Fishing the Sloe-Black River

by Colum McCann

  But the strangest thing of all, my father said, was that when he had gone into the house to recover the body, the room had seemed very small to him. It was customary to burn the bedsheets and scrape the paper from the walls when someone had been dead that long. But he took a knife to the paper and discovered it was a couple of feet thick, though it didn’t seem so at first glance. Layers and layers of wallpaper. It looked as if Osobe had been gathering the walls into himself, probably some sort of psychological effect brought on by the bomb. Because the wallpaper had been so dense, the town council had decided simply to knock down the house, burying everything Osobe owned in the rubble. There had been no clues there, no letters, no medical papers, nothing to indicate that he had come from that most horrific of moments.

  I rode my bicycle around London that night. I plowed along to no particular place, furious in the pedals, blood thumping, sweat pouring from my brow. The chain squeaked. A road in Ireland rose up in front of me—a road of grass grown ochre in the summer heat, a thin figure in a brown hat along the river, a cat the color of the going sun, a wall brought closer in slow movements, a road that wound forever through dry fields toward a gray beach, a road long gone. I found myself down by the Thames in the early morning. I dropped a single twenty-pound note into the water and watched it as it spun away, very slowly, very simply, with the current, down toward some final sea to fete the dead, their death, and their dying too.

  THROUGH THE FIELD

  See, the thing about it is that klein grass was about going out to head. It was hot out there—like Kevin says, it was hotter than a three-peckered goat—and I was keen on getting the whole job done as soon as possible, before we got ourselves a rain and lost all the nutrient to seed. I never seen a field look so good, a big sweep of grass almost four foot tall, running down to the creekbed where Natalie found that rattler one time. When the sun fell on it right and the wind blew from up along the creek, the field looked like someone had given it a real good haircut.

  I wished I owned it, but we were renting it from Cunningham. It was going to take about three days, what with all the cutting, crimping, and swathing. We’d have ourselves about forty, fifty round bales and we were going to make a nice little profit, I could tell. Kevin figured on maybe buying some wallpaper for Natalie’s bedroom—she’s gone outgrown that pink kind—or maybe just him and Delicia having a little easier living, put their feet up some for a day or two. I was wanting to get a valve job done on my pickup.

  We were only able to work the field at the weekend, Kevin and me, seeing as how we were at the State School during the week. That Friday evening Kevin was hollering to fill the tractor with gas so we could get a start. He’s a hard worker, Kevin is, with big ropy arms. He’s always itching to get going. You watch him, even at lunchtime, and his foot’s tapping. I was ready too. I had my new boots that Ellie bought me at Reid’s. We wanted to cut as much as we could, up until it got dark. We were filling the tractor right enough, but then we started getting into all that stuff about Stephen Youngblood, the kid that murdered that guy over near Nacogdoches. Kevin, he got the chills when I told him what that boy had said. He started shivering, Kevin did, and he went on home to gather up mine and his family. That night we hardly got nothing done.

  * * *

  I been doing the grounds maintenance at the State School for the best part of three years now, and in all that time I never seen a man want to know something so bad. Ferlinghetti, he come down from the University of Texas, like they sometimes do, for his work study. He got assigned the juvenile capital offenders. He wasn’t young like the rest of the students. He was about my age. He was kind of fat, and once I heard one of the boys say that he was nothing but ten pounds of shit wrapped in a five pound bag. Which made me laugh. But he wasn’t that fat, and he had these blue eyes, blue as the blue you get on a winter’s morning. And, boy, could he get those kids to talk.

  Truth be told, most of the staff at the State School don’t like the social work students much. They come in on their work placement, thinking they can save the world. There’s nobody can save the world except maybe Jesus, but even Jesus must have had an off day when He made most of the kids at the State School. And maybe when He made the place itself, because it don’t much look like a prison. It’s like a complex with a fence around it and cottages where the kids live. But it’s big and open, with grass and trees and flowers, which I guess is good because it gives me and Kevin a job. There ain’t no uniforms on the kids neither. The thing that shocks people the most is that the place doesn’t shock them. It just looks ordinary. The kids out there, walking in double-file groups along the sidewalk, with the security guards going around in vans and station wagons. And no guns, not a one.

  Most of those kids—even the ones in there for murder—look like the sort you see hanging out down by Sonic or skateboarding outside the 7-Eleven. I thought Stephen Youngblood was just another one that got caught up in a mess and couldn’t get out. But Ferlinghetti, he thought he was onto something big for him and his head-shrinking business.

  Stephen was small and blond and wiry with acne all over. You could drown him just by spitting on him. He had eyeglasses, but kept them hid in his back pocket. Embarrassed, I guess. He always walked with his head down, like he’s hiding something. You wouldn’t believe that he’d done what he done. Most days him and Ferlinghetti would be outside, on the bench under the oak tree. Ferlinghetti’d be talking to him, staring right into his face, hands on his belly, nodding his head up and down. He looked like a buzzard on a branch, searching for some dead meat.

  The kids were supposed to get about twenty-five minutes of counseling a week, but Ferlinghetti, damnit, he must have talked Stephen’s ear off for a couple of hours each time.

  I was out there the first time they talked, working on a flower bed near the bench, and Stephen was giving him the normal kind of stuff the kids give new counselors. “I took the life of William Harris on December ninth two years ago. I got a thirty-year determinate sentence.” They learn to say it that way in the Capital Offenders Group. After a while they just say it, not a hint of emotion, because they said it hundreds of times.

  Stephen was flicking his blond hair away from his eyes, gazing straight ahead, when Ferlinghetti just, boom, changed the subject. Now, most of them counselors they get all serious and sad-like, then say: “Would you like to talk about it, Stephen?” And Stephen’d say, “Yeah, s’pose so,” just because he knows he’d be up the creek without a goddamn paddle if he says no. Then the counselor would say: “Well, Stephen, how do you feel about it?” And Stephen, he’d say: “Bad.” And on and on, until the counselor goes off to write up his CF 114.

  But not Ferlinghetti. He just looks at Stephen and nods. Then he starts talking about baseball, football, and heavy metal. I damn near shit myself laughing, kneeling down there with the trowel in my hand. I stayed down there in the flower bed and listened as they talked about some drummer from England who got his arm chopped off in a car accident. Then Ferlinghetti said bye, walking off, his big ass waddling like a duck. And Stephen, he looked like he’d been slapped with a stick.

  After that they started meeting all the time. And always on the concrete bench under the oak tree. Most of the other counselors, they like to get one of the offices or something for privacy, but not Ferlinghetti. Out in the open, that was him. And, man, did he get that boy to talk up a storm.

  Me and Stephen, we worked together sometimes too. The kids get to do some of the flowers and the weed-eating, depending on their level. Stephen was doing pretty good—he was a senior—and he got to work with me. There’s about three hundred kids, maybe twenty capital offenders, and you hear it all. There’s some in there did nothing more than piss on their momma’s toothbrush. But there’s one who hung babies up by Christmas ribbons when a drug deal went wrong. Another who just blew his friend away for a vial of crack. One girl knifed her old man forty times.

  Kevin, he’s different from me. He’s been working there twelve years,
and he doesn’t like to hear the stories no more. He says after a while you don’t want to hear anything. You walk around with your head down and you mow the lawn with the noisiest goddamn lawnmower you can find, so that your ears get to ringing and you can’t even hear the bell sounding for lunch. Even when Delicia comes along to pick him up at the front gate every day, he gets in the front of the station wagon, she asks him what’s going on, and he just says, same ol’, same ol’, darling.

  * * *

  Me and Kevin planted the field in spring. Cunningham lent us the tractor and the other equipment, we plowed the field in late March, then sowed the klein grass the next day. That night, when we finished the sowing, we took ourselves a bottle and sat down at the edge of the creek and had ourselves a good time.

  We took care of that field, Kevin and me, even though we didn’t own it. Lord knows why we wanted to do it. One night we was just sitting around, shooting the shit, and both of us got to talking about ranching. See, last year there was a drought and some of the ranchers were low on hay for the cattle. We just wanted to start off with something small. Next year we’re going to plant ourselves a proper crop. But Kevin has a friend works in the feed store on Polk Street who said he could get us some free grass seed, and we said okay. The field was five miles down the road and it was lying idle. We called old man Cunningham and he laughed at first. Said he didn’t have time for fooling around. But we got it, in the end, pretty darn cheap too.

  At night we’d come home from the State School and get a few beers and sit down and watch the thing grow. Klein grass has a broad leaf and a narrow stem. It gets up to near four foot.

  It was mighty nice out there. We’d sit on the back of my pickup and watch the stars. Sometimes, when the sky was clear, Kevin would point out the satellites moving on through the stars. Every now and then you’d hear a coyote howl. I wanted to shoot those critters—used to be you could get some money for killing them—but Kevin said they never done anyone any harm. I suppose he’s right. There’s enough killing without having to start on the coyotes. When Kevin began in the State School twelve years ago there was hardly any kids who had done murder. Now they’re all over the place. It gets you to wondering.

  Kevin brings little Natalie out to the field a lot. She plays on the dirt road and sometimes climbs trees. But it scared the living daylights out of Kevin when Natalie found the rattlesnake down in the creekbed. She was six then and damn nearly got bit. I leave my Robert at home. He’s just four years old and don’t need to be messing around with snakes.

  That Friday night we were supposed to start cutting the field. The following day we were going to cut some more, crimp it and lay it out in nice neat swaths. Then we were going to turn it so it dried evenly and, the next day, bale it. As it happened, we ended up being late with the whole deal, seeing how Kevin took the story about Stephen. At first he wasn’t listening much, I was just babbling on. But then he looked at me, bug-eyed, like I’d told him the end of the world was coming.

  * * *

  Ferlinghetti got everything out of Stephen except why he gave himself up. I never seen anyone work a kid so hard for a tiny bit of information. I listened most days that I could, whenever they were out there on the bench. What I can’t believe is how Stephen opened up to Ferlinghetti, telling him nearly every damn bit, but not the bit he really wanted to hear.

  Once I seen Ferlinghetti hand him some Red Man, which is against the rules. It was raining pretty heavy but Ferlinghetti had himself an umbrella and they were huddled up close on the bench. I was walking over to one of the cottages and I seen him take the pack of Red Man out of his overcoat and give it to Stephen. But I do that too, sometimes. I have a can of Skoal and some kid’s working with me, just dying for a dip, so you give him a pinch. It’s only human. I suppose Ferlinghetti knew he could get Stephen to talk if he gave him some tobacco.

  Stephen was fourteen when he did the killing, living in a trailer out near the Piney Woods. He’d been in one of them chicken-eating Baptist homes for a few years after some petty thievery, but his momma had taken him back. He’d watch a lot of TV and play with Nintendo. His momma was whoring around while his father was off out west, working the oilfields.

  She was getting these pretty regular visits from this Bill Harris guy who was married and lived outside Nacogdoches. Nothing but cheap plyboard in the trailer and Stephen, he can hear all of it, the grunting and moaning and slapping and screaming. He gets mad and takes a baseball bat to Harris, who’s laying in bed. He gets a couple of licks in, but Harris ups and kicks Stephen in the mouth, sending him to the hospital, where he has to get eight stitches.

  Stephen gets himself out of the hospital and decides to take a visit over to Harris’s wife to tell her what her husband’s at. He gets on his ten-speed Huffy and rides over there. Except he gets tired halfway and decides to steal himself a truck, one of those Toyota pickups that just has YO on the back tailgate. He speeds on over there. This woman, Mrs. Harris, or whatever her name is, takes Stephen into her trailer. She sits him down at the kitchen table.

  Stephen tells Ferlinghetti that the weird thing is that this Mrs. Harris—she’s a redhead—don’t even flinch when she finds out her husband’s screwing around. She rises up from the table, puts her arms around Stephen, then starts rubbing her fingers up and down his chest saying thank you, thank you, thank you for telling me. Opening the buttons and all. Working her way down to his zipper. He’s fourteen. Walks around all day long with a boner anyway, let alone when some old lady is doing him.

  He’s telling Ferlinghetti all this. That’s what’s killing me. He’s telling Ferlinghetti about how he’s getting done, how she’s leaving lipstick on Russell the Love Muscle, how she looks like Woody Woodpecker down there with the red hair. Ferlinghetti lets him say things like that. Both of them look very serious, out there on the bench.

  Anyway, that night Stephen goes home. Dumps the YO truck out on the edge of town. When he gets back Harris is gone. His momma has made him some chicken-fried steak. She never cooks normally, always eating those Sonic burgers. He sits himself down at the table and eats real slow. She asks if his mouth is hurting him, and he tells her it’s all right. He sees one of Harris’s bandannas outside the bedroom door, but he just walks on by it.

  He gets to visiting Mrs. Harris a couple of times a week, going out there on his Huffy. Harris, he’s out in the oilfields, he don’t know a goddamn thing about what his wife’s doing. The redhead, she’s telling Stephen how cute he is and all. Making him sandwiches and iced tea. Sitting on the concrete blocks, waving to him when he leaves. Stephen, he’s in hog heaven.

  Anyway, Harris comes home early to his trailer one week. Nobody expecting him. Stephen is there, lying in bed with the redhead, like a regular soap opera. Harris picks him up out of the bed and slaps him around. Stephen gets beat up pretty bad again and leaves on his ten-speed. When he comes back two hours later he’s got a hunting rifle, a Marlin, that he’s stolen from the gun rack of a pickup. Parks the truck. Goes around the back. Stands up on the ball of the trailer, where he can look into the bedroom. Harris is there boning his wife. Stephen’s done himself some hunting before and says he’s an ace with the rifle on Nintendo. He shoots him straight in the forehead. Harris flops to the floor. Stephen opens the door of the trailer and tells Mrs. Harris that she should get packed, that they’re leaving. He wants her to go to Florida. He’s seen Florida on the TV.

  Harris is still alive on the floor. Stephen wants Mrs. Harris to say, “I love you, Stephen,” in front of her old man. He’s flipped out, Stephen has. And she’s going plumb crazy. She’s bent over her husband, sobbing. Then Stephen shouts at her: “Kiss me!” He’s fourteen years old. “Kiss me!” She gets up and kisses him on the lips. Then he goes over to Harris, puts the gun down the man’s throat, pulls the trigger, and kills him. He shoots Harris twice more, in the chest. All the time Mrs. Harris is just standing there, screaming.

  * * *

  Ferlinghetti, I guess he sees it as
one of these mother complex things, because he’s asking Stephen if he loves his mom and if he thought Mrs. Harris was his mom, that sort of thing. But, more than that, he’s asking all the time what happened afterward and why Stephen gave himself up. They’re sitting on the bench a couple of days a week, and he keeps coming at it all sorts of different ways. Eventually he just says it straight out.

  “So, dude,”—that’s what’s cracking me up, this guy Ferlinghetti says “dude” and “dissing” and “cool” and “wild” and all—“why did you give yourself up to the cops?”

  And Stephen, he don’t say nothing. He just keeps on saying “because” over and over.

  Stephen has already told him about how he ran into the forest after he shot and killed old man Harris. How the cops came and flooded the place. How he hid himself behind a tree and was just waiting for a chance to go back and ask the redhead if she wants to go to Florida. That’s all he wants, to go down to the beaches with all the skinny women. How he wasn’t scared of the cops, not a bit. He was sure they were going to get away. He was even going to leave a note for his mom. Gone to Florida, see you soon. The cops and the ambulance and the fire people are there all over the place.