In An Arid Land (12 page)

"Okay, Rog," said Lawrence. "He's right, Der, you're going to scare off all the fish. And all the stingrays too." They looked at me and couldn't hide their mirth. "You know, I hear tell those things get as big as this boat."

"Why, I hear," said Derald. "I hear that they especially love to devour small boys."

"After stinging them to death first, of course."

"And you know what they do with them then?"

"That's enough," said Daddy, but he was grinning too, and Derald and Lawrence broke out laughing.

This was a serious concern to me, for in all his explanations Daddy had stressed the "safety factor." The outline of a stingray, he mentioned many times, burrowed down in the silty mud at the bottom of the bay, looks just like a flounder. And if you gig one by mistake it can tear you alive and fill you full of its poison before you have a chance to get away. I had been stung by a jellyfish once and knew the pain of such an outrage. This, though, was the challenge of the thing, he said, not to be taken lightly, this the reason for doing it. You had to be exact, you had to be careful and you had to do it alone, after midnight.

My waders filled with water as soon as they put me over the side, when I stumbled in the sucking mud and almost fell. Daddy handed me my lantern and gaff. He had rigged a rope to the handle of my net so I could tie it around my waist, not let it get away.

"You work this area right here," he said.

"Yessir."

"And don't wander off. Stay close to the shore, in the shallows. We're going to fan out and work the next two coves. We'll be back for you in three hours." He looked at me closely over the gunwale. "Remember everything I told you, son."

"Yessir."

"It's a slow, painful death," murmured Lawrence, his smirking face a pale leering disc in the lantern light.

"Hush," said Daddy. Then he cranked her up. I heard their loud voices talking and laughing over the chug of the engine for a good five minutes as the boat took them away . . . .

I looked down for the first time, peered through the circle of lighted water to the bottom. I could see my boots and other things, small things, floating around down there, but nothing was clear. Minnows flashed by. I moved my foot and a billow of silt swirled up around my ankles and I wondered how I would ever see a flounder, hidden down there, who didn't want to be seen.

I decided to wade for a bit. Like a warrior I waded, spear in hand, raised for action. I went in orderly rows along the shore, doing a section at a time. Nothing; I saw nothing. Were there flounder here? I expanded my boundaries, moved farther down the shore toward the next point. For an hour, two, three, I waded, scanning the gray-green luminous water. Until I was tired.

I was cold too, my toes chilled. Out there was only the single yellow light, so far away, nothing else. Nothing above the water, nothing below it. Only me and my lantern. Perhaps it was time; perhaps if I looked hard enough I would see their light. It would grow brighter, coming for me, and they would raise their heavy stringers crowded with flounder and they would tease me good-naturedly, saying there's always tomorrow.

Something touched my leg, or I thought something did. I flinched but my boots were held fast in the mud. I raised my lantern, peered into the water, and there it was. My flounder in its hiding place. Two feet away. How had I missed it? And a big sucker too. Or maybe not. Was it a flounder? I looked closely, looked for the oval shape in the silt, the point of eye, a flicker of movement. Yes perhaps. I looked for the stingray's telltale sign: the string-like indention in the mud behind the fishy tail. But where was the tail? Was that it? Must be . . . .

Do it!

I lunged, with power, but I missed. Just barely I missed, and it came up out of the silt so fast and furious that it must have had engines. It struck me on the rubber legs and flitted around my thighs. All of this in a second, maybe two. I swung back to get out of its way and tried to run. But my boots!

Backwards I toppled like a felled tree, and I thrashed. The brine stung my eyes and my hands sank into the muck on the bottom. Everything was dark when I struggled to my feet. The lantern was gone; I couldn't find it anywhere. The gaff too nowhere. I thrashed some more, to be frightening this time, and then I raced for the shore, kicking through the water, panting for air.

So that was it; the thing was finished.

Where was I? It felt good to sit down, I was so tired, but what was I sitting on? And what might be lurking in the brush behind me? Killer bobcat? Don't think about it, I told myself.

Think about this: what has happened? They would laugh for sure now. No flounder, and all my gear lost; I was alone, wet, cold, frightened. Yes, they would laugh, but only if they found me. And how would they find me without my lantern's beacon to guide them to me through the darkness?

The sky was just beginning to pale when I heard the boat's motor and woke to see it a hundred yards off shore. My exhaustion had proved stronger than my fear and I had fallen asleep there in the sand.

Daddy yelled, "Wa-ayne," as if I were far away.

I waved and yelled and splashed into the water.

"Where have you been, son?" he wanted to know as I waded toward the boat.

He didn't look good. His face was haggard and angry, his cap crooked on his head. Lawrence didn't look any better. One of his shirt sleeves had been ripped from its shoulder and his hair was wild. He sat at the bow and gazed at me as if I were a suspicious stranger approaching the boat. I didn't see Derald until I was alongside. He was lying in the bottom, curled up asleep and as wet as I was. He smelled of vomit and looked the worst of all. Floating in the bilge under Daddy's seat was a seriously wounded soldier, Mr. Jack Daniel. There were no flounder hanging from stringers, no proof they had even entered the water.

Something awful had happened out there in the darkness an argument, a fight, maybe more and I could tell they were still suffering from the mystery of it, the hurt of it.

I put up my hands for help getting into the boat. Daddy and Lawrence both moved toward me, but Daddy stopped him.

"Don't, Larry, don't you touch him. I'll do it myself."

"Fine with me, Rog."

"Just stay where you are, you hear me."

"Shut up, Rog, would you?"

"You're not getting your hands on this one."

"Christ, Rog."

"Christ yourself," said Daddy.

He pulled me in and covered me with his flannel shirt. I explained what had happened to me in the night how I'd had one, a big one, how I'd done battle with it, a flounder or a stingray, I didn't know which, and how I'd put up a good fight and I told it all in a way to let them know how brave I had been. But it was mostly for myself. Neither of them laughed or smiled, neither of them spoke; they weren't interested. Their thoughts were tangled and far away, submerged in bitterness. At that moment I longed for the night again, as I long for it still: that special happiness around the fire, that electric pulse of friendship that Mr. Daniel in the glory of his gift had ignited for us. I looked at their faces harsh and bewildered yet tinged with sad regret and I saw then what grave difficulties awaited me as a man.

"You're not hurt then?" Daddy asked.

"No, sir," I said. I picked the bottle out of the bilge and held it in my lap, held it close like a promise.

He cranked the engine, turned us around and we set out for the boat launch, The Fish Camp and then the long drive home. We went in silence all the way. It was a mean, greedy kind of silence, and it lasted for years and years.

I

Carla Acres, her small stout body covered in denim and her feet in rough-out boots, stood in the doorway of the room twisting her hands and gazing at the old man lying in the bed. He was sleeping now, thank goodness, but his scratchy breathing, catching and starting, told of a pain that no pill could ease and an exhaustion that only death would release him of. He shouldn't have come here, though she understood why he had and even sympathized with him. It would mean a battle when Warren found out. And how would she tell him when he called; how would she tell him that his father was there, sleeping in the house?

The hallway was dark after she closed his door, so she made her way quickly to the kitchen, always so cold under its high ceiling. With a match she lit the oven and stood before it to warm herself, thinking of supper alone and of what she would say to Warren when he called. She would have to go slowly.

Into a pan she poured her evening soup and set it on the low burner. There, outside the window, loomed the enormous listing barn, illuminated in wavy patches by the mercury light on its pole, up among the trees. She stood still, blinking, wondering, and then, as if something had grabbed her and pulled her out the door, she took her coat from the wall rack and hurried into the night across the frozen yard, through the gate and into the barn, cavernous and harsh-smelling. Old Velvet, her belly swollen, about to foal at any time, whinnied deeply and turned once in her stall as Carla approached cautiously, not to frighten her. She had been nervous and fidgety at feeding time and stared at Carla as if confused by something, wanting an explanation.

"I know, girl," she said falsely, hearing the lie, for she knew nothing of the suffering of motherhood. "It won't be long."

Lady Blue and Buster in their stalls, necks low and stretched over the rails, watched her with concerned, absurdly grave expressions on their long haughty faces and even the cows, chewing and twitching, had gathered in the corner of their shed to be in attendance. What if her time arrived too soon? She had heard the vet was up near Trinity on a bad case that might keep him till morning, and not a single neighbor to rely on. What would she do? Wouldn't it be a shame to lose this one, being registered and all, so valuable. She wished Warren were home, he would know. Such a good man, a proud man, her Warren, with hands that could build or fix anything, hands with a gentle touch.

It was his gentle nature that had first attracted her to him back when she was still at the college over in Huntsville and he was working there in town, before he had asked her to give up the life she had expected, to come live with him on the land. His forty acres. Twelve years now and still each month they held their breath till payday. This work he did for Mr. Hudson that took him away at least one week in five he did to meet the bills, and he did it well. For he too was educated in certain matters, matters having to do with machinery and equipment and the mysteries of chemicals that can transform a building made of wood and iron into a gigantic icebox. No, it wasn't the life she had expected, but she wouldn't change it: not the work, not the worries, not the frigid mornings in the old drafty house, not Warren's moods, not even the rank odors of life and death and decay which were a natural part of a place like this. It was all fine with her. They were a pair for life, she and Warren.

Velvet nuzzled her as if to wake her from a dream and she remembered her other responsibilities.

"Just hold on, girl," she said. "Hold tight."

Outside, in a drizzling rain now, the dogs collected around her for the return trip to the house and this timeit was so cold!she allowed them to follow her into the kitchen. All but that limping mongrel who'd been hanging around despite her curses and hurled rocks. "Go on!" she snapped and closed the door. The four of them sat in a pack, licking, scratching, sneezing.

She peeked in on Mr. Acres but saw no change. Why here; why did he come here? There was something terrible between them, her husband and his father, had been for years, and what an awful chill it brought. She would have to take up for him, the old man, and everything would be difficult then for however long it lasted. And didn't they have trouble enough as it was?

In the kitchen, resting finally, warm finally in her place at the table, she was just raising the first spoonful of noodles to her lips when the phone rang causing her to spill it.

The operator made the collect connection. "Go ahead . . . ."

"Hey, gal." He sounded so happy. "Guess what?"

"What?"

"Be home tomorrow," he said. "And all weekend too."

The idea of saying it out loud seemed to set him off. He talked for a long time about how his work had gone and then went on with questions about the mail and the weather and the animals and giving her advice about caring for Old Velvet on such a raw night. He was excited and glad for the chance to talk to her and she could tell in the things he said and the way he said them that he loved her and wanted like Holy Hell, as he would put it, to be with her just then. It sickened her to have to spoil it.

"Warren," she said to prepare him but he didn't respond and so she said again, "Warren?" as if calling out in the night.

"What is it, Carla?" His voice was light and expectant.

"It's about your father," she said.

II

Sunup was still an hour away when Warren Acres checked out of the motel in Texarkana and headed south on U.S. 59 hoping to make Huntsville and home by lunchtime. The rain had let up in the night and the last of the stars had had a chance to make an appearance, like a thousand gleaming eyes in a black sky so clear and immense it hurt even to glance up at it.

By the time he reached Marshall there was enough of a glow in the east that he could switch off his headlights and quit worrying about every bridge he came to and whether he was going to find himself spinning and sliding and ending up in the bottom of a creek bed somewhere. The fierce wind battered the old Ford and moaned like a demon, slipping in through the wings. A snapping, beauty of a day but so God-awful cold that his knee wouldn't stop tingling and the hair on his neck pricked him like pins.

So the old man's come home, has he. Wants us to make him a place, like a bed for an old dog that shows up just to die on your front porch, or under it, and leaving you with the nasty business of digging the hole to put him in. Well, why should we, why should we bother with him? He's never much bothered with us. Gone for thirteen years and showing up just when he needs something, money usually or a hot meal from Carla, and then taking off again in the middle of the night. Why, he couldn't even be found to attend his only son's wedding, and in his own house that he built with his own hands. He wouldn't have come anyway, with Mother there, but it was the idea of it. He killed her sure enough with his restless ways and his liquor and then running off with that old gal, Shirley was her name, living with her in that stinking trailer house in that stinking town out there in that stinking desert where nothing'll grow but cholla cactus.