BL 13

Anthony Vieira frozen in terror—and then it passed. He looked around, stopped singing, and saw the fishing shanty.

“Glory be," he said to himself, and lurched along a thickening path of mud and tree branches, the wind whipping up the Delta swampland up around him. He walked around to the doorway facing the river and walked inside and saw Annabelle, bent against the wall and fucked by Will, by his father, by a tall white man with no eyes. She laughed and grunted and writhed and shouted Skip's own name just once, delirious, eyes squeezed shut and he yowled like the kittens his Uncle Walter had crushed to death under his boot heel, just because he had too many hanging around his tobacco shop.

He went sprawling in the mud, instantly filthy. Chiggers jumped into his shirt, his jacket was layered in the nastiest shit a swamp has to offer, and he'd just seen— well, what? And someone was laughing at him.

An old man sat with his back against an ancient eucalyptus and holding a long, hard-carved fishing pole. The pole was taut and quivered in the rain, the line vanishing into the silver water. You couldn't really tell where the sky ended.

"Fancy Moses, son! You filthier than your Papa after twelve days in Baton Rouge!" he yelled to him, and then sprang for the pole as a monster snag bent it nearly double. "Ye Gods, Nehemiah! Look at that!"

Skip stared at him, then looked at himself, on his back in the mud, so he stood up and stretched, tried not to crack his knuckles (they'd been aching for hours, though not as bad as some nights back in Vicksburg, yeah?), and walked to his side, watched him struggled with the pole.

"What was that you called me?"

The man ignored him. "Lookit! Aw, hell yeah! Ride it like a Chinese dragon!"

"Hey! Put that thing down! Look at me!"

"That's your name, and you know it! Now help me!"

The old man thrust his pole at Skip and jumped back.

"Whoa! Hey, no, here!"

"You gotta get him in here, boy! Go for it!"

"No, now take your pole, you old bastard!"

“Bring 'er in, Skip!" the old sonuvabitch shouted, and clapped him on the back. Skip lost his footing and let go. The pole was swept along by the current, into that endless, roiling black and blue sky. The old man bellowed laughter, slapped his thighs, and marched back through the mess of a levee into what Skip figured had to be his shanty.

"Hey! Ah, shit!" He almost slipped and didn't want this last suit any dirtier, so he followed, shouting. "Hey! Who are ya! What you doing out here, and how the fuck you know me? Eh? Old-timer!"

But the old man would just laugh and shake his head, his long, white coils of hair shaking around. He stroked his beard and vanished into the shack. Skip stood outside and let the rain soak in his skin. He wiped his jacket and pants down but it 41