True Fires (22 page)

“Another monkey just like him?”

“Not necessarily. I’ve been known to climb a few trees. And how about you, Lila? Afraid of heights?”

“Well, no.” Lila folds Ruth’s note into a small white square, slips it into the side pocket of her slacks. “Not exactly.”

42

Late afternoon Friday, Daniel peers across the field to that place in the distance where the dirt road to their property intersects the blacktop into town.
Any time now,
he thinks. And then, he sees it, the hump and flash of dark metal, the moving mound of dust rising off the road. “They’re home!” he hollers to Aunt Lu who, with the girls, is shooing the chickens back into the coop.

Daniel, man of the house, rises out of his porch rocker, solemnly sets his .22 aside, safety on, muzzle up, and leaps off the porch yelling “Wahoo!”

Coming up the drive, Pap and Uncle Will wave hello from each side of the truck. Daniel bolts across the clearing to Pap’s side and greets him with, “Kin I go, Pap? Kin I? Now?”

“Yes, boy,” Pap tells him through the window, “ye kin go. Be home ’fore full dark.”

“I will,” Daniel calls over his shoulder as he races across the field, past the hives, toward the sandy path through the woods. He’s been waiting all week for this moment, endured the long days of work and boredom with the girls, the nights of schooling with Miz Jenkins, the short, blocky teacher from the Christian school, and the photographs for Miz Barrows and her newspaper story on their “School at Home.” It had been a hard week to put by. The girls had pestered him something awful. But, this moment, the hours just ahead of him will make all of it worthwhile. This is the day he’s going to catch his first catfish, Seminole style.

In the woods, Daniel races past the now familiar landmarks, the long-needle pines, the big, tripping tree root, the magnolia by the banks of the river, the hook right, away from the water, the sudden fork that takes him deeper into the woods, and, at last, the clearing surrounded by tall pines.

Sampson stands, grinning welcome, by the fire.

“Did I beat them bee guards?” Daniel peers up at the buzzing basket, the tangle of bones tinkling below.

“Cain’t. Wings faster than feet, heh?”

Watching the basket, Daniel’s mood suddenly darkens. “Need t’get me one of these,” he says.

“Guard bees?”

“Pap, town stuff.” Daniel wags his head to shake off his thoughts. “Ready to fish?” he asks eagerly, avoiding the ancient eyes that probe him.

“Grab your goblin today, heh?” Sampson nods, and points the way, down a different path, out of the clearing. Behind him, Daniel marvels at, and tries to mimic, the way Ol’ Sampson’s big feet take such light, silent steps.

They speak quietly along the way. Sampson reminds him that a catfish doesn’t see real well, but it’s got the hearing of a hunt dog, so there’ll be no talking once they reach the water. He’s scouted the spot, a murky hole between the knees of a cypress in a slowed-down crook of the river.

In his haste to leave home, Daniel’s forgotten his kerchief. Sampson takes off his and carefully wraps the red cloth around Daniel’s right arm, from above the boy’s elbow to his wrist, leaving the tail of it extended between his finger and his thumb. “Shake it at ’im, like you stickin’ out your tongue,” he instructs. “Big fish gonna come at you, gonna swallow your arm whole. Don’t be ’fraid. Remember you bigger. Jus’ grabble onto whatever you can, inside. Then, lock your other hand on his lower lip. Don’t worry ’bout his teeth, ain’t nothin’ but nubs, heh?”

AT THE RIVERBANK, Sampson points and winks. He pantomimes wiggling the red tongue, shoving his right arm forward, grabbing his elbow with his left, raising both high above his head, and throwing something heavy onto the bank. Daniel nods solemnly and wades in.

The water is about the same temperature as the air, so the boy feels at first only the sensation of wet, sweeping from his ankles up to his waist. He steps toward and around the big folded knob, like a bent knee, of cypress root. In front of the dark narrow hole, between two knees, the water is the color of brown ink with a faint rainbow of oil slick on top.

Daniel takes a deep breath then dives under, extending both hands gently in front of him.
Cain’t see a thing, but somethin’s there, slick and smooth.
Moving his hands slowly upward, he feels the shape of a fin, on top, angling sharply up to the left. “Higher on the left puts his head on the right,” Sampson had said. Daniel backs off and rises for air.

At the surface, he looks at Sampson, points to the right, and drops down again. Underwater, he wiggles the cloth tongue and thrusts his right fist in the spot where he guesses the head to be. There’s a sensation of—nothing!
Where’d he go?
Suddenly there’s a vicious clamping, a painful turning on his upper arm.
I’m in him!
Daniel realizes, and, in shock, opens his fingers onto the fish’s soft, squishy innards.
His lower lip!
Where is it?
Daniel slides his left hand up, above his elbow, finds the hard ridge of fish lip, grabs it, and hoists his arm overhead.

Lungs about to burst, he kicks up, yells when he hits the surface, “I got him! I got him!” And, suddenly, Sampson’s there, too, grabbing gills, yanking the monster, the ancient goblin face, off his arm and onto the sandy bank.

“You shore did!” Sampson laughs. “Wheweee! Look at ’im! Twenty pounds, for sure.” Then scowling at the catfish, he crows, “The boy got you, Ol’ Ugly. His name’s Dan’l. And he got you, all by hisself !”

Daniel is awash with water, pride, and the remains of his fear. His upper arm is rubbed raw and sore. But, the sight of his fish, now strung up by its huge lower lip on a nearby tree branch, thrills him.

This time, it’s Daniel who, under the Ol’ Seminole’s patient direction, digs the hole in the sand beneath his fish, and guts and cuts the meat off its carcass. Later, refilling the hole, he offers the Indian the catfish head for stew. But Sampson refuses, saying, “First head, all yours.”

It’s getting on dusk when the two of them return to Sampson’s clearing, Daniel carrying the monstrous fish head by the piece of wire strung through its lip, Sampson carting the leather pouches filled with water and fillets.

The boy insists that the old man keep one of the pouches. Sampson accepts, on condition that he walk the boy home.

There’s a hiss and a crackle as Sampson lights a gas lantern with a stick from his still-smoldering fire. Daniel watches him carry the lantern to the third chee-kee, the one where he works, and rummage around for what looks like a small, woven bowl.

“What’s that for?” he asks.

“See soon, heh?” Sampson tells him. The old Indian crosses the clearing to the tree where the bee basket hangs quietly on guard. Only when he holds the bowl in front of the basket does Daniel realize
it’s not a bowl atall,
but the basket’s lid. With quick but gentle hands, Sampson seals the basket, and removes it from its perch, the web of fish bones tinkling below.

“Why’d you do that?” Daniel wants to know.

“Make you a present of it,” the old man says, then, holding the now-buzzing basket in one hand, the lantern in the other, nods, “Go now, heh?”

Daniel scoops up the catfish head and the dripping leather pouch. Together, they retrace his steps through the woods and the field to the cabins in the clearing.

43

K. A. DeLuth parks his freshly washed and waxed Sheriff’s car in front of his Main Street office downtown.
Do folks good to see
their reelected Sheriff workin’ hard on a Saturday afternoon,
he thinks, chuckling, as he grabs file folders and the fat paper sack from Big Nick out of the backseat.

Unlocking and relocking the door, flipping on the light, he notes that his new deputy has swept the floor, polished the wooden reception counter, and stacked the mail neatly on his desk.

He’d hired Carl Paige on Clive Cunningham’s recommendation. Paige was Sarah Cunningham’s younger brother, a Korean War vet, and, like Clive said, “Carl ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he can shoot straight and knows how to take orders.” Though it had only been a few days, DeLuth was enjoying having Deputy Paige around. On top of everything else,
he’s a tidy sonofabitch
.
Should’ve thought of this myself
years ago.

Seated at his desk, DeLuth removes the gunmetal gray cash box from its spot, beneath the false bottom of his lower desk drawer.

Tossing the paper sack into the trash, he recounts the stacked bills of his Bolita share into the box, enters the amount and new total in the small journal, and replaces the box in his bottom drawer.
Not as big a take as last weekend, Halloween night,
but better than the week before. Next week should be better still,
he thinks, grinning at the memory that, a few hours earlier,
that
Greek Nigger didn’t like my demand for a bigger piece of the pie, but
he’s too smart to say no.

Turning to the top file folder, he reads again the letter from Paine Marsh, requesting “copies of any and all documents proving transfer of title of the following animals purchased by Howard T. Hightower from breeder B. T. Hallwelle of Houston, Texas.” The list contained references to practically his entire herd!

Damn the ol’ man!
Toward the end, the Judge had promised DeLuth again and again that he’d sign the papers. Kyle had even gone so far as to secure the forms from Hallwelle in Texas, type them up himself, and present them, at the Judge’s bedside, at least half a dozen times. But, there’d always been something that got in the way—a coughing attack, the spitting up of blood, too tired, needed some sleep, and, finally, Lila, come home to bar him from the bedside.

Setting the unsigned stack of forms aside, DeLuth pulls out a blank sheet of paper and another document, an old writ signed by the Judge last year.

In the sharp sunlight pooling on his desk, DeLuth begins, slowly at first, then with increasing confidence, to practice the hacking verticals, the slashing crossbars of the Judge’s distinctive initials H.T.H., mastering later, the slicing horizontals, looping, like a snake, in between and after.

AROUND SIX, on his way out to drop the big envelope into Marsh’s mail slot, DeLuth phones Birdilee at the hospital to suggest a steak supper at the Cattlemen’s Club. She agrees “so long as you don’t mind my Pink Lady uniform. And it’s just us, right? I don’t have what it takes to make nice with the Cunninghams tonight.”

But, of course, Clive and Sarah were there—he’d known they would be—with the Matthewses, the MacGregors, and the Fraziers. And they’d all wound up, the county’s biggest beef men and their wives, at the banquet table in the back. Too bad Birdilee was so tuckered out. She was quiet all evening and, on the way home, closed her eyes claiming she was “too tired to talk.” But, not him! No way! He was all keyed up over the evening’s triumph—the first night, “the first
time,
Birdilee!” he’d actually “sat with the big boys and felt like I
belonged
! All those years—ten
years,
Birdilee!—of being the Judge’s chief boot-licker are behind us! Thanks to Ol’ Ben and Big Nick, we are
in
like Flynn!”

Around ten, having squired Birdilee home, he heads out again, in his truck, to meet the boys. He’d guaranteed Zeke Roberts that this whole mess with the Nigger Dares and their suit against the school board would go away.
And he, by God,
was a man of his word!

44

After supper Saturday night, Daniel sits on the porch in Pap’s rocker, cradling his father’s shotgun in his lap, staring up at the slice of melon moon.
Wish he was here,
the boy thinks.
Or
better yet, that there’d been a way for Pap and Uncle Will to take me
with them.

It was all that lawyer man Mr. Marsh’s fault. He was the one give Pap the list of things—marriage certificates, death notices, wills, and the like—to collect from up home.

Up home.
If they drove straight through, taking turns like they planned, Pap and Uncle Will are there by now. He can picture them, sitting on Uncle Dolph’s porch, with his cousins Jack and Frank. If word got ’round in time, there’d be others there, too. Maybe Uncle Dolph has busted out his banjo, Cousin Jack his box, and Aunt Angie her fiddle. They’re all up there now, picking to beat the band, something old and lively like “Cacklin’ Hen,” or sweet and sorrowful like “Wildwood Flower.”

Daniel swats a mosquito off his arm and rocks, hearing the strains of “Wildwood Flower” in his head, wishing he had a box to pick out the notes. He’d been promised one once, but that was before Mam and the move off the mountain and all. Before Floridy and the Sheriff at the school and all. Before Sampson taught him how to catch a catfish.

In the dark, Daniel smiles, remembering his catfish. Aunt Lu had done a fine job on his fish for supper. And he’d had fun scaring the girls with the head. Even now, drying and hardening on the porch post, that head was monstrous ugly and plumb beautiful at the same time.

Across the clearing, Aunt Lu appears in the doorway. “Daniel, sure you don’t want to come in with us?”

“Got a better view of things from here,” he calls back.

“All right, then, but don’t sit out all night. Them skeeters’ll eat you alive.”

“All right,” he calls and goes back to rocking.

Sometime later, not meaning to, he dozes off, hearing in his head the sound of up home singing “I Am Weary, Let Me Rest.”

THAT’S A QUARE NOISE, the boy thinks. Stirring stiff in his chair, Daniel doesn’t recognize it at first. But, swimming up into awake, he remembers. The tinkling sound of the bones strung off Sampson’s bee basket. He’d hung it off the live oak beside the house.
Them bees are hard at it,
he thinks. Wondering why sits him straight up now, clutching the cold, heavy metal of Pap’s shotgun.

The clearing and the wide field are deeply dark, except for the pale light from the slice of moon. Everything’s hushed, but for the bees buzzing angry and rattling the tangle of dry bones.

Way off in the distance, a pair of headlights turns off the hardtop onto their road. And another pair. And another after that. Five of ’em in all, the dust kicked up from the car in front smearing the headlamps of those behind.

Daniel’s up and running. “Aunt Lu!” he yells as he slams into the kitchen. “Git up! Git the girls somewheres safe, under the bed, back o’ the cupboard. Now!”

Once he sees his aunt, with Uncle Will’s rifle in her hand, he races back into the clearing between the two cabins and watches and waits.

The line of headlamps makes its way around the field and up the drive. When the light of the first car,
or mebbe it’s a
truck,
hits the cabins, it stops. The two behind it pull up alongside, the other two stop behind. Three pairs of bright white eyes stare into the clearing where Daniel stands frozen, staring back.

He hears the sharp mechanical wrench of doors jerked open, slammed shut. He sees the shapes of men dressed like ghosts, the flash of gunmetal against their chests. “It’s the boy,” he hears one man call to another.

“Where’s your daddy, boy?” a hard voice yells from behind the lights. “Get ’im out here!” “And your uncle, too!”

Daniel’s shaking. He wonders desperately what to yell back. His mind skitters through his options. But before he can say a word, a single word, all hell breaks loose among the ghostly men behind the headlights.

The outermost guards saw it first. The waiting
at roadside, the passing of jugs, the gas and
gunning of angry engines. They turned and, imperceptibly to the intruders, sent the alarm.
“Some come!”

The message was passed from guard to guard,
from outer rim to inner wall, from watchful eyes
to anxious hearts. “Some come!”

Those assigned to the Young One’s defense
took flight immediately. Others followed from
neighboring commands. Only a few, and the Old
Ones, stayed behind to guard their communal
treasure. Sensing the alarm (“The Young One
and his sisters, are they safe?”), She Who
Decides emerges from Her chambers.

The forward most flank attacks first; their
enemy, though large, a thousand times outnumbered. In waves, the defenders assault their
intruders, each strike a single soldier’s sacrifice. Word of the battle flies to and through the
woods. He Who Provides rises, alert, to their
report.