The Bottoms

24

I didn’t want to leave him to bleed and die, but I had to help Grandma find the Goat Man and Tom. I put Toby down easy, pushed back the tears, ran blindly into the woods, down the narrow path Grandma had taken in her pursuit of the Goat Man. I fully expected at any moment to fall over Grandma’s or Tom’s body, but that didn’t happen. I finally began to catch up with Grandma. She wasn’t moving so fast now. She was limping, breathing hard. Her nightgown had been ripped by limbs, and so had her hair. She looked absolutely crazed.

“Hon, you got to follow,” she said. “I can’t go another step… I got to sit and rest… I ain’t as tough as I thought. He went through them brambles there. You got to hurry… Take the shotgun.”

“I don’t want to leave you here.”

“You got to follow him, find Tom. You got the gun. He ain’t got none, but I seen he’s got a knife. A big’n, strapped to his side. You make him tell where Tom is, hear? Oh, Jesus, I feel like I’m gonna die. My heart’s actin’ up. Go… go, Harry.”

Grandma collapsed to the ground on her butt, her chest heaving as if pumped with bellows. As Grandma lay down, I snatched up the shotgun, darted through the brambles, broke out onto a narrow pine-straw-littered trail. The moonlight danced through the boughs overhead and lit up the path. I could see where the Goat Man had pushed back limbs, even broken a few, as if he wanted me to inspect the direction he had gone.

There was enough moon for me to see where I was going, but not enough to keep every shadow from looking like the Goat Man, coiled and ready to pounce. The wind was sighing through the trees and there were bits of rain with it, and the rain was cool. Gradually the moon was being bagged by rain clouds.

I didn’t know if I should go on, or go back and get Grandma and try and find Mama and Daddy. I felt that no matter what I did, valuable time was being lost. There was no telling what the Goat Man was doing to poor Tom. Had he tied her up and put her at the edge of the woods before coming back to taunt me at the window? Maybe he already done what he had wanted to do to Tom, and now he wanted me too.

I thought of what had been done to all those poor women, and I thought of Tom, and a sickness came over me, and I ran faster, deciding it was best to continue on course, hoping I’d come on the monster and would get a clear shot at him and be able to rescue Tom.

It was then that I saw a strange thing in the middle of the trail, prominent in the moonlight breaking through the trees. A limb had been broken off, and it was forced into the ground. It was bent to the right at the top and whittled on to make it sharp. It was like a kind of arrow pointing the way.

The Goat Man was having his fun with me. I decided I had no choice other than to go where the arrow was pointing, a little trail even more narrow than the one I was on.

I went down it, and in the middle of it was another limb, this one more hastily prepared, just broken off and stuck in the ground, bent over at the middle and pointing to the right again.

Where it pointed wasn’t hardly even a trail, just a break here and there in the trees. I went that way, spiderwebs twisting into my hair, limbs slapping me across the face, and before I knew it my feet had gone out from under me and I was sliding over the edge of an embankment, and when I hit on the seat of my pants and looked out, I was at the road, the one the preachers traveled. The Goat Man had brought me to the road by a shortcut and had gone straight down it, because right in front of me, drawn in the dirt of the road, was an arrow. If he could cross the road or travel it, that meant he could go anywhere he wanted. There wasn’t any safe place from the Goat Man. That story about the road stopping him, about him not being able to leave the bottoms, it was all wrong.

The Goat Man could do anything he wanted to.

I picked up the shotgun I had dropped, ran down the road. I wasn’t even looking for sign anymore. I was heading for the Swinging Bridge and across from that the briar tunnels. I supposed he could have Tom under the bridge, in the cave, but in spite of what Grandma had said, I knew those tunnels were his nest, and I wanted to find him there, and I wanted to shoot and kill him. I wanted Tom to be okay. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted not to be dead. I wanted that a lot. Then I wondered if a shotgun blast could stop the Goat Man. I had thought on that before and wondered, but now, chasing him like this, him leading me on, I certainly wondered it more than ever before.

As I ran, I became more certain that the place I was being taken was the briar tunnels, and that Tom, for better or worse, was there. Those tunnels were where he had done his meanness to those women before casting them in the river. By placing that dead colored woman there, he had been taunting us all, showing us not only the place of the murder, but the probable place of all the murders. A place where he could take his time and do what he wanted for as long as he wanted.

I felt confident of my conclusions, though I could base them on little more than intuition and childish fantasy. I wished then I had pushed my ideas on Daddy, but I hadn’t, and now I had to deal with the consequences.

When I got to the Swinging Bridge, the wind was blowing hard and the moon showed itself to the world in patches. The bridge lashed back and forth, and I could easily visualize myself being tossed through the air, a stone snapped from a sling. I decided I’d be better off to go down to Mose’s cabin and use his boat to make my way to the briar tunnel.

I remembered we had left the boat along the shore, and my heart sank momentarily, then I thought of how it had been returned before, and ran down there hoping.

When I got there, the boat was in its spot, but when I put the shotgun inside it and tried to push it out in the water, it bogged in the sand and I couldn’t move it. I struggled a full five minutes, unable to budge it, bursting into tears.

I took a deep breath. I had no choice but the bridge. Way the boat was bogged down, there was no way I was going to move it by myself, and I knew in my heart where the Goat Man had taken Tom.

As I raced past the cabin, up in the woods I saw the nose of some kind of vehicle sticking out of the brush, the rest of it tucked between trees. It occurred to me that it might be Mama and Daddy for a moment, but a quick look and I could tell it wasn’t their car. It was a truck. It really didn’t matter. It could be someone down on the river with a boat, running night lines, or hunting possum or coon.

I turned and ran behind the shack on my way back to the bridge, saw something that grabbed my attention. It was hanging from the nail on the back of the cabin. It was a hand and part of a wrist. Something bright dangled from the hand.

My knees sagged. Tom. Oh God. Tom.

I went over to it slowly, bent forward, saw with relief the hand was too large to be Tom’s, and it was mostly rotten with only a bit of flesh on it. In the shadows it had looked whole, but it was anything but. The rotting hand was in a half fist and it was holding a little chain; the chain was draped through its bony fingers, and in the partial open palm on a pad of darkening flesh I could see what it held was a bullet-dented French coin.

Taylor’s coin.

I was trying to reconcile this with the Goat Man, figure on how it had all come together, when there was a hand on my shoulder.

As I jerked my head around, I brought up the shotgun, but another hand came out quickly and took it from me.

I was looking straight into the face of the Goat Man.

The moon rolled out from behind a rain cloud, and its light fell into the Goat Man’s eyes. They shone in his red-black face like cold emeralds. They were the same color as Mose’s eyes.

The Goat Man made a soft grunting sound and patted my shoulder. I saw his horns were not horns at all, but an old darkened straw hat that had rotted, leaving a gap in the front, like something had taken a bite out of it, and the tips the gap had made had been turned up by time, wind, and rain.

It was just a straw hat. A blasted straw hat. No horns.

And those eyes. That skin. Mose’s eyes. Mose’s skin.

In that instant I knew. The Goat Man wasn’t any Goat Man at all. He was Mose’s son, the one wasn’t right in the head and was thought to be dead. He’d been living out here in the woods all this time, and Mose had been taking care of him, and the son in his turn had been trying to take care of Mose, by bringing him gifts he found in the river, and he was still doing it, even if Mose was dead and gone. He was just a big dumb boy in a man’s body, wandering the woods wearing worn-out clothes and shoes with soles that flopped.

The Goat Man turned and pointed upriver. I knew then he hadn’t killed anyone, hadn’t taken Tom. He had come to warn me, let me know Tom had been taken. Now he was pointing the way. I just knew it. I didn’t know how he had come by the hand or Taylor’s chain and coin, but I knew the Goat Man hadn’t killed anybody. He had been watching our house; maybe he thought of himself as a kid. Hadn’t aged a day in his head. The sensation I had felt earlier hadn’t been any possum watching us, it had been the Goat Man. He had been in the woods and had seen what happened with Tom, and now he was trying to help me.

I broke loose from him, ran back to the boat, tried to push it free again. The Goat Man followed me, put the shotgun in the boat, grabbed the end of it, and together we pushed it out of the sand and into the river.

I splashed into the water with the Goat Man. He grabbed me suddenly and stuck me in the boat, pushed on out until the current had it good.

I watched as he waded back toward shore and the cabin. He stood on the bank looking at me, like a friend who hated to see his playmate go away. The wind snapped at his old hat and plucked at his clothes as if to remove them.

I picked up the paddle and went to work, trying not to think too much about what was being done to Tom.

Dark clouds kept passing over the moon, but none grabbed it and held it. It peeked out every now and then, like a frightened child looking out from beneath warm blankets. The raindrops became more frequent as the wind grew hard and slightly cool with dampness.

I paddled so hard my back and shoulders began to ache, but the current was with me, pulling me fast. I passed a whole school of water moccasins swimming in the dark. I feared they might try to climb up in the boat, as they liked to do, thinking it was a floating log and wanting a rest.

I paddled quickly through them, spreading the school. One did indeed try to climb up the side, but I brought the boat paddle down on him hard and he went back in the water, alive or dead I couldn’t say.

As I paddled around a bend in the river, where moss hung down from trees like curtains, and as I paddled through the moss, fighting it the way you might a thick swath of spiderwebs, I saw where the wild briars grew, and in that moment I had a strange sinking feeling, like carrying a bucket full of water and suddenly having the bottom drop out of it.

The feeling came not only for fear of what I might find in the briar tunnels, but fear I might find nothing at all. Perhaps I was all wrong and the Goat Man did indeed have Tom. Possibly in Mose’s cabin, hiding her there, waiting until I was out of sight. But if that was true, why had he given my gun back? Then again, he wasn’t bright. He was a creature of the woods, same as a coon or a possum. He didn’t think like regular folks.

All of this went through my head and swirled around and confused itself with my own dread and the thought of actually cutting down on a man with a shotgun. I felt like I was in a dream, like the kind I’d had when I’d had the flu some years before and everything had whirled and Mama’s and Daddy’s voices echoed and there were shadows all around me, trying to grab at me and pull me away into who knows where.

I paddled to the bank, got out, pulled the boat on shore best I could. I couldn’t quite get it out of the water since I was so tuckered out from paddling. I just hoped it would hang there and hold.

I got the shotgun, went up the hill quietly, found the mouth of the tunnel just beyond the tree, where me and Tom and Toby had come out that night.

It was dark inside the briars. The moon had gone behind a cloud and the wind rattled the bone-like stickers and clicked them together. Bits of rain sliced through the briars, mixed with the sweat in my hair, ran down my face, put salt in my mouth, and made me shiver.

July the Fourth, and I was cold.

Or was it the fifth now? I remember thinking that. Is it the fifth, and knowing full well I shouldn’t think that at all. I had to keep my mind sharp.

As I sneaked down the tunnel, through the briars I could see an orange glow leaping, could see a shadow moving before the glow. And I could hear a crackling sound, like dry leaves being wadded up in a big man’s hand.

I trembled, eased forward, came to the end of the tunnel, and froze. I couldn’t make myself turn into the large tunnel; the one that was cave-like and held pieces of paper with pictures of women on them, and cloth. And it came to me in a rush. The cloth I had seen, white with something red on it. It was the trim on the dress Mrs. Canerton had worn the night of the party, and then, I assumed, the night of her murder.

Suddenly, it was as if my feet were nailed to the ground.

I pulled back the hammer on the shotgun, slipped my face around the edge of the briars, and looked.

There was a fire going in the center of the tunnel, in the spot where Tom and I had seen the burn marks that day, and I could see Tom lying on the ground, her clothes off and strewn about, and a man was leaning over her, running his hands over her back and forth, making a sound like an animal eating after a long time without food. His hands flowed over her as if he was playing a piano.

He picked up a Sears and Roebuck catalogue off the ground, tore out a page, tore it again. I could see in the firelight it was a picture of a little girl. He rolled the picture up carefully, very tight, and gently placed it on the ground. I thought of the others, with those pieces of paper stuck into them, and I thought of Doc Tinn and his talk of fetishes.

A huge cane knife was stuck up in the dirt near Tom’s head, and Tom’s face was turned toward me. Her eyes were wide and full of tears and blood-red flickers from the fire. Tied around her mouth was a thick bandanna. Her hands and feet were bound with rope, and they were twisted at horrible angles. It looked as if she would break at the slightest touch.

As I looked the man rose and I saw that his pants were undone and he had hold of himself. He was walking back and forth before the fire, looking down at Tom, yelling, “I don’t want to do this. You make me do this. It’s your fault, you know? You’re getting just right. Just right. Tonight, you were just right.”

The voice was loud, but not like any voice I’d ever heard. There was all the darkness and wetness and muddiness of the bottom of the river in that voice, all the decay of dead fish and snakes and tossed garbage, the sewage from the on-bank outhouses.

I hadn’t been able to get a good look at his face, but I was sure from the way he was built, and from seeing that chain in Mrs. Canerton’s hand, that it was Doc Taylor. I figured she had grabbed at him while they fought, got hold of his chain, and he cut her hand off, not knowing the chain had gone with it.

Slowly he turned, and the way the fire caught his hair, I realized I was wrong. It wasn’t Doc Taylor. It was Mr. Nation’s son, the older one.

Then he turned to where I could see him good, and it wasn’t Nation’s boy at all. I had merely thought it was because that’s the kind of person I expected.

I stepped fully into the tunnel, said, “Cecil.”

The name came out of my mouth, without me really planning to say it. Cecil turned, and when he saw me his face was like it had been earlier, when Tom was being bounced on his knee and the fireworks had exploded behind him. It was neither happy nor sad, but dreamy, like a man waking from something he couldn’t quite figure.

He let go of his privates, let them hang out for me to see, like some kind of display at Groon’s general store.

“Oh, boy,” he said, his voice still husky and animal-like. “It’s just gone all wrong. I didn’t want to have to have Tom. I didn’t. But she’s been ripenin’, boy, right in front of my eyes. Every time I saw her, I said, no, you don’t shit where you eat. But she’s ripenin’, boy. And I thought I’d go to your place, peek in on her if I could, then I seen her there, easy to take, and I knew tonight I had to have her. There wasn’t nothing else for it.”

“Why?”

“Oh, son. There is no why. I tell myself I won’t, but I do. I do.”

He eased toward me.

I lifted the shotgun.

“Now, boy,” he said. “You don’t want to shoot me.”

“Yes sir. I do.”

“It ain’t something I can help. Listen here. I’ll let her go, and we’ll just forget about this business. Time you get home, I’ll be out of here. I got a little boat hid out, and I can take it downriver to where I can catch a train. I’m good at that. I can be gone before you know it. I come out here in a truck with my boat, but I’ll leave the truck for you. You’re gettin’ old enough for a truck. You should have a truck. I’ll leave it for you. It’s up above Mose’s shack.”

“You’re wiltin’,” I said.

His pee-dink had gone limp.

Cecil looked down. “So I am.”

He pushed himself inside his pants and buttoned up as he talked. “Look here. I wasn’t gonna hurt her. Just feel her some. I was just gonna get my finger wet. A little smell. I’ll go on, and everything will be all right.”

“You’ll just go down the river and do it again,” I said. “Way you come down the river to us and did it here. You ain’t gonna stop, are you?”

“There’s nothing to say about it, Harry. It gets out of hand sometime.”

“You killed those people, Cecil. I trusted you. My Daddy trusted you. We all trusted you.”

“Nothing I can say, Harry.”

“Mrs. Canerton. I thought you liked her.”

“I do. I did. I like Tom. I like them, and I try to leave them alone. The ones that matter. I went for the prostitutes. Thought that would hold me. But I didn’t want them. I wanted something… fresher. Louise, she was so nice.

“I didn’t mean to kill Louise. I wanted her, and she didn’t want me. She didn’t want to be tied. I swear, I wasn’t gonna hurt her. But she didn’t want me. We got to arguing, then I saw that chain and coin around her neck, and I thought of that silly little doctor having some of that, and she was mine, and I grabbed at her throat, at his damn coin, and her hand came up, got tangled in the chain, and I had the cane knife.”

He pointed at it where it stuck up in the ground next to Tom. It was a wicked-looking thing, and the firelight brightened its edge and made it appear to be coated in blood.

“I had it,” he said, “and I swung it. Cut off her hand. Damnedest thing. We was on the edge of the river. I told her I wanted to show her somethin’, see. That got her down here. And so we were on the edge, and” – he laughed slightly – “the damn hand, it popped right off and into the river. Can you imagine that…”

“I know the Goat Man found it.”

“Goat Man?”

“You’re the real Goat Man. You’re Miss Maggie’s Travelin’ Man.”

“You’re not making any sense, boy.”

I wanted him away from the cane knife. “Move on around to the side there,” I said.

Cecil slipped to my left, and I went to the right. We were kind of circling each other. I got over close to Tom and I squatted down by her, still pointing the shotgun at Cecil.

“I could be gone for good,” Cecil said. “All you got to do is let me go.”

I reached out with one hand, got hold of the knot on the bandanna and pulled it loose. Tom said, “Shoot him! Shoot him! He stuck his fingers in me. Shoot him! He took me out of the window and stuck his fingers in me.”

“Hush, Tom,” I said. “Take it easy.”

“This hurts. Cut me loose… Give me the gun and I’ll shoot him.”

“All the time you were bringin’ those women here to kill, weren’t you?” I said.

“It’s a perfect place. Already made by hoboes. Once I decide on a woman, well, I can easily handle a woman. I always had my boat ready, and you can get almost anywhere you need to go by river. The tracks aren’t far from here. Plenty of trains run. It’s easy to get around. I used my truck to bring the boat down.”

“You told where Mose was? You told Mr. Nation.”

“Your Daddy gave me a lead. And Smoote, that idiot, who do you think cuts his hair? He was all worked up about that colored man in his barn, and he got to talkin’, and I didn’t mean to do anything with it, but hell, lots of people knew about it ’cause of his big mouth, and it was just a matter of time. All I had to do was let it slip to couple folks I figured wore the hoods.”

“But why?”

“He took the blame, and I’d quit. I really wanted to, you know. I wanted to marry Louise, settle down, cut hair, live like your Daddy. Maybe even have some kids. But I can’t do it, Harry. I tried, but I couldn’t do it. I thought I had it beat, then Louise took a shine to that boy doctor. It all snapped.”

“Just go on and shoot him,” Tom said.

I squatted, got hold of the cane knife, ran it against the ropes that held Tom with my left hand and kept the shotgun tucked to me with the right hand.

“Sometimes friends make you mad, don’t they? They do wrong things. But they don’t mean to. I didn’t mean to. I couldn’t help myself.”

“We ain’t talkin’ about stealin’ a piece of peppermint here. You’re worse than the critters out there with the hydrophobia, ’cause you ain’t as good as them. They can’t help themselves.”

“I tell you, neither can I. You don’t know what I saw in the war. It was horrible.”

“You was the one killin’ them Germans way you told Daddy about, wasn’t you?”

“Your Daddy told you about that, huh? Yes. It was me. It was a relief. Pretty soon, I wasn’t scared anymore. When I was home, I was always scared. My Mama, she liked me. She liked me a lot. And she liked to tie me up like her Daddy tied her when he had her. I learned that from her. The tying. But I didn’t like being tied. She did. I liked the tying. We were quite a team till I overdid it. That was in Arkansas. I went away to the war then, and I learned to kill more. To enjoy it. And when I came back… Well, I just naturally found it burned off tension. I’m tellin’ you, Harry. I can’t help it. I tried to keep it to people that didn’t matter.”

“Like anyone matters to you,” I said, sawing without much success at the ropes.

“You’re gonna cut me, Harry,” Tom said.

The fire crackled, bled red colors across Cecil’s face. Some of the rain leaked in through the thick wad of briars and vines and limbs overhead, hit the fire, made it hiss.

Cecil said, “You’re like your Daddy, ain’t you? Self-righteous.”

“Reckon so.”

“My Daddy’ll whip your ass,” Tom said.

The cane knife was sharp, but just too hard to handle, and Tom was starting to cuss and going on about letting her loose and giving her the shotgun. I finally tossed the cane knife down, got my pocketknife out and opened it with my teeth.

Cecil eased toward me.

“Don’t come no closer, Cecil. I’ll shoot your legs out from under you.”

“Shoot his pee-pee off!” Tom yelled.

The pocketknife was easier for me to handle. I finally got the ropes loose and Tom sat up rubbing her wrists.

“It’s all right now, Tom.”

“It will be when we shoot his pee-pee off.”

I stood up, raised the gun, and Cecil flinched. But I couldn’t cut him down. I wasn’t raised to kill a human being. I couldn’t even shoot a squirrel or catch a fish if I thought I wasn’t gonna eat it, and I damn sure wasn’t gonna eat Cecil.

Just wasn’t in me to shoot a fella in cold blood. He needed it, no doubt, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I figured if I blew his knee off to cripple him till I could get Daddy, he’d end up bleeding out slow, and dying anyway. The idea of letting buckshot fly into human flesh overwhelmed me, made me ill, and took my common sense away.

I didn’t know what to do with him. I decided I had no choice but to let him go, tell Daddy, and have him try and hunt him down. If I went to tie him up, I was certain he’d turn the tables, and I was afraid if I tried to take him back at the point of a gun, he’d outdo me somehow.

Tom was pulling on her clothes when I said, “You’ll get yours eventually.”

“Now you’re talkin’, boy.”

“You stay over yonder, we’re goin’ out.”

He held up his hands. “Now you’re using some sense.”

Tom said, “You can’t shoot him, I can.”

“Go on, Tom.”

She didn’t like it, but she turned down the tunnel and headed out. Cecil said, “Remember, boy. We had some good times.”

“You ain’t never done nothing with me but cut my hair, and you didn’t know how to cut a boy’s hair anyway.” I turned and went out by the tunnel. “And I ought to blow one of your legs off for what you done to Toby.”

“He hurt Toby?” Tom said. “Gimme that gun.”

She made as if to grab it, and in the same moment Cecil stepped forward. I pushed Tom aside and brought the shotgun up.

“I thought you was wantin’ to go your own way.”

He smiled. “I am, Harry. You can’t fault a fella for tryin’.”

“I can,” I said. “Tom. Go!”

We hustled through the tunnel, and I listened for him following, looking back now and then, but I didn’t hear nor see any sign of him.

We come out of the tunnel and went past the tree where the first body had been found, and down to where I’d pulled the boat on shore. I figured if we went through the woods he might get us, but if we took the boat downriver it would be hard for him to track us, if that was his notion.

I was hoping it wasn’t.

When we got down to the river, the boat, which I hadn’t been able to pull up completely on shore, had been washed into the river by the rain-dappled current. I could see it in the distance, flowing away at a rapid pace.

“Damn,” I said.

“Was that Mose’s boat?” Tom asked.

“We got to go by the bank, to the Swinging Bridge.”

“It’s a long ways,” I heard Cecil say.

I spun around, and there he was up on the higher bank next to the tree where me and Tom had found the body. He was just a big shadow next to the tree, and I thought of the devil come up from the ground, all dark and evil and full of bluff. Maybe Cecil wasn’t the Travelin’ Man after all, but in fact was Beelzebub himself, one Miss Maggie told me about.

Cecil stepped out from behind the tree, and the moonlight caught the blade of the cane knife, made me think of a story I had read once about Death and his scythe.

“You got a long ways to go, children. A long ways.”

I pointed the shotgun at him and he slipped behind the tree out of sight, said, “A long ways.”

I knew then I should have killed him. Or at least taken the cane knife. Now, without the boat, he could follow alongside us, back up in the woods there, and we couldn’t even see him.

Me and Tom started moving brisk-like along the bank, and we could hear Cecil moving through the woods on the higher bank above us, and finally we didn’t hear him anymore. It was the same as that night when we heard the sounds near and in the tunnel. I figured it had been him, maybe come down to see his handiwork at the tree there, liking it perhaps, wanting it to be seen by someone. Maybe we had come down right after he finished doing it. He had been stalking us, or Tom maybe. Could be he had wanted Tom all along.

We walked fast and Tom was cussing most of the time, talking about what Cecil had done with his fingers. The whole thing was making me sick.

“Just shut up, Tom. Shut up.”

She started crying. I stopped and got down on one knee, let the shotgun lay against me as I reached out with both hands and took hold of her shoulders.

“I’m sorry, Tom, really. I’m scared too. We got to keep ourselves together, you hear me?”

“I hear you,” she said.

“We got to stay the course here. I got a gun. He don’t. He may have already given up.”

“He ain’t give up, and you know it.”

“We got to keep moving.”

Tom nodded, and we started out again. Pretty soon the long dark shadow of the Swinging Bridge was visible across the river, and the wind was high, and the bridge thrashed back and forth and creaked and groaned like rusty hinges.

“We could go on down a ways, Tom, but I think we got to cross by the bridge here. It’s quicker, and we can be home sooner.”

“I’m scared, Harry.”

“So am I. Can you do it?”

Tom sucked in her top lip and nodded. “I can.”

We climbed up the bank where the bridge began and looked down it. It swung back and forth. White foam rose from the dark water below, rolled away and crashed over the little falls into the broader, deeper, slower part of the river, but on this rainy, windy night, even that flowed fast.

The woods seemed quiet, yet full of something I couldn’t put a name to. Now and again, in spite of the rain, the clouds would split and the moon would shine down on us. The rain was growing stronger, and I knew before long there would be only clouds and lots of rain and little to no moonlight. That would only make matters worse.

Like that other time, I decided to cross first, so if a board gave out Tom would know. When I stepped on the bridge, the wind and my weight made it swing wide, and I darn near tipped into the water. When I reached out to grab the cables, I let go of the shotgun. It went into the water, making no sound over the roar of the water.

“You lost it, Harry,” Tom yelled from the bank.

“Come on, just hang on to the cables.”

Tom stepped onto the bridge. It swung violently, nearly tipped again.

“We got to walk light,” I said, “and kind of together. When I take a step, you take one. But if a board goes, or I go, you’ll see in time.”

“If you fall, what do I do?”

“You got to go on across, Tom.”

We continued, having gotten the movement right, because we weren’t wobbling as badly as before. Still, it was slow work, and I began to suspect we might have been better off traveling down the bank until we could cross in the shallows. But that route was dark, the trees grew close to the water, and it would have been easy for Cecil to have snatched us.

But now, on this bridge, going slowly, the wind and rain blowing, I found myself reconsidering. But, of course, there was no going back. We had the same distance to go to cross that we did going back. And I no longer had the shotgun.

I turned, looked down the length of the bridge, past Tom. I didn’t see anyone tryin’ to follow.

It was slow going, but it wasn’t long before we were six feet from the other side. I began to breathe again. Then I realized after we crossed the bridge we still had a ways to go till we got to the wide trail, then the road. But there wasn’t any road would stop Cecil or anyone else. It was just a road. If we got that far, we still had more distance to travel, and Cecil would know where we were going, and Mama and Daddy might not even be home yet. As for Grandma, I didn’t know if she had gone back to the house, in search of Mama and Daddy, or driven off for help. For that matter, she could still be lying where I had left her.

I thought if we got to the road, I might try and fool Cecil by going the other way. The drawback was it was a longer distance in that direction to anyone’s house, and if Cecil figured what we were doin’, we could be in worse trouble. I decided the only thing to do was to head straight home and stay cautious.

While all this was on my mind, and we were about to reach the opposite bank, a chunk of the bank moved and the shadows that clustered around it moved too. Cecil, looking as if he had crawled through a working cotton gin, stepped into view holding the cane knife.

The look on his face said it all. He had us. I tossed a glance over my shoulder at Tom. The look she gave me back was one that expected some kind of answer.

I thought maybe we could turn back, but before I could make the decision, I glanced at Cecil, saw him stick the cane knife in the dirt beside him. Staying on solid ground, he took hold of both sides of the cables that held the Swinging Bridge, said, “I beat you across, boy. Hurried down and crossed in the shallows, like you should have done. Then I just waited. Now you and little Tom, you’re gonna have to take a dip. I didn’t want it this way, but that’s how it is. You see that, don’t you? All I wanted was Tom. You give her to me right now, let her cross to this side, you can go. By the time you get home, me and her, we’ll be on our way, and I’ll keep goin’ from there. That’s all the deal I can offer, Harry.”

“You ain’t got your dough done in the middle,” I said.

Cecil clenched the cables hard and shook them. The bridge swung out from under me and I found my feet hanging out in midair. Only my arms wrapped around one of the cables was supporting me.

I jerked a look at Tom. She had fallen and was grabbing at one of the board steps. As she clutched it, I could see bits of rotten wood splintering, throwing splinters into the moonlight. Tom’s feet swung out into nothingness. The board creaked. She groaned. The bridge sighed in the wind and the rusty old cables screeched like a rat being slowly crushed to death by a boot heel.

Cecil shook the cables again. I hung tight, my feet swinging way out. I tried to pull up and get my feet back on the slats, but the bridge had tilted, and every time I tugged, it merely leaned with me, the cables being flexible, shaken, and wind-driven.

The board Tom clung to didn’t give, just shed more wood; she was holding nothing more than a thin fragment bolted to the lower cables on either side.

I glanced toward Cecil, saw another shape lurch out of the shadows; a huge one, with what looked like horns on its head.

Mose’s boy, Telly.

Telly grabbed Cecil around the neck and jerked him back. Cecil spun loose, hit him in the stomach. They grappled for a moment, holding each other’s biceps, pushing and pulling.

Cecil got loose, losing some of his shirtsleeve in the process. He snatched up the cane knife, slashed it across Telly’s chest. Telly let out with a wail, leaped against Cecil and the both of them went flying onto the bridge.

When they hit, boards splintered, and the bridge swung violently. There was a snapping sound, followed by a hiss as one of the cables broke in two, whipped out and away from us like a lash, then dropped into the water.

Cecil and Telly plummeted past us into the Sabine. Tom dangled for a moment from the bridge slat, then it cracked, but before it could break all the way and drop her, the remaining cable snapped, and we tumbled into the fast-rushing water after them.

I went deep, surfaced in choking foam, bumped into Tom. She bellowed and I grabbed her shirt collar. The water churned us under again. I struggled to bring us up, all the while clinging to Tom’s collar. When I broke the surface of the water, I saw Cecil and Telly in a clench, riding the blast of the Sabine over the little falls, shooting out into deeper, calmer waters.

Then we were part of the falls, and over we went, and the water covered us, and I clung hard to Tom’s shirt collar. I felt as if I blacked out for a moment, then we rose up and I came to as the night air hit me.

I tightened my grip on Tom, started trying to swim toward shore. It was hard in our wet clothes, our clinging shoes, tired as we were, and that damn current.

Tom wasn’t helping herself a bit. She had gone limp, letting the water pull her. I thought several times I wasn’t going to make it, or that, worse, I would let go of Tom to save myself, but I clung to her until my fingers lost feeling.

Eventually my feet were touching sand and gravel. I waded onto shore, Tom in tow. I collapsed on my knees. Tom rolled over and puked.

I fell forward and rolled on my back and gasped in cool draughts of air. My head was spinning. Absently, I realized it had quit raining.

I raised my head, glanced out at the water. The moon, happy to be shed of rain clouds, cast a glow on the Sabine like grease starting to shine on a hot skillet. I could see Cecil and Telly gripped together, a hand flying up now and then to strike, and I could see something else all around them, something that rose up in a dozen silvery knobs that gleamed in the moonlight.

Cecil and Telly had washed into that school of water moccasins, or another just like them. Had stirred them up. Now it was like bullwhips flying from the water, lashing the two of them time after time.

They washed around a muddy bend in the river struggling with each other, accompanied by the lashing snakes, and even before they had completely gone from sight the clouds came again and the moon went away and in the shadows of the trees overhanging the river, they were lost from sight.

When I was able to stand, I realized I had lost a shoe. I got hold of Tom, pulled her farther up the bank. We lay there for a moment, still recovering.

Finally we felt strong enough to move, and we staggered toward the gap in the trees that led to the road. My bare foot found every sticker in existence.

When we got to the Preacher’s Road, I stopped, sat down, and picked the stickers out of my foot as best I could. I took off my other shoe, and we started walking toward home. The rain came in earnest now, not letting up at all. No more moonlight, just night and rain so dark it was hard to stay on the muddy road.

It took us a long time, but as we neared home, we heard Mama in the yard, calling our names.

When she saw us she let out a roar of relief, ran toward us with her hair wet in her face, her nightgown clinging to her like a satin glove.

When we arrived that night, Daddy was off in the woods looking for us, and Grandma was in bed, ill from excitement. Toby, who I thought had died, was in the house, lying on a makeshift pallet Mama had made for him. She had also bandaged his head. She called him a hero. When he saw us, his poor pathetic body managed to make his tail work, and he beat it a few times to let us know he was glad to see us.

Near dawn, wet and tired, Daddy arrived, found us sitting at the table telling Mama and Grandma all about it. When he saw us, and we came to him, he dropped to his knees, took us both in his arms and began to cry.

Next morning they found Cecil on a sandbar. He was bloated up and swollen from water and snake bites. His neck was broken, Daddy said. Telly had taken care of him before the snake bites.

Caught up in some roots next to the bank, his arms spread and through them, his feet wound up in vines, was Telly. The cane knife wound had torn open his chest and side. Daddy said that sad old straw hat was still on his head; it had somehow gotten twisted up in his hair, and that the part that looked like horns had washed down and was covering his eyes.

I wondered what had gotten into Telly, the Goat Man. He had led me out there to save Tom, but he hadn’t wanted any part of stopping Cecil. Maybe he was afraid. But when we were on the bridge, and Cecil was getting the best of us, he had come for him.

Had it been because he wanted to help us, or was he just there already and frightened? I’ll never know. I thought of poor Telly living out there in the woods all that time, only his Daddy knowing he was there, and keeping it secret just so folks would leave him alone, not take advantage of him because he was addle-headed.

In the end, I remember mostly just lying in bed in what had become Grandma’s room, our old room, for two days after, nursing all the wounds in my foot from stickers and such, thinking about what had almost happened to Tom, trying to get my strength back.

Mama stayed by our side for the next two days, leaving us only long enough to make soup. Daddy sat up with us at night. When I awoke, frightened, thinking I was still on the Swinging Bridge, he would be there, and he would smile and put out his hand and touch my head, and I would lie back and sleep again.

During the day he took a side of the barn down and used the planks to close in the sleeping porch. He said he’d never feel safe with anyone sleeping out there again. I missed the old porch, but it was best he did what he did. I could have never lain out there again, closed my eyes for a good night’s sleep.

It was nearly two years later before he replaced the boards he had taken from the barn.

Over a period of years, picking up a word here and there, we would learn that there had been more murders like those in our area, all the way down from Arkansas and over into Oklahoma and some of North Texas. Back then no one pinned those on one murderer. The law just didn’t think like that in them days. The true nature of serial killers was unknown.

It’s all done now, those long-ago events of the nineteen thirties.