Domaque ducked his head even lower, I couldn’t tell if he was ashamed or happy. He said, ‘Yeah, I got it out to the house.’ Mouse smiled. ‘Well then, com’on. Let’s get us some fish!’
Domaque screamed and jumped and hurried away; Mouse went after him, and I followed Mouse.
‘I tole ya I’ma show you how t’fish, Easy.’
‘You ain’t even got no fishin’ pole,’ I said.
‘Ohhhhh, but I do.’
‘Yeah, Easy.’ Mouse leaned back against an old elm looking out into Rags Pond. It was a largish body of water with a thin mist clinging to its sleek surface. ‘Me an’ Dom go way back. Huh, Dom?’
Domaque ducked his head and chortled. ‘That’s right, brother. We been friends since we was little.’
‘God’s truth, Ease.’ Mouse held up a hand in a swearing motion. ‘Me an’ Dom went through it when we was kids. You know they picked on me ‘cause I was so little, an’ they pestered Dom cause’a his hump. But you know wit’ my mind an’ Dom’s size we roughed up they little butts.’
The morning was darker than it was light but day was coming on fast. Live oaks completely surrounded the pond. The oaks had gray moss hanging from them into the water. Mouse reached under his coat, into the back of his pants, and came out with a long-barreled .41-caliber pistol. He smiled. Domaque howled and waved his fists in circles.
‘Shhhh.’ Mouse waved at him.
Dom put both hands to his mouth.
‘You know we cain’t be yellin’,’ Mouse said. ‘It’s time. Easy, you an’ Dom go sit on the rocks an’ keep quiet. You got that sack right, bro?’
‘Yeah, Ray. I got it,’ Dom said.
‘All right then! Let’s get us food fo’ the wintah!’
Mouse rolled up his cuffs to just below the knee. I couldn’t figure out why he did that, because then he waded into the water up to his waist. In one hand he had the pistol and in the other he had some crackers or dry bread that he pulled from his shirt pocket. He sprinkled the crumbs in the water and stood stock still.
Behind Mouse stood the half-circle of twenty-odd live oaks. A jury of old men with gray moss beards. Over them was the glimmer of a weak yellow sun in a sky that just hinted blue. There was no breeze or sound at all. Mouse looked like a big man, bigger than life, out in that water. He was taller than the trees, and the only thing that stood out from the pond.
‘In the beginnin’ God made the heavens an’ the lands,’ Domaque said from behind me. ‘An’ there was darkness in the land and the face of God was on the water...’
Dom went on and on whispering with his version of Genesis.
Out in the water, just to the left of where Mouse stood, came a sucking sound and a droplet of water leaped up into the air. Then to the right, two droplets, also with sucking sounds.
‘And God went beyond the waters and he called that heaven...’ Domaque said, while dozens of droplets plopped in the water. It was the sound of rain under a clear sky. Mouse slowly scattered the last of his bread into the pond. Then, carefully and slow, like a cat stalking raising his claws, Mouse brought the pistol over his head, holding it with both hands so that the barrel pointed at the water; his thumbs were on the trigger and his fingers were laced around the butt.
When he fired, dozens of mallards and pelicans started from behind the oaks. Dom Jr. let out a yell that started at a low warble and peaked at a siren’s whine.
Mouse yelled, ‘Com’on, Dom! Get yo’ sack out here fo’ they get away!’
Dom looped the sack around his neck with a rope that was stitched around the lip of the bag. He splashed in, bouncing up and down in the water like a very small child at the shore.
‘Com’on, Ease!’ Mouse called. ‘We need some help wit’ all’a these here!’
He kept on shouting while I got off my shoes and socks and put them on my sitting rock. By the time I waded out to them they had turned away, catching fish with their hands and shoving them into the large burlap sack. When I was up to my hips in water I saw the unconscious fish. It seemed like hundreds of them but I guess it couldn’t have been so many. Pale white underbellies of gar, catfish, carp, and other fish I had never seen. They shuddered in the water like they were dead. Mouse told me later that it was the force of the hollow-nosed soft-lead bullet hitting the water that knocked them out.
‘That’s why you gotta catch’em quick,’ he said. ‘Fo’ they come awake an’ slip down ‘tween yo’ legs.’
It was terrible.
Mouse lunged one-handed, because he had his pistol held high in the other hand, going for fish after fish. Dom was yucking and yelling. He was clumsy and barely got as many with two hands as Mouse did with one. I didn’t grab any. It was like a bad dream to see all those fish quivering and half dead. I don’t mind catching a fish or wringing a hen’s neck, but that slaughter left me sick.
On the last day I saw my father he took me down to the slaughterhouse. It was an awful place. They had cows walking down an aisle that came to a sharp turn. When the cow took the turn she came to a window and a big man hit her on top of the head with a sledgehammer; she’d hit the floor shaking just like those fish. From there a conveyor belt took the body to a man with a curved sword. He caught a mean-looking hook in her carcass and then had his helpers lift her up off of the ground. Then he cut her jugular. At first the hot blood sprayed out; then it slowed to a pumping ooze. When the bleeding had almost stopped he cut her open from crotch to throat. The blood flowed down the sides of the killing floor into gutters underneath the room. The blood and the leavings down there were what made the room smell rotten. The smell of death by the dozens and by the hundreds; death so strong that my eyes burned and I gagged, but I wouldn’t let myself throw up because I was afraid to vomit in blood.
The foreman was a white man with great big arms and blood all down his thick apron. His curved knife was black and pitted, but you could see it was sharp by the way it cut through the cow’s shoulder joint; it made a tearing sound as it reaped. He was taller than anyone else in the slaughterhouse.
