Ol’ Skunk standing by Ray, and Ray down on the ground. Half of Ray’s head gone. Skunk holding a pistol like it’s a snake. Skunk looking over to me.
Then another voice. Right behind me. “Come on over here, Edsel, and put that pistol in this white boy’s hand here. This boy ought to knowed not to hang out with these others.”
My one eye sees a shiny deputy boot toe-tap my hand, showing Skunk where to put it.
“Use this,” the voice behind me says. Voice throws a white rag over to Skunk. “Wipe it clean.”
The white rag and pistol now in Skunk’s hand. White top of Skunk’s head in my face when he bends down.
And then I’m light and free. Rising in the air, slow. Like I’m caught in some cold rising breeze. First I’m circling low just looking around, looking down at myself on the ground on top of DC, watching the sheriff deputy reach a hand down to his pocket, take out his radio, hear him say, “Derrick, you my backup, ain’t you?” before he says, “Well, get your ass on up here then.”
And Ol’ Skunk edging down the creek bank, whispering to himself, whispering low but I hear him. I hear it all now, from the loud right on down to the tiny sound every ripple in the creek makes. I hear Skunk whispering stuff makes no sense, like another language, and then: Don’t mess wi’ me. Don’t mess wi’ me. Don’t mess wi’ me. I’m OG. OG. I seen they kind. I seen they kind.
And then I’m higher and higher, higher and higher, watching Ol’ Skunk’s white head-top moving down the creek, crossing the footbridge, heading back to the Hollywood, hominy snow falling harder and hitting all the dry leaves, sounding loud now, flakes getting bigger and fluffy, and then me higher still, like a balloon somebody let go of, rising in the open sky where the flakes are falling thick now, sky soft and full of it. I look down and there the creek flows into the Tennessee River, and there are the miles and miles of cotton fields out Gunwaleford Road all frozen but with raggedy cotton lint like more snow. Higher still now, soft snow, flakes like cotton. Till the whole world’s looking exactly like nothing at all but white.
Deepwater, Dark Horizons
by Suzanne Hudson
Fish River
Gary Wright, in his expert, know-it-all way, insisted that what was happening on Turkey Branch was a crime. “A goddamned crime, you stubborn old coot. You can get fined for it. I’ve done googled it. The county site says five hundred dollars a day for every day you let them turds roll down in the branch yonder.” The man jabbed his pointer finger with every few syllables.
Yoder Everett ran his fingers through thinning hair, hair that had once upon a time been a thick home to the ladies’ painted fingernails that combed through it, now gone limp and thin as he traversed his sixties, alone but for this one pathetic friend. “You’re always so goddamned sure of yourself, Gary.”
It had finally come to a head, after months of back and forth, after Gary first noticed the oozing fissures in the grass, soil becoming a sloosh of fetid, foul stink. Yoder, tight with a dollar and loath to spend from the thousands he had hoarded over the years, managed to deny, pretend, and scoff his way out of taking any action, until Gary drilled down into something like research. Any fool could find out what was what, it seemed, on the Internet.
Now the two men stood beneath one of the massive live oaks that thrust their mossy arms to the summer sky across Yoder’s six acres of waterfront on a branch of the Fish River, studying the patch of yard gone to shit swamp. When breezes lifted, along with the undeniable stench, a chorus of clatters and clacks and tinklings and knockings rose and fell from the scores of wind chimes hanging from branches, from hooks on porches, from posts on the wharf and the pier, from the trash-can corral Gary had built to keep away the raccoons, armadillos, and possums. Gary was handy that way.
The noisy mobiles, though, were all fashioned by Yoder’s own hands, inspired by a fragmenting mind, that willy-nilly mishmash of chimes, along with paintings on plywood, palettes of muddy browns, reds, oranges; even murals painted onto the asbestos-shingled sides of his river house. His gnarled but nimble fingers strung together the cacophonous orchestra of objects tied onto lengths of fishing lines, knotted through the boards of driftwood or stripped sapling limbs or guitar necks or whatever, from which the lines dangled. He used all sorts of materials too, for the chimes themselves: old costume jewelry, a deconstructed clarinet, wooden kitchenware, beer cans, women’s stilettos, anything at all. “I make art out of junk,” he liked to boast. “I’m environmentally friendly that way.”
But here was Gary Wright’s dumb ass claiming Yoder was a major polluter, right up there with the goddam BP criminals who had ruined the gulf this past spring. Now into full-bore summer, the beaches from NOLA to Apalachicola were so gummed up with the crude that business owners along the coast were yelling bloody murder.
“It’s right there in black and white, son,” Gary went on. “It’s right there on the damn website. You know, that branch runs out to the river and the river runs to the bay and the bay—”
“Hell, Gary, don’t you think I know about geography and watersheds and currents and all? And don’t call me son.”
“And the bay goes to the Gulf of Mexico and then out to the whole goddamned world. You’re polluting the world with that rusted-out old septic system.”
“I told you I’ve fixed it. I worked on it all day yesterday, down in the bowels of it. Ha!”
“Naw, crawling down in the empty old thing and squirting a hosepipe through it ain’t fixed a damn thing about it. You’ve done broke so many laws I can’t count ’em.”
“Why don’t you google them up, then, the laws?” Yoder shot back. “Google is God now, I guess. Google is the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg looking down on the Valley of Ashes.”
“What the hell?”
“Forget it. Why read a book when you have the Google machine to impart life’s truths to your stupid ass.”
“It’s the law, that’s all I’m talking about. You can’t let a steady stream of turds and piss-water keep rolling down that hill and into that branch. You’ve got to call a septic service or I’m gonna have to turn you in to the county. You’re the property owner. It’s your responsibility.”
Yoder, clench-fisted, tight-toothed, gritted out, “Get off my property, then. I’ve a good mind to evict you.”
But they both knew it was an empty threat. They had a long history of disputes, even fistfights, going back to when they were young, potent warriors of the gridiron, back when women liked their looks and a loop around the town of Foley, Alabama, from drive-in diners to picture shows in a Ford Mustang, when a make-out chick in the front seat was the pinnacle of a life promising to be all downhill from there.
They were an odd couple, all right: Yoder, well-educated, creative, once-charming-now-cautious, carrying several DSM-referenced labels; and Gary, low of IQ, naive, spur-of-the-moment. Yoder taught art education in a community college before the mental meltdown that had him on disability by the time he was forty. Gary, no hope of a deferment, found himself, straight out of high school, chasing Charlie in the jungles of Vietnam. He spoke of it from time to time, though not with enough depth or detail to satisfy the curiosity Yoder kept in check.
“I seen some shit there, over yonder, in itty-bitty-titty land. Nobody ought to see them things.” He would fall silent for several beats, then, “I seen nothing BUT shit all my life,” he would repeat, to the air, to the nights, to anybody or nobody, “and shit don’t cool for folks like me.”