Edge of Dark Water (14 page)

“I believe he has gone as far as his will allows,” Terry said.

W
e 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.