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Poachers by Tom Franklin.

At dawn on the first day of April, the three Gates brothers banked their 10-foot aluminum

boat in a narrow slew of dark water.

They tied their hounds and strap their rifles and stepped out, ducking black magnolia branches

heavy with rain in Spanish moss.

The two thin younger brothers, denim overalls, tucked in their boots, lug between the

styrofoam cooler of iced fish, coons, and possums.

The oldest brother, 20, bearded and heavy set, carried a sunbeam, bread, sack of eels in his

coat pocket.

Hooked over his left shoulder was the pink body of a foam they'd shot

in skin, and over the right a stray dog to which they'd done the same. With skins and heads gone

and the dog's tail chopped off, they were difficult to tell apart. The gates has climbed the hill,

clinging to the vines and saplings and slipping in the red clay,

their boots coated and enormous by the time they stepped out of the woods.

Before a moment they stood in the road looking at the gray sky, the clouds piling up.

The two younger ones, Neil and Dan, set the cooler down. Kent, the oldest, removed his

limp cap and squeezed the water from it, and his brothers did the same. Then Kent nodded,

and they picked up the cooler. They rounded a curve and crossed a one-lane bridge, stopping to

piss over the rail into the creek water high

from all the rain, and then went on, passing houses on either side, dark warped boards

with knot holes big enough to look through, and cement blocks for steps. Black men appeared in

...