When Dex tossed the scraps into the water, an enormous garfish emerged almost immediately, rolling over and snapping up the guts and then vanishing from view.
“Dex.”
“I’m not gonna tell you what to do.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“Good.” Dex started for the camp but stopped. “What’s her name?”
“Luz,” Jonah said. “Her name is Luz Hidalgo.”
“That’s pretty,” Dex said. And he went inside.
3
AFTER DINNER THE BOYS SET UP SLEEPING BAGS ON THE CAMP floor. Jonah dreamed of the footpath by the water, the path upon which he used to race to the dock and the flatboat. In his dream he walked the path alone in the night, feeling the living things around him. Trout hovered in the lightless, still water. Out through the marsh, blue crabs wandered into the crab pots or were lucky enough not to. The teal and the wigeon and the mallard huddled together, pulling their feet and necks into their bodies where they slept on patches of grass. And the nutria swam the dark surface of the water, leaving their silent wakes, propelling themselves toward food. The young ones followed and learned. A foreign species, doing what they do in a Louisiana swamp same as a South American swamp. The swish-swish of their claws was heard beneath the surface only, where in the dark and the deep a gator thrashed its tail and watched through clear eyelids those webbed claws kick. And if there was any understanding of this creature on the part of its prey, it was that this was the thing always there in the dark, always there in the deep.
4
THE PERCOLATING COFFEE ROUSED JONAH IN HIS SLEEPING BAG. He got up and sat on the couch with his elbows on his knees and waited for his mind to galvanize out of slumber. While Bill was deployed, Jonah used to stare at his shoes and see the duck-blind floor beneath them, or the boards of their back porch, or the grass, or the gravel. And he’d wonder what kind of ground was beneath Bill’s boots in Afghanistan—he’d always imagined sand for some reason, but there was snow in the videos he’d looked up. He couldn’t know. He thought he’d feel better if he could know, but there was a wall there he’d never be able to see through, and it made him want to scream. Now he thought of Luz, and what did she see beneath her sneakers? He pressed his thumbs into his eyes until he saw stars, and then he went to Dex’s bedroom door and knocked.
Dex was slipping a shirt on over his tattooed chest. Jonah hadn’t known that his brother had tattoos. Dex looked at him and pulled on his baseball cap. “Up early.”
“Heard the coffee.”
“Was trying to be quiet.”
“I was wondering if we could go out with you today.”
Dex sat and pulled on socks. “Huh?”
“Like, could we help and maybe you could give us a few bucks?”
“Oh.” Dex stood and opened his palms. “Okay. Wake up your buddy. He lazy?”
“He’s all right.”
Jonah poured coffee and kicked Colby gently in his sleeping bag. Colby grunted and Jonah said, “Get up, dude. We’re working today.”
“I don’t drink this shit,” Colby said when Jonah handed him the mug.
“You’ll do shots of mouthwash but won’t touch this, that right?”
“Fuck you,” Colby grunted and sipped the coffee.
They dressed and followed Dex and Donald the dog down the path. The mosquitoes could be felt but not seen this early. Dex carried the .22 in its case, and a satchel of other supplies. He had a cigarette in his mouth trailing smoke. A structure materialized in the shadow ahead. Jonah halted.
“Dex. Where’s the dock.”
Where the dock used to be—long and rickety, a tin overhang—stood a sheltered, narrow wharf and half a dozen plank jetties. Moored flatboats and pirogues.
“Washed away in Hurricane Gustav, year and a half back,” Dex said. “All of us with camps out here ponied up the cash for this. Now they call it a landing.” Dex sighed and flicked the cigarette into the water. “A landing.”
Dex clomped to the family flatboat and Colby followed, but Jonah was rooted to the spot: Wake up, Little Dude. What Bill always called him. They raced down to the dock. Bill carried the fishing gear and he let Jonah win the race, and at the end of the dock Jonah came face-to-beak with a blue heron. Thing’s taller than me, standing there. Small, fierce eyes. Bill came up and the heron turned and lurched over the water, rising through the fog with prehistoric wing strokes. Never seen a bird do something like that, Bill said. Like it wanted to be friends—Bill smiled—or maybe eat you.
5
DEX STEERED SLOWLY DOWN THE BAYOU, SWINGING THEM INTO a wider channel flanked by marsh grass. He said, “Hold on,” and laid into the throttle, and the wind obliterated all sound except for the smack-smack-smack of the flat hull against the chop. Dex throttled back as the route became more tangled, overgrown.
Jonah arched and knuckled his lower back. “You should get a new boat.”
Dex grunted and lit a cigarette while the sky went orange.
“Mickey-Bee,” Colby said. He looked hungover and he was rubbing his back, and he slapped at a mosquito that landed on his neck. “I feel good enough to run through a brick wall, johnson first.”
A quick snort of laughter escaped Dex. He glided the prow into a patch of spongy earth where the cane was yellow and trampled. A yard back from the water stood a wooden stake with a neon-pink ribbon tied around its top. Connected to the stake was a loop of wire, and caught in the snare was a nutria. Big as a beaver. Orange buckteeth and a long ratlike tail. The snare had one of its hind legs, and the creature scrabbled in the muck, straining for the water.
“Oh, no,” Colby said, standing.
Dex smiled behind the glow of his cigarette. He hefted a wooden baseball bat from the deck and hopped onto the island.
“All right, Mr. Nutria,” Dex said, and clubbed the rodent’s skull. A dull clunk.
The thing toppled, one leg kicking. Dex undid the snare and lifted the nutria by its tail. He swung the heavy creature back once and heaved it into the boat, where it landed against the metal hull with a thud. Donald didn’t even rise to sniff it.
Dex had snares all over the swamp. If the nutria were large enough to butcher he’d toss them into the boat. If they were too small he’d simply remove their tails with a cleaver and set the carcasses to float for the gators.
“All this shit out here looks the same,” Colby said, waving at the green tangle along one bank. “How you remember where you got the traps?”
“Spend enough time out here and you’ll remember, too.” Dex pitched a cigarette butt overboard. “Give me a hand here any time you two feel like it.”
At the next trap Jonah asked Colby if he wanted to handle it, and Colby’s eyes grew wide. Jonah laughed, took the bat from his brother, and hopped onto land. His boots squelched an inch into the muck. The small nutria’s claws churned up mud. Dex passed the cleaver down to Jonah.
Jonah raised the bat one-handed and brought the barrel down on the nutria’s skull. He felt the connection in his fingertips, like a fastball cued off the end. The nutria toppled. Then it stood up again, rigid and staring. Brain-dead.
“Give him another,” Dex said.
Jonah swung again, hard. Too hard. The animal collapsed, and there was a small spatter of gore on the bat’s sweet spot. Dex nodded, once. Colby covered his eyes. Jonah bent, drew the warm tail taut, and lopped it off with the cleaver.
The day was still and hot when the boat entered a long manmade canal. A small outcrop of rusted machinery rose from the water. “Gauges and such,” Dex said. “While back, a gas company dredged all through here, laying pipeline. Right underneath us. If you could see the swamp from above . . . It’s all cut up.” He chuckled. “Wonder if you could pop a few executives, turn in their suit tails for five bucks each.”
Colby said he didn’t get it.
“You saw how that grass was all dead where the nutria were at?” Dex asked. “They dig out the roots, and the land starts to wash away. Any time you
chop up the land, a little bit more of the wetlands dissolve. That’s what the bounty’s all about, trying to control the damage they do.” Dex motioned up and down the expansive canal. “I’ve never seen a water rat dig a trench this big, though.”
“But ain’t nobody gonna tell the gas company to stop,” Colby said.
“You got it.” Dex nodded. “Eighty or ninety years ago, some dumb-asses imported the nutria from South America. You know, put ’em on farms, try to sell ’em. But who wants rat meat, rat fur? They let ’em all go.” Dex smiled ruefully. “So I got a job now.”
He shoved the throttle forward and a flock of snowy egrets launched from the forest in a single cascade.
The final trap of the day had been sprung, but the nutria had escaped.
“There,” Colby said, pointing to a spot some seventy yards off through a stretch of dead cane. The nutria hunched at the edge of a seep, gnawing on something.
“Good eye,” Dex answered.
He unzipped the .22 and put the rifle to his shoulder. He sighted from where he stood, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. “Poor stupid fucker,” he muttered. Fired. The report sieved through the swamp with a sound like the fluttering of wings, and the nutria flopped over.
Colby whistled. Jonah crossed the distance, trudging through the mud.
The nutria’s limbs were outstretched, claws splayed. The round had entered just behind the shoulder, straight to the heart. Blood like dark water soaked through its coat. Jonah lifted it by the tail—had to be twenty-five, thirty pounds—and trekked back.
He leaned and held the creature out. “Take it, Colby. You ain’t done shit.”
Colby scrunched his face.
“Don’t be a pussy.” Jonah put a boot in the water, stretched. “Fucking grab it.”
Colby reached over the water, short armed. He sighed and lowered his arm and shook it out, and then he leaned again, bracing himself with a hand against the edge of the hull. His fingers closed around the tail. When Jonah let go, Colby’s hand fell, like he slipped or was surprised by the weight, and then he was in the water. Splashing, flailing, shouting. Not more than a foot deep. He was up and back in the boat almost quicker than he’d fallen out of it. He pitched the nutria two-handed like a basketball into the prow and said, “Fuck holy fuck!”
Jonah laughed, hands on his knees. Dex smiled around his cigarette.
“It ain’t fuckin’ funny!” Colby cried. “A gator coulda got me!”
6
THEY TIED UP AND CARRIED THE NUTRIA AND THEIR TAILS down the path. Colby dropped his load at the shed and made for the camp, a change of clothes, and the beer.
“I don’t know how to clean these,” Jonah said.
“That’s all right,” Dex told him. “I’ll take care of it. Things smell terrible when you cut into ’em.”
Inside, Colby stood in a pair of boxer shorts drinking a beer. Jonah told him to get some clothes on. After a while Dex brought strips of meat in on a plate and put a new case of beer into the refrigerator. He made chili with the nutria meat, and they ate and drank late in the quiet of the camp. Colby was drunk, talking. When he paused, Jonah spoke up, something on his mind.
“Dex, remember that night we came over here? When I was little?”
Dex stared into the neck of his beer.
“The night just me and you—”
“I remember.”
Did Dex think of the way Pop hit him? Jonah remembered the thud of Dex’s back against the floor. Jonah gestured at the frames on the table. “I’m glad there are some pictures in here now.”
Dex smiled, slightly, without looking at him.
“Do you still believe what you told me that night?”
“I don’t know. What did I say?”
Jonah picked at the label on his beer. They had been sitting in this very room. Earlier that same day, Jonah remembered, some boys at school had been talking about the country going to war, going after the terrorists. Jonah was worried about Bill having to go, potentially, and he wanted to talk with Dex about it. “You told me”—Jonah cleared his throat—“we only lose the things we care about, so it was better if we didn’t talk about him or think about him or anything.”
“I said all that?”
“Yeah.” Jonah wanted to know if Dex still believed it. Luz was out there, and they were going to have a kid, and Jonah didn’t know where she was or what she was doing, but he wanted to think about her, he wanted to talk about her.
“Hell.” Dex drained his beer, got up. “I was only eighteen. I didn’t know shit.”
Jonah strangled his bottle. When he glanced at Dex, Dex looked away.
Dex returned with new beers and handed one to Colby: “You got any brothers or sisters?”
“I got a brother. Jamal.”
“What’s he do?”
Colby drank a lot of the beer quickly, set the bottle on the coffee table, and slid off the couch onto his sleeping bag. “Jamal been locked up in Angola for almost four years.” He closed his eyes but continued to speak, voice faltering as he neared slumber. “Nobody used to mess with me. People were scared of Jamal, ya heard? Nobody fucked with me. But he gone now.” His voice trailed off, and Jonah thought his friend had fallen asleep, but Colby spoke up again, smiling dimly. “I told people I knew kung fu. Ha. They didn’t believe me. I don’t. I don’t know kung fu.”
Colby’s breathing evened out and there was silence in the room. Jonah got to his feet. “I’m going for a walk.” He carried his beer out back and set off down the path.
He walked to the landing, and this newer and grander construction made him feel like a stranger to his own history. He sat in the old boat and drank. His eyes burned. He drained the beer and watched the moon rise and bore through the sky like a lode of silver, and he got up and hurled the beer bottle at it. The night swallowed up the bottle as soon as it left his hand. The glass spun somewhere out there until it splashed, a feeble sound.
“Hey.” Dex appeared on the jetty alongside the flatboat. “I wonder if Jamal knows Uncle Dexter.”
Pop’s brother, the one for whom Dex was named, was also in the penitentiary. Their other uncle, for whom Jonah was named, had died long ago in Vietnam, and they only knew stories about him. Once, Jonah heard Mom tell Pop that it was a curse, so many boys in the family. Sometimes he figured his mother had been right.
Dex sipped his beer and stepped into the boat and sat across from Jonah. “Do you remember,” he began, “that night Pop went looking for the guy who crashed into Mom?”
“What?” Jonah said. There was nothing there, an awful vacancy. “No.”
“Yeah. Month, maybe two, after the funeral.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Pop drank most a bottle of whiskey, then got in his truck. He’d found the man’s address. I tried reminding him that the dude was in jail, me and Bill did. Pop was crazy, wouldn’t listen. I kept thinking he was so drunk he’d kill someone looking for the guy who killed Mom and how the fuck would that ever make sense. Something like that never woulda dawned on Pop, I thought, so it made me hate him more—I could imagine it, see what I mean, and I was only fifteen years old. But then Pop didn’t come home and we didn’t know what the hell had happened. Me and you and Bill were alone all night. When Bill wasn’t looking I tasted Pop’s whiskey and about coughed my guts out.”
“I didn’t know any of that.”
Dex bobbed his shoulders and drained his beer and set the empty in the boat.
“Where was Pop?”
“Got pulled over on the way there. Spent the night in jail himself. Lost his license for a while.”
A frog trilled. The boat was moored, but Jonah felt adrift.
Dex started to get up. “I think I’ll go to bed.”
“Wait—”
Dex paused on the boards and turned, eyebrows raised.
“What’s the point?”
“Of what?”
“Of that story.”
Dex put his ha
nds on his hips. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Why’d you tell it to me?”
“Didn’t know if you remembered, I guess.”
“You think I’m doing something dumb, don’t you, going to Mexico.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yeah, but you think it.”
“Hell, Jonah. Did you hear me say that?”
Jonah stood in the boat, felt it pitch. “I never hear you say anything, Dex.”
His brother shook his head. “It ain’t my place to tell you what to do.”
There were words on the tip of Jonah’s tongue: Shouldn’t it be somebody’s place? There’s no one else but you, Dex. What are you so afraid of?
But Jonah balked and swallowed the sentences. He couldn’t bring himself to ask for his brother’s advice. Stubborn, but also hurt and angry. And now Dex turned and went, and Jonah stood in the boat and listened to the swamp.
VI
. . .está allí para siempre.
1
A REMOTE GROWLING STIRRED LUZ AWAKE—A JET, SCRATCHING its contrail across a pale sky. She sat up, terror clutching her when she realized she had failed to keep watch. Her heart slowed; she was alone in the creek bed. She let go of the knife—she had held it all through the night—and flexed her stiff fingers and thought of her mother’s hands. The jet crawled across the sky. There were people up there.
Luz’s skull ached. A wicked thirst in her throat. It seemed that red ants had bitten her while she slept, and her ankle was on fire. She stood and peered over the rim of the arroyo and saw nothing but scrubland folding into hills and the green ridge beyond. A shadow of cloud crested the hills, galloped toward her, and then passed, leaving the sky clear and blinding. Distant telephone poles came into focus. She climbed from the dry creek. The adobe house must be nearby, but she couldn’t see it anywhere.
The hardpan road beneath the power lines was empty, dusty. A radio or perhaps cell tower rose in the hills and she set out for it along the road, hoping a phone might wait in that direction.
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