by Skip Horack
They walked on and Gladys spotted some movement in the grass a few feet to her left. A small chestnut bird ran like a mouse through the brush, then buried itself in a clump of broken broom sedge. Gladys waved to Dr. Cooper, motioning for him to come quietly. He reached her side and Gladys knelt down. She pointed to a spray of delicate tail feathers, the only part of the sparrow that remained visible, exposed.
Megan had joined them as well. “Is it a Henslow’s?” she whispered.
“Ammodramus henslowii,” said Dr. Cooper, and at the sound of its name the sparrow bolted, took off running down another tunnel of brush. “Make it fly, goddamn it! Make it fly!” Dr. Cooper shoved Megan and then Gladys in the back, and as they stumbled forward the sparrow finally flushed. It flew low and quick across the muddy creek, then lit down on the lip of a pitcher plant.
Gladys had fallen hard onto her knees. She heard Megan begin whimpering beside her, but concentrated on watching the Henslow’s. The tiny creature seemed to be watching her right back and considering her, regarding her. Dr. Cooper ordered Gladys to be still, but when he spoke the perched sparrow chirped and dropped back to earth.
There came a second chirp, and then it was swallowed up by the underbrush once again.
Burke’s Maria
An outpost camp moves through virgin timber, pushing panthers and ivory-bills deeper into the swamp. Working with their own tools, paid by the kill, hard men drop an enormous cypress in the direction of a fresh canal. They sound the steam whistle and collect at the company pull boat.
A thick cable is stretched a half-mile back into the swamp, to the dead tree. A holler down the line and the drum begins to turn, drawing the log to the pull boat; the men, smoking and laughing, ride her like a sled.
The cypress is bound to others floating in the canal, a great raft to be led out the swamp to the Pass Manchac tracks, loaded onto an Illinois Central flatcar, and hauled south to New Orleans.
She breaks free in a storm and wanders for weeks through the bayous and canals until one cold, quiet night she has absorbed enough water and sinks, nestling like a lost ship in the silt bottom of a forgotten spur.
Choupique season opened in December and ran three months through the winter spawn. On the final week Burke fished the back, dead-end waters above North Pass, stretching small nets along the trenasses and washout gaps where bayous bled into the swamp. Here, the big females, roe heavy, would follow the high water over breeched bayou banks, then deposit their eggs in shallow nests that had been tail-scraped in the soft mud by stud males, ready and waiting for a home to guard.
He set close to thirty nets Monday evening and dawn the next morning pulled in fifty-odd females—ugly prehistoric creatures looking more reptile than fish. Only a few of the fishermen around Manchac bothered messing with choupique, chasing caviar. Most stuck to the Pontchartrain, fishing the blue crabs that paid the bills until spring shrimp.
Burke was different. He’d take deck-hand work on a shrimper, maybe help a friend move crab traps around the lake, but for the most part he stuck to the old ways, the freshwater. Men teased him for that, called him a swamp rat. No matter. To Burke, the big lake held nothing but fool’s gold. Hang your hat on crabs, shrimp—you’re always just a hurricane, a seized motor, away from losing everything. And so he diversified, threw a wide, steady net across life.
Burke made a dusty circle in the clamshell parking lot of Sullivan’s, then backed his boat trailer up to the loading dock. One of the Mexicans gave a whoa whistle, and Burke slid out of his pickup. It was a perfect day, blue-skied and beautiful. He saw Avery standing by the scales while they weighed out his crabs. Burke waved, and his skinny cousin shuffled over. He was dressed the same as Burke: blue jeans and white shrimp boots, a thick flannel shirt. His long brown hair was pinned back with an orange bandanna.
“So how go the mudfish, old man?”
Burke smiled and climbed up into his skiff, a plain white Reno. “That’s it for the season”
“Make any money?”
“Did all right.” Burke began pulling choupique from the live well and passing them down to the Mexicans. “How’s crabbing?”
“Same old.” Avery lit a new cigarette off the cherry of his last. “Puts beer on the table.”
“I found a great big cypress last week.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, sunk back in a canal off Middle Bayou.”
“Think Lonnie will let us borrow the barge?”
“Already talked to him.” Burke lifted his mesh Saints cap with his left hand, then rubbed at a sideburn with his right. “Free Friday?”
“Hell, Cousin. I’m always free.”
Burke nodded as the Mexicans stacked the last of his choupique into a wheelbarrow and rolled them into the processing plant.
Almost an entire wall of Sam Sullivan’s office was a window, the back side of a two-way mirror that looked out over the floor of the plant. Rows of Mexican women worked the refrigerated room, handpicking long piles of steaming crabs.
Sam was old and kind, a good and decent man. He handed Burke a Coke, and they watched the foreman pull five women off the line. The Mexicans wore hairnets and paper masks, long white coats over layers of cheap sweatpants and sweatshirts that Sam bought in bulk from the Wal-Mart in Hammond. Burke thought one of the women might be Maria but couldn’t be sure.
Sam went to his desk and they settled into chairs. “You had a good season.”
“I guess.”
“So what’s next?”
“Thought I’d rest up a few days, then start pulling cypress.”
Sam nodded, his attention on the floor of the plant. The foreman led the Mexicans to a stainless steel table and began laying out Burke’s catch. With sharp knives, two women opened the bellies of still-breathing choupique, passing great blue-black sacs of caviar to the others to wash, clean, and weigh. They finished and the foreman scratched down a number on a scrap of paper that he pressed against Sam’s trick window.
“That fair enough, Burke?”
“Sure, fair enough.”
But Burke wasn’t paying attention; he was watching the doe-eyed girl who had tugged her mask down beneath her chin. He’d like to think this was a hello for him but knew that, from her side of things, Maria could see nothing but her own reflection. Her young, pretty face floating in the glass.
The Mexicans lived in a cinder-block bunkhouse behind Sullivan’s. Most of the men—the husbands, brothers, and fathers—they were all gone, had left after the storm to find work in the city. There was good money to be made in New Orleans, cash for roofing houses, pulling rotten sheetrock.
Burke’s small red-brick home was just across the railroad tracks from the Mexicans’ bunkhouse. That evening he was storing the last of his nets when Maria appeared, stepping out of the right-of-way and into his yard. She was quiet but knew more English than she liked to let on. Burke thought that in her snow-white sweats she looked damned close to an angel.
Maria crossed Burke’s yard and he followed her into his house. He stayed clear while she washed his filthy clothes, vacuumed and mopped the floors. She finished and he went to his bedroom closet, gathered a handful of the caviar cash from the hidden cigar box—the place where he kept those cash earnings that the government would never know of. In the laundry room Burke passed Maria her weekly twenty. He then offered dinner and an extra hundred, asked that she stay awhile. As always, Maria accepted with a smile.
After Burke had showered he pulled back the slick curtain and there she was, waiting with a warm, clean towel she had taken from the dryer. She was wearing one of his T-shirts now—a cheap white V-neck. Burke stepped to her, and she raised her arms just like a little girl. He slid the thin shirt up and over her head.
A small cross hung from a chain around Maria’s neck. Burke tried to kiss her and she placed the crucifix in her mouth. She bit down on the silver and he wrapped the towel around them both. Maria hugged his wet body and then they began a slow shuffle-dance out of the bath
room.
“You do not trust me, Señor Burke?” Maria sat on the edge of the bed as he searched the nightstand for a condom.
“Burke, just Burke.”
“Burke.”
“Of course I trust you,” he said, slipping into a Trojan. “It’s just something everyone does in America.”
“Then you no good Catholic.”
Burke lay back on the bed, and Maria climbed on top and took him inside. The silver cross was swinging in the space between them, back and forth, back and forth, a hypnotist’s pendulum. “No,” he said, his voice rough. “I don’t guess I’m much of one at all.”
Maria frowned and ran her fingers over the scars on his chest, groaning as she moved over him. Her black hair tickled his face and she rose up and off him when he shuddered, went soft. Burke flipped her over and used his hand on her until she came, or at least pretended to, then left her tangled in the bed sheets while he searched for their supper.
He made fresh rice that they shared in the kitchen, ate with the last of yesterday’s courtbouillon. Later, Maria brought their coffee out onto the porch, and she was singing a quiet song when one of the older women crossed the tracks and came calling. The señora scolded Maria in Spanish, then led her home like some stray village goat.
It was marketed and sold as Cajun caviar, the roe cut from choupique. Burke dreamed about taking Maria down to the city some night, over to one of the restaurants in the Quarter. They would find a fine place with ivory tablecloths, order champagne and a dozen raw oysters topped with beads of caviar, his caviar. He would show her that a choupique wasn’t just some trash fish, that he wasn’t just some dirty fisherman—that, in the end, they both contributed to something classy, something appreciated, something delicious.
A little before midnight the phone rang, a call from the bartender at the up-the-road cut-and-shoot. Miss Cindy coughed hard and told Burke that the place was empty save for Avery and the Daigle brothers, glaring at one another from across the room. She figured there would be trouble soon, trouble no doubt.
Burke sighed and then eased out of bed, into his jeans and the undershirt that still smelled of Maria. The sliver moon was a day off new, the air brisk but not too cold. He drove to the Lastchance, coming through the door just in time to see Duke Daigle push Avery down. Miss Cindy screeched a take-it-out-side and both Daigles fell back at the sight of Burke. Avery was writhing on the plywood floor, a toppled turtle struggling to right itself. Burke shook hands with Duke, and Avery went still, appeared to fall asleep. Duke pulled his wristwatch out the front pocket of his jeans and put it back on. “Man, Burke, we was just in here playing pool when he started saying that we was running his traps.” He pointed at his brother, now slumped against the silent jukebox. “He punched Peanut in back the head.”
“Well?”
“It’s true,” hollered Peanut.
“No,” said Burke. “The traps, I mean”
Duke shook his head. “Our skiff’s been on the bank for a week. Bent prop, ask anybody.”
Burke went to the bar and bought beers for the Daigles. “Y’all do me a favor and take him home, try and keep from leaving him in a ditch.”
Peanut pressed the cold can of Bud Light to the back of his head and winced. “Sure thing,” he said. He helped his brother peel Avery off the floor, and they dragged him outside like a wounded soldier.
Burke watched them leave and then took a seat at the bar. Miss Cindy was studying him from behind a cloud of smoke. “Bachelor Burke,” she said.
“Miss Cindy.”
“Want something?”
Burke thought on it. “A little SoCo on a lot of ice,” he said finally.
Miss Cindy fixed his drink and then flashed her yellow teeth. “You know, people been talking, saying you must have the cleanest house in Manchac.”
Burke sipped his Southern Comfort.
“That’s not really saying much,” he said.
“Well, they also saying you’re gonna get trapped with a Mexican baby.”
“That right?”
“That’s what they saying.” She smiled and winked at him. “You think you’re her only customer?”
“I mind my own business.”
“Your mama would have wanted me to say something.”
Burke ran his finger through a puddle that had formed on the bar. “People always gonna talk, Miss Cindy. That’s what they do.”
Sam Sullivan paid Burke to night-watch his buster crabs, and twice—first at midnight, then again at four A.M.—Burke would cross the railroad tracks and unlock the shed, pull molted crabs from the water before their tender new shells went to leather.
He checked the tanks on his way home from the Lastchance, stored seven dripping softshells in the refrigerator, and then waited for an eighth to finish shucking. Cold winter rain began to fall, pinging the tin roof of the shed. Next door, the Mexicans slept in their bunkhouse. Burke thought of Maria and imagined that she might be awake at that late hour—imagined that maybe, just maybe, she might be alone and thinking of him.
Rain fell steady for the next two days. Fishermen left their traps soaking in the lake, and Burke lazed on the couch, watching satellite during the cloud breaks. Come Thursday morning the Mexicans had no more crabs to pick. The few men who had not left for New Orleans killed time playing cards on the loading dock, while the women did laundry in the washer/dryer on the back porch of the bunkhouse.
Maria was waiting her turn for the Kenmore when Burke stepped outside and hollered, Come on. She turned and he waved, then he jogged over to help carry her laundry bags across the tracks.
She mixed his clothes from yesterday in with her own, had them spinning clean when the señora came for her again. She marched right up Burke’s porch and banged on his door. He answered and the woman pushed past him, grabbed Maria by the hair. Burke stepped between them and Maria shook free, then let fly a string of border-town curses that chased the señora back to the bunkhouse.
An hour later the next person to visit was Sam, sent by the Mexicans on account of the situation. Burke met him at the door with Maria by his side.
“I’m in a bind,” said Sam.
“How’s that?”
“The women won’t work with her no more, Burke. I’ve got to get rid of her.” Sam cleared his throat. “They done threw all her things outside already. The best I can do is take her up to catch a Greyhound. I’ll buy her a bus ticket to wherever she wants.”
Burke saw the Mexicans gathered and watching from across the tracks. He shook his head. “Do me a favor and go fetch her stuff” he said. “I’ll take her to Ponchatoula if it comes to that”
“You sure?”
“It’s my mess.”
Sam grunted and left.
Burke turned to Maria. “Gracias,” she said to him. “Thank you.” He nodded and then held her. She began to cry and they stayed that way for a long time, all the way up until Sam returned carrying a garbage bag filled with her few rain-soaked possessions.
That night, Burke passed on the condom. Maria noticed and kissed him for the first time. Their teeth clicked together as they moved across the bed. She laughed and brought her lips to his ear, breathed Spanish whispers until he was done, spent.
His wallet was on the nightstand and Burke went for it now. He fished out some twenties that Maria refused. “No more money.” She waved her hand across the room. “All of this is enough.” She closed her eyes, and Burke wondered just what all of this was.
He would sometimes watch this television show about commercial fishermen, crabbers up on the Bering Sea. He watched an episode while Maria slept, her warm legs locked around his own. The captain was worried about some pots being covered by the approaching ice pack, expensive gear carelessly lost.
What the captain didn’t mention was how a lost trap becomes a ghost trap and keeps fishing, keeps killing. How his bait would bring crabs until it was gone. How the caught crabs would then begin to starve, become bait themselves as others entered to
attack the dead and dying.
In time the captain’s stray pots would be packed full of dead crabs, then add more still whenever enough broken shells crumbled away and made room. Just putting some dollar amount on the cost of lost gear ignored all that. To Burke, money didn’t come close to covering the damage that captain was doing to the world.
Avery breezed into Burke’s house Friday morning, saying hi to Maria as if he’d expected her to be there. She nodded at him from the living room sofa, and the cousins stepped outside to talk.
“Take it you got home all right the other night,” said Burke.
Avery laughed. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Thanks for the help.”
“No problem.” Burke slid his hand up the sleeve of his T-shirt, rubbed the spot on his shoulder where Maria had bitten him. “You ready?”
“I’m ready.”
Burke nodded toward the house. “Mind if she comes along?”
Avery grinned and shook his head.
They launched Burke’s skiff in the canal that ran under the interstate, then tied onto the winch barge docked behind Lonnie Carson’s house. It was cold out on the water, and Maria huddled close as Burke steered the skiff. His tan duck jacket was wrapped tight around her narrow shoulders. He was uncomfortable now in just his T-shirt but was careful not to let on.
Burke towed the winch barge up North Pass into Middle Bayou, then down a little spur canal. He pointed at Avery, and Maria laughed. His cousin had stripped down to his underwear and was laid out on the bow, shivering as he tried to squeeze into a secondhand wetsuit.
With the high water they were able to pull the barge far into the swamp. Near the end of the spur Burke shut down the outboard, then began searching with a push pole until he connected with the sinker—the ancient timber resting like buried treasure at the bottom of the canal.
The cousins positioned the barge above the sinker, and Avery slipped over the side of the skiff, into the dark water. Burke handed him slack cable from the winch, and Avery took a deep breath. He disappeared beneath the surface.