The Southern Cross Read online

  Jimmy’s just around the corner, but we fool around pretty serious right there in the hallway. I’m a puppet master pulling at bikini strings when I hear Jimmy’s chair chalk-scratch across the linoleum. I figure that means he’s about to come looking, wants to show me something exciting happening in his jar. As much as it kills me, I have to pull back.

  A thin thread of spit connects me to Amanda for a moment, then it snaps and falls back against my chin. Amanda giggles as she licks it away, and I think to myself that it’s true what they say about the class of 2005. Those seniors really do rock the house.

  I make my fox set on the no-cattle side of the barbed-wire fence, just before the Sawyers’ pasture yields to thicket and pine. A scratch road cuts right through the middle of the field, and my truck’s parked in the shade of a pecan tree maybe fifty yards away. Jimmy’s napping on a horse blanket I laid down for him in the bed. He was tired from all his medications, and I figured he should catch some shuteye while I work. You don’t want to get him too excited.

  There’s not much to a dirt-hole set. I dig a narrow tunnel about six inches deep, then drop in a couple of the frozen mice I sometimes use to pull the big catfish—the monster blues and flatheads—out of Lake Mary and the Mississippi.

  My hole angles under a clump of ragweed, and a fox will have to step right onto the pan of a no. 2 coil spring to reach inside. That’s the most important thing, tricking the fox into approaching from the right direction. And you have to do it in a natural sort of way. If the fox doesn’t think he has a world of choices, he’ll just pass on by.

  Across the fence, a fat Holstein chews her cud and watches me finish off the set. I screen-sift black dirt over the trap, then splash the area with a bottle of fox urine to cover my scent. When I’m done I carry my gear on back to the truck, and the cow wanders away. Between thawed mice and fox piss, I smell like all hell. Jimmy’s still asleep so I jump the fence again and take a deer trail down to the creek to wash off.

  I linger awhile down by the water, just a series of pools connected by a thin trickle. It’s a no-name creek to me, one more stream that feeds into the Buffalo. I sail a mulberry leaf from one pool to the next. A pod of whirligigs skitters past, and I scoop one up.

  You hold a water bug to your nose, it smells a little like bubblegum. My hands still reek of fox piss so I smash the whirligig flat to make a soap of sorts. I begin working the broken body between my fingers, but I’m not sure it’s helping. I catch a handful more and keep scrubbing away.

  A car horn’s blaring in the distance, but sound travels funny in a creek bottom. I don’t realize it’s blowing for me until the beep plays out steady for a good ten seconds. That’s when I figure Jimmy’s in some sort of bind. I hurry up the bank so fast I miss the deer trail, end up bushwhacking through greenbrier until I stumble back out into the clearing.

  Donna’s Datsun is parked over by the pasture gate, and the ex is leaned up against my truck, arm inside the open window, working the horn. I hop the fence and here she comes, all business. Donna’s a forest fire coming across that field, and I shuffle over to meet her halfway. So maybe it wasn’t such a good idea tooling around Woodville playing Jimmy-on-the-floorboard with Amanda Sawyer. It is a small town.

  “What’s going on?” I holler. She’s wearing a church dress not all that different from Amanda’s, and I wonder how much of her Easter she’s spent driving around looking for us.

  “Where’s he at, you son of a bitch?” Donna gave Jimmy his red hair, and right now hers is frizzed out and wild. I’ve done plenty to make her mad in my life, but when she rushes up on me, damn near shoves me to the ground, I can see from her wet green eyes that she’s not so much mad as scared. And to tell the truth, that scares me.

  “He’s in the truck.”

  “No, he ain’t.”

  That catches my attention. I brush past her and jog on over to the pecan tree and my pickup. She’s right—no Jimmy, no jar—so I climb on top the cab for a better look.

  The thin steel buckles under my weight as I scan the pasture, and I relax when I spot Jimmy way off on the far side of the field. I wave over to Donna but she only glares back, arms akimbo and looking like a gunslinger.

  I call for Jimmy once or twice, but he’s either too far away or he just ain’t listening. Donna has finally decided to walk on over, so I climb down off the cab and crank the engine. Me and Donna in the Chevy, just like old times. I pull off the road and we start bouncing across the field like Russell Sawyer told me not to. “You see,” I say. “He’s fine. He just went looking around.”

  Now that Donna can see him she’s calmed herself down. She wipes at her eyes and looks at me. “He’s been with you all day?” she asks.

  “Tell your sister to mind her own business.” I see now that Jimmy has spotted us coming. He’s standing next to his pickle jar and doing a little dance. “Yes,” I tell her. “He was with us.”

  Donna laughs without smiling. “Us?”

  “Me and Amanda.”

  “I know who you mean. What are you doing hanging around with a high-school girl?”

  “Her daddy wanted me to give her a ride.”

  Again with that same laugh. “You’re a goddamned fool, Lucas.” She grabs me by my arm and the truck veers.

  “Easy”

  “Look me in the eye and tell me he was with you.”

  I’m not her husband no more so I won’t do that. Instead I just tell her about the stupid game that Jimmy and Amanda were playing, leaving out second-base-in-the-hallway and a few other details. I know that Donna actually likes Amanda so I think she’s all right with the story. But then again, I’m not so sure she’s even listening anymore. She’s staring straight ahead and looks, I don’t know, tired.

  I finish up and she sighs. “You still should have been watching him,” she says.

  That’s not really something you can argue with, so I don’t even bother trying to explain just how bad fox piss smells on a man’s hands. I keep my mouth shut and drive on.

  Things go south again when we catch up with Jimmy and realize that he’s in pain and sobbing. I get out the truck and he keeps on dancing. He’s covered in fire ants. Good Christ. I look down and see that he’s kicked the top off an enormous ant pile. He’s got dirt clear up to his elbows. “Son of a bitch” I say. “Get away from there.”

  Jimmy blows past me and runs to his mama. “Don’t you curse him,” says Donna, and then she strips him naked right there in the field. I pull the ice chest out the bed of my truck and she dunks his head inside, starts washing the ants from his thick hair. He’s shivering from the cold water, and I can see red welts rising on his pale white skin. I fetch the horse blanket and we wrap him up tight. He’s not happy but at least he’s stopped crying.

  “What were you doing, son?” I ask him.

  At last Jimmy looks at me. “I wanted another queen” he says.

  “What? Why?”

  “Leave him alone,” says Donna.

  I rub the back of my neck until I settle. “It’s okay,” I say finally. “You’ll be all right now.” I tickle at his ribs. “We just need to get you some calamine.”

  Donna is smoothing out his hair, and her clean dress is dirty now. I forget myself, think this might be a good time to put my arm around her. Mistake. She slaps my hand away, shooting me a look that’d burn holes before she packs Jimmy into my truck. “Tell Daddy bye,” she says.

  Jimmy gives me a stiff-wristed wave but doesn’t say anything that I can hear. Donna shuts the door behind him and he stares at me through the glass. I throw the ice chest in the bed as they pull off and leave me. I’m a scarecrow in that pasture watching Donna drive him on back to her car.

  Visitation day’s over, happy fucking Easter. I track down Jimmy’s clothes but they’re lousy with ants. I stuff them deep into a rabbit hole over by the fencerow, then go back and grab his pickle jar before I begin the long walk across the field. He’ll want his ants later, so I’m cradling that jar like a baby. I’d
hate to see those fragile tunnels collapse, they take so long to make.

  I never do get my truck washed. Start to—even drive all the way back into town—but the football players have beaten me to the Shell station. They’re in the middle of some kind of grab-ass water fight with the cheerleaders when I turn the corner. I see Amanda wrestling some hardleg for a hose and all of a sudden I feel like an asshole. She spots me but I creep on by. I’m watching her in the rearview. She goes on back to playing before I can shift to third gear.

  Sundays are tough enough without it being Easter, and it’s all downhill after that. I ain’t got nobody to eat ham with, so I go looking for trouble.

  And I find it soon enough. I pass Tommy Causwell on the highway and he flags me down. He’s headed across the state line to find an open bar so I leave my truck at Dixie Creosote and hop on in.

  We drink our way south to Baton Rouge, that chemical city. Across the river from the Cancer Alley refineries there’s an all-night dive named the Firefly, then another called the Shift Change. We stay longer than’s reasonable at both, and next thing I know it’s four in the morning and I’m out front some fuck ‘n’ suck, waiting on Tommy to get his hand job so we can limp on home.

  By the time Tommy drops me back off at the yard, it’s almost dawn and I want to die. The turpentine stench of creosote bubbling away in the dip tanks flat gags me, and I puke up my empty stomach right there in the parking lot. Tommy pulls away laughing, covering me in a cloud of shell dust when he spins his tires. I’m doubled over sweating ice water, and all I want is to head back to the house, call in sick, and boil in the tub.

  But a caught fox suffers, and a trapper should never put off checking his sets.

  The stench of a possum fouls a good fox set forever, and that’s just what I’ve got waiting for me in the pasture—a boar possum and a ruined fox set. He starts hissing like a loosed balloon when he spots me coming over the barbed-wire fence.

  A filthy possum’s not much use for anything. The pelt might fetch a buck or two, if you can find a buyer. But I figure Jimmy will get a kick out of the grizzled gray hide if I tan it up real nice, maybe tack it on his wall or something.

  Dawn’s breaking, and I’m cutting myself a green branch when I see an upstairs light flicker on in the Sawyers’ distant farmhouse. I picture Amanda getting up for school, and the way I imagine it, her room’s all sweet smells and yearbooks, teddy bears and pillow clouds.

  I’ve got a .22 pistol in the truck, but there’s a no-blood way to kill a possum. He’s caught tight by the foreleg, so I start in with the sweet gum switch and work him over pretty good. He fights right on back for a while, but there’s something in these fuckers that clicks when things go hopeless. I push too far and his eyes glaze over as he plays decoy dead. I drop the switch and put the steel toe of my boot right between his shoulder blades, wrapping the naked tail once around the meat of my hand. A quick tug and the spine snaps under my foot with a gravel crunch.

  The sun’s well up in the sky by the time I finish digging out my trap, and walking to the truck with my kill, I can’t tell whether Amanda’s light’s still on or not. For a long while, I just sit behind the steering wheel staring at that farmhouse window. Spring fleas have left the possum for my hand and soon I get to scratching, Jimmy’s forgotten pickle jar resting right there beside me.

  Chores

  Easy Sykes pulled into his gravel driveway and parked alongside the singlewide trailer that he shared with his part-time father. Their two-acre lot was carved out of the front corner of a dairy farmer’s hay field; a speckled Holstein had stretched her thick neck between strands of barbed wire and was feeding on Easy’s lawn.

  The grass was a foot tall in places. Easy looked across the highway and saw the pastor of Bethel Baptist pause from changing the message on his roadside church sign. The black man watched him, smiling big when Easy lifted a five-gallon gas can from the back of the Ford. Easy carried it across the yard, smiled himself when he saw the pastor place the final letters on that week’s sentence sermon, telling the world: OUR CHURCH IS PRAYER CONDITIONED, PLEASE COME PRAY WITH US.

  The riding lawn mower sat under a tarp lashed to a cluster of slash pines. Easy filled the tank, then began checking and replacing spark plugs. The sun was full up and steam rose from the yard as the morning dew burned away. By the time Easy was able to coax the ancient Deere to life, sweat had plastered his cotton shirt to his back, and the grass was dry enough to cut.

  He worked the mower parallel to the highway, disengaging the blade as he passed over the damaged strip of yellow grass where his father liked to park his eighteen-wheeler. When he was home, the old man insisted that the trailer be kept cave cold and blacked out like his Peterbilt’s sleeper, a familiar place to rest between runs where he could drink Coors oilcans and tell Easy stories about truck-stop romances, whiteout blizzards on Raton Pass. He never stayed long enough for his rig to actually kill the grass in the front yard, but the lawn sure did suffer for his visits.

  Easy finished with the front and began cutting behind the trailer. A thick patch of ragweed grew along the back fence. Here, he busted a pair of quail that exploded across the hay field. They separated then disappeared into the pinewoods, and Easy tracked them, wincing as he imagined a clutch of eggs passing through the blade of his mower.

  Later, the lawn finished, Easy drank his father’s beer on the back deck and watched the hen quail scratch along the fencerow for the remains of her nest. From a distant brush pile the male whistled bobwhite twice, then fell silent when a mockingbird took up the call.

  The Journeyman

  The morning before he left for South America, a black girl in beaded braids came calling on Clayton. She was nine, maybe ten, and she introduced herself as Kenyatta before explaining that—with the help of her Bible—she had killed the serpent living under his house. Clayton had been expecting his wife when he heard the knock at the door, figured Jolie had forgotten her keys at the diner again. Shirtless in faded 501s, he stepped into a pair of Red Wings and joined Kenyatta on the porch, lighting a cigarette while he considered girl-in-a-church-dress and serpent-under-the-house.

  From the crumbled corner of Press and Dauphine, a timid cavalry of neighborhood boys looked on, legs cocked on the pedals of their battered bikes. Clayton followed Kenyatta onto the sidewalk, and the oft-chased children flushed like plantation quail, scattering deep into the Marigny. Kenyatta ignored their retreat, but bold as she was, Clayton saw that she was careful to avoid the cracks in the concrete.

  Kenyatta led him onto the vacant lot that ran alongside his clapboard shotgun, then began picking her way through the shattered glass and ragweed. At the far end of the torn half acre, she showed him where she had cornered the snake against the rusted-out shell of a Kenmore icebox. A few feet away, the two halves of a Bible—the binding cleft somewhere near the Testament divide—lay next to a fat water moccasin writhing in death spasms. Ocean tides of muscle relaxed and contracted under pecan brown scales.

  “I’ve been watching that serpent,” said Kenyatta. “Every time I try to kill him he slides back up under your house.” She smiled. “But I caught him sleeping today.” Clayton listened as Kenyatta told him how after crippling the moccasin with chunks of asphalt, she had launched her church Bible at the poor creature and, in a miracle of sorts, opened the snake’s head with the hard edge of the Holy Book.

  Clayton explained to her that the moccasin was very poisonous, very dangerous, that Kenyatta should stay away from all snakes, that she was better off keeping to the sidewalks.

  Kenyatta just shrugged.

  The mystery, the part Clayton couldn’t figure, was how a cottonmouth ever came to live under a house in New Orleans. The Mississippi was staged spring high, and perhaps the snake had been forced from the weed bank by the rising river. Perhaps, even from the other side of the levee, the moccasin had been drawn to calmer waters in the Marigny, to that cool collection of rain that had softened the foundation of Clayton’s home a
nd sent cracks racing up the plaster walls of the shotgun.

  Kenyatta claimed her grandmother would whip her if she came home without her King James. She demanded that Clayton buy her a new one. Too tired to argue with the logic of a child, he offered up a crumpled ten and she left him alone with the dying snake and the broken Bible.

  Clayton ground the snake’s head into the dirt with the toe of his boot, then watched a rundown Volvo turn the corner on Press Street. It stopped in front of his house just long enough for Jolie to step out. She was wearing her work uniform, and handicapped by knockoff French Market Chanels, she never saw him as she walked up their porch steps and into the house.

  A breeze washed over the lot, and a page from the Bible—thin as cigarette paper and flecked with snake blood—broke free from cheap glue and pinned itself against Clayton’s leg. Kneeling, he read the first full passage he came to. A story about ancestry, about ancients begetting ancients. Irrelevant Scripture about people who lived for centuries, back when such a thing was possible. He shifted his leg and watched the page blow away.

  Clayton stepped into the kitchen. “Hey there, Mrs. Godeaux.”

  Jolie raised her hand for silence as she finished counting the wrinkled cash piled in front of her. She divided her tips into smooth, even stacks of ones and fives that she folded and placed in her purse. “Where you been?” she asked him as she took the pins out of her dirty blond hair and shook it loose.

  Clayton wasn’t up for explaining why he’d had to give a little girl money to buy a Bible. His wife rose from the table and he grabbed her wrist, pulled her close. Exhausted, she buried her head in his chest as he kneaded the tense muscles at the base of her neck. He felt her relax as she leaned against him and dug her hands into the front pockets of his jeans.