One day they stopped at a forgotten picnic area along the Elberta River. Janie crawled underneath a concrete-slab table and passed out. She woke later to blue-black clouds piled overtop the valley, and settling into its bunches and folds. The clouds burst open, and Janie and Crusoe quickly gathered wood before it was all soaked. The day grew dimmer as the rain fell steady as time itself. Hillsides were washing out, the river white and rising.
Just before dark Crusoe wandered out and returned with a handful of mushrooms. He set them near the fire. The mushrooms sweated and shriveled. Janie ate them all, the skin so tender it popped when she bit down. She laid down on the concrete while Crusoe went back into the rainstorm. He returned with a fistful of herbs and made a poultice he warmed in the fire. The rain had slickened the dirt boy smooth as a laid egg. Teeth gaped out from his holey jaw. Janie thanked him, held the poultice to her eye and soon fell asleep.
Same time, along this same river, Tammy Treeborne Ragsdale was struggling to loosen her hands from a rope that bound her arms to a chair she hadn’t stood up from in she didn’t know how long. Whoever’d brought her here had quit coming days ago. She’d messed herself twice. Sores covered the backs of her hairy thighs and filthy rear end. She was so starved she would of eaten the rocks on the floor if she could just reach them. Her plan had been to secret a rock next time she was let up to piss and use it as a weapon against her captors. But that time was yet to come—and might never now.
She was being held in a cave, she thought, or way back underneath a big bluff. She could not see for a T-shirt tied around her face, but she could feel cold blowing out from somewhere deep underground, smell mold and taste its bitterness when she hollered for help, which she did now less and less. She could hear crickets and rats, sometimes feel them crawl across her bare feet. When the rain started falling, water pooled on the floor. It soon covered the tops of her feet. Tammy did not sleep unless exhaustion took over. Sleep she fought because she knew it kin to Death.
Ricky Birdsong had taken her. This much she knew. But he wasn’t the one who’d been coming to let her up from the chair and feed her. It was one of the others who’d been wearing masks the day they took her. One time, when she’d been let up to piss, Tammy tried to push up the T-shirt they always kept wrapped around her face. All she could make out in the darkness was rock that looked like it was bleeding. Another time she was able to glimpse the outline of someone beyond a light shining on her as she took a shit. This person was big, had a beard. Could it be? She let slip, Woot! The light was cut. Whoever it was dragged her back to the chair and here she’d sat since. She might of kept sitting however long it took to die had the rain not started falling, running underground, pooling up where she was being held till it’d covered her feet, reached her ankles, now partway up her prickly shins.
Just like her momma, Tammy’d never learned to swim. Not a soul knew this—not even Woot. How many hours had she spent next to water, tanning her legs? Nobody questioned her staying dry. You couldn’t look pretty in a filthy river or the lake. Tammy reclined on the shore or, later, on the pool deck with sunglasses on her face and a magazine or book she never read by her side. She always felt a little jealous of her brothers and, back in school, the boys in her class, watching them jump off bluffs and splash around in De Soto Lake, of Wooten floating on his back in their aboveground pool. There were summer days Tammy’d get so hot she nearly threw herself in without thinking. At least the pool was shallow enough she sometimes could get the courage to wade in up to her waist. She’d cup water in her hand and splash it onto the back of her neck. Somebody would of taught her to swim had she just asked. Probably poked a little fun at first, but they would of taught her. Now here she was maybe about to drown because of stubborn pride—the Treeborne curse.
Outside the rain fell harder. Sounded how Tammy imagined being trapped in bottom of a kitchen sink would. She took in a great-big breath then bent her wrists farther backward than she knew her body able, folding her fingers all over each other as she pulled and bucked against the rope. The chair nearly tumped over. Drown for sure, you damn fool, she thought. But now the rope had slack. She breathed in, prepared to try again. This time the knot slackened enough that Tammy could slide out her left hand. For the moment it felt unattached to her arm. She thought of Wooten. She opened and closed her rubbed-raw fist till the blood flowed back into it, then she pulled the T-shirt down around her neck and witnessed a whole other darkness.
She didn’t dare stand right away. When she did she stumbled to a wall and braced herself till her eyes adjusted better. She squatted down and drank rainwater till her stomach ached. She was hungry enough to eat a rat or a bug—if she could get her hand on one. She stood up, fearing how deep the water might get, then walked several steps before realizing she had no idea which way to go. Panicked, she looked to see if she could still make out the chair. There, just barely. One more step and she might of been lost. Unbound yet still trapped. She sloshed back through the water and sat down again.
Back downriver, Janie woke up and vomited. She’d dreamed of Pedro Hannah’s voice being played in reverse, of a possum trapped in a dresser drawer. In her head she could still hear the creature scratching to be let out. Her throat felt like she’d swallowed coals from the fire barely burning at her feet. The mushrooms, she thought. She crawled out from under the table and rinsed where vomit had dripped down her chin.
The river’d risen overnight. She drank from it and felt hungry, then splashed back to the picnic table. Crusoe turned his head where he sat. Looked like not much more than a melted candle. Janie went hunting clay. Her stomach fussed and she thought of her daddy, who always carried the Elberta Times-Journal into the bathroom. She missed him. It hurt no less knowing that, especially now, she could not go back home. Crusoe tried forming the words to thank her. For what? Letting him get thisaway? Everything you touch, she thought, falls apart. Everything you touch. Even anger, feeling the emotion resign itself to her like a wart.
Days passed without her moving out from under the picnic table. The concrete dug into her hip. She tossed and turned. Crusoe kept a fire burning and a fresh poultice on her eye, which she couldn’t open anymore. The dampness kept the blisters on her feet from healing. Every so often Crusoe stumbled off and returned with something for Janie to eat. Black walnuts, a sliver of minty bark to chew, more mushrooms bruised blue, honeysuckle flowers muddied by his hands. Janie wouldn’t touch the stuff, which piled up next to her like the offering it was. Hunger passed. The girl was on the verge of something new and dangerous.
One morning she was ready for that next step. She gathered the strength to walk down at the river—the distance shortened by days of ceaseless rain. Crusoe was in no shape to stop her from it, though he tried. She pushed the dirt boy away and picked a spot to enter the surging whitewater. It was ice-cold. She stepped back as doubt coursed up her rear end into her skull. Had it not, she wouldn’t of noticed the catfish there.
The catfish was this big to the girl’s leg and had long ropy whiskers attached to its flat head. Janie watched its ugly mouth open and close as if it sang a silent song. “We got to catch him,” she said, surprising herself and forgetting what she’d come to the river to do.
If only she had her bag, her daddy’s pocketknife. She imagined stabbing the fish in its gill plate and lifting it from the water. The engorged river had covered most of the bigger rocks along the bank. Eventually she found one the right size though. The catfish still hadn’t moved. Crusoe was watching it. Janie told the dirt boy to grab one end of the rock. She grabbed the other. They raised it high then let go. The rock shot sideways when it hit the water and stirred up so much silt they had to wait to see whether they’d hit the catfish.
When the water cleared, there the fish floated yet. Crusoe said, “Grab the tail.”
“What if it fins me?”
“Get in front.”
Janie waded in downstream. The current sucked at her legs. She’d been finned before, but t
his fish’s fins were as wide as her hand was across. She looked down to see where she was stepping. Careful, if she fell the current would carry her off. Another version of herself was trapped in the water she waded. Crusty eyeball, chapped lips, hair greasy as duckfeathers. When she could of touched the catfish’s back Janie held up a hand and counted down from three, then she fell astraddle the monster and held tight.
The catfish shook. Janie hollered for Crusoe to grab him, grab him. The dirt boy did and they dragged the fish onto the bank. Dead leaves stuck to its skin, a slimy belly blushed pink and pearl-white. The fish was still shaking and shaking. Janie was afraid it might flop back into the river. It seemed important to keep ahold of this thing. The way the fish had been floating right there by the bank, like it was trying to come onto land. Evolution, she thought, hurrying to find another rock to use. She waited for a clean opening then brought the rock down on the fish’s head. It made a dull sick sound against bone. Blood trickled from a split. The fish’s mouth looked stuck now. Janie bent over, and the fish came alive again.
“Hit him!” Crusoe hollered.
But Janie couldn’t stand to. “No,” she said. “Help me.”
They cleared out twigs and leaves from the innards of a trough near the picnic table, then lifted the catfish in there. Just enough space to swish its tail. The water turned rosy-pink as the catfish surfaced and tried to feed on raindrops dimpling the water. Janie tried to touch it, but the fish retreated from her hand.
That night she ate more mushrooms blackened bitter by the fire. Flames small enough to fit in her hand. Wind yanked sheets off the river, spraying Janie and Crusoe where they hunkered underneath the picnic table. Another day or two, Janie figured, and the water will rise above this spot. Before the catfish she would of been alright waiting for this to happen. But the mud dweller had reminded the girl that there were things worth caring for and other chances to do right. She heard the catfish croaking and got up to check on it. The wound on the fish’s head was already crusting over, like Janie’s eye. She picked algae off a rock, rolled it into a ball and dropped it into the trough. The catfish ate. She rolled another algae ball and dropped it. The fish was, Janie decided, like her, a girl.
Come morning they rigged up a sled with green vines and rubbery treebranches, and rolled the catfish out of the trough and onto it. Janie tied a vine across the fish’s broad back. Crusoe walked behind the sled in case the fish slipped loose. Janie saddled the lead vine over her shoulder and pulled, digging bare toes into the soggy ground for leverage.
They headed away from the rising river. Seemed like most of the day was spent making that first hillside out of the bottomland. They finally reached a clear-cut where rain pounded through what few skinny treebranches remained. The cut was vast and ugly. Every so often they stopped and lowered the catfish into a mudhole, splashed orange water into her bright-red gills. A beard of dirt formed on her jaw and she looked wild-eyed from lack of oxygen. Janie worried the catfish would die before they got wherever they were going.
* * *
The sky stayed clouded over and it wept. Janie couldn’t tell time of day. They were crossing another sorry bottomland now. Had walked what seemed like miles when a sandy bluffline appeared to the left. Trees clung to its washed-out ledges till, soon, the yellow stone could no longer be seen for dense foliage. They were in what amounted to a holler. At their feet a clear stream bubbled up from patchy moss and sand.
They rolled the catfish into an ankle-deep pool. She let out a pained bleat. The stream too shallow to cover the fish’s head. Janie splashed her gills then looked up. The bluffline went on and on, rising higher, far as she could see. She glanced down at her own bloody and muddy feet. They needed a dry place to rest. But a place near water too. She scanned the bluffs for shelter. There, within a stand of pines, something glimmered.
Crusoe waited with the fish while Janie climbed the bluffline. Halfway up she found it—a vehicle wedged among the trees. The bumper missing, the tires long rotted. Janie touched the warped hood and ran her fingers through rust spread all down the fender. She popped the trunk then looked all around, as if somebody might be tricking her.
She fetched Crusoe and the fish, then pulled stuffing out of the mildewed seats and clogged the holes in the trunk with it. The rain slowly did its job then. Once there was enough water, Janie and Crusoe heaved the catfish up into her homemade tank. It was coming on dark. Crusoe splashed rainwater off the hood and built a fire. The vehicle faced out across the holler. Janie climbed inside and fixed a bed on the front seat. The windshield reminded the girl of a movie-theater screen, which reminded her of her aunt Tammy. She listened to the catfish, still thinking about her aunt, till she fell asleep.
Upriver in the cave, Tammy had not moved from the chair. She wondered how much work Wooten had done in her absence. Maybe she’d been gone long enough that the house was framed, electricity and plumbing done, rooms drywalled. Wooten Ragsdale was a hard worker if he was nothing else. She’d give him that. Sure, he didn’t go to a regular job—he didn’t need to with his check—but he worked hard at everything he did. Tammy knew better than to think that Wooten would go on working with her missing though. It’d be a wonder if he could even get up out of bed. How did he find out, what did he do when he did? She hoped Ren was taking care of him. But Ren had plenty to deal with on his own. Thinking about her big brother got her thinking about their momma, and she wondered how Maybelle would act if she was the one trapped down here. It was Maybelle who Tammy blamed for her own failure to get to Hollywood. Daddy couldn’t help how he was—provincial, Tammy thought, was the word—but Momma, she’d left home and still wound up in Elberta—Shithole, Alabama, USA. Gave up on her dreams. Tammy gazed toward where she imagined the ceiling. Her mind cast moving images into the darkness. Scenes from movies she’d watched—a rancher’s widow leaning against a fence, a tuxedoed man ordering a cocktail, an attractive couple just about to kiss. The camera always cut away just before the kiss. Tammy wouldn’t be like her momma. Damn the dead, she thought. Come morning a glint of light would fall down into this hole and she’d find a way out.
At daylight Janie got out of the vehicle and pissed. The sun had cracked the clouds. She shook Crusoe to life, and they climbed to the tiptop of the bluffline. She sighted back toward where she thought Elberta was hidden among the treetops then tracked toward Bankhead. She could make out a gap in the quilted forest. Coal mines. They hadn’t gone far at all.
They climbed back down and checked that the catfish was alive. Janie fed her crickets, pinching off the legs so the fish would have an easy time. Then she found a suitable pocket of clay and dug up several loads. She set Crusoe on her lap and worked him over some. Fixing the dirt boy would take time. She slathered on a thick layer of clay then put him in the sun and sprawled out beside him. The sun felt nice, even as a lonesome buzzard circled overhead. This seemed like a place they could stay for a while. Just needed food.
Later that day they snuck into town and hid behind The Bird’s Nest. The cook sat on a milk crate smoking a cigarette. Janie could hear a radio playing in the kitchen. When the cook went into a storage shed, she took off through the back door. A tray of warm biscuits was on the counter. She grabbed as many as she could tote. The radio was tuned to The Peach. Janie waited, listened, but Pedro Hannah said nothing about her aunt, or anything that would let the girl know how many days she’d been gone. The screendoor creaked. Janie took off through the kitchen and out the front of the restaurant. It wasn’t till she’d grabbed Crusoe that she thought maybe some of the diners, or a waitress even, had seen her flee.
Over the next several days Janie swapped up the times she went down to the restaurant to steal food. Fried chicken, meat loaf, fried okra, fistfuls of every cooked pea imaginable. She gave some of this food to the catfish. While she was in town she also studied Big Connie Ward’s used-car lot. The roadside display now gone. She saw no sign of Lyle or Goodnight there. For a spell she considered writing a letter a
nd mailing it to Jon D. Crews. But what if somebody got ahold of the letter and read it? Worse, what if Jon D. didn’t care?
The weather kept dry and hot. As the ground hardened, slabs of earth broke loose from the bluffline and crashed down the wooded holler. Night after night Crusoe burnt fires on the hood. Janie leaned back and watched embers shoot up past the pinetops, flaming out among a hundred-million stars carelessly assembled from one end of the horizon to the other, and listened to the earth breaking apart all around where they camped.
Down the bluffline she discovered a coal seam. She knocked several chunks loose for the fire. Slowly, she rewound Crusoe’s innards with green vines and with springs yanked out of the vehicle’s seats. Each day she lathered on a fresh layer of clay. Before long the dirt boy was looking a sight better. The clay was sandy so he sparkled now. Janie’s feet scabbed over too, and her eye became damp again and dripped gloopy tears down the side of her nose. She picked at the scabs and imagined using them to tell time, like the rings inside a treetrunk.
She was crouched behind The Bird’s Nest one morning eating a stale biscuit when she decided to snoop around Big Connie Ward’s place instead of watching from afar. She waited for a break in a line of dusty pickups bound for the coal mines then darted across the road.
In back the garage door was rolled partway open. Janie got down and crawled underneath then pulled Crusoe through behind her. The garage was cool and smelled musty. She wanted to linger there. Smell reminded her of her daddy’s pickup truck. But the garage also made her think of whatever dark place her aunt had been left, the girl feared, to die. She hurried down a hallway toward the showroom, where a silver convertible rotated on a mirrored platform, and was surprised to find Big Connie’s secretary already at work. Janie’d spied on this woman before. Looked like she wasn’t long out of school, though Janie didn’t recognize her from Elberta. Maybe went to Bankhead High. The secretary wore a tight skirt that showed off her wide rear end. Janie ducked into a bathroom and waited for the secretary to start fixing coffee. Then she left Crusoe in a stall and snuck into the showroom to see if she could find a copy of the Elberta Times-Journal.
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