The Southern Cross

by Skip Horack

  “And they began to get sick maybe five or six days later?”

  “I guess, lady.” He was tired of playing the student.

  “I’m real sorry, sir, but there’s no choice. We’ve been chasing this outbreak all over the state.” Dr. Wall held the sick rabbit out to him, and Milam took a quick step back. “They’re no danger to people,” she assured him, reading his mind.

  “You know that for certain?”

  “I do.”

  He finally accepted the buck, one of his breeding stock. Clyde and Gretta. His original male, original female. Blood bubbled from Clyde’s nose and fell in great drops onto the ground. Milam watched the blood mix with dust and become paste.

  “If we don’t get a handle on this soon,” said Dr. Wall, “it could wipe out a lot more farmers like yourself.”

  Forty-odd years in the oil patch was the closest Milam had ever come to working the land, but he didn’t correct her. Truth was, he liked being called a farmer. It made him feel part of something bigger. And that, he realized, was the same thing his wife used to say about church.

  There are two easy, no-blood ways to kill a rabbit.

  One: Hold the hind legs, its head pointing down. After a few seconds the rabbit will stop struggling and hang quietly. Then, with the edge of the palm of your free hand, or with a pipe or a stick, give a quick, chopping blow to the back of its neck.

  Two: Some prefer dislocating the neck. Hold the hind legs with one hand, then place the thumb of your other hand just behind the ears, with your fingers grasping the throat. Pressing down on the thumb while quickly pulling the rabbit upward dislocates the neck.

  Milam alternated between the two methods of execution, and, either way, the rabbits died swiftly and without much pain. He finished with five tiny kits that Dr. Wall had missed during her first pass through the shed. They were maybe a week old, still too small to clear the top of their jump box. Milam lifted the babies from the wooden box and killed them one at a time, placing each thin neck between his thumb and forefinger and then giving a slow, gentle squeeze.

  His rabbitry destroyed, Milam walked with Dr. Wall to the front yard. He leaned against the side of her government-issue Ford and listened as she called back to her office for a cleanup crew. A cleanup crew. Like he’s got an oil well back there that’s just been capped. Milam was picturing spacemen in HAZMAT suits when Dr. Wall flipped her cell phone shut and turned to him.

  “They want me to ask whether you’ve sold any rabbits since your trip to Shreveport.”

  Milam told her yes—but just one, to a pretty woman who wanted a bunny for her daughter’s birthday party. He didn’t sell too many rabbits as pets, at least not until Easter came around.

  “Do you remember her name?”

  He shook his head. “But she paid with a check—so she was local, I know that.”

  “Still have that check?”

  “It’s already cashed.”

  “I need you to come with me to your bank. Would you do that for me?”

  Milam hesitated, then remembered the other farmers and agreed. He climbed into the passenger seat of the white Taurus, and Dr. Wall backed out the driveway, swinging wide to miss a broken-down Big Wheel some kid had left blocking the center of Raymond Street.

  The teller at Teche Federal grinned at Milam’s house slippers but was nice enough. She found his check in good order and printed him out a copy. In the top-right corner, superimposed over a picture of a magnolia blossom, was the information that Dr. Wall needed:

  Mr. & Mrs. William LaFleur

  15 Pintail Drive

  Opelousas, LA 70570

  Milam ran a cracked thumbnail over the broad loops of Mrs. LaFleur’s signature. “Elizabeth. Her name was Elizabeth. I remember that now.”

  “Any idea where Pintail Drive is?” Dr. Wall asked him.

  Milam shook his head and glanced over at the teller, aware that she had been eavesdropping. She blushed and he nodded his head, giving her permission to speak.

  “It’s over in Beau Canard,” she said in a rush. “That new country club north of town.”

  Milam cut the girl off as she began to give them directions. “I know the place,” he said. “I’ll show her.”

  He headed for the door, and Dr. Wall fell in beside him. “You don’t have to come, Mr. Fourcade.”

  Milam shrugged and Dr. Wall took his hand as they stepped from the curb onto the parking lot, even opened his door for him. Sweet girl, he thought. He waited in the hot car as she walked around to the driver’s side. She slid behind the steering wheel, and he asked if they should call ahead to Mrs. LaFleur.

  “It would be better just to show up unannounced.” Dr. Wall stretched her mouth into a thin smile. “People can be funny about their pets.”

  Milam remembered Gretta hidden away in his bathroom and nodded. He began directing Dr. Wall out of town, and when they passed the cemetery on Market Street he gave a slight nod toward the mausoleum—though not so obvious that Dr. Wall would notice. He and Dottie had bought three crypts: one for the twins, one apiece for themselves. All in a row like drawers in a filing cabinet, rabbit hutches in a shed.

  Dr. Wall turned onto the highway, and Milam pulled himself away from the cemetery, away from memories of shoebox coffins and silk christening gowns. The lovebugs were swarming, maybe for the last time that year. He watched them collect on the windshield as Dr. Wall drove north to Beau Canard.

  “Are you going to Maggie’s birthday party?” The security guard was damn near his age, Milam decided, even looked a little familiar. A former classmate, perhaps. Dr. Wall smiled politely as she handed the old man an identification card of some sort.

  “Feds, huh?” The guard pondered the ID, even flipped the card over to examine the back. “I think maybe I should call over there first”

  “I would prefer if you didn’t,” said Dr. Wall.

  The guard mulled that over. Behind him, a uniformed kid slouched in a folding chair and smirked at his stonewalled boss. “Well, they’re probably all outside for the party, anyway,” the guard said. He turned to his sullen teenage charge. “I’ll send Officer Landry for you to follow,” he added, saving face.

  “That would be fine,” said Dr. Wall.

  Officer Landry, maybe eighteen and clearly outranked, sighed in response to his orders. With great effort he rose from his chair. He dropped his cigarette into a coffee can, then grabbed a set of keys from the pegboard. Milam felt a measure of sympathy for the kid. He knew a little bit about crap jobs.

  The east–west streets of Beau Canard were named for ducks, the cross streets for geese, shore birds, that sort of thing. At the intersection of Specklebelly and Teal, Dr. Wall turned left and continued on to Pintail Drive, following Officer Landry’s Corolla and its flashing yellow light.

  Pintail Drive ended in a cul-de-sac, and balloons were tied to the mailbox of number 15. A line of parked cars stretched down the street and back again, but Officer Landry just parked behind the SUV in the driveway.

  Dr. Wall pulled in behind him, then told Milam it probably would be best if he waited outside for now. That was fine by Milam. His nerve had faded in this neighborhood of the rich. Of golf-course dads and tennis-court moms. He watched from the passenger seat as Dr. Wall marched up the driveway. She rang the doorbell and was invited into the house by a little girl in a party hat.

  Milam stepped outside to stretch his legs. He walked over to where Officer Landry was leaning against the side of his Toyota, smoking. “I’m Milam Fourcade,” he said.

  “Josh Landry.” The kid was examining a fleck of tobacco he’d scraped off the tip of his tongue. He wiped his thumb clean on the front of his gray uniform before shaking Milam’s hand. “You weren’t related to Miss Dottie Fourcade, were you? The librarian over at the junior high?”

  “I was her husband,” said Milam.

  “No kidding? I was real sorry to hear she passed” Officer Landry dropped his cigarette onto the driveway, scarring the concrete as he ground
it out with the toe of his black Reebok. “A real nice lady,” he added, almost to himself.

  Milam nodded, watching as the kid fumbled in his shirt pocket for another smoke.

  “What’s this all about, anyway?”

  “I sold Mrs. LaFleur a poisonous rabbit.”

  Officer Landry arched an eyebrow and considered him. “Yeah?”

  “All my rabbits caught disease.”

  “I didn’t even know y’all raised rabbits.”

  “It’s just something I started doing after Dottie died.”

  Officer Landry spun the unlit Camel between his teeth. He started to speak but was interrupted by Dr. Wall exiting the house. She was holding a plastic Winn-Dixie bag, and from behind her, framed in the doorway, Elizabeth LaFleur glared out at them. Milam shuffled over to apologize, but Mrs. LaFleur turned away and shut the door. Not that he could blame her.

  It was high noon and Africa hot. As Dr. Wall drove out of Beau Canard, Milam watched a black man in a riding lawn mower pass over a wet newspaper hidden in the grass. The Daily World exploded into confetti, and the yardman mouthed a curse as he dismounted to pick up the pieces.

  Dr. Wall eased over a speed bump and told Milam what she had learned. How on the morning of little Maggie’s birthday, Mrs. LaFleur had to explain to her daughter all about bunny heaven while Mr. LaFleur triple-wrapped Hoppy in plastic, embalming her until trash day in the garage chest freezer.

  Milam winced at the story, sorry for little Maggie, sorry for bringing death to her house. He reckoned he should probably send Mrs. LaFleur a check when he got the chance. Maybe stop by with a healthy bunny on Easter. If he could make it past the guards. If he ever got back into the rabbit business. He smiled tight. That’d be a sight. The return of Hoppy from bunny heaven. And on Easter, no less. Milam decided against it. Probably be best for the girl to learn the big lesson now: things die, they stay dead.

  The golf course was still littered with sticks and leaves from Rita, almost two weeks previous. Dr. Wall braked to let a pair of carts cross the road to the seventh hole, and Milam watched as they wound down the clamshell path, following a chemical green fairway that ran like spilled paint through second-growth hardwoods. Hoppy defrosted in the trunk as Milam imagined the wild rabbits, the cottontails and the swampers, that would appear at dusk to feed along the course edges.

  The cleanup crew was waiting for them in the backyard, and they had the dead Hotots piled just a few feet from the bathtub grotto. A blood sacrifice to Mary at the place where Milam lit Sunday candles for Dottie and the twins. A thin man with a clipboard approached Dr. Wall, and Milam listened as they discussed complicated plans for disinfection, quarantine, disposal.

  Clipboard Man was all business, and he reminded Milam of that long-ago pediatrician at the General. The doctor who sat Milam down and told him about bacteria in the spinal fluid. Meningitis. Dottie fainted and that doctor had kept on talking, telling Milam how maybe, if he had brought the babies in sooner, they might have stood a chance.

  The sun bore down on the yard, and flies were collecting on the dead. Milam excused himself to the house for a glass of water, and Dr. Wall patted him on the shoulder. She thanked him for all his help, for being so understanding. Go inside where it’s cool, she told him. Get some rest. We’ll be out here awhile.

  Milam had left red beans to soak overnight on the stovetop. He drained them in the sink and decided he’d better go ahead and move Gretta. One of the USDA crew might ask to use his bathroom, and of course that wouldn’t do.

  He’d been putting it off, checking on Gretta. Didn’t want to open that door and see his original doe blowing red and dying. Milam took a deep breath and eased into the bathroom slowly, damn near cried in relief when he saw fresh-faced Gretta cat-curled in her nest of towels. Her nostrils twitched when she smelled him, and then she hopped right over.

  Gretta followed him as he moved her water and her towels into the laundry room next to the kitchen. She made a lazy attempt to escape, but he slid the flimsy door shut. The bi-fold door closed the same way a book opened, and when Milam saw Gretta’s whiskers poking out from between the cheap wooden slats he was happy for the first time that day.

  A black woman who lived on the other side of Raymond cut up the Cajun holy trinity for him, stopping by every few weeks with a Cool Whip tub of onions, bell peppers, and celery she’d diced. Charity for the Rabbit Man to make her right with the Lord. Fine by him. Milam heated a measure of bacon grease in his Dutch oven, then sautéed two great handfuls of the trinity until the vegetables were crisp-tender, the onions clear. He smelled garlic frying. Lagniappe. Why, thank you, Miss Cora. He added a few slices of pickled pork from Savoie’s and a link of the rabbit sausage his butcher made for him special, dusting it all with Tony’s before he finally dropped in the tender beans and some clean water, a couple of bay leaves. He set the mix to simmer.

  Milam made sweet wine from the muscadine and blackberry that grew in wild tangles along the railroad tracks behind the house. A jug of it sat atop the icebox, corked and waiting, and he went for it now. Milam poured four fingers into a coffee mug and settled down at the kitchen table. The creak of hinges came from his left and, turning, he saw that Gretta had forced her way out of the laundry room, pushing against the spine of the door until it collapsed in like a Bible closing. His pregnant doe presented herself in the doorway. “Sneaky girl,” said Milam.

  Gretta hop-slid across the linoleum, and Milam placed her on his lap. He offered a handful of trinity, and she fed from his palm as he took a long, slow pull from his mug. A window looked out onto the backyard from the kitchen, and he remembered too late what he’d been forgetting. His hand trembled and wine spilled from his lips, cutting a ruby line down the front of his white shirt. Dr. Wall’s pretty face was framed in the window, her ice blue eyes watching him watching her.

  The grandfather clock struck noon. Milam told his wife he loved her as he grabbed hold of Gretta’s hind legs.

  The Rapture

  Biz folsom, that’s my new floor boss. You should see the son of a bitch: pressed Wranglers, George Strait Resistol—thinks he’s a cowboy. He cradles his pie plate of a belt buckle, daring me to push him. “Either pull yourself together,” he says, “or get your sweet ass on home.”

  He’s sore at me for refusing a lap dance to some drunk. “I don’t know how y’all did it in New Orleans,” he says, “but you don’t get to choose your customers here.” Fuck this. I don’t say nothing, just grab my bag and walk out the door dressed like a goddamn schoolgirl. I didn’t make it through the storm to put up with his small-town bullshit.

  Outside, a giant Pentecostal screams at deer hunters from the shoulder of the highway. He looks close to seven feet tall but is built like a rake. He calls me a whore. “You’re gonna burn in hell,” he says.

  My ride home is inside swinging on a pole, so I holler right back at the skinny Bible beater. “Give me a lift” I tell him. “Be a good Christian.” A logging truck rumbles by and the headlights play across his red face. He looks scared to death as I prepare to jump the ditch in my tiny plaid skirt.

  The man’s station wagon smells like insect repellent. We pull out onto the highway and his courage returns. “You dance for the Devil,” he preaches. “The Enemy has made you his servant.”

  “Take a left here,” I say, pointing at my turnoff.

  It’s a clear, cool evening, and deer are moving with the full moon, night-feeding in the soybean fields. A doe and two yearlings skitter across the gravel road, eyes phosphorescent. We brake, then roll on.

  I’m back living with my mama in the same clapboard where I grew up. The freak preacher pulls in front of the house and kills the engine. “Will you pray with me?” he asks.

  I figure that’s the least I can do, seeing as how he gave me a ride and all. I take his big hand and listen to him ramble. The prayer drags on and on until finally I realize that he’s stalling, doesn’t really want to let me loose. I think that’s pretty funny so I inch m
y hand closer to his thigh. My little finger brushes the hard-on pressing against his thin black slacks and his palm goes slippery with sweat. “Sister,” he asks, his voice raspy, “is there anything at all that you would like to pray for?”

  “I’ll finish you off for fifty bucks,” I tell him. “Amen.”

  He gives a quick gasp when I say that, then pushes my hand off like it’s on fire. “Get away from me,” he whispers.

  I’ve never turned a trick in my life and don’t plan on starting outside my mama’s house with this clown. “Relax” I say. “I was only joking.”

  “Get away from me now,” he repeats. “Please don’t make me ask you again.”

  I take my time but do as he says. Coyotes are yipping in the distance and I sit on the porch to have a smoke and listen. I keep waiting for him to crank up his station wagon but the creepy fucker never does. The moonlight’s reflecting off his windshield and I wonder what he’s doing. He can see me but I can’t see him, and since there was a time when I believed what he believes, I wonder whether it’s finally happened. I wonder if he’s gone and disappeared on me. Is it possible that the Tribulation has just now begun?

  The High Place I Go

  My husband screws around. Not much and not often, but I know that Andy tries whenever he gets the chance. I know it, and he knows that I know it. I press him, and he says that if I want to split up he’ll understand. That’s him trying to pin it all on me. Trying to make it so he can tell our two boys that Mama was the one who left, that he’d hoped to make things work. He says to me that he loves me and that I’m still his best friend—that we’ll always be best friends—but that maybe we just started out too young, had too much play left in us when we tied the knot. I’ve got a clock in my head that reads four years and four months. That’s how long until our youngest turns eighteen and I can call a lawyer. Yessir. Four years, four months.

  I wake up most days, all I see is red. Well, crimson. An Alabama Crimson Tide. Andy painted the walls of our bedroom cranberry after the coach was fired in 2000, even bought a secondhand RV for tailgating, celebrating that new beginning. He was making better money then, foreman money. That was before his drinking got him busted back to the line. He’s lucky he wasn’t fired himself, really.