Poachers (24 page)

In the investigation, several local blacks including Euphrates Morrisette stated to Goodloe that the youngest Gates boy and his two dead brothers had molested Euphrates’s stepdaughter in her own house. There was a rumor that several black men dressed in white sheets with pillowcases for hoods had caught and punished Dan as he lurked along the river, peeping in folks’ windows and doing unwholesome things to himself. Others suggested that the conjure woman had cast a spell on the Gateses, that she’d 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—some fires, a broken jaw—but soon it died down and Goodloe filed 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 his eye sockets had required grafts. The surgeons had had to use skin from his buttocks, and because his buttocks were hairy, the skin around his eyes began to grow hair, too.

In the years to come, the loggers who clear-cut the land along the river would occasionally stop in the store, less from a need to buy something than 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 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, grayer Goodloe came by on the occasional evening, smelling of booze, he’d take the bills and coins and put some in Kirxy’s cash drawer 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, his route including the hospitals in the county, and, every other month, the prison.

“Dern, boy,” he once cracked to Dan. “This store’s doing a better business now than it ever has. You sure you don’t want you a cookie rack?”

When Goodloe left, Dan listened to the rattle of the truck as it faded. “Sugarbaby,” 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 Kirxy’s cane from where it stood by the coatrack. He would go outside, down the stairs like a man who could see, his beard nearly to his belly, and he would walk soundlessly the length of the building, knowing the woods even better now as he crept down the rain-rutted gully side toward the river whose smell never left the caves of his nostrils and the roof of his mouth.

At the riverbank, 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, detaching, its thin ricochet and the way it settled into the leaves. A bullfrog’s bubbling throat and the things it said. The trickle of the river over rocks and around the bases of cattails and cypress knees and through the wet hanging roots of trees. And then another sound, familiar: the soft, precise footsteps of Frank David. Downwind. Not coming closer, not going away. Circling. The striking of a match and the sizzle of ember and fall of ash. The ascent of smoke. A strange and terrifying comfort for the rest of Dan Gates’s life.

acknowledgments

Alabama has given
me a great varied group of friends, all of whom helped with these stories. My deepest gratitude to Marshall Barth, Laura Cayouette, Charles McNair, Brian Oberkirch and Jack Pendarvis. And to Gary Wolfe, who tells me things like, “Nobody uses lead pipes anymore. You know that.”

I was fortunate to live for four splendid years in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where I met Michael Carragher, Jim Colbert, Michael Downs, David Gavin, Otis Haschemeyer, John Reimringer and Sidney “Compson” Thompson. Thanks, guys. Fayetteville also gave me my best reader and best friend: Thanks, B.A., for things only you know. My appreciation, too, to the Arkansas Arts Council for its generous financial support.

I also want to thank Rick Bass, whose stories made me believe in the power of stories; Roy Parvin (burn them dogs); and Paul Ruffin, George Garrett and the staff of
The Texas Review
for taking the chance.

And my teachers. To Skip Hays, Jim Whitehead and Bill Harrison, giants from Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas, respectively; to Joanne Meschery; and (speaking of Texas) to Jim White, one of the most generous men I’ve ever known: Thank you, thank you, bless you all….

And I owe a special debt of gratitude to Nat Sobel, my agent: Thanks, Nat, for the best wedding present ever. And, for the faith,

thanks to Paul Bresnick, my editor; Michael Murphy, my publisher; and the rest of the good folks at William Morrow and Company.

And finally, for gracefully sharing my history, deepest thanks to Barry Bradford, Kenneth Lovell and Jeff Franklin, my brother.

about the author

T
OM
F
RANKLIN
was born and raised in south Alabama, where he worked as a heavy-equipment operator in a grit factory, a construction inspector in a chemical plant and a clerk in a hospital morgue. In 1997 he received his MFA from the Universtiy of Arkansas and now teaches fiction writing at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he lives with his wife, poet Beth Ann Fennelly.
Poachers
was named by
Esquire
as a Distinguised First Book of Fiction for 1999, and the title novella won the 1999 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Mystery Story.

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praise
for poachers

“The stories in
Poachers
are collectively and individually brilliant, imbued with a high sense of Southern Gothic and a dark sense of humor reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor and more recent Southern masters like Barry Hannah and Larry Brown. Franklin's gaze into the lives of his characters is direct and unwavering, freezing them in his sights just long enough to drag them into his stories, bloody but still kicking.”

—
Chicago Tribune

“[A] startling debut collection…darker than anything delivered since the work of James Dickey.”

—
San Francisco Chronicle

“With this satisfying collection [Franklin] establishes himself as one of the region's more interesting emerging voices.”

—
New York Times

“These 10 honestly crafted and carefully executed tales of cotton-mouths and skulking outlaws in the South unflinchingly explore the pitfalls and dangers involved in making one's place in the world.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“Refreshingly gritty and unpretentious: stories that manage to open the door on what—for most readers—remains a previously unknown world.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“
Poachers
…is like a hand that comes out of the green swamp on a moonless night and pulls you from the canoe.”

—
Tampa Tribune

“Writing in a style that echoes the raw energy of Cormac McCarthy, the Alabama native is making waves in the publishing world.”

—
Atlanta Journal

“A remarkable debut collection…. Franklin, a native of Alabama, weaves tall tales, horror and boyish adventure into a tapestry of closely observed social detail…. With [its] clear, economical writing, Franklin's collection should boost the biorhythms of readers in search of a new literary talent.”

—
Minneapolis Star Tribune

“If Flannery O’Connor and Raymond Carver had gotten drunk together and produced a love child, he might have been Tom Franklin.”

—
Dallas Morning News

“[Franklin’s stories] awaken within us something we have never consciously understood before, but something which, having seen it for the first time, we instinctively recognize as having always been there from the beginning.”

—
Orlando Sentinel

“I’m thunderstruck by the dark, furious beauty I found in these pages. Take note: Tom Franklin is one magnificent writer and
Poachers
is one savage and artful book.”

—Brady Udall

“Thank God that Southerners still write like Southerners—fallen angels updating the old, dark ways. Tom Franklin is one of the newest of the breed, and one of the best, a storyteller who will shoot you dead-on through the heart, and raise you up again.”

—Bob Shacochis

“Tom Franklin writes as if his hands and mind are on fire and as if force, power, gentleness, crudeness and grace are the only way to stay ahead of the flames. The effect is most pleasing for the fortunate reader.
Poachers
plumbs raw and startling places. I could rave on about Franklin’s work, but that would be to get in the way of the immediate and bottom line, which is read this work. His stories are burning, waiting for you.”

—Rick Bass

“Mean and sweet at the same time. Stripped for action, locked and loaded, Franklin’s tale of the swamp and, get this, a commando game warden gives us a harrowing myth. These poachers are so mean even their ghosts keep poaching! What a trip, and awfully good.”

—Barry Hannah