Southern Cross the Dog

by Bill Cheng

  They made camp half a mile from the run, hanging their packs up in the trees and sleeping in the open air. In the morning they’d scout the country for sign of game. They came to a swath of dirt where the mud had dried. In the dirt was a long smooth groove, where a panther had banked her belly. They knelt above the imprint, clutching strands of dry grass, not talking. They knew that the bugheways were driving the panthers from their prowl lands, but they never expected them to come this way. The corridor wasn’t good country for panther. The grasses were too low and the trees were neat and spread apart. Neither Roan nor Bossjohn could figure it. What they knew, however, was that the panther was either brave or desperate, and by the ridge in the dirt, that she was in foal.

  Roan hunted from the blinds, squatting in mud holes behind dense bramble. Chiggers crawled up his legs, on his back, his arms. They traveled up his neck, into his beard. They sucked greedy on his blood. He pinched one free, held it between his fingers. Its tiny jaws clamped the air. He did not share his brother’s concern about the bugheway. Roan had been to Fort Muskethead. He’d seen the bugheway stock—soft and pink and full of milk. Can’t trap. Can’t shoot. Didn’t have the sand to live here in the marsh country, and those fool enough to try would be sucked clean by skeeters. All that was wanted to shuck off the bugheways was strength. He looked down and grimaced at the red speck pinched between his thumb and forefinger, its legs struggling. He squeezed and wiped his hands across his leg.

  For days, they hauled their chains and hunted the land, with little to show and few words between them. Roan watched his brother draw into himself. He was his opposite. Where Roan was small and slight, Bossjohn was heavy-built like a bear. Powerful and muscular under the sheaths of fat. In all things Bossjohn was slow and deliberate. His anger built in a slow burn across his body, pulling drifts of red across his skin.

  Were he not the younger L’Etang, Roan could’ve led their clan, not hiding and sneaking like coons, but with salt and grit. Where Bossjohn was weak, Roan would have been forceful. He would not have brought that muskie home, would not have nursed that bugheway nigger on their food, on their kill, would not have left their cousin alone with him. First chance, he would’ve skinned him like a rabbit, do him easy and stretch that hide across a tree for all there bugheways to see. Bossjohn! His brother’s weakness brought bile into his mouth. Slow up, he told himself. He tried to soothe the fire in his blood. He was a trapper. And if trappers understood anything, it was waiting.

  FOR DAYS THEY’D SEEN THE smoke above the trees, the scare of birds that fled into the sky. They rose hours before the dawn and made their way east through the corridor. First light broke and they went down on their bellies, Injun-crawling up the high scrub to where they could watch the bugheway, witness their great work. Below, in the gully, where there once had been a field of high grass to hunt rabbit, was a concrete pit and a large stone wall. The bugheway came in on their machines, beetling through pylons of dense forest. There was so much noise—the hornet whine of engines and metal groaning against metal. They watched for hours, Bossjohn turning cold and pale as whole walls of earth crumbled violently under the bugheway’s command. There was a crack, and the air filled with red, rolling upward and through in a hot coppery breath.

  They returned to camp to find their packs in tatters and their rolls shredded to bits. Their stores of food had been pulled from the trees and raided. What hadn’t been eaten was dragged into the bushes and left to molder in the mud. There was sign all through camp—paw prints, scratch marks, a mound of dry hard scat.

  Bossjohn and Roan salvaged what they could. They moved the camp north, flanking the river in hopes that the panther could not approach from behind. At night, they took shifts, gazing warily into the unbreaking darkness beyond the firelight.

  Their fortunes turned when after a rain, they spied sign of stag near the run. They stalked it west, tracking a set of cloven prints that were fresh pressed in the rain-soft dirt. They gave it slack, let it gain ground, while they broke trail toward a hill, downwind from the stag. They spied it in a clearing through a fence of hedge cover. It bent its thick brown neck down to a patch of clover, whisking the flies from its ears. Roan set his rifle while Bossjohn sighted. He rocked the shaft slow on his knee, pivoting down—the nose aimed just above the neck.

  Bossjohn rested his hand on his shoulder, squeezing lightly.

  Easy. Easy.

  Roan let the air slow through his nose. He threaded his finger around the trigger, drew back the hammer. It made no click.

  Suddenly the stag raised its head. It looked off to the west, then took off into the bushes.

  Roan looked from the rifle and down into the clearing.

  Wha—!

  Bossjohn hushed him. His hand clamped down hard on the shoulder.

  Roan looked and he saw something move through the brush. It emerged into the clearing where the deer had been. A man. A bugheway. The man looked around the clearing, took a few steps back the way he came, then stopped again.

  He lost, Bossjohn said.

  Roan brought his cheek back down to the rifle. He pivoted again. Sighted.

  What you doin’?

  Roan gon’ have he reward.

  The man unhitched his pants and was now pissing against the base of a tree.

  Roan tightened around the trigger. The gun jumped from his hand. A shot discharged, finding nothing. The man looked around, bewildered. Roan looked and saw Bossjohn’s hand forced hard against the barrel.

  What in hell you doin?, Bossjohn hissed.

  Roan looked back down. The man had run off, his trousers drawn hastily over his lily-pale flesh. Roan’s face burned with rage. He took his hand from the stock, let the rifle fall from his grip so he would not be tempted to use it. Bossjohn grabbed it up and stalked off down the hill.

  Slow, Roan told himself. Slow, slow.

  WHERE THE TREES BROKE, RED dust and smoke rolled in from the east. It came like a locust cloud, falling earthward in headlong plumes. For days the run bled rust, and Bossjohn and Roan would pull drowned beavers from the rocks, their hides smelling, crawling with lice and maggots.

  Then one night Bossjohn sat Roan down.

  Mebbe Frankie be right, he said. Mebbe here ain’t ground for L’Etangs no mo’.

  Bossjohn heaved his body forward, let out a slow breath.

  No mo’ no mo’, he sang.

  Bossjohn measured his words carefully, flicking his eyes up to meet his brother’s before casting them down again at his boots. Noises hitched and unhitched in his throat. He was tired, Roan saw. Old.

  When here autumn come, gon’ scrap we camp and head we down ’a Muskethead. Trade for what I’s can, see’n if we can’t set root out there a ways.

  Roan nodded, saying nothing. Bossjohn looked at him for some sign and he gave him none.

  Say bon? he said.

  Oui, Roan answered softly. Casually. Say bon.

  That night Roan lay on the grass while his brother kept watch. He did not sleep, but still he dreamed. In his dreams, he saw fire. Bright and red, choking the air in fullsmoke. It swept down like a rug on the country, then out, through the marshes, the forests, out into the bugheway camps, and it took in its breath the weak, the stupid, the dithering. Then it stood itself tall in a chimney from earth to sky and blazed on heaven high.

  When his brother tapped him lightly to take his panther watch, Roan lifted his heavy body to the fire. The air was chill and sharp in his lungs. It did not take long. He heard his brother drop off, the deep sonorous snores sounding from his throat.

  The hours passed and the cricket pulsed softly in his ears until all at once they became silent. Roan looked out into the darkness. He angled his ears and sniffed. He looked back at his brother’s sleeping form, then back into the darkness. He grinned. The time had come. He took up his rifle, stood, and then he took up his brother’s. Without a word, he wa
lked off into the dark.

  In the still-dark, Frankie would rise and make up their packs before setting out into the trapping grounds. As she and Robert hiked, she’d count the owls, swinging her arm through the inky air. They swooped invisibly from perch to perch, and she read their number with seriousness, prognosticating the fortune of the coming day’s haul.

  She would point and one would glide from its branch.

  You see? Good luck.

  They’d make their way west. The swamp, he learned, lay across a series of underground springs and aquifers, running in bands of salt and brack and potable water. He paid attention to the trees, how dogwood turned to willow turned to cypress turned to blackgum. They’d move through the rings, come to a pond of standing rainwater. Birds would gather in the shallows, puffing their breasts at one another. None of them big enough to eat.

  She’d ask for his hands and he’d offer them to her, palms out. Then she’d slather on a cake of mud and when he looked at her bewildered, she laughed. Hide we smell, she said, and she did the same, smoothing the mud under her neck, in the pits of her arms.

  They passed the days together, hiking through the dank country, trying to read the earth.

  She’d slip her finger into his mouth and read the wind. Then they’d huddle under blinds of peat moss, breathing the same air, sweating through the same dank stink. Their muscles cramped and twitched and jumped, and they could feel the other’s nerves sparking in the too small space.

  Hours would pass. The sun would slide loose from its chamber, then down.

  Most days, there was nothing.

  They’d crawl from the blind, their limbs numb, crazed from hunger. In what little light they had left, they’d head back to the dugout. They’d start a fire and strip off their larrigans. Robert would lie under the warmth of his coat, the blood finding its way again to his limbs. They grubbed on beans and boiled hominy, swallowing it down before it had time to cool. They slept close to the fire, their backs huddled against each other for warmth.

  On the trails, she showed him how to tie a sapling into a snare. Watch my hands, she said. They were smooth, white, bending down the stem, working it back, then around. She made a noose of a length of wire and strung it to a stake. She tripped the snare and the sapling unraveled. You try, she said, and he knelt beside her. He forced the tip down, hard so he thought it would snap from its roots. Slow, slow, she said. Take your time. He tucked his lip under his teeth, forced his thoughts to a single point. There were weights and pressures, angles of force. The sapling whipped away from him. Try again, she said.

  He anchored the tip with the heel of his palm, the tension building in the still green bough. The sapling strained under the weight, and he threaded the wire back, around. Above him, the sky turned, the earth countering, each grinding to its place. He felt her at his shoulder, felt the space she took. There was a spreading quiet. It rippled outward, crawling, searching. The world bent to his hands. He rested his foot against the stake, pivoted, smoothing the bend. All at once, the trap sprang free. Something cracked beneath his eye. There was fire in his palms.

  You bleeding, Frankie said.

  Robert looked down at his hands, but it was his face she was staring at. She pressed her thumb to his cheek, forcing up the skin.

  He swallowed, still in shock. The sapling stood upright.

  She stitched him up, his head across her lap, him gazing into the sky of her face. From under her hat, strands of hair hung down, falling toward him like a rain. Her forehead smoothed and furrowed. Small noises gathered in her throat. He felt the thread passing through his flesh, tugging at his cheek. He tried not to wince, to keep his head still. Her hands padded across his face, angling and reangling, finding new purchase on his nose, his chin. When she finished, she swabbed his wounds and bandaged his hands.

  Not so bad, she said.

  He lifted his head from off her lap and sat himself up. She held the bloody cloth in her hand. I go bury these, she said. You stay here. She left him alone, and he felt along the raw terrain of his face. The gash wasn’t large. No more than an inch. In time, it would heal but it would leave a scar—a smooth waxen grin beneath his left eye. His mama’s baby boy. Uglied for life.

  Night fell swiftly through the woods, driving through the ancient trees. There was no sound. No birdcall. His breath looked brittle and strange in the bruised light.

  He was free. If he chose, he could’ve walked out of Panther. No one would have stopped him. The days would pass, and every day he would renew his promise to leave. He could start again, go into town, try to find work. But he didn’t. He would wake in the middle of the night, trembling without understanding why. He’d bolt upright in his roll, cough out the thick black air in his lungs, and stare restlessly at the edge of camp. He would hear the wind through the boughs, piercing and wounded, and he would draw the rug around him and try to shake the howling in his brain.

  THEY WERE TWO SHAPES RISING over the western hill, black in the dusk. For a time, the clouds broke and they crossed under the star cover, the valley a bowl of silence around them. By dawn, a storm had gained and overtaken them. They moved against the gusting and slashing rain, their loads heavy, their stomachs light. By midday, they arrived back at the dugout.

  Frankie took him by the arm and led him up the path to the house. They changed out of their clothes and she lit the stove and brewed coffee. He gazed moodily out the window, moving his hand from time to time to wipe the sheen from his nostrils.

  He turned abruptly and found Frankie staring at him, her eyes red, the coffee in an urn in her hand.

  This is a look of someone who has lost something, he told himself. That is all.

  But her eyes were fixed to him, filling with wet. And when he spoke up in a weak voice—What’s wrong?—she dropped the urn and burst into tears. She fell upon him, and in his shock, he found himself holding her. This white woman. The walls groaned, settling against the yielding mud. Against the dugout, water lapped against the boards, sluicing away the earth.

  Her hands were wringing. He looked at her and she tried to force a smile. He knit his brow together. He took her hands and folded them into his own. They were so warm. A single sob broke from her throat. She tamped it down and shut her eyes. She stood up, leading him by his hand. They crossed into the other room, pulling the curtain aside. She laid him down on a pallet of soft hay and nestled herself into the crook of his arm. She put her mouth against his, the sharp bone of her nose digging into his cheek. Blood flooded her mouth. He heard his breath dam in his chest. She worked loose his trousers, slid down her pants, and guided him into her. The ground canted and heeled. She could feel him gripping her hips, his body rocking against her. She flexed against him. He was inside, pressing into her. He felt himself expanding inside her, and then at once, it was over. She climbed off and lay beside him, the both of them breathless and raw.

  ROBERT WOKE TO SNOW. OUTSIDE the tanning shed, it fell mutely, a faint crinkle like bolls of cotton pulled apart. He opened his eyes. Through the slats of the shed ceiling, he saw daylight. Frankie had let him sleep. He threw off the bearskin rug and went to light the smudge pot. He had not witnessed a snowfall before. The flakes were small and hard to see against the wool-white sky. Against the line of trees, they were clearer. Fine white grains gliding down in slow drifts, as if they had been shook loose, almost accidentally, from some far chamber above the world.

  In the distance, Frankie approached from the woods. They saw each other and she hailed up one hand. Robert returned her wave. She raised the other arm, hoisting up a sack that she’d been carrying. Her face, he saw, was red and beaming. The snow fell around her, dusting her shoulders. Robert took a slow breath. The sky yawed wide above them, filling with soft white dander. It was warm still. It would not stick. But for the moment the Flats looked frozen under glass, cut off from the rest of the world. She neared, and his anticipation rose. A brassy twang in
side his gut.

  Sleep you good?

  Say bon, he found himself saying.

  She slung down her sack and warmed herself beside the smudge pot.

  What’d you get?

  She grinned at him.

  Take’n you look.

  Robert worked open the sack. At the bottom of the canvas, wrapped, was a set of three rabbits. He held one out by its scruff.

  T’night, grease’n we on meat, she said.

  They roasted her catch over hot stones. The meat was hot and greasy. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was. He sucked the flesh off the bone and spooned the fat with his fingers. He could hear Frankie telling him to slow, but he couldn’t. His hunger raged like flash powder. He burned his tongue and he scorched his throat and steam let from his open mouth. Still he ate, sucking his burned fingers, licking the bones. He gnashed them, sucked out the marrow. He ate the eyes and the head, spitting out the tiny skull.

  They sat beside the fire. The snow had eased and above, a gray plain of sky smothered the dusk. The taste of meat was still in their mouths, and their clothes and skin and hair were perfumed with smoke. A western wind carried off their scents in a breath, toward the dark band above the horizon. He wondered what the smell of meat would call forward from those swamps.

  Then, as if she’d heard his thought, Frankie turned toward the tupelos and stared hard into the dark. She narrowed her eyes, clenched her jaws.

  Between the trees, a desperate form materialized. His clothes were in tatters. A long beard hung from his ghoulish face, black and matted with mud. But Robert could not mistake the knife that dangled from his belt.

  ROAN STAGGERED TOWARD THE FIRE. He paid them no mind, falling to his knees and pawing the hot embers, peeling off the strips of ashen meat that had melted on the stones. He ate greedily, shivering from the heat, his eyes shut and rimmed with tears.