Edge of Dark Water (13 page)

“Jaren’s mama climbed back there with the body, and his daddy clucked the mules up, and they started off. I could hear his mama yelling and carrying on long after they were out of my sight. I got sick and threw up, and could hardly walk, but finally I went and got the rifle, determined I was going to tell the law I had taken it, but then I thought, what does it matter now? They’ve killed Jaren. And I’d be incarcerated. I was a coward. I took the rifle down to the river, by the oak tree where Jaren had saved me from drowning, and threw it in the water. I stayed quiet about what happened, and now and again I would hear those men laugh about the time they burned a nigger, and how they had shown that thief a thing or two. Jaren wasn’t even a person to them. He was a thing. Castrating him wasn’t any different to them than castrating a hog, and burning him wasn’t any different than setting fire to a stump. I never told anyone until now what really happened. One day, that memory was haunting me like a ghost, and I came to the conclusion that God, to help me repent, had called upon me to spread his word. Now I think my own guilt might have been talking to me.”

“Oh, Jack.”

“Yes. Oh, Jack.”

“How old were you when this happened?”

“I was thirteen, but age doesn’t matter. I knew better. I sold him out for something he didn’t do to keep from being tagged with the deed myself. They didn’t question him. They didn’t find the rifle on him. They just killed him. I always wondered if the last thing they told him was that they knew he had taken that rifle because I told them so.”

“You poor man,” Mama said.

“Me? Goodness, no. Me? Why, I’m the scum of the earth. I have murder on my hands, and I tried to absolve it by preaching. And now I know I wasn’t even called. I called myself. And I’m not really any different, not at the core. That little colored girl, Jinx. She’s just as smart and good as she can be, and I guess I thought I could make up for one evil deed by saving her soul so she wouldn’t go to hell. But it’s me that’s going to hell, not her. It’s me that belongs with the devil.”

I understood then that what I thought was discomfort about Jinx being colored wasn’t Reverend Joy’s problem at all. He was toting around a sack of guilt, and in some way, she reminded him of it.

Frogs bleated. Something splashed out on the water.

“I told you my sins,” Mama said. “I’m not clean, either.”

“You haven’t done anything of consequence but leave an abusive husband and strike out down the river with your child. My sin is heavy as the world and dark as the deepest shadow in hell.”

It was a big statement from the reverend and sounded like a line out of a book, but it hit me like a fist between the eyes. Compared to him, Mama and me and my friends was all doing pretty good when it came to any kind of measurement of sin. What scared me then was what I figure makes some people religious. The sudden understanding that maybe there isn’t any measurement, and that it’s all up to us to decide. And no matter what you do, it only matters if you get caught, or you can live with yourself and the choices you make. It was a kind of revelation.

Thinking on that made me feel cold and empty and alone.

“You were a boy,” Mama said to Reverend Joy. “You did something wrong. You stole and you told a horrible lie, but you were young and frightened. It’s not an excuse, but it is a reason.”

“Sounds like an excuse to me,” he said. “I was evil.”

“If that’s true, you’ve shown the evil has been cleansed. You have been saved, Jack. You have saved others. You’ve been baptized, of course, and therefore you have been redeemed. You’re a good preacher.”

“Good or bad, I’m done now. There’s nothing left for me here. I don’t deserve to ask it, but I’m asking you. Can I go with you downriver? Away from here? I don’t know where I’ll go in the end, but away from here. Will you have me with you?”

“I suppose it’s up to the children, at least to some extent,” Mama said. “They will have to be asked. Frankly, I’m uncertain what it is I want to do next. But I suppose whatever it is I’ll first have to go downriver.”

“What about your first love—the man in Gladewater?”

“I don’t know,” Mama said. “That was a long time ago. The idea of him and what we had got me out of bed and on the raft, but I don’t know it’s such a good idea to dig up the past like an old grave. What’s in it might stink.”

I hadn’t thought about that. Hadn’t considered that Mama and Brian would meet and things wouldn’t go back to where they were some seventeen years ago, that we wouldn’t be just one big happy family. It was another one of those revelations, and I didn’t like it. Basking in ignorance has much to be said for it.

“Will you have to tell the children what I have done?” he said. “Should I?”

“I suppose not,” Mama said. “Another time, maybe, if you want to get it off your chest. But there isn’t any going back in time, for me or for you. We got to wear our crowns of thorns. We can talk all we want, but we can’t take them off.”

“My thorns are sharper,” he said, “but I suppose that is as it should be. I’m sick to death with the memory, and I wanted you to know. Somehow, telling you makes me feel better. Not about what I done, but it helps me bear it. I hope I haven’t handed you a burden.”

“Nothing I can’t carry,” Mama said.

“I appreciate that, Helen. I really do. Shall we leave tomorrow? I have to resign my church, which I might as well anyway. It doesn’t mean I have to actually write out a resignation letter. I just need to go. It does no good to preach to the wind. I have to leave the cabin. It’s given to the preacher to use, and I won’t be the preacher anymore.”

“All right, then,” she said. “We can load the raft tomorrow morning. Then we can leave.”

I saw Mama take the reverend’s head in her hands, and their shadows mixed. I knew she was kissing him. More and more I realized I didn’t know Mama at all.

They talked awhile, and held hands, and the Reverend Jack Joy even cried. She put her arms around him, and they leaned together and kissed again, and it was real kissing, what Jinx calls smackie-mouth.

I didn’t want to see no more of it, so I got up and sneaked back into the house and onto my pallet, lay there with my mind full now of Jaren and his last moments, burning up, chained to a stump, all for a lie. And then I had to think about Mama, and how she was more than I knew as a person, and that she and the reverend was down there on the raft, kissing, and maybe more. I couldn’t find any way to lose the thoughts, or to get hold of them.

Wasn’t long after I laid down that the door opened, and I seen Mama’s shape in the frame, and behind and above her, I seen more heat lightning dancing across the sky. Also behind her, I saw Reverend Joy heading toward his car. Then Mama eased the door closed and moved noiselessly to the bedroom.

In spite of all that was bothering me, I eventually nodded off.

My sleep was soon spoiled by the sound of lumber splitting. I sat bolt upright, and so did everyone else in the house, cause the door had been kicked back and broken apart; there was two hat-wearing shapes in the doorway. They brought with them the smell of liquor and sweat. One of them was holding a flashlight. It was shining across the room, right on my face, and it was blinding me. Jinx moved on the floor, said something in surprise, and one of the shapes kicked her hard enough she let out her air and was knocked tumbling. She twitched just enough that I knew she wasn’t knocked out.

Mama came into the room instantly, and when she did, one of the shapes quick-stepped toward her. A hand struck out, and she went down with a scream.

“Stop it, damn it,” I said, coming off my pallet and to my feet.

“Unladylike as always,” said a familiar voice. “You best sit back down before I hit you, Sue Ellen.”

The flashlight beam that was resting on me hopped around the room. I couldn’t help but look where it went. It came to rest on Terry’s pallet, where he was sitting up.

The voice said, “There’s the sissy.”

“Where’s the damn preacher?” said the other man. I recognized that voice, too.

After a moment, both shapes moved deeper into the room. Then one of them spotted a lantern with the flashlight, and the lantern got lit. The lamp lighter was that one-eyed Constable Sy, and the other one, the kicker and hitter, was the man I had always known as Uncle Gene.

W
ell, now,” Uncle Gene said. “If it ain’t my brother’s wife, Helen, in another man’s house, along with her sassy-ass daughter, the sissy, and a runaway nigger. Where’s the preacher?”

It was easy to figure. They had been looking for us for some time now. All they had to do was ask along the river until they come to the right person, and someone who had seen us talked. With the reverend’s congregation being on the outs with him, they had most likely been swift to say something, not realizing, of course, that the men looking for us was more than bill collectors. Course, I guess it could have been something they did by meaner purpose, and if that was the case, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was the Fried Chicken with Too Much Salt Lady.

“I’m not going back,” Mama said, coming off the floor and to her feet. She had a hand pressed against her face where she had been hit.

Gene took a seat by the table. “I know that, Helen. Where’s the preacher?”

“He’s gone off,” I said. “They got rid of him at the church. Didn’t like his living arrangements. He’s gone off.”

“That right?” Sy said. He had his hand on his holstered gun, letting it rest there like a bird that had lit on a post. Right then, I believed that story about what that holster was made out of. “Gene,” he said, “go look in the back room, see if you can find a preacher. Bring him out, drawers or no drawers.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself for thinking such a thing,” Mama said.

“Now, don’t get special on me, girl,” Gene said. “You lowered your own drawers down before you took up with my brother. You done that, didn’t you? It ain’t like no one else has ever been under the bridge. Only thing I got to wonder is if you were charging a toll.”

Even in the dark I could feel embarrassment come off Mama like heat off a fire. Gene went past her on his way to the room, paused to slap her on the butt. “You know,” he said. “Always figured, you and me could have a good time, and I think we might still.”

Mama wheeled and spit in his face.

Gene wiped the spit off with his sleeve and grinned at her. “Oh, your time is coming, honey. You can bet on that.”

“Quit jawing and go look,” Constable Sy said.

Gene went on. While he was in the bedroom looking around, Constable Sy said, “All of you might as well cooperate. I’m with the law.”

“You’re out of your formal jurisdiction,” Terry said.

“You always was a smart little fruit,” Constable Sy said. “But I figure you know jurisdiction doesn’t really mean squat. It’s not like I plan on taking that money back to the bank. It’s not like I plan on running you folks in.”

Gene came back. “No one in there.”

“That surprises me,” said Constable Sy, looking at Mama.

Gene went to the icebox, took out the fruit jar with buttermilk in it, screwed off the lid, and drank deep, spilling some of it on his chest. He burped and came to the table and took a chair. He sat the milk on the table at his elbow. The lantern lit one side of his face bright as day. The other side was dark as a hole in the ground.

“So you wasn’t satisfying that preacher and he run off,” Constable Sy said, looking at Mama. He was still standing, one leg cocked forward, his hand resting on his gun butt. “You look good, but I can bet you got a lot of the shrew about you.”

“Come on over here and sit down,” Gene said, motioning at Mama. “It’s all right. Sit down. I ain’t going to let anything happen to you.”

Mama, one hand still on her jaw, went over and sat. She chose a chair far away from Gene.

Constable Sy took a chair on the opposite side, right across from her. He took the gun out of its holster and laid it on the table, kept his hand on top of it. “Like I said. You wasn’t satisfying him, so he left you here. I figure he had to, as the folks we talked to said he wasn’t living like a preacher, just talking like one, then coming back down here and snuggling up with you at night.”

“He was letting us stay out of Christian generosity,” Mama said. “That’s all there was to it.”

“Have it your way,” Gene said. “Let’s make this easy, then we’ll leave you be. We want that money.”

“Where’s Cletus?” I asked.

“Cletus, he’s got his own way of looking for you,” Gene said. “He says he’s going to hire that stinky nigger Skunk to come find you. Trying to get somebody knows Skunk that’s willing to go look for him, like there really is a Skunk. But even if there is, he don’t need to get him. We got you. He thought we wasn’t never going to find you, but he was wrong.”

“How’s Don feel about all this?” Mama asked.

“Don looked for a few days then put himself in the house and hasn’t come out, least not last I looked,” Gene said. “You broke his heart. And I think that’s a bad thing. Not that his heart is broke, but that he’d let it break over someone like you. You come to him with a baby in your belly and he took you in, and now here you are, out on the prowl.” He looked at me. “You know Don ain’t your daddy, don’t you?”

“It’s one of the great reliefs of my life,” I said. “And that business about him having the Sight, that hasn’t helped him none now, has it? It wasn’t him found us.”

“Ha,” Gene said, and seemed to think that was genuinely funny.

“And I’m not on the prowl,” Mama said. “I’ve just run away. That’s all.”

“I got a mind to see if you’re worth what Don thought you was,” Gene said. “Don said you could warm a cold night pretty good after you got liquored up.”

“Hush up,” Mama said. “There’s children in the room.”

Gene laughed and took another swig of buttermilk. “Now you got scruples. That’s funny.”

“Enough chitchat,” said Constable Sy. “Here’s how it’s going to work. You give us that bag of money, and we’ll go, and won’t nothing happen to you. You don’t, it’s fixing to be a bad night for all of you. You going to wish you was dead and done gone to hell.”

“I already wish that,” I said.

Gene studied me for a while, said, “Sassy there, and the nigger gal, could be all right to keep us busy. And then we got Helen, too. It could be real good for us before it turns real bad for them. And we got the sissy, too. A sissy can be all right if you know how to use him.”

“For God’s sake, Sue Ellen’s your niece,” Mama said.

“Not by blood,” Gene said. “And if she was, I don’t know how much that would bother me. You might say since that money got stolen and you left, circumstances has changed in a big way.”

“We lost the money,” Terry said.

Constable Sy snapped his head toward Terry. “You’re a liar. You’re a damn liar, and that’s the worst lie I’ve heard. You think we looked  hard and long as we have to take a lie as the truth? You better have that money.”

“The raft turned over and we lost it,” Terry said.

Gene glanced at Constable Sy. “It could have happened,” he said.

“If it did,” Constable Sy said to Gene, “that’s a real sad thing for everybody. But especially for them.” Sy turned his attention back to us. “What we want to know, and all we want to know, is where the money is. You tell us that, we can all go our own way, without the messy part.”

Gene reached in his pocket and took out a folding knife, flicked his wrist, and popped it open with a loud snap.

“You seen me gut fish and skin squirrels,” Gene said, looking at me. “You know how I can work. You don’t want me to start skinning, do you?”

“Leave her alone,” Mama said.

“I would start at the toes and skin upward to the top of your head,” he said. “I’d take your hide and hair right off. It wouldn’t be any fun for anyone but me.”

“We didn’t take that money from you,” Jinx said. “Wasn’t your money.”

“Damn, gal,” Gene said. “I forgot your black ass was even here.”

“You didn’t take it from us,” Constable Sy said. “But we’re going to take it from you.”

“What you going to tell Cletus?” I said.

“Thought we’d tell him you died,” Gene said. “That we didn’t find no money. And he wasted his fee on Skunk.”

“There ain’t no Skunk,” Constable Sy said. “Cletus ought to know better. He might as well stick a dollar in his ass and wait for the leprechauns to leave him a note.”

“All right, then,” Gene said. “I’ve decided first thing I’m going to do is skin that little uppity darky.”

Jinx was on her feet with her fists up. “You better brought you a bucket full of dinner, cause this fight here going to take all night.”

Gene grinned at her and stood up. “That’s all right,” he said, waving the knife around. “I think I’m up to it.”

A shadow fell across the open doorway. Reverend Joy came through it clutching a two-by-four. Gene and Constable Sy didn’t see him, least not in time.

The board whistled and caught Gene upside the skull so hard it knocked his head around and made him look over his shoulder in a way a man can’t do when his neck is on right. Before he hit the floor, Constable Sy, who was still sitting at the table, stood up as he grabbed his gun, but the board was there first. It caught him across the nose and knocked him back on the floor. He tried to sit up and Reverend Joy hit him again, right between the eyes. Constable Sy lay there not moving, but he was breathing loud, like a horse snorting water out of his nose.

“Come on,” Reverend Joy said, tossing the board aside, picking up Constable Sy’s pistol. “Come on.”

The constable was almost to his feet when we ran outside. We ran past Constable Sy’s truck in the yard, and started downhill toward the river. We was just following the Reverend Joy, like he knew something we didn’t, but we all knew in the back of our minds where we was going. The raft. When we got to it, we loosened the rope, and pushed off with our poles. The water wasn’t running fast, and we couldn’t see good, but there was enough current to get us moving.

We hadn’t gone far when something hit the raft. It hit and bounced off into the water. Looking back at the bank and up the hill, I saw Sy’s big shape on the rise. He was bending down and coming up fast with small rocks, throwing them at us. One hit my foot hard enough it made me hop.

“You don’t do this to me,” he yelled. “You just don’t do it. I’ll catch you all. Every damn one of you.”

“You couldn’t catch a cold,” I yelled back at him.

The rocks kept coming, and Constable Sy had a good arm. We was way out and still they was coming. Mama crawled into the hut Reverend Joy had built and hid out there, rocks clattering on top of it like hailstones.

Eventually the water was faster and we moved beyond his arm, sailing out of the little horseshoe spot where we had been and onto the main river. By that time, we couldn’t see him anymore, though we could hear him running through the brush and trees and cussing his head off, trying to catch up.

Soon we couldn’t hear him, either. We had a straight shot on the river now, and it was just a dark, wide line of water. There could have been sandbars or rocks or logs in our path and we wouldn’t have seen them until we was right up on them. But we didn’t have a choice. We used the poles to stay as straight as we could and let the water run us, Jinx doing her best with the rudder at the back.

Mama crawled out of the little hut and sat down in front of it. Reverend Joy, who had been standing on the raft like he was a rock target but hadn’t so much as been grazed, looked at Mama and said, “I think I killed a man.”

I was thinking: that makes two. But I didn’t say anything. Jinx did, however.

“Hell, yeah, you killed him,” she said. “You knocked his head all the way around on his neck. You hit him any harder, his brother, Don, would have died, too, and maybe them hogs they got in the yard would have keeled over. I ain’t never seen nobody take a piece of wood like that.”

“I didn’t mean to hit him that hard,” Reverend Joy said, and he sat down on the raft as if his legs had just melted. He still had the pistol in his hand, and the way he held it, loose and unconcerned, made me nervous. Mama scooted over beside him and put her arm around his shoulders.

“I don’t know you didn’t mean to,” Jinx said. “I ain’t never seen nobody get hit that hard that wasn’t on purpose. I think you meant it.”

“Jinx, hush,” Terry said.

“I ain’t got nothing for that Gene,” Jinx said. “I hope he is dead.”

“I think I heard something snap,” Reverend Joy said.

“That was his neck,” Jinx said.

“You did what you had to do,” Mama said.

“Here’s something I hate to bring up,” Terry said. “The money is back at the cabin. And so are May Lynn’s ashes.”

“What money?” Reverend Joy said. “Whose ashes?”

These were the parts of the story Mama had left out when she told him why we was on the river. Now, as we floated on, she filled the Reverend Joy in on it. After she was done, he sat there taken aback, looking up at us with his mouth open. He had in one night lost his church, murdered a man, and discovered he had run off downriver with a bunch of thieves and grave robbers. It was a lot to take in. Right then his mind went somewhere we couldn’t go, and it didn’t try to come back, least not right away. He just turned around and, still clutching the pistol, crawled inside the hut, sticking his head in there and letting his feet hang out on the raft.

“Guess he didn’t take none of that too well,” Jinx said. “I was just trying to give him a compliment on his board slinging. It wasn’t meant in a bad way.” She studied his feet hanging out of the hut. “Even so, looks like he’d just go on and crawl the rest of the way in.”