by Bill Cheng
Are you going to shoot me?, he asked.
Roan stepped around him and then he saw the tin basin. It’d been drawn full of water.
Strip, the man said.
Robert passed his shirt over his head and stepped out of his trousers. He stood before him, naked, his chest rising and falling.
That’un too.
He gestured to Robert’s neck.
Robert touched the stiff leather of the pouch. He paused for a moment, then let his hand fall.
No, he said. It stays on.
The man seemed to think for a moment, and then he shrugged.
Okay, Roan said. Bon. Now get you in.
With the rifle, he gestured into the tub.
Slowly, Robert climbed into the icy water. It was electric. A bolt of cold shot through him. He wanted to cry out, but he clenched down and shuddered weakly. The nerves jumped inside his legs, and he had to brace the sides of the basin to keep from falling over.
The man watched on, a smirk working across his face.
We gon’ on a petit trip real nice-nice, muskie.
Roan crossed to a bucket and filled it from between Robert’s legs. He raised it up and let it spill over Robert’s head. A sun erupted behind Robert’s eyes and he buckled. He heard his own haggard voice fighting in his throat.
But first we gon’ get you nice clean, wash’m up good. Get’r that nigger stink off’a you.
The man took his time bathing him, filling the bucket then pouring it across Robert’s shoulders or on his head. Sometimes he’d cluck his tongue like he was consoling a small child. He soaked a rag in muskrat oil, then he ordered Robert to stand and turn. Roan rubbed him down, working the dark brown cloth hard on Robert’s neck, under his arms, and his groin. The smell was stomach turning. By the time the man had finished, Robert could no longer feel his own body. Only a cherrystone of nausea in the pit of his gut.
When Roan was satisfied, he ordered Robert out of the basin. Robert was shivering and his lips were blue, and the sun seemed to give no comfort. Roan dressed him in a canvas shirt and a pair of hide pants, and for his wrists, a pair of iron shackles. They were old and rusted and must’ve been part of an old animal trap. The thick links of chain were heavy and unfamiliar. It took all his effort to keep his hands up, to keep them from falling toward the earth.
Next came the rabbit box.
Roan held it up in front of him. The box was hickory and a foot deep in every direction. On the bottom was a folding panel that would lock around his neck. Roan was shorter so he had Robert kneel, and he set the box down over his head like a crown. The thing was heavy and uncomfortable, the rugged edges digging into his shoulders. It was a cage, he realized. Hot and moist and airless. Only the narrow slat inches from his nose threw any light, and all around in the invading periphery was a soft gray dark. Something cold and metal tightened around his neck, locking the box in place.
Bon, bon, he heard the man say.
From inside the box, it was hard to make out what was happening. At some point, Bossjohn and Frankie had come out from the dugout and had been arguing with Roan. Robert nursed the hope that they would force him to remove the box, but it did not happen. He felt a yanking on his chain, and so they began. For hours he followed the noise of their footsteps, of the grass passing across their shins—journeying through invisible country. He imagined them, the L’Etangs, passing through the pulsing wilderness.
Robert tired quickly. His head hurt, and it was almost impossible to breathe. Come the afternoon, the air had become warm and sticky and he could smell the tooth rotting in his own mouth. There were times he wanted to throw up, but he forced his mind clear. After what felt like days, they finally stopped. He felt the box raise from off his shoulders and the light hurt his eyes.
Frankie touched his arm.
Sa’sooffee?, she asked.
He didn’t answer her. He looked and he realized they’d come to a kind of pond. He stumbled toward the bank and dunked his head into the cool water. He came back up, his eyes shut, his face throbbing. There was a smell, he realized. A stench. He looked out over the water. It was almost still. A cloud of mosquitoes pulsed above the shallows. Flecks of pollen crawled across the surface. For the first time in months, he saw his own reflection. He almost did not recognize himself. What fat there was in his face had dissolved, drawing the skin tight against his cheekbones. He thought, suddenly, that he looked not like Ellis but like his mother. The papery skin at the corners of his eyes, the square squat brow, the narrow bruised-looking lips. How strange family is, haunting your blood, with all those phantom faces lying in wait beneath your own. He felt ill.
Something flickered in the corner of his vision and he turned. There, in the tall reeds, was a mass of yellow and pink. It was an animal. Its belly was ripped open and its head was missing. Strips of moldy blackened skin lay in patches over the cave in the thing’s chest. Flies struggled atop one another, pressing in and out of the yielding meat.
Robert dropped to his knees. His stomach unspooled and he heaved his sick onto the grass. Bossjohn made a clucking noise at the back of his throat.
He was allowed to rest while Roan and Bossjohn went on ahead to check their traplines. Frankie stayed with him. He lay down in the shade as Frankie gave him hunks of fry dough from her ration bag. There were spots in his vision still, blinking in and out, but the blood had calmed inside his chest. Frankie took off her hat and fanned warm slow waves of air against Robert’s neck, shooing the flies from his face. Robert listened to her murmuring as she went in and out of her pack. Here and there he’d hear their name for him—Rowbear. He could cry. What he wouldn’t give to be Rowbear! To be, like a L’Etang, baptized anew in the cold waters. But he was a Chatham and bad stayed stuck to Chathams.
When Roan and Bossjohn returned empty-handed, their faces a sheen of sweat, neither brother spoke. Roan kicked the soft carcass into the water, and they gathered up their things. Robert was placed again inside the rabbit box, and as the wall came down, he thought he could see a note of sorrow in Frankie’s face.
THEY WENT THROUGH THE TRAPPING grounds, and inside the box, Robert did not see the stretches of blighted country—long waterways of dead water, blown-out hills, swaths of nuded grass and timberland. He did not know how in the summer seasons, they used to fat on rabbit and whitetail and shoot coyotes from the trees. For the L’Etangs, the traps themselves turned up little. A squirrel here. A mangy sore-skinned rabbit with hardly the meat or fur to spend the effort. But all throughout, they came across kill like they’d seen by the pond—puddles of spongy viscera rotting in the hot wet sun.
These were signs of panthers. They kept territory in the palmetto to the north and west where they could feed on hog and raccoon, and it was rare to find them east, here, in the beaver grounds. Panther pelts fetched a high price at Fort Muskethead, but crossing a panther was bad luck. They drove away quarry, raided traps, and if they’d gotten this far, it meant that game was scarce all through the swamp.
But Robert saw the kill and he understood; the Dog had found him. He sucked the thick stale air inside the box. The links on his wrists chinked softly. Through the narrow slit in the rabbit box, he could see the wide fan of leaves, the sunlight filtering down through the gauzy canopy above him. There were birds. The machinelike whir of insects tearing through the invisible air around him. They came to a rocky narrow and they filed across in a single line, Bossjohn ahead, and then Roan tugging Robert by his chain. Frankie was behind him. He could hear her light step against the ground. Her hand touched the sweaty blade of his shoulder, navigating him through the forest. Even here, it’d found him.
They stopped that evening at a crumbling shelter in the middle of the swamp. It was a small wood lean-to put up by Pierre L’Etang nearly half a century ago. The walls were thin, pieced from cut timber and roofed with carpets of moss. There were shelves inside, and a small clearing in
the dirt for where they’d lay their bedrolls. They refilled their canteens and stocked their pouches with jerky and tack. In the evening they bedded down next to each other, Robert against the wall and Roan wedged beside him.
Night came uneasy over Panther Swamp. A yellow moon moldered in the lower reaches of the sky. It was full and round and oozed like a pustule. Underneath, the air pulsed with cricket song. Heavy birds thrashed in the treetops, then winged soundlessly through the ink-blue air. Robert lay on his roll. He shut his eyes and he listened. He peeled back the night sounds, one by one, until finally he could hear it, clear as a whistle, the long lonesome call of some animal.
HE WOKE TO THE DRY violent suck of his own breath dropping into his throat. He shot upright. His heart hammered in his chest. He was awake. He’d been dreaming—what about he could not remember, only knew that he could still feel the tightness in his chest. Robert touched his face, his lips. He fingered the cool links of his chain. He set his back against the wall and rested his head against the rough timber. He shut his eyes and tried to steady the jumping in his neck. He took a deep breath, letting it out between his teeth. He opened his eyes and let them adjust to the dark. There were his legs, the roll. There were the shelves against the wall, the sacks of grain, the jars of water. By the doorway, he saw Bossjohn, still asleep, the moonlight blanketed atop him.
The roll beside him was empty. Roan was gone, as was Frankie.
Now was his chance.
He sat up, gathered the slack of his chain into his palms, and very quietly worked his boots onto his feet.
Outside, the air was chill and damp and the ground was jeweled in dew. He was free, but he could not remember the way he had come. Every direction looked the same—thick impenetrable darkness that fed deeper into the swamp. Robert looked up. The moon was a cataract eye, white now and milky. He felt its gaze shoot through him. He was small suddenly, naked under its light. His hummingbird heart smashed itself against his ribs.
Robert flew deep into the swamp. The forest pressed in around him. He fumbled blindly through its walls of hooked and thorny foliage, which snagged his clothes and tore his skin. A fresh bright sting bloomed on his cheek and neck. He lifted up his hands to protect his face, pushing against the dense netting of weeds and vines. Something filtered down from above him. Dry and moldy. He pushed through, felt the ground slope down beneath him.
Here, the moon could not break through the trees. He could not see. He took a step and the ground was soft and yielding. His feet slid apart beneath him, and he stumbled forward trying to catch himself. On his way down something hit him hard across the chest. A rock. A tree root. He tried to stand but he couldn’t. His right leg was deadweight under him. His mind flashed to the carcass at the water. He clasped the devil around his neck. His lungs were on fire. This last time, see me through.
He sat there, panting, the blood damming in his temples.
Without moonlight, he could not tell the foreground from the back. The night lay draped like a wet sheet around his face. Dark stretched for miles in every direction. His ankle was throbbing. He worked off his boot and pressed his fingers into the swollen tissue. He sniffled softly. Was this what it was like? To be under the earth. No sight. The dim whoosh of blood draining in his ears. A lozenge of light hummed inches from his eyes, flaring then dying away. Now another. And another, this time farther out. Slowly he rose, easing his weight onto his good leg.
Lightning bugs filled the space like stars. They pulsed in time, floating up on one side, and drifting down the other, churning slow through the air like a waterwheel. Carefully, he followed their yellow-green burn through the ether, feeling out the space in front of him. He came to where the path narrowed, hemming in against an earthen wall. He put his hand against its face. It was cool and soft, napped with roots. Here the air was ancient, yolky, rotted through with water. He’d been traveling along a dry bed gully.
He squeezed through the narrow and after a few yards, there was sky again. He found a place where the walls were shallow and climbed out. The swamp opened to a large uneven clearing. Ahead of him was a kettle pond, marked off in a square by yellow caution tape. Behind the tape, he saw something catch the light, an eye. He moved toward it. There it was, standing on its mount, a surveyor’s transit. One of the crews had forgotten to take it back to the equipment depot. He reached for it, this alien thing, and touched the cool brass casing.
He looked again. It was not a pond at all, but a large crater. The edges had been dynamited out and support structures installed along the base. The beginnings of the Panther Reservoir.
Something crackled and all at once he felt himself being wrestled down. The ground came hard against his head and he became confused. The night crashed like a wave above him. He wriggled against the earth as blows rained down on his skull and spine and kidneys. His arms popped from their sockets. He cried out. He felt himself being turned over. Something thin and cold slid against his neck.
Voom’urie-eh-ci.
Robert looked up and found those cold hard eyes inches from his face. It was Roan.
You gon’ be very still now.
The knife crawled thinly across his throat.
Is it now?, he asked himself. Here was as good as anywhere, just feet from the reservoir—their new shining South. Robert tried to ready himself. It had come. It had finally come. But he couldn’t quiet the panic in his flesh. His eyes could not focus. The blood raged inside him. He could not keep his arms from jumping nor his teeth from chattering. That was the worst of it—to leave with that clatter-clack in his skull. The warmth was on his neck. The knife was gone. Roan too. The universe hurtled away from him. From the corner of his eye, he saw the Dog. Its hind legs lay tucked under its muscular body, foam gathered thick on its muzzle. Robert watched it, his heavy mind slow to turn. He saw it in the moonlight: the svelte sheen of its fur. Every furrow and wrinkle of its coal-black hide. A thick sappy filament unspooled from its chops.
It hurt to breathe, to sift the air through his still-raw throat. I am soul and brain sick and there is no dog. He shut his eyes, and it was true. He was not well. Had not been for a long time. There was too much time that’d passed, too many miles spent in lonesome country. I’m ready, he said. But then she was above him. Frankie. Her hands were crushed against his throat. Her mouth was moving, shaping words. He did not hear them.
The missing Negro had not slowed work at the swamp. When no family came forward, the Yazoo County Sheriff’s Department filed Chatham, Robert Lee, among the other transients of the county. George Burke went every day for two weeks to see what, if anything, the police had found.
The deputy moved the piles of blue and pink forms across his desk. They stacked over three feet high. Too many to keep a count of, the deputy told him. The top button of his shirt was undone and his tie was set crooked. He assured Burke that they were doing everything they could. Burke thanked him and went out into the street, a cold wind threatening to blow off his hat.
He tried to put Chatham out of his mind. Within a week, a new man was hired to fill the vacancy on his crew. Late summer brought fair blue weather, and the crew worked long days, moving tons of yielding earth.
He’d seen men die before in blowouts and explosions. In his career, he’d personally pulled the mangled bodies of six of his crewmen from under fallen rubble. He remembered each and every one—the soft cast of their faces, still and chalky white save for the deep slow rose of blood incarcerated beneath the skin. There were sacrifices. Burke understood that. That at times, the world called for more than was fair or was right. But he’d never met a man who so vigorously sought out those sacrifices, who wanted to make that offering in his own blood and body.
The other members of the crew underestimated Robert Chatham. Chatham was quiet and didn’t socialize with the other men. During lunch, he’d sit alone under a tree, outside the rough noise of cussing and dirty jokes at the chow tables. Every d
ay it was the same meal—a ham sandwich with a single slice of cheese—and he’d chew slow and methodical, staring out from under the shade.
But Burke recalled when the crew was on demolition and after a blast how Chatham would walk across the craters. He remembered the beaver dam, the emptiness of his face as he stared back at him from across the desk. No shame or fear or surprise. And on the day of the blowout, he was inches away. Could almost touch him. His body broke through the river, his vulture form diving into the foam.
From the sheriff’s department, Burke started walking. He was a large man and he made himself look small by stooping and shoving his hands into his pockets. He followed the trail of grit in the gutters, crossing one street then another. Cars churned dust in his direction as they drove past. He squinted and kept walking. He arrived at Chatham’s boardinghouse, unsure if it was an accident or if he’d been guided.
The landlady was an old colored woman. She let the door open just a few inches so that the space could frame her mouth.
Yes?
Ma’am. Good afternoon.
Afternoon, she said carefully.
I’m a friend of one of your boarders. Former boarder. Robert Chatham.
Robert didn’t have no friends, she said.
We worked together. Don’t mean to put you out but I’d like to see his room if you’d allow me.
The woman squinted hard at him and furrowed her lip.
Let me go talk to my husband, she said.
She closed the door. When it opened again later, she had a ring of keys in her hand.
This way, she said.
They went up a long narrow staircase and came to the door at the top of the stairs. Burke reached for the knob, but the landlady stopped him.
