The Cage Keeper (19 page)

The woods were dark. Red flicked on his flashlight and shined it ahead of him.

“What’s your test weight, BW?”

“One hunerd and fifty pounds!”

Reilly laughed. “You ever really catch anything over five pounds, Billy Wayne?”

“Shit, you hear that, Red? I’ll tell ya somethin’ now, son, and I’ll tell ya true. There’s turtles in that water hole that you can’t even lift, by God!”

Reilly stumbled on the trail then used the gaff to get his balance back. “I’ve heard that before.”

“Red, hey Red, tell this yankee son of a gun about them old turtles we killed.”

“Which way’s your trap?”

“I got it at the west fork, Red. Go on, Red, tell the kid here about how long it takes them sonsabitches to really die.”

Reilly looked in front of him at Billy Wayne’s back and heard the tapping of the beer cans in the sack over his shoulder, listened to Billy’s heavy breathing over the flat trail.

“Hey yank!” Red called over his shoulder.

“Yeah.”

“You think I pull five-pound turtles with that thing you’re carryin’? Do you?”

“I wouldn’t think so, Red.”

“There you go, yank, there you go.”

“Hear that, Cap? Cut through that thicket, Red, it’s quicker.”

They moved through briar bush that pulled against their legs and snapped under their feet. Reilly stepped high to keep from tripping and held the gaff in front of him with two hands. He liked the heavy balanced feel of it, something solid, a good thing to carry in night woods with a weight to bludgeon with and a hook to gouge. He took a deep breath and filled his chest with air, smelled the pine and dry brush, the wood rot of the creek; things were feeling different this time, more like a job to do, and he knew it was because of Red Willie.

They came out onto the trail again and it widened into a pine-needle-covered clearing near the creek. Reilly heard Billy Wayne cough then spit onto the ground. “Let’s have the light, Red, I’ll show ya.”

Reilly followed them down a short embankment to a small sandbar at the creek’s edge. His foot sank in and he pulled it out fast, steadied himself with the gaff. Billy Wayne shined the light out over the slow swirling surface of the water at the cork; it was half submerged in the creek, the water flowing over and around it. “That sonuvabitch is pulled back a foot or two.”

“Let’s have the light,” Red said. He followed the length of the line from the cork over the bank to the tree trunk it was tied to, then he brought the light back down again and followed the line on the other side.

“Ooo Jesus, look how tight them sonsabitches are!”

“Where’s your bottom rope, Billy?”

“Right behind us.”

Red pointed the light at Reilly then behind him at the ground to a coil of nylon rope in the sand, one end leading then disappearing into the water. “Well son, you might see what that hook’s for right now.” Red handed the flashlight to Billy Wayne.

Reilly stepped out of the way as Red walked over and picked up the coil of rope then started up the embankment with it, dropping some slack behind him as he moved.

“I’ve been usin’ this little hickory here for my pulley, Red.”

“Let’s have the kid gaff her, Billy.”

Reilly heard the wink in Red Willie’s voice.

“You and me will do the pullin’ from over here.” Red threw the length of rope over a bare branch four or five feet above his head. Billy Wayne caught it.

“Now Cap,” Billy shouted to Reilly, “soon as we get the net up even with the water I’ll jump down there and give ya some light.”

“Yep. Okay.” Reilly had a sudden need to urinate and as he walked over the sand and stepped into the warm water, his legs felt too springy, his arms and hands too small.

“Get ready, yank! We’re about to snag her!”

Reilly spaced his feet apart in the water, one sinking ahead of him in the creek’s bottom, the other just barely in it behind him. He held the gaff well in front of him then turned it around once in his hands so that the hook’s point was facing down.

“Pull!”

Reilly took a deep breath and heard the whine of the rope over the branch, Red’s grunting, Billy Wayne’s breathing. The water dripped off it, moving high and to his right; he narrowed his eyes and could not see the current on the water’s surface but felt it against his feet and ankles, could hear it flowing over and around the cork out there ahead of him. He gripped the gaff tighter and thought of black snakes slithering through the water as his feet sank a little deeper; he curled up his toes inside his shoes then felt rooted there, a part of this place forever.

“Hold it, Billy.” The rope stopped moving. Reilly heard Billy Wayne cough something up, heard it hit the water with a heaviness he knew it shouldn’t have.

“She’s on the far right side of it. We gotta wait for her to go to the middle or she’ll flop out when it breaks water. Let her back down slow, Billy.”

“Yessir.”

Reilly pulled his feet out of the water still holding the hook in front of him. He turned and walked fast up the embankment, a chill spreading down his neck to the center of his back. He walked in the direction of the beer bag then dropped the gaff and sat cross-legged on the ground, waited for the light.

“Just let her hang, BW.”

“There enough slack?”

“Hell yeah, she’s hit bottom already.”

The light bounced in Reilly’s face as they came up toward him. “I thought you’d have us a full fire goin’ by now, yank.” Red Willie shined the light ahead of them while Billy Wayne and Reilly gathered dry sticks and brush from the woods. They came back and dropped an armful each into a pile. Red Willie squatted and struck a match to the brown pine needles beneath it, then struck three more and dropped them burning in the bottom of the brush. Reilly got down on his hands and knees and blew hard until the pine needles glowed and the brush and small sticks began to catch fire. He stood up and Billy Wayne handed him a beer out of the burlap sack; Reilly passed it to Red Willie then reached in and got one for himself.

“She’s a big one all right,” Red said, popping open his beer.

“How can you tell?”

“You pull on that rope and you can tell, Cap.”

“Nope. I knew she was big as soon as we got to the creek. Yank, perk your nose up a bit, what do you smell?”

Reilly sniffed. “Burning wood.”

“Well that’s the difference between you and me, son.”

“I smelled it, Red,” Billy Wayne said just before he raised the can of beer to his mouth and slurped loudly.

“Dead fish, yank.”

“Yeah?”

“The stronger the smell the bigger the turtle, son.”

“What do you mean?”

“These things eat fish and frogs mainly, but their gullet ain’t big enough to swallow ’em whole so they end up takin’ chunks out of things as they pass by. A man smells a lot of carcass in a water hole, he knows somethin’s feedin’.”

“I don’t smell anything like that.”

“That’s ’cause you ain’t got the nose for it, yank. Them fish float downstream but if you got a nose for things like me and BW here, well then you can still smell it in the air, see.”

Reilly took a long swallow from his beer and imagined a turtle that took chunks out of things, its head popping out of its shell open-mouthed then chomping down and tearing free with a quick twist of its leathery neck. “Why doesn’t it just swim away from the net?”

“Hell, you know why from the little ones we caught, Cap.”

“The net helps her get fish, yank. She’ll come up for air then go right back down to her feedin’ place. Then we pull on the bottom rope to feel where she is. When she’s in the middle, then shit, that’s all she wrote.” Red Willie took a pint-sized bottle out of one of his overall pockets, opened it, and took a long pull.

“Ooo, I’ll have some of that.”

Red passed the bottle to Billy Wayne. He swallowed then chased it with his beer. “Cap?”

Reilly took it from Billy, swallowed once then held himself tight against the cough, the first layer of skin on his tongue and throat feeling fresh killed; he passed the bottle back to Billy Wayne and swallowed cool beer fast.

“You divorce that Texas gal yet?”

“Shit,” Billy said.

“Boy, she did a number on you. Even my Martha, God bless her, wouldn’t a gone that far.”

“That’s because Jude is a class A, number one, ball breakin’ bitch, boys, and I’ll tell ya somethin’ right now, the good Lord give me the opportunity to see that through the time I done in Rapides Parish.”

“Shit, if that’s God’s way feel free to count me out, son.”

“Yeah but I’m talkin’ different, Red, them bars give a man some time with hisself; hell I ain’t even ’sposed to be drinkin’. I got to report down to that center to piss in a jar for ’em whenever they call me for it.”

“Don’t tell me no sad stories, friend. I killed a damn truckload of Germans for Uncle Sam and I ain’t seen a disability check in fourteen fuckin’ years.”

Reilly looked at Billy Wayne standing in the firelight, saw how lean and sunken his face had gotten in the last year, a harbor for shadows. “How long were you in there, Billy?”

Billy Wayne took another drink from the bottle then chased it again with his beer. “Eight months and sixteen days.”

Reilly looked away and into the fire, felt his face muscles go slack as he went into a stare, his eyes open and nonblinking even as they began to water from the smoke; he looked deep into it at the glowing coals beneath the unburnt wood, saw them breathing with their own heat, thought how nice it would be to be able to wade through them, to lie down in them without burning. He watched a small blue flame in its center weaving back and forth, licking up at some brush, and he remembered the cobra he’d seen with Mimi.

Her roommate was gone and they had spent all morning and part of the afternoon in bed, the clock radio stuck on a soft-rock FM station; they had made love for hours, had held each other tight until their arms slipped from their backs with the sweat, until the room was humid with their smells. Then they showered and dressed and went out into the cold Sunday afternoon to find bagels and coffee, ended up at The Animal Reserve.

They were looking at the reptiles and he had tapped the glass after reading the sign that said not to. The snake uncoiled fast and rose up out of itself, its head fanning to twice its normal size, and Mimi had pulled him back as the top part of it began to weave from side to side, slow and controlled, then shot itself straight forward into the glass making a knocking sound that made them both jump.

Reilly closed his eyes against the smoke and tried to see her face. He saw her eyes then her hair in the sunlight. He thought harder and saw her mouth and nose but this time he didn’t see her forehead or cheeks. But he had her smell and her taste. Sometimes he’d be working in the garden with his grandfather, holding a half-full basket in each hand while the white-bearded old man stooped over between the vegetable rows, a V of sweat sticking his faded workshirt to his back; he would half straighten up, then without looking hold the okra or green beans or tomatoes out for Reilly to put a basket under. Her smell came to him at these times. Among all the other earth smells his mind would play tricks on him; he’d be handling tomatoes when his nose would be filled with the milky scent of her cheek and throat, or he’d be rinsing the vegetables with the hose at the gate, letting cool well water run over his dirty hands, and then he’d taste her, would all of a sudden know in his mouth the salty sweetness of her down there. He would keep doing what he was doing, wouldn’t think about it, but it always left something opened in him, something drafty and unfinished. But he could never see her whole face, just fragments of it, and he knew that when he could see all of her in his head talking and laughing or quiet and watching, that he would be very close to not needing her anymore, that her place inside him would fill up with something else.

Reilly opened his eyes and looked back into the fire. He heard the Louisiana twang in both men’s talking and felt he couldn’t be farther away from her if he tried. He drank from his beer then lowered it quickly; he knew what it had been doing, that it hadn’t been helping but was instead making liquid and fertile all those feelings he was trying to dry up, was pulling him inside himself to a hollow place full of bad echoes, and he knew if he had the keys to Billy’s truck he’d be running through the woods right now, would get in and start it up, would drive to Le Mae’s and fill up the tank, buy two large coffees to go then get on the interstate north. In two days he’d be with her, his face buried in her curly blond hair, smelling it, kissing her neck, not knowing what to say, hoping she’d say it for him, would be shocked at what he had done to see her and just hold him tight, invite him back.

“Yank, you gone deaf or is this liquor a bit much for your constitution?”

“Hell no.” Reilly cleared his throat.

“Then let’s go, Cap.” Billy Wayne turned his back on the fire and walked unsteadily toward the creek. Reilly followed after him but Red stopped him with his arm. He gripped Reilly’s shoulder with his thick-fingered hand and looked him in the eye. “We’re going to pull her. Now you’re goin’ to have to wade in about waist deep to do any good here tonight.”

Reilly was looking back into Red’s face lit up gold from the fire; he saw how crooked his nose was, how the skin hung dry and loose over the sharp bones of his face, a few days’ growth of white and gray whiskers covering most of it; his eyes were locked into the old man’s and he felt their hardness even though he knew that Red Willie liked him, that he called him yank with a tease in his voice Reilly understood. “Yeah, no problem, Red.”

Red handed him the gaff. “Just hook her in the head hole of the shell and pull her back to the beach.” He was mimicking a pulling movement with both his bare arms.

“Yeah, no problem.”

“How ’bout some light down here!”

Red pulled his flashlight out of his overall pocket and flicked it on. Reilly walked ahead of him and saw his shadow on the ground, then the sand and slow-moving muddy water.

Red stood beside him and shined the light in the direction of the cork.

Reilly couldn’t see it.