so sad as a child’s bare head when the head has been shaved for lice or the poor thin hair has fallen out from sickness and it seemed to Suttis, this had happened to him, too. Many years ago when he’d been a small child.
Lice, they’d said. Shaved his head and cut his scalp with the razor cursing him as if the lice were Suttis’s fault and then they swabbed the cuts with kerosene, like flames too excruciating to be registered or gauged or even recalled except now obliquely, dimly.
Poor little girl! Suttis had no doubt, she was dead.
Maybe it was lice, they’d punished her for. Suttis could understand that. The small face was bruised, the mouth and eyes swollen and darkened. Blood-splotches on the face like tears and what was black on them, a buzzing blackness, was flies.
Only the head and torso were clearly visible, the lower body had sunk into the mud, and the legs. One of the arms was near-visible. Suttis stared and stared and Suttis moved his lips in a numbed and affrighted prayer not knowing what he was saying but only as he’d been taught Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name bless us O Lord for these our gifts and help us all the days of our lives O Lord thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven! Amen.
Suttis had seen many dead things and was not uncomfortable with a dead thing for then you know, it is dead and cannot hurt you. Only a fool would lay his bare hand upon a “dead” raccoon or possum and that fool would likely lose his hand in a frantic rake of sharp curved claws and a slash of razor-teeth.
A dead thing is a safe thing and only bad if it has started to rot.
The poor little girl in the mudflat had started to rot—had she? For something smelled so very bad, Suttis’s nostrils shut tight.
It was a wild extravagant prayer of Suttis Coldham, he’d never have believed he could utter:
God don’t let her be dead. God help her be alive.
For cunning Suttis knew: a dead child could mean that Suttis would be in trouble. As an older boy he’d been beaten for staring at children in a wrong way, or a way deemed wrong by others, by the children’s mothers for instance who were likely to be his Coldham relatives—sisters, cousins, young aunts. Staring at his baby nieces and nephews when they were being bathed in the very presence of their young mothers and such a look in Suttis’s face, of tenderness mixed with brute yearning, Suttis had somehow done wrong in utter innocence and been slapped and kicked-at and run out of the house and in his wake the cry Nasty thing! Pre-vert! Get to hell out nasty pre-vert Sut-tis shame!
And so now if this little girl is naked Suttis will turn and run—but it looks as if on what he can see of the little body is a nightgown—torn and grimy but a nightgown—isn’t it?—for which Suttis is damned grateful.
The King of the Crows has been screaming for Suttis to bring the little girl to shore. In a crouch half-shutting his eyes groping for something—a long stick, a pole—a piece of lumber—with which to prod the body loose.
Suttis has it!—a part-rotted plank, about five feet long. When he leans out to poke at the doll-figure in the mud he sees—thinks he sees—one of the swollen eyelids flutter—the little fish-mouth gasping for breath—and he’s stricken, paralyzed—The little girl is alive!
A terrifying sight, a living child—part-sunken in mud, a glint of iridescent insects about her face—has to be flies—suddenly Suttis is panicked, scrabbling on hands and knees to escape this terrible vision, moaning, gibbering as the King of the Crows berates him from a perch overhead and like a frenzied calf Suttis blunders into a maze of vines, a noose of vines catches him around the neck and near-garrots him the shock of it bringing him to his senses so chastened like a calf swatted with a stiff hunk of rope he turns to crawl back to the edge of the embankment. There is no escaping the fact that Suttis will have to wade into the mudflat to rescue the girl as he has been bidden.
At least, the sharp stink of the mud has abated, in Suttis’s nostrils. The most readily adapted of all senses, smell: almost, Suttis will find the mud-stink pleasurable, by the time he has dislodged and lifted the mud-child in his arms to haul back to shore.
Suttis slip-slides down the bank, into the mud. Makes his way to the mud-child lifting his booted feet as high as he can as the mud suck-suck-sucks at him as in a mockery of wet kisses. Above the mud-child is a cloud, a haze of insects—flies, mosquitoes. Suttis brushes them away with a curse. He’s shy about touching her—at first. He tugs at her arm. Her exposed shoulder, her left arm. She’s a very little girl—the age of his youngest niece Suttis thinks except the little nieces and nephews grow so quickly, he can’t keep them straight—can’t keep their names straight. Lifting this one from the mud requires strength.
Crouched over her, grunting. He’s in mud nearly to his knees—steadily sinking. Rushes slap against his face, thinly scratching his cheeks. Mosquitoes buzz in his ears. A wild sensation as of elation sweeps over him—You are in the right place at the right time and no other place and no other time will ever be so right for you again in your life.
“Hey! Gotcha now. Gonna be okay.”
Suttis’s voice is raw as a voice unused for years. As it is rare for Suttis to be addressed with anything other than impatience, contempt, or anger so it is rare for Suttis to speak, and yet more rare for Suttis to speak so excitedly.
The part-conscious child tries to open her eyes. The right eye is swollen shut but the left eye opens—just barely—there’s a flutter of eyelashes—and the little fish-mouth is pursed to breathe, to breathe and to whimper as if wakening to life as Suttis carries her to shore stumbling and grunting and at the embankment lays her carefully down and climbs up out of the mud and removes his khaki jacket to wrap her in, clumsily; seeing that she is near-naked, in what appears to be the remnants of a torn paper nightgown all matted with mud, slick and glistening with mud and there is mud caked on the child’s shaved head amid sores, scabs, bruises and so little evidence of hair, no one could have said what color the child’s hair is.
“Hey! You’re gonna be okay. S’ttis’s got you now.”
Such pity mixed with hope Suttis feels, he has rarely felt in his life. Carrying the whimpering mud-child wrapped in his jacket, in his arms back along the embankment and to the road and along the road three miles to the small riverside town called Rapids murmuring to the shivering mud-child in the tone of one of his young-mother sisters or cousins—not actual words which Suttis can’t recall but the tone of the words—soothing, comforting—for in his heart it will seem a certainty that the King of the Crows had chosen Suttis Coldham to rescue the mud-child not because Suttis Coldham happened to be close by but because of all men, Suttis Coldham was singled out for the task.
He was the chosen one. Suttis Coldham, that nobody gave a God damn for, before. Without him, the child would not be rescued.
Somewhere between the mudflats and the small town called Rapids, the King of the Crows has vanished.
The sign is RAPIDS POP. 370. Suttis sees this, every time Suttis thinks there’s too many people here he couldn’t count by name. Nor any of the Coldhams could. Not by a long shot.
First he’s seen here is by a farmer in a pickup truck braking to a stop and in the truck-bed a loud-barking dog. And out of the Gulf gas station several men—he thinks he maybe knows, or should know their faces, or their names—come running astonished and appalled.
Suttis Coldham, Amos Coldham’s son. Never grew up right in his mind, poor bastard.
Now more of them come running to
