Poachers (17 page)

long steps led up to the door, where in the window a red sign said OPEN. Inside to the right, like a bar, a polished maple counter ran along the wall. Behind the counter hung a rack with wire pegs for tools, hardware and fishing tackle. To the left were rows of shelves made of boards and concrete blocks, and beyond the shelves a Coca-Cola cooler buzzed faintly by the wall.

The store owner, an old man named Kirxy, had bad knees, and this weather settled around his joints like rot. For most of his life he’d been married and lived in a nice two-story house on highway 35, fireplaces in every bedroom, a china cabinet. But when his wife died two years ago, cancer, he found it easier to avoid the house, to keep the bills paid and the grass mowed but the doors locked, to spend nights in the store, to sleep in the back room on the army cot and to warm his meals of corned beef and beef stew on a hot plate. He didn’t mind that people had all but stopped coming to the store. As long as he served a few longstanding customers, he thought he’d stick around. He had his radio and the Thomasville station and money enough. He liked the area and knew his regulars weren’t the kind to drive half an hour to the nearest town. For those few people, Kirxy would go once a week to Grove Hill to shop for goods he’d resell, marking up the price just enough for a reasonable profit. He didn’t need the money; it was just good business.

Liquor-wise, the county was dry, but that didn’t stop Kirxy. For his regulars, he would serve plastic cups of the cheap whisky he bought in the next county or bottles of beer he kept padlocked in the old refrigerator in back. For these regulars, he would break packages of cigarettes and keep them in a cigar box and sell them for a dime apiece, a nickel stale. Aspirins were seven cents each. He would open boxes of shotgun shells or cartridges and sell them

for amounts that varied according to caliber, and he’d been known to find specialty items—paperback novels, explosives and, once, an old magneto telephone.

At Euphrates Morrisette’s place, Kent
Gates pounded on the back door. In Morrisette’s yard a cord of wood was stacked between two fenceposts and covered by a green tarp, brick halves holding the tarp down. A tire swing, turning slowly and full of rainwater, hung from a pine limb. When Morrisette appeared—he was a large, bald black man—Kent pointed to the fawn and dog hanging on the porch rail. Morrisette put on reading glasses and squinted at both. “How ’bout that,” he said, stroking his chin. “Be right out, young mens.” He closed the door. Kent sat on the porch edge and his brothers on the steps. A skinny wet dog trotted from under the house, wagging its tail, and Dan began to pet it. When he found a swollen blue tick in its ear, he pulled it off and flicked it across the yard.

The door opened and Morrisette came out with three pint jars of homemade whisky. Each brother took a jar and unscrewed its lid, sniffed the clear liquid. Morrisette set his steaming coffee cup on the windowsill. He fastened his suspenders, looking at the carcasses hanging over the rail. The brothers were already drinking, Dan still petting the dog, which had its head in his lap.

“Where’s that girl?” Kent asked, his face twisted from the sour whisky.

“My stepdaughter, you mean?” Morrisette’s Adam’s apple pumped in his throat. “She inside.”

Far away a rooster crowed.

“Get her out here,” Kent said. He drank again, shuddered.

“She ain’t but fifteen.”

Kent scratched his beard. “Just gonna look at her.”

When they left, the stepdaughter was standing on the porch in her white nightgown, barefoot and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The brothers backed away clanking with hardware and blushing and grinning at her, Morrisette’s jaw clenched. The dog watched them go, then turned and trotted back underneath the house.

Sipping from their jars, they took the bag of eels down the road to the half-blind conjure woman who stood waiting on her porch. Her house, with its dark drapes and empty birdcages dangling from the eaves, seemed to be slipping off into the gully. The younger brothers wiped their noses on their sleeves and shifted from foot to foot by the gate as Kent walked across the muddy yard and held the bag out. She snatched the eels from him, squinting into the bag with her good eye. Grunting, she paid them from a dusty cloth sack on her apron and muttered to herself as Kent turned and walked through her gate and the three of them went up the dirt road. Only Dan, the youngest, looked back.

They peddled the rest of the things from their cooler, then left through the dump, pausing while Kent and Neil shot at liquor bottles Dan threw into the air. Out of ammunition, they stumbled down the ravine in the rain, following the water’s edge to their boat. In the back, Kent wedged his jar between his thighs and ran the trolling motor with his foot. His brothers leaned against the walls of the boat, facing opposite banks, no sound but rain and the low hum of the motor. They drank silently, holding the burning whisky in the hollows of their cheeks before gathering the will to swallow. Along the banks, fallen trees held thick strands of cottonmouth, black sparkling creatures dazed and slow from winter, barely able to move. If not for all the rain, they might

still be hibernating, comatose in the banks of the river or beneath the soft yellow underbellies of rotten logs.

Rounding a bend, the brothers saw a small boat downriver, its engine clear, loud and unfamiliar. Heading this way. The man in the boat lifted a hand in greeting. He wore a green poncho and a dark hat covered with plastic. Kent shifted his foot, turning the trolling motor, and steered them toward the bank, giving the stranger a wide berth. He felt for their outboard’s crank rope while Neil and Dan faced forward and sat on the boat seats. The man drawing closer didn’t look much older than Kent. He cut his engine and coasted up beside them, smiling.

“Morning, fellows,” he said, showing a badge. “New district game warden.”

The brothers looked straight ahead, as if he weren’t there. The warden’s engine was steaming, a flock of geese passed overhead. Dan slipped his hands inside the soft leather collars of two dogs, who’d begun to growl.

“You fellows oughta know,” the warden said, pointing his long chin to the rifle at Neil’s feet, “that it’s illegal to have those guns loaded on the river. I’m gonna have to check ’em. I’ll need to see some licenses, too.”

When he stood, the dogs jumped forward, toenails scraping aluminum. Dan jerked them back and glanced at Kent.

Kent spat into the brown water. He met the warden’s eyes, and in an instant knew the man had seen the telephone rig in the floor of their boat.

“Pull to the bank!” the warden yelled, drawing a pistol. “Y’all are under arrest for poaching!”

The Gateses didn’t move. One of the dogs began to claw the hull and the others joined him. A howl rose.

“Shut ’em up!” The warden’s face had grown blotchy and red.

The spotted hound broke free and sprang over the gunnel, slobber strung from its teeth, and the man most surprised by the game warden’s shot seemed to be the game warden himself. His face drained of color as the noise echoed off the water and died in the bent black limbs and the cattails that bobbed in the current. The bullet had passed through the front dog’s neck and smacked into the bank behind them, missing Dan by inches. The dog collapsed, and there was an instant of silence before the others, now loose, clattered overboard into the water, red-eyed, tangled in their leashes, trying to swim.

“Pull to the goddamn bank!” the warden yelled. “Right now!”

Scowling, Kent leaned and spat. He moved his thirty-thirty aside. Using the shoulders of his brothers for balance, he made his way to the prow. Neil, his cheekbones flecked with dog blood, moved to the back to keep the boat level. At the front, Kent reached into the water and took the first dog by its collar, lifted the kicking form and set it streaming and shivering behind him. His brothers turned their faces away as it shook off the water.

Kent grabbed the rope that led to the big three-legged hound and pulled it in hand over hand until he could work his fingers under its collar. He gave Dan a sidelong look and together they hauled it in. Then Kent grabbed for the smaller bitch while Dan got the black-and-tan.

The warden watched them, his hips swaying with the rise and fall of the current. Rain was coming harder now, spattering against the boats.

Kneeling among the dogs, Kent unsnapped the leash and tossed the spotted hound overboard. It sank, then resurfaced and floated on its side, trailing blood. Kent’s lower lip twitched. He looked at Neil and opened his mouth. Dan whispered to the dogs

and placed his hands on two of their heads to calm them—they were retching and trembling and rolling their eyes fearfully at the trees.

Neil stood up with his hands raised, as if to surrender. When the game warden looked at him, relief softening his eyes, Kent jumped from his crouch into the other boat, his big fingers closing around the man’s neck.

Later that morning, Kirxy had
just unlocked the door and hung out the open sign when he heard the familiar rattle of the Gates truck. He sipped his coffee and limped behind the counter, sat on his stool. The boys came several times a week, usually in the afternoon, before they started their evenings of hunting and fishing. Kirxy would give them what supplies they needed—bullets, fishing line, socks, a new cap to replace one lost in the river. They would fill their truck and cans with gas. Eighteen-year-old Dan would get the car battery from the charger near the woodburning stove and replace it with the drained one from their boat’s trolling motor. Kirxy would serve them coffee or Cokes—never liquor, not to boys—and they’d eat whatever they chose from the shelves, usually candy bars or barbecue potato chips, ignoring Kirxy’s advice to eat healthier, Vienna sausages, Dinty Moore or Chef Boyardee.

Today they came in looking a little spooked, Kirxy thought. Neil stayed near the door, peering out, the glass fogging by his mouth. His arms folded. Dan went to the candy aisle and pocketed several Hershey bars. He left a trail of muddy boot prints behind him. Kirxy would have to mop later.

“Morning, young fellows,” he said. “Coffee?”

Dan nodded. Kirxy filled a Styrofoam cup, then grinned as the boy loaded it with sugar.

“You take coffee with your sweetener?” he asked.

Kent leaned on the counter, inspecting the items hanging on their pegs, a hacksaw, a Lucky 13 lure, a set of Allen wrenches. A gizmo with several uses, knife, measuring tape, awl. He took off his cap and balled it in his fist. Kirxy could smell the booze on him.

“Y’all need something particular?” he asked.

“That spotted one you give us?” Kent said, not meeting his eyes. “Won’t bark no more.”

“She won’t bark no more?”

“Naw. Tree ’em fine, but won’t bark nary a time. Gotta shoot her.”

His mouth full of chocolate, Dan looked at Kirxy. By the door, Neil unfolded his arms.

“No,” Kirxy said. “Ain’t no need for that, Kent. Do what that conjure woman recommends. Go out in the woods, find you a locust shell stuck to a tree. This is the time of year for ’em, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Locust shell?” Kent asked.

“Yeah. Bring it back home and crunch it up in the dog’s scraps, and that’ll make her bark like she ought to.”

Kent nodded to Kirxy and walked to the door. He went out, his brothers following.

“See you,” Kirxy called. “You’re welcome.”

Dan waved with a Hershey bar and closed the door.

Kirxy stared after them for a time. It had been more than a year since they’d paid him anything, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask for money; he’d even stopped writing down what they owed.

He got his coffee and limped from behind the counter to the easy chair by the stove. He shook his head at the muddy footprints

on the candy aisle. He sat slowly, tucked a blanket around his legs, took out his bottle and added a splash to his coffee. Sipping, he picked up a novel—Louis L’Amour,
Sackett’s Land
—and reached in his apron pocket for his glasses.

Though she had been once
, the woman named Esther wasn’t much of a regular in Kirxy’s store these days. She lived two miles upriver in a shambling white house with massive magnolia trees in the yard. The house had a wraparound porch, and when it flooded you could fish from the back, sitting in the tall white rocking chairs, though you weren’t likely to catch anything, a baby alligator maybe, or sometimes bullfrogs. Owls nested in the trees along her part of the river, but in this weather they’d grown quiet; she missed their hollow calling.

Esther was fifty. She’d had two husbands and six children who were gone and had ill feelings toward her. She’d had her female parts removed in an operation she was still paying for. Now she lived alone and, most of the time, drank alone. If the Gates boys hadn’t passed out in their truck somewhere in the woods, they might stop by after a night’s work. Esther would make them strong coffee and feed them salty fried eggs and link sausages, and some mornings, like today, she would get a faraway look in her eyes and take Kent’s shirt collar in her fingers and lead him upstairs and watch him close the bathroom door and listen to the sounds of his bathing.

She smiled, knowing these were the only baths he ever took.

When he emerged, his long hair stringy, his chest flat and hard, she led him down the hall past the telephone nook to her bedroom. He crawled under the covers and watched her take off her