Edge of Dark Water

16

We drifted for a long time, me and Terry using the poles to keep the raft in the middle of the river. Jinx was still at the rudder, and she was beginning to get the hang of it. The reverend had done a fine job building the rudder, and it heaved easy and gave the raft better direction and kept us from swirling.

Reverend Joy hadn’t moved from where he lay. Fact was, I thought he might have died, but Mama checked on him. She grabbed him by the feet and pulled him out of the hut. He drawed his knees up and put his hands under his chin, one of them still hanging on to the pistol, which was slightly unnerving. Mama sat by him, put a hand on his arm, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“I feel certain we can navigate a good distance downriver,” Terry said, poling the shallow bottom with his long pole. “Then we need to find a place to tie up, and go back for the money and May Lynn’s ashes. Fact is, I think we could just take the ashes and leave the money. It’s nothing but trouble.”

“I don’t like that,” Jinx said, calling from her place at the rudder. “May Lynn’s dead, but that money is still green as grass. I done ran off from home and been threatened with all kinds of mean things, and had rocks thrown at me, and now you’re saying leave it. I ain’t all that much for going back, but if we go back for May Lynn’s burnt-up ass, I say we get that money.”

“We could take enough to continue our trip and leave the rest,” Terry said. “Maybe if we do that, Constable Sy will be satisfied with the bulk of the money. We could just leave it on the table. He may decide to stop bothering us, especially if we are far away and are not causing him concern.”

“There’s still Cletus and Skunk,” Jinx said. “And maybe Don.”

“There isn’t anyone called Skunk,” Terry said. “He’s nothing more than a story people tell to scare their children.”

“He’s a story that will chop off hands, you can bet on that,” Jinx said. “I come out of this, I’d just as soon not have to ask someone else to pick my nose and wipe my butt.”

“If he’s real, you’ll not only be missing hands,” I said. “You’ll be dead.”

“I take to that even less,” Jinx said.

“I tell you again,” Terry said. “There is no Skunk.”

“There are a lot of folks who believe in Skunk,” Mama said. “I’ve heard about him all my life.”

“Have you seen him, Mrs. Wilson?” Terry asked.

“Well, no. But I know people who say they have.”

“There are people who have told me with considerable conviction that they’ve seen snakes that can grab their tails with their teeth and roll downhill like a hoop, or snakes that can suck a milk cow dry, but with all due respect, ma’am, I don’t believe it.”

“I ain’t no believer in snakes can do that,” Jinx said. “But I believe in Skunk.”

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “Skunk or no Skunk, we got to go back for the money and the ashes. There’s a man been killed over that money and tucked in a shallow grave, and there’s another dead one back there in the reverend’s house. We’ve come this far, I say we need that money and we owe May Lynn a little something for drawing that map we found, and for being our friend.”

“I don’t know that I want you children to do that,” Mama said.

“No offense again, Mrs. Wilson, but you really don’t have a say in this,” Terry said. “You haven’t said boo to Sue Ellen all this time, and now you want to tell her how to do things? I’m glad you’re back from where you went, but these decisions are now ours.”

“He’s right, Mama,” I said, before she could say anything back. “You don’t have a say in this. You came with us, not the other way around.”

“I suppose that’s true,” she said. She sounded the way she did when she had been in bed sucking cure-all. I hated that. I liked her better a little on the feisty side. But that still didn’t change the fact that Terry was right. This wasn’t her decision.

I peeked at Reverend Joy. He appeared to be asleep.

“All right, then,” I said. “We go back for the money and the ashes. But I’ll tell you this, we ought not all go. Someone needs to stay with the raft, and the other thing is I don’t want to drag all of us through the woods. And the reverend there, we’d have to carry him, or pull him behind us on a rope, so that won’t work. We’re going to do this, we’re going to have to sneak.”

“You done talked me into it,” Jinx called from the back. “I’ll stay. Anybody else can go that wants to. Me and your mama and the reverend, we’ll hold down the raft and you and Terry go.”

It wasn’t long before the water got deep and the poles were useless. What we had was the rudder, and me and Terry squatting on either side of the raft, using the boat paddles. The raft went fast, and we didn’t see a good place to stop for a long time. Finally we could barely make out a sandbar that jutted out into the river. We let the force of the water ride the raft up on it.

Terry took one of the paddles and put the narrow end in the soft, damp sand, pushed it down tight, and tied the docking rope off to it. Reverend Joy was still out of it, Mama sitting by him with her arm draped over his shoulders, him still with the pistol. For all he knew he was someplace on Mars having his hair combed by a nine-eyed octopus.

“Let me have the pistol,” I said to him.

I had to say it several times before he looked up at me.

“You got Constable Sy’s pistol,” I said. “I might need it.”

Reverend Joy came hurtling back from Mars, but his voice seemed to come from far away. “Haven’t we done enough?”

“It’s all right, Jack,” Mama said. “Give her the pistol. Just for protection.”

The reverend was slow to realize he had hold of the pistol, and he was even slower to give it up, but in time he handed it to me. It was a small pistol, and I put it in the deep pocket of my overalls. Reverend Joy dipped his head as if the weight was just too much. “May the good Lord be with you,” he said.

“It’s a good walk back,” I said. “Lot longer walking than it was riding the river. It’ll be daylight before we get turned around good. We’ll try and bring some food if we can get it. All you got to do is wait. Jinx, we don’t come back by the end of next day, you need to push off and go.”

“All right,” Jinx said.

“You could have at least hesitated a little,” Terry said.

“I know a good plan when I hear it,” Jinx said.

“We can’t just push off without you,” Mama said.

“I think we can,” Jinx said. “It don’t take but two of us to handle the raft, Mrs. Wilson.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Mama said. “I meant we can’t go off without them if they’re late.”

“I know what you meant,” Jinx said. “And I meant what I meant. We can, and will. Waiting here for One-Eyed Sy to catch up with us won’t do nobody no good.”

“Me and Terry will be back,” I said to Mama. “So don’t worry. And even if you go on without us, that don’t mean we ain’t coming. We’ll just have to find another way and meet up with you in Gladewater.”

“Maybe I should go with you,” she said.

“We need you here,” I said. “And though you’re doing better, you ain’t doing so good you’d have the energy to go the way we’re going. Me and Terry can travel quicker without you.”

When the reverend built the hut on the raft, we had stashed a few of our things inside of it, in case we had to leave in a hurry. That had turned out to be a smart move. One of those things was a flashlight. There was also twine and rags, matches, tow sacks, a pocketknife, and a few tins of sardines, which we opened right then and ate with our fingers. We took the flashlight and started off.

We walked along the sandbar on up to the bank, and it was a slog. We had to use damp roots to hang on to and climb up. On the shore there was lots of trees, and it wasn’t as starlit as it was out on the river cause the tree trunks was so close together. The woods was hard to work past, but we kept threading our way until it broke out into a marshy run of land that went on for quite a few miles. Without so many trees it was clear, and there was some light, but it was uncomfortable going. To our left was a line of woods that looked like a wall of shadow. To our right was another line, but it thinned in spots and sloped off toward the water in such a way there wasn’t any good place to stand, let alone walk. We was close enough for a while to hear the river run and smell it, but because of the way the marsh was, we had to go wide away from it and head toward the far line of trees. Our feet sunk deep in the muck. Pulling them out and dropping them back down made a sound like a giant baby struggling to suck on an empty tit, and it wore us slap out.

We was able to find the right stars to figure on how to go, which wasn’t a real chore anyway, as all we had to do was follow the river back and we’d come to the cabin. But it wasn’t all a straight shot, not with the way the brush and brambles grew up in spots in the marsh. You could easily get off the path and not realize you was far from the river, or you could get turned around and not know it until it was too late. So when we could look at the stars, we did. Just to make sure we was going the true direction.

After what seemed a long time, we came to a little tree all grown up by itself in the middle of the marsh. It was big enough to lean against and rest, so we did. While we leaned, we kicked our heels into the tree and shook the mud off our shoes.

“I lied to you,” Terry said.

“About what?”

“About how I’m not a sissy. I tried to say that May Lynn naked did something for me, but it didn’t. I didn’t want to lie to you, but I didn’t want you to think I’m the way I am. As a friend, however, I have to admit it to you.”

“Terry, I don’t care.”

“Really?”

“I know how you’ve been to me, and that’s good. I see how you are with Jinx, and how you’ve been the one most concerned about May Lynn’s Hollywood dream, which ain’t something me and Jinx have been as rich about. I’m proud of you and happy to call you a friend. You and Jinx are my best friends.”

“A colored girl and a queer,” he said. “You sure have chosen some strange company.”

“Only thing strange about it is the people that might think it’s strange.”

“So you don’t think less of me for lying about that, telling you I had an interest in May Lynn?”

“No. I will say, had you not been someone who likes boys, I would find it hard not to like you, you know, in the boy-girl way. You are about the best-looking and nicest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Well, if I were not how I am, I am certain I would have been interested in you as well, in a boy-and-girl way.” He paused, and when he spoke again, he sounded serious as a heart attack. “As for nice, well, don’t think I’m all that nice. I’m not.”

“That’s sweet,” I said. “And you are nice. If it matters any, you ain’t sissy. You might like boys, but you ain’t sissy. You’re tough enough. You’re tough as you have to be. You’re plenty tough.”

“Thanks,” he said, and he looked away from me, out toward the outer dark. “There’s lots of things I might tell you in time.”

I didn’t know what that meant, and considering we had things to do, I didn’t push it. We needed to get moving. Lightning started to pop in the sky, and way in the distance we heard thunder. That got us going again, but it turned out to just be a night of dry lightning and dull rumbling.

Near morning a fog rose up. It was white as cotton and thick as a winter cloud. The flashlight bounced off the fog, and the fog rolled around us, head-high. There was no noise from frogs or crickets, which was kind of odd, and except for our feet stomping in the deep muck, it was quiet and lonely-feeling out there.

On we went, and then there was a lightening in the east, pink as a rose petal where it was low to the ground, bright and golden at the top. We could see it above the fog, and some of the morning light was so bright we could see right through the fog. Then the day’s heat started up, and the fog melted like ice cream. Terry turned off the flashlight and put it away in a tow sack.

It was solid light when a five-foot-long rat snake wriggled through the grass in front of us. We stopped and watched it slither by, then started again. Big white birds flew up from the river, and one flew high over our heads with a fish in its mouth. Terry said, “Maybe that’s some kind of good omen.”

“Unless you’re considering from the fish’s point of view,” I said.

By the time the sun was high and hot, we still hadn’t recognized anything. It was hard to tell just how far we had come, not knowing what time it was when we started out, but we guessed something like four hours, maybe five. Had we been on flat, dry land, we’d have already covered the necessary distance, but the muck slowed us and wore us out, so it was pleasing to reach a stretch of pines and get out of that mess.

The pines was a thin stand. Looking through them, on the far side, I spotted the church where the reverend had been minister. We had come out on higher ground than I expected. It had gone up so gradual, I hadn’t realized we was climbing. We was well above the reverend’s house.

We went to the church. The front door was thrown open; inside, some of the Christians had written on the walls. ADULTEROR was painted in big black letters in two places, and in another spot was a longer sentence that declared something Reverend Joy did with donkeys, which I knew was a lie. We hadn’t seen a donkey once since we’d been there.

“They ain’t much on spelling, are they?” Terry said.

We came out of the church and halted just below it and looked down the trail at the cabin. The front door was still thrown open and there was lantern light inside. Constable Sy’s truck hadn’t moved.

“You think he’s waiting inside?” Terry asked.

“Don’t know. Seems funny he’d stay there. Maybe he’s looking for the money.”

“He won’t find it,” Terry said.

“If it’s still in your sack on the floor, it won’t take a prize bloodhound to sniff it out,” I said.

“I moved it.”

“Out of the house?”

“It’s in the toolshed.”

“Reverend keeps that locked,” I said.

“I know where he hides the key. That’s how I got it moved in there in the first place.”

“And pray tell, where does he hide the key?”

“That’s the drawback,” Terry said. “The money and May Lynn are no longer in the house, but the key is still there, shoved into a crack in the front-door frame, along the side. I saw him stick it there once. When he was gone, I borrowed it and used it to take a peek in the shed. I wanted to see what was in there. Way he locked it up, I thought he might have something in there we needed to know about. What he had was lumber and some nice tools and finally, for me, a good hiding place for the money and the ashes.”

“So we still have to go down there in broad daylight. We might as well strip off and paint ourselves barn-red and run down yelling at the top of our lungs.”

“It does present a challenge,” Terry said. “Where can we find the paint?”

“Ha.”

We went wide and came down near the side of the house, and hid up in the tree line. We stood in the trees and looked around. It was as quiet as a deaf-mute taking a nap down there. The morning light was spreading.

“What’s that on the porch?” Terry said.

I looked at what he was talking about for a long time. I said, “It looks like spilled black paint.”

“Why would there be black paint on the front porch?” he said.

“Someone had black paint up at the church,” I said. “Maybe they brought it down here to write on things.”

“I doubt that,” Terry said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”

I don’t know how long we stood there, listening and watching, but after a while curiosity got the best of us. I pulled the pistol from my overalls and we sneaked down there and slipped up on the porch. About where the doorway started there was the black mess, and now that we was close, I could see it wasn’t paint-it was blood that had dried dark. There was lots of it.

I cocked the revolver, and we eased along to the window and looked in. I could see Uncle Gene lying on the floor on his stomach. His head was still turned around on his shoulder and his face was looking right at me, his eyes as dull as if they had been worked over with sandpaper. Jinx was right. That had been some lick Reverend Joy had given him.

On the table, on his back, stretched out and tied down with rope, was Constable Sy. Blood had dripped off the table, and the floor must have sloped slightly because the blood had ran toward the wall and out the door. I had no idea there was that much blood in a person, even a big man like Constable Sy.

“What in hell happened here?” Terry said.

I suppose the thing for us to have done was to have lit out for the raft, but we didn’t. What we had seen through the window yanked us forward as surely as if we was on a rope.

Over by the door we was careful to try and not step in the blood, but it wasn’t any use. We couldn’t help it. It was everywhere. As we went inside, our shoes, already mud-coated and sticky, stuck to the floor like flies to molasses. The inside smelled bad, really bad, and not just because of the blood. The air was rank, like body odor on top of dead things on top of old river mud on top of what was left in the outhouse.

I stood at Uncle Gene. His death didn’t heat up much sympathy. What occurred to me was that he wouldn’t leap up suddenly and hit his wife anymore. When she found out he was dead, I wondered if she would feel like a bird that had just figured out the cage door had been left open. I hoped so. I liked to imagine her burning his clothes and dancing around the fire and taking a piss on the whole mess after it had gone black and cold.

But that broken neck wasn’t all that was horrible about his body. There was something else. His hands was cut off at the wrist from jagged strikes. It was the same for Constable Sy, who had been bound to the table with wraps of rope. The lantern had been placed by his head so whoever had done him in would have a close light to work by. The jar with the buttermilk was empty, and the jar itself had bloody fingerprints on it. Whoever had done this had paused in his work to refresh himself.

The picture of an animal of some kind had been carved into Constable Sy’s forehead; a duck with a ruler and a pocketknife could have made pretty much the same mark.

If Constable Sy had lived, he’d have needed two patches, cause his other eye had been scooped out, and flies was crawling around inside his head. There was a spoon lying on the table, and it was bloody, and I had a pretty good idea how the eye had been taken out.

Constable Sy had been cut and stabbed in a lot of places. You could see where his wrists had been placed on the table and struck. There was deep chop marks in the wood. His head was thrown back and his mouth was open and his tongue was torn out. His shoes was off and his toes had been whittled down to nubs so there was only the bones left, poking out like little wet sticks. The badge he always wore on his shirt pocket was missing.

I felt sick. I carefully set the hammer on the pistol down and put the gun back in my overalls pocket.

“What sort of design is that etched into his head?” Terry asked, leaning over Constable Sy. “Is that representative of some breed of cat?”

I looked at Terry, sniffed the foul air loudly so as to add to what I was about to say. “I wouldn’t hold it up as an example of much, but it looks like a skunk to me.”

“Oh,” he said.

It was spine-chilling to think we might have just missed Skunk catching up to us, or that he was out there now looking for us. I guess he saw Uncle Gene and Constable Sy as standing in the way of his progress, trying to do what he had been hired to do, so he had taken them out. Or maybe he thought they had the money, or knew where it was. Whatever the reason, if we had been here when he came, we’d have been tortured, and no doubt we’d have given up the goods, as well as our lives. Course, if he hadn’t come, and the reverend hadn’t showed up with that board, the same thing could have come about with Constable Sy and Gene before he got there. I wondered by how many minutes we had missed Skunk showing up.

A short time before, I was mostly sure there was no Skunk; now there was no way I could doubt him. No way I couldn’t fear him. He was out there, and his stinky self was looking for us.

We each took one of the tow sacks that Terry had brought from the raft and gathered up the rest of our goods, including a few tins of food and a bit of bread. Then Terry scratched around for the key he said was hidden in the door frame. He found it right off. Outside the house, standing on the end of the porch, I put my sack aside and leaned over and vomited. When I did, and Terry smelled it, it was just one stink too much. He leaned over and tossed up his insides, too.

When we was finished doing that, we scratched our feet in the dirt to get the blood off our shoes, then went out to the well and pulled up the bucket. There was a dipper hanging there on a stout cord, and we dipped water from the bucket and took turns drinking.

As we did, I looked over and seen the front door of Reverend Joy’s car was slightly open. I nudged Terry, and he saw what I was talking about right away. Hefting the flashlight, he started over there. I pulled the pistol and followed.

At the car, Terry looked through the windshield, then back at me. He shook his head, opened the front door so we could see inside clearly. The reverend’s blanket and pillow was in there. They was pushed around, not neat like he usually left them. There was blood smears from fingers all over the dash and all over the pillow and the back of the car seat. I noticed then that there was blood on the inside and outside door handle. That same smell from the house came rolling out of there like a speeding truck. It hit us hard enough we had to back up. I thought for a moment I was going to throw up again.

“He slept in the car,” Terry said. “Skunk. He killed Constable Sy, chopped him and Gene up, came out here, and spent the night in the car. That’s some guts.”

“That’s some crazy,” I said.

Terry looked down at his hand, lifted it, and showed it to me. Where he had taken hold of the car door he had gotten blood on himself. We went back to the well. I poured water over his hand and rinsed it away.

“Let’s get the money and ashes and leave,” I said.

“Gladly,” Terry said.

“You think this Skunk fellow has given up on us?” I said.

Terry shrugged. “How can we know? I doubt it. I think he likes what he does. I didn’t even consider there really could be a Skunk, but now I’m scared to death there is. I owe Jinx an apology.”

“If he was following us, after taking a sleep, he might be going along the river now,” I said. “Mama and Jinx are on that sandbar waiting on us. If he gets there first-”

I let that hang.

Terry hustled over to the work shed and unlocked it. It was tight in there with lumber from the reverend’s projects. There was a birdhouse in the corner, almost finished. Terry moved toward the back, bent down by the wall, and pulled at one of the boards. It creaked and the nails slipped out. There was a surprising lot of room between that board and the outside boards. Inside was two good-sized lard buckets.

Terry pulled them out by their wire handles and set them on top of the lumber. He found a screwdriver, used that to pry open the lids. Inside the cans was something wrapped in old hand towels. He took out first one, then the other, unwrapped them. There was a fruit jar wrapped up in each hand towel. One held the ashes, the other had the money.

“I wanted you to see how I arranged the money and what’s left of May Lynn,” he said. “I preferred you to know what was what.”

“Now I know,” I said. “Close them up, and let’s get.”

We gathered up our tow sacks. I put one can-I don’t even know which one-in my bag, and Terry put the other in his. I shoved the pistol in my overalls and we got out of there.