Poachers (22 page)

The field blazed with the eyes of deer—red hovering dots staring back at him. Kirxy aimed and squeezed the trigger at the first pair of eyes. Not waiting to see if he’d hit the deer, he moved the gun to another pair. He’d gotten off seven shots before the eyes began to vanish. When the last echo from the gun faded, at least three deer lay dead or wounded in the glow of headlights. One doe bleated weakly and bleated again. Kirxy coughed and took the gun back into the truck, closed the door and reloaded in the dark. Then he waited.

The doe kept bleating and things in the woods took shape, detached and whisked toward Kirxy over the grass like spooks.

And the little noises. Things like footsteps. And the stories. Frank David appearing in the bed of somebody’s
moving
truck and punching through the back glass, grabbing and breaking the driver’s arm. Leaping from the truck and watching while it wrecked.

“Quit it,” Kirxy croaked. “You damn schoolgirl.”

Several more times that night he summoned his nerve and flicked on the headlights, firing at any eyes he saw or thought he saw or firing at nothing. When he finally fell asleep at two
A.M.
, his body numb with painkillers and whisky, he dreamed of his wife on the day of her first miscarriage. The way the nurses couldn’t find the vein in her arm, how they’d kept trying with the needle, the way she’d cried and held his fingers tightly, like a woman giving birth.

He started awake, terrified, as if he’d fallen asleep driving.

Caring less for silence, he stumbled from the truck and flicked on the lights and fired, though now there were no eyes. He lowered the gun and for no good reason found himself thinking of a time when he’d tried fly fishing, standing in his yard with his wife watching from the porch,
Tarzan of the Apes
in her lap, him whipping the line in the air, showing off, and then the strange pulling you get when you catch a fish, and Betty jumping to her feet, the book falling, and her yelling that he’d caught a bat, for heaven’s sake, a
bat
!

He climbed back into the truck. His hands shook so hard he had trouble getting the door locked. He bowed his head, missing her so much that he cried, softly, for a long time.

Dawn found him staring at a field littered with dead does, yearlings and fawns. One of the deer, only wounded, was trying to crawl toward the safety of the trees. Kirxy got out of the truck and vomited colorless water, then stood looking around at the

foggy morning. He lifted his rifle and limped into the grass in the drizzle and, a quick hip shot, put the live deer out of its misery.

He was sitting on the open tailgate trying to light a cigarette when Goodloe and a deputy passed in their Blazer and stopped.

The sheriff stepped out, signaling for the deputy to stay put. He sat beside Kirxy on the tailgate, the truck dipping with his weight. His stomach was growling.

“You old fool,” Goodloe said, staring at Kirxy and then behind them at the field. “You figured to make Frank David show himself?” He shook his head. “Good lord almighty, Kirxy. What’ll it take to prove to you there ain’t no dern vigilante game warden out there?”

Kirxy didn’t answer. Goodloe went to the Blazer and told the deputy to pick him up at the old man’s store. “Get Dave over here to load up them deer, quick,” he said. “Tell him to gut ’em and drop ’em off at my place, in the barn.”

The deputy put the Blazer into gear. “Can I have some tenderloins, boss?”

Goodloe slammed the door. At Kirxy’s truck, he helped the old man into the passenger seat and went around and got in the driver’s side. He took the rifle and unloaded it, put its clip in his pocket.

“We’ll talk about them deer later,” he said. “Now I better get you back.”

They’d gone a silent mile when Kirxy said, “Would you mind running me by Esther’s?”

Goodloe shrugged and turned that way. His stomach made a strangling noise and he patted it absently. The rain and wind were picking up, rocking the truck. The sheriff took a bottle of bourbon from his pocket. “Medicinal,” he said, handing it to Kirxy.

“It’s just been two freak accidents, is all, Kirxy. I seen some strange shit in my life, a lot stranger than this. Seen a nigger had rabies one time? All foaming at the mouth? Bit his dern wife on her titty fore she shot him. Hell of a thing, buddy boy.” He took the bottle back. “Them Gateses is just a unlucky bunch. Period. I ain’t one to go believing in curses, Kirxy, but I swear to God if they ain’t just downright snakebit.”

Soon Goodloe parked in front of Esther’s and they sat waiting for the rain to slack. Kirxy rubbed his knees and looked out the windows where the bottoms of trees were submerged in the rising floodwaters.

“They say old Esther has her a root cellar,” Goodloe said, taking a sip. “Shit. I expect it’s full of water this time of year, ain’t it? She’s probably got cottonmouths wrapped around her plumbing.” He shuddered and offered the bottle. Kirxy took it and sipped. He gave it back and Goodloe drank, then drank again. “Lord, if that don’t hit the spot.

“When I was in the service,” Goodloe went on, “over in Thailand? They had them little bitty snakes, them banded kraits, they called ’em. Poison as cobras, what they told us. Used to hide up under the commode lid. Every time you took you a shit, you had to lift up the lid, see was one there.” He drank. “Yep. It was many a time I kicked one off in the water, flushed it down.”

“Wait here,” Kirxy said. He opened the door, his pants leg darkening as rain poured in, cold as needles. He set his knee out deliberately, planted his cane in the mud and pulled himself up, stood in water to his ankles. He limped across the yard with his hand before his face, blocking the rain. There were two chickens

on the front porch, their feathers fluffed out so that they looked strange, menacing. Kirxy climbed the porch steps with the pain so strong in his knees that stars were popping near his face by the time he reached the top. He leaned against the house, breathing hard. Touched himself at the throat where a tie might’ve gone. Then he rapped gently with the hook of his cane. The door opened immediately. Dark inside. She stood there, looking at him.

“How come you don’t ever stop by the store anymore?” he asked.

She folded her arms.

“Neil’s dead,” he said.

“I heard,” Esther said. “And I’m leaving. Fuck this place and every one of you.”

She closed the door and Kirxy would never see her again.

At the store, Goodloe nodded
for the deputy to stay in the Blazer, then he took Kirxy by the elbow and helped him up the steps. He unlocked the door for the old man and held his icy hand as he sank in his chair.

“Want these boots off?” Goodloe asked, spreading a blanket over Kirxy’s lap.

He bent and unlaced the left, then the right.

“Pick up your foot. Now the other one.”

He set the wet boots by the stove.

“It’s a little damp in here. I’ll light this thing.”

He found a box of kitchen matches on a shelf under the counter among the glass figurines Kirxy’s wife had collected. The little deer. The figure skater. The unicorn. Goodloe got a fire going in the stove and stood warming the backs of his legs.

“I’ll bring Dan by a little later,” he said, but Kirxy didn’t seem to hear.

Goodloe sat in his office
with his feet on his desk, rolling a cartridge between his fingers. A plate of ribs sat untouched before him. Despite himself, he was beginning to wonder if Kirxy might be right. Maybe Frank David
was
out there on the prowl. Good lawman would at least consider the possibility. He stood, took off his pistol belt and walked to the back, pushed open the swinging door and had Roy buzz him through. So far he’d had zero luck getting anything out of Dan. The boy just sat in his cell wrapped in a blanket, his head shaved for lice, not talking to anybody, not eating. Goodloe had told him about his brother’s death, and he’d seen no emotion cross the boy’s face. Goodloe figured that it wasn’t this youngest one who’d killed that game warden; it’d probably been the other two. He knew that this boy wasn’t carrying a full cylinder, the way he never talked, but most likely he had been a witness. Goodloe had even considered calling a psychologist from the Searcy Mental Hospital to give the boy an evaluation.

“Come on,” Goodloe said, stopping by Dan’s cell and jingling his keys. “I’m fixing to put your talent to some good use.”

He kept the boy cuffed as the deputy drove them toward the trestle.

“Turn your head, Dave,” Goodloe said, handing Dan a pint of Old Crow. The boy took it in both hands and unscrewed the lid, began to drink too fast.

“Slow down there, partner,” Goodloe said, taking back the bottle. “You need to be a little bit alert.”

Soon they stood near the trestle, gazing at the flat shape of the boat on the bank. Dan knelt and examined the ground. The deputy came up and started to say something, but Goodloe motioned for quiet.

“Just like a goddern bloodhound,” he whispered. “Maybe I ought give him your job.”

“Reckon what he’s after?” the deputy asked.

Dan scrabbled up the trestle, and the two men followed. The boy walked slowly over the rails, first staring into the trees, then examining the spaces between the cross ties. He stopped, bent down and peered at something. Picked it up.

“What you got there, boy?” Goodloe called, going and squatting beside him. He took a sip of Old Crow.

When Dan hit him, two-handed, the bottle flew one way and Goodloe the other. Both landed in the river, Goodloe with his hand clapped to his head to keep his hat on. He came up immediately, bobbing and sputtering. On the trestle, the deputy tackled Dan and they went down fighting on the cross ties. Below, Goodloe dredged himself out of the water. He came ashore dripping and tugged his pistol from its holster. He held it up so that a thin trickle of orange water fell. He took off his hat and looked up to see the deputy disappear belly-first into the face of the river.

Dan sprinted down the track, toward the swamp. The deputy came boiling ashore. He had his own pistol drawn and was looking around vengefully.

Goodloe climbed the trestle in time to see Dan disappear into the woods. The sheriff chased him for a while, ducking limbs and vines, but stopped, breathing hard, his hand on his side, his cheeks red.

Dan circled back through the
woods and went quickly over the soft ground, scrambling up the sides of hills and sliding down the other sides. Two hollows over, he heard the deputy heading in the wrong direction. Dan slowed a little and trotted for a long time in the rain, the cuffs rubbing his wrists raw. He stopped and looked at what he’d been carrying in one hand: a match, limp and black now with water, nearly dissolved. He stood looking at the trees around him, the hanging Spanish moss and the cypress knees rising from the stagnant creek to his left.

The hair on the back of his neck rose. He knelt, tilting his head, closing his eyes, and listened. He heard the rain, heard it hit leaves and wood and heard the puddles lapping at their tiny banks, but beyond those sounds there were other sounds. A mockingbird mocking a blue jay. A squirrel barking and another answering. The deputy falling, a quarter mile away. Then another sound, this one close. A match striking.

Dan began to run before opening his eyes and crashed into a tree. He rolled to his feet and ran again, tearing through limbs and briars and spiderwebs. He leapt small creeks and slipped and got up and kept running. At every turn he expected Frank David, and he was near tears when he finally stumbled into his family graveyard.

The first thing he saw was that Kent had been dug up. Wooden stakes surrounded the hole and fenced it in with yellow tape that had words on it. Dan approached slowly, his fists under his chin. Something floated in the grave. With his heart pounding, he peered inside. It was the big three-legged hound.

Wary of the trees behind him, he crept toward their backyard, stopping at the edge. He crouched and blew into his hands to warm his cheeks. He gazed at the dark windows of their cabin,

then circled the house, keeping to the woods. He saw the pine tree with the low limb they used for stringing up larger animals to clean, the rusty chain hanging and the iron pipe they stuck through the back legs of a deer or the rare wild pig. Kent and Neil had usually done the cleaning while Dan fed the guts to their dogs and tried to keep them from fighting.

And there, past the tree, scattered, lay the rest of the dogs. Shot dead. Partially eaten. Buzzards standing in the mud, staring boldly at him with their heads bloody and their beaks open.

It was dark when Kirxy
woke in his chair, he’d heard the door creak. Someone stood there, and the storekeeper was afraid until he smelled the river.

“Hey, boy,” he said.

Dan ate two cans of potted meat with his fingers and a candy bar and a box of saltines. Kirxy gave him a Coke from the red cooler and he drank it and took another one while Kirxy got a hacksaw from the rack of tools behind the counter. He slipped the cardboard wrapping off and nodded for Dan to sit. The store-keeper pulled up another chair and faced the boy and began sawing the handcuff chain. The match dropped out of Dan’s hand but neither saw it. Dan sat with his head down and his palms up, his wrists on his knees, breathing heavily, while Kirxy worked and the silver shavings accumulated in a pile between their boots. The boy didn’t lift his head the entire time, and he’d been asleep for quite a while when Kirxy finally sawed through. The old man rose, flexing his sore hands, and got a blanket from a shelf. He unfolded it, shook out the dust and spread it over Dan. He went to the door and turned the dead bolt.