The Southern Cross

by Skip Horack

  A half a dozen shallow dives and Avery was able to work the thick cable through the mud and then back around the circumference of the log. Burke started up the diesel winch and took in the slack, motioning for Maria to stay clear as the cable went tight. The winch began to whine under the strain.

  No give. Avery swore and Burke killed the winch. Again Avery dove, scraping more silt out from under the trapped cypress with a steel trowel. Another six dives and he surfaced, gasping. His face was pink and marbled. With a thumbs-up he gave Burke the go-ahead to spin the winch.

  A second time Burke asked Maria to step aside, only now she refused and came to him, reaching out with her hands so that one rested atop his head, the other on the winch. She smiled as she spoke hushed words that Burke took to be a prayer, maybe a blessing. She pulled away and he shrugged. Burke flipped the switch and laughed as bubbles came and he felt it, as they all felt it, the swamp beginning to give up the great cypress, lost for some hundred years.

  For the better part of the day they worked freeing the cypress, and once the log was secured to the barge they made the slow tow back to Manchac. At the interstate canal they turned off the pass and pushed on to Lonnie’s. In the distance they could see the old man weed-eating between the Roman columns of sinkers that lay drying on his lawn, waiting their turn for the sawmill.

  The day had warmed, and Lonnie wore loose overalls but no shirt as he worked. He clapped his hands hot damn when he saw their catch, then jogged into his barn and brought out the tractor. Maria went to shore and watched the cousins fasten the thick tow chains. They released the sinker from the barge and gave Lonnie a go wave.

  The glistening black timber slid dripping from the canal. Lonnie pulled the log up onto the bank, positioning it with the others before crawling down from his tractor. He was making his measurements when Burke brought Maria over and showed her the base—the spot where the crosscut saw of a long-dead man had taken the tree, virgin cypress like the world hadn’t seen in three generations.

  Maria’s hand went to the trunk, the saw scar. She moved her fingers across the thin bands of rings, and Burke saw that she understood because she was counting softly, counting out the years. She counted uno, dos, tres before her big brown eyes grew even bigger and she realized that she had a thousand more years to go.

  Lonnie haggled with them over the price before he finally took his cut for the winch barge and offered a big number that Burke split sixty-forty with Avery. The cousins straddled the sinker as they counted out the cash. Satisfied, they untied the skiff from the barge and idled back to the launch.

  Driving home, they stopped at the little concrete market between the highway and the boat works. Burke was icing down a case of beer when the Daigle brothers pulled up, back in business and on their way to Sullivan’s to sell their catch. Maria sipped grape soda while the men talked along the edge of the blacktop. The cousins swapped six beers for a half hamper of fat crabs that they took back to Burke’s to boil.

  Maria went into the house while they set up the burner in Burke’s driveway. Avery began heating water and Burke checked on her, found her already asleep. He watched Maria for a moment—this beautiful young woman asleep in his bed—then went to the closet and dug the cigar box out from the back corner. He added Lonnie’s cash to his choupique money, the little he made off tending the softshells.

  “The crabs are ready?”

  Burke jumped at the sound of her voice, banging his head against the side of the closet.

  Maria laughed. “I scared you?”

  “No, no.” Burke closed the closet door and sat down on the corner of the bed. “Thought you were sleeping, that’s all”

  They moved a picnic table to the driveway and spread the boiled crabs out across layers of newspaper. In the warm sun it felt almost like spring. Avery rolled down the windows of Burke’s pickup, and they listened to old country music and ate crabs, drank their cold beer.

  Maria sat opposite the cousins. A foot teased her bare calf and she teased back, smiling at Burke until she realized that Avery had come courting. She withdrew and shook her head, let him know that their thing was done, over.

  Avery glared back at her as he ripped loose a claw. He smashed the shell open with the bottom of an empty beer bottle and Maria flinched, then returned to cleaning her own crabs. She was focused, serious, her hands a blur as she sorted the meat into neat piles of lump, backfin, claw.

  Burke laughed and Maria looked up, blushing when she saw that he had been watching her work. Then, more laughter, laughter from across the tracks. The señora, her tormentor, was cackling like a goblin as she waved a mask and a hairnet.

  Maria’s eyes watered and she excused herself. Her sweet crabmeat cooled on Burke’s table while, back inside his house, she watched Mexican soap operas on the satellite she’d already taught herself to work.

  Burke awoke and the bedroom was twilight gray. He turned and saw that the alarm clock had been unplugged. He had slept through the night, missed both checks on Sullivan’s buster crabs.

  And Maria was gone—her side of the bed cool, cold even. Burke sat up and shook his beer-thick head. He looked around the room and understood all at once that she had packed up and left, disappeared sometime during the night. He hurried to the closet and then dropped to his knees, sliding his hand under spare blankets until his fingers met the cigar box.

  Burke opened the lid and relaxed when he saw his money—the neat stacks of crisp bills all there—Mother of Christ, thank God. He dressed quickly, then went into the den and woke Avery, asleep on the couch.

  “What is it?” Avery rubbed an eye with the meat of his palm.

  “Maria’s gone.”

  Avery swung his bare feet to the floor and sat looking at him. “I heard somebody leave out the door around midnight” he said. “Figured it was you checking the crabs.”

  Burke kicked Avery’s jeans closer to the couch. “Come on” he said.

  “She’s long gone, you know that.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Ain’t no maybe about it.”

  “You gonna help me find her or not?”

  “Yeah, Christ. Just give me five minutes, okay?”

  Burke went outside and started the pickup. The air was chill again. The engine began its slow idle to warm as he crossed the tracks and slipped inside the slumbering bunkhouse. No sign of Maria. A sharp whistle and he heard a train rumble by, separating him from his truck. Cut off and restless, his search delayed, Burke left the bunkhouse and went to check on the busters. He stared at them and sighed, hoped Sam wouldn’t notice just how many of those softshells he’d let go to leather.

  South of Hammond the lime green longleafs give way to cypress as the interstate enters the once-great swamp that flanks Lake Pontchartrain. A truck driver hears a rattle and pulls off at Man-chac, parking on the shoulder of the ramp while he checks the thick chains binding his load of creosote-soaked Mississippi pine.

  He is stepping back up into his rig when a young woman approaches carrying a garbage bag. She is wearing jeans and a jacket. Her T-shirt is too big for her, and it meets in a plunging V at a point just between her small breasts. A silver cross winks in the head- lights, and the girl shivers as she begs a ride in shy, shaky English. The driver smiles and says, Of course, señorita. I’m headed south to the city, let me know just how far you want to go.

  In New Orleans the interstate cuts through City Park. The sun is up and the girl can see the migrants camped along the bayou, the old tents, the blue tarps taken from roof jobs. This, she thinks, is the place. She asks out and the trucker eases onto the shoulder, reaching for her as she opens the door. His big and damp hand finds her wrist but the girl is able to twist loose. She slides free of the cab and he curses her. The massive rig rolls forward and she tumbles to the asphalt, tears her jeans.

  The girl sits on the side of the interstate, whimpering as she pulls bits of rock from a burnt knee. She hears a whistle and looks up. Men are watching her from behind the chain
link fence that borders the park. They call to her in Spanish. She stands and limps across the interstate. She goes to the men. She throws them her bag. She is searching for her father’s face even as she begins to climb, to rise.

  Acknowledgments

  First: Sylvia, all my love and gratitude for being the absolute best thing ever to happen to me. Without you, I don’t write; hell, I’m not so sure I even smile.

  Thanks to all the wonderful and generous people at the Stanford University Creative Writing Department, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt—as well as the incredibly supportive and understanding folks at Watson, Blanche, Wilson and Posner in Baton Rouge.

  Thanks also to Liz Lee, Nicole Angeloro, Lisa Glover, Tracy Roe, Michael Collier, Tom Jenks, Bret Lott, Pia Z. Ehrhardt, and, of course, the amazing Antonya Nelson.

  I owe so much to the fantastic writing teachers I’ve had along the way: Brother Ray Bulliard, Mary Jane Ryals, Amanda Boyden, John L’Heureux, Elizabeth Tallent, Colm Tóibín, Tobias Wolff, and the late Brother Bill Parsons. Thank you all.

  My deepest appreciation to the following journals and magazines where previous versions of several stories have appeared: Sea Oats Review, ByLine, the Southeast Review, New Delta Review, Louisiana Literature, Southern Gothic, StoryQuarterly, the Southern Review, Epoch, and Narrative.

  I made a promise to my older brother a long, long time ago—and so this book goes to him (thanks, Matt, I’ll love and miss you forever). Still, Mom and Dad, please know that you’re my twin heroes, and I love you both much more than I could ever express.

  Finally, thank you to my family and friends. Many of you I haven’t seen in quite some time, but you’re all under my skin and with me (in a good way). You’ve given me so much to write about over the years—so thank you, thank you, thank you.

  Bread Loaf and the Bakeless Prizes

  The Katharine Bakeless Nason Literary Publication Prizes were established in 1995 to expand the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference’s commitment to the support of emerging writers. Endowed by the LZ Francis Foundation, the prizes commemorate Middlebury College patron Katharine Bakeless Nason and launch the publication careers of a poet, a fiction writer, and a creative nonfiction writer annually. Winning manuscripts are chosen in an open national competition by a distinguished judge in each genre. Winners are published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company in Mariner paperback original.

  2008 JUDGES

  Antonya Nelson, fiction

  Tom Bissell, nonfiction

  Eavan Boland, poetry