Pride of Eden

by Taylor Brown

  In an hour, she was surrounded by the night sounds of the swamp. The surge of crickets, the croak of bullfrogs. The very air seemed to buzz and whine, clouding her—thousands of tiny motors with wings. She was dressed for night-walking, head to toe. Black compression shirt, Teflon-coated pants, soft-soled jungle boots. At the last moment, standing before the hollow-core door of her rented room, she’d set her pistol on the bedside table. Her baby Glock. She felt almost faint leaving the gun behind, but she didn’t want to risk a replay of Africa. The riverbank.

  Now she lay prone in a thicket of palmetto, glassing the property. She swept the stilt-house where the brothers lived, the brick pit where Mighty Mo had been chained. She focused on the barge floating on the creek behind the house, the wire crib full of mismatched crates and birdcages and aquariums. A hive of activity—creatures bobbed and twitched, slithered and paced. Meanwhile, weak yellow light spilled from the windows of the house.

  No movement.

  Malaya rose and began circling the property, moving through the trees. Slowly, slowly, testing the earth with every step, walking on the outer edges of her bootsoles. She willed all of her weight into her head, away from her feet, trying to touch the ground but barely. A soundless creature, floating through the trees, no more than a wrinkle in the night.

  The dock planks hardly groaned, scarcely aware of her weight, and then she was crouching before the corncrib, removing a small can of WD-40 from her fanny pack. She greased the hinges and unhasped the door, swinging it wide without a creak. She stepped inside. A hundred beady eyes surrounded her on every side, shining in the night’s dark—hungry little planets drawn into her orbit. She imagined their hearts, sized like seeds or cherries or grapes, beating newly at her presence. She could hear the hopeful scrape of their claws, could smell the taint of their urine and fear.

  She began working catches and levers and slides, opening crates. Creatures scurried out, a river of fur and scales and skin that rumbled over her boots, flooding out under the moon. Raccoons and squirrels, marsh rabbits and gophers and a pair of otters. A red fox and a gray fox and a small bobcat that flashed through the door. Malaya thought she could feel the barge rising higher on the water, lightening, as if the creek were rising. She could feel her own spirit lifting, as from the blue belly of the pit, and her hands worked faster, faster, loosing opossums and cottontails into the night. She was nearly finished with the bottom row of crates, the heaviest creatures, when the door of the crib clanged closed behind her, the hard snap of a lock.

  She wheeled, throwing her hand to her hip, but no weapon was there. On the far side of the iron-barred door stood the boyish swamper with the sky-blue eyes, holding his bangstick in one hand. A heavy brass padlock hung from the door hasp, still swinging.

  “Didn’t bring your weapon this time, did you?”

  Malaya imagined raising the hard black shape of a pistol, two-handed, superimposing the glowing tritium dots of the night sights over the boy’s head. Her hands wouldn’t shake.

  “If I had, you’d have a third eye already, staring at the moon.”

  The boy’s face was serene.

  “But you didn’t,” he said. “It could mean something.”

  “Means you’re in luck, that’s for sure.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe you’re the one that’s lucky.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You’d have to live with what you done.”

  Malaya opened her mouth, but no words came out. She cleared her throat.

  “Tell me something,” she said. She swept a hand around herself, at the cages and crates. “What the hell is this? What’re y’all trying to do out here?”

  “To keep the seed alive upon the face of the earth.”

  Malaya crossed her arms, cocked her head.

  “Well, I’m afraid I just don’t know what in the flying fuck that’s supposed to mean.”

  A slight blush in the boy’s cheeks.

  “I’m talking about the Flood,” he said. “Like with a capital F. They say the melting of the ice sheets is accelerating, sea levels rising. Miami and New Orleans under water in fifty years. The sea swimming inland, swallowing up the coast. The Flood.”

  Malaya sat down in place, cross-legged, and shook her head.

  “Fuck,” she said, then looked up at him. “Like with a capital F.”

  * * *

  Anse stared at the fence of the old enclosure along the river, grinding his teeth. Something was wrong. Malaya hadn’t shown up for work in three days. She hadn’t called or put in her notice or left a note. He’d tried calling—her phone was dead or off. Earlier that day, he’d driven past the motor inn where she rented a room by the week. Her car wasn’t there and the motel clerk said he hadn’t seen her. For twenty dollars to think harder, the man’s answer was still the same.

  Anse pushed his hat back, staring at the fence. Creeper vines curled through the chain link and kudzu hung in heavy reefs along the top, hiding the rusty snarls of barbwire. Past that, the King of Savannah roamed under the trees, black-maned, the sunlight rippling across his golden hide. A thing unseen, hard to believe, and true. Anse lifted his thumb to his chest, tracing the triangular scrap in the breast pocket of his shirt, tucked flat over his heart. The clue he’d found at the pool—a trace of the animal pitted against the dogs.

  A wolf.

  A velvety scrap of flesh just like the one strung from his neck an age ago, in Vietnam, when it was his talisman against the black-sandaled men who haunted the jungle. The ghosts. The Cong. When the ear of the dog could hear the rumor of feet, the whisper of fronds. When the scrap of flesh would tingle at his throat, telling him what secrets it heard, and the men of the patrol would look to this boy, their youngest, who could outspook the Cong. He’d buried that last relic of the war, finally, in a maize field in Africa, alongside the body of a blind lion. He’d buried the ghosts. Buried the hiss of gun barrels through elephant grass, the patter of sandaled feet. But here was another scrap of flesh, singing against his heart. It told him something was wrong. Malaya had missed work. She hadn’t called.

  He could feel a storm rumbling in his blood. He could hear distant sounds.

  Anse slipped the bison shoulder through the old feeding chute, then started back up the drive in his truck. He stopped at the gator pond and got out, looking through the fence. There was the Nile croc, Mighty Mo, cutting a black wake in the scum. Anse looked into the reptilian eyes of the creature—so swampy and ancient—and the wolf-flesh glowed against his heart. He could hear a black tongue of creek water, lapping at the shore, and the thrum of tiny hearts. He could hear a wind rising, moaning through halls of cypress, tugging at beards of moss. He could hear metal skirling through air.

  Spinning, spinning, like a staff of power.

  He knew where she was.

  CHAPTER 21

  SKUNK APE

  Anse’s truck skidded to a halt in front of the raptor barn, the chrome stacks trailing streamers of diesel smoke. The old jockey leapt down from the cab and came marching through the dust he’d raised. He was chewing his bottom lip, cracking his knuckles.

  Lope had just removed the eagle’s jesses and anklets, her bells and hood. She was free of him, untethered, but he could still sense the invisible wires of connection between them, like the plucked strings of a guitar. Still vibrating. Lope’s ditties to the bird had been high and lonesome since Malaya had gone. He knew what the old man was going to ask.

  “You still ain’t seen her, have you?”

  Lope shook his head.

  “Not for two, three days.”

  The old jockey shook his head.

  “Something’s happened, Lope. And I got an idea what.”

  Now he cocked his head beneath his bush hat, flashing the hard iron of one eye.

  “I need your help, Lope.”

  Lope nodded. He hung his gauntlet on a nearby hook and told the bird goodbye.

  * * *

  They crossed into the swamp at dusk, pu
shing eighty through the darkening pines. Fireflies rose like starry vision from the roadsides, bleeding past, and the sun squatted low behind the trees, scorching the cloud-bellies red. They might be rushing toward a giant, distant structure fire—a city burning just over the horizon.

  The big truck hopped the joints of small bridges, pushing deeper into the wild. They were beyond the range of cell towers and emergency services now. Before them lay the Okefenokee Swamp, Land of the Trembling Earth. A place where the law grew weak, too short-armed to steer the actions of men.

  A pair of heavy rifles rattled in the gun rack of the truck. Lope breathed in, out, willing his heart to settle, to perch calmly in the cage of his ribs. Night fell, the dark trees rumbling past them like so much smoke. They turned onto a perimeter road, then wheeled onto an unpaved track through the swamp.

  “I thought nobody was allowed to live in here,” said Lope.

  Anse chewed his bottom lip like a wad of gum.

  “We’re right on the border of the park,” he said. “Where all the old swampers came when the government pushed them out.”

  They crossed a dark slither of creek and Anse pulled off onto an old maintenance siding. Malaya’s battered sedan flared in their headlights, covered in a three-day layer of tree droppings. The men elbowed open their doors and stepped from the cab. Anse kinked the barrels of his howdah pistol and loaded a pair of heavy cartridges from his shirt pocket. He looked across the seat at Lope, then at the double rifle still hanging in the cab—the same one used to stop a charging lioness those weeks ago. He looked back at Lope.

  “You gonna leave that here or what?”

  “I didn’t know if you, if … after what happened.”

  Anse slung his holster over one shoulder, snugging the big howdah pistol butt-forward against his ribs.

  “You can leave it if you want. But where we’re going, I advise bringing more than them two gangly-ass arms of yours.”

  When Lope still hesitated, Anse nodded at the big double rifle.

  “Think of it as a steel hose,” he said. “That’s all. Puts out a certain kind of fire.”

  Lope swallowed, looked at him. Anse set one hand on his shoulder, squeezed.

  “I trust you,” he said.

  Lope nodded and reached into the cab, unracking the gun.

  * * *

  Malaya lay locked in the corncrib, surrounded by motley stacks of crates and cages and glass terrariums. The moon had risen silver and fat, like the bad nights in Africa when poachers scuttled through the bush. The Okefenokee Swamp croaked and chittered and hissed on every side of her, like life simmering in a pan. She could hear the rasp of claws, the hum of insects. The mosquitoes whined at her ear canals, as if trying to bore into her brain.

  Deep in the nights, she’d seen strange lights floating in the trees, pulsing and weaving. Swamp gas, she told herself. Only that. She’d heard the crackle of unknown creatures in the woods, circling, and heard strange splashes of creek water, blood-thick, like knife-wounds being made. She’d tried not to think of the pig man or the skunk ape or how very alone she was in this place. How far from help.

  Now she heard the clop of rubber boots and saw the angel-faced boy coming down the dock. The first night, she’d nearly gagged at the contents of the metal cafeteria tray he pushed under the door. Piles of worms and insects and dead baby mice, neatly scooped and arranged in various compartments. She’d pushed the tray back.

  “You’re kidding yourself, you think I’m eating this shit.”

  The boy sat cross-legged on the dock, his bangstick leaning in the crook of his arm.

  “It ain’t for you. It’s for them.” He nodded to the animals around her. “You feed them, I might could get you a plate of our leftover dinner. Fried gator tail.”

  “I might could starve instead.”

  The boy leaned his head on his staff.

  “I believe you’d starve yourself. But the rest of these animals? I doubt it.”

  Malaya had sighed and looked again at the tray. Around her, the animals were rattling their cages, alive with anticipation. Their eyes beady, bright. Suppertime.

  “One condition,” she said. “I need a name.”

  “Name?”

  Malaya nodded. “Name of whoever set up that big dogfight last week. I’m sure you heard about it on the news.”

  “We don’t believe in television.”

  “I’m sure you heard about it, no matter what you believe in.”

  The boy smiled, nodded. He blew into his palm and stuck his hand between the bars.

  “Deal.”

  They settled into a pattern. The boy would sit on the dock, Indian-style, while she fed the animals. She lowered mice by their tails to the snakes and spooned out beetles and worms. She watched the strangely nimble paws of the raccoons, glove-black, as they reached through the wire of their crate, and the scraping claws and nibbling teeth of the other animals. Sometimes she thought she could hear their breathing as one breath, the very swamp quickened with hunger.

  The third night, she took the tray and cocked her head at the boy. There was a sweetness to him, how neatly he arranged the food for the animals.

  “How come you keep them?” she asked. “Are they like pets?”

  “They were my mother’s,” said the boy. “Before she passed on.”

  Malaya paused, the first mouse dangling from her fingers.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “She fed the animals every night. They never went hungry. There was a river prophet up on the Altamaha River said flood times were coming. She said the scientists were saying the same thing, the sea levels was rising every year, inch on inch. And if the prophets and scientists were in accord, you might ought to listen. Said all these, the snakes and rodents, the slimy things of the swamp, they was the last creatures the rest of the world would save. Said she’d die ere she saw them drowned. We’d make an ark of our own.”

  “What happened to her?”

  The boy blinked again.

  “Fire of oh-seven. Bugaboo Swamp Fire, they called it after. Powerline went down west of Waycross, igniting a fire on Sweat Farm Road. Five days later, bolt of lightning in the swamp started a second burn. They converged here in the Okefenokee, biggest wildfire in the history of the state. They say you could smell the smoke as far away as Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, Mississippi. Astronauts could see it from space. Burned people’s eyes, put them in the hospital for asthma.”

  “I remember it from the news,” said Malaya. “They handed out masks for the smoke.”

  The boy nodded.

  “Mama made us tow out the ark first. She wasn’t ready to leave just yet. Brother tried to make her, but she wouldn’t listen. Last I saw her, she was wearing a wet bandanna tied over her face, spraying down the house with a garden hose. We towed the barge down to the coast, tied it off on a buoy. By the time we came back, the creek was a tunnel of fire, water seemed near to boiling. Mile-high smoke blotting out the sun. The house was steaming like a hot pie—all that water she’d sprayed on the roof and walls—and Mama was gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “We found her body a month later. Quarter mile from the house. Looked like a napalm strike had come down, or the finger of God himself had touched the earth, left a thumbprint there—everything stumped and charred. She was curled up in a ball next to a live animal trap she’d laid. She must of been making sure nothing was caught inside when the fire came.”

  Malaya realized she was sitting now, listening, the tray of food in her lap.

  “Was something trapped in there?”

  “Cage was empty. Door unlatched. There’s times I’ll see a flying squirrel gliding through the trees, stretched out white-bellied like a slice of bread, or I’ll see a fox shoot through the scrub, and I’ll wonder if that’s the bloodline Mama saved. If it was that animal’s great-great-gran she let free.”

  “Maybe she’d want you to let the rest of these go, too.”

  “I’ve yet to see a si
gn.”

  Malaya looked at the bulwark of cages and crates. The animals that surrounded her, they were emitting a low murmur or hum, a compounded whisper of scrambling paws, darting tongues, swelling ribs. They were breathing all at once. Malaya felt a whelming in her chest, a rising. She leaned toward the boy, her words rolling from her tongue like testament.

  “I’m the sign,” she said. “It’s me.” She leaned farther forward. “Don’t you see? You caught something you never expected in this cage, something that can speak. Me. I’ve been locked in here three days with the rest of them. Breathing the same air, feeling the same fear. I’m the same as them. And I can tell you this: They’d rather die in a flood than live in a cage. They’d rather burn in a fire. They would rather anything than this.”

  The boy shifted on his sit bones.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Brother won’t like it.”

  “Fuck what he likes. He listened when you put that bangstick to his chest.”

  The boy shook his head against his staff.

  “I lost my temper, is what happened. I shouldn’t of done that.”

  Malaya felt her heart tilt toward this strange boy, nearly a man. His blue eyes, so bright. His white hair and white rubber boots.

  “Listen,” she said, “you got to stand on your own. You don’t now, you never will.”

  With this, she tilted back her head and inhaled the wretched musk of the cage. It poured down her throat, into her lungs like a flood, and she rose to her feet. Her hands went to the cage of the mink. The most vicious of weasels, skinned for the stoles of women in pearls.

  Her hand found the latch.

  * * *

  Lope lay on the far side of the creek, one knee hugging the earth, the double rifle tucked against his shoulder. The swamp cried on every side of him, like the pop and scream of burning wood. He aimed down the iron sights of the gun, watching the barge across the creek. Inside the corncrib sat Malaya. He could see her through the warped glass of aquariums, the metal wire of crates. She sat cross-legged, leaning over a tray in her lap.