Edge of Dark Water (17 page)

We was in a very narrow stretch now, but the water was really moving, the way the last bit of something will race through the bottom of a funnel. There was a wider spot beyond, and it had about a ten-foot drop-off that hit right where the water was swirling around and around like someone using a spoon to mix something up in a bowl. It roared like it was angry.

“Whirlpool,” Terry said.

Now, I didn’t know a lot about whirlpools, but I had heard a story Don told about a boy he used to swim with that had got caught up in one and sucked down, and had drowned before anyone could get to him. Wasn’t no one could swim down in that whirlpool after him, cause if they did, they wouldn’t come up. Don said they had to wait for the water to spit him out, which it eventually did, dead as last year’s news.

“There ain’t no way around it,” I said. “We got to go into it.”

On either side of the whirlpool the bank was not soft, like it usually was, but there was big flat rocks that looked like they was stacked on one another, pancake-style. I was trying to figure the best thing to do when Mama came out of the hut, wobbling from side to side. “We’re gonna capsize,” she said.

This wasn’t information we needed. It was pretty clear that if things didn’t change, this was indeed what was going to happen. And since the only thing that could change our situation was a miracle from God—a real one, where the raft was picked up and carried over the whirlpool and set down in calm water—things looked grim.

We was short on miracles that day, but we wasn’t short on water. The raft went over that drop-off and we sailed out in the air with a lot of force, like a dried cow patty being tossed. The raft came down on the water hard. I heard the hut groan. I heard the reverend’s body smack around inside of it. Logs creaked and heaved, and then we was swirling around and around, fast as if we was inside a rolling car tire. Once I looked out to see that Jinx was in the water, having been thrown free, and she still had the rudder handle in her hand where it had broken off. Next thing I knew the raft was going down and the water was rising up on the sides of it. I had somehow ended up on my belly, clutching at the lumber that was nailed to the logs.

The raft rose up, and for a second there I thought I was going to get my miracle, but it was just the way the water spun. It spurted the raft skyward, out of the whirlpool. But now it was heading into those pancake rocks. Actually, it was more like those rocks were coming to the raft; they clashed against one side, then the raft went the other way and caught the rocks on the other side. I clung to the raft best I could, and after a while I realized the hut was gone and half the raft was missing. I was clinging to a piece of it, and a piece was about all that was left.

The piece I was hanging on to slammed up against the rocks and it come apart, and a chunk of it went one way and a chunk went the other. I tried to go both ways, clinging to different sections as one part went east and one went west.

My arms wasn’t long enough, however, and pretty soon I wasn’t holding on to anything. I was in the water and I was going down and then back up. When I came up, I tried to gulp air, but the water took me down again.

Finally I decided that the Sabine was out to drown me, and that’s all there was to it. That point of view lasted about the time it takes to bat an eye, and then my inborn stubbornness took over.

Can’t say how it happened, but the next thing I knew I had a knee on the edge of the bank, and there was rocks poking me. I wilted there for a moment, then got to my feet and staggered along, off the bank and onto a run of green grass. I was on the opposite side of the bank than the one Skunk had been on, and that gave me a bit of relief, even if it didn’t really amount to all that much.

I didn’t stumble far before I fell down. I lay there for a moment, and eventually, after a long time, got up and tried to walk again. That lasted until I got to some shade trees. I tumbled down beneath them and lay still. I knew there was a lot of things at risk, including Mama, Reverend Joy, and my friends, but it felt like I didn’t have any bones in my legs and my head was stuffed with mud. I couldn’t think and I couldn’t move.

Reckon I lay there a long time, because the day got long and the sun got hotter and I passed out. Eventually, I opened my eyes, realizing I had passed out. It was some squirrels that got me focused, being in the trees above me, chattering like a couple of old biddies over a fence line. I managed to sit up and look around. From where I lay I could see the river, but I couldn’t see Mama or anybody else.

It took me about the time it takes a baby to be born and to learn to walk before I could get to my feet and go down to the shoreline for a look, fearing all the while what I might see. There was good reason for that worry, because what I did see made my heart sink like a lead boat.

It was the reverend.

The river was calmer beyond the falls and the rocks, and where it went off to the right there was a narrow split in some boulders and the river ran through it; the reverend was hung there between the boulders. He was lodged in tight as a pig in a jug. A big piece of the raft had broken off and stuck through his stomach. I scrambled along the bank and climbed over some smaller rocks, and swam out to the center, where he was. It was much easier than before. The rain was gone and the river was slower. There were plenty of rocks to climb on till I could get to one of the boulders.

When I got out to where he was jammed up, I inched along the top of the boulder until I was just above the reverend. I called out his name.

It was a long time in coming, but he finally said, “And now I’m called home.”

“Sounds like you’re still here,” I said, hoping that would cheer him up, but it was a silly thought. The raft piece was sticking out of his lower back and blood was leaking around the wooden ram in little driblets. It was stuck so tight I figured it was all that was holding him together.

I noodled around on the rocks until I could get down on another one that was lower, and could see the reverend’s face. It wasn’t a pretty sight. His skin was white, his lips were dark, and blood was bubbling out of his nose and mouth. He lifted his eyes, as he was too weak to lift his head, and said, “You are an angel.”

I knew then he was really bad off. “No. It’s me, Sue Ellen,” I said.

“I see now I’m forgiven, or you wouldn’t be here,” he said.

I started to correct him, tell him again who I was, but right then I knew there wasn’t any use, and it was best to let him think I was holding open the door to heaven so he could fall through.

He dropped his eyes. His chest, which had been heaving hard, quit moving. It was as if he got heavier. The big piece of wood sticking through him shifted and he eased down lower, his ankles going into the water. Then he was still again, hanging there like a big piece of fruit.

I didn’t like it none, but I left him where he was. I didn’t have the strength or the will to try and drag him loose, especially with that big piece of wood in him. There wasn’t anything else I could do for him. I wanted to find Mama and my friends, though I feared what it was I would come up on. I climbed back on top the boulder and looked out over the river. I could see there was a limb sticking out from a tree by the bank. The limb had been underwater a short time ago, but now the water was low again, and it was out. There was something hanging from it.

I swam back toward shore, started walking toward where that something was hanging. My heart was beating fast and I was having trouble breathing. When I got to the limb, I saw what was hanging was one of the bags me and Terry had taken from the reverend’s shed. I eased up against the trunk of the tree, then out on the limb, and got the bag. It was work, but I tugged it back to shore. I pulled the bow that tied it off at the top, and even wet it come loose easy. I looked inside. Everything in there was pretty much ruined, but there was one of the lard cans and the lid was still tight. I hadn’t lost my pocketknife, so I got it out of my sticky-wet pocket, opened it, and used it to prize up the can lid. The jar was unbroken and the padding inside was dry. It was full of May Lynn’s ashes.

I put things back how they was, and, carrying the bag with the can in it, went walking again. Then I saw Terry. He was standing up, leaning against a tree, reaching across with his right hand and holding his left elbow. The other bag was at his feet.

I ran over to him, and he let go of his arm and hugged me.

“I thought you had gone under,” he said.

“I thought you had,” I said.

“This bag washed up on shore,” he said, “and I rescued it and was leaning against this tree thinking everybody else was drowned. I hurt my arm a little, nothing bad, but a little. It doesn’t hurt near as much as my finger.”

He held up his hand. The bandage had washed off. His hand was swollen all the way from where the hatchet had cut off the tip of his finger to his wrist; it looked like a ham hock.

“It hurts,” he said, “and when I look at it, it hurts more. You okay?”

“I feel like I been beat with a bag full of hammers,” I said.

I told him what had happened to Reverend Joy.

“May God have mercy on his soul,” he said. “He was all right to us, and I think his heart was good.”

“The rare true Christian,” I said.

We said nothing for a moment, and I guess that was a kind of unspoken moment of silence for the reverend. But our circumstances didn’t allow us too much time for being sentimental or sad.

Terry said, “I don’t know what’s in my bag. The money or May Lynn.”

“The money,” I said. “I have May Lynn, and she’s high and dry.”

“Wonder how the money is,” Terry said.

“What I’m worried about is Mama and Jinx,” I said, but that didn’t keep me from pulling the bow loose on his bag. We got the can out and pried it open and looked inside the padded jar. Just like the jar in my can, it wasn’t broken. It was in fine shape, and so was the money. Everything else in the bag was ruined. I tried the flashlight, but the water had messed it up. I took the lard cans out of each of the bags while Terry leaned against the tree. I figured those lard cans was all that was worth carrying.

Then we heard Jinx yell. We looked up and our hearts soared, cause there she and Mama came, dripping wet, walking along the bank toward where we was standing. We hurried to meet them, went about hugging each other, and then we found a place on the shore where the sun was bright and all of us just sat there, numb, with the sun beating down on us, drying us out.

I told them about the reverend, and when I did Mama burst out crying. I had to hold her. In time she stopped, and we all lay down on the ground in the hot sunlight and fell asleep from exhaustion.

W
hen I woke up, it was fresh dark, but not so much I couldn’t see good. Terry and Jinx was still asleep. Mama was down by the edge of the river, squatting on her haunches, looking out at the river. I went and sat down by her.

“I walked down to find Jack,” she said. “He was hung up good. I could see that from the shore. I wanted to swim out there and free him, but I didn’t. I’m not that good a swimmer and I’m bone-tired. It was luck and nothing else that allowed me and Jinx to survive. We clung to a piece of the raft and it washed up against the shore and got hung up in some roots, and we were able to get onto land. We were lucky, and Jack, a man of the Word, one of God’s chosen, was killed. I don’t understand it.”

“I don’t think there’s any understanding to it,” I said.

“What are we gonna do now, Sue Ellen?”

All of a sudden, I felt like the mother and like Mama was the child.

“I don’t know just yet,” I said.

“While I was sleeping, I had the dream about the black horse again, and the white one, but this time the white horse not only had wings but he was flying up and away, fast. I was running and jumping like a kid, hopping up trying to grab onto his hind legs, or his tail. I kept jumping even though he was long gone from me. And that black horse, he came closer, and I forgot about the white horse, and I started to run. The black horse came on behind me, snorting fire out of its nostrils and mouth. He came closer and closer, and I couldn’t run any faster. He was right on me, and then…I woke up.”

“It’s just a dream, Mama. Ain’t no horses after you. Why would a horse be after you?”

She shook her head. “I think it may be some kind of sign. Some kind of warning. I feel it means something.”

“It means you need some rest, Mama. That’s what it means.”

We went back to where Jinx and Terry was. Jinx was up now and she was on her knees beside Terry. She said, “He ain’t looking so good.”

He wasn’t. Even by starlight I could see his hand was swole up a lot bigger than before.

“I reckon we’ll have to walk out, find some people,” I said.

“We’re wanted,” Jinx said.

“Just by Don and Cletus,” I said. “They ain’t going to tell no law about that money. They’re as big a crook as we are, worse.”

“There’s Skunk,” Jinx said. “He could have been out there watching us sleep, for all we know. They say he’s like that. That he does things on his own time, that it’s all just a game to him.”

“Let’s hope they’re wrong,” I said.

“We could end up dead on a big nest of hope,” Jinx said.

And then something hit me. “You know, there is another problem.”

“And what’s that?” Mama asked.

“Gene and Constable Sy,” I said. “We was the last ones anyone knew to be in that house. I got to reckon we’re going to be the ones most likely figured for the killing.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Jinx said. “So maybe we’re wanted after all, and in a big way.” After a moment, she said, “Course, Reverend Joy, he did the killing of Gene with that board. He’s dead, so we could lay both of them killings on him.”

“That isn’t right,” Mama said.

“It ain’t right,” Jinx said. “But it sure is workable.”

“No,” I said. “We won’t do that. He tried to help us.”

“I know that,” Jinx said, her voice deep. “I was trying it on for size. But it didn’t fit. I guess you got to walk out and take the chance. Maybe we all got to walk out. Jail is bound to be better than Skunk.”

“I’m not sure Terry can walk out,” Mama said. “And what about the reverend?”

“He damn sure ain’t walking nowhere,” Jinx said.

“That’s not what I meant,” Mama said.

“If we pull him loose,” I said, “we got no way to bury him proper. So I don’t think there’s a good way to go when it comes to him.”

“We can’t just leave him hanging there,” Mama said.

“I ain’t as bothered by it as you two,” Jinx said.

I looked down at Terry. “We can talk about it till the blood poison kills Terry, or while he might have a bit of strength, we can try to get going. Way I see it, night is Skunk’s time, and we keep standing here chatting, he’s gonna solve all our problems for us, and not in a way we’re gonna like.”

“All right, then,” Mama said. “But how do we go?”

I thought on that a moment. “We could walk toward the tree line, see if there’s a road somewhere, but probably the best thing is to stay along the river. The river always leads to a town or somebody.”

We talked about it some more, and finally come to the conclusion it was best to stick together. Might have a chance that way, but if we split up, we was sure as hell going to be killed if Skunk was out there. Three of us could fight him better than one or two. Of course, there was Terry, but in his condition our best bet was to grab him by the ankles and sling him about, use him as a weapon.

Terry made it to his feet with some coaxing, and was able to walk with one arm over my shoulder, the other over Jinx’s. But he was out of it, jabbering about this and that: “It was an accident,” he said over and over.

“What’s that?” I said. “What was an accident?”

“The water,” he said.

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “A storm does what it does.”

We kept walking, his arm over our shoulders, carrying our lard cans, me with May Lynn in mine, and Mama carrying the one with the money in it.

We stayed close to the river as we could, but sometimes the growth around it got wild, and we had to go wider, come back closer to it when the stuff thinned. I don’t know how long we walked, but we finally came to a place where there was a big burned patch with a chimney sticking up. It had happened a long time off, because the rain from the night before hadn’t stirred the char up, and there wasn’t any burned smell about it. Up against the shore I could see a boat chained to a big oak that had died and fallen into the water.

We stopped and laid Terry out on the dirt and set our lard cans down. Mama sat beside him, and me and Jinx went down to the boat. The chain ran through a hole in the front of the boat and was wrapped around the log and fastened back to the boat with a padlock. The way it was looped under the log, I figured someone had to have gone to a lot of trouble to get in the water and under the log to wrap the chain. It couldn’t be pulled off either end. One end of the log went out in the water. The other end had a bunch of dead limbs on it, and you couldn’t pull the chain over them. If we had an ax, then we could have chopped the limbs off and pulled the chain free. But no ax appeared.

We looked around for a rock, something, anything, to bang that padlock off, but all there was in that way was the bricks in the chimney, and they was caulked tight. We couldn’t find any means to work one loose.

I kept looking around for Skunk, but I figured by the time I saw him come up, it would be too late. Besides, we was all so tired we could hardly move. I went over and sat down by Mama while Jinx went off in the woods to take care of nature’s business.

“Sorry you came now?” I said.

“I don’t think I am,” Mama said. “It would have been nice had things worked out a bit smoother, but I’m not sorry. I’m sorry for the reverend, and even Gene and Constable Sy, I guess.”

“Constable Sy got it pretty bad,” I said. “Skunk did some things to him for fun.”

Mama nodded. “I’m still glad I came.”

“Even if you dream scary dreams of horses?”

“Even if I do.”

About that time Jinx came out of the woods, hurrying along so fast I was afraid she might have come up on Skunk.

“There’s lights on the other side of them trees,” she said.

“Skunk?”

“I don’t know it ain’t Skunk,” she said. “But I figure he’s a whole lot sneakier than to go out there and light a fire, and him trying to creep up on us.”

“You stay here with Terry,” I said to Mama, and me and Jinx hustled into the woods. This wasn’t the smartest thing in the world, to leave them by themselves, but it seemed at this point less smart to have them approach a fire with us. It could be Skunk, and he might not even care to put a sneak on. For that matter, whoever it was might not be friendly. It was better two young girls who could run like deer went to see what was what, instead of a tired woman and a boy we’d have to drag around by the arm.

We hadn’t gone far when I could see the same light Jinx had seen. It was definitely firelight, and we could faintly hear someone talking. Easing closer, we could make out the fire was in a big clearing, and beyond the clearing was some trees. We squatted down and looked out at the fire and listened as best we could to the voices, but there wasn’t much that could be made out. There was some laughing, and I could tell one of the voices was a man, and the others was a woman and child, and there was some other voices, too, that might have been older children. It was hard to tell.

Jinx and I didn’t even discuss it; we just got up and walked out of the woods where we was hiding and started toward the fire. I called out, “Hallo, the fire.”

The voices stopped, and I seen then that there was two men, because they both stood up and looked in our direction. We kept walking.

One of the men said, “Who’s out there?”

“Some near-drowned people,” I said.

There was some hesitation, but one of the men called out, “Come on up,” and that’s what we did.

When we got closer we could feel the heat of the fire. Though it was a warm night, we were still a bit damp, and it felt good. I sniffed something cooking, and the smell made my stomach hurt like it was going through a washer wringer. Where the smell came from was a big lard can setting on some logs in the fire. It was full of something and that something was bubbling.

I looked around at the others. The fire flickered over their faces. There was three young people, one maybe six, and the other two was a boy and a girl in their early teens. The woman was about Mama’s age, and she looked like she would have been pretty in daylight with a good dress on and her hair done right. Both men had on worn-out clothes and hats. I figured the one that was about the woman’s age was her husband, and the other man, though older, looked enough like the younger man I reckoned it was his father. They both had on old suit coats, which wasn’t the best thing for the weather, but I reasoned out they thought they might need them when the weather changed, and wearing them was the best way to keep up with their goods. They wore ragged hats and had some bundles bound up and lying near the fire. It didn’t take much thinking to know they was on the scout, trying to survive with what they had, same as us.

“We had an accident on the river,” I said. “Our raft got torn apart in the rainstorm, and we near drowned. We got an injured boy back there with part of his finger chopped off and his hand all swole up.”

“Chopped off?” the woman said.

“Yes, ma’am, he got it caught up in something when the raft broke up, and it come off. We been walking, trying to find our way out.”

It was a lie, but I figured I might not want to point out we had been chased by a crazy man with a hatchet, since he was most likely still out there.

“We come here by train,” said the older man. “Not to this spot, but back there”—he pointed—“where there’s a higher grade. The train slowed down and we could jump. We was tired of riding in the boxcar. You ride long enough, and you jump off, you feel like you’re still riding. I just now got over it. Thing is, though, I ain’t so sure jumping off was the smart idea. We’re just out here in the woods now. I was fed up plenty with that train then, but now I’m wishing we was back on it.”

“We’ve walked awhile,” said the woman.

“We’re thinking we ought to catch the next train coming through,” said the older man, “though this ain’t a good spot for it.”

I looked out beyond them, knew then that the rail line run right past us, not more than a hundred feet away.

“When’s that next train come through?” I said.

“We ain’t got no schedule,” said the younger man. “We’re new to this hoboing. We wasn’t born to it. We never had so much to begin with, but then it got so there wasn’t any work, and what work there was had fifty men after the job.”

“Jud,” the wife said. “She’s just asking a question, not our life stories.”

“No problem, ma’am,” I said.

“We was in the Dust Bowl up in Oklahoma,” the older man said. “Day that first dust storm come in. We hadn’t never seen nothing like it.”

“I don’t know there’s ever been anything like it,” Jud said.

“Naw,” said the old man. “Nothing like it.”

“These girls don’t want to hear all that,” said the woman, but that didn’t slow the old man down.

“At first,” he said, “out there on the horizon, it looked like a rain cloud, but the color was wrong, and it was too low to the ground. It got closer, and I thought, twister. But it wasn’t that. It was like big balls of dirty cotton being pushed along by the wind, balls higher than a house and wider than a town. It was sand. The birds was flying in front of it fast as they could go. And then it come. It hit the house and knocked out the windows, throwed glass and dirt every which way. It ripped the curtains to shreds. Everything turned dark, so goddamn dark we couldn’t see each other in it. It come and it come. We lay on the floor coughing. Then, when it was gone, we went out and looked at the fields. There wasn’t even a sprig of grass out there. It was like the storm had pulled everything up from the ground, including the ground. All the good planting soil was gone, taken off to God knows where. But them storms wasn’t done. They just kept coming. One after another. We fixed windows and we put wet rags around the cracks. We even sealed some with flour paste. But them storms, they didn’t make no never mind. I thought it was like in the Bible for a time. I thought it was the end times. And later, I sort of wished it had been, cause there wasn’t nothing left for nobody to eat that was worth eating. Oh, there was the rabbits at first. They was starving just like we was, and they was everywhere. Them rabbits was so poor, you had to eat three to get a meal for one person. And even cleaned and cooked they tasted like grit. Then if that wasn’t enough of a rock to tote up the mountain, along come a tornado and blowed our house all over Oklahoma. We got what was left and piled it in our truck, which by the grace of God didn’t get blowed away with the house. It got turned over two or three times and righted, but we was lucky there. It ran, even if it did have an engine full of sand.