Leech could hang that bird from a hook. With one stroke, a cupping of the wand hand, he could withdraw the rooster’s coiled meld while it died vertically on the wall. He was the dismantler of everything that flew or walked or burrowed at the base of a tree — he could not stand peacefully in the barnyard accepting his eviction by the chicken. So he crept again toward the beam where it had fallen. A slow, noncommittal clucking and the barn held over him its dusty peak, a shadow closing upon the doors rolled aside for the passing of some nocturnal elephant or roach. He felt, in the rags of the chicken thief scratching the grated wire of darkness through which the prowler glides, that he was guided by the slippery fingers of one who carries a gunny sack, a hood, for the squatting quarry.
The bird was hiding. He could hear the wind chortle in its gullet, then the sudden tripping of hooked feet, the flurry of straw against the wing bow as it moved, re-took its position. He waved out-lifted hands, barring its flight as if the cock could stay in the air long enough to escape, and pushed to the rear where one jump would land him on the sudden squawk.
There was no hen house, no setter walking on her breast over abundant eggs, nor was the one-legged guardian posted windward on the gable. Cap Leech did not have to climb, only explore each changing, still warm niche, approach with velvet crouching feet. In and out of a child’s late cradle, perched for a moment on the rim of an enamel pitcher, then behind it, pink helmet in full view; it adorned a tilted dry commode and backed off bowing and scraping.
He thought of the face, all nib, and followed the body, the simplest shape, a bag for the intestines, as it puffed and shrank. He stopped, clapped his hands twice and listened as it fell over and over itself. He climbed through the collars, the leather loop, harness for a whale, until he saw the plumes and heard the ligatures and chalk of the bare head batting against the wall. Down came his two stiff arms as one.
Out of the barn slid a short dark tousled figure who carried a handful of tight feathers around the side to the fence and who, moving to his moonlit chores, tossed it over the rails for the horses. Then, crossing the yard briskly, he disappeared into the cabin.
He undressed in front of the open door and by the smudged light of the hurricane lamp. Off came the vest with a careful crick of the arms, picking the buttons, dropping another bit of white cloth to the floor, and there was no curiosity for the place upon whose husks and hides they had slept so long switching their faces. With an old maid agility he skipped into the nightshirt. He left the light smoking for his sons. He tested the bed. And, with low white neckline and tremulous drawstrings, thin loose cuffs and deckled folds, fluttering like a small moth, Cap kicked off his slippers, lay flat, drew the blanket to his chin. Arms straight at his side he slept, waiting, eyes boring through the roof.
My place.
“Shall we let him go,” shouting above the engine, “or take him to the hollow?”
“Put me down!” And Camper watched the crusty truck jog from sight. Alone, dun flies dropping from his collar, he began to run toward the dormitory where his wife — wet trouser legs ran faster— had met the fiends.
“I told you to keep that shade drawn. I told you.” Even now they might be circling for another look, the amphibiotic eyes. She sat by the child’s cot side, feet tightly together, hands folded in her lap. She shook her head. The boy lay on his sheet of white canvas, without fever or chill, the short body draped from top to foot in the translucent gauze of a mosquito net. It clove to the pointed face and thinly hid the open lips. The snake’s breath hung about the body.