Poachers (20 page)

Near dark, in a wooden trap next to an old fence row, he was surprised to find the 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 hand steady despite the way the fox snapped at the stick and bit off the end. Would the witch woman want this alive? At the 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 upstream, Neil had lost a boot to the mud and was hopping back one-footed to retrieve it. It stood buried to the ankle. He wrenched it free, 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 moving inside. With his rifle barrel he rolled the thing out—it was most of the body of a dead catfish, 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 a trotline length by length and removing the fish or turtles and rebaiting the hooks and dropping them back into the water. Near the bank, approaching the last hook, he heard something. He looked up with the 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, then his neck burned and went numb and he felt dizzy, his fingertips buzzing, legs weak, a tree on the bank distorting, doubling, tripling into a whole line of fuzzy shapes, turning sideways, floating.

Kent blinked. Felt his eyes bulging, his tongue swelling. His head about to explode. 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, 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 the log. He removed his coat and laid it over the boots. He handed his brother his rifle without looking at him, left him watching as he climbed down the bank and, hands and elbows in the air like a believer, waded into the water.

Dan propped the second rifle against a 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 downstream. 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. Together they pulled it out of the water and stood looking at their brother, who lay across the floor among the fish and turtles he’d 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, the black bruises and shriveled skin, the neck swollen like mumps, the purple bulb of tongue between his lips. They were supposed to think
cottonmouth
. Kent’s hands were squeezed into fists and they’d hardened that way, the skin wrinkled, his eyes 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, the trap empty, its catch

sprung. Neil knelt and ran his knuckles along the rim of a boot print in the mud—not a very wide track, not very far from the next one. He put his finger in the black water that’d 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, quickly—no time to get the dogs—they followed the trail back through the woods, losing it once, twice, backtracking, working against the rain that fell and fell harder, that puddled blackly and crept up their legs, until they stood in water to their ankles, rain beading on the brims of their caps. They gazed at the ground, 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. When Dan didn’t scoot over, the older boy hit him in the jaw through the window, then slung open the door and pulled Dan out, sent 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. They laid him on the ground and began digging near where their sister, 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 slinking 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, baying. The boys paused but saw or 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’d finished, it was late afternoon and the hole was full of slimy water and they were black with mud. They each took off 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. When he bobbed to the top of the water, they got stones and weighted him down. Then shoveled mud into the grave.

They showed up at Esther’s
, black as tar.

“Where’s Kent?” she asked, holding her robe closed 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 Kirxy but decided to wait until morning—the old bastard thought she was a slut and a corruption. For tonight she’d just keep them safe in her house.

Neil went to the den. He turned on the TV, the reception bad because of the weather. Dan, a bruise on his left cheek, climbed the stairs. He went into one of the bedrooms and closed the door behind him. It 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 blackand-white face, searching for signs of the 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, removed his hunting knife, and stripped the belt off. 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 them over his thighs, knees and ankles and draped them across the back of a chair. She pulled off his boots and socks. Pushed him back onto the bed. Pried a finger beneath the elastic of his underwear, felt what had already happened.

He looked at her face. His mouth opened. Esther touched his chin, the scratch of whiskers, his breath on her hand.

“Hush now,” she said, and watched him fall asleep.

Downstairs, the TV went off.

When Goodloe knocked, Esther answered
, a cold sliver of

her face in the cracked door. “The hell you want?”

“Good evening to you, too. The Gateses here?”

“No.”

Goodloe glanced behind him. “I believe that’s their truck. It’s kinda hard to mistake, especially for us trained lawmen. We was just cruising by and seen it.”

She tried to close the door but Goodloe 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 Goodloe with their hands on their revolvers and their legs apart like TV deputies.

“Why don’t y’all just let ’em alone?” Esther said. “Ain’t they been through enough?”

“Tell ’em I’d like to see ’em,” Goodloe said. “Tell ’em get their boots.”

“You just walk straight to hell, mister.”

Dan appeared behind her, lines from the bed linen on his face.

“Whoa, Nellie,” Goodloe 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, Dave?”

“You got a warrant for their arrest?” Esther asked.

“No, I ain’t got a warrant for their arrest. They ain’t under arrest. They fixing to get questioned, is all. Strictly informal.” Goodloe winked. “You reckon you could do without ’em for a couple of hours?”

“Fuck you, Sugarbaby.”

The door slammed. Goodloe 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 Goodloe down the stairs, the deputies watching him closely, and watching the house.

“Where’s your brothers?” Goodloe asked.

He looked down.

Goodloe nodded to the house and two deputies went in, guns drawn. They came out a few minutes later, frowning.

“Must’ve heard us coming,” Goodloe said. “Well, we got this one. We’ll find them other two tomorrow.” They got into the Blazer and Goodloe looked at Dan, sitting in the back.

“Put them cuffs on him,” Goodloe said.

Holding his rifle, Neil came
out of the woods when the Blazer was gone. He returned to the house.

“They got Dan,” Esther said. “Why didn’t you come tell him they was out there?”

“Boy got to learn,” Neil said. He went to the cabinet where she kept the whisky and took the bottle. She watched him go to the sofa and sit down in front of the blank TV. Soon she joined him, bringing 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, Esther began clipping her fingernails, a cigarette smoking in the ashtray beside her. She’d forgotten about calling Kirxy.

Neil was telling her about the biggest catfish they’d ever called up: a hundred pounds, he swore, a hundred fifty. “You could of put your whole head in that old cat’s mouth,” he said, sipping his whisky. “Back fin long as your damn arm.”

He stood. Walked to the front window. There were toads in the yard—with the river swelling they were everywhere. In the evenings there were rainfrogs. The yard had turned into a pond and each night the rainfrogs sang. It was like no other sound. Esther said it kept her up at night.

“That, and some other things,” she said.

Neil heard a fingernail land in the ashtray. He rubbed his hand across his chin, felt the whiskers there. He watched the toads as they huddled in the yard, still as rocks, bloated and miserable-looking.

“That catfish was green,” he said, sipping. “I swear before God. Green as grass.”

“Them goddamn rainfrogs,” 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. “They was moss grow

ing on his nose,” he said, putting his hand inside her robe, on her knee.

“Go find your brother,” she said. She got up and walked unsteadily across the floor and went into the bathroom, closed the door. When she came out, he 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 spun off, aiming for every mud hole he could. He shot past a house with a washing machine on the front porch, 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 dump and turned the truck in circles, kicking up muddy rooster tails. He swerved past the Negro church and the graveyard where a group of blacks huddled, 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 trees for balance, stumbled down the hill to their boat. He carried Kent’s rifle, which he’d always admired, and he wore Kent’s jacket. On the river, he fired up the outboard and accelerated, the boat prow lifting and leveling out, the buzz of the motor rising in the trees. The water was nearly orange from mud, the cypress knees nothing but knobs and tips because of the floods, a cottonmouth wound around most every one. Nearing 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, 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