Show Me

Guts fascinated Chalktawl. The bayou offered up a host of entrails from American Alligators, swamp rats, feral hogs… and humans. Chalktawl has seen them all. Including those of Tex.

Crouching on his knees, Chalktawl lifted a lumpy strand of a transversing zig and zag for a closer look. He tilted the willow stick. The large intestine descended back into the heap. If he hadn’t been 4-F, he’d seen plenty of guts on D-Day.

Summoned by U S Marshall Louise LaBlanc, Chalktawl Jones arrived. They were gone. The guts. Gone from where they’d gushed and plumped onto the dirt floor. Tex’s body – was also gone. A mix of soiled and bloody straw fostered an eerie gloom.

LeBlanc waved Chalktawl in, “I got your statement.”

“Told your deputy all I know.”

“Mackem.”

“Say what?”

“It’s Deputy Mackem.”

“Yeah. So, what.”

“Tell me what you remember.”

“Tex’s guts got kicked around.” Chalktawl flails his hands. “Like a stuck pig hung from the rafter. Its forelegs chucking his own guts. I stayed and watched?"

"Watched what?"

‘You know, the guts… and blood. Guts had heat in them. Frosted over last. Turning a weirder color than the frozen mud. Shinny. Watery looking.”

Chalktawl Jones exhaled through his nose, his teeth clenched. Seizing the three-pronged-manure-buster, he gigged a clump of thaw smeared in the dirt floor. Jones wrangled the pole, thrusting it back and forth like shaking off a gigged frog. But as he inspected the skewered tuft, he dropped the pitchfork before the copperhead could slither up his sleeve. He sidestepped the implement, he said, “wouldn’t say I knew him well. But I knew him. He went by ‘Tex.’ When Tex said Tex he’d tack on an extra twang, that made him sound stupid. I always got a good laugh. But it made us here around the bayou… seem altogether – stupid. Yep, ‘Tex,’ who’s laughing now. HA ha ha.”

“Chalktawl Jones, you aren’t funny and better be honest. I don’t think you sat around and watched.”

“Why?”

“Your reputation.”

“What reputation – don’t be spreading lies.”

“You’re the Parish coward and liar.”

“Lies. I’m neither. No matter what they say.”

“Who’d you say you saw run?”

“That Chinaman. Hoe Lee Long or Wong lee… does laundry. Down on those river boulders. The flat ones.”

LaBlanc had ‘questioned’ Wong Hoe Lee earlier in the morning. Wong testified he saw the “bogeyman”. Then he physically ‘sealed his lips and threw away the key.’ And said no more.

“Honestly?’

“Honest as a scorpion on a toad’s back.”

“Frog’s back.”

“Does it matter?”

“No.”

“But it does, Marshal LeBlanc - scorpion got no use for a toad.” Jones laughed at his outfoxing U.S. Marshal Louise LeBlanc. Chalktawl frolicked in his ‘twang’ that seeped in and out of the walls from floor to open beam ceiling and past the cedar shakes. It spooked away a barn owl, and feathers went AWOL as it launched a protest. A mousey screech trailed off into the decay of a dying thicket. Poisoned by effluent.

“You got cause to smirk, Chalktawl?

He grinned wide. Twirled the hickory handle.

“Going to hurt yourself with those tines.”

Marshall LeBlanc knew he had a scorpion on his back, letting Jones dodge in and out of shadows and brandishing the pitchforks. He’d made the calculation. But so had Deputy DeBoise. Dead. He was murdered by a suspect during a field interview. But Deboise didn’t have a backup. But sometimes, a backup doesn’t keep you from a despot dicing you up. Especially an inbred that talks – more like mumbles – to himself. Deboise’s case; gone cold. Deboise had come upon the scene. Had his notebook out and his gun holstered. It may have been Chalktawl. If not, someone like him who can lull you without a shade of false pretense. Ego. That’s what the Marshall decided to deploy. Had to let Jones feel superior. The pitchfork and shadows ‘should stoke Chalktawl’s confidence.’

Chalktawl dismissed the threat of LaBlanc’s nonchalant deputy. He’d rather contemplate the feel of puncture wounds punching through the skin, then softly through fat, hesitating through membrane and tendons, then softly and deeply into the lungs, kidney… or liver.

“Marshall, I got to get back. Slop the herd.”

“You think this is so small - can’t fry it. I don’t want to use your time. Ah, allow me a little help to get me down the road.”

“KK. You say so. I got to get home. Slop ’em before dark.”

“So that’s how you remember him; an embarrassment to you?”

“No, to all of us.”

“Right.”

“Don’t pick me out of the crowd. I’m just saying what I saw. After Tex… well, you know.”

““And that’s all you saw… Tex just got ‘pigged.’”

“Yeah. That. And how his eyes looked.”

Lablanc pushed his bifocals towards his forehead. Hat in the way he reversed. Glasses ended at the tip of his nose. He rubbed the pink divots. “They were open. You sure?”

“Yes.”

“How’d they look?”

“Like they were blinking. Blinking the gray away… but it stayed glued, the layer of gray. Wide open.”

“What kind of gray?”

“Kind you see in dead things.”

“Now, ah, you said you heard music.”

“Yes.”

“What kind”?

“Banjos.”

“By themselves.”

“Steel banjos. Down by the river. Some people were fishing. Drinking. And dueting. That means two. They’d come together- their music and pull apart following each other.”

“Deuling?”

“That’s what I’m saying. And a man was squealing like a pig.”.

“How you know it was a man?”

“Ever hunt wild bores?”

The Marshall shrugs, “You… kind of hung up on pigs?”

“They all I know. They and donkeys. I know what a man making out like a pig sounds like.”

“Can you make a pig noise?

“A squeal?”

“A squeal.”

“I can, but I don’t want to make no squeal if I don’t want to.”

“Okay, no squeal. But you’re telling me too much. Slow down and show me.”

“You want me to stand up and show you?’

“Show, don’t tell. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Well…”

Pushing the chair back. Standing, Jones says, “got to get the mood.”

“You’re no LaRue, just show us.”

His hands and feet twitch like a sprinter before he gets into the blocks.

“Start with the rope.”

Fingers diligent, by memory, eyes closed, he finishes and pulls the slack out of a Dropper’s knot.

“You made a hangman’s knot. You put it around his neck?”

“No.”

“Show me. If you were to use a knot, but not a hangman knot, what would you use?”

“That’s it. That’s all I know. Chow Lee did it. He doesn’t know a special kind at all.”

“You lying toad. Are you so stupid? A one-knot wonder? Stupid Cajun like your friend Tex.”

Jones measured out two identical loops. Overlapped them as in a Clove Hitch, then threaded each loop into the other, jerks – the friction and force scour grime and flesh from Chalktawl’s palms. He licked his hands and added two Overhand knots to lock it. “Wa-lah

“Finish it.”

“What?”

“What do you think happened next? If you were to do it – show me.”

Pointing to a mannequin, “Show you with this dummy?”

“Yes, helps me understand. New. Scientific.”

“Silly.” Cinching each knot over the dummy’s gloved hands and stockinged feet. Appendages torqued they go cockeyed. They accepted the handcuff knot in a lifeless twitch. “how’s that?”

“Good. Now finish it.”

Jones pulled the rope taunt and coiled the rope around a horseshoe cleat nailed to a weight-bearing pole. ‘Tex’s’ hands dangled in a heap of soiled straw. “I like your soft rope, Marshall. Don’t like the hemp rope out here. You know this knot?”

“It’s familiar. Looks tough, how’d you learn it?”

“Tying them since I’ve been born. It’s a good knot for the hind legs of a burrow or pig you don’t want to get away. Thought you were smarter than us folks out in the tulles, thought you’d recognize it.”

“Oh, I recognize it: It’s called a Handcuff knot. Deboise was tied up with one…”

“Don’t know, no Deputy Deboise. Thought this was about Tex, and he wasn’t tied up when I found him. Tied this way.”

“Thanks for showing me, not just telling me it’s a handcuff knot, Chalktawl.”

The nub of LeBlanc’s cigar thuds near Chalktawl. With the tip of his boot, the lawman snubbed the dead butt as though putting it out. A stream of bog spurted out onto Chalktawl’s callused feet. “Marshal…”

“Turn around, arms behind your back. Showing off the smarts got you tied up, didn’t it.” He added a Swamp-a-Billy twang, “Chalktawl.”

Chalktawl’s malleable darkness pounded out inky hypnotic shapes. The kind that eases young girls walking home to hop into his truck for a short ride, deputies to surrender their guns or muted laundrymen to zip their lips. “Marshall.” Chalktawl’s eyes drew LeBlanc in, “You still carry my Papa’s gun. The one with the notches.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Show me.”