Abanda: A Novel

1

The sun was not yet an hour high on what was an unusually warm morning for early March. With a half-filled burlap sack slung over his left shoulder, ten-year old Josh crossed the railroad tracks and headed for the creek.

He walked first past the Baptist and then the Methodist church. The two wooden structures sat comfortably side by side, cheek to jowl, as if they congenially and conjointly ruled over all things religious. And in Abanda they did.

Just beyond the Methodist church the paved road came to an abrupt halt. A dilapidated yellow-board fence, now overgrown with weeds and bushes, warned drivers of its termination.

From the end of the pavement, one could look across the way, across the gorge through which flowed High Pine Creek, and see another neglected yellow barrier. Beyond the barrier, the pavement picked up again.

The Alabama Department of Transportation had once had plans for construction of a new bridge over the creek on State Highway 77. Approaches to the bridge had already been completed on both sides of the creek. All construction was canceled, however, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and war broke out. The paved sections, the state decided, would have to wait until peacetime to be joined by a new bridge.

In the meantime, just before the end of the pavement, a dirt road angled off to the right and descended to the level of the old narrow roadway with its one-way bridge.

As he walked along Josh could occasionally feel movement in the sack he carried. He walked without the slightest hint of haste. His bare feet left closely laid and clear prints in the dew-kissed dust on the road.

Water droplets, crystalline deposits left by the night, clung to the newly opened plum blooms, trying to ward off the forces of evaporation. But the distillates of the night were quickly losing out to the dissipations of the day.

Overhead half a dozen turkey buzzards floated effortlessly and rode the rising air currents. They strained their eyes in search of some unmoving flesh, preferably already decomposing. In the trees that lined the creek bank, crows were cawing, absorbed in a family squabble.

Inside the pasture fence on his right, two recently-born calves were running their morning windsprints. With their mothers watching, the calves would dart for about thirty yards, turn quickly, and race back to their starting point. Although their species was no longer threatened by non-human predators, the old evolutionary survival drive still called for strong lungs and steady legs.

The smell of dust, early-opening plum blossoms, and recently expelled cow manure pervaded the morning air. A wind, blowing from the southwest, was clearing the fog that had risen from the creek and settled over the low places in the pasture.

Josh made his way down the road to the ancient bridge whose creaking frame conveyed vehicles over the creek. The metal skeleton, rusted and unpainted, held huge thick boards of wood almost half as big as railroad crossties, laid across its beams. Three two-by-six inch unplaned planks were laid together and nailed to the floor board. Two adjacent rows of these planks produced runners for vehicle tires. All had been left rough for strength and to make it last. Splinters were everywhere like booby traps lying in wait for a bare foot or an uncovered toe. Vehicles approaching from opposite directions had to wait their turns to cross.

Almost thirty feet wide, High Pine Creek flowed under the bridge about midway of its length. A solid concrete column in the middle of the stream provided a base on which the bridge’s structure rested. The creek originated in the hills of Randolph County and flowed south. Lined with trees that shaded out the sunlight, the creek was extremely cold, even on the swelty days of August. Young boys who swam in the cold water for very long were said to be unable to find their goobers for days.

Josh removed the sack from his shoulder and gently set it on the bridge floor. He rolled the top down. Huddled in the bottom of the sack were six newborn puppies, now wiggling, whining, and climbing over each other.

Squatting down beside the bag, Josh picked up each of the puppies in turn. For a brief moment he held each furry little body with its sweet-smelling breath close to his cheek, stroking its head and back with his free hand. Each of the puppies licked his face and reached for his nose as if it might be a mother’s nipple. Josh inhaled the aroma of their pristine, sweet-smelling breath, a scent unique to young puppies. The pups’ eyes were not yet open. Their ears, like tiny thin pancakes glued to their heads, were almost translucent in the morning sunlight.

Josh replaced the pups and pulled up the sides of the sack. Leaving them on the bridge, he walked back to the dirt road. In the ditch beside the road, he found a rock about a quarter the size of his head. He carried the rock back to where the sack with the puppies lay. He moved them aside, and placed the stone in the middle of the sack’s bottom.

He took out a short string from his pocket, pulled the sack together at the top, and tied it securely. He then carried the sack to the edge of the bridge.

Under the north end of the bridge, a large branch joined the creek, flowing in from the northeast. Flooding waters in the branch during heavy rainy periods had worn deeply into the opposite creek bank. Here the water was five to six feet deep. The eddy produced by the converging streams created a yellowish swirl of water on which tiny bubbles rode like circling ephemeral carousels.

With some effort, Josh moved the sack, with the pups now atop the rock, to a point over the eddy. His hazel eyes flooded with tears. Sobbing, he lifted the sack to his chest and gave it a hug.

I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Oh, God, I am so sorry.

Straining he heaved the sack into what he thought was the deepest water. The sack hit the creek with a huge splash, knocking water in all directions. Some even landed on the bridge and wet his feet.

The sack sank quickly. For a moment, huge bubbles rose to the surface as the air in the sack emptied out. The large bubbles gave way to smaller bubbles as little lungs exchanged their sweet-smelling breath for water.

Josh leaned out over the railing of the bridge. He strained to see the sack beneath the yellow waters but could not. Tears dropped from his eyes, landing where the bubbles had risen.

He watched for only a moment as the water flow returned to normal. Turning, he ran away as fast as his feet could carry him—away from the creek, away from the bridge, back onto the pavement, past the Methodist and then the Baptist church, and across the railroad tracks. He turned off the highway and ran past Tatum’s store.

He didn’t stop running until he reached where he had tied his dog. He had not wanted Skipper to watch the act he had performed. While untying the rope, he gave his dog a long hug. Then, with Skipper at his side, he didn’t stop at the house, but ran to the railroad tracks and headed down them at full speed.

2

Josh sat cowered against the wall of the culvert. Overhead an Atlanta, Birmingham, and Atlantic freight train rolled along headed for the trestle spanning the Tallapoosa River. He could hear the thud of the wheels as they moved from one rail section to another. Without thinking, he counted thirty-eight boxcars.

The culvert was his place of refuge and solitude, a place where he could be alone in times of anxiety and stress.

The culvert was about four hundred yards from the tenant house where his family lived. Constructed of poured concrete reinforced with steel rods, the culvert was built so a small stream could flow underneath the railroad and cows could move through freely from one pasture to another. The little branch was only a couple of feet wide and a few inches deep; the culvert, however, had been made broad enough to handle the torrents of rainwater that flowed through during a heavy thunderstorm.

Its roof was tall enough for youngsters to stand upright and walk around. Dirtdauber nests, with short rows of five or six clay cylinders that looked like organ pipes, were stuck around the ceiling. Three to four feet of ground lined each side of the stream in dry weather.

Skipper, a black and tan Feist mix, busied himself digging at what he thought was a mouse tunnel running underneath the culvert wall. Killing rats and mice was his favorite hobby and his main talent. Skipper’s mother had been hit by a car and killed shortly after giving birth. Skipper was the only puppy to survive. Josh had asked for and raised him by feeding him milk with an eyedropper. For a few days, Josh even got up at night to feed him. For several weeks he kept the pup in the house wrapped in an old, worn-out sweater.

Josh was surrounded with the aroma of blooming wisteria. An old oak tree, some twenty feet up the branch, struggled to survive the ever-tightening stranglehold of the wisteria vine that encircled its trunk and every limb and was slowly taking the tree’s life. In early spring, the wisteria appeared to be an enormous floral bouquet masquerading as a tree. Bunches of flowers hung on the vines, looking like freshly squeezed clusters of purple grapes. Josh had often wondered how something so beautiful and sweet-smelling could be such a killer.

At the moment, however, Josh was oblivious to the world around him. Through his tears, it all looked like a blur anyway.

At first he didn’t want to believe what he had done. He had watched as his dad had pulled the pups away from their mother’s nipples. As each separated from its mother, its mouth made a popping sound as it tried to hang onto the milk-filled teat.

Josh tried to imagine what it would have felt like to have been one of the pups, taken from the warmth of their mother’s body and the pine-straw bed he had made for them, and then to have been suddenly submerged in the creek’s icy-cold water. Just the thought made him shiver. He wanted to run again but he knew there was no place to run to.

He kept telling himself that had he had his way drowning the pups was the last thing on earth he would have done. It was a horrible, dastard act. The pups had done nothing to deserve to die. Their tiny fur-encased lives had been snuffed out before they ever had the chance to run, and to bark, and to play. They never even got a look at the world into which they were born. They would never dig for rats like Skipper. Their bodies now lay at the bottom of the creek, limp and lifeless. Josh was glad he was not some unwanted, unneeded puppy.

Josh understood in his head why he had done what he did. He had been told to do it; it was an assigned duty. The puppies’ mother, a purebred Walker foxhound, had surreptitiously been bred by a local mongrel, who had torn through the rusted and rotten wire on the dog pen. Everybody in the family had known the wire was weak and vulnerable but there was no money to buy a new roll of wire. His father had wanted to raise hunting dogs that he could sell; but nobody would want such a mixed breed. In fact, no one would even allow themselves to be given a half-breed mongrel that could hardly smell a biscuit much less the trail of a long-departed prey. People he knew couldn’t afford to feed a worthless canine. He knew that even Skipper often went hungry. A dog had to be able to earn its keep. Perhaps in town, but no one living in the country wanted a dog that could be nothing but a dog, nothing but a pet.

In his head he understood, but in his heart he grieved. He had wished it wasn’t Saturday but a school day; then he would have been in class. Had he had his way, he would have kept all the puppies and found them good homes. But he knew that his wishes and desires were only daydreams. More mouths to feed was the last thing his family needed. Now he just hoped no one at school would learn about what he had done.

Skipper stopped his digging, sat back on his short, stubby tail, and scratched the right side of his head as if a flock of fleas were scurrying through his hair. He then jumped the branch, reared up on Josh, putting his front feet on the bib of his overalls, and gave his chin a bevy of licks.

Suddenly, Skipper stopped his licking and bolted from under the cover of the culvert and let out a single short bark. He turned quickly and came back under the culvert, followed by Albert.

Albert, whom most everybody called Prince Albert or just Prince, was Josh’s closest and really only playmate his own age. Like Josh, his father was a sharecropper on the Green place. Both Josh and Albert were small for their age, short and skinny. Soaking wet, neither would have weighed over sixty pounds. Like Josh, Albert was in the fifth grade at school. Albert’s kinky hair stuck out on his head in every direction almost covering his small ears. Under his broad nose, his white teeth looked like pearls against his black skin.

Albert was barefoot, wearing a pair of frequently patched overalls, a well-worn brown short-sleeved seersucker shirt, and a small straw hat.

What you doin here by yoself?

Ah, nothing.

How come you been crying?

I threw Lottie’s pups in the creek.

All of them?

Yeah.

Even that red and white you wanted to keep?

Yeah, Dad made me take ’em all.

I sure wish yodda let me gone with you.

You know I didn’t want nobody to watch what I done. You’d jist cried like I did.

I know dat, but we coudda cried together just like we dun when that calf died.

I ain’t never gonna do that again. If I got to drown puppies I’m gonna run away from home. And I won’t never come back again. I feel like I shod’ve been in that sack and not them pups. Maybe I oughta be at the bottom of the creek, dead and waterlogged.

Josh started to cry again. He snorted to suck up the tears that seeped into his nose and throat.

Albert reached out and grabbed him by his hand. Their heads and necks fell across each other’s shoulders, and together they sobbed.

3

As they had been told to do by their parents, Josh and Albert spent the rest of the morning knocking down,