Dark River Road (3 page)

Still, lying there in the soft darkness with little Mikey’s breathing shallow and regular in the double bed next to him, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“God,” he whispered, “if You can hear me and if You care, keep that pup alive. It’s the only one I’ve ever helped be born and I’m kinda partial to it.”

That was it. If God was going to listen, He’d know what to do.

Chantry ran a hand down his bony arm to grab his wrist. “Later. After church. You know Mama doesn’t like to be late.”

Before Mikey could offer more argument, he lifted him up with both hands and carried him to the kitchen table, tickling him a little to make him laugh.

As soon as he’d eaten breakfast, Chantry raced out with table scraps for Belle. She lay in the bed he’d made her, the pups scrabbling around her belly like fuzzy little worms. He counted eight and his throat got tight. Then he found the pup, curled up and mewling complaint at the side of the crate. He tucked it next to a litter mate already nursing, watched as the tiny mouth fastened greedily to a nipple. Belle nosed the pup, licked it a few times, then lost interest and turned her attention to one of the others. Chantry put the pup back a few times when it got pushed aside by a stronger one. Finally it stopped trying, more exhausted then full. It lay so still on the rags, not moving when others crawled over him.

“So much for praying,” Chantry muttered as he cradled the pup in his palm. It laid there, warm and soft, eyes still tightly shut. Dark fur streaked the back, the belly was pink, the brown stub of stomach cord sticking up stiffly. Fragile sides heaved with the effort to breathe.

“Chantry. It’s time to leave for church.”

“I’m staying here this morning,” he called back to his mother without turning around, and in a minute, he heard her come out of the house and cross the dirt yard to the pen. She paused at the fence, stared at the tiny unmoving pup lying in his palm.

“Perhaps it’s not meant to live,” she said after a brief silence. “There are times it is best for small, weak creatures to make room for the larger, healthier ones.”

Chantry looked up at her. “You don’t feel that way about Mikey.”

There was a shocked silence. He couldn’t believe he’d said that, and saw that his mother didn’t either. Her face went so pale it made her eyes look like two large blue bruises beneath her brows. He wanted to take it back, but it was too late.

Hanging his head, he swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s just that
 . . .
well, I helped this pup into the world. I’d like to try to keep him here. If I can.”

A mockingbird chattered in the mimosa tree, and a train whistle signaled that it was nearly nine o’clock and time for the C&P to rattle by with freight on its way to New Orleans.

After another moment Mama said, “Very well. You may skip Sunday School, but I’ll expect you to attend the church services in time for Reverend Hale’s sermon.”

Fire and brimstone. Shouts of eternal damnation and Hell awaiting sinners. Reverend Hale liked to scare moral trespassers into Heaven.

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be there, Mama.”

He heard her walk away and looked up. She wore her summer Sunday dress, a white cotton with tiny lavender sprigs. It flowed around her legs when she walked. Mama always walked with her head up, back straight. He’d heard Mrs. Pritchett say once that Carrie Lassiter had dignity and grace despite everything. He guessed that was good. It bothered him though, that people talked about her. He hated that part of living in a small town. Everyone knew everything about everyone else and there weren’t many secrets you could keep for long.

Everybody knew Rainey Lassiter was nothing but poor white trash and his wife had to try and keep him out of the beer joints since he’d got hurt on the job. Everybody knew their own jobs depended on Bert Quinton, too. He made all the big decisions about how much money people made, where they worked, where they went to school and even to church. Most people in Cane Creek owed their living to him and he didn’t mind reminding them of that fact if they ever tried to forget. He owned most everything in town. Even a few souls, Dempsey had said once. He also said Quinton was a ruthless old bastard. Dempsey ought to know. He’d worked for the Quinton family since he was only five, and he was ancient now. At least fifty.

Maybe he’d ask Dempsey what to do about the pup. He knew about a lot of stuff. He’d tell him what he could do to keep it alive.

Chantry pushed the pup back up to its mother’s side to nurse, fingers gently milking her so the pup didn’t have to struggle so hard. It was getting weaker. If it didn’t get regular feeding, it’d die. He just didn’t know if he’d be able to keep it alive by himself.

When the pup was asleep he moved it to one side so it wouldn’t get squashed by the others, gave Belle fresh water, and then cleaned up the pen a little. Rainey’d never think of doing that.

It was getting late and he dressed quickly and quietly to keep from waking up Rainey. The house was silent, but just knowing he was there alone with Rainey made it feel precarious. Mama was all that stood between them sometimes. Rainey might be free with his fists, but there were times Chantry thought he was almost afraid of Mama. He’d never dared try to hit her, and when he did hit Chantry, he’d seen Mama dissect him with a few soft-spoken words. Rainey’s reaction to that was always violent. Like he knew she told the truth and couldn’t stand it.

Chantry left by the back door, let it shut gently behind him. He’d have to hurry to get there before services started and everyone would turn around to look at him when he went in the front door. It was bad enough having to go, it’d be worse to give people a chance to talk about him always being late. They talked enough as it was. He’d only been in two fights in his life with anyone besides Beau and Rafe, but most of Cane Creek seemed to have the idea that he was always in a fight with someone.

Probably because of his fight with Chris Quinton. That’d been the year before and no one had forgotten it yet. Chris’s grandfather was old man Quinton, and everybody in town had talked about the fight for months afterward. Mama had been so upset with him, and he’d had to promise not to ever fight again even though he knew he might not be able to keep that promise. Lines got crossed a lot.

Some lines were pretty definite in Cane Creek. There were kids like Chris who wore expensive clothes and drove new cars, and there were kids like Donny Ray Caldwell, whose daddy worked at the cotton plant and made enough money to have a nice size house and almost new car. Then there were kids from Sugarditch. Like Chantry.

He hated being lumped in with the kids who lived in tarpaper shacks, missed school most of the time, and were regular visitors over in the Quinton County juvenile detention center. They drank too much, smoked dope, and caused trouble. He tried to stay away from all that. Mama would skin him alive if he got into that kind of trouble.

The sun was already bright, beating down on his bare head as he left the house. The street baked quietly. A hot smell hung in the air, jimson weeds and dust, and creosote from the railroad ties mixed with the smell of tar. There were only three houses on Liberty Road. It was gravel here at their end, and stopped at the blacktopped road leading into town. On the other end it dead-ended into some fields that had once grown sugar cane, but usually grew cotton or soybeans now. Blight or something like that had ended the sugar cane long before he’d moved here. Economic blight, Dempsey had said. Beyond the barren fields lay wooded land, some of it thick, some of it swampland. Sugar Creek meandered through oak, maples, wild dogwoods and pines to where it joined with the cut-off into the Mississippi River. Muddy banks rose surprisingly steep in some places, when farther south it planed out into flat fields edged with kudzu.

He took a shortcut across an empty lot with waist-high weeds, then crossed the railroad tracks that stitched a boundary line between Sugarditch and the rest of Cane Creek. Mostly, Sugarditch had shotgun shacks built on cinder block foundations that housed families who worked for Quinton. He owned the houses and he owned the people in them. The history books might say slavery had ended almost a hundred and thirty years before, but Chantry figured there were different kinds of slavery still at work in Cane Creek.

New Cane Creek Baptist Church sat on the corner of Main and Forrest Streets. It’d been built after the first church burned down twenty years before. Now it had white aluminum siding, a tall steeple with a bell, stained glass windows with white doves and blue flowers and red drops of blood, and had cost the congregation more money than the school cost the county. It wasn’t the only church in town, but the only one the white folks who worked for Quinton attended. There was a Methodist church and a Presbyterian church, and over near Tunica County there was a Catholic church for the papists. There was a black church, too, and sometimes Chantry heard glad shouting and singing that sounded a lot better than the solemn hymns sung at New Cane Creek. But any white man who worked for old man Quinton went to the Baptist church he’d founded. It wasn’t overt segregation, but a definite divide. A few years before, Reverend Hale had come to replace the retiring pastor, and he was the kind of shouting preacher that always made Chantry feel jumpy and anxious for the sermon to be over.

Strains of the organ playing
Old Rugged Cross
seeped from the double doors just as he reached the sidewalk in front of the church. He made it up the shallow stone steps right before one of the deacons shut the doors.

“Sorry,” he muttered when the man frowned, and pushed past him into the chapel. It was crowded as always. Wooden pews sprouted old ladies in hats, young girls whispering, and men looking bored and pious. Ceiling fans slowly stirred the air conditioning under a vaulted ceiling. Mama sat near the front, her back straight, staring straight ahead at the choir arranged behind the padded pastor’s chair. Mikey sat beside her, a Bible story coloring book and crayons in his lap.

He slid in beside them and got an appraising look from Mama that made him wish he’d taken time to put on a clean white shirt with his Levi’s. She wanted him to wear a suit, but didn’t complain as long as he was clean and his hair combed out of his eyes.

After the singing, Reverend Hale got warmed up by reading passages of doom and death from Revelation, then he launched into an hour long rant about the wickedness of sinners and the eternal punishment that awaited them. Sins of the heart, the flesh, even thoughts, bought a ticket to Hell. According to the good reverend, everyone in church that day stood in imminent danger of feeling the hot breath of sulphur and brimstone after death.