by Russell Hill
"Y'all gots to go back into the bayou," he said.
"We haven't got a boat."
`"I'se got a pirogue," Robert said.
"What's a pirogue?"
"Boat for the bayou. Go places no other boat can go. I take you to a place where you can hole up 'til that sheriff tires of lookin'."
We followed Robert through the fields, skirting the clearings, and by noon when the sun was at its hottest we were at the edge of the bayou. A small flat-bottomed boat was drawn onto the bank among the reeds. Made of a single piece of wood, it floated barely above water. Robert had a bundle wrapped in a cloth that he took out of the crotch of a small tree.
`"This here's some vittles," he said. "They's grits and johnny cakes and some fatback what my daughter cook up for you. It last you a few days."
Robert pushed the boat into the water and we climbed into it. It seemed as if it would sink under our weight but Robert assured us it wouldn't. He used a long pole to push us into the deeper water and we spent the next two hours threading our way through cypress and tupelo. Once we came on a stump where a water moccasin was waiting, coiled like a carelessly dropped length of rope. Robert brought the pirogue close to it and it didn't move.
"You can eat them," Robert said. "They stinks when you cleans 'em, but you wash 'em good and cut 'em up and they OK to eat."
We moved on and the bayou became dense, so little water that it seemed the boat wouldn't float, but it glided over weeds and muddy shallows and then we came to a shack on stilts, a box made of old planks with a ladder hanging below a narrow doorway.
"You stays here," he said. "I come back day after tomorrer. Bring you something more to eat. Some more water for you to drink. Nobody find you here. They's a little stove in there, but don't make no fire."
"Why are you doing this, Robert?" I asked.
"You seed the Lord God Bird. Your lady, she call the bird. She gots a charm and that's a fack. I knows a lot about charms, but that one special. Ain't no way I gonna let them crackers touch her." He reached out and stroked Robin's forehead, then cupped her shiny skull in his large hand. "You special, chile," he said.
21.
We spent the night in the shack, wrapped in the mosquito netting, listening to the sounds of the bayou: the croak of herons, owls, once a shriek of some animal caught, and then the far-off barking of dogs and a rooster near dawn, so faint we wondered if we had heard them at all.
The day went slowly. Several times we slipped into the water to cool ourselves and we spent another night wrapped in the netting and on the third morning Robert came. He came so silently we were startled when he appeared in the doorway.
He had more johnnycakes and some pigs feet, a canvas bag with water and an oily liquid that he said we should rub on ourselves to ward off the mosquitoes.
"They don't bother some but they's some what gets bit awful bad. This here keep them off."
"What is it?" I asked.
"Roots and things. Some roots you make a tea and you mix with some oil what comes from green shoots and it work pretty good."
We stayed two weeks in the bayou. Robert brought us food and replenished the canvas bag with drinking water. The water beneath the shack was only several feet deep and we waded, until we came to a tangle of cypress roots and brush a hundred yards away. That was our toilet so we wouldn't foul the water beneath the shack.
Sometimes at night we made love when it cooled and all we could hear were the call of owls. There was never a sign of a boat. Rain came in the midafternoon, thunderheads building over us and then the rush of rain on the water, the clap of thunder and when it passed everything was suddenly cool.
Robert came the last time. It was evening when the pirogue silently nosed under the shack.
"They brings dogs but they don't find no smell," he said. "They gone south to look for you."
He took us in the pirogue to another shack, this one on the edge of a clearing where the stumps were raw.
"They's cuttin' down the woods," he said, "They won't be nothin' left but boll weevils and sharecroppers."
So we moved into the abandoned shack. I fashioned a table from scraps of wood and Robert brought a sack we could stuff with grass for sleeping. At first Robert brought us things to eat, but I was handy with a hammer and I knew how to build and fix things so I had a value to the scattered families and I was paid in food, a chicken or sorghum molasses or corn meal. It was Fall now and the days were cooler. We had been a month in the abandoned shack and it was clean and the holes in the walls were patched. We had a spring nearby for water and I dug a pit for an outhouse. Robert came by every few days. Once he brought the black feather cape and he asked Robin to put it on and she did.
"You with chile," he said. He reached out and touched her belly.
"How do you know that?" she said.
"I knows such things."
"You're pregnant?" I said.
"Yes."
"When?"
"I think it's been since we left Arlington Heights."
"You've been pregnant all this time?"
"I think so," she said. "At first I wasn't sure. But now I am." She raised her arms and the feather cloak lifted like black and white wings and Robert said, under his breath, "Lord God."
"We have to leave," I said to Robert. "We have to go back north."
"Not yet. They's still folks what looks for you. The sheriff ain't comin' 'round, but it ain't safe for you to go out on your own. You waits 'til the weather changes, folks turn in on theyselfs. Then they not so likely to be lookin' out for someone else."
We stayed. But now I watched Robin carefully, made sure she didn't lift things, insisted that she rest, even though she said she didn't need to. Her belly began to grow round and Robert said we should stay longer, that his daughter was good with childbirth, she had five children of her own, that we shouldn't risk exposing ourselves to the white world. I think, looking back, that he only wanted Robin to stay. That he wanted her to have her child there.
The days were no longer oppressively hot. I caught fish in the bayou now, and neither Robin nor I looked the way we had looked when we fled the house north of the bayou. Robin's skin was fair and she was thickly freckled. Her hair was long again, usually tied in a pigtail down her back and her breasts were fuller, her belly extended. My skin had turned dark brown from the sun, my hair was long, and I, too, wore it in a braid. But I was more muscular, I could pole a pirogue deep into the bayou and walk ten miles and do a day's work with ease. A logging crew from the north came into the tract and I got work with them. Robert was nervous about it, but they were outsiders and lived in a camp in the woods north of where we were and there seemed little chance that they would have any contact with the white world that Robert said still wanted me.
One afternoon when I came home from the logging camp, Robin was sitting in the shack, leaning against the wall, her hands in her lap. She had been wringing out clothes and she looked exhausted,
"My hands hurt," she said.
"Here." I reached out and took one of her hands in mine. It was small, and my fingers closed easily around it. I took some of the oil that Robert had given us for the mosquitoes and dribbled a bit on her palm and began to massage the palm of her hand, the heel where the callous was, slipping my fingers around hers and stretching them. Her hand became oily and smooth and when I pressed hard against the palm I could feel the bones of her hand, as if they were the bones of a bird's feet, delicate and held together by a thin web of muscle.
"That feels good," she said, and I slid my hand up her wrist, massaging the muscle of her forearm, coming back to close her fingers into a fist, squeeze it and then open it again, stretching the muscles while she lay against the wall of the shack, eyes closed.
"I can do this forever," I said.
"I know."
"Your hands are beautiful."
"Don't be silly."
"No. They're the hands of a bird."
"Birds don't have hands."
"If they
did, they would have hands like yours."
We counted the days, reckoning that in another month we would be able to leave. Robin's belly was more pronounced although Robert was insistent that we couldn't leave without endangering ourselves. But when we were alone we talked about going back north, about Arlington Heights and how we would make a life for ourselves far away from the south.
Robin was more beautiful now, a radiance that was hard to define. One afternoon I watched her as she stood at the clothes line, reaching up to hang a towel, clothespins in her mouth. She wore one of my shirts, a white shirt with a ragged collar, but it was newly washed and it shone in the sun. When she reached up to put a clothespin on the line, the shirt rose, and her round belly was exposed, and the fabric of the shirt pressed against her breasts. The neck was open and there was a vee of skin that I could see as well, and she said, "Jake, help me with this," holding up a sheet, and I stood behind her, placing one hand on her shoulder and felt the skin and bones and muscle beneath the fabric of the shirt and I did not trust myself to do anything more than rest my hand there while my other hand reached into the bag for a clothespin and I held the end of the sheet while she went to the other end and it hung there in the sun, so white it hurt my eyes.
There was the smell of fresh laundry, the smell of hot cotton and soap and it was a smell that I remembered when my mother had hung clothes on the line in Arlington Heights. Robin turned and lifted her arms again so that her belly glowed in the sun, glazed with sweat, and she said, "This is for you," and she grinned and I thought of the roundness of her belly when she bent over, naked, above me, and the hardness of her belly when she said, "here, feel this," and I touched her rigid belly, taut with child.
She bent to lift the empty basket and I looked beyond her at the bayou and I imagined that she was rising, naked, from the water and the water dripped from her shoulders and her breasts and her thighs and her round belly and she stood, toes pressing into the mud at the edge, and far into the bayou a cormorant disappeared, cleaving the water as if there were a wet opening in the water and the bird had slipped inside the opening and would not reappear until she was gone.
One leg was in front of the other and as she lifted the basket, the muscle on the inside of her leg grew rigid and then relaxed and my fingers touched the memory of the tendon that rose on the inside of her thigh and I waited for the cormorant to reappear, but it was still throbbing inside the bayou, somewhere just under the surface, touching secret places among the grasses.
22.
It was the next day when I went back to the logging camp that things changed. The foreman stopped me as we gathered to start the day's work.
"Some fellow come to camp yesterday asking about you," he said.
I had a sudden chill.
"What did he look like?"
"Ordinary looking."
"White or black."
"White man. He asked if we seen a white guy who lived in the bayou and I told him the only white guy we seen was you. He wanted to know if you were somebody named Hamrick, but I said no, not the name I know you by. Is there a problem?"
"No. Probably he's looking for somebody to do a job."
But it was a problem and when I finished that day I told the foreman I wouldn't be back for several days. That I had to take my wife into town to see a doctor.
When I told Robin a man had been asking for me at the logging camp, she said, we had to leave. "We have to take our chances. If they find us, that's the end. We'll talk to Robert."
We didn't get a chance to talk to Robert.
I went fishing the next afternoon and it was dark when I came back to the house. There was a faint light in the windows, a candle, I thought, but I didn't call out. A few yards from the house I heard the man's voice. It was low and threatening. I stopped, laid the catfish carefully on the ground and stepped closer. I had, in those few months, learned to move as quietly as Robert and when I was next to the window I could hear the words.
"He's out there some place. He ain't going to leave no woman with child all alone."
" You got the wrong people," Robin said. Her voice was even.
"I ain't got the wrong people," the voice said. "Everybody else give up on you but I say to myself, they's two hunnert dollars somewhere out there where them niggers live. I get a bone between my teeth, I don't let it go. Now you can tell me when he's coming back or maybe I cut it out of you."
"You wouldn't do that" she said.
"Ain't nothing said about you being worth a hunnert dollars with a whole skin. How you like it if I cut that baby out? You think maybe that will change your mind?"
"You wouldn't do that," she repeated.
"I do it quick as you can blink," the voice said.
I carefully looked around the edge of the window and Robin was facing me, holding her belly with both hands. The bulk of a man was between us and I could see the glint of a knife in the light from the candle that burned on the table. I slid along the wall to the screen door. I knew that he would whirl when I opened it but he would be only a couple of steps away and I would have the advantage of surprise. Grab the hand with the knife first, I thought, then deal with him. I took a breath. He had the point of the knife at her belly. Robin's eyes widened and I knew she could see my shape in the darkness beyond the screen. Everything was still,
I tore open the door and leaped at him, and as I expected, he half-turned to face me and I grabbed his wrist, felt the point of the knife cut me and I slammed his hand against the edge of the table as hard as I could. The knife clattered to the floor and I raised my other arm, ramming it into his throat and he gagged, stumbling back. I drove him back against the wall, past Robin, and the strength I had gained in months of work rolling logs and walking for miles and poling the pirogue deep into the bayou was concentrated in crushing his neck against the wood. He struggled, tried to kick me, but I put both hands against his throat and he gurgled, pulled at my arms with his hands. He was strong, but I could only see Robin holding her belly and the knife pointing at it, and I threw all my weight against my arms and he sagged, no breath coming from his open mouth, his hands losing their grip on my arms.
I heard Robin's voice and paid no attention to it and then I realized she was shouting at me.
"Don't kill him!" were the words and I let up on the pressure. He sagged to the floor, gasping, and I turned him over on his face and knelt on his back, my knees pressing all my weight on his spine.
"Give me a towel," I said, and Robin handed me a worn dishtowel. I wrapped it around his wrists, knotting it hard twice and then I turned, took off my belt and wrapped it around his ankles, cinching it so that his legs were tight together.
"Jesus," came the hoarse whisper. "Don't kill me. I didn't mean nothing. I wasn't going to hurt her."
"Shut up you piece of shit," I said. I rolled him on his side. His eyes were wide with fright and blood came from his nose, dribbling down the side of his face. He was a wiry man, with a hawk face.
"Who knows you're here?" I said.
"Nobody."
I slid across the floor, grabbed the knife and held it poised above his mouth.
"Who knows you're here?" I repeated.
"Sweet Jesus, I'm telling you the truth. Nobody knows I'm here."
" I could run this in your gullet and pin your head to the floor," I said. "Just like sticking a toad to a log. How do I know you're telling me the truth?"
"Cause you worth a hunnert dollars apiece and I wasn't going to share it with nobody."
"And you thought you could come in here and I'd go with you like some fucking sheep?"
"They says you some scrawny white boy from up north and his little bitty wife. I don't guess it would be all that hard."
"You guessed wrong, didn't you?"
"You let me go and I won't say nothing and that's the God's truth."
"You lying sack of shit. I let you go and that cracker sheriff will be here as fast as you can run."
"What you gonna do?"
/> "I might just kill you, bury you back in the woods so deep nobody ever finds your body."
"You wouldn't do that."
I touched the point of the knife to his eyelid.
"I do it quick as you can blink," I said.
We left him lying on the floor of the shack and went outside where Robin took deep breaths, holding her belly with both hands.
"You all right?" I asked. "He didn't do anything to you, did he?"
"No. He grabbed me from behind while I was washing some things in the sink. I didn't hear him. I thought it was you, trying to surprise me, but he was rough and he stinks and when he let go I had to hold on to the table to keep from falling."
"The son of a bitch. If he's found us, there's going to be others. We need to find Robert. We need to get out."
"What will you do with him?" she asked.
"I don't know. I'm going to tie him up good and leave him in the outhouse. I'll find Robert and see what we should do."
I took the .22 down and chambered a cartridge.
"Take this," I said. "Sit outside where you can see the door of the outhouse. If he comes out, shoot him. But wait until he's close so you don't miss."
"I'm not sure I can do that," she said.
`""He won't come out," I said. "I'll wrap him in baling wire. It will take me an hour to get to Robert's. Another hour back."
I hoisted the man to his feet and dragged him to the outhouse. I took baling wire and wrapped it around him a dozen times, twisting the ends tightly.
"You struggle, you cut yourself on the wire," I said. "You do what I tell you, and you can keep on breathing. You try to fuck with me and it's the last breath you'll ever take. You hear me?"
He pulled his knees up so that his chest rested against them. "I got friends. They going to be looking for me."
"They ain't going to find you tonight," I said.
I set out in the dark, but I knew the way and I made good time. Robert's house still had lantern light when I got there and when I told him what had happened, he said, "You gots to bring him here."