Southern Cross the Dog (13 page)

He held the flat over the can.

Meat commendeth us not to God. For neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither are we the worse.

The can smoked and a tongue of flame licked up and out toward the blade. The fat started dripping down the edge. We hadn't eaten in days except maybe the heel of some stale bread. I couldn't remember the last time I had meat. It sizzled on the knife blade, sweetening the air. Something pinched at my stomach. Uncle Reb stared at it, his eyes wide, his mouth pooling up with his spit.

When it was all cooked up, Stuckey held the knife out to me.

Careful, it's hot, he said.

No, thank you, I said.

Stuckey smiled. He held the blade to Uncle Reb. Uncle Reb didn't waste no time; he plucked up the meat and put it in his mouth. It steamed out of his mouth, it was so hot. He sucked his fingers and his eyes watered and Stuckey laughed. Stuckey cut up another strip and started cooking, and Uncle Reb and Stuckey went on like that all night, feeding my uncle on little bits of rabbit, so's that my stomach was fussing me all night and come morning, there wasn't nothing left but a pile of bones and two little rabbit heads.

NAN SAID, WAKE UP, AND
I did.

Then Uncle Reb said, How much?

And Stuckey said, How much for what?

You take a man's livelihood, you're taking the whole man.

I pretended I was still asleep. There was a long quiet, just the water babbling all around, and there was a hawk screaming about something. The dew was cold on my skin.

Then Uncle Reb said, The girl. How much you give for the girl?

And that's how Uncle Reb got his rifle back.

STUCKEY ROWED I DON'T KNOW
for how long, over places he told me what used to be Hollandale and Rolling Fork and Silver City. There wasn't nothing left but a sheet of water. Little crosses stuck out where the churches were, and little roof islands, empty except for maybe a blanket here or bits of straw there. There was something under the water by the penny cinema in Silver City, all cloudy and covered in what looked like little yellow hairs, I couldn't make out what.

Where are we going? I asked.

Your new home.

We went on and on, till there wasn't no town at all, no houses or building or nothing—just bits of treetop sticking out with the leaves all stripped. By dusk, we were drifting toward a forest of blackgum. Weeds and roots scraped the boat bottom as we came into the shallows. We found ourselves in a great swamp. The gums came up like bars over the mossy water. Stuckey brought the oars in and steered us through by hand, managing us forward through the marsh grass.

There were bits of mirror nailed to the trees.

What're those for?

Keeps away the ghosts, he said. Ghosts don't like mirrors. Can't stand the sight of them.

And I didn't say anything more after that.

WE STOPPED WHERE THE GROUND
was soft and flooded. Up above, branches blocked out the sky. The air was hot and still. Nothing moved. Stuckey dragged the boat up a mud bank and tied it off.

Rest of the way we go by foot, he said.

The water came up to my ankles. Stuckey made me carry one of the smaller satchels and he shouldered up the rest.

Don't dawdle, he said. We don't want to get stuck here come nightfall.

He marched ahead. The long tail of his coat floated behind him as he pushed across the swamp, a cloud of mud rising around his boots.

We'd gone some time before it began to darken. My toes were numb in the water. There was screaming coming from the trees. We looked up and saw a line of crows flying away from where we were heading. Stuckey started singing: Old black crow, old black crow, did the farmer pluck where your feathers don't grow.

The cabin was set out on a small clearing, the earth pocked from where the trees used to be. The boards looked blue-black and rotted. Stuckey took me around back where I could make water. He turned his back as I crouched out in the grass, next to a small pump, staring out into the woods. There was a small path that led out behind the scrub to what looked like a henhouse. He waited for me to finish, then he took me into the cabin.

Inside, the junk had come together into piles with only a narrow strip of floor to move around on. There were chairs stacked on top of chairs. An old bureau had been stripped of its doors and heaped up with brass pots, sketches, bundles of old newspapers.

Stuckey set his bag down by the door and made his way to the stove. He lit it, then he picked up an old steel poker with a little hooked head and pushed around the coals, sending up a breath of sparks.

Come here, he said.

I didn't move.

Don't make me come to you.

When I wouldn't move, he grabbed me and yanked me toward him.

He thrashed the poker into the embers and little sparks licked out of the stove. When he took the poker out, the head was all red. He took my leg with his hand and twisted it toward him.

I shut my eyes.

There was the smell of something burning. After a minute, he let go of my leg.

When I opened my eyes, little fat leeches were squirming on the floor.

He put the poker back in its place. He stamped on their fat bodies.

We're going to have to get you some proper boots, he said.

STUCKEY PUT ME UP IN
a cramped room with a mattress and a little bureau pushed against the wall. He changed me out of my clothes and gave me a cotton dress that itched all over and didn't fit right in parts. He looked me up and down, made me turn for him, and he clicked his teeth and pinched the scrub of hair on his chin.

Pretty as the morning, he said.

He looked me up and down a little bit, then without a word, he left room.

The window was boarded up, but there was space enough between the boards to see through to the outside. On top of the bureau, there were cane poles and little fishhooks. After a while, Stuckey came in again with a plate of biscuits and some cold beans.

Eat and then go to bed, he said. We'll talk tomorrow.

When he closed the door, I heard it lock behind him.

I ate up the beans and scooped up all the juice with the biscuits. I filled up my mouth faster than I could chew, pushing the food through with my fingers. When I was through, I had licked the plate clean and my stomach was starting to feel a little funny. I left the plate on the floor and tried to sleep.

Before the flood, there was only one bed and it was Uncle Reb's—a beat-up old thing he traded a Guernsey heifer for. It was all cut up and the stuffing was coming out but Uncle Reb got in a terrible fit if anyone went near it. Me and Nan Peoria had to sleep down on a pallet of crushed hay and dry grass. At night, I could hear it crackle softly under me, and come morning, there'd be little bites all up and down my arm.

Here, there was a mattress and it was strange the way the bed went up against my shoulders and my back. It pressed at you the way nothing else did, rising up to fill the spaces you couldn't fill yourself. I turned and beat on it for a while, but there wasn't any way I could get any sleep. Instead, I pulled the sheets down into a pile at the foot of the bureau and curled up against it.

I slept I don't know how long. The room was all dark and I couldn't see nothing. There was somebody in there with me.

Nan Peoria put her hand across my mouth.

Don't breathe, she said.

It took a while for my eyes to get used to the dark. There was a man standing at the foot of the bed. His head was rolled back toward the ceiling.

Don't wake up, she said.

She said, Do you believe in God?

My mouth was stuffed up with cotton.

Do you believe in the Devil?

COME MORNING, THE LIGHT WASN'T
more than a trickle through the boards. There were little motes of dust casting through the air. I rubbed the stiff out of my sides and looked around before I remembered where I was. The door was open and someone had taken out my tray, swapping it for a pair of cotton slippers.

Out in the kitchen, Stuckey was at the stove, turning over a pot of oatmeal. He looked at me and pointed over to the table with his chin.

You slept on the floor last night, he said.

I'm not used to beds, I said.

You'll learn.

He served up the oats in two bowls. They weren't boiled up all the way, and there were little mealworms floating in the milk. I picked them off and ate around it.

After this, all the meals, you cook. You know how to cook, don't you?

I told him I did.

Finish eating and I'll show you what needs doing.

After breakfast, he took me around to the back and showed me how to pump for water, how to split the firewood. He showed me the chicken coop all twisted up with wire and straw, not far from the cabin. Then he took me inside, showed what needed wiping down. The stove had to be swept out and the floors needed scrubbing. There was the laundry and the dusting and the mending. He showed me his socks that needed darning and the holes in his oilskin coat worn through at the elbows. He talked me through the piles and piles of junk. What to touch. What not to touch.

When he was done, he stooped down and put his face into mine. His eyes were lowered till there was barely any white showing. His face hung there, waiting on something. When nothing happened, he stood up and took his long coat off the hook.

Swamps are full of gators, he said.

He pulled on the sleeves, then checked the chamber of his pistol.

I'll be back by nightfall, he said.