by Bill Cheng
Nasty weather, he said.
Keeps the mosquitoes down, the man said. He offered Mr. Catkill a cigarette from his cigarette case. Mr. Catkill shook his head.
I’ve brought in your requisition. A model six slurry pump. Brand-new. I wanted to bring it in personally.
The man drew from his cigarette.
Much appreciated, he said.
Mr. Catkill could feel the beginnings of irritation prickling beneath his collar. He watched the man smoke, the cigarette pinched between two dirt-scaled fingers, the long deep pulls that dribbled out on his breath. Mr. Catkill cleared his throat.
I brought it in personally, Mr. Burke, he said. I take it it’s an everyday occurrence for you that a vice president brings in your shipments?
The foreman arched his eyebrows.
No need for sarcasm, Mr. Catkill. I’m listening.
He eased forward in his chair.
Good, Mr. Catkill said.
Since May I’ve had over thirty-eight replacement orders put in for this capital project, Mr. Burke. Most of them coming from this crew. Orders for replacement drills, mixers, turbines, motor saws, and last week, a slurry pump. It seems like anything that can be lost, broken, or stolen has been eaten up in this godforsaken swamp—and before I release another piece of expensive machinery to your crew, I would like to know why.
The foreman Burke tapped his ash onto the floor.
Well, Mr. Catkill, these aren’t everyday conditions here in Panther. There’s a lot of moisture. A lot of heat.
Mr. Catkill screwed up his face. He hated being lied to, of having his intelligence insulted.
Oh, come on, Burke. Don’t kid me. You think this is my first go-around? I’ve been to Black Canyon and I’ve seen what they use out there. Their equipment is practically ancient compared to what we buy. Doesn’t that strike you as odd? Three model six slurry pumps in three months? You and I both know we’re not talking about everyday wear and tear.
The foreman’s eyes were two slate marbles. He crinkled them at the edges, taking a full long measure of the vice president of operations from the home office. After some time, the man stubbed out his cigarette on the edge of his desk and slid open one of his drawers. He brought out a set of metal jaws.
Found this not too far off-site.
Mr. Catkill lifted it by its chain.
It’s a leg trap. A big one too. For hunting panther is my guess. We keep confiscating them, but they keep showing up. We’ll pull one out of the bushes, and the next day there’ll be another one.
I don’t understand.
Some of my men have been saying they’ve been hearing things in the woods. Seeing things that aren’t there. Frankly, I think they’re a little spooked.
Of what? Ghosts? That’s not what you’re telling me, is it, Burke?
The man snickered. No, of course not.
Mr. Catkill touched his thumb to a steel tooth. It was still sharp.
Then what are you saying?
This is Panther Swamp and everybody from around these parts will know that you can clear a good haul on beaver skin if the season is right. Now, it may not say so on any map of yours, but this is hunter and trapper land and—
Mr. Catkill cut him off. This is government land.
Burke shook his head.
You don’t know these people, Mr. Catkill. They’re not like most trappers. They’re worse than wild men. They got Injun blood mixed up with Scots and French and who knows what else. You see this place? Someone like you or me wouldn’t come out to a place like this unless we were paid to. Mosquitoes alone will suck you dry if you aren’t careful. Most days the heat is near unbearable. I got men on my crew who’ll pass out where they stand if they’re out in the sun too long. For us, it’s a hell. But for trappers, this is their home. They live here because no one else can or no one else will. And with all due respect to the home office, Mr. Catkill, they don’t give a damn about capital projects or budget sheets or requisition forms. They want us gone, and they’ll keep doing what they’re doing—setting traps and breaking equipment—until that happens.
Mr. Catkill’s left eye twitched. His head had begun to ache and he felt the small stinging pulse behind his temple. He rubbed small slow circles along the bridge of his nose.
Well, have you tried the police?
The foreman laughed.
No. You reckon I should?
The heat rose into his cheeks.
Of course you should! What do you mean?
We’re talking about livelihood, Mr. Catkill. Just like how I got to go out there and work my crew, that’s my livelihood. And how you got to go into your nice cool office with all your papers and your books and things—well, that’s your livelihood, and I’m not faulting you for that. But you take that away from a trapper, you’re taking away his bread, his meat, his whole way of life. You’re asking for trouble.
Mr. Catkill narrowed his eyes and looked the foreman up and down, at the trails of mud that’d dried across his belly. It wouldn’t be hard to have Burke transferred to some garbage detail or even fired. Except for the problems at Panther, his work record was exemplary. But the dam needed men of singular vision. Burke did not understand. The story of any great country is a story of creating value from nothing. From dirt and dust and patience. From one man there can spring cities. This was the problem with his type. The lack of vision. The absence of will. The unwillingness to sacrifice.
THERE WAS A CRACK AND they turned toward the door. Outside, voices were shouting over the rain. Mr. Catkill had started to speak but already Burke had rushed out to the site.
The men had massed and clustered all along the tributary edge. Get a rope!, someone called.
Stay back. Everyone stay back.
Mr. Catkill ignored the warning and pushed through. There had been a blowout in the basin and the river had swept up one of Burke’s crew. Water flooded into the trenches, smashing down the weak retaining walls. Out toward the break, he could see the crewman. He was small and pale, spinning helplessly toward the river.
Don’t move, someone shouted. It was the foreman. We’ll get you out of there!
Burke lowered himself waist deep into water. He gathered the slack of rope around his hips and cinched it tight. He ordered three of his men to brace the other end, then he eased out into the basin. A ridge of silt rose up under his feet, darkening the water. Burke inched closer.
Mr. Catkill could see the crewman’s small white hands grasping for the soft mud. He was slipping. It gave way in wet sloughs. Burke was almost upon him now. He had his hands up, trying to keep his balance. Burke swooped forward and snatched the man into his arms. The rope went taut and the men anchored tight against the weight.
There was a great whoop and the men cheered their foreman. Quickly, they hauled the rope back in. Mr. Catkill watched. One grown man cradling another. They pulled them up off the banks and wrapped the fallen man in a blanket before laying him out under the heat lamps. A hail of cheers went up as the foreman unknotted the rope from his waist. Burke looked almost defiant, coiling the rope around his arm.
Mr. Catkill averted his eyes. He looked into the basin.
Burke!, he cried.
Mr. Catkill pointed. His voice was high and clipped.
Look! The pump!
Somehow it had fallen in during the blowout. The crate rolled now on the current, making toward the break.
For God’s sake, Burke. Don’t let it get away.
No one would move. Catkill’s teeth were chattering. The rain was smashing around him. He could still see the box gliding slowly downstream. Mocking him. For a moment Mr. Catkill could not understand what was happening. He was aware of the wall of bright gleaming eyes that were fixed upon him. The men’s faces were dark and dirty, their hair set in wild cakey clumps. This was a mistake, he realized. He should not have come here
.
There was a flash of movement. Something went up into the air, over their heads. Mr. Catkill looked up. It soared up, then plummeted back down to the earth. It lay muddy and inert at his feet. A work shirt.
Chatham!, someone cried.
Mr. Catkill turned. The men surged together, tightening around a single point. One of the crewmen, a Negro, burst his way through a wall of arms. The Negro raced toward him and Mr. Catkill put up his hands, tensing for the blow. But the Negro ran past him to the tributary edge. Burke reached out. It was too late. He grabbed at the empty air, and in one swift movement the Negro launched himself into the yellow water.
Last year on his twenty-first birthday Robert had fetched himself a shave and gone to a movie, a double feature. He shrank into the sticky velvet of his seat. The theater was full of people—dozens of staring eyes, silent as trees. He could feel their heat clouding the air, drawing over him. On the screen a white woman billowed out big and silky in her sun hat. Dust popped and crackled on her cheeks. It’d been eight years already since the fire in Bruce. It was a memory he kept tasting, faint like metal in blood.
He couldn’t sit all the way through the first film. On the sidewalk, the afternoon was bright and hot. There were cinders in his eyes, and he mashed his palms into his sockets.
Around the corner, he found a bar with a COLOREDS WELCOME sign hanging from the door. The trash was piled to the windows, and a cloud of moths danced on the glass. Inside, the bar was empty and a stale smell like wet wool hung in the air. An electric fan was going, moving the dust around. He turned to leave when a man came in through a trapdoor from behind the counter. He was a white man, short and fat with swollen cheeks. His oily hair was parted in the middle. The man smiled and motioned with his smooth, fish-pale arms.
Sit at the counter?
He leaned over and wiped a stool with a rag.
Robert sat down and the seat was smooth with grease.
What can I get you?
I don’t have but fifteen cents.
The man looked him over slowly. How ’bout a sandwich?, he asked. On the house.
The sandwich was stale and oversalted. Still he wolfed it down, chewing the hard rough bread. When he swallowed, he tasted blood and tongued the bright sting in his cheek.
New in town?
Robert looked at the man carefully.
It’s just that I never seen you around here before.
I bale cotton on the Jones-Tennessy plantation.
That so?
That’s so.
He turned back to his sandwich. The man rested his hands on his belt and the air shifted inside him. He cleared his throat and busied himself with filling up a glass with a pitcher of water.
What’s your name, son?
Billy, he lied.
Those hands of yours are awful soft-looking for handling baling wire.
Robert stood up and pushed off from the counter.
Thanks for the sandwich, he said.
Now wait a minute. I was just talking.
Robert started for the door, but it opened inward in front of him. It would’ve smashed into him if he hadn’t jumped out of the way. There was a girl on the other side. She looked up at him, startled.
That’s my daughter, the man said from behind him. He was grinning.
Your daughter?
The girl was colored and there were wires in her teeth. Her eyes were big and staring, flecks of gold in the iris. She was smiling up at him.
You can call her Marie, he said.
Is that really your daughter?
Maybe, the man said. Are you interested?
The girl had already started to working. She was looking him up and down, dragging her smooth nail down the front of his shirt.
I haven’t got but fifteen cents, he said. The man didn’t say anything so Robert took her hand in his and said it again. Just fifteen cents.
She don’t hear you. This one is deaf and dumb, the man said.
The girl slipped her hand from his and rested her arms on his shoulders, framing the sides of his neck. Her skin was cool and slippery smooth.
I think she likes you, the man said.
IN THE TINY BACK ROOM, she moved expertly in the dark, first stripping off his belt, then his shirt. She went for the small flannel bag around his neck but he guided her hand away. No, he said. She tried again and he squeezed her fingers. No! He thought maybe she heard him because she didn’t try again. Instead, they fell blindly onto the bed. She worked him through the zipper of his trousers and he wondered if her eyes were better on account of her being deaf. Could she see his face then, the lean and ashen hollow of his cheeks? She was warm at his tip. She slid down, soft, grasping. The breath went out of him. He felt his insides being drawn out. A weak queasy feeling flowed up his stomach, into his throat. The pressure built behind his eyes.
On the ceiling there were stripes of sunlight between the slats from where the afternoon was casting through. There was someone upstairs, their footfalls dislodging fine grains down over the bed. The girl was small and lithe, her body passing through the slashes of light. He leaned back and she shoveled down on him. He felt himself sinking first through the pillows, the sheets, into the mattress, then deeper still, to floor then stone then earth, down and down, into that cold low chamber. He opened his eyes and she was there still, her braces sharp and catching the sun.
When he came, she caught it in her palm and wiped it on his stomach. He didn’t move, exhausted. The blood was thumping in his temples. He heard her moving in the dark, rifling through his clothes. He heard the dull thump of his shoes, the insole lifting, his last twenty dollars melting away.
THE NEXT DAY ON THE train out of town, he got hooked for freight-hopping. The railroad bulls came down with their fists and boots and clubs. He thought he heard his nose break. There was a crunch and his head filled with salt and iron. Not so beautiful, one of them said. His body was a rag doll, tumbling out of the car. The ground was hard and loveless. Behind his eyelids, there was the sun, warm and red. He spat strings of black into the dust. He listened to the bulls gather, the crackle of grit under their soles. They kicked him awhile, burying their toes into his ribs. He kept his eyes shut and tried not to yell. When they’d finished, they carried him into their car and drove.
He felt ashamed about the lie he told, the name he’d given to that girl. He wasn’t sure why he’d done it, why it had been the name to come to him. He told himself it was a coincidence.
A bag went over his head and he could smell his own damp breath blowing back against him. It was sour and foul like something had rotted in his mouth.
The car ride seemed to go forever. The men were talking but he couldn’t make out their words over the thumping of his pulse. His throat had tightened and he gagged on his own fluid. He thought in his confusion that they’d got the noose around him. Then he realized it was just the devil around his neck. He’d been pulling hard on the loop of twine.
When the car stopped, someone lifted him up by his arm and stood him on his feet.
This’ll do.
They pulled the bag from his head. There was so much light, he thought his eyes might crack. His knees started to crumbling.
Please, he said.
Someone said something. A word of warning, maybe. Then a bright warm pain opened in the side of his head and he was gone.
In that deepening black, he dreamed again of the Dog. Not the Widow Percy’s dog he’d seen in Bruce but a large black hound—lean and sleek—that looked out at him with deep piercing eyes from which no light could escape.
When he awoke, the grass was tattooed to his cheek. He sat up. His skull was crowded with pain. In the upper sky he could see the first splatter of starlight descending down. Then in the low violet bands, the sun set behind the western hills. He was in a field, unmarked save for a small creek a few ya
rds down, burbling along the yellowed grasses. How long had he been unconscious? Hours? Days? Years? He touched the side of his head. The blood was still sticky. He pushed against the pain and stood himself up. Then he moved slowly toward the water. Grasshoppers grazed past him, their wings grinding through the air.
He sat down on a rock and listened to the blood click in his septum. The air was starting to cool. The pain eased into a dull humming ache. He leaned out over the water and washed the blood from his face. Then he angled his mouth into the stream and swallowed. It hurt going down but he drank again, sucking the inky cold water, drawing it in. His heart was beating. He was alive. He was still alive. Above him, there was the ancient sky, yoking back the heavens. Still holding. His eyes started to well.
THE FOLLOWING DAY, HE WENT on foot following two gleaming rails into the next town. In Hollandale, a boy was giving out leaflets written in a bad hand: $2 a day. Strong backs wanted. It gave the address of a small brick building a mile from the main stretch. He went upstairs and put his name on a piece of paper. The next morning, he climbed on the back of a truck and, with half a dozen other men, was driven out to Panther Swamp.
For a month he cleared the land, hacking through thorn and brush, laying down pounds of tree killer. There were fifteen-hour days crossing through the wet country, trailing the chalky white poison into the swamp. When the weather turned, he pierced the plates of hard earth to where the soil was warm and black and musky and he’d gouge out the brittle tangle of taproots with a spade. It was hard work and by day’s end, his back would scream and his muscles would lie slack and dumb on his bones. On the truck ride back to the company apartments in Hollandale, he couldn’t feel anything, just the warm throb where his legs had been. Out beyond the truck bed, the country darkened around him. There were lights in the far-off farmhouses and he’d try to count them before they’d pass or blink away.