On Flint’s ninth birthday his father took him sailing on the Guadalupe River. It was late July, and the morning waves were filled with tiger-striped trout. The air smelled of wet, blooming flowers; the sun still rising behind cliffs thick with cacti, and when Flint stood on his toes he could see pelicans gliding like white bombers above the red-gold horizon.
Ahead of him, Boyce leaned bare-chested over the bow of their cruiser. There was a reel of ammunition clipped to his khaki slacks. A pair of binoculars hung loosely from a cord beneath his chin. Every so often he swiped his hands through the river and then brought them up to his mouth, allowing the cold water to trickle through his fingers.
‘A fine day,’ Boyce said. He snorted, and then spat into his palms. ‘Yessir, a fine day for becoming a man.’
Flint let his own fingers dangle in the water. The sky was streaked with gold, the amber light rising like fire inside the trees. Spray struck sideways as they shifted through patterns of ragged driftwood and floating moss. When Boyce guided the boat against the riverbank, the sound of the engine seemed to be swallowed by the foliage.
He cut the gas, and turned to his son.
‘Pass me that gun, soldier.’
Flint lifted the rifle from beneath his seat. Boyce’s stomach was hard and flat like a boxer’s. A pale pink scar ran from his armpit to his naval, the wound self-stitched and as jagged as a carving knife. Flint watched him loading the rifle and noticed, for the first time, that his father’s forearms were webbed with blue-black veins.
‘You ready to put in the work, scout? You ready to make your country proud?’
Flint glanced at the trees. The woodland was full of birdsong. Sunbeams hung like strips of flame on the leaves of the water oaks. Then he realised that his father was staring at him, and for a moment it seemed that the world had stopped turning, that the reeds and willows and still-rising sun were frozen in time. He saw Boyce’s hand twitch impatiently, the smoke from his filter-tipped cigarette pluming in the pink light.
‘I ain’t scared,’ Flint said.
‘Of what, boy?’
‘Of anything,’ Flint replied. As if to prove his point, he hung his leg over the side of the boat, allowing his boot to touch the riverbank. ‘I’ll go in there my own self. Don’t need help from nobody.’
Boyce laughed. He tossed his cigarette into the water, and then stood up, flexing his half-naked body against the sun. Behind him, a flock of red cardinals erupted from the trees, lifting into the sky like sparks from a fire.
They climbed out of the cruiser. The wind had shifted westward, and a brassy odour now hung above the bank. Boyce crouched at the base of a live oak, his back and shoulders painted with sunlight, the loaded rifle weightless beneath his arm. He twisted his neck and raised his hand in a flat-fingered gesture, before disappearing into the undergrowth.
Flint followed. The air inside the trees was thick with trapped humidity, and the forest floor had pulped and swollen in the spring runoff, leaving damp, fecund soil into which Flint’s feet sank. Beneath the superheated canopy, his canvas coat felt glued to his skin, and his boots seemed to take on the weight and texture of industrial breeze blocks. Boyce cut a careful path through the forest, somehow soundless atop the wet soil. Then, he stopped. Flint watched his father squat and trail his fingers through the mud.
‘Twelve o’ clock,’ he whispered, raising a closed fist in the air.
Boyce gestured for Flint to follow him down the slope. A band of light was breaking through the trees ahead of them, and Flint could hear waves capping against the shore. He found Boyce perched beneath a clump of willows, his eyes focused on the eastern bank.
Less than two hundred yards away, a crumbling jetty extended four feet across the water. A white fishing boat was moored to the outpost, and around it lily pads floated like coins in the sun-spangled haze. Further down the river, where the trees were suddenly sparse, a cloud of cinnamon-coloured mist hung above the roof of a small, wooden cabin. The walls of the cabin were crawling with lichen; the gallery stained black by water that had settled in the pine. Smoke was rising from a stone chimney, flattening beneath the willows and drifting in white wisps across the riverbank.
‘Why it’s got to be us, Pa?’ Flint asked. ‘And why he living all the way out here, anyway?’
‘Soldier don’t ask why,’ Boyce said. ‘Soldier follow orders, or soldier get my foot up his ass.’
Flint hesitated. The sun had slipped behind the clouds, and in the sudden gloom Boyce’s eyes were as hard and black as cherimoya seeds. Boyce slapped a fly from his cheek, then rubbed his nose with his knuckle. He looked at his son expectantly.
‘Go on,’ he said, pushing his hand into Flint’s back, ‘get.’
Flint shuffled forwards. He could hear music playing from inside the cabin. The clouds hung like strips of torn cotton above the jetty, and beneath it the water was dark brown and floated with dead hyacinths. Flint felt as if the air had been sucked from his lungs. He longed to turn back, but he knew that Boyce would know.
When he reached the cabin, Flint paused. He was suddenly conscious of the sweat pooling in the pits of his cotton t-shirt, and of his heart hammering in his chest. It had rained the previous night, and the water had formed a protective moat between the house and the bank. Flint stepped over it, his boots squelching, and walked up the stairs to the gallery.
He knocked on the door.
Inside the cabin, he heard a chair scraping across a wood floor. Then the music stopped, and he knew without seeing that someone was looking down at him through the peephole.
‘Sir,’ he called out, remembering Boyce’s instruction. ‘I’ve come to help you.’
A tall man opened the door. He wore a black, ankle-length robe with a flattened oval collar. His hair was long and dark and hung in wet curls above his shoulders. The man had small eyes and small lips, and when he spoke his voice was soft and foreign.
‘Nino,’ the priest said, pointing at Flint. He waved his hand. ‘Por que aqui?’
Flint tried to reply, but as he did so, the sun broke through the clouds overhead. The gallery was suddenly bathed in golden light, the priest’s features carved in shades of bronze and violet. The light seemed to radiate from his robes, creating the silhouette of a man who was at once mightier and brighter than any Flint had seen before. When the priest looked at him, Flint felt a weight lift from his body. His lungs were filled with air. His clothes were as cool and fresh as mist rising off a mountain.
‘Que estas…’
The first shot hit the priest in the face. Flint saw his nose melt against his lip, his cheek scored by a bullet that tore flesh from bone. The man went down, groaning, before another round shattered his kneecap and spun him violently against the wall of the cabin. Overhead, a flock of crows scattered from the trees.
‘You did good, soldier,’ Boyce called, climbing the steps behind Flint. He rested the smoking rifle against the balustrade. ‘Look away now.’
But Flint did not move. He was transfixed by the wounded priest. The man was whimpering in pain, covering his mangled face with his arms as he crawled away from Boyce. Boyce caught him with the toe of his boot, then bent down and gripped him by the hair.
‘Even God can’t hide from me,’ he declared.
There was a free-standing lamp beside the door. Boyce picked it up and mounted the priest’s back, his muscles heaving as he raised the base high in the air. Flint heard the man’s teeth shatter, and saw his skin split at the hairline when Boyce thundered the lamp off his skull. Then Boyce lifted the priest by his waistband, as if he were made of foam, and threw him headfirst through the open doorway.
‘Come here, boy,’ he yelled.
Flint remained rooted to the spot. His blood was pumping in his wrists, and there was a roaring in his ears like two trains crashing together. Boyce knelt down and fitted his hands around his son’s collar.
‘Ain’t no time for pant-pissin,’ he growled. ‘Out back I seen a pile of lumber.’
Without a word, Flint walked down the steps to the woodland. The sun was at full mast now, the clouds dissolving into wisps of smoke above the treeline, and when he looked east he could see the place where the river met the sky. He closed his eyes and pictured his mother’s face, then opened them and realised she would be ashamed of what he had done. The timber from the wood pile seemed weightless in his arms, the sound of birds barely audible above the echoing rumble inside his head.
When he returned, Boyce was sitting at a table inside the cabin, thumbing through a stack of bills. The rifle was resting by his hip, and there was a pool of blood beneath the chair leg.
‘Where he at?’ Flint asked.
Boyce looked at him. ‘That’s some fine work. Put the wood down over there.’
Flint dropped the lumber. He could see a stove burning in the small kitchen behind his father, and a shelf that had been stacked messily with leatherbound books. A metal crucifix hung on the wall above the sink. Flint felt a wave of nausea building in his stomach.
‘He dead?’
‘Folks like him never die,’ Boyce said, slipping the money into his pocket. ‘They come back as snakes, or jackals, or some other dirt-nosed critter.’ He stood up, and Flint saw that his khaki trousers were smeared with blood. ‘We gon’ see him again, believe me.’
‘You said…’
‘Don’t matter what I said,’ Boyce replied. He began washing his hands in the sink, his back to Flint. ‘You the one got us into this mess. But I’m gon’ get us out, because that’s what any father should do.’
Boyce wiped his wet palms with a dish rag, and then turned to look at his son. Flint’s lip was trembling.
‘We got one more mission, soldier.’
Chronicles of Cooke 