppose she belong to Mr. Sawyer, like all us. But she be married to Beamon. He out in the peanuts today.”

  “Well what in the hell’s her problem then? Is she mute or dumb?”

  “No suh. It’s just that she from Ethiopia, or Haiti, or Angola or someplace over there in Africa. She don’t speak no English.”

  “Tell that Beamon bastard to control his bitch just the same. She was acting uppity to me. And Luther you tell the rest of your people that this playing games hogwash is gonna stop. You all is not to associate with Mr. Sawyer’s children. Now get the fuck out of here. Lunch and play time are over.”

  “Yes suh, boss. I do that right off.”

  Luther helped the poor woman to her feet and lifted the sobbing child skyward to ride piggyback atop his immense shoulders. He whispered something in the beaten woman’s ear and she nodded, and then he looked back over her shoulder and met DuBois in eye to eye combat. DuBois blinked first and looked away in the distance across the rear fields as Luther turned and walked with the rest of the slaves, back to their stations, leaving a slightly rattled DuBois standing in the yard.

  “Daddy won’t like it that you struck her,” Louise spoke to Mr. DuBois. Then her sister Prentiss stepped up and said “You shouldn’t hit people. We were just playing. I’m telling father when he gets back.”

  Miss Swilley broke up the diatribe as calmly as possible and ordered the children back into the library. They went ahead as told, up the ornate stairs, but Marlowe DuBois wasn’t finished yet. He came up beside her and rubbed her shoulder with his filthy hand. “Mr. Sawyer been gone two weeks. He ain’t a due back for two more. I be in charge here now missy, until he do come back and I could use some company tonight.”

  Miss Swilley stepped back from his horrid touch and spoke while keeping her eyes on the ground. “While honored, sir, it is common knowledge that you have a wife and children and I, myself, have a fiancé in Biloxi.” With that she turned and entered the library to finish the children’s lessons for the day. She could feel his lustful glare, as she followed after the children, until she shut the door and embraced the cooling air of the library.