Dark River Road (2 page)

“An eight hundred dollar profit,” Mama said, “if she has six puppies. To get top dollar, you’ll have to pay vet bills, buy quality food, and send off for the proper paperwork to verify pedigree. To continue making money you’ll have to breed her again. There will be breeding fees, then more puppies. Eight hundred dollars will disappear quickly. This isn’t that big a town. Who will buy all these dogs?”

Rainey slammed his meaty hands down on the kitchen table, making the pan of cornbread and Chantry jump a little. “Damn you. Always got to lick the red off my apple, don’t you. Don’t you think I done thought of that? I got three buyers already interested. All the bitch’s got to do is drop the pups. That’s what quality bitches do, y’know. Whelp pups.
Healthy
pups, not sickly ones.”

Bright red spots flamed in his mama’s cheeks and her mouth went flat. Chantry looked down at his dinner plate, pushed a few white beans around with the back of his fork, feeling sick.

Mama’s voice was low and tight. “How dare you speak of your own son like that?”

“I didn’t say nothin’ about him. I was talkin’ about dogs.”

“We both know you meant Mikey. It’s not his fault he was born like that, and I won’t have you constantly degrading him with your thoughtless cruelty. Isn’t it enough that you took money to gamble, without thought of how we’ll be able to afford surgery for Mikey? Did you have to go and buy a dog that will only be one more drain on our finances as well?”

Rainey kicked the table, his florid complexion going even redder with anger. It made his freckles stand out like mud splatters. He shoved a finger at Carrie. “I won that money. I took five hundred dollars and doubled it. Don’t you tell me how to spend my money.”

“It’s not just your money. It’s supposed to be our money. Schoolteachers only make so much, and I cannot keep covering all the expenses with what little you’re bringing in from disability. Mikey needs so much medical care. We need to save money for him, not waste it. How am I supposed to do it all?”

“All I know is, I got two big healthy boys from my first wife, but you birth me a kid that can’t walk straight and looks like a damn ghost most of the time. Doctors done said can’t nothin’ else be done to make him walk better, so savin’ that money’s a waste.”

“The doctors here cannot do anything, but surgeons in Memphis can. My insurance only covers a small portion. We have to have money for that, Rainey. Don’t you care about your own son?”

“My son? Shit. He ain’t my kid. He’s yours. Just like that other brat you got sittin’ here at my table eatin’ my food.”

Mama sucked in a deep breath and Chantry’s fingers tightened around the handle of his fork. He hated these fights. They almost always ended up the same way, with Mama silent and Rainey taking his anger out in drink or hitting or both. It’d been that way since Mikey had come into the world with his feet twisted all up like little pink rosebuds. Rainey’d taken one look at him and said it’d have been better to have drowned him than let him live. At almost five, Mikey still had to drag his feet in braces instead of walk like other kids, but he never complained.

Mikey didn’t look anything like Rainey, who was big and broad, with a nose that’d been broken when he was a lot younger and hadn’t healed right. Rainey might’ve been handsome once. Now his features were blurred from too much drink, his pale green eyes like faded marbles. Mikey looked so much like Mama it was startling, light brown hair, big blue eyes, and pale skin so soft and clear there were times Chantry wondered if he wasn’t just a ghost like Rainey said.

Sometimes he felt guilty for getting bigger when Mikey stayed so sick. He’d grown some this past year, put on a few inches in height and added some weight. His skin was naturally a little dark, but he’d been working out in the sun a lot and Mama said he’d gotten brown as a berry. He hadn’t ever seen a brown berry, but he guessed there were some somewhere or Mama wouldn’t say he looked like one. Tansy said if it wasn’t for his eyes, he’d look like an Indian because of his thick black hair. He’d asked Mama if he was Indian, but she said he was part Irish, mostly just all American.

Outside, the dog barked, and Chantry said he’d go and see if she was okay. Rainey didn’t argue with that, and he slid from his chair and out the back door. Their voices followed him, Rainey’s loud and belligerent, his mother’s soft and despairing. He was glad Mikey was already asleep and didn’t have to listen to it.

Cooler evening air held the familiar scent of red dust and decay. A mimosa tree spread out at the edge of the garage, adding a faint peachy smell to the heat. Its leaves were already closing up for the night, folding in like tiny fans.

Chantry went around to the pen that had once held some chickens, another of Rainey’s money making schemes. The dog lay on her side, panting. He got an old tin pie pan and put some water in it, then pushed through the gate into the pen. She looked up at him and whined softly.

“What is it, girl?” He knelt beside her with the pan of water, but she only lapped a couple of times before getting up to turn around. She was a big dog, maybe fifty pounds. Sleek blue-gray sides bulged out, looking tight. Her fur was soft, sleek and shiny and spotted like a leopard’s. He stroked her a few times. “You about to have those pups, huh?”

He left the dog and went into the garage, then came back out with soft rags from the bin and some newspaper. An old wooden crate that had only three sides would be just the right size for a bed, and he put that in the pen, too. Corrugated tin formed a roof, and it was attached to the side of the garage, but the sides were open and made of chicken wire. It’d be enough shelter until cold weather set in. Then she’d need a house for the winter. If she was still here.

Catahoula hounds were stock dogs, bred to herd livestock and used by cattlemen to help find cows that had gone deep into the wild. Chantry didn’t know where they’d originated, but he knew there were a lot of cow men in Quinton County who favored the breed. Catahoulas had short hair, often with mottled fur. Quick, aggressive, and smart.

He knelt beside the dog a few minutes as she turned around and around in the bed, digging furiously until she mounded the rags just like she wanted. Then she flopped to her side and looked at him expectantly. He sat down to wait. Crickets beat a tinny melody, and bullfrogs sounded loud and gruff in the distance.

It was near dark now, long shadows claiming the yard beyond the garage. Just west of town lay the Mississippi River, a rushing muddy brown torrent that flooded cotton and soybean fields on a regular basis despite the best efforts of the Mississippi Corps of Engineers. Albert Parks Quinton, whose forefathers had founded Quinton County in 1813 and carved out a town here, owned most of the land along the river. He also owned the town, the hospital, the school, and even the new Baptist church. Sometimes it seemed like he owned Mama, too.

It’d been that way as long as Chantry could remember. His mama had come to Cane Creek when he was only three, a widow hired by old man Quinton to teach several grades in the local school. He’d offered her a house and a job and a safe place to rear her son, and when she’d been there only a year, a husband to take care of her since it wasn’t seemly for a single woman to be on her own. Maybe Rainey had been nicer then. Chantry couldn’t remember a day when he hadn’t been like he was now, surly and lazy. Drawing disability for a bad back didn’t stop Rainey from being strong enough to drink too much.

“Twelve ounce curls,” he called it when he was being funny for the benefit of his two sons.

Beau and Rafe, Rainey’s sons, were several years older than Chantry, big, slow, and mean. They’d made his life a misery when he was smaller, but since his growth spurt the year before he’d made it a lot harder for them to torment him so they pretty much left him to his own now. Besides, they stayed away a lot since they were older and had quit school, doing iron work on out of town jobs, and when back in Cane Creek, usually drunk somewhere and causing trouble.

The dog made another soft sound, and Chantry looked down when she washed the back of his hand with her tongue. It was unexpected and pleasurable. The sides of her belly went taut, and she grunted. He soothed her, murmured soft words and stroked her head.

The first pup popped out so quick and easy it took Chantry’s breath away. It lay still and silent atop the rags, a tiny dark comma against the old tee shirts. The mama didn’t seem upset, but set immediately to work cleaning it up, her tongue rasping over the wet, still form until it began to wiggle and make faint sounds. Chantry relaxed a little.

The screen door to the house slammed open and shut with a bang. Rainey came out of the house, looking mad at first until Chantry pointed to the pup. Then his face eased into a satisfied gloating. “Damn if that ain’t the shit. Puts ’em right on the ground and I ain’t even had to feed her a meal yet.”

“The doting owner,” Chantry muttered, but with his head down so Rainey wouldn’t hear.

“You stay out here and keep an eye on her,” Rainey said after another minute or two of watching. “Looks like she’s havin’ trouble, holler for me.”

As if Rainey’d know what to do. Chantry just nodded.

By almost nine, the dog struggled with eight pups already born and another one nearly out. It had tired her, Chantry could see. He hadn’t left her side, even when his mama had come out earlier to urge him inside for the night.

“Nature takes its own course, honey,” she’d said. “The mother knows how to care for her own by instinct.”

Chantry figured sometimes even mothers needed a little help, though, and had stayed by the dog’s side. He called her Belle, but he didn’t know what her real name was. Probably one of those long fancy names breeders used. Rainey didn’t come back, and probably wouldn’t until it was all over. He liked easy money, not something he had to put any effort into. Staying with a whelping dog would fall under that last category.

Now he heard the back door open and close again and knew it was his mother by the softness of it. She came to stand by the pen, smelling faintly of lavender bath powder. Her old robe was pulled tight around her, reaching almost to her ankles, and her hair was damp from a bath, pulled on top of her head and secured with some kind of clip. She looked a lot younger when she didn’t wear her hair slicked back so tight and strict from her face.

“It’s nine o’clock, Chantry,” Mama said, and looked at him with a worried frown.

“It’s okay. I think this is the last one. She’s tired and having a little trouble is all. Did Rainey pick up any dog food? She’ll need something to eat after this.”

“I’m certain he never thought of it.” Mama hesitated. “I’ll find something for her to eat, and tomorrow we will purchase her the proper food for a nursing mother.”

Mama spoke precisely, her voice soft and drawling and school-teacherish. It held traces of her Memphis childhood and education. Her parents were gone and she didn’t talk much about growing up, or about much of anything before coming to Cane Creek. It was almost as if her life hadn’t started until she got to this sleepy delta town even though he knew it had. After all, his father had been in her life once.

Chantry had a couple of photographs of his father in his Marine uniform, looking out at the camera with a steely-eyed gaze that reminded him of Rambo. He’d died overseas in some far-off place named Vietnam. A hero. Chantry thought about him every day. He’d been named for him, the man who’d died before he was born but still had the most influence on him. Sometimes at night he dreamed about him. It was always the same kind of dream. His dad would be smiling at him and telling him it’d all been a big mistake, that he’d been on a secret mission for the American government and couldn’t tell anyone, even his wife and son about it. Now he was back and ready to be with them again. To be a family. Rainey would just go away, but Chantry’s real dad would take Mikey with them so he’d get his operation and be able to walk like other kids. Rainey and the dull despair of Cane Creek would then be just a memory best forgotten.

But the dream was always gone like smoke when he woke up, his dad vanishing from a place he’d never been. Chantry always felt so sad after the dream, as if he’d had something special just within his reach and it’d been yanked away.

“She’s having trouble with this last one, Chantry.” Mama knelt beside the wire fence and tucked the ends of her robe between her knees. “I think she’s just too exhausted to continue.”

He looked at the dog. The pup’s feet were sticking out, the rest of its body still inside. It was probably dead by now; it’d been so long coming, suffocated before it ever drew a first breath. Gingerly, because he’d never done anything like this before, but guided by some instinct, he reached up inside and curved two fingers around the pup’s slick body to tug gently. It felt weird, hot and wet and soft as he guided it with firm pressure. The mama dog didn’t protest except for a kind of little whining sound, and in a minute, he was able to work the puppy free of the soft folds and lay it on the rags. It was so still, a small thing all limp and soggy.

“Oh, I think it’s dead,” Mama said, and sounded sad.

Chantry wiped his hand on one of the rags and shook his head. “Maybe not. See? The mama’s taking care of it.”

Following some maternal instinct, Belle washed the pup to life with her tongue. After a few minutes of that the pup wriggled around, blind and seeking comfort. There were only eight nipples and nine pups, but the first and strongest puppy was already sleeping, its mouth making sucking sounds as if still attached. Chantry gently nudged the last puppy to the teat. It latched on with surprising strength. Tiny paws pushed against the mama, milking her.

“It’s no bigger than a shadow,” Mama said after a moment. “You know it may not make it through the night.”

“I know.”

“Come inside now. It’s after nine and I need to finish preparing my Sunday School lesson. You’ll need to sit with Mikey again. He has been restless tonight.”

He didn’t want to leave. He’d never seen puppies born before. He felt powerful, as if he’d been part of magic. And he felt a strong connection to the tiny scrap of dog nursing so fiercely. It got to him somehow, just watching it. He looked up, and saw something in his mama’s face that he hadn’t seen in a long time, a smile of pure pleasure. She felt it, too, felt the miracle that had just happened.

“Come along, Chantry,” she said, and held out her hand to him. “I know just what we’ll feed the mother. I’ll prepare it, and you may bring it out to her before you sit with Mikey.”

That night he lay in bed close to his brother and thought about the puppy he’d helped bring into the world. It was a male, and he’d live. He just knew it. Maybe he’d say a prayer about it. Then again, Chantry wasn’t much on praying despite Mama’s best efforts to make him a strong believer. He figured if God was so all-powerful, He’d do something to stop all the wicked stuff going on in the world. If He was there like Mama and Reverend Hale claimed, then He either didn’t care or had a really strange sense of what was right.