I run, and I am sure the guards in the cornfield will shoot me dead before Taylor’s dogs are even free of their pens. The men on the rows are all in stripes, and they’re sowing manure in among the hip-high stalks. Only trustees pick the ripe ears, high as the crops get during harvest time.
The men hoot as I go past.
“Where you going to in such a hurry?”
“You finally breaking out?”
“Martin!” I hear, a stronger voice. “You doing what it looks like you’re doing?”
It’s Beau. I wish they’d keep him in one spot — the southeast tower or the sixth-floor row or the yard or the corn — so I’d know where to expect his lurching face. He’s leveling his rifle in my direction.
“Best stop!” he shouts.
I’m near to slowing when I hear Taylor. “Easy, Beau. We’re just doing some dog work.” Taylor has got himself up on a horse in what seems just a few seconds. “You pass it down the line,” he shouts, then yells in my direction, “Call that running, Martin? Slow as a lame heifer.”
The corn shakes with laughter, men in stripes and guards in their denim.
I’m ripping the cuff from my sleeve — is this what Taylor wants? — leaving it for a dog to sniff out. And then I’m pouring myself into woods that could easily be the woods of Marie’s land, woods I’ve stamped through in my freedom. I’m running to a large possum oak on the far side of a creek so that I can be treed by dogs. I’m doing this because George Haskin was ignorant enough to get himself killed on the transformers I’d so carefully built to run current to a dying farm.
My scars throb, angered by the exertion. All the moisture is gone from my mouth, and I feel the sweat on my forehead gathering itself into drips down the sides of my face. My hands sting from scratches, these spiny-branched bushes and trees plucking at my skin and clothes as I push myself past. I know the names of these plants, but I can’t name them now. Holly? Buckeye?
Here is the creek, high and muddy from the rains we’ve had. I splash into it gratefully, the water to my knees, soaking my boots and socks. I bend at the waist to scoop a handful of brown water into my mouth. I don’t mind the silt, the rich-earth flavor, and I go to all fours to lap at the creek like a dog.
I am soaked now, my back wet from sweat, the water on my front climbing my sides. I could turn over, make my body a board, my hands behind my head, my feet pointing downstream. The current would spill me into the Alabama River, and I would ride that wide channel all the way to Mobile Bay. A ship could collect me, and I could say, “London,” when the captain asked where I was heading.
I hear dogs behind me, and I crawl from the water, leaving prints of my hands and feet in the mud. The possum oak spreads itself wide over the creek, its branches forking with their spoon-shaped leaves, wide at the tips and narrow at the base. It’s kind enough to offer a few low branches, and I pull myself up to them with a moan I can’t contain. It’s an old man’s moan, and I’m worried to house it. I climb a bit higher and settle myself into the crook of a thick branch about twenty feet off the ground. My breathing is desperately hoarse, a racket for the dogs to catch, and water drips from my boots and cuffs. I can hear the drops hitting leaves, a tick loud enough to be heard over the creek’s slosh and ripple. It’s a warm summer day, but I am cold in these wet clothes, the heat from my race washed downstream. Only that part of me will make it to Mobile.
I take a breath and chance a look down. I’m startled by the girl I see, leaning against the trunk of my tree, her narrow shoulders spread wide against the puzzled bark. She plucks a leaf from the closest branch, peeling the green away from the tendons. She faces the woods, away from the prison, and her hair is a lovely dark brown, like Marie’s when we met. I can’t see her face, but she seems young.
“You listening, Roscoe?” she says.
“What?”
She looks up, then, and the face she shows bewilders me. It is Marie’s face, or a version of hers, younger than I have ever known her to be. A drop of water from the soles of my boots wets the sleeve of her dress, light blue and thin. “Those hounds are so loud. They’re scaring off the birds. There’s a warbler or two in this tree of yours.” My God — to hear Marie talk of birds. “A cerulean, from the sound of it. What I caught of its song, that is, before those dogs got close.”
She picks at the bark, a long finger in a rough vein.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
She smiles at me, and she is young and beautiful, low on the ground under my wet and dirty boots, her sleeve speckled now as if caught in its own small rainstorm.
“The farm is doing wonderfully, Roscoe.”
“Why don’t you write?”
“What would I say if I did?”
She starts moving away, waving as she goes. A dog is in the creek, two smaller ones behind it.
“Wait!” I yell, but Marie is only a rustle of shadows in the brush. A dog has taken her place near the trunk, its nose at the footprints I stomped firm in the ground. A drip taps the middle of its head, and it brings its neck up level with the ground and shakes its giant ears. The thing is slow to sniff the bark, slower still to look up. The other two sniff wildly around it, dashing from creek bank to trunk and back, ears in their faces to shepherd in the scent, as I’ve learned from Hartley. They’re dashing in circles when the big one spots me. It lets out a piercing wail of sound, and the smaller ones chime in. They’ve found me quick it seems, but I don’t know what Taylor expects to happen now. Hartley would have him sitting on some stump a ways back, waiting for a dog to return and lead him to this spot. But if the dogs left, and I were a real escapee, I’d be quick to take off running again.
The dogs have set themselves wide around the base of the tree, holding still as they’ve been taught. One of the pups tries to mimic the older dog’s point, and it comes off-balanced, adolescent limbs outpacing its joints in their growth. The other pup lies down.
Why was Marie here? Why so young?
At least a quarter hour passes before the hooves of Taylor’s horse clomp to a halt on the other side of the creek. He whoas his mare.
“What do you think of that, Martin?”
The big dog whines, and the standing pup copies.
“They found me, sir.”
“Ha!” Taylor shouts, and he clucks his horse through the water. “And you thought your book didn’t have a nose for this type of hunt.”
I fear Taylor’s sense is clouded by his want for answers. If he climbed off his horse and stepped off a few yards, he’d see how foolish the chase was. The hounds may have found me quick, but they left Taylor behind. Without that lead tying them together, he was just a man on a horse, heading toward the possum oak across the creek where he knew I’d be hiding. Untying the dogs from the waists of his boys just makes for more hunting. The dogs track the man, and Taylor’s boys track the dogs, and Taylor tracks his boys.
It’s clearly not my place to tell him this.
“Wait,” he’s saying to the dogs. “Come on down, Martin.”
I climb down to low growls from the big dog and one pup. The other pup lunges toward me in excitement.
“Back,” Taylor roars, swinging down from his saddle. I am taken again with his ease of maneuvering. He swats the pup on the head, thick-handed across the ears. “No,” he shouts. The pup cowers and whimpers, tail tucked, haunches lowered. The other two keep their snouts turned on me. “Goddamn.” Taylor gives the pup one more whack and spits in the soil by the dog’s head. “That was the last chance on this one.”
I want to defend this dog, to at least tell Taylor not to hit him in the ears — Hartley has taught me that dogs need their sense of hearing as much as they need their sense of smell.