Southern Cross the Dog (12 page)

Eli gaped at Duke.

We . . . we didn't talk about . . . I'm not sure—

Duke hissed at him.

You do what you're told, Eli. The rest you leave to me.

He looked out into the crowd. The guests seemed unsure of themselves. They murmured nervously to one another.

Now, Mr. Cutter. A song.

Eli started playing “My Creole Sue.” It was slow and pretty, but he was only a few bars in before Duke cuffed him hard across the neck.

No, goddamn it. None of that.

He leaned in close and held the burning tip of his cigar above Eli's knuckles.

You'll play what I goddamn tell you.

Duke smoothed out the front of his shirt. He cleared his throat and smiled at the crowd.

As I was saying, Mr. Cutter is going to play us a blues.

Eli looked out at the room.

Go on, Duke said.

Nervous laughter rippled across the room.

Eli adjusted himself on his seat and he took a deep breath. The air stretched out in his lungs and pressed against the ache. The keys started to blur. Eli shut his eyes. He stretched out his fingers and tensed the cords of his neck and hands. From behind, he looked like a buzzard, arms spanned wide and high above his shoulders, his head bent forward. For a moment he hung, coasting along some invisible thermal. Then
Boom!
He beat against the keys.
Boom!

Eli threw his head back, and the hands surged down again.
Boom! Boom!

He stood up and punched hard at the notes. The box hummed beneath his fingers. He could feel the audience behind him, their hearts rattling in their throats, the piss swelling in their groins. They wanted a blues. So he let them have it.
Boom. Boom.
Like a hammer at their skulls.
Boom. Boom. Boom.

He opened his mouth and powered violently through the noise.

My baby's gone, my baby's gone.

DUKE SNUCK OUT OF THE
parlor and made his way to the supply room. The key was missing so he forced the door open, tearing the bolt from the jamb. It seemed the stores had been replenished for the evening's performances. There were jugs upon jugs laid out before him and he gathered what he could into his arms. He uncorked one with his teeth and began there first, spilling the contents in long chemical trails. Then he went out into the hallway and, traveling up and down its length, drenched the curtains and the furniture. When he'd emptied one jug, he returned to the supply room for another and started again, staggering from room to room.

The gall of that whore, Duke fumed. And after he had laid so bare his feelings! His face was burning. She had played upon his weaknesses. Duke laughed sadly at how he had allowed himself to be fooled. Schemes and lies were a part of Lucy's trade and she'd had years to hone her craft. She'd made this place a trap for men.

He felt the liquor spill through his fingers.

He would've shared his life with her. He would've offered her greatness. He heaved a sigh.

Now, instead, he would have to teach her humility.

He ended his trail at the kitchen, spilling out the final jug on the tiles and mopping it with his shoes. He took the matchbook with Eli's name from his breast pocket and lit the cover. The Negro's name burned quickly in a fang of heat and light. He bent the cardboard down toward the greasy pool. All at once his arm erupted in a hot white sleeve, spreading across his shirt. Duke dashed out into the rain and smashed his burning body against the grass.

The fire spilled in eager sheets across the floor, up the stairs. Bright liquid white, massing and suffusing through the wood. Piece by piece, the hotel would come apart. The glass would burst and the pipes would buckle. Smoke and flame would suck down into the air-filled rooms.

BUT NOW IN HERMALIE'S ROOM,
Robert lay in the cool dark. Hermalie's head rested on his chest, and he moved his hand gently across her crown. Between his legs he was sore and throbbing. His heart pulsed strong and small inside his chest, electric with some unnamed anticipation.

He held the pouch absently between his fingers.

I did this, he found himself saying.

Yes, you did, Hermalie said.

She drew a shape above his breast.

I like it here, she said.

He put his arm around her, placing his warm hand on her bare shoulder.

He liked it too, he thought but would not tell her, suspicious that his words would somehow break this spell.

She burrowed into his side.

Don't you love when it rains? Makes me think of home.

He did not say anything.

For the time being, he did not see the flames spike and stretch outside her door. Soon the house would fill with smoke and screaming. The eaves would crash, puffing cinders into the rain-filled night. And Lucy and her guests would stand under the storm to watch the smoke rear through the wood-bone frame, oozing through the bursting windows.

But here, in this moment, he could still feel the life inside Hermalie. The blood moving warm beneath her skin, into her bird heart. Breath filling then emptying.

Do you hear that?, he asked.

And she moved her head slightly. Hear what?

Robert sat himself up, leaned toward the strange pull in the air.

And behind the crunch and pop of cracking timber, the druggist's wife would stand on her stoop and laugh and hoot and smash her palms, and her dog would howl and drag its chain—as the whorehouse of Bruce was damned to ash.

But he sat up now, and he listened. There it was, inside the walls. Somewhere someone was singing—my baby's gone, my baby's gone.

PART THREE

SALVAGE

(1927)

D
uring those first days when the water was up to the roof, Uncle Reb slept on his deering rifle to keep the wet from the powder. He wrapped it up in our only quilt while me and Nan Peoria shivered and cried, bedded down with nothing but dew and prayer and flood spray. He told Nan Peoria, This here rifle is keeping us from the mercy of God. Then he sighted a bird far upstream and dropped it from the sky. When it floated down to our eaves, there was hardly any meat on it at all.

About a week in, Nan Peoria got the pneumonia and when she died, Uncle Reb just rolled her off her spot, didn't say no good words or nothing, and that's how come I remember what he said about that rifle. She rolled away kind of stiff, then the current took her, and that was all there was to Nan Peoria.

After Nan died, I huddled up with Uncle Reb at night, which was all right because he had that quilt, excepting that that old rifle was lumpy and sticking at me in places, and some nights Uncle Reb would press into me and whisper Dora, Dora, and when morning come, he'd tell me it was just my fool dreaming.

THE FIRST MORNING I'D SEEN
the boat, the fog was still high. Something was out in the water, sliding slow toward the eaves of the Waller farm. I shook at Uncle Reb but he swatted me away. There was a low thump, and that's when I knew it was a boat hitting up against driftwood. I heard a man's voice. He was singing.

Uncle Reb, I whispered. Wake up. There's somebody out there.

He wouldn't rise till I pinched him. He stood up and flung the quilt off his rifle. He leaned it toward where I was pointing, swinging the mouth of the thing left and right. The water steamed a little, and a breeze swirled the fog around. There was nothing.

God almighty, he groaned.

We should've said Amen Jesus. We should've said good words over her.

Uncle Reb stretched up, scratched himself with one hand, then went to the edge of the roof to make water. Turn your head, he told me. When it was okay to look, there were bubbles already running downstream. He knelt down and checked the waterline.

Dropped an inch overnight, he said.

There was something, I told him. It was here then it was gone. I heard singing.

Go back to sleep, he said. Then he spit over the side and stretched out on the quilt. He wrapped the gun up and draped his arm over the stock. Then like nothing, he started snoring.

THERE WASN'T MUCH TO DO
during the day except be hungry and be sad. We hadn't saved much—just some clothes, Nan Peoria's Bible, and my Sally doll, which Uncle Reb threw into the water and ruined on account of his having a temper. What food we had, we couldn't mete out more than a week. So I read Nan Peoria's Bible and I pretended it was Bible times and we was on what they call an ark, and every bird I seen I pretended they was doves till Uncle Reb sighted one up and felled her. And so I didn't play Bible after that.

SOMETIMES, WHEN UNCLE REB WENT
out on one of his swims, I'd put my ear up against the roof tiles, and the house would shift and mumble and groan on like some big belly. I tried to imagine maybe there was fish in there, swimming around my things, little silver ones flapping, going in and out of the cabinets with those tiny yellow eyes, always looking at everything but never got nothing to say. And I thought maybe when the water went down, Nan Peoria could fry them up with a skillet, and Uncle Reb would eat the heads like he showed me one time, eyes and brains and everything.

I ASKED UNCLE REB WHAT
happened to Nan Peoria and Uncle Reb said she died.

And I said how come she died.

And he said because the pneumonia got her.

And I said well, where the pneumonia getting her to?

And Uncle Reb laughed and said, Down the Gulf of Mexico.

But that ain't what Nan told me.

SOMETIMES WHEN I GET MY
dreams, Nan Peoria is putting her hands on my shoulder. They're warm and I can smell that sweet oil she wears before she goes to bed. And I try to turn over and get a look but only she don't let me. She says to me, You can't wake up yet.

IT WAS EVENING THE SECOND
time I heard the boat. We'd both of us heard it, moving across the water, a man's voice humming. Uncle Reb was already up. A mist rolled thickly across the water plain. He stared out toward the neighbor's house, his rifle against his leg, his fingers kind of loose in his grip, like it was a hand he was holding. Flies buzzed all around his ears and his eyes, but he didn't swat them. He was just watching.

There were rings in the water widening out toward us, and I could hear the spilling coming off a pair of oars. It slapped soft, and bumped the boat and spilled again, moving closer and closer. Uncle Reb put the rifle up against his shoulder.

Ho there, he called out.

His shoulder jumped and there was smoke.

Ho, he said again.

Whoa, a voice answered.

Who's that?

The man drifted out from the mist, his hands up so his long coat came down almost like a pair of wings.

Easy, brother. I bring peace.

The man turned a little sideways, and there were little canvas bundles on the other end of the boat.

You come on easy there, Captain, Uncle Reb said with his rifle still up. That your salvage?

It's salvation, brother.

Uncle Reb let the rifle down an inch so he could look over the man's goods.

Bring it over here, Uncle Reb said.

The man paddled over till the boat bumped up against our roof. Uncle Reb put one foot down on the boat floor, anchoring it.

All right now, I'm the one with this here rifle. Just you remember that.

From your mouth to God's ear, the man said.

Now get on over to that far end there.

The man moved to the back of the boat, his arms still raised. Uncle Reb went on board, aiming his rifle to the man's chest. Balancing the gun with one arm, Uncle Reb started untying the bundles with one hand and emptying them on the boat floor. There were cans mostly, but also some bread and what was maybe jugs of clean water. The man looked at me and winked.

When Uncle Reb was bent down low, reaching one arm deep into a gunnysack, the man kicked the side of the hull, rocking it. Uncle Reb near fell over excepting that he put one hand down on the boat edge. And quick as anything, there was a pistol in Uncle Reb's face.

The man said, Easy, brother, easy.

The rifle passed out of Uncle Reb's hand and lay flat on the boat floor. Uncle Reb righted himself.

The man said, Now let say you invite me aboard your lovely home.

HE MOORED TO OUR ROOF
with a length of rope, and when he crossed, he bowed deep and said his name was Pat Stuckey. He went through our things, but there wasn't much to begin with. Uncle Reb's box of shells and a tin of rolling tobacco. He flipped through Nan Peoria's Bible, holding the cover open and rattling the pages. Uncle Reb sat down beside me, his arms crossed over his knees, not looking at neither Stuckey nor me.

Roll it, he said to Uncle Reb, handing him the tobacco.

Paper?

Use the book.

Uncle Reb tore a page cleanly from Nan's Bible and started to roll. I bit my tongue.

Stuckey took a match from his breast pocket and lit the hand-rolled. He drew on it, then passed it over to Uncle Reb.

What're you going to do with us?, Uncle Reb said.

They sat together cross-legged on the quilt.

Haven't puzzled that out yet.

COME SUNDOWN, IT DIDN'T LOOK
like Stuckey was going to quit us. He took a coffee can from inside his jacket and set it down on our quilt. He matted the bottom with a fist of dry peat. Then he took Nan Peoria's Bible and started tearing up pages, crushing them down into the can bottom.

You can't do that, I said.

Uncle Reb hushed me.

Now how do you figure on that, miss?

You can't use those. Those are the Good Words.

Uncle Reb ripped up a few more pages, then took a match to them. Stuckey took a small gunnysack from his boat and drew up two skinned rabbits. He cut a slice with his knife, then laid a strip out on the flat of the blade.