Septima cut her off. “You know I’m open-minded, Ruthie, and you know how I feel about the creative atmosphere at Thanatopsis and the artists’ behavior as regards their personal ethics and standards of sexual conduct—”
Ruth could only stare at her.
“Well, when my son told me he was bringin’ home a Jewish girl I didn’t bat an eye—why would I, with all the talented Jewish artists we’ve had here over the years—but I’m gettin’ away from what I want to say altogether. Whether you were more, more intimate with this foreign boy than you allow or not is really not at issue here …” She paused, and the silence could have engulfed ships and swallowed up oceans. “Ruth”—the sound of her own name made Ruth jump, she couldn’t help it—“Ruth, what I want to say is that I had a call from Saxby this afternoon.”
A call from Saxby, a call from Saxby. Yes? And so?
“He was in jail, Ruth. In the Clinch County Jail in Ciceroville.”
“In jail?” Ruth couldn’t have been more surprised had the old woman told her he was taken hostage in Lebanon. “For what?”
Septima gave her a close penetrating look. “My law-yers are seein’ to that, don’t you worry. He’ll be out by this time and that sheriff down there and all the rest of them will be mighty sorry they ever tangled with Septima Lights, believe you me—but that isn’t the point. The point is that they accused him of helpin’ that boy escape and takin’ him in my car, my Mercedes, down to that swamp. The point is, Ruthie, I wonder who put that boy in the trunk of that car and what you want to tell me about it.”
Ruth was stunned. Paralyzed. She could feel her toehold at Thanatopsis slipping, her career in jeopardy, Saxby alienated from her, waitressing looming up like a black hole in her future. “I lied,” she blurted, “I admit it and I’m sorry. But just about Hiro, I mean how much I helped him when he was … was at large. But I swear to you, I had nothing to do with his getting out of that cell, I knew nothing about it—and neither did Sax.”
They sat there for half an hour, and Ruth fed the old woman the bits and crumbs of the truth about Hiro—but she’d never been intimate with him, never, she insisted on that—always circling back to the justification that she’d been using him for a story, for research, for art. That was it: she’d done it for art. And she hadn’t meant any harm. She hadn’t. Really.
When she was finished, the shadows beyond the window had lengthened perceptibly and the chatter of the forest had settled into an evening mode, richer now with the chirp of tree frogs and the booming basso of their pond-dwelling cousins. Owen was at the door. Septima cleared her throat. “They want you to go down there tomorrow, Ruthie—Mr. Abercorn does—and it’s not a request. I know all about that shameful incident on the patio and I just kick myself for lettin’ that class of people stay on at Thanatopsis, and I don’t know how to be delicate about this, but I want you to go too.” Septima fixed her eyes on her. “And I’m afraid it’s not a request either.”
“But—but what they did, grabbed me by the hair, called me names—” Ruth was angry now, she couldn’t help herself. And then a little fist of fear clenched inside her. “What do they want with me?”
The old woman chose her words carefully. “I don’t really know, Ruthie, but it seems to me the least you can do. My boy’s gone to jail over this.” She let the words sink in, and the moment held between them, bloated and ugly. “In light of all this—” Septima said finally, searching for the words, “—this emotional upset, I would understand if you’d like to postpone your readin’ tonight …”
Postpone the reading! Ruth nearly came up out of the chair with joy and relief at the mention of it—off the hook, she was off the hook!—but then she caught herself. If she didn’t read, no matter what the reason, short of nuclear war, they’d be on her like jackals. Ruth backed down, they’d say, she’s nothing but talk; did you bear what Jane Shine said about it?
“You’re sure Saxby’s all right?”
“I’ve known Donnager Stratton for forty-two years and he went down there personally to set things right.” Septima sighed. “He’s a stubborn boy, Saxby, always has been. He’s after those little white feeish, Ruthie, and he’s goin’ back into that swamp after ’em, manhunt or no manhunt. That’s what he told me.”
Ruth looked down at her lap. She was still clutching the manila folder. When she looked up again, she’d made her decision. “No,” she said finally, “I’ll read.”
The Power of the Human Voice
The first thing he was going to do when they got him out of here was find that little paramilitary goon with the scraggly beard and kick his ass into the next county. And Abercorn too, that crud. The strong-arm tactics might go down with some poor scared hyperventilating wetback drowning in his own sweat, but he’d be damned if anybody was going to slap him around. Or Ruth either. It was unnecessary, totally unnecessary. It was outrageous, that’s what it was.
Saxby Lights, scion of the venerable Tupelo Island clan, son of the late Marion and Septima Hollister Lights and lover of an obscure literary artist from Southern California, found himself in a concrete-block cell in the Clinch County Jail in Ciceroville, Georgia, guest of Sheriff Bull Tibbets and Special Agent Detlef Abercorn of the INS. The cell featured a stainless-steel toilet bolted to the floor and a cot bolted to the wall. Three of the walls were painted lime green and displayed an ambitious overlay of graffiti relating to Jesus Christ Our Savior, the probability of His coming, and the sex act as it was practiced between men and women, men and men, men and boys, and men and various other species. Crude drawings of a bearded Christ replete with halo alternated with representations of huge bloated phalluses that floated across the walls like dirigibles. The fourth wall, which gave onto a concrete walkway, was barred from floor to ceiling, like the monkey cage in a zoo. The whole place smelled of Pine Sol cut with urine.
Saxby was on his feet—he was too angry to sit. In the interstices of his anger he was alternately depressed and worried, anxious for Ruth—and for himself too. Had she helped the kid escape? Had she concealed him in the trunk? He wouldn’t put it past her, not after she’d hidden the whole business from him, not after she’d lied to him. Sure he was worried. He hadn’t seen the inside of a jail cell since college, when he’d spent a night in the lockup at Lake George on a drunk-and-disorderly charge. But that hardly made him a career criminal. And while he could appreciate that the whole business with the Japanese kid looked pretty suspicious, especially after what Ruth had done, and he could understand that Abercorn was frustrated and beginning to look more than a little foolish, it didn’t excuse a thing. They were such idiots. He was no criminal, couldn’t they see that? He was the one who’d reported the guy in the first place. And yet here they’d sicked their commandos on him and wrenched his vertebrae out of joint, they’d handcuffed him and humiliated him and dragged him off to jail like some Sicilian drug runner. They didn’t have to do that. He would have gone with them peaceably.
Or maybe he wouldn’t have. On second thought, he definitely wouldn’t have. That was the thing. Nothing could have gotten him off that island this morning—nothing short of physical force, that is—and the minute Donnager Stratton showed up he was going back, police cordon or no. What was he thinking?—settling the score with Abercorn and his henchman could wait.
The reason, of course, was Elassoma okefenokee (or Elassoma okefenokee lightsei—he couldn’t resist appending his own name, though he knew it was a bit premature, and, well, a little childish too). He’d found them. He’d finally found them. And he’d just gotten going, just thrown his nets and discovered the mother lode, when that brain-dead little storm trooper came at him from behind. Talk about bad timing—he’d finally found his albinos, over two hundred of them in his first six pulls, only to have them taken away from him. Or to be more accurate, he was taken away from them.
But it was amazing. There they were, right where Roy said they’d be. And the thing was, Roy hadn’t even wanted him to go out—not after the Nipponese
escape artist popped out of the trunk between them and tumbled headlong into the swamp. “What in god’s name was that?” Roy had said, scratching his head and gaping out across the boat pond to where Hiro Tanaka was cutting a clean frothing wake to the other side. Saxby hadn’t been able to answer him. He thought he was hallucinating. It was as if he’d thrown a ball up in the air and it hadn’t come down, as if he’d turned on the gas range and flames had burst from his fingertips. His mouth fell open, his arms dangled like wash at his sides. But then he recovered himself, then the impossible became possible and he connected the trunk and Tupelo Island and the ground beneath his feet, and the anger came up on him like a thousand little cars racing out of control through his bloodstream. “You son of a bitch!” he bellowed, charging into the water like a bull alligator and shaking his fist at the retreating swimmer, “you, you”—he’d never used the words before, never, but out they came as if they were the very oleo of his vocabulary—“you Nip, you Jap, you gook!” He was standing there, knee-deep in the water, shaking his fist and waving his arms and shouting, “I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you yet!,” when Roy took him by the belt and led him back to shore.
After he’d calmed down he told Roy the story, and that was when Roy put on his official face, the face of the second in command and de facto overseer of the Okefenokee National Wilderness Area with his offices in the tourist center at the Stephen C. Foster State Park and his unwavering allegiance to the mammals, birds, fishes and reptiles of the swamp, not to mention the Secretary of the Interior, a man who had more than a passing interest in law and order and public relations. “We can’t go out there now,” he said, “not after this.”
“And why the hell not?”
Roy looked offended. “Why, we’ve got to call the sheriff, the authorities. They’ll want to coordinate some sort of manhunt with our people on this end”—he was no longer addressing Saxby, but thinking aloud—”… of course he won’t get far out there before he’s stung, bitten and chewed half to death, presuming he doesn’t drown—and that in itself’s a big presumption …”
“Roy?”
“Hm?”
“I’m going out there just the same.”
Roy gave no sign that he’d heard him. “You say he’s Japanese?”
Saxby nodded.
“Well, you never know. From what I’ve heard of the Japanese—they’re pretty resourceful, aren’t they?” Roy tugged at the bill of his cap, stroked his nose as if it were detached from him. “Still and all, I’d wager they haven’t got anything like this over there, and resourcefulness can only take you so far, know what I mean?” He looked past Saxby to the low pine building that housed the tourist center and then back across the lagoon to the spot where Hiro had vanished in a vegetable embrace. “I’d say they’ll have him back here by sundown.”
“All the more reason to let me go—hell, the park’s still open, isn’t it?”
They both glanced at Roy’s boat: it was canted back on the trailer, the gentle surge of the water baptizing its slick fiberglass hull in one long continuous motion. This was Roy’s particular boat, the one he’d built himself for swamping, a marvel of poise and maneuverability. Their eyes fastened on the stenciled legend—the Pequod II—and both of them smiled. All round them were men with tackle boxes and coolers, their faces sun-inflamed, their eyes a squint of cracker blue. They glanced furtively at Roy and Saxby, the phenomenon of the amphibious Japanese no less marvelous than an eighty-pound catfish or a three-legged deer, but they went about their business as if it were the commonest thing in the world. Engines sputtered to life, boats cut the surface of the whiskey-complected water. For just a moment then, Roy relaxed his official face. “AH right, go ahead,” he said. “But you understand you’re on your own. I won’t be able to join you, not now. And if it gets bad,” he added, “I’ll come out there after you myself.”
And so Roy walked off toward the office and the telephone that would summon Bull Tibbets, Detlef Abercorn and Lewis Turco and a whole chin-thrusting, neck-stretching pack of intensely curious people representing the nation’s supremely curious press, and Saxby set out alone for Billy’s Island in Roy’s long low flat-bottomed boat.
It was early yet, and when Saxby got beyond the fishermen with their cane poles, straw hats and early-morning Budweisers, the swamp was still and silent, a place of immemorial wakings floating beneath a breath of mist. Roy’s directions were flawless—for all his easy country ways, when you came down to it he was as precise as a brain surgeon—and Saxby had no trouble finding the crude trail that led round to the back side of Billy’s Island. The trail was off-limits to anyone without a special permit, and since it wouldn’t admit any of the motor-driven rental boats in any case, it was little used, overgrown with cascades of honeysuckle and cassena. Saxby had to pole his way through, stopping from time to time to cut back the vegetation with the machete Roy had thought to provide. By nine o’clock the sweat had soaked right on through to his underwear and the ribs of his socks, and the boat was a traveling salad of chopped leaves, twigs and fat disoriented spiders. The drizzle had cleared off and the sun was coming on strong by the time he glided out onto the titi-fringed pond Roy had described right on down to the last lily pad.
The pond looked ordinary enough—fifty feet across, six or eight feet deep, a prairie beyond it snarled with marsh grass, pipewort and lily pads, the slash pine of Billy’s Island backing up on it from the rear. It was nothing more than an oversized gator wallow, really—in fact, an eight-footer hung in the water ahead of him, floating like a sky diver in the blue, its legs spread wide, the crenelated tail hanging motionless. Yes, the pond looked ordinary enough—no different from a thousand others—but to Saxby it was entirely unique, the pond of all ponds, the place in which the albino pygmy sunfish lurked in all its rare and recondite glory.
He could barely restrain himself. He wanted to toss out the minnow traps, float the seine, make the water churn with the hard flat caudal muscles of his quarry—but he knew better. Though it looked clear, the sun hot, the sky arching electric overhead, he knew the weather could change out here from moment to moment and that he had to set up camp first—just to be safe. Half an hour, that’s all it would take.
When he drifted back out onto the pond, the sun had set it aflame and the gator had gone (which was just as well—the last thing he needed was tangling an angry gator up in his net). He set and baited half a dozen minnow traps and then he floated the seine across the pond. He wasn’t particularly confident in the seine—if there were too many obstructions the net would snag and the fish would escape—but he was hoping to get lucky. Short of dynamite, the seine was the quickest and most efficient way to discover what lay beneath the surface. And there was no thrill like it—as the two sides of the net drew together like a purse, you could see the fish fighting it, roiling the water and beating at the mesh, and then, as you pulled it ashore, there they were, silver and gold, flashing in the bag like rare coin.
The first pull produced nothing—the net fouled on a sunken branch. But the second—the second hit the jackpot. There he was, drowned in sweat and a paste of crushed mosquitoes, up to his thews in the muck, the net sweeping closer, the neck of the bag constricting, and he could feel the weight and the life of them. And then he had the bag over the gunwale of the boat that floated beside him, and there they were. His albinos. Two of them, three, five, six and eight and ten, counting breathlessly as he plucked them from the farrago of thrashing fish, casting aside the darters and the bluegills and the ordinary dark-skinned pygmies like so much refuse. He put the good ones, the albinos, in an array of sloshing buckets in the bottom of the boat, and then he cast the net again and again. Finally, late in the afternoon, he forced himself to stop and take his treasure back to camp (he was like a forty-niner, a crazed old galoot onto the richest vein in the hills, and he didn’t want to stop, couldn’t, but he had to—the sun was slowly raising the temperature in the buckets and he was afraid he’d lose everything he had if he
didn’t). Yes, and then he went back to camp to set the buckets in the shade beneath the trees. Yes. And then Turco hit him.
All the long way back to the dock, all the way up the rough wooden planks, through the phalanx of reporters and photographers and into the tourist center where Sheriff Bull Tibbets sat chewing his cud and stroking his gut as if it were a crystal ball, Saxby protested his innocence. He raged, he wheedled, he reasoned, pleaded, threatened, but Abercorn wouldn’t listen. Abercorn was angry. His jaw was set, his pink eyes were hard. “No more Mr. Nice Guy,” he said, and his voice was cold and uncompromising, “I’m through fooling around.” Saxby knew something he wasn’t telling him, he claimed—and so did Ruth—and there were going to be some charges leveled. People were going to jail here. This was serious business. Deadly serious. On the other hand, if Saxby cooperated—if Ruth cooperated—arrangements could be made, charges dropped. All he wanted was this illegal alien. And he was going to get him.
Saxby was furious, enraged, frightened. No matter what he said, they didn’t believe him. He knew nothing. But until he did know, until he told them precisely where Hiro Tanaka was and why and how he’d helped him escape, he was going to sit in a jail cell and work hard at remembering. For the longest while, Saxby couldn’t even think straight—all he wanted was to spring out of the chair, snap the handcuffs like some superhero and pound that acid-washed face till it burst like a tomato. But then Abercorn waved him away in disgust and they shipped him off to the Clinch County Jail in Ciceroville and gave him his phone call. He phoned his mother. She was a towering presence, all-powerful, the mother he’d clung to as a fatherless boy trying to survive a Yankee accent in a Guale Coast school. She honed her anger in the clearest tones of reassurance and threat: “Donnager Stratton will have you out of that cell inside the hour, I guarantee you that, and we will have the governor himself in on this by nightfall—really, I still cannot believe it—and those odious petty little agents will find themselves the ones in hot water, just you believe me.”