On the River Styx (6 page)

The turtle fell in the invisible underbrush, a heavy breaking crash which jarred the nighttime into silence.

The returning steps of Cyrus Jone came from the darkness. Behind, the bright-lit kitchen waited, the empty chairs at angles to the cooling dinner. From an upper room, the little boy was crying.

1953

N
ovember on the Carolina coast is cold at night, a dark clear cold that kills the late mosquitoes.

Toward dusk, a black man slithered from a drainage ditch. He moved swiftly on his belly, writhing out across a greasy bog and vanishing into the sawgrass by the river. The grass stirred a moment and was still. A rail bird rattled nervously, and a hunting gull, drawn inland, cocked a bright, hard, yellow eye. Startled, it dropped a white spot on the brown waste of the bog and banked downwind.

Deep River is dark with piedmont silt and without depth or bottom. It bends its way to its wide delta like a great dead snake slung out across the tidewater, and in the summertime it smells. Alluvial ooze packed tight and rotting on its banks sucks into itself the river debris. Through the grasses near the rim, Traver could see the stranded tree limbs
and the prow of the derelict skiff glimpsed earlier in the day.

It was near dark. Raising his eyes to the level of the grass, he listened a last time. Then he slid forward and, on his knees in the shallows, wrenched the buried skiff from its sheath of mud. It came with a thick sucking sound and the rank breath of its grave.

Traver knew without experiment that, upright, the skiff would fill immediately. He turned it turtle and waited one moment more, gaining his wind. It was high water, the first of the ebb. The tide and river would be with him. He shivered, moaning softly, though not yet afraid.

In the water, he kicked away from shore. An eddy curled him back upon the bank. He kicked away a second time, and caught the current. But the slimy hulk would not support his weight, and he coasted along beside it, one hand spread-fingered on the keel.

He moved downstream. Across the marsh, the lights switched back and forth like nighttime eyes, dancing in the blackness of the pines. The voices came vaguely on the shifting river air, and a new sound stirred him. He sank lower in the water, so that only his hand and half his face broke the low outline of the skiff.

Dey gone and put de hounds on dat man Traver.

He giggled, teeth chattering, and cursed.

The river dragged the capsized skiff across the coastal waterway, which parted the mainland from the inner marshes of the barrier islands. Though wisps of cloud at times obscured the moon, the night was clear. No longer able to see the lights, he was alone in the cold river, which widened now as it neared its mouth. He thrashed his legs for warmth, and cursed to restore his courage. Southeast, an arm of
woods from Ocean Island reached across the outer marshes toward the bank. He wanted to go aground there and, fearful of drifting past it to the open sea, began to swim the skiff inshore. To keep himself company, he swore foully at the balky hulk, the cold, the river, the night world.

His voice wandered in the thin mist over the river, and startled by it, he had a cold premonition of his death. But an inshore current seized the skiff and swept it in beneath the bank. Nearing the piles of the abandoned landing, he forsook the skiff and struggled through the shallow water. He had to drag himself ashore. Crouched beneath the wharf, too weak to beat his arms, he listened to hoarse, painful breaths he could not stop. The skiff disappeared around the final bend, toward the booming where the seas broke on the bar.

Traver scraped coon oysters from the pilings and opened them with his knife. Since the clothes he wore were the property of the state, this knife was his sole possession. He had had it fifteen hours. The knife was long, with a spring blade, and when he had eaten, he cleaned it before replacing it in his pocket.

Then he rose, peering over the bank at the trees a hundred yards away. Though sure he was alone on Ocean Island, he disliked outlining himself against the river. He went forward in a low crouch, covert, quiet. He liked to think he was quiet as an animal.

In the shelter of the live oaks, for the first time since early morning, he stood straight. Stretching, he threw his shoulders back, legs spread in unconscious arrogance. Traver was a tall man and very strong, with the big hands and haunches of his race. His skin was the mud black of the coastal Gullah, and his left eye was obscured by scars which extended in
cordy ridges toward the neat, tight ear. The scars seemed to have stretched the skin, which was taut and smooth, like a rubber mask. The expression of the mask was open, almost smiling, the boyish smile of a man enjoying himself without quite knowing why.

Most of the time, this smile was genuine. Traver liked to laugh and, though good-natured, he also liked to fight. He had been fighting since the day when, brought home to Raccoon Creek by a wayward mother, he was nicknamed Traveler.

The name became Traver, and stayed with him. And he had traveled north, south, east, and west, in and out of work and jail. He could stay no longer in a job than out of trouble. He had worked on the railroad and the road gang and the big menhaden boats out of Hampton Roads, and everywhere he laughed like hell and finally fought. Every once in a while, half-drunk, he would come home. And his mother would tell him, You born with too much life in you, dass all, you like you daddy. And you headin straight fo’ trouble, big mule as you is.

The last time home he had fought the man who happened to marry his girl. The man had knifed him near the eye. Unable to catch him, Traver, still bleeding, had burned their cabin down and taken the willing girl away. The sheriff followed in his own good time. I got your old place on the road gang saved for you, the sheriff said. We ain’t had a good laugh since you left.

But now, a month later, he had escaped. He appeared with the knife in Raccoon Creek, but the man had moved
away. The girl’s mother reported him, and he took to the woods, and kept on going out across Deep River Marsh. The tide was flooding when he saw the skiff, and he’d had to wait. He had scurried, crouched, scurried again, and once submerged, sliding beneath the surface like an alligator. The rasping voices had not picked up his trail in the green, broken scum, and they had passed.

I a big bull gator, he sang now, a tough-hide long-tail mean ol’ gator. Opening his open mouth a little more, he chortled soundlessly, still shivering. It growin cold, and dis gator ain’t no place to warm hisself. Well, I mean. Cold.

He moved inland through the trees, away from the dark river.

Ocean Island is long and large, spreading down some four miles from the delta, southwest toward Cape Romaine. The true land is a narrow spine supporting red cedar, cypress, yaupon, live oak, and the old-field pine, and here and there a scattering of small palmettos. There are low ridges and open groves and clearings, and a core of semitropic woods. Its south flank is salt marsh and ocean beach, and to the north, diked years ago above the tide, lies a vast brackish swamp. The swamp is grassy, like a green-and-golden flooded plain, its distances broken by lone, bony trees and hurricane dikes and sluice gates. Here, in a network of overgrown canals, the nut and widgeon grass grows in abandoned rice fields. Wildfowl winter in a diadem of reedy ponds, and coot and rail and gallinule, and predators.

In the swamp, the predators move ceaselessly.

He went to Snake-house. This was a sagging toolshed near the landing, so-called because in other times a worker had been bitten there, and died. In the dark, a sign,
NO
TRESPASSING
, loomed white and new. The door was gone, but the dank interior gave shelter from the breeze. Traver stripped and wrung his clothes, then rubbed his body fiercely with his hands. He found an oily piece of old tarpaulin and, wrapping himself in it, dozed a little, fitful.

He had come to Ocean Island because here he could survive. As a boy he had labored on the rice fields and the dikes, and he knew the name and character of every pond and ditch and slough. He knew where to snare rabbits, stalk birds, ambush deer, and where the wild swine and cattle were which he might outwit and kill. On the salt shores there were razor clams and oysters, and mullet in the canals, if a fish trap could be rigged. He would not starve. He could eat raccoon and otter and, if necessary, he could eat them raw.

He could survive here, too, because he would not be caught. The island had been unused for years, even for gunning. If he was tracked to this forsaken place, he could always find shelter in the swamp. Hounds could not help them here, and the whites did not know the swamp as he did, how to move quickly in it without risking the deep potholes and soft muck. He could elude a wider search than the state would send into the swamp after a black man. For this was black man’s country, slow and silent, absorbing the white man’s inroads like a sponge. A white man loomed large on Ocean Island, but a black man was swallowed up in it, and disappeared.

I
N THE NIGHT
, he was awakened by the grunting of a hog. The grunt was nervous, and there was a skittish stamping of small cloven hooves. He smell me, Traver thought. Taking his knife, he glided to the doorway. Upwind, the
hog came toward him on the island path. He crouched, prepared to ambush it, then stiffened.

Ol’ Hawg scairt. And he ain’t scairt of Traver.

Traver stooped for his shirt and pants and slipped outside. The hog snorted and wheeled, crashing off into the brush. Traver slid down a sandbank behind Snake-house and lay watching. He heard a rush of bait fish by the landing, the choked cry of a night heron behind him. A barred owl hooted and was answered. This was the hunting time.

The man had not seen Traver. He had stopped short at the crashing of the hog. Now he came on, down the soft sand path toward Snake-house. He was a tall, lean man with a rifle slung over one arm and a flashlight, unlit, in the other hand. His face was shadowed in the moonlight by his hat brim, turned down all the way around.

Traver opened the knife blade and lay still. He could not retreat now without being seen, and if he was seen, he was lost. He had no doubt that this man was his enemy, an enemy as natural as a raccoon to a frog, nor did it occur to him to curse his luck that an enemy was here at all. He was only relieved that he had heard in time. The rest no longer mattered. Traver was hardened to hunting and being hunted, and the endless adaptation to emergencies. He was intelligent and resourceful, and he was confident. Through the grasses, he gauged the stranger as he passed.

From the man’s belt, behind, hung a hatchet and a piece of rope. The rifle, carried loosely, was ready to be raised, and the unlit light was also ready. He was hunting. He crossed a patch of dry grass without a sound, and Traver nodded ruefully in respect.

Dat a poacher. Might be he jackin deer.

The man went on, down toward the landing. Stooping
on the wharf, he peered beneath it. Traver, who had moved, could see him do this, and felt a tightening in his chest.

He see dem feetprints. He see white places where dem orster was. You a plain fool nigger, man.

The hunter returned, moving more quickly. Raising his rifle, he flicked his light into the Snake-house. Traver could see its gleam through the rotting tongue-and-groove.

Ain’t no deer in dar, Boss, ain’t no deer in dar.

He repressed a nervous giggle, sweating naked in the cold, and clutched his knife. Upwind, he could hear the hog again, rooting stupidly near the path. The white man turned, bent to one knee, and fired. Traver jumped. The report ricocheted across the grove as the hog kicked, squealing, and lay still.

Ol’ white folks, he kin shoot. Only why he shootin now and not before? He lookin to fool somebody, he makin pretend he doan know somebody here.

He know, all right. Ol’ white folks know.

The man dragged the hog into the trees and dressed it quickly, viciously, with the hatchet and a knife. Then he piled brush on the head and hooves and entrails and, rigging a sling with a length of rope, hoisted the carcass to his shoulder. He went away as silently as he had come, and Traver followed.

We stickin close as two peas, man. I got to know what you up to every minute, lest you come sneakin up behind me.

Traver, though uneasy, was excited, jubilant. It seemed to him that he had won some sort of skirmish, and he could scarcely wait to see what would happen next. But because he guessed where the man was going, he kept a safe distance behind. There was a clearing at Back-of-Ocean, and the old
cabin of an abandoned shooting camp, and the only beach on the south side steep enough to bring a boat ashore. The poacher would have to have a boat, and he probably had a helper. Realizing this, Traver slowed, and put on his wet clothes.

He circled the clearing and came in from the far side, on his belly. There was kerosene light in the cabin window, and hanging from its eaves on the outside logs were moonlit amorphous carcasses. He made out deer and pig, and what could only be the quarters of a large wild bull. These cattle gone wild were the wariest creatures on the island, and this sign of the hunter’s skill gave him another start of uneasiness. Backing off again on hands and knees, he cut himself a rabbit club of the right weight. Waiting for dawn, he whittled it, and bound with vine and a piece of shirt two sharp stones to the heavy end. He was skillful with it, and the feel of it in his hand was reassuring.

It was growing light.

T
HE BOAT APPEARED
at sunup. Traver heard it a long way off, prowling the channel between islands at the southeast end. Now it drummed along the delta, just inside the bar, and headed straight in for the beach. It was a small, makeshift shrimp boat with rust streaks and scaling gray-green paint. Before it grounded, the hunter came out and, hoisting two small deer onto his shoulders, went down to the shore.

The two men loaded quickly. Then they stood a moment talking, the one on the pale sand of the beach, the other a black silhouette on the bow against the red fireball of the sun.