The Eden Hunter (12 page)

“
Gracias, Papá
,” sang the girls.

A nail had been driven at a slant into the side of the post oak, and the big rabbit was hung upside down by a slit foot. The twins then began to argue over the knife, and Pelayo scolded them until it was passed. The second girl brought the blade to the rabbit’s neck and cut off its head. Dark blood spilled down the rough trunk of the oak to collect between twisting roots.

Back and forth the knife was traded. The girls took turns sawing through the rabbit’s feet, then one peeled the pelt while the other removed the bowels. They finished and the carcass dangled from the nail. The girls carried the hide and guts and head behind
the cabin, and Kau heard happy pigs squeal. After the hogs went silent the girls returned to the front yard with a bucket of water collected from some hidden cistern or well. They took the rabbit down from the tree, washing the carcass and then their hands in the water. One girl quartered the rabbit and took the pink sections of meat inside. “
Bueno
,” said Pelayo, and the remaining daughter nodded as she cleaned her father’s knife.

Soon the dry and dusty cornfield became too hot for Kau to bear, and so he returned to his canoe to think. Across the river the land was unsettled and lush, and he wondered if there, at last, was the quiet forest that he was seeking. He figured that he could hunt in those across-the-river pinewoods, maybe even trade with this farmer Pelayo for corn and milk and eggs. But how to approach him? He took a sip from his canteen, then dragged the canoe halfway into the river. The corn grew close to the bank, and he could see bent stalks left by crop-raiding coons. He stole four or five of the raw ears for himself as a line of clouds passed over the sun and the whole world darkened.

 

HE MADE HIS camp on the western bank, a quarter mile or so inland into the pine forest. As night fell he took up the tinderbox and risked a small fire. He had left the unshucked corn soaking in a shallow pond rimmed with pitcher plants and flytraps, and after the fire had burned down he laid them carefully over the bed of white coals, turning them from time to time just as Samuel had once taught him. He shook his head. Those five years at Yellowhammer now felt as distant to him as his old life in Africa.

The corn cooked as he sat on his horse blanket and thought of the valley-dweller Elvy Callaway. He had been trying to keep her out of his mind, but now finally she forced her way in. On that full-moon night the American had both washed him and tasted him, and he considered the strangeness of that for a long while—how after the death of his wife Janeti he could go so many years without the touch of any woman only to then have such a thing happen here in this land. He remembered the white woman screaming, how she had begged him not to leave her. He remembered the feel of her mouth around him. Just as Elvy was doomed to remain in her valley, he seemed doomed to wander. In the end all he could conclude was that he was a man destined to travel between worlds, to spend a first life moving through one and then a second life struggling through another.

He used the bone club to push the roasting corn free of the coals, and the fire coughed sparks as he waited for the steaming cobs to cool. Satisfied, he picked up the closest of the ears and removed its blackened husk. The meat of the hot corn was swollen and yellow, and he finished with the first ear and then went for another. Soon none were left and it was time for him to sleep. He stretched himself out and saw the chopped face of Benjamin’s man in the moon. A god-giant peering down at him from between a gap in the skeletal pines. In Africa Kau had seen many things revealed in that same moon—animals and trees and rivers—but never once a man.

 

HE HID FOR two days in the forest across the river. It was pine savanna, and the tall trees were mostly longleafs, the flatlands below a green patchwork of wiregrass and saw palmetto interlaced
with game trails. When the wind blew the pines swayed, and from the high canopy there came a sound like the roar of the ocean he thought he had forgotten.

At dawn he would hunt with the sling, and on the second morning he watched a blue heron come circling down through the pines to settle onto the bank of the pond. The slate bird was stabbing at the shimmering water when Kau sent a river stone flying. There was a hollow thumping as the round rock hit the heron hard in the breast. It collapsed stunned but kicking and he ran for it.

 

THROUGH THE HOT hours he would rest in the shade of the pinewoods and then, at night, cross the river to steal corn from Pelayo’s field. Sometimes he would linger, listening to the sounds that escaped from the cabin.

 

SUNSET. HE HEARD laughter in the cornfield and crept toward it. On a small patch of stubbled ground he came upon Pelayo and Elisenda, alone and kissing. A warm breeze blew in from the river, riffling the surrounding cornstalks, and he watched them as they undressed. Elisenda laid herself down on a spread quilt, then giggled as her husband went to her.

Finally Kau turned and crept off, the whole time thinking of his nights with Janeti, the way she would smile at him when the children fell asleep. He pushed his canoe out into the current and yet still he could hear moanings from the cornfield. A new torture. He hooted like an owl calling but of course they did not quit.

 

THE FOLLOWING NIGHT he was carrying more stolen corn to his canoe when he spotted Pelayo’s twin daughters walking along the dim riverbank. The barefoot girls were thin, yet not so much shorter than he himself was. They were talking and laughing, but then they came upon his canoe and went quiet. Kau set the corn down in the dirt and eased back into the field. Here he waited, crouched low and listening, willing his quick breaths to settle.

Soon the twins began to call for their father, and then Kau heard them bolt toward the cabin. He was pulling his knife from its belt sheath when they both came tearing through the corn and slammed into him. He dropped the knife, and the surprised girls screamed as they all fell to the ground together. They were locked in a tumble, and for a flash instant he thought of Benjamin and his bleeding neck. Kau rolled away from them, his eyes now filled with dirt, and began to stumble blind through the cornfield. His breechcloth had come untucked from his belt and was gone.

And then Pelayo’s deep voice cried out from the direction of the cabin. “
¡Ramona!
” he called. “
¡Marcela!
”

A terrified girl answered back: “
¡Papá!
” she shrieked. “
¡Ven por favor!
”

“
¿Qué paso?
”

“
¡Un ladrón! ¡Ven ahora!
”

Kau wiped dirt from his eyes and could see the corn ahead thinning. He had almost reached the river when he was swallowed up by the arms of the farmer Pelayo.

 

THE COLLISION IN the cornfield had somehow swollen the eye of the twin he heard them call Ramona, and so Pelayo took vengeance with the bone club. The farmer and his girls struck blow after blow until finally Kau lay still, refusing to fight them. He felt the tickle of blood leaking from his left ear, a bone in his nose breaking. So this, he decided, will be the death of me. Soon he felt nothing as they beat him, nothing save the numb sensation that he was being hammered like a fencepost into the warm earth. He let himself believe that the farmer was indeed planting him within that turned field, that he would cycle with the crops and fall back in with the natural rhythm of the world. So yes beat me then, he thought, beat me until nothing remains.

He might have been strangled or even drowned had it not been for the arrival of Elisenda. Pelayo had dragged him all the way to the riverbank, but she pried her husband’s fingers from his throat and calmed him. “
Por favor
,” she said. “
No lo mates
.”

 

MORNING. HE AWOKE naked and hogtied on the shit floor of the hot chickenhouse, his hands bound to his feet, and the hens slept in their nest boxes while the angry rooster paced. Now and again the cock would rush forward to peck and spur at his legs, and soon they were badly scratched and bleeding. He rocked onto his side and the rooster retreated. A girl laughed from somewhere close, and Kau craned his neck, searching for her.

The door of the chickenhouse had been propped open and there sat black-eyed Ramona on an overturned bucket. Spread out behind her was his knife and bone club and belt, his canteen and
saddlebags. She said something harsh in Spanish, and he tried to speak to her. He moved his lips but no words came, his damaged throat unable to mold his breaths into anything more than a reptile hiss. There was a constant ringing in his left ear, and he could feel shards of bone jostling in his nose. Again he tried to speak and this time the girl mocked him with hisses of her own.

He began to cough and his mouth filled with salty blood. He spit, then watched his blood and saliva mix with dust and chickenshit. He spit and the girl spit. A speck of her fluid settled onto his eyelash and shined like a prism; for a moment the rays of sunlight that pushed through the cracks in the chickenhouse seemed to sparkle and glisten. He blinked and the world returned to clear.

The girl called for her sister Marcela and there came a muffled response from somewhere beyond. He had his good ear pressed to the stinking ground, and could hear a slight pounding in the earth as she came running. Marcela joined her sister at the entrance to the chickenhouse, and he watched as, together, they regarded him. Ramona then cleared her throat and spit on him once more, impressing her twin. They made a game of it. One would spit and then the other, and when he finally he rolled away from the both of them he was attacked again by the cornered rooster. The twins laughed and crept closer. The rooster flew to the high rung of its roost, and the girls raised their short dresses. Elisenda was shouting for her daughters as the first hot splash of piss hit the side of his face. A shallow cut that ran across the bridge of his fractured nose began to throb and sting, and he shut his eyes and then turned onto his stomach, waiting for these girls to finish, waiting for these girls to be satisfied.

 

LATER THAT DAY a shackle was fastened to his ankle, and at last he was untied so that he could move about the chickenhouse. A chain ran from his shackle up into the rafters, and he felt like a dog on a leash. The shackle was small—could only have been meant for a woman or even a child—and he wondered why, if this was truly a place without slaves, Pelayo would ever possess such a thing.

 

BY EAVESDROPPING ON the chickenhouse whisperings of the twins, he would soon learn that their mother had been awoken from a dream on the night that he was discovered in the cornfield. His visit to their farm—his very appearance, even—had tracked all of the important details of that dream. The superstitious woman had seen his small size and sharp teeth and thought him a death angel come to take one of her daughters. It was good that he had been caught—of that she was certain—but whether it was proper to execute an angel, that was not for simple farmers to decide.

 

HIS SECOND NIGHT on the chain he killed and ate the rooster, and again Pelayo beat him. For all of the next day he was given neither food nor water. He drank raw eggs to quench his thirst, burying the broken shells to avoid another punishing.

 

HE PILED FEATHERS to mark the days, and over the three weeks following his capture word spread and every manner of negro man, woman and child came to behold him. A few Indians, even. Some of the negroes spoke Spanish and some spoke English. They would give Pelayo a basket of vegetables, some ribbon for his wife, and in
exchange he would throw open the door of the chickenhouse, allowing them a look at his
ángel de la muerte
.

 

THE PRIMARY AMUSEMENT of these visitors seemed to be the challenge of somehow making him speak. They would pelt him with rocks and jab him with sticks, threaten him with fire. He tried to communicate with them, pointing at his bruised throat while at the same time shaking his head. He did this time and again but they never once caught his meaning. A young negro flinched and then cursed him. “No suh,” he said. “Don you go puttin no spells on us.”

 

A FOURTH WEEK passed. The ceiling of the chickenhouse was lined with the panpipe nests of dirt daubers, and he watched the black wasps come and go.

His visitors dwindled to the occasional curious Indian, then soon stopped coming altogether. Food was brought rarely now, and he was dependent upon the eggs of the chickens, even the lice in their feathers. It became clear that no one truly believed him an angel anymore. He imagined that he would be killed soon, that Pelayo and his daughters would finally come for him.

To keep his mind he mouthed the names of every member of his Ota band. They came easily and so he moved on to recalling the names of every Kesa and every Indian and every slave and every white man he could recall. He whispered Benjamin last and fell into a sort of half-sleep trance. He saw the boy in the river, dead but moving. Benjamin has walked the Chattahoochee south to the Apalachicola and he is here, underwater and waiting, level with Pelayo’s farm.
One night as the moon rises Benjamin emerges onto the east-bank shore. The blood has drained from his body and most of his flesh is missing. Still, Kau sees him and he has hope. The boy has forgiven him; the boy is coming to save him. He calls Benjamin’s name over and again to guide him to the chickenhouse, and Benjamin leaves the shore for the cornfield. Looking down on the world from somewhere above, Kau can see the collapsing of cornstalks as Benjamin weaves his way closer. Yes, he is coming. Kau says, Benjamin, Benjamin, Benjamin, loud as he can manage and finally the boy steps out onto the dirt of Pelayo’s yard. Benjamin looks at the chickenhouse, then brings two fingers to his lipless mouth and whistles. The door to the cabin opens and Kau sees Marcela and Ramona. The twins leap from the porch to the yard, and the three children meet by the post oak. Together they all turn for the chickenhouse.