Fay: A Novel

by Larry Brown

  He cussed softly, his eyes intent upon the rising line. He hauled into the boat a dripping White River cat that weighed about six pounds, the eyes dead and pale in their sockets and the curved body stiff and hard.

  “Damn it, Sam,” he said. He tore the hook from the fish’s mouth and tossed it over the side. He pulled a half-thawed shrimp from the pile in the bucket and threaded it onto the hook, drew the line in, saw the next hook come up. Empty. And the one after that. And the one after that. He glanced up. Boats were beginning to move everywhere on the water now but he didn’t pay any attention to them. He kept on baiting and pulling the line. This one had sixty-three hooks on it and he doubted he’d have enough bait for both lines. But he could check the other one and see if it had any fish on it.

  He couldn’t think of any reason she couldn’t just stay with them for a while. She was undernourished, that was easy to see from looking at her, but her clothes were too small for her and that meant she must not have had any new ones for a long time. The fish kept coming up dead and he kept taking them off, working silently, the boat rocking slightly in the water and the line riding down the other side and back into the depths. She must not have had many chances at anything. And the thing of it was that she wasn’t complaining about it. She’d just told him the way things were. He didn’t blame her for being scared of him at first. She’d probably been told to stay away from cops, or had already seen the bad side of too many. Walking to Biloxi. Jesus. Somebody would find her dead somewhere in a field off an interstate and there would be a note in the local papers, nothing more. She probably didn’t even have any identification on her. And nobody would ever know who she was, who she’d been, where she’d come from. It was just a lucky thing that he’d seen her. A lucky thing that he’d been on that particular road at that particular time, before she’d gotten in with somebody. Who would take her no telling where. And do to her no telling what.

  By the time he got to the end of the line, the sun was rising up over the trees and the heat was already climbing. He had four live fish big enough to keep. He’d taken off fourteen dead ones and he was not happy with himself for wasting them. But he was eager to get back to the house and clean these and put them in the refrigerator, cook them for their supper tonight.

  The long paddle was there beside his knee. He picked it up and pushed off from the dead tree the line was tied to and then leaned it against the seat once again. The old outboard started on the second pull and he motored slowly out of the stand of dead trunks, a boiling trail of churned water following him, and then he opened it up and headed straight for his dock. It was a speck in the rising sun and the sun was on the windows of his house so tiny and far away across the moving water of the lake. But they were probably still asleep. He checked the time on his watch and it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet. The catfish would live for a long time on their stringer and there wasn’t any need to be in a hurry about dressing them. He twisted the throttle back a bit on the outboard, scanning the water around him. More boats were coming out from the levee and fisherfolk were finding their parking places among the stands of trees or up in mats of brush close to the shore. He could see the sun glinting on their cane poles when they swung out their jigs or minnows, but he didn’t need any more crappie now. The deep freeze was already full of them.

  He glanced at the dock and the house once again, then turned the motor to the left and goosed it up again until it was nearly planing and the hull was slapping the waves in a steady gait. He went past Pat’s Bluff and the long line of pickups and boats already turned around and waiting to back down onto the ramp, people gathered in small groups, talking and waiting for the ones in front to unload and get going. He steered wide of them so as not to make a wake and moved back toward the center of the lake and pushed the throttle wide open. The old boat was dented and battered yet it moved across the water like a fleet and weightless thing now, skimming past the red sand banks and the anchored fishing boats nearly hidden in their copses of vegetation. The outboard roared in a low and throaty voice as it pushed him across the lake.

  He went nearly a mile before he made a wide sweep to the right and throttled back just short of the landing at Coontown, then slowed it even more and edged into the shallower water and nearly to the shore. He cut the motor off and drifted closer, until the boat came to a halt in a group of young willows. There was a nylon rope coiled behind the seat and he picked it up and fastened it to the nearest tree with a brush hook. He picked up a chain stringer and snapped it into one of his belt loops and then went over the side carefully, rocking the boat until he felt his tennis shoes sink into the soft mud of the bottom. From the bow he retrieved his rod and reel, an old Johnson spinning rig. He stood there and cast his lure out into the open and let it settle, then wiped a bit of sweat from above his eyes and twitched the tip of the rod, turning the crank slowly, pulling the lure in. It darted and swam in the manner of a small baitfish. The water swirled behind it and he felt a fish grab it, but then it turned loose. The lure floated back up and he began to retrieve it again, more slowly now, making the lure dance and jerk as if it were an injured minnow. Nothing hit it. He pulled it on in without another strike, then walked some more.

  The sun rose higher and it reflected back off the surface of the water into his eyes. He pitched the lure beside a half-submerged log and let it lie there for a moment, then twitched it gently, once, twice. He actually saw the fish come up in a green flash and suck the lure down, a tiny disturbance and then the rod was bowing in his hands and the fish was pulling off line and he was trying to keep the line free of stumps and bushes, holding it high in front of him, trying to horse the fish in before it could wrap the line around something and break it. It jumped once and he guessed its weight at three pounds, and then it was pulling again and he let the rod tip down a bit before he pulled on it again.

  He smiled under the sun and towed it closer and closer until finally he leaned up and caught it by the jaw and lifted it out and held it for a moment, admiring it. It wasn’t caught bad and he eased down on the thumb button on the reel and let a length of line slide out and held the rod between his knees while he worked the hook out and then it was free. He lowered the fish back into the water and it flashed away into the depths. He walked on in the water and cast his lure again. The morning grew warmer and the water lapped at the shore. Far up past the point where the water ended a red tractor turned in to the field and lowered its disk and began to break the land, the green earth turning under and coming up brown and the diesel engine chugging and jetting its black smoke from the high exhaust pipe and the big cleated tires turning. He fished on and let the rest of the world go on by.

  It was nine o’clock when he nosed the boat into the dock and shut off the motor. He leaned down for the stringer of catfish and lifted them dripping from the water.

  When he slid the patio door open he was careful to be quiet in case they were still asleep. Just as quietly he went back out and took off his wet tennis shoes and left them on the deck and then went back in. The house was silent except for the whisper of the fans slowly turning in the ceiling. His jeans were still wet but he took a minute to put on some fresh coffee before he went down the hall. He eased open the door to the dark bedroom and saw Amy huddled in sleep, just a bit of her hair sticking out from under the covers. She didn’t move when he went to the closet and pulled a clean pair of jeans off a hanger and got some clean boxers from a drawer. She turned over and made a noise just as he was closing the door. He went to the hall bathroom and changed, knocking softly a few times at first to make sure Fay wasn’t in there.

  It was Wednesday morning, the first of his two days off, and he didn’t have to go back on patrol until Friday at 10:00 A.M. He was thinking picnic, make some sandwiches and ice down some beer and take them over to the other side and let her play in the shallow water, maybe even get a life jacket and let Fay get used to being in the water, maybe even get out there with her and see if he could teach her to dog-paddle. Take his
rod and reel, fish up in the willows while they worked on their tans. He could see the whole afternoon in his mind. He’d have the fish dressed before they left and he’d have them soaking in some salt water inside the refrigerator and late in the afternoon he could fire up his fish cooker and make some hushpuppies, slice up some potatoes, and then just when the sun was going down across the lake they could sit out on the deck and eat.

  The phone rang inside and he went to catch it before it woke them up. Even going to it he was thinking about getting out the bacon and starting them some breakfast, get it almost ready and wake them up. It was almost nine-thirty. Time for them to get up anyway.

  But it was the dispatcher on the phone from Batesville.

  “Where?” he said.

  He grabbed a pen and a pad from where they stayed beside the phone and jotted it down.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m on my way.”

  He hung up the phone and tore the piece of paper off and wrote a quick note to Amy, then hurried down the hall to get his uniform on and put on his gun.

  About seven minutes later he was screaming down the lake road with all his lights flashing and as he approached the intersection of Highway 6 he pumped the brakes hard several times and looked to the right. Two trucks way off, one passing, and to the left there was one car coming. He saw the smoke come squalling up from the front tires, some woman gripping the steering wheel with both hands.

  “Thanks, lady,” he said, then pushed down hard on the accelerator and smoked his own rear tire coming out of the intersection. When he topped the first hill there was a car passing a truck and already heading back into the right lane. He turned the siren on and passed them at eighty, then turned it back off. Over the next hill there was traffic ahead and he slowed down and turned the siren on again. They all moved over and he flew by them, a rush of sound coming out against the doors each time he went by one, shoom shoom shoom. Trees and houses flashed by and he could hear the four-barrel carburetor suck in wind and gas each time he hit the pedal. He never liked going this fast because a dog could always trot out in the road in front of you, a deer could leap from the bushes.

  He made it to the city limits of Oxford in about ten minutes and slowed for the caution light, swung wide around some cars that were waiting to turn, siren screaming, then floored it again and went on over the hill into heavy traffic. This was the worst part, cars all jammed together and passing or people cruising with their radios on and not hearing him until he was right behind them. Sometimes they did something stupid like slamming on the brakes or weaving into another lane without looking. He didn’t want to cause anybody to have a wreck and he damn sure didn’t want to have one himself before he got there.

  He climbed the long hill on the east side of town and then he was back on a two-lane road and he had to be more careful. He passed when he could and when he couldn’t he turned the siren on and got them to pull over and passed them then. When he glanced at his watch he realized that less than an hour ago he had been in the water with his rod and reel.

  The traffic got lighter as he gained more distance from town. There were a few straight stretches where he hit a hundred. And then topping the last hill he saw before him the wreck at the bottom of it and he swerved over to the left lane to go past the line of stopped cars, that rushing sound coming against the doors again. He slowed down. An ambulance was already sitting there with its red light turning, and two county patrol cars were there as well.

  He pulled in and parked on the shoulder of the road and picked up the mike and told the dispatcher that he was 10-6, put on his hat and got out. It was already very hot and he closed the door of his cruiser to keep the interior cool. The ambulance attendants were trying to free a woman pinned behind the steering wheel of a late model Grand Prix and he could hear her screaming. The other car was turned upside down in the ditch and he couldn’t tell what it was, just a rusty undercarriage, some slick tires, shattered bits of metal and plastic lying around it. He walked over to one of the deputies who was trying to help the ambulance attendants. He could see the other one down on his knees in the ditch, looking into the overturned car.

  Spectators had gotten out of their cars. The road was blocked both ways, the Grand Prix sitting dead on the center line. He could feel people looking at him but he ignored them and spoke to the deputy.

  “What about it, Mike?”

  “We’re trying to get this lady out. I believe the man in the other car’s dead.”

  “You called the wreckers yet?”

  “Yessir, they’re on the way.”

  He stepped around and looked into the car over an attendant’s shoulder. They had bandaged a cut on the woman’s head and put a neck brace on her.

  “Can I help y’all in any way?” he said. One young man with red hair turned his face to him.

  “Yessir. Can you hand us that backboard there? I think we’re just about ready to try and bring her out. She’s got a broke leg but there ain’t enough room to splint it in here.”

  Sam bent to the aluminum frame and spread it open and passed it into the car. The red-haired attendant climbed into the backseat and slid the frame behind the woman. She had stopped screaming now and was just gritting her teeth together. There was blood on her clothes.

  “Y’all are killin me,” she said.

  “Yes ma’am, we’re just trying to help you,” the young man said. “Now we’re gonna slide this thing in behind you and I’m gonna hold your head real still. Now just take it easy and we’ll have you out of there in a jiffy. Be on our way to the hospital in just a minute.”

  Sam leaned in and spoke to the woman.

  “Do you know what happened, ma’am?”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment and she closed her eyes. He could tell she was having a hard time breathing.

  “He pulled right out in front of me,” she said. “I tried to miss him. The son of a bitch. Where’s he at?”

  “The other car’s over there in the ditch, ma’am. Were you headed west?”

  “I was headed to Memphis,” she said in a breathless gasp.

  “Okay, let’s get her on it,” the attendant in the backseat said. The other attendant in the front seat pulled forward on the woman’s shoulder and Sam helped them slide the backboard behind her. He stepped out of the way and they quickly strapped her into it and started sliding her out. He caught the outside edge of it with his hands and they brought her out in a sitting position and then put her down in the road and she started screaming again. He figured they’d have her out of there in a couple of minutes and he looked up the hill to see if he could see the wreckers coming but there was still just that stopped line of traffic.

  The deputy came around from the other side and they went down into the ditch together and squatted next to the driver’s door and the other deputy, the really young one, who raised his face and shook his head. The top was crunched down on the car so that the headrest was pressing against it. Sam could smell booze when he poked his head in through the broken window. A man who looked to be in his late fifties was lying against the roof and he wasn’t moving, his face coated in blood and already flies were on him. There was a piece of something shiny lying beside him and Sam reached out and picked it up. Ice. He dropped it on the grass and lay on his belly and crawled in far enough to find the man’s wrist and pressed his thumb down hard on it just back from the heel of the hand. He watched the faces of the deputies watching him and he felt one drop of sweat fall from his nose and there was no beat of blood in that withered arm at all. He looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes after ten.

  He crawled back out and stood up.

  “Yeah,” he said. He looked up on the road and he could see the attendants putting an air splint on the woman’s leg. He wanted to get this traffic moving again as soon as he could.

  “Yonder comes the wrecker,” the young deputy said.

  “And there’s the Ford truck behind him,” the other one said. “You want to move that Pontiac first,
Sam?”

  “That’d be real good, Jay. The sooner we can get this traffic moving the better I’d like it.”

  When they stepped back up on the road the attendants had loaded the woman onto a wheeled stretcher and were lifting her up into the open back doors of the ambulance. One climbed in the back with her. The wreckers pulled in slowly and up the hill he saw another ambulance coming down for the body. He glanced at the overturned car in the ditch again. Somebody had some bad news coming.

  It took another hour to get the Pontiac out of the road and to right the overturned car and retrieve the body, send it to the hospital. He got the traffic moving again, standing in the center of the highway and kicking bits of glass and metal onto the shoulder. He had sweated almost completely through his shirt by then and the only thing he was thinking about was getting back home and finding a cold beer. The deputies got called to a woods fire on Highway 7 and they went up the hill with their blue lights going. When a break in the traffic came he went back to his cruiser and sat down and started filling out the accident report and drew a sketch of what he believed had happened and signed everything. He put the car in gear and shut the door and turned around on the side of the road, then pulled out and turned his blue lights off and headed back toward town. There was sweat running down his face and his hair was wet with it. He called the dispatcher on the radio and told him that he was headed back home. The radio never ceased its chatter. There were wrecks on Highway 55. Troopers were pulling over people at Byhalia. Somebody was checking out for lunch at Pontotoc. He didn’t know how they kept it straight who was doing what.