Speaker 1: This podcast may not be suitable for young listeners. Poachers
by Tom Franklin. Dawn, on the first day of April,
the three Gates brothers banked their ten foot aluminum boat
in a narrow slew of dark water. They tied their
hounds and strapped their rifles, and stepped out, ducking black
magnolia branches heavy with rain and Spanish moss. The two
thin younger brothers denim overalls tucked in their boots, lugged
between the starfoam cooler of iced fish, coons and possums.
The oldest brother, twenty bearded in heavy set, carried a
sunbeam bread sack of eels in his coat pocket. Hooked
over his left shoulder was the pink body of a
foam they'd shot in skin and over the ride a
stray dog, to which they'd done this With skins and
heads gone and the dog's tail chopped off, they were
difficult to tell apart. The Gates has climbed the hill,
clinging to the vines and saplings and slipping in the
red clay, their boots coated and enormous. By the time
they stepped out of the woods. For a moment, they
stood in the road, looking at the gray sky, the
clouds piling up. The two younger ones kneel and Dan
set the cooler down. Kent, the oldest, removed his limp
cap and squeezed the water from it, and his brothers
did the same. Then Kent nodded and they picked up
the cooler. They rounded a curve and crossed a one
lane bridge, stopping to piss over the rail into the creek,
water high from all the rain, and then went on,
passing houses on either side, dark warped boards with the
knotholes big enough to look through, and cement blocks for steps.
Black men appeared in the doors and windows to watch
them go by. To most of these people, they were
something not seen, often something nocturnal and dangerous. Along the
stretch of the Alabama River, everyone knew that the brother's father,
Boo Gates, had married a girl named Anna when he
was thirty she was seventeen, and that the boys had
been born in quick succession, with less than a year
between them. But few outside the family knew that a
fourth child, a daughter unnamed, had been still born, and
that Boo had buried her in an unmarked grave and
a clearing in the woods behind their house. Anna died
the next day, and the three boys, dirty and naked,
watched their father stoop shouldered descent into the earth as
he dug her grave. And by the time he'd finished it,
it was dark, and the moon had come up out
of the trees, and the boys lay asleep upon each
other in the dark, like wolf pups. The name of
this community, if it could be called that, was Lower
Peach Tree, though as far as anybody knew, there'd never
been an Upper Peach Tree. Scattered along the leafy banks
of the river were ragged houses, leaning and drafty, many
empty and caving in so close to the water they'd
been built on stilts. Each April, floods came and the
crumbling land along the bank would disappear, and each May,
when the flood waters were seeded, a house or two
would be gone. Upriver, near the locking dam stood an
old store, a slanting, weathered building with a steep tin
roof and a stovepipe in the back. Two rusty gas
pumps on the left beside the road. The regular pump,
empty for years, had a garbage bag tied over it.
Around the store, mimosa trees sagged water logged in front.
Long steps led up to the door, wherein the window
a red sign said open inside. To the right, like
a bar upon maple counter ran along the wall, and
behind the counter hung a rack of wire pegs for tools, hardware,
and fishing tackle. To the left were rows of shelves
made of boards and concrete blocks, and beyond the shelves
a Coca Cola cooler buzzed faintly by the wall. The
store owner, an old man named Kirksey, had bad knees,
and this weather settled around his joints like rot. For
most of his life, he'd been married and lived in
a nice two story house on Highway thirty five fireplaces
in every bedroom a china cabinet. But when his wife
died two years ago cancer, he found it easier to
avoid the house, to keep the bills paid in the
grass mode, but the doors locked, to spend nights in
the store and to sleep in the back room on
the army cot and the warmest meals of corned beef
and beef stew on a hot plate. He didn't mind
that people had but stopped coming to the store. As
long as he served a few long standing customers, he
thought he'd stick around. He had his radio in the
Thomasville station and money enough. He liked the area and
knewest regulars weren't the kind to drive half an hour
to the nearest town. For those few people, Kirksey would
go once a week to Grove Hill to shop for goods.
He'd resell, marking up the price just enough for a
reasonable profit. He didn't need the money, it was just
good business. Liquor wise, the county was dry, but that
didn't stop Kirksey. For his regulars, he would serve plastic
cups of cheap whiskey he bought in the next county,
or bottles of beer he kept padlocked, and an old
refrigerator in back. For these regulars, he would break packages
of cigarettes and keep them in a cigar box and
sell them for a dime apiece a nickel stale Ashburn's
were seven cents, and he would open boxes of shotgun
shells or cartridges and sell them for a mouse at
varied according to caliber. And he'd known to find specialty
items paperback novels, explosives, and once an old magneto telephone.
At Euphrates Morset's place, Kent gates pounded on the back door.
In Morset's yard, a cord of wood was stacked between
two fence posts, covered by a green tarp. Brick halves
holding the tarp down. A tire swing, turning slowly and
full of rain water hung from a pine limb. When
Morset appeared, he was a large, bald black man. Kent
pointed to the fawn and dog hanging on the porch rail.
Morset put on reading glasses and squinted at both. How
about that, he said, stroking his chin right out, young men's.
He closed the door. Kent sat on the porch edge,
and his brother's on the steps. A skinny, wet dog
trotted from under the house, wagging its tail, and Dan
began to pet it. When he found a swollen blue
tick in its ear, he pulled it off and flicked
it across the yard. The door opened and Morset came
out with three pint jars of homemade whiskey. Each brother
took a jar and unscrewed its lid and sniffed the
clear liquid. Morset set his steaming coffee cup on the
window sill. He fastened his suspenders, looking at the carcasses
hanging over the rail. The brothers were already drinking, Dan
still petting the dog, which had its head in his lap.
Where's the girl, Kent asked, his face twisted from the
sour whiskey. My stepdaughter, you me morsets items apple pumped
in his throat. She had sid far away. A rooster crode. Well,
get her out here, Kent said. They drank again, and shuddered.
Now she ain't of fifteen, Kent scratched his spard. She's gone.
Look at her. When they left, the stepdaughter was standing
on the porch in her white nightgown, barefoot and rubbing
the sleep from her eyes. The brothers backed away, clanking
with hardware and blushing and grinning at her. More sets
jaw clenched. The dog watched them go, and then turned
and trotted back underneath the house. Sipping from their jars,
they took the bag of eels down the road to
a half blind, conjured woman who stood waiting on her porch.
Her house, with the stark drapes and empty bird cages
dangling from the eaves, seemed to be slipping off into
the gully. The younger brothers wiped their noses on their
sleeves and shifted from foot to foot by the gate.
As Kent walked across the muddy yard held the bag out,
she snatched the eels from him, Squinting into the bag
with her good eye, grunting. She paid them from a
dusty cloth sack on her Apron muttered to herself as
Kent turned and walked through her gate, and the three
of them went up the dirt road. Only Dan, the youngest,
looked back. They pedaled the rest of the things from
their cooler and then left through the dump, pausing while
Kent and Neil shot at liquor bottles, Dan through into
the air out of ammunition. They stumbled down the ravine
and the rain, following the water's edge to their boat,
and in the back Kent wedged his jar between his thighs,
ran the trolling motor with his foot. His brothers leaned
against the walls of the boat, facing opposite banks, no
sound but rain and the low hum of the motor.
They drank silently, holding their burning whiskey in the hollows
of their cheeks, before gathering the will to swallow. And
along the bank's fallen trees held thick stands of cotton
mouth black sparkling creatures, dazed and slow from winter, barely
able to move. If not for all the rain, they
might still be hibernating. Comatos in the banks of the
river are beneath the soft yellow underbellies of rotten logs.
Randing in Ben, the brother saw a small boat down river,
its engine clear, loud and unfamiliar. It was heading this way.
The men in the boat lifted a hand in greeting.
He wore a green poncho and a dark hat covered
with plastic. Kent shifted his foot, turning the trolling motor
and steering them toward the bank, giving the stranger a
wide berth. He felt for their outboards crank rope while
Kneel and Dan faced forward and sat on the boat seats.
The man drawing closer didn't look much older than Kent.
He cut his engine and coasted up beside them, smiling
morning fellas, he said, showing his badge. I'm the new
District game Warden. The brothers looked straight ahead, as if
he weren't there. The warden's engine was steaming. A flock
of geese passed overhead. Dan slipped his hands inside the
soft leather collars of two dogs who'd begun to growl. Now,
you fellows ought to know, the warden said, pointing his
long chin to the rifle at Neil's feet, that it's
illegal to have those guns loaded on the river. Now
I'm going to have to check them. I'll need to
see some licenses too. When he stood, the dogs jumped forward,
tonails scraping the aluminum. Dan jerked them back and glanced
at Kent. Kent spat into the brown water. He met
the warden's size, and an instant knew the man had
seen the telephone rig and the floor of their boat.
Pulled to the bank, the warden yelled, drawing a pistol,
y'all are under a rest for poaching. The gates is
didn't move. One of the dogs began to claw the hull,
and the others joined him, and a howl rose shut
them dogs up. The Warden's face had grown blotchy and red.
The spiteed hound broke free in sprang over the gun
slopper strung from his teeth, and the man most surprised
by the game wardens shot seemed to be the game
warden himself. His face drained of color as the noise
echoed off the water, and died in the bent black
limbs and the cattails that bobbed in the current. The
bullet had passed through the front dog's neck and smacked
into the bank behind them, missing Dan by inches. The
dog collapsed, and there was an instant silence before the others,
now loose, clattered overboard into the water, red eyed, tangled
in their leashes trying to swim. Pulled to the goddamn bank,
the warden yelled right now. Scowling, Kent leaned and spat.
He moved his thirty thirty aside, Using the shoulders of
his brothers for balance, he made his way to the
prow kneel, his cheek bones flecked with the dog's blood.
Moved to the back to keep the boat level. At
the front, Kent reached into the water and took the
first dog by its collar, lifted the kicking form and
set it streaming and shivering behind him. His brothers turned
their faces away as it shook off the water. Kent
grabbed the rope that led to the big three legged
hound and pulled it hand over hand until he could
work his finger under its collar. He gave Dan a
sidelong look, and together they hauled it in. Then Kent
grabbed the smaller bitch while Dan got the black and tan.
The warden watched them, his hip swaying with the rise
and fall of the current. Rain was coming harder, now,
spattering against the boats. Kneeling among the dogs, Kent unsnapped
the leash and tossed the spotted hound overboard, and it
sank and then resurfaced and floated on its side, trailing blood.
Kent's lower lip twitched and he looked at Neil and
opened his mouth, and Dan whispered to the dogs and
placed his hands on two of their heads to calm them.
They were wretching in trembling and rolling their eyes fearfully
at the trees. Neil stood up with his hands raised
as if to surrender. When the game warden looked at him,
relief softening his eyes, Kent jumped from his crouch into
the other boat, his big fingers closing around the man's neck.
Later that morning, Kirksey had just unlocked the door and
hung out the open sign when he heard the familiar
rattle of Gates truck. He sipped his coffee and leant
behind the counter and sat on a stool. The boys
came several times a week, usually in the afternoon, before
they started their evenings of hunting and fishing. Kirksey would
give them what supplies they needed, bullets and fishing line
and socks, a new cap to replaced one lost in
the river. They would fill their trucks in cans with gas.
Eighteen year old Dan would get the car battery from
the charger near the wood burning stove and replace it
with the drained one from their boat trolling motor. Kirksey
would serve them coffee or cokes, never liquor, not to boys,
and they'd eat whatever they chose from the shelves, usually
candy bars or barbecue potato chips, ignoring Kirksey's advice to
eat healthier Vienna sausages and denty moore or shift boyard.
Today they came in looking a little spook, Kirksey thought.
Neil stayed near the door, peering out the glass, fogging
by his mouth. His arms folded, and Dan went to
the candy isle and pocketed several Hershey bars. He left
a trail of muddy boot prints behind him. Kirksey would
have to mop later morning, young Fellas he said coffee,
Dan nodded, Kirksey refilled a starfoam cup and then grinned
as the boy loaded it with sugar. You take coffee
with your sweetener, he asked Kent, lending them the computer,
inspecting the items hanging on their pages, A hack saw
a Lucky thirteen lure, a set of Alan wrenches, a
gizmo with several uses, knife and measuring tape and all.
He took off his cap and bought it in his fist.
Kirksey could smell the booze on him. Y'all need something
in particular, he asked, that spotted one you give us,
Kent said, not meeting his eyes. Won't bark no more.
She won't bark no more, no tree. Im fine, but
won't bark neary a time? Got a shoot her his
mouth full of chocolate. Dan looked at Kirksey and by
the door, Neil unfolded his arms. Now, Kirksey said, I
ain't no need for that, Kent, do what that conjured
woman recommends. Now, go out in the woods and find
you a locus shell stuck to a tree. This is
a time of year for him, if I'm not mistaken,
akus hyeah, Kent asked, yeah, bring it back home and
crunch it up in the dogs scraps, and that'll make
her bark like she ought to. Kent nodded to Kirksey,
walked to the door, and he went out, and his
brothers followed. See Kerksey called you're welcome. Dan waved with
a hershey bar and closed the door. Kirksey stared after
them for a while. It had been more than a
year since they'd paid him anything, but he couldn't bring
himself to ask for money. He'd even stop writing down
what they owed. He got his coffee and leant from
behind the counter to the easy chair by the stove.
He shook his head at the muddy footprints on the
candy isle. He sat slowly and tucked a blanket around
his legs, and took out a bottle and added a
splash to his coffee and sipping, he picked up a
novel Louis Lamore sack its Land, and reached in his
apron pocket for his glasses. Though she had been one once,
the woman named Esther wasn't much of a regular and
Kirksey store these days. She lived two miles up river
in a shambling white house with massive magnolia trees in
the yard. The house had to wrap around porch, and
when it flooded, you could fish from the back, sitting
in the tall, white rocking chairs, though you weren't likely
to catch anything. A baby alligator maybe, or sometimes bullfrogs.
Owls nested in the trees along her part of the river,
but in this weather they'd grown quiet. She missed her
hollow calling. Esther was fifty. She'd had two husbands and
six children who were gone and had ill feelings toward her.
She'd had her female parts removed in an operation that
she was still paying for. Now, she lived alone, and
most of the time drank alone. If the Gates boys
hadn't passed out in their truck somewhere in the woods,
they might stop by after a night's work. Esther would
make them strong coffee and feed them salty fried eggs
and link sausages, And some mornings, like today, she would
get a far away look in her eyes and take
Kent's shirt and her fingers and lead him up the
stairs and watch him close the bathroom door and listen
to the sounds of his bathing. She smiled, knowing these
were the only baths he ever took. When he emerged
his long hair stringy, his chest flat and hard. She
let him down the hall, past the telephone nook to
her bedroom. He crawled under the covers and watched her
take off her gown and step out of her underwear. Bending.
She looked in the mirror to fluff her hair, and
then climbed in beside him. He was gentle, at first, curious,
and then rougher, the way she liked him to be.
She closed her eyes, the bed frame rattling and bumping
in her father's old pocket watch slipping off the nightstand.
Water gurgled in the pipework in the walls as Neil
took a bath to hoping for a turn of his own,
which never had happened, at least not yet. Slow down,
baby Esther, whispered into Kent's ear. There's plenty of time.
On April third, it was still raining. Kirksey put as
out his crossword to answer the telephone. Can you come
down to the lock, and Damn Goodlow asked, we got
us a situation developing here. Kirksey disliked smart ass good Low,
but something in the sheriff's voice told him it was serious.
On the news, he'd heard that the new game warden
had been missing for two days. The authorities had dragged
the river all night and had a helicopter in the air.
Kirksey sat forward in his chair, waiting for his back
to loosen a bit. He added a shot of whiskey
to his coffee and gulped it down as he shrugged
into his denim jacket, zipping it up to his neck
because he stayed cold when it rained. He put cotton
balls in his ears and set his cap on his
bald head and took his walking. Came from beside the
door in his truck, the four wheel drive engaged and
the defroster on high. He sank and rose in the
deep ruts and gobs of mud flying past his windows,
the wiper swishing across his view. The radio announcer said
it was sixty degrees and more rain on the way.
Then the red or Lin began to sing. A mile
from the locking down, Kirksey passed a grove Hill ambulance
axled deep in the mud. A burly black paramedic was
wedging a piece of two by four beneath one of
the rear tires, while the board looking driver sat behind
the wheels, smoking and racing the engine, Kirksey slowed and
rode down his window. Y'all going after a live one
or a dead one? Dead to Kerksey, the black man answered.
Kirksey nodded and accelerated. At the locking down, he could
see a crowd of people and umbrellas, and beyond them
he saw the dead man lying on the ground under
a black raincoat. Some onlooker had begun to direct traffic.
Goodlow and three deputies and yellow slickers stood near the
body with their hands in their pockets. Kirksey climbed out,
and people nodded sombrely and parted to let him through. Goodlow,
who had been talking to his deputies, ceased as Kirksey approached,
and they stood looking at the raincoat. Morning sugar Baby,
Kirksey said, using the nickname Goodlow. Hated. Is this who
I think it is? Yep, Goodlow, said rookie game Warden
of the Year with his cane. Kirksey pulled back the
raincoat to reveal the white face. He's a young fella,
he said. There was a puddle beneath the dead man,
twigs in his hair and a clove of moss in
his breast pocket. With the rubber tip of his cane.
Kirksey brushed a snail from the man's forehead. He bent
and looked into the warden's left eye, which was partly open,
and he noticed the throat, the dark bruises there. Goodlow
unfolded a handkerchief and blew his nose and then wiped it.
Don't go abusing the evidence, Kirksey. He stuffed the handkerchief
into his back pocket. Evidence now, sugar baby. Good Low
excelled and looked at the sky. Don't shit me, Kirksey,
you know good and will who done this? I expect
they figured the law wouldn't apply to them up on
this part of the river, the way things has been
all these years. Them other wardens scared of him, are
feeling sorry for him. But I reckon that's fixing a change.
He paused. I had to place a call to the
capitol this morning to let him know that we was
all out of game wardens. And you won't believe who
they patched me through to. Kirksey adjusted the cotton in
his right ear. Oh, Frank David himself, the sheriff said,
Ain't nothing ticks him off more than this kind of thing.
A dread stirred in Kirksey's belly. Frank David was see
a relation to this fellow teacher, Goodlaw said, said he's
been given lessons to young game wardens over at the
Forestry Service. He asked me a whole bunch of questions
regular interrogation. Said this here, young fellow was the cream
of the crop, the best new game warden there was.
Wouldn't know it from this angle, Kirksey said, good Load grunted.
A photographer from the paper was studying the corpse. He
glanced at the skies if gauging the light, and when
he snapped his first picture, Kirksey was in it like
a sportsman. Well, what do you want from me, he
asked Goodlow. You tell them boys, I need to ask
them some questions. Ain't fixing the traps all over the county.
I'll drop by the store this evening if they're there.
They're there, Kirksey said, ain't their damn father. Goodlow followed
him to the truck. You might think of getting them
a lawyer, he said through the window. Kirksey started the engine. Shit,
sugar baby. Them boys don't need a lawyer. They just
need to stay in the woods where they belong folks
ought a note to let them alone by now Goodlow
stepped back from the truck and smacked his lips. I
don't reckon anybody got around, telling that to the deceased. Driving,
Kirksey remembered the Gates brothers when they were younger, before
their father shot himself. He pictured the three blond heads
in the front of Boo's boat as he motored up
river past the store, lifting a solemn hand to Kirksey,
where he stood with the broom on his little back porch.
After Boo's wife, a newborn daughter, had died, he taught
those boys all he knew about the wood. It's about
fishing and tracking and hunting and killing. He kept them
in his boat all night as he telephoned catfish and
checked his trotlines and jugs and shot things on the bank.
He'd given each of his sons a job to do,
one cranking the phone, another netting the stunned catfish, the
third adjusting the chain that dragged along the bottom and
the wire which conducted electricity from the telephone's magnet into
the water. Boo would tie a piece of rope around
the sun's waists and loop the other endto his ankle
in case one of the boys fell out. Downriver in
the moonlight, Kent would pull in the trotlines while Dan
handed him a cricket or a cataba worm for the hook.
Neil took the bash or perch or catfish Kent gave
him and slid its soft, cold belly with a knife
and ran two fingers up into the fish and drew
out as palm full of guts and dumped them overboard.
Sometimes on warm nights, grinnel or cotton mouth or young
alligators would follow them, drawn by the blood. A danger,
too was catching a snake or snapping turtle on the
trot line, and each night Boo whispered for Kent to
be careful to lift the line with a stick see
what he had there, instead of using his bare hand.
During the morning, they would leave the boat tied and
the boys would follow their fathers back through the trees
from trap to trap, stepping when he stepped, and not talking.
Boo emptied the traps and rebated them, while behind him
Kent put the carcasses in his squirrel pouch. In the afternoons,
they gutted and skin what they'd brought home. What time
was left before dark. They spent sleeping in the feather
bed in the cabin where barely a memory. Their mother
and sister had died. After Boo's suicide, Kirksey had tried
to look after the boys. Their ages twelve, thirteen and fourteen,
just old enough who must have thought to raise themselves
for a while. Kirksey let them stay with him and
his wife, who never had a child. He tried to
send them to school, but they were past learning to
read and write. Got expel the first day for fighting
and ganging up on a black kid. They were past
the kind of life Kirksey's wife was used to living.
They scared her the way they watched her with eyes
narrowed into black lines, the way they ate with their hands,
and the way they wouldn't talk. What she didn't know
was that from those years of wordless nights on the
river and silent days in the woods, they had developed
a kind of language of their own, the language of
the eyes, of the fingers, and the way a shoulder twitched,
not of the head. Because his wife's health wasn't good
in those days, Kirksey had returned the boys to their
cabin in the woods. He spent most saturdays with them,
trying to take up where Boo had left off, bringing
them food and milt and clothes and new shoes, and
reading them books and teaching them things and telling them stories.
He'd worked out a deal with Esther, who used to
take hot food to them in the evenings and wash
their clothes. Slowing to let two buzzards hop away from
a dead deer, Kirksey lit a cigarette and wiped the
foggy wind show with the back of his hand. He
thought of Frank David Alabama's legendary game warden. There were
dozens of stories about the man. Kirksey had heard and
told them for years, and had repeated them to the
Gage boys, even made some up to try to scare
them into obeying the law. Now the truth and the
fictions were confused in his mind, and he remembered one
a dark, moonless night, and two poachers used a spotlight
to freeze a buck in the darkness and shoot it.
They take hold of its wide rack of antners and
struggled to drag them big deer, when suddenly they realized
that now there's three men pulling. The first poacher jumps
and says, hey, it ain't supposed to be but two
of us dragging this deer, and Frank David says, ain't
supposed to be none of y'all dragging a deer. The
Gates boys came in the store just before closing, smelling
like the river. Nodding to Kirksey, they went to the
shelves and began selecting cans of things to eat. Kerksey
poured himself a generous shot of whiskey. He'd stopped by
their cabin earlier, not finding them there, left a quarter
on the steps, a signal he hadn't used in years.
Sheriff Goodloaw's coming tonight, he said to Kent, wants to
ask you if you know anything about that Dead Game Warden.
Kent shot the other boys a look, now, I don't
know if y'all ever seen that, fella, Kirksey said, And
I'm not asking you to tell me. He paused, and
in case they wanted to, but that's what old sugar
Baby's going to have on his mind. And if it
was y'all, I just wouldn't tell him anything. Just say
that I was at home that I don't know nothing
about any dead game war, nothing at all, Kent shrugged
and walked down the aisle that he was on and
stared out the back window, though there wasn't anything to
see except trees ghostly and bent. When lightning came, his
brothers took seats by the stove and began to eat.
Kirksey watched and remembered when he used to read to
them Tarzan of the Apes and the Return of Tarzan.
The boys that wanted to hear the books over and over.
They loved the jungle, the elephants, the rhinos, the gorillas,
the anaconda's thirty feet long. They would listen intently, their
eyes brighten the light of the stove. Dan holding his small,
dirty fingers, the slinky Kirksey had given him as a
Christmas present, his lips moving along with Kirksey's voice, spouting
some of the words the Great Apes, Numa, the Lion,
La Queen of a poor and the Lost City. They
had listened to his Frank David stories the same way.
The game warden rising from the black water beside a
tree on a moonless night. A tracker so keen he
could see in the dark, could follow a man through
the deepest swamp by smelling the fear in as sweat,
A bent over shadows, stealing between the beaver lodges, the
cypress trees, the tangle of limb and vine, parting the
long wet bangs of Spanish moss with his rifle barrel,
and creeping toward the glowing windows of the poacher's cabin.
The deer hides nailed to the wall. The gator pelts,
the fish with their grim smiles hooked to a clothes line,
and turtle shells like army helmets, straying in the window sills.
Any pit bull meant to guard the place lying behind
him with its throat slit. Frank David slips out of
the fog, with fogs still clinging to the brim of
his hat. He circles the cabin and peers in each window,
mounts the porch, puts his shoulder through the front door, stands,
with wood splinters landing on the floor at his feet.
A man of average height, clean shaven, no threat until
the big hands come up, curling the fist, knuckles scarred
blue and sharp. Kirksey finished his drink and poured another,
and it burned pleasantly in his belly. He looked at
Neil and Dan occupied by their bags of corn curls.
A Merle Haggard song ended on the radio, and Kirksey
clicked it off, sparing the boys the evening news. In
the quiet, Kirksey heard Goodlaw's truck. He glanced at Kent,
who probably had been hearing it for a while outside.
Goodlaw slammed his door and he hurried up the steps
and tapped on the window. Kirksey exaggerated his lamp and
took his time, letting him in Good evening, Goodloaf said,
Shaking the water from his hands. He took off his
hat and hung it on the nail by the door,
and then hung up his yellow slicker Evening sugar Baby.
Kirksey said, if I can volunteer a little understatement here,
Goodload said, it's a tad wet tonight. Yep. Kirksey went
behind the counter and refilled his glass. You just caught
the tail in the happy hour, that is, if you're
off the wagon again, Can I sell you a tonic
and warm you up? You know we're in a dry county, Kirksey,
Would that be a no? It's a watcher ass. Goodload
looked at the brothers, just wanted to ask these boys
some questions. Well, have that it? Sugar baby. Goodlow walked
to the lance rack and detached a package of Nipchie crackers.
He opened it, offered the pack to each of the boys.
Only Dan took one, smiling Goodlow bit of cracker in
half and turned a chair around, sat with his elbows
across its back. He looked over toward Kent, Half hidden
by shadow, he chewed slowly. Come on out here so
I can see you, boy. I ain't gonna buy nothing
but these stale ass crackers. Kent moved a step closer,
his eyes down focused on Goodload's boots. Good Load took
out a notepad. Where was y'all between the hours of
four and eight am two days ago? Kent looked at
Neil asleep. Neil said, good Load snorty. Now, come on, boys,
the whole Dern County knows y'all ain't slept a night
in your life. Y'all was out on the river. Weren't
you making a few telephone calls you saying he is
a liar? Kirksey asked, I'm posing the questions here. Good
Load chewed on another cracker. Hell, everybody knows them other
game Boardings has been letting y'all get away with all
kinds of shit. I reckon this dead fellow had something
to prove being new, and all sounds like he ought
to use the life jacket, Kirksey said, wiping the counter.
It appears good Low studied Kent, that he might have
been strangled. You got an alibi, boy. Kent lowered his eyes,
took his hands out of his pockets and bought them
into fists. Good Low side, I mean, Christ, is there
anybody that can back up what you're saying? The windows flickered, Yeah,
Kirksey said, I can. Good Low turned and faced the storekeeper.
You that's right. They were here with me here in
the store. Good Load looked amused. They was was they? Well? Okay,
mister Kirksey, how come you didn't mention that to me?
This morning? Saved us all a little time. Kirksey saw
Kent's eyes, but saw nothing there, no understanding, no appreciation,
no fear. He went back to wiping the counter. Well,
I guess because they was passed out drunk, and I
didn't want to say anything, being as I was given
alcohol to youngins. But now they has come down to murder,
you figured, you'd just better on up something like that,
said Kirksey. Goodlaw stared at Kirksey for a long time,
neither would look away. Then the sheriff turned to the boys.
Y'all ever heard of Frank David? Dan nodded well, Goodlad said,
looks like he's aiming to be this district's game warden.
I figure he pulled some strings what he did. Kirksey
came from behind the counter that all your questions. It's
past closing and these youngins need to go home and
get some sleep. He went to the door and opened
it and stood waiting alrighty. Then the sheriff said, standing,
I expect ought to be getting back to the office
aity how he winked at Kirksey, see you or these
boys don't leave the county for a few days. This
ain't over yet. Put the crackers in his coat. I
expect y'all might be hearing from Frank David too, he said,
watching the boy's faces, but there was nothing to see alone. Later,
Kirksey put out the light and bolted the door. He
went to adjust a stove and found himself staring out
the window, looking into the dark where he knew the
river was rising and swirling tires and plastic garbage can
lids and dead wood from upriver floating past. He struck
a match and lit a cigarette, and the glow of
his ash reflected in the window, and he saw himself
years ago, telling the boys these stories, how Frank David
would sit so still in the woods waiting for poachers,
that dragonflies would perch on his nose, nats would walk
over his eyeballs. Nobody knew where he came from, but
Kirksey had heard that he'd been orphaned as a baby
in a fire and found half starved in the swamp
by a Cajun woman. She raised him on the slick
red clay banks of the tom Bigbie River, among laying
black poachers and moonshiners. He didn't even know how old
he was, people said, And they said he was the
best poacher ever, the craftiest, the meanest. That he'd cut
a drunklogger's throat and a duke joint knife fight one night.
That he'd fled south and under age, joined the Marines
in mobile and wound up in Korea the infantry, where
because of his shooting ability and his stealth that made
him a sniper Before he left that country, he'd registered
over one hundred kills communists half a world away, who
never saw him coming back home in Alabama, he disappeared
for a few years, and then showed up at the
state Game Warden's office demanding a job. Some people had
heard in the intervening time he'd gotten religion. What makes
you think I ought to hire you, the head game
Morden ask him, because I spent ten years of my
life poaching right under your damn nose. Frank David's The
Gates Boys pick up was the same old Ford their
father had shot himself in several years before, heartbroken over
their mother's death. The bullet hole and the roof had
rusted out, but was now covered with a strip of
duct tape from Kirksey's store. Spots of the truck's floor
were rusted away, too, so things in the road often
flew up into their laps, rocks and Budweiser cans, and
a king snake they were trying to run over. The
truck was older than any of them, only one thin
prong left of the steering wheel and the holes from
the missing knobs and the dash. It was a three
speed a column shifter, the gearstick covered with a bucks
dried balls sack. A window and windshield busted or shot
out years before hadn't been replaced because most of the
driving took them along back roads after dark or in
the fields, and the things they came upon were easier
shots without glass. Though he'd never had a license, Kent
drove had since he was eight. Neil road shot gun tonight.
Both were drinking, and in the back Dan stood holding
his rifle, trying to keep his balance below the soles
of his boots. The floor was soft, a tarry black
from the blood of all the animals they'd killed. You
could see spike antlers and forelegs and hoofs of deer,
teeth and feathers and fur, the brittle beaks and beards
of turkeys, and the delicate hinge leg bone of something
molded in the sludge like a fossil, just beyond a
no trespassing sign, already gnawed up by bullets. Kent swerved
off the road and they bounced and slid through a
field in the rain, shooting at rabbits. Then they split up,
the younger boys checking traps, one on each side of
the river. Kent in the boat, rebaiting their trotlines the
way his father had shown him. They met at the
trug just before midnight, untied the dogs and trumped over
a steep logging path, down on one end of four
leashes and the lunging hounds on the other. When they
got to the bottom land, he unclipped the leashes and
loosed the dogs, and the brothers followed the bang ahead
in the dark, aiming their flashlights into the black mesh
of trees, where the eyes of coons and possums gleamed
like rubies. The hounds bathed and frothed and clawed at
the trunks of trees, and leaped into the air and
landed and leaped again, and their sides pumping and ribs showing.
When the gates came to the river two hours later,
the dogs were lapping water and panting. Dan bent and
rubbed their ears and let them lick his cheeks. His
brothers rested and drank, belching at the sky, and after
a time they leased the hounds and staggered downstream to
the live oak, where their boat was tied. They loaded
the dog dogs in and shoved off into the fog
and trolled over the still water in the middle. Neil
lowered the wire in the chain stolen from a child's
swing set behind the boat and began cranking the old telephone,
which he held between his legs. Dan knitted the stunned catfish.
You couldn't catch him with your hand, or they'd come too,
and he threw them into the cooler, where in a
few seconds the waking fish would begin to thrash. And
in the rear, Kent propped his rifle on his knees
and watched the bank in case of coyote, wandered down
hunting bullfrogs. They climbed out of the woods into the
dirt road in the misty dawn, plying through the muddy
yards and pissing by someone's front porch and plain sight
of the face in sight a few houses down. Mor
Set didn't come to his door, and when Kent tried
the handle, it was locked. He looked at Neil, then
put his elbow through the glass and reached in and
unlocked it. While his brother's searched for liquor, Dan ate
the biscuits he found wrapped in tinfoil on the stove.
He found a box of corn flacks in the cabinet,
and he ate most of them too. He had to
play the cold fried liver. Neil was in a bedroom
looking under the bed, and in the closet he was
going through drawers and his dirty fingers smudged white shirts.
And in the back of the house Kent found a
bathroom door locked from in the side he Jimmy had
opened with his knife, and when he came into the kitchen,
he had a gallon jar of whiskey under his arm
and euphraed. He steppdaughter by the wrist. Dan stopped chewing,
crumbs falling from his mouth. He approached the girl and
put his hand out to touch her, but Kent pushed
him hard into the wall. But Dan stayed there, a
clock ticking beside his head and a string of spit
linking his open lips, watching as his brother ran his
rough hands up and down the girl's shivering body. Her
eyes were closed and lips tr in prayer. Looking down,
Kent saw the puddles spreading around her bare feet. Dan
giggled and then put his hand over his mouth shit,
Kent said, letting her go. She pissed herself. She shrank
back against the wall behind the door and was still there,
along with a bag of catfish on the table when
her stepfather came back half an hour later, ten gallons
of whiskey under the tarp in his truck. On that
same Saturday, Kirksey drove to the chicken fights held in
Heflin Bradford's bulging barn, deep in the woods, cloudy with mosquitoes.
He passed a hand painted sign that had been there
forever as long as he could remember, nail to a tree,
it said, Jesus is coming. Kirksey climbed out of his
truck and button his collar, his ears full of cotton.
Heflin's wife work beneath the rented aunting and grilling chicken
and sausages and selling cokes and beer. Gospel music played
from a portable radio by her head. Heflin's grandson Nolan,
took the price of admission at the barn door and
stamped the backs of white hands and the cracked pink
palms of black ones. Men in overalls and baseball caps
that said cat Diesel Power or STP stood at the
tailgates of their pickup, smoking cigarettes, stooping to peer into
the cages where the roosters paste the air was filled
with windy rainspits and the crowing of roosters. The ground
littered with limp dead birds. A group of loggers was
discussing Frank David, and Kirksey paused to listen. He's one
caught that bunch over in Washington County. One man said
them alligator poachers. Sugar Baby said to of them wound
up in intensive care. Another one claimed said they pulled
a gun and old Frank day David went crazy with
an axe handle. Kirksey moved on and paid the five
dollars admission. In the barn, there were bleachers along the
walls and a big circular wooden fence in the center,
the dome of chicken wire over the top. Kirksey found
a seat at the bottom, next to the back door,
near a group of men old farts he'd known for
forty years. People around them called out bets, and bets
were accepted. Cans of beer were lifted, and Kirksey produced
a thermos of coffee and a dented tin cup. He
poured the coffee, then added whiskey from a bottle that
went back into his coat pocket. The tin cup warmed
his fingers as he squinted through his bifocals to see
which bird to bet on. In separate corners of the barn,
two bird handlers doused their roosters heads and asses with
rubbing alcohol to make them fight harder. They tightened the
long steel curved spurs. When the referee in the center
of the ring indicated it it was time, the handlers
entered the pen, each cradling his bird in his arms.
They flashed the roosters at one another until their feathers
had ruffled with blood lust and rage, and the roosters
pedaled the air, stretching their necks toward each other. The
handlers kept them a breath apart for a second, then
withdrew them to their corners, whispering in their ears. When
the referee tapped the ground three times with a stick,
the birds were unleashed. They charged and rose in the
center of the rain, gouging with spur and beak. The
handlers circling the fight like crabs, blood on their forearms
and faces, ready to seize their roosters. At the referee's
cry of handle, A clown of Louisiana occasions watched, and
they emerged red eyed from a van in a marijuana cloud.
Skinny shirtless men with oly ponytails and goates, and tattoos
of symbols of black magic under their arms. They carried thick,
white hooded roosters to pit against the reds and blacks
of the locals. Their women had stumbled out of the
van behind them, high yellowl like gypsies, big lips and
big chested girls, and halter tops tied at their bellies,
and many skirts and moccasins. In the ring, the Cajuns
kissed their birds on the beaks, and one tall, completely
bald Cajun, wearing gold earrings in both ears, put his
bird's whole head in his mouth. His girl, too, came
barefoot into the ring, tattoo of a snake on her shoulder,
and took the bird's head into her mouth. Bet on
them white ones, a friend whispered to Kirksey. These ones
around here ain't ever seen a white rooster. They don't
know what they're fighting. That evening, bending to check a
trap in the woods north of the river, Dan took
hold of a sapling and yelped when a spray of
water rained on him. He crouched, dripping and waited while
the drumming of his heart slowed, forced himself to rise
and move on so his brothers wouldn't laugh at him
for being afraid near dark. In the wooden trap next
to an old fence row, he was surprised to find
a tiny white fox they'd once seen cross the road
in front of their truck. He squatted before the trap
and poked a stick through the wire at the thin snout,
his hands steady, despite the way the fox snapped at
the stick and bit off the end. Would a witch
woman want this alive? Never thought of her. He looked around.
It felt like she was watching him, as if she
were hiding in a tree, in the form of some animal,
a possum, or a swamp rat or a chicken snake.
He stood and dragged the trap through the mud and
over the land. While in the trap, the fox jumped
in circles, growling. A mile up stream, Neil had lost
a boot to the mud and was hopping back on
one foot to retrieve it. It stood buried to the ankle.
He wrenched it free and then sat with his back
against a sweet gum to scrape off the mud. He'd
begun to lace the boot when he saw a hollow
tree stump, something moved inside. With his rifle barrel, he
rolled the thing out. It was most of the body
of a dead catfish, and the movement from the maggots
devouring it. When he kicked it, they spilled from the
fish like rice pellets and lay throbbing in the mud downstream.
As night came and the rain fell harder, Kent trolled
their boat across the river, flashlight in his mouth, using
a stick to pull up the trot line length by
link and removing the fish or turtles, and rebating the
hooks and dropping them back in the water. Near the bank.
Approaching the last hook, he heard something. He looked up
with a flashlight in his teeth to see the thing
untwirling in the air. It wrapped around his neck like
a rope, and for an instant he thought he was
being hanged. He grabbed the thing. It flexed and tightened,
and then his neck burned and went numb, and he
felt dizzy, his fingertips buzzing, his legs weak. A tree
on the bank distorting, doubling, trippling into a whole line
of fuzzy shapes, turning sideways and floating. Kent blinked and
felt his eyes bulging and his tongue swelling. His head
was about to explode, and then a bright light. His
brothers found the boat at dawn, four miles downstream, lodged
on the far side in a fallen tree. They exchanged
a glance and then looked back across the river. A
heavy gray fog hooded the water, and the boat appeared
and dissolved in the ghostly limbs around it. Neil sat
on a log and took off his boots and left
them standing by a log, and he removed his coat
and laid it over the boots. He had his brother
his rifle without looking at him, left him watching as
he climbed down the bank, hands and elbows in the
air like a believer, waded into the water. Dan propped
the second rifle against the tree and stood on the
bank holding his own gun, casting his frightened eyes up
and down the river. From far away, a woodpecker drummed
crows began to collect in a pine tree down stream,
and after a while Dan squatted, thinking of their dogs
tied to the bumper of their truck. They'd be under
the tailgate, probably trying to keep dry. Soon Neil had
trolled the boat back across, and together they pulled it
out of the water and stood looking at their brother,
who lay across the floor among the fish and turtles
that he had caught, one greenish terrapin, still alive, a
hook in its lip, stared back. They both knew what
they were supposed to think. The blood, and the sets
of twin fang marks, and the black bruises and shriveled skin,
the next swollen like mumps, the purple bulb of a
tongue between his lips, they were supposed to think cotton mouth.
Ken's hands were squeezed into fists, and they were hardened
that way. The skin wrinkled, and his eyes were half open.
His rifle lay unfired in the boat, and the telephone
rig seemed untouched, as if indeed a snake had done this.
But it wasn't the tracks of a snake they found.
When they went to get the white fox. The fox
was gone and the trap was empty. Its cat sprung.
Neil knelt his hand and ran his knuckles along the
rim of the bootprint in the mud, not a very
wide track, not very far from the next one. He
put his finger in the black water that had already
begun to fill the track, not too deep. He looked
up at Dan, the print of an average sized man.
In no hurry, Neil rose and they began above them.
The sky cracked and flickered silently and quickly, no time
to get the dogs. They followed the trail back through
the woods, losing it once and twice, and backtracking and
working against the rain that fell and fell harder, that
puddled blackly and crept up their legs until they stood
in the water to their ankles, rain beating on the
brims of their caps, and they gazed at the ground
and the sky, at the rain streaming down each other's
muddy faces. At the truck, Dan jumped into the driver's
seat and reached for the keys. Neil appeared in the window,
shaking his head, and when Dan didn't scoot over, the
older boy hit him in the jaw through the window,
and then slung open the door and pulled Dan out,
sending him rolling over the ground. Neil climbed in and
had trouble getting the truck choked. By the time he
had the hang of it, Dan had gotten into the
back and sat among the wet dogs, staring at his
dead brother's eyes at their cabin. They carried Kent into
the woods and they laid him on the ground and
began digging near where their sister and mother and father
were buried in their unmarked graves. For three hours they worked,
the dogs coming from under the porch and sniffing around
Kent and whining and watching the digging, finally sleeking off
and crawling back under the porch. An hour later, they
came out again and stood in a group at the
edge of the yard bay. The boys paused but saw
and heard nothing. When the dogs kept making noise, Neil
got his rifle and fired into the woods several times.
He nodded to his brother and they went back to digging.
By the time they finished, it was late afternoon and
the hole was full of slimy water, and they were
black with mud. They each took one of Kent's boots,
and Neil got the things from his pockets. They stripped
off his shirt and pants and socks and lowered him
naked into the hole, and when he bobbed to the
top of the water, they got stones and waited them down,
and then shoveled mud into the grave. They showed up
at Esther's blackest tar. Where's kent, she asked, holding her
robe at her throat. We buried him, Neil said, moving
past her into the kitchen. She put a hand over
her mouth, and as Neil told her what they'd found,
she slumped against the door, looking outside. An owl flew
past in the floodlights. She thought of calling Kirksey, but
decided to wait until morning. The old bastard thought that
she was a slut and a corruption fortnight, she'd just
keep them safe in her house. Neil went to the den.
He turned on the TV. The reception was bad because
of the weather. Dan, a bruise on the left cheek,
climbed the stairs. He went into one of the bedrooms
and closed the door behind him. He was chilly in
the room, and he noticed pictures of people on the wall,
children and a tall man and a younger woman. He
took to be Esther. She'd been pretty. Then he stood
dripping on the floor, looking into her black and white face,
searching for signs of a woman he knew now. Soon
the door opened behind him and she came in, and
though he still wore his filthy, wet clothes, she steered
him to the bed and guided him down onto the
edge of it. She unbuckled his belt and removed his
hunting knife and stripped the belt off, and she unbuttoned
his shirt and rubbed her fingers across his chest, the
hair just beginning to thicken there. She undid his pants
and ran the zipper down its track. She worked him
over his thighs and knees and ankles and draped them
across the back of the chair. She pulled off his
boots and socks and pushed him back onto the bed,
and pried a finger beneath the elastic of his underwear
and felt what had already happened. He looked at her face,
his mouth open. Esther touched his chin, the scratch of whiskers,
his breath on her hand. Hush now, she said, and
washed him fall asleep downstairs. The TV went off. When
Goodlow knocked, Esther answered a cold sliver of her face
and the crack door. The hell you won't good evening
to you too. The gates is here, No Goodlow glanced
at him. Believe that's their truck. It's kind of hard
to mistake, especially for a trained lawman. We're just cruising
by and seen it. She tried to close the door,
but Goodlow had his foot in it. He glanced at
the three deputies who stood importantly by the blazer. They
dropped their cigarettes and crushed them out. They unsnapped their
holsters and strode across the yard, standing behind Goodlow with
their hands on their revolvers and their legs apart like
TV deputies. Why don't you just leave them alone? Esther said,
ain't they been through enough? Tell them I'd like to
see them, good Load said, tell them to get their boots.
You just walked straight to hell. Mister Dan appeared behind
her lines from the bed, leaning on his face. Whoa nellie,
good Load said, boy, you look plumb terrible. Why don't
you let us carry you on down to the office
for a little coffee, little cake. He glanced back at
one of the deputies. We got any of that cinnamon
roll left day? Do you have a warrant for their rest?
Esther asked, now, I ain't got a warrant for their arrest.
They ain't under arrest. They're fixing to get questioned. That's
all strictly informal. Good Load winked, you reckon, you could
do without them for a couple of hours. Fuck you,
sugar baby. The door slammed, The good Load nodded down
the side of the house, and two deputies went to
make sure nobody escaped from the back. But in a
minute Dan came out, dressed his hands in his pockets,
and followed Goodload down the stairs, the deputies watching him
closely and watching the house. Where's your brothers, Goodlow asked.
He looked down. Goodload nodded to the house, and the
two deputies went in, guns drawn. They came out a
few minutes later, frowning must have heard us coming, Goodloaf said, well,
we got this one. We'll find them other too tomorrow.
They got into the blazer and Goodload looked at Dan
sitting in the back. Put them cuffs on him, Goodload said,
holding his rifle. Neil came out of the woods when
the blazer was gone, and he returned to the house.
They got Dan. Esther said, why didn't you come tell
him they was out there? The boy got to learn,
Neil said. He went to the cabinet where she kept
the whiskey and took the bottle. She watched him go
to the sofa and sit down in front of the
blank TV. Soon she joined him in glasses. He filled both,
and when they emptied them, he filled them again. They
spent the night like that, and at dawn they were drunk.
Wearing her robe. Estra began clipping her fingernails, a cigarette
smoking in then ashtray beside her. She'd forgotten about a
calling Kirksey. Neil was telling her about the biggest catfish
they'd ever called up, one hundred pounds, he swore, one
hundred and fifty. You could have put your whole head
in that old cat's mouth, he said, and sipping his
whiskey backfin long as you damn arm, he stood and
walked to the front window. There were toads in the yard.
With the river swelling, they were everywhere. In the evenings,
there were rain frosts. The yard had turned into a pond,
and each night the rain frog sang. It was like
no other sound. Esther said. It kept her up all night.
That and some other things, she said. Neil heard a
fingernail land in the a ashtray, and he rubbed his
hand across his chin and felt the whiskers there. He
watched the toads as they huddled in the yard, still
as rocks and bloated and miserable looking. That catfish was green,
he said, sipping. I swear before God, green is grass.
Theamn goddamn rain frogs, she said, I just lay there
at night with my hands over my ears. A clipping
rang the ashtray. He turned and went to her on
the sofa. There was moss growing on his nose, he said,
putting his hand inside her robe on her knee. Go
find your brother, she said, And she got up and
walked unsteadily across the floor and went into the bathroom
and closed the door. And when she came out and
the bottle were gone. Without kent, Neil felt free to
do what he wanted, which was to drive very fast.
He got the truck started and he spun off, aiming
for every mudhole that he could. He shot past the
house with a washing machine on the front porch and
two thin black men butchering a hog hanging from a tree.
One of the men waved with a knife, drinking. Neil
drove through the mountains of trash at the dunk and
turned the truck in circles, kicking up muddy rooster tails.
He swerved past the Negro church in the graveyard, where
a group of blacks huddle four wobbling poles over an
open grave, the wind tearing the preacher's hat out of
his hands, and a woman's umbrella reversing. When he tired
of driving, he left the truck in their hiding place, and,
using the trees for balance, stumbled down the hill to
their boat. He carried Kent's rifle, which he had always admired,
and he wore Kent's jacket. On the river, he fired
up the outboard and accelebrated the boat, prowl lifting and
leveling out, the buzz of the motor rising in the trees.
The water was nearly orange from the mud, and the
cypress sneeze nothing but knobs and tips because of the floods.
A cotton mouthwa around most every one of them. During
the old train trestle, he cut the motor and coasted
to a stop. He sat listening to the rain, to
the distant barking of a dog a half a mile away,
chasing something, maybe a deer. As the dog charged through
the woods, Neil closed his eyes and imagined the terrain,
marking where he thought the dog was now and where
he thought it was now, then the barking stopped suddenly,
as if the dog had run smack into a tree.
Neil clicked on the trolling motor and moved the boat
close to the edge of the river, the rifle across
his knees. He scanned the banks, and when the rain
started to fall harder, he accelerated toward the trustle from
beneath the cross ties. He smelled Chris soak and watched
the rain as it stirred the river. He looked into
the gray trees and thought he would drive into town
later see about getting Daan Kent had never wanted to
go to Grove Hill, and their father had warn them
of the police of jail and telling your truck needed
to have a tag in tail lights. A worked Neil
picked up one of the catfish from the night before.
It was cold and stiff, as if carved out of wood.
He stared at it, watching the green belowflies hover over
his fist, and then threw it over into the weeds
along the bank. The telephone rig was under the seat.
He lifted the chain quietly, considering what giant catfish might
be passing beneath the boat this very second. I think
as large as a man's thigh, with eyes the shape
of right plums and skin the color of mud. Catfish
their father had taught them, have long whiskers that make
them the only fish that you can call. Kirksey had
told Neil and his brothers that if the game warden
caught you telephoning, all you needed to do was dump
your box overboard. But Kirksey warn Frank David would handcuff
you and jump overboard and swim around the bottom of
the river until he found your rig. Neil spat a
stream of tobacco juice into the water, and minnos appeared
and began to investigate, nibbling at the dark yoke of
spit as he elongated and dissolved. With the rifle safety off,
he lowered the chain into the water, then the wire,
and a good distance apart, he checked the connections, and
then lifted the phone and began to crank Hello. He
whispered the thing his father had always said, grinning in
the dark. The wind picked up a bit, and he
heard a rattling in the trees, and he dialed faster.
Had just seen the first silver body appear behind him,
when something landed with a clatter in the boat. And
he glanced over a bottle of dynamite, sparks hissing off
the end, fuse already gone. He looked above him and
the trestle, but nobody was there. He moved to grab
the dynamite, but his cheeks ballooned with a hot red wind,
and his hands caught fire. And when the smoke cleared
and the water stopped boiling, silver bodies began to bob
to the surface, large mouth bass and brim and guar,
and suckers and white perch, and polly wogs and catfish.
Some only stunned, but others did, and pieces of pink
fruit like things, the water blooming darkly with mud. Kirksey's
telephone rang for the second time in one day, a
rarity that proved that his wife had always said, bad
news comes over the phone. The first call had been Esther,
telling him of Kent's death, Dan's arrest, and Neil's disappearance.
This time Kirksey heard Goodlow's voice tell him that somebody,
or maybe a couple of somebody's, had been blown up
on the trustle. Neil Kirksey said, sitting He arrived at
at the trestle and with his cane hobbled over the
uneven tracks. Goodload's deputies and three ambulance drivers and rubber
gloves and waiters were scraping pieces off the cross ties
with spoons and dropping the parts and zip lock bags
the boat. Two flattened shreds of aluminum lay on the bank,
and none of the water minnows darted about, nibbling christ
Kirksey said. He brought a handkerchief to his lips. Then
he went to where Goodlow stood on the bank, writing
in his notebook. What do you aim to do about this,
Kirksey demanded, We'll try to figure out who it was first,
you know, goddamn well who it was? Well, I expect,
judging from that boat over Yonder, it's either Neil or
Kent Gates, it's Neil. Kirksey said, Well, why do you
know that? Kirksey told him that Kent was dead. Goodlaw
studied the storekeeper. I ain't seen the body, have you.
Kirksey's blood pressure was going up. Fuck, sugar baby, are
you one bit of ware of what's going on here? Well,
it's fishing accident, Goodload said. His bait exploded from the bank.
A deputy call that he'd found most of a boot
foot still in it, he said, holding it up by
the lace. The deputy behind him gagged and turned away.
Tag it, Goodload said, writing something down and keep looking.
Puke on your own time. Kirksey poked Goodlow in the
shoulder with his cane. You really think Neil would blow
himself up? Goodload looked at his shoulder, the muddy cane print,
and then at the storekeeper. Not on purpose, I don't,
and he paused, of course, suicide does run in their family,
you half wit son of a bitch. What about Kent Well,
what about Kent christ sugar Baby? Goodlow held up his hand.
Just show me, Kirksey. They left the ambulsce drivers and
the deputies had walked the other way without talking, and
when they came to Goodlaw's blazer, they got in and
drove without talking. Soon they stopped in front of the
gates cabin, and instantly hounds surrounded the truck, barking viciously
and jumping with muddy paws against the glass. Goodload blew
the horn until the hounds slunk away, heads Low and
fang spared. The sheriff opened his window and fired several
times in the air, backing the dogs up before he
and Kirksey got out, Goodlow reloaded. The hounds kept to
the edge of the woods, watching while Kirksey led Goodlow
behind the decrepit cabin. Rusty screens covered some windows, and
rags of drapes others. Beneath the house. The dogs paced
them back here, Kirksey said, heading into the trees. Esther
had said that they'd buried Kent, and this was the
logical place. He went slow, already out of breath, stopping
to cough once, and sure enough there lay the grave.
You could see where the dogs have been scratching around it.
Goodlow went over and towed the dirt. You know the
cause of death, you dumb ass. I know the cause
of death. His name is Frank fucking David. I mean
how he was killed, said Goodlow. The boy said, snake
back three times in the neck. But I'd do an autopsy,
oh you would, good Low excelled. Okay, I'll send Roy
and Avery over here to dig his ass up, maybe
shoot these damn dogs. I'll tell you what you better do. First,
you better keep Dan locked up safe. I can't hold
him much longer, Goodload said, unless he confesses. Kirksey swung
at him with his cane and nearly lost his balance
at the edge of the woods. The dogs tensed, and
Goodload backed away, raising his pistol the grave between them.
Are you crazy, Kirksey, You've been locking that store too long,
good Low, Kirksey gasped. The cotton in his left ear
had come out, and the air was roaring through his head.
Even you can't be this stupid. You let that boy out,
and he's that cold blooded fucker's next target target, Kirksey.
Shit ain't nothing to prove anybody to kill them damn boys.
This one a snake bit. You said so yourself. That
other one blowing hisself up them durned gates is had
fished with dynamite their whole lives. You ought to know
that you the one gets it for him. He narrowed
his eyes. You're about neck deep in this damn thing,
you know that. And I don't mean just lying to
protect them boys, neither I mean selling explosives illegally to miners. Kirksey.
I don't give a shit if I am. Kirksey yelled.
Two dead boys in two days, and you're worried about dynamite.
You ought to be out there looking for Frank David.
He's supposed to be here for another week, week or two,
Goodloaf said, paperwork, He fired his pistol. Kirksey jumped and
looked down at his chest to see the blood, but
the sheriff was aiming passed him, and when Kirksey followed
his eyes, he saw the three legged dog that had
been creeping in it lay slumped in the mud, a
hind leg kicking, and blood coloring the water around it.
Good Load backed up a step and smoke curling from
the barrel of his pistol around then the other dog circled,
heads low, moving sideways, and the hair on their spines
sticking up. Let's argue about this in the truck, good
Loaf said. At the store, Kirksey put out the open sign.
He sat in his chair with his coffee and a novel.
He read the same page three times when it occurred
to him to phone Montgomery and get Frank David's office
on the line. It took a few calls, but he
soon got the number and dialed it. The snippy young
woman who answered told Kirksey that yes, mister David was
supposed to take over the Lower Peachtree district, but that
he wasn't starting until next week. She thought, well, where
is he now? Kirksey wanted to know, Florida. She said, no, Louisiana.
He's fishing. No, sir, he couldn't be reached. He preferred
his vacation's private. Kirksey slammed down the phone. He lit
a cigarette and tried to think it was just a matter.
He decided of keeping Dan alive until Frank David officially
took over the district. There were probably other game wardens
who testify that Frank David was indeed over in Louisiana
fishing right now, But once a son of a bitch
officially moved here, he'd have a motive because he'd known
the dead game warden, and his alibi wouldn't be as
strong if Dan turned up dead and Frank David would
be the chief suspect. Even Goodlow would be able to
see that. Kirksey in Hell smoked deeply and tried to
imagine how Frank David would think, how he would act,
the noise he would make or not make as he
went through the woods, What he would say if you
happened upon him or he upon you, What he would
do if he came into the store. Certainly, he wasn't
a creature that Kirksey had created to scare the boys,
not some wild, ghostly thing. He was just a man
who had had a hard life and who'd grown bitter
and angry. A man who chose to uphold the law
because breaking it was no challenge, A man with no
obligation to any other men or a family, just to
himself and his job to some damn unwritten game Warden code.
His job was to protect the wild things the law
had deemed worthy, deer and turkeys, alligators. But how did
the Gates Boys fall into the category of trash animal?
Wildcats or possums or armatie villas, snapping turtles, snakes? Things
you could kill any time, run over in your truck
and not even look in your mirror to see it
dying behind you. Why couldn't Frank David see that he,
more than a match for the boys, was exactly the
same as them. Kirksey drove to the highway. The big
thirty six he hadn't touched in years, was on the
seat next to him, and as he steered, he pushed
the cartridges into the clip and then shoved the clip
into the guns underbelly. He pulled the lever that injected
a cartridge into the chamber, and took a long drink
of whiskey to watch down the three pills that helped
all the ache in his knees and the one in
his gut. It was almost dark when he arrived at
the edge of the large field near park, facing the grass.
This was a place a few hundred yards from a
fairly well traveled blacktop, a spot no sane poacher would
dare use. There were already two or three deer creeping
in the open from the woods across the field that
came to eat the tall grass, looking up only when
a car passed, their ears swiveling, jaws frozen, and sprigs
of grass twitching in their lips like the legs of
an insect. Kirksey sat watching. He sipped his whiskey and
lit a cigarette with a trembling hand. Both truck doors
were locked, and he knew this was a very stupid
thing that he was doing. Several times he told himself
to just go home and let things unfold as they would.
But then he saw the faces of the two dead boys,
and the face of the live one when Boo had
killed himself. The oldest two had barely been teenagers, but
it was twelve year old Dan who'd found him. That
truck still had window glass then, and half the back
window shield had been sprayed red with blood. Flies had
gathered at the top of the truck around what Dan
discovered to be a bullet hole, the pistol still clenched
in his father's hand, the rim of Boo's hat still
on his head. The top blown out, and Kirksey frowned
thinking of it. The back of the truck was full
of wood Boo had been cutting, and the three boys
had unloaded the wood and stacked it neatly beside the road.
Kirksey shifted in his seat, imagining the boys pushing that
truck for two miles over dirt roads, somehow finding the
leverage or whatever the goddamn strength to get it home,
to pull their father from inside and bury him, to
clean out the truck. Kirksey shuddered and thought of Frank David,
and then made himself think of his wife instead. He
rubbed his biceps and watched the shadows creep across the field,
the tree line dimming beginning to disappear. Soon it was
full dark. He unscrewed the interior light bulb from the
ceiling and rolled down the window and pull the door
lock up. Quietly, holding his breath, he opened the door
and outside, he propped the rifle on the side mirror,
flicked the safety off, and he reached through the window
and felt alongside the dash for the headlights switch and
pulled it. The field blazed with the eyes of deer,
red hovering dots staring back at him. Kirksey aimed and
squeezed the trigger at the first pair of eyes, Not
wanting to see if he'd hit the deer, he moved
the gun to another pair. He'd gotten off seven shots
before the eyes began to vanish. When the last echo
from the gun faded, at least three deer lay dead
or wounded in the glow of the headlights. One dough
bleeded weakly and bleeded again, and Kirksey coughed and took
the gun back into the truck and closed the door
and reloaded in the dark. Then he waited. The doe
kept bleeding, and things in the woods took shape, detached
and whisked toward Kirksey over the grass like spoon ukes,
and the little noises, things like footsteps, and the stories
Frank David appearing in the bed of someone's moving truck
and punching through the back glass, grabbing and breaking the
driver's arm, leaping from the truck and watching while it wrecked.
Quit it. Kirksey croaked, you damn school girl several more
times that night. He summoned his nerve and flicked on
the headlights, firing at any eyes he saw or thought
he saw, or firing at nothing. And when he finally
fell asleep at two am, his body numb with painkillers
and whiskey, he dreamed of his wife on the day
of her first miscarriage, the way the nurses couldn't find
the vein in her arm, and how they'd kept trying
with the needle, and the way she'd cried and held
his fingers tightly like a woman giving birth. He started
to wake, terrified, as if he'd fallen asleep. Driving Caring
less for silence, he stumbled from the truck and flicked
on the lights and fired, though now there were no eyes.
He lowered the gun and for no reason found himself
thinking of a time when he'd tried fly fishing, standing
in his yard, with his wife watching from the porch,
tarzan of the apes in her lap, and him whipping
the line in the air, showing off, and then the
strange pulling you get when you catch a fish, and
Betty jumping to her feet, the book falling, and her
yelling that he'd caught a bat. For Heaven's sakes, a bat.
He climbed back into the truck, his hands shook so
hard that he had trouble getting the door locked. He
bowed his head and missing her so much that he
cried softly for a long time. Dawn found him staring
at a field littered with dead doughs and yearlings and fawns,
and one of the deer, only wounded, was trying to
crawl toward the safety of the trees. Kirksey got out
of the truck and vomited colorless water, and then stood
looking around the foggy morning. He lifted his rifle and
limped into the grass in the drizzle, and a quick
hip shot put the live deer out of its misery.
He was sitting on the open tailgate trying to light
a cigarette when Goodlow and a deputy passed in their
blazer and stopped. The sheriff stepped out, signaling for the
deputy to stay put. He sat beside Kirksey on the
tailgate the truck, dipping with his weight. His stomach was growling,
You old fool, good Loaf said, staring at Kirksey and
then behind them at the field. You figured to make
Frank David show himself. He shook his head. Good Lord,
almighty Kirksey, what'll it take to prove to you that
there ain't no durned vigilanti game warden out there? Kirksey
didn't answer. Goodlaw went to the blazer and told the
deputy to pick him up at the old man's store.
Get Dave over here to load up them deer quick,
he said, Tell him to gut them and drop them
off at my place in the barn. The deputy put
the blazer into gear. Can I have some of the tenderloin's?
Boss good Load slammed the door at Kirksey's truck. He
helped the old man into the passenger's seat and went
around and got in the driver's seat. He took the
rifle and unloaded it and put his clip in his pocket.
We'll talk about them dear later, he said, now I
better get you back. They gone a silent mile. When
Kirksey said, would you mind running me by Ester's Goodload
shrugged and turned that way. His stomach made a strangling
noise and he patted it absently. The rain and the
wind were picking up rocking the truck, and the sheriff
took a bottle of bourbon from his pocket. It's medicinal,
he said, handing it to Kirksey. It's just been two
freak accidents, that's all, Kirksey. I seen some strange shit
in my life, stranger in this. I seen a nigger
had rabies one time off foaming at the mouth, bit
his terrned wife on her teddy before she shot him.
It's a hell of a thing, buddy boy, and he
took the bottle back them gates. Is is just an
unlucky bunch period. I ain't one to go believe it
in curses, Kirksey, but I swear to God if they
ain't just down right snake bit. Soon Goodload parked in
front of Esther's and they sat waiting for the rain
to slick, and Kirksey rubbed his knees and looked out
the windows where the bottoms of the trees were submerged
in the rising floodwaters. They say old esther has a
root seller, good Load said, taking a sip she had.
I expect it's full of water this time of year,
ain't it. She's probably got cotton mouse wrapped around her plumbing.
He shuddered and offered the bottle, and Kirksey took it
and sipped. He gave it back, and then Goodload drank
and drank again. That they don't hit the spot. When
I was in the service, good Low went on over
in tie Land. They had them little bitty snakes, then
banded crates. They call them poison his cobras, what they
told us used to hide up under the commode lid.
Every time you took a shit, you'd have to lift
the lid up. See was one there? He drank? Yep,
it was many a time I kicked one off in
the water and flushed it down the commode. Wait here,
Kirksey said, and he opened the door, and his pants
legged darkened as the rain poured in, cold as needles.
He set his knee out deliberately and planted his cane
in the mud and pulled himself up. Stood in the
water to his ankles. He leaped across the yard with
his hand before his face, blocking the rain, and there
were two chickens on the front porch, their feathers fluffed
out so that they looked strange and menacing. Kirksey climbed
the porch steps with the pain so strong in his
knees that stars were popping near his face. By the
time he reached the top. He leaned against the house,
breathing hard, touching himself at the throat where a tie
might have gone, and then he rapped gently on the
hook of the cane and the door opened immediately. It
was dark inside, and she stood there looking at him.
How come you don't ever stop by the store anymore? Well,
she folded her arms. Neil's dead, he said, I heard
esther said, now I'm leaving. Fuck this place and every
one of y'all. She closed the door, and Kirksey would
never see her again. At the store. Goodload nodded for
the deputy to stay in the blazer, and then he
took Kirksey by the elbow and helped him up the steps.
He unlocked the door for the old man and held
his icy hand as he sank in his chair. He
want those boots off. Good Low ass spreading a blanket
over Kirksey's lap and unlaced the left and then the right.
Pick up your foot, now the other one. He set
the wet boots by the stove. It's a little damp
in here. I like this thing. He found a box
of kitchen matches on the shelf under the counter, among
the glass figure ings Kirksey's wife had collected, the little Deer,
the figure skater, the unicorn. Goodlow got a fire going
in the stove and stood, warming the backs of his legs.
I'll bring Dan by a little later, he said, But
Kirksey didn't seem to hear. Goodlaw sat in his office
with his feet on his desk, rolling a cartridge between
his fingers. A plate of ribs sat untouched before him.
Despite himself, he was beginning to wonder if Kirksey might
be right. Maybe Frank David was out there on the prowl.
Good Lawman would at least cons the possibility. He stood
and took off his pistol belt and walked to the
back and pushed open the swinging door and had Roy
buzzhm through. So far he'd had zero luck getting anything
out of Dan. The boy just sat in a cell,
wrapped in a blanket, his head shaved for lice, not
talking to anybody, and not eating. Goodlow had told him
about his brother's death, and he'd seen no emotion across
the boy's face. Goodlow figured that it wasn't this youngest
one who'd killed that game warden. It'd probably been the
other two. He knew that this boy wasn't carrying a
full cylinder by the way he never talked, but most
likely he had been a witness. Goodlow had even considered
calling a psychologist from the Searsing Mental Hospital to give
the boy an evaluation. Come on, said Goodlow, stopping by
Dan's sell and jingling the keys. I'm fixing to put
your talent to some good use. Up the boy cuffed
as the deputy drove them toward the Trustle. Turn your head, Dave,
Goodloaf said, handing Dan a pint of old crow. The
boy took it in both hands and unscrewed the lid
and began to drink too fast. Slow down, their partner,
good Loaf said, taking back the bottle. You need to
be a bit of alert. Soon they stood near the trustle,
gazing at the flat shape of the boat on the bank.
Dan knelt and examined the ground. The deputy came up
and started to say something, but good Low motion for quiet,
just like a bloodhound, he whispered. Maybe I ought to
give him your job. Reckon what he's after, the deputy asked.
Dan scrambled up the trustle and the two men followed,
and the boy walked slowly over the rails, first staring
into the trees and then examining the spaces between the crossties.
He stopped and bent down and peered at something, and
he picked it up. Well you got there, boy, good
Low call, going and squatting beside him. He took a
sip of old crow. When Dan hit him two handed.
The bottle flew one way and Goodlow flew the other.
Both landed in the river, and Goodlow, with his hand
clapped to his head to keep his hat on, He
came up immediately, bobbing and sputtering, and on the trestle.
The deputy tackled Dan. When they went down, fighting on
the crossties below. Goodload dredged himself out of the water,
and he came ashore, dripping and tugged his pistol from
its holster. He held it up so that a trickle
of orange water fell, and he took off his hat
and looked up to see the deputy disappear, belly first
into the face of the river. Dan sprinted back down
the track toward the swamp. The deputy came bowling ashore.
He had his own pistol drawn and was looking around vengefully.
Good Low climbed the trestle in time to see Dan
disappear in the woods. The sheriff chased him for a while,
all ducking limbs and vines, but stopped and breathing hard,
his hands on his side and his cheeks red. Dan
circled back through the woods and went quickly over to
the soft ground, scrambling up the sides of hills and
sliding down the other sides. Two haulers over, he heard
the deputy heading in the wrong direction. Dan slowed a
little and trotted for a long time in the rain,
the cuffs rubbing his wrists raw. He stopped and looked
at what he'd been carrying in one hand, a match
limp and black. Now with water nearly dissolved, he stood
looking at the trees around him. The hanging Spanish moss,
and the cypress sneeze rising from the stagnant creek to
his left. The hair on the back of his neck rose,
and he knelt, tilting his head and closing his eyes,
and he listened. He heard the rain, heard it hit
the leaves and wood, and heard the puddles lapping at
their tiny banks. But beyond those sounds there were other sounds.
A walking bird walking, a blue jay, a squirrel barking,
another answering, and the deputy falling a quarter mile away.
Then another sound, this one close, a match striking. Dan
began to run before opening his eyes, and crashed into
a tree. He rolled to his feet, ran again, tearing
through limbs and briers and spider whips. He leapt small
creeks and slipped and got up. And he kept running,
and at every turn he expected Frank David. And he
was near tears when he finally stumbled into his family's graveyard.
The first thing he saw was that kent had been
dug up. Wooden steak surrounded the hole and fenced it
with yellow tape that had words on it. Dan approached slowly,
his fists under his chin. Something floated in the grave.
With his heart pounding, he peered inside. It was the
big three legged, wary of the trees behind him. He
crept toward their backyard, stopping at the edge, and he
crouched and blew into his hands to warm his cheeks,
and gazed at the dark windows of their cabin, and
then circle the house, keeping to the woods. He saw
the pine tree with the low limb they used for
stringing up larger animals to clean, and the rusty chain hanging,
and the iron pipe they struck through the back legs
of a deer or the rare wild pig. Kent and
Neil had usually done the cleaning, while Dan fed the
guts to their dogs and tried to keep them from fighting.
And there past the tree scattered and laid the rest
of the dogs, all shot dead, partially eaten, buzzards standing
in the mud, staring boldly at him, with their heads
bloody and their beaks open. It was dark when Kirksey
woke in his chair. He'd heard the door creak. Someone
stood there, and the storekeeper was afraid until he smelled
the river. Hey boy, he said, Dan ate two cans
of potted meat with his fingers, and a candy bar
and a box of saltines. Kirksey gave him a coat
from the red cooler and he drank it, took another
one while Kirksey got a hike saw from the rack
of tools behind the counter. He slipped the cardboard wrapping
off and nodded for Dan to sit. The storekeeper pulled
up another chair and faced the boy and began sawing
the handcuff chain. The match dropped out of Dan's hand,
but neither saw it. Dan sat with his head down
and his palms up and his wrists on his knees,
breathing heavily while Kirksey worked, and silver shavings had accumulated
in a pile between their boots. The boy didn't lift
his head the entire time, and he'd been asleep for
quite a while. When Kirksey found he saw it through.
The old man rose, flexing his sore hands, and he
got a blanket from a shelf, and he unfolded it,
shook out the dust, and spread it over Dan. He
went to the door and turned the dead bolt. The
phone rang later. It was good Low, asking about the
boy and telling what had happened. Kirksey nearly smiled, You've
been lost all this time? Sugar baby reckon, I have good, Low, admitted,
and we still ain't found Deputy Dave yet. For a
week they stayed in the store together. At times Kirksey
could barely walk, and other times the pain in his
side was worse than ever. He gave the boy a
stocking cap to cover his skinned head and put him
to work sweeping and dusting and scrubbing the shelves. He
had Dan pull a table next to his chair, and
Kirksey did something he hadn't done in years. He took inventory.
With the boy's help, he counted and ledgered each item,
marking it in his life Green book. The backshelf contained
canned soups, vegetables, sardines, and tins of meat. Many of
the cans were so old that the labels fleked off
in Kirksey's hand, and so they were unmarked when Dan
replaced them in the rings. They'd made not only in
the dust, but on the wood itself. In the back
of that last shelf, Dan discovered four tens of underwood
deviled ham and as their labels fell away at Kirksey's touch,
he remembered a time when he'd purposely unwrapped the paper
from these cans because each label showed several red dancing devils,
and some of his colored customers had refused to buy them.
Kirksey now understood that his store was dead, that it
no longer provided a service. His colored customers had stopped
coming for years, the same with Esther. For the past
few years, except for an occasional hunter or logger, he'd
been in business for the Gates boys alone. He looked
across the room at Dan sprang a window with winds
and wiping it absently. Gazing outside, The boy wore the
last of the new denim overalls Kirksey had in stock,
and they were too short by an inch or two. Once,
when the store had thrived, he'd had many sizes, but
for the longest time now the only ones he'd stok
were the boys sizes. That night, beneath his standing lamp,
Kirksey began again to read his wife's copy of Tarzan
of the Apes to Dan. He sipped his whiskey and
spoke clearly to be heard over the rain, and when
he paused to turn a page, he saw that the
boy lay asleep across the row of chairs they'd arranged
in the shape of a bed. Looking down through his bifocals,
Kirksey flipped to the front of the book and saw
his wife's name written in her neat script. He moved
his thumb over to it, and he read it to himself,
and then he turned to the back of the book
to the list of other Tarzan novels, twenty four in all,
and he decided to order them through the mail so
that he and Dan would know the complete adventures of
Tarzan of the Apes. In the morning, Goodlow called and
said that Frank David had officially arrived. The sheriff himself
had witnessed the swearing inn, and he was now this
district's new game warden. Pretty nice fellow, good Loaf said,
kind of quiet and polite. Asked me how the fishing was.
Then it's over, Kirksey thought. A week later, Kirksey told
Dan that he had business in Grove Hill. He'd spent
the night before trying to decide whether to take the
boy with him, but had decided not to that he
couldn't watch him forever. Besides, town wasn't the best place
for a gates. Before he left, he gave Dan his
thirty all six and told him to stay put not
to leave for anything and for himself. Kirksey took an
old twenty two bolt action and placed it in the
back window rack of his truck, and he waved to
Dan and he drove off. He thought that if the
boy wanted to run away, it was his own choice.
Kirksey owed him the chance, at least. At the doctor's office,
the tired looking young surgeon frowned and removed his glasses
when he told Kirksey that the cancer was advancing, that
he'd need to check into the hospital and mobile immediately.
It was way past time. Just look at your color,
the surgeon said, and Kirksey stood and thanked the man,
put on his hat and he leaped outside. He went
by the post office and placed his order for the
Tarzan books, and he shot for the supplies in the
dollar store, using the buggy for support, and then the
pigloo wiggily and had the checkout boys put the boxes
in the front seat beside him. Coming out of the
drug store, he remembered that it was Saturday, that there'd
be chicken fights to day. Impossible news about Frank David.
At Heflin's, Kirksey paid his five dollars admission and let
heflin help him to a seat in the bottom of
the stands. He poured some whiskey into his coffee and
sat studying the crowd. Nobody had mentioned Frank David, but
a few old timers had offered their sympathies for the
deaths of Kent and Neil down in the Pith. The
Cajuns were back, and during the eighth match, one of
the Cajun whites versus the local red the tall ball
Cajuns stooping and circling the tangle birds and licking his
lips as his rooster swarmed the other and hooked it.
The barn smoky and dark, and rain splattering on the
tin roof, and the door swung open instantly. The crowd
was hushed, feathers subtle to the ground. Even the Cajuns
knew who he was. He stood at the door, unarmed,
his hands on his hips. He was a wiry man,
lifted his chin and people tried to hide their drinks.
His giant ears that hook nose the eyes. The bird
handlers reached over their shoulders, clawing at the numbered pieces
of masking tape on their backs. The two handlers and
the referee in the rings sidled out, leaving the roosters
for a full minute. Frank David stood staring, and people
stepped out the back door and climbed out the windows.
Half naked boys in the rafters were frozen like monkeys
and hypnotized by a snake. Frank David's gaze did not
stop on Kirksey, but settled instead on the roosters, the
white one pecking at the red's eyes. Outside, trucks roared
to life, backfiring like gunshots. Kirksey placed his hands on
his knees. He rose and turned up his coat collar
and flung his coffee out, and Frank David still hadn't
looked at him. Kirksey planted his cane and made made
his way painfully out the back door and through the mud,
not a person in sight, just clattering tailgates vanishing into
the woods. From inside his truck, Kirksey watched Frank David
walk away from the barn and head toward the trees.
He watched him step around a mud puddle. Now he
was just a bury bowlegging man with white hair. Kirksey
felt behind him for the twenty two rifle with one
hand while rolling down the window with the other he
had a little trouble aiming the gun with the shaky arms.
He pulled back the boat. He flicked the safety off.
The sight of the rifle wavered between Frank David's shoulders
as the game warden walked as if an old storekeeper
were nothing to fear. Closing one eye, Kirksey pulled the trigger.
He didn't hear the shot, though later he would notice
his ears ringing. Frank David's coat bloomed out to the side,
and he missed a step, and he stopped and put
his hand to his lower right side and looked over
his shoulder at Kirksey, who was fumbling with the rifle's
bolt action. And then Frank David was gone, Just wasn't there.
There were only the trees bent in the rain and
shreds a fog in the air. For a moment, Kirksey
wondered if he'd seen a man at all, or if
he'd shot at something out of his own imagination, if
the cancer that had started in his pancreas had spread
up along his spine and into his brain and was
deceiving him, forming men out of air and walking them
across fields, giving them hands and eyes and the power
to disappear from inside the barn Aroosto Crode, Kirksey remembered Dan.
He hung the rifle in the rack and started his
truck and gunned the engine. He banged over the field
and flattened saplings in a fence, and though he couldn't
feel his feet, he drove very fast. Not until two
days later in the VA hospital and mobile with Kirksey
finally began to piece it all together. Parts of that
afternoon were patchy and hard to remember. Shooting at Frank David,
going to the store and finding it empty, no sign
of a struggle, and the thirty six gone, as if
Dan had walked out on his own and taken the gun.
Kirksey could remember getting back into his truck. He planned
to drive to Grove Hill in the courthouse, the game
Warden's office and find Frank David finished the job, but
somewhere along the way he blacked out behind the wheel
and veered off the road into a ditch. He barely
remembered the rescue workers and the lights and the sirens.
Goodlow himself pulling Kirksey out. Later that night, two coon
hunters had stumbled across Dan wandering along the river, his
face and shirt covered in blood, the thirty six nowhere
to be found. When Goodlow told the semi conscious Kirksey
what happened, the storekeeper turned silently to the window, where
he saw only the reflected face of an old, dang
failed man, and later, still in the warm haze of morphine,
Kirksey lowered his eyelids and let his imagination unravel and
retwine the mystery of Frank David. It was as if
Frank David himself appeared in the chair where Goodlow had sat,
As if the game warden broke the seal on a
bottle of jim Beam and leaned forward on his elbows
and touched the bottle to Kirksey's cracked lips, and whispered
to him a story about boots going over land, and
then gun shot and rain washing the blood trail away
even as the boots passed, about a tired old game
warden taking his hand out of his coat and seeing
the blood there and feeling it trickle along his side
and down the back of his leg, And about the
boy in the game warden's truck, handcuffed and gagged and blindfolded,
about driving carefully through the deep ruts in the road,
stopping behind Esther's empty house and carrying the kicking wet
boy inside on his shoulder. When the blindfold is removed,
Dan has trouble focusing, but knows where he is because
of her smell bacon and soap and cigarettes and dust,
and Frank David holds what looks like a pillow case.
He comes across the room and puts the pillow case down.
He rubs his eyes and sits on the bed beside Dan.
He puts on a pair of reading glasses and opens
a book of matches and lights a cigarette, holds the
filtered into Dan's lips, but the boy doesn't inhale, and
Frank David puts a cigarette in his own lips and
the embers glow. Then he drops it on the floor
and crushes it out with his boot and picks up
the butt, slips it into his shirt pocket. He puts
his hand over the boy's watery eyes, the skin of
his palm dry and hard, cool, and the faint smell
of blood, and he moves his fingers over Dan's nose
and lips and chin. He stops at his throat and
holds the boy tightly, but not painfully, in a strange way.
Dan can't understand, and he finds it reassuring. His studying
heart slows. Something is struggling beside his shoulder, and Frank
David takes the thing from the back. Now the smell
of the room changes and Dan begins to thrash and
whip his head from side to side. My damn son,
Frank David whispers, I hate to civilize you. Good Low
began going to the Veterans Hospital and mobile once a week.
He brought Kirksey cigarettes from a store. There weren't any
private rooms available in the hospital, and the beds around
the storekeeper were filled with dying ex soldiers who never talked.
But Kirksey was beside a window and Goodload would raise
the glass and prop it open with a novel. They
smoked together and drank whiskey from paper cups, listening for nurses.
It was the tall, mean one. One more time, God
damn it, she said, coming out of nowhere and plucking
the cigarettes from their lips so quickly that they were
still puckered. Sometimes Goodlow would push Kirksey down the hall.
When they would get a good wheelchair. The IV rack
attached by a stainless steel contraption with a black handle
the shape of a flower, and they would go to
the elevator and ride down three floors to the covered
area where people smoked and talked about the weather. There
were nurses and black cafeteria workers in white uniforms and hairnets,
and people visiting other people, and a few patients. A
in the halls, they'd see some mean old fart Kirksey knew,
and they'd talk about hospital food or chicken fighting, or
the fact that Frank David had surprised everyone by deciding
to retire after only a month of quiet duty, that
the new game warden was from Texas and a nigger
to boot. Then Goodlow would wheel Kirksey back along the
long window, out of which they could see the tops
of oak trees. On one visit, Goodlow told Kirksey they'd
taken Dan out of intensive care three weeks later. He said,
the boy had been discharged. I give him a ride
to the store. Good Load said. This was in late May,
and Kirksey was a yellow skeleton with hands that shook.
I'll stop buying check on him every evening, good Loa
went on, It'll be okay, The doctor says, he just
needs to keep them bandages changed. I can do that,
I reckon. They were quiet then for a time, just
the costs of the dying men, and the soft swishing
of nurses thighs, and the hum of ivy machines. Goodlaw,
Kirksey whispered, I'd like you to help me with some
The sheriff leaned in to hear, an unlit cigarette behind
his ear like a pencil. Kirksey's tongue was white and cracked,
and his breath was awful. I'd like to change my will,
he said, make the boy the beneficiary, all right, said Goodlow.
I'm obliged, whispered Kirksey, and he closed his eyes. Near
the end, he was delirious. He said he saw a
tiny black creature at the foot of his bed. He
said it had him by the toe. In surprising fits
of strength, he would throw his water pitcher at it,
or his box of tissues, or the reader's digest. Restraints
were called for, and his coma was a relief to everyone,
and he died quietly in the night in Kirksey's chair
in the store. Dan hadn't seemed to hear Goodload's questions.
The sheriff had done some looking into the Grove Hill
Public Library, research was the modern word, and discovered that
one species of cobra spat venom at its victim's eyes,
but there weren't such snakes in southern Alabama anyway. The
hospital lab had confirmed that it was the poison of
a cotton mouth that had blinded Dan. The question, of course,
was who had put the venom in his eyes. Goodloads
shuddered to think of it. How they'd found Dan staggering about,
howling in pain and bleeding from his tear ducts, the
skin around his eye sockets dissolving, exposing the white ridges
of his skull. In the investigation, several local blacks, including
Euphrates more Sets, stated to Goodload that the youngest Gates
boy and his two dead brothers had tested euphrates stepdaughter
in their own home. There was a rumor that several
black men dressed in white sheets with a pillowcases for hoods,
had caught and punished Dan as he alurked along the river,
peeping in folks windows and doing unwholesome things to himself.
Others suggested that the conjured woman had cast a spell
on the gateses that she summoned a swamp demon to
chase them to hell, and still others attributed the happenings
to Frank David. There were a few occurrences of violence
between the local whites and the Blacks, and some fires
and a broken jaw, but soon it died down. In
good Low file the deaths of Kent and Neil Gates
as accidental, but he listed Dan's blinding as unsolved. The
snake venom had bleached the boy's pupils white, and the
skin around the eye socket had required grafts. The surgeons
had had to use skin from his buttocks, and because
his buttock were hairy, the skin around his eyes began
to grow hair too. In the years to calm, the
loggers who clear cut the land along the river would
occasionally stop in the store, less from a need to
buy something, and more from a curiosity to see the
hermit with the milky, hairy eyes. The store smelled horrible,
like the inside of a bear's mouth, and dust lay
thick and soft on the shelves. Because they had come in,
the loggers felt obligated to buy something, but every item
was moldy or stale beyond belief, except for the things
in the cans, which were unlabeled, so they never knew
what they'd get. Nothing was marked as to price either,
and the blind man wouldn't talk. He just sat by
the stove. So the loggers paid more, some less than
what they thought a can was worth, leaving the money
on the counter by the telephone, which hadn't been connected
in years. When Plumper Gray or Goodlow came by on
the occasional evening, smelling of booze, he'd take the bills
in coins and puts them in Kirksey's cash shower and
the rest in his pocket. He was no longer sheriff,
having lost several elections back to one of his deputies,
roy Or Dave. He still wore the same khaki uniform,
but now he drove a lance truck, and his route
included the hospitals and the county, and every other month
the prison. Damn boy, he once cracked to Dan, this
store's doing better business now than it ever has. You
sure you don't want a cookie rack? When Goodlow left,
Dan listened to the rattle of the truck as it faded.
Sugar Baby, he whispered, and many a night for years
after until his own death. In his sleep, Dan would
rise from the chair and move across the floor, taking
Kirksey's cane from where it stood by the coat rack,
and he would go outside and down the stairs like
a man who could see, and his beard nearly to
his belly, and he would walk soundlessly the length of
the building, knowing the woods even butter now as he
crept down the rain rutted gully toward the river, whose
smell never left the caves of his nostrils in the
roof of his mouth. At the river bank, he would
stop and sit with his back against a small pine,
and lifting his white eyes to the sky, he would
listen to the clicks and hum and thrattle of the woods,
seeking out each noise at its source, and imagining it
an acorn nodding and detaching its thin ricochet, and the
way it settled into the leaves, a bullfrog's bubbling throat,
and the things it said, And the trickle of the
river over rocks, around the bases of cattails and cypress sneeze,
and through the wet hanging roots of trees. And then
another sound familiar, the soft, precise footsteps of Frank David
down Wind, coming closer, not going away, circling, the striking
of a match, and the sizzle of ember and fall
of ash, the ascent of smoke, strange and terrifying comfort
for the rest of Dan Gates life. I hope you
all enjoyed that story. Poachers is a short story by
Tom Franklin. It is a story from a collection of
short stories by the same name, Poachers. I think the
book won an award. I think it's the Edgar Award.
I'm not sure. I saw an interview with Tom Tom Franklin,
and he said it won an award, and he didn't
even know what the award was. He had to ask
his agent. He goes, what award is this? I'm sure
he knows now. Anyway. I sent an email to Tom
about a month ago and I asked him if I
could read a story or two from this book, and
his answer back to me was hell, yes, that's all
he sent back. And so he's probably a He's probably
a pretty good guy if he hears this. I certainly
do appreciate him giving me permission to read this great story.
I love this style of writing. It's so easy for
me to follow especially when it's set in a region
where I'm familiar with and I can relate to the characters,
and so I love this story. Tom has several novels available,
plus this book of short stories. I'll put his author
page linked in Amazon in the description, and you guys
can look him up and buy his books and you
will not be disappointed. If you like good literature, good
modern literature, you'll enjoy this stuff. So thank you all
for listening, and we will see you on the next podcast.
Thanks