by Bill Cheng
Hold my hair, she said.
She held the damp bun against her head and he took the mound in his fingers.
Tight now. Don’t let her loose.
She dunked her head into the stream, taking the water in large swallows. She came back up and Rowbear was watching. His eyes followed her neck down to the dark wet of her shirt. She took his hand from her head and tried to hide her blush.
Go’head ’n slake you fill, she said. It’s some time ’fore we get to the Flats.
Rowbear washed his face and his hands, and only after did he make a bowl of his palms and let a little into his lips. Frankie laid out her jacket beneath the dogwoods and they sat and lunched on knots of hard jerky. After they ate, he let her change his bandage. She wet a kerchief and cleaned out the dirt and blood from around the wound before packing on a thick green salve. She took his hand and showed him where to hold, pressing down against his Adam’s apple. His skin was cold, clammy. He gaped up at her like a fish, his breath oozing from his throat, his eyes wide, his nostrils ringed with wet. She put a fresh cloth around the wound and he winced as she cinched it tight.
You breathe?
He nodded.
Bon, she said, Say bon. Don’ itch it none.
She scraped a fleck of dry blood with her fingernail. It sting?
Just a little, he said.
His voice was rough and full of wind. They were Rowbear’s first words to her in days.
You jes’ lucky I seen you fo’ Roan do you good.
Lucky, he said. Real lucky Robert.
When they’d finished, she tied the rest of the food in a canvas pouch and buried it by a sapling yew. When she returned, Rowbear was asleep. His eyes fluttered behind their lids. His breath rose and fell gently. It was still early in the afternoon, and she judged she could spare him the nap. She took up her rifle and went alone a quarter mile down the run to where she’d set a pair of ankle traps the week before. Above the water, dragonflies held the air, mincing the sunlight on their wings. Out across, she could see gnats churning the air, flashing amber like chaff.
Along the waterline were trails of animal prints. There were two sets—the first belonging to a mob of dog paws, and the second to a single animal, large and clumsy. By the impression of its hooves, she could tell it’d been driving hard through the mud. The prints traveled across the underbrush and disappeared at the bank. She bent and placed her hand inside the groove of its hoof and picked apart the flecks of dried grass and dung.
She woke Rowbear.
We go now, she said.
They washed the smell of meat from their mouths and hands and took off across the run. She held him tight by the loose of his shirt and Rowbear shuddered as the water coursed through his boots.
The prints began again almost immediately, taking up a mud slope. Frankie quickened their pace. She led him north, toward the grasslands, through thickets of brush and sedge and fall oaks. They came to a loess wall. Quick now, she said and up they went, pegging their boots into the footholds. They went on a few yards more before she clapped her hand over his mouth and pointed. Below them was a kettle pond of mud and peat, and in the shallows was a bull. Its fur was dark and clumped, its undersides dripping. Blood coursed from its nose. Along its flank, she could see where the flesh had been torn away.
No brand on him, she said. Feral. Must a wandered into the swamp here by heself.
She charged her rifle and steadied the stock against her shoulder.
Without a word, Rowbear rose and took off down the hill. Something caught his foot and he fell forward into the shallows. The bull snorted. Its eyes were large and bloodshot. They stared back at him through a rim of mucus. There was a crack and the bull knelt down. Rowbear fell backward. There was blood on his face and clothes. He felt himself. He was not hurt. He looked up the loess, at Frankie, at the ribbon of smoke. The bull tried to rise, but its legs would not hold. The beast trembled and fell again. Rowbear rose to his height and brought up his arms. There was another shot and the bull lay down on its side, shaking its flank. The beast heaved in the air, its tongue wagging against the mud. Crack! and something in its shoulder popped. It was done.
THEY LOST HOURS AS FRANKIE dressed the kill and cut the meat into steaks. She slit its throat and the blood drained out into the shallow wade-through. Her arms and clothes and hair were slick and red, and what she couldn’t wash off in the brackish water was streaked crimson, her neck and cheek and face. Rowbear did not speak. He sat on a log and watched the bull carcass, silent, the chill of the water on his skin.
Come, she called out to him. Let me wash there blood off you.
He didn’t move. His silence wounded her. It wasn’t spiteful or angry. There was a care in it, a sadness. Some part of him seemed to have been closed away, a door slammed inexplicably shut. And this enraged Frankie.
The sun was going down, and to Frankie, he seemed to drink the light into himself, darkening into pitch. He did not look at her and she wondered if she could bear the gaze. They could not make it to the Flats in this darkness so Frankie pitched camp on the high ridge overlooking the kettle pond. She sent Rowbear to gather kindling. When he returned, she dug out a fire pit, laying down a bed of dry grass and rimming the pit with stones. By nightfall, she’d built two rolls out of moss and soft duff under the shelter of a fallen tree. They sat by the fire, eyes tearing from the smoke. She unpacked one of the steaks and cooked it over the flame. When it was ready, she recited the trapper’s prayer and they ate.
She watched him, his eyes distant, taking slow measured bites of his supper. Supper she had tracked and killed and slaughtered. Supper that he hated her for. She wanted to spit in his face, to tear the food from his hands. He was dangerous and reckless. When he dove into the river. When he ran toward the bull. He wanted to die. She saw this now. His hand hung limp on his knee. His lips barely moved.
She fed the fire with the rest of the kindling, then pushed past Rowbear to her bedroll. The ground was cold and hard, and she turned her head from the firelight. She shut her eyes and didn’t move and, though her mind couldn’t settle, pretended to sleep.
Her anger was a small sharp blade and she honed it, waiting for sleep. It was some time before Rowbear tore himself from the fire to bed down beside her. Even near the flames, his teeth chattered. He coughed and sneezed and sniffled. It felt like hours, yawning deep into the black morning. She watched shadows dance on the bark, listened to a chorus of frogs pulsing in the pond below. She thought of owls. Tried to count them in the forest of her mind, sweeping the cold air above her. Eight for safe travel. Nine for illness. Black for life. White for death. Down she went through the hole, Rowbear’s moaning in her ears whorling into that country of sleep and notsleep. Electric light flashed in the ether. Down and down. She was alone. The valley was flat and treeless, extending toward no horizon. She could see her breath in front of her. Her hands. A wave of loneliness washed over her. Above, the heavens stormed, rolling dust and sand and stone into their folds.
She awoke. Rowbear was crouched above her, his hand clamped over her mouth.
Shhh . . .
His face was pale, and his lips were chapped. It did not look like he had slept. She took his palm from her mouth.
What, what is it?, she asked.
Something. I heard something.
Rowbear took her to an outcrop of sandy ground. He pointed out into the darkness. She could hear it now too, down in the kettle. How many were there? Four? Five? Growling and yipping and snarling. Carolinas maybe. Or coydogs. They must’ve gotten buffed at the run and doubled back here when they could not find the bull. She leaned toward the drop and peered down. They were there with the carcass, blood mad and cheated of their prey. They fought for bone and cartilage and scraps. Carolinas were worthless but she could fetch eight dollars for coy hide at Fort Muskethead. She unscrewed her canteen and took a deep swallow. Then she t
ook up her rifle and checked the chamber.
Stay here, she said.
Where you going?
Keep to the fire, you be safe, she said.
She walked the slow drop down into the kettle. The underduff crackled in her ears, but there was no helping that. She took up a clump of dung and smeared it on her coat. The trigger was slick now, and she wedged her finger hard against the guard. Her eyes started to adjust. She could see shapes, forms, edges. Down at the waterline, she spotted the bull carcass, its long brackets of bone emerging from the muck. The dogs leaped at each other, tugging at the thin strips of sinew.
She steadied her rifle.
They were four, the largest near eighty pounds by her reckoning. The lead dog pushed past the other three, the muscles of its stomach pulsing. Its ribs showed through its girth. It’d found a hole in the bull’s side and pushed deep into it, pulling strings of gristle. The sky began to lighten. She sighted down the barrel and aimed at the soft hackles of the lead’s neck. She levered the hammer back and drew in a breath.
The dogs stopped. The sun crowned up from the east, blazing copper through the shrub and grass. They turned toward it, noses against the breeze. She looked too. Rowbear stood atop the ridge, his shirt open, his cheeks still flecked with dried blood. There was a stillness in his face, his eyes half open. They’d smelled him.
For a moment nothing moved.
Then the pack took up the hill, toward Rowbear. Frankie found her hands again. Her finger had turned to stone on the trigger. She pulled and the shot disappeared.
They advanced quickly, their paws kicking up flecks of soft mud. Rowbear kicked one square in the head and sent it down the rise. He threw mud and thrashed the air, brandishing a rock in his hand. Frankie fired again, and again nothing. Just smoke and noise. She cursed and got to her feet and began to run across the kettle. Rowbear tried to keep the dogs at a distance, but they held their ground. Frankie fired once more, and one of the dogs fell down. Another two took off running, but one remained, too crazed to retreat. There was a blur of fur and noise. Then a dull sick sound.
She did not know what she was seeing. It was only after she’d come closer, after the blood and thrill had subsided, that she saw the two of them on the ground, the dog in Rowbear’s lap. Its head was open, and the blood was black and sticky, and Rowbear brought the rock down over and over, chipping away bits of bone and brain. His eyes were wide and his mouth hung slightly open. He was in a trance. Frankie touched his arm. But he kept beating, slow now, hefting his arms like weights. It was morning and the sky was brightening, and on the ridge, the mist gathered and spilled, rolling down toward them. He brought his hand up. Tracks of blood runneled down his arm. And then as if his arms had turned to straw, the rock slipped from his hand.
It’s not him, he said.
Not who?
Rowbear shook his head, his hands trembling.
Nothing. Never mind.
Sometimes Robert wondered if this weren’t all in his head—the light chipping through the high canopy, the slush-slush-shlock of his boots—if the rise and fall of the mud trails didn’t sway in the same clay sloughs of his brain. Birds. Who would make so many birds? Fill the whole damn place with their lunatic cries? It was a sick mind made this swamp. That put crisp clean air so high above the bad. Here, everything crawled and curled and spidered, exploding from the ground in blades and fans and tendrils of poison green. The deeper he went, the more tangled the disease, twisting and knotting into itself, throwing up ropes of kudzu and creeper, and on that rope, bright purple flowers that burst open like sores.
And if this were all in his head, how did Frankie L’Etang fit inside it? She gained the ground, patiently drawing back the lashweed for him to pass. His thoughts pressed in like gnats around her, chasing heat, wheeling. Every few yards, she would glance back at him. Make sure he was okay. That he could follow. And those last few times. Was she grinning?
Eyes lie. Can’t trust them. Things flashed in the edge of his vision then disappeared. Movement. A rush of color. A distortion of light. He told himself it was the heat on his nerves. This was not real. If only he could have air. If only this heat didn’t squat down on him. He’d suck deep into his lungs and breathe through the poison. He could get his eyeballs to steady, and quiet that hum inside his skull. There were no voices. Not yet. Etta had the voices. She would speak into an empty room and smack her legs with the flat of her hand. Get! Get!
He looked at his hands. Frankie had undone the chains around them. He told his fingers, Flex, and they obeyed. He felt them meet his palms. Felt his own meat resist. This was real.
Was this living? Always having to decide between the two. This is real. This is not. He touched the devil through his shirt. And this? So many square inches of worsted yarn. Inside—rock salt, ash, an Indian head penny. He fingered the loops of twine, lifting it from the damp of his neck. He ran the underside of his finger across the coarse fibers. To mark the years, he had frayed X’s on the twine—one hatch, then another, then another until there were over half a dozen. How many more could he fit around his neck? This is real. This is not.
It had protected him. He did not die. Not in Bruce, by fire. Or drowned in the river. Nor on the thousand night roads like arteries feeding into buckra towns, rope trees, torches, nor those stitches of railroad that fled into the furious cities. He’d been saved where others had not. Billy and Etta and Ellis. And poor Hermalie and all those girls who’d been sucked into the death that gloried around him. And now came the Dog. For what end, he could not be sure. To warn or threaten or to collect upon some soul debt? It did not matter.
He felt something sharp glide through his ribs. He had not felt afraid, truly afraid, in so long that it took a moment to recognize it. To feel his body come alive in riot against him. His heart. His muscles. His brain. His spleen. Every damned fiber of his existence burning for life. And yet, wasn’t this what he wanted? To meet the sumbitch at his eye. To end.
Frankie was looking at him. She held something out between her forefinger and her thumb. Her face was furrowed in concern, and he realized he’d been looking hard at her. Sweat beaded on his face. She made a motion for him to take what was in her hand and he did. The brown greasy plug was in his palm. She gestured her hand to her mouth as if showing him how to eat it, then she turned away quickly so he could collect himself.
What is it?
Medicine. Eat.
They were in a cypress grove, the tall canopies above them holding down the heat. Frankie slung down her pack, then she took off her hat and combed her hair into a tail. Robert watched her fingers travel through the nest of dark hair, airing out its folds, her smooth white neck flushed in the humidity. This was not real. He felt the blood creep across his face and he turned away.
Hold we up a mo’, she said.
Frankie undid her jacket and spread it out on the ground, her shirt soaked with sweat. He bit into the plug. It was hard and bitter, and when he swallowed, warm spread into his chest and face.
Why’re we stopping?
Can’t y’nose it?
Frankie closed her eyes and breathed, her full chest rising beneath her shirt. Robert shuddered. He bit down on his cheek, tried not to look. She was facing the sky, her arms splayed at her side.
It gon’ pour.
THEY SHELTERED UNDER A CYPRESS hollow, Frankie’s jacket draped across the knotted bark to make a lip. They lay side by side, their packs padded underneath them. The storm came sudden and full, hammering down in sheets of silver foam. Around them, the cypresses groaned from their roots. Frankie was asleep. She had laid herself lengthwise under the shelter, her legs crossed at the ankle, her felt hat set careful on her face. Robert gazed out into the frosted air. The earth was beat soft into a pudding. High above the heavens cracked. He saw fire lash down through the trees, strike the earth, and on that spot the ground cracked and hell bubbled forth. He shu
t his eyes. Opened them again. Rain. Just rain. He looked up. A flock of woodcocks were caught in the storm. They gave call, then broke through the trees, their large wings clumsily grabbing air. The rain had scared up worms and they took to the high boughs and waited.
You wake?
She had spoken through her hat. Didn’t move, her rifle resting beside her. He told her he was.
Since you been here, I been careful watching you. And I sees you. I sees it.
Robert blinked. He could almost laugh.
What you see?
It ain’t my business. All I’s saying is I sees it, she said.
Outside this place, they would beat him, maybe kill him for the way he looked at her—his eyes traveling up the folds of her shirt. He shut his eyes. Swallowed. Tried to calm the tattooing in his brain. She shifted and her sleeve hiked a little. He saw the white band of her wrist, then the long slight fingers. He remembered those fingers in his mouth, pushing a taste across his tongue. Her body warmed the air around her. At the end of his life, he would hold to this image, her face obscured, her body at rest as the world tore itself apart around them. Already the world had turned and the heavens had locked into place, and that massive machinery of gears and weights and counterweights glided into motion. And it was funny, that they call it falling, because that was what it was. The ground giving up underneath you. The surge of air. He did not stand a chance.
Bossjohn and Roan headed south into the corridor, neither brother speaking. Three days, stoving through the gnat swarms and the late-summer rains that came full and sudden and bone-cold. Half a mile out from the run they could smell its water. Warm and heavy and full of moss. They inhaled deeply through their nostrils, into their skulls, trying to draw the taste. When they came upon it, the run was big and beautiful and lash-tongued mean, the waters rollin’ silver down the banks and dam flot ribboned across the surface.
They followed the trim, pitching their traps into the water and laying jaws and snares out in the dense clover. Where the water slowed, Roan built a blind to shoot whitetail or wild hog or anything thirsty for drink.
