by Bill Cheng
Duke spoke up.
And where is this man now?
The performers looked at him then fell quiet.
Duke stepped out of the hall and wrote the name on the back of a matchbook. After he sold off what was left of his inheritance, he traveled for years up and down the country, the slip of cardboard in his left breast pocket. He went into the dance halls and juke joints, to the corner musicians and the traveling medicine shows, and he’d ask about the mysterious piano player, Eli Cutter.
Some said he’d been killed in a bar fight in Laredo, or that he was working on a shrimp trawler out on the Gulf, or that he had gone mad from syphilis and was locked away in some New Orleans crazy house. He chased these leads across the country, ending where he started—with a head full of tall tales and nowhere closer to finding Eli Cutter.
In the idle hours of the night, exhausted from the road, Duke would lie in bed with a bottle of rye and read through his notes. He had an age. An approximate height. Nothing firm. He would shut his eyes and feel the pressures shifting in his skull. In his mind’s eye Elijah Cutter was long and tall with fingers that stretched like spokes on a combine harvester. There was no face, no voice—just a shade without shape or form.
If he was quiet, he could almost hear the music in his blood.
Duke would pull hard from the bottle, feel its heat in his chest and his face. He could fail. He recognized this. Life on the road had not been easy. He’d already spent the bulk of what his father left him on gas and hotel rooms and booze. And with every cent that passed from his purse there was Hiram’s ghost throwing reproachful glares. Five years had passed and nothing had come from this fool venture. He might never find Eli.
And even if he did, what then?
On the road, he would turn over their meeting in his mind. The more he thought on it, the less confident he became. He could not quite understand what it was that drew him toward Eli, toward a man he never met, toward a music he’d never heard.
For Duke, Eli was an empty space, a hole that needed filling, and every story Duke had ever heard only helped in widening that hole. Elijah Cutter was a man defined by his own mystery. Everywhere Duke went, he would hear the nonsense accounts of backwater magic and hoodoo curses. He did not believe in a secret world of rewards and punishments. Only the competition of men’s wills.
One day, he drove his car out to a camp meeting. He listened to the preacher give his sermon and at the end of the services, Duke walked out of the tent and into the evening full of disquiet. There was a soup line set up out in the field, and a fight had broken out between two men.
He moved through the mob, pushing his way to the center. He saw the two battered bodies, one on top of the other. One of the men’s shirt was off and his lips were flecked with foamy spittle. He was beating the other’s head against the ground.
Duke saw the man and he realized what it was he was after. Proof. Evidence that all a man was allotted in this world was what he could steal or scam or hard-bully.
He would carve out his piece of this life, leave a mark that ran harsh and deep and jagged. He would loose this Elijah Cutter out into the world, have him sing and dance and fool. He would be rich, yes, but that was not his main concern.
He wanted what was his.
He learned in time that there was an Elijah P. Cutter doing time in Wayne County. Duke tracked him down to the prison farm, where he found a scarecrow of a man in a secondhand suit. Eli was shy, Duke remembered, as he drove him out into the field. Quiet and unsure of himself.
But he set him down in front of the organ. He watched the man roll up his sleeves and unbutton his jacket. Eli rested his hands against the keys, his body bending forward as if magnetized. Duke heard the roaring chord and all at once, the man had become transformed. He watched the hands move, the sound erupting fast and full and driving.
Duke smiled.
He had done it at last.
DUKE REACHED BENEATH HIS SEAT and nipped from the flask. He followed the canal, the engine humming in his ears. The shantytown spread across an acre of raw black earth along the water’s banks. He made his way down toward the sheet-iron houses and canvas canopies. The fire pits were still smoldering from the night before, and all through the camp, he could see braids of smoke washing skyward. Duke cut his engine and a group of hoboes swarmed around the car. They crushed against him as he climbed out, tugging on his sleeves and the hem of his coat. They were lice-ridden and filthy and he pushed past their open palms.
When they saw he had no money to give, they dispersed back to their business.
A small black boy was squatting in the dirt, busying himself with digging up the earth with his hands. The boy glanced up and Duke reached into his pocket. The boy’s face shifted. Duke made his way over and squatted down beside him. He showed the boy the crumpled bill.
I’m looking for salvage, he said.
The boy pointed down the lane and Duke slipped the dollar into the boy’s small dirty hands.
Good boy, he said.
Toward the water, he could hear the nag of pelicans as they hunted along the garbaged shore. Along the shanties, shadows shifted behind the sheets of corrugated iron. They were watching him, nervous and cagey from hunger.
He came to a patchwork of canvas canopies bound and staked into the ground. The salvage man, a filthy-looking Negro, was sitting on his prize, a dirty old settee. The man was old, his hair gone from his head and a grizzled beard knotted into hard mash-flecked kinks. He was smoking a pipe and resting his right foot on top of a soap crate. There were sores on his shins and ankles, and the toes of his left foot had gnarled together into a palsied club.
Behind him were the junk piles, a crumbling structure of pillaged miscellany stolen and trawled from the surrounding country. Taken as a whole, the heap was a junkman’s trove—gray and black and rust-colored treasures. Duke let his eyes narrow, saw the individual pieces caught under the weight of the rest. There were jewelry, picture frames, old books and clothes—the strange intimate effects of people he would never know. A woman’s comb. A rusty shaving razor. The spiral of a watch chain.
I’m looking for something, Duke said to the man.
That so?
There was disdain in the man’s voice. The man eased forward in his seat. From behind one of the piles came two small children—a boy and a girl. They were barefoot and poorly dressed in their sackcloth clothes. The girl was chasing after the boy, swerving around the furniture piles. There was a crash and the noise of crying. The boy had knocked over one of the piles and was now sitting in the dirt whimpering while the girl looked on.
Eunice!, the man barked.
At the sound of his voice, a woman materialized from within the tent. She was tall and slim with small firm breasts and hips that belled out like a tulip. Duke stared at her. Her inky hair lay heaped in a wet mop atop her head. She let her eyes fall on Duke and then to the man.
Yes, Pa?
She spoke slow, calm, watching Duke as he watched her, her large doe eyes opening and closing. A heat rose in his throat. He let his gaze travel across her skin, young, nubile, vital, the sun trapped under the small hairs of her arms, the thin band of dewy sweat on her lip. Duke coughed to hide his excitement.
Control those young’uns, the man said.
Yes, Pa.
She walked off and gathered up the boy.
Is that your family?, Duke asked.
The man leaned forward and narrowed his eyes.
What’s your business here, stranger?
Duke told him what he was looking for—a piano or some such instrument. He was ready to pay, he assured the man. The man listened and nodded.
This way, he said.
He hefted himself up, supporting himself on the crook of Duke’s elbow. One leg was shorter than the other and he swung it as he walked, rolling out his hips and shoulders. They walked
out among the heaps to where the furniture had been freshly salvaged, still stinking from the mud beds it’d been trawled from. From across the lot, he could see the woman Eunice cradling the boy in her arms, whispering into his ear.
The man guided him through the stacks. He was talking, going on and on about the history of each piece, how it’d belonged to someone way far back in his family, but Duke had not been listening. He wished he had brought his flask along with him. His throat was dry and he was finding it hard to concentrate.
They came at last to a large cabinet underneath a canvas sheet. The man pulled off the sheet.
It looked like a piano but smaller, with a skeleton of reeds set across its back. He ran his finger along the edge of the body, tracing the warp of the wood. Duke lifted up the fall board and pressed a key. Sure enough, a note thunked inside the thin wood body. Duke looked at the man and the man shrugged, wiping his nose across the back of his arm. Duke bent down and studied the row of reeds, picking at the small brass teeth along its spokes.
They settled on a price and the man helped him rope the beast across the top of his car. When they finished, he shook the man’s hand, and he reached underneath his seat for his flask. You have a cup?, he asked the man. The man went off and returned with a small tin cup. Duke poured the rye and he toasted to the man’s health. The man said nothing, swallowing, then returning to his tent. Duke sat in his car, watching him limp up the lane. He tried to catch a glimpse of the woman Eunice, but he did not see her.
As he drove he could feel the new weight—the strain on the axles, the strange friction on his tires. On his way to Bruce, he managed to turn off the wrong road and got himself lost. It took forever to reorient himself. He managed to find the canal again and continued along its straight.
A few miles outside of Bruce, Duke finished off the rye and he pulled off the road. His head was buzzing and a warm feeling came over him. He trudged across to the canal edge and unzipped his trousers. It was evening, and he felt triumphant. The air was cooling and the stars were starting to make their show. His penis was in his hand, raw and sticky. He thought of Eunice. He thought of Eli. The rest came easy.
Robert told no one about that afternoon at the creek. He woke every morning with a hole punched through his chest. He could almost feel it, right there, the air escaping across the nickel-shaped opening beneath his collar. He was excitable and jumpy and he could not set his mind to any one task. Loud noises startled him. A knock on the door. A car on the street. Everywhere he went he felt he was being watched. In town, running errands for Miss Lucy. At the grocer’s or the dressmaker’s or a quick run across the street to Percy’s Pharmacy for polish or wax or tablets. That uneasiness followed him inside, into the halls and parlors and guest rooms of the hotel. Even alone in his room, he’d wake up in the middle of the night, his sheets twisted around his legs. He would stare out into the dark, certain that someone was there.
All day and all night there were strange men coming and going from the guest rooms. Sometimes, when he could work up the nerve, he’d sit at the foot of the stairs and watch them as they passed. He’d study their faces and he’d wonder which, if any, had come for him. More than once, Miss Lucy had asked him what was wrong, but he would not tell her. He could not risk her finding out.
So he soldiered on with his weekly duties. On the first of the month, it was his job to go into town with an envelope of money and settle Miss Lucy’s accounts. It took hours sometimes. He was of a mind to rise early and get in before the rest of Bruce had even had their morning coffee. But Robert hadn’t slept well the night before and he didn’t leave the hotel until well into the afternoon. He walked down the lane, along the tall stalks of johnsongrass, his head crowded with buzzing. It was the first cool day in a long time, and the river air swept in from the south and with it, the warm heady musk of linden trees. The light was clean and clear, like after a storm, with the clouds swept off into the shoulders, leaving above him soft blue sky.
He arrived in Bruce and began with his rounds, first to the butcher, then the wigmaker, the dress shop, the locksmith—settling all Miss Lucy’s accounts for the previous month. The moonshiner he saved for last. He walked off the main drag toward the small brick building off Pontotoc Road where the air was harsh and chemical.
Robert always disliked visiting the shiner. There’d been a fire last year when one of the stills exploded and the man’s face had been burned into a smooth pink plaster. Robert paid the shiner for the previous month, then ordered six more cases of corn whiskey and rye on top of Miss Lucy’s usual. After the accident, the man had lost his vision to rotgut and bad jake so Robert counted his money out in singles, guiding the blind man’s trembling hands to the stack of bills. They were cold with flesh as smooth and slippery as an oyster. It took time for the man to thumb through each bill, murmuring the tally in his hoarse slow breath. Robert looked out the window. The sun would be setting soon.
ROBERT STARTED DOWN THE ROAD and it wasn’t till the dusk had passed into a deep black pitch that he realized it was not the road he’d come in on. Somewhere, along the way, the paths had forked and forked again, and now he was lost, tucked in the nook of anonymous country, where the tall loping forms of wisteria passed into the sky, and only the deep chatter of crickets marked the time. One foot in front of the other, he told himself. Just like that. All the way home. And at home the word caught and broke in his mouth, and he could not fight anymore against the wrenching in his gut. He doubled and he spasmed, and the sick rushed out in acid chokes.
For a moment he wanted nothing more than to be still.
There was the beat of blood in his face, the ragged breath, the whirl of insect wings passing in the dark. He braced himself by his knees. The sweat lay like a sheet on his body. He brought his head up to where he thought the road should be. Beyond he could see light birth out from the rise—a warm red halo that danced and stretched across the width of the road.
Robert straightened. There was drumming. A staccato rumble, and he knew that it came from the marching of horses. That the light was torch fire.
He began to run.
Something whizzed by his face and he sped faster. He heard the stones crashing in the dark—smashing through the hedge, beating into the dark road, spinning off trees. Somehow one of his shoes had slipped off. He could already feel the slick of blood pool around his toes. He bounded down to the bottom of the hill and threw himself into the bushes. Something cut him. The skin above his eye and his cheek throbbed. He tried to still his breath. Their light drew closer. He buried his breath into the dirt, puffing the loose soil from his nostrils. He could smell the sour of piss and it took a moment for him to realize it was his own. He shivered and pressed his mouth harder into the dirt as he waited for the riders to pass.
HE WAS EXHAUSTED BY THE time he found his way back to Beau-Miel. He could barely feel his limbs as he went out back and washed himself down under the hand pump. The water was cold but he scooped it over his face, let it run down his body. The cut on his foot throbbed dully. His mind was blank, empty. There was little it would hold on to. He scrubbed off the bits of dirt and grass that clung around his shins, dried off, and walked naked into the house. Inside the small jam cellar, he lay down on his cot and shut his eyes.
He dreamed of his brother—whole again, alive, without his rope-scarred neck and catgut eyes. They were on a shore together, and up the beach was his daddy and his mama calling out to them. They waved their arms, and when he woke, he felt the word again in his mouth. Home.
He got up and put on a fresh pair of trousers and a clean shirt. He stepped out into the empty kitchen. There was no one there. He looked out the window into the backyard and he realized he had slept through most of the day. Lunch had been served and the plates already washed down and put away.
He walked out into the main hall, then up the stairs until he found himself outside Hermalie’s room. He knocked twice and when she op
ened, he pushed past her into the room. She asked him what he wanted.
Nothing, he said.
He went to the window and pulled down on the gutters like a bar, raising himself up, one leg over, then the other. He half expected her to scream, but she didn’t.
Once he was over, he stood on the roof, straight and tall like a weathervane. No one would see him. There was a lump in his throat and he felt it catch. He sat down on the sloped shingles and looked out toward the town.
He stayed like that for hours. Come sunset, the dogwoods blazed and the sun set moody below the western hills. Out toward Bruce, rows and rows of gabled roofs held the last of the greasy sunlight. He was alone. No mother. No father. He was alone. At the eastern edge of town, he could see the flamekeepers already starting work, moving from lamp to lamp, their torches like bright pinpricks. He shut his eyes and tried to picture the lamp cases, the gas catching and brightening. His face was warm. And above the lamps, in his mind’s eye, there were cables arcing, black and dead, hanging slack from their telegraph poles—untapped, alone. Soon they would go miles, hissing along roadways and cornfields, over riverbanks and rail lines, chasing and chasing, through flat swaths of open country, carrying in their coils heat and light. There! Lines flying over kudzu and magnolia and lantana, over houses and churchyards and markets. Up they go in Mayersville, Jug’s Corner, Crookhand Farm, all through the state, wood struts thrust like crucifixes, high above the river swell and levee walls and flood camps—he felt himself shaking, the slick running down his eyes and nose and cheeks—the tract of dirt where he was born, where his brother lay, bone and ash and worms, the cables crossing and recrossing, a giant hex in the sky, bearing down like a net on the souls beneath it, him and his daddy and his mama and his brother, on Dora and Hermalie and Miss Lucy, down and down. He felt himself standing. His lungs were full of fire, heaving for air. Something snapped under him and he felt himself turning backward. Did he mean to jump? He was not sure. The shingles moved under his feet and all at once there was air.
