Edge of Dark Water (9 page)

W
e started back with Terry carrying the bag full of money from the crockery pot. When we got to the cane field we stopped and I cut us another snack. I figured since we had gone over deep into theft, we might as well go whole hog and hit the cane again.

The night was growing thick, and we left the cane field and went through a run of trees and out into a meadow of wild grass. It was a slightly different path than we had gone before, and the moonlight made the grass look like shiny water; the wind rustled it like someone shaking hard candy in a paper bag.

By going that way, we came down right behind where May Lynn lived. As we neared her place, you could hear the river run, and you could see the house near it creaking in the wind. Cletus was home, because we could see his old truck parked in the trail that ended up against the house. Course, if the truck wasn’t there, it didn’t mean he wasn’t home. Sometimes he lost his truck when he got drunk and got brought back by someone and dropped off, least that’s what May Lynn had said, and I didn’t have any reason to doubt her. It’s why I had been careful to want to call out to the house earlier, to make sure he knew we was there if he was home. He struck me as a man might shoot first and ask questions later.

Jinx spied the outhouse not far from us.

“I’m gonna have to stop and use the toilet,” she said.

“Can’t you wait?” Terry said.

“I can wait, but you won’t like it about the time we get to the boat.”

“Well, hurry up,” Terry said. “We’ll wait over by that tree.” He pointed at a big elm on the hill above the river.

Jinx darted across the way and inside the outhouse and closed the door.

Terry and I walked over to the elm, sat down under it, side by side, our backs against the trunk. Terry put the bag of money between his legs and looked off toward May Lynn’s house and the truck parked by it. He said, “Think he knows about May Lynn by now?”

“I don’t know, but I’m not in the mood to tell him anymore. Especially since we dug up the money his son stole and we’re thinking about digging his daughter up. I don’t know I could look him in the eye.”

“I don’t care,” Terry said. “With that money, we can get out of here.”

“Split three ways it won’t last long,” I said. “It’s a good start, but that’s all it is.”

“That’s all I want,” Terry said. “A good start. I’m like a bird with someone’s foot on its tail. I can’t fly. Stepdaddy has heard rumors about me, about me and a boy who came to visit before he married my mom. Those rumors are not true. But because he thinks it, he treats me bad and talks to me bad, and he hurts my mother’s feelings. He’s sucking the spirit out of her, like she’s nothing more than a sugar tit. And how come he’s made up his mind about me? How come so many people have? Do I seem like a sissy to you?”

I mulled that over.

“I do!” he said. “I can tell the way you’re thinking it over.”

“Well, you are very good-looking and you have good manners. I don’t see you with a lot of girls.”

“You’re a girl,” he said.

“But we’re friends,” I said.

Terry shook his head. “Looks are not my choice, and there are lots of people with good manners.”

“Not crossing my path,” I said.

“That’s the only reason you think I’m a sissy?”

I shook my head. “No. May Lynn. You didn’t look at her the way other men did. You didn’t even take notice when we went skinny-dipping; you hardly even looked.”

“You noticed her, or you wouldn’t be asking me why I didn’t notice her,” Terry said. “So do you like girls?”

“Sometimes, between me and you, I think I could have liked her. She looked like some kind of ice cream dessert. But no, I’m kidding. I reckon I’m inclined to men and a life of misery.”

“Not all men are miserable,” Terry said. “A man and a woman can be friends and be married.”

“Mama and Don aren’t friends,” I said.

“Yeah, and that’s precisely the reason they don’t get along,” Terry said.

“You got me there,” I said.

“That time we went skinny-dipping, when May Lynn was naked as a nymph, I noticed. I noticed plenty. I was on the sly about it, but I noticed. Thing is, May Lynn liked to use that body of hers for power, and I didn’t want to give it to her. I didn’t want her to know I liked what I saw. I don’t want anyone having power over me. Anyone. In any kind of way.”

Before I could fully get in line with this new information, I saw a man coming up from May Lynn’s house, trudging in the moonlight. He was heading for the outhouse. He had on a ragged hat and overalls and clodhopper boots with the laces untied. He had about him the look of a scarecrow that had climbed down from its pole.

“It’s Cletus,” I said, knowing it was the first time Terry had actually ever seen him.

We stood up but stayed in the shadows under the tree. Still, bright as the night was, he would have seen us easy had he looked that way, but he had his head down and was walking fast. He was a man on a mission.

He came to the outhouse, tugged on the door, and it didn’t open. Jinx had thrown the swivel lock inside. It wasn’t the sort of lock that would hold if someone was serious against it; it was more of a friendly reminder that someone was inside.

May Lynn’s old man stepped back and looked at the outhouse like it was strange to him. He said, “Who’s in there?”

“Just passing by,” Jinx said. “I’ll be out right soon.”

“Is that a nigger in there?” he said. “You sound like a nigger.”

“No,” Jinx said. “I’m white.”

“Better not be no black ass on my outhouse hole,” he said.

There was a long pause, and then the side of the outhouse bumped, and bumped again. A board came loose with a screech and popped out. Then another. Jinx shot out of there like a cannonball, causing the boards to fly completely off. She came charging toward the tree where we stood, pulling an overall strap over her shoulder as she ran.

Behind her came Cletus, running at a good pace, his loose bootlaces flapping.

I suppose the polite thing to do would have been to wait on Jinx, but we didn’t. Terry grabbed the bag, and we broke and ran like a couple of rabbits, leaving her to catch up. When I looked back over my shoulder, she was almost up with us, but Cletus was closing in fast.

“Hey, hey,” Cletus yelled. “That there is my bag.”

He had recognized it even in the dark.

We ran over the ridge and down to the river, and then we ran along its edge. When I looked back again, Cletus wasn’t slowing, and he had picked up a big stick. About that time, Jinx tripped and fell against the riverbank.

“I got you now,” Cletus yelled, and in fact he did.

I stopped and turned, saw him bring the stick down on the back of Jinx’s head as she tried to get up. It was a good solid blow, and it wasn’t meant to aggravate or wound. It was meant to kill. Jinx went down with her nose in the dirt, her heels flipping up like two startled birds.

Cletus dropped his club and grabbed her up and pulled her to the edge of the water and stuck her head under. Jinx started flailing her arms and legs and sputtering.

Cletus looked at us. “You two better come back, or I’m gonna drown this little nigger. If she’s anything to you, you better come back.”

I found a rock by the river, about the size of half a cantaloupe, dug it free with my fingers, hefted it in my hand, and started running at him. I seen then that Terry was running up alongside me, and he had the bag of money in one hand and a short, stubby stick in the other.

Cletus was pushing Jinx’s head under the water again as we came running up. He was yelling at Jinx, even though she didn’t have the pillowcase. “Why you got my pillowcase? You better tell me. Better give it back.”

I came up on him and brought the rock down with both hands. I hit him on the forehead with it, just as he turned to look at me. It knocked him onto his side and his hat come off. It wasn’t an entirely successful attack. The rock slipped out of my hands and fell down and hit Jinx in the small of the back. Cletus tried to get up, one hand holding his bloody head.

Then Terry was on Cletus with the stick, swinging it like a madman. Cletus grabbed Terry around the waist, driving him over Jinx, who still lay on the ground, trying to get her hands underneath her. So far, she had only managed to get her face out of the water.

When Terry was knocked back, the bag came out of his hand and came open and a bunch of that money puffed out of it like goose feathers from an old mattress.

Cletus came down on top of Terry with his fist raised, and then he saw the money scattered about, said, “That’s my money.”

Jinx, who had found her feet and her energy, got hold of Terry’s dropped stick and swung it. It was one heck of a swing. I could hear the wind coming off of it; it made a sound like an owl swooping down on a mouse. The blow caught Cletus in the back of the head. His noggin jumped up like it might come off his neck, and then he bent his head forward, shook once, and down came that stick again. Man, that was some hit. You could probably have heard it all the way to Gladewater. It caused Cletus to let out with a kind of bark like a startled dog, and then he fell off Terry.

Jinx jumped on Cletus again, and was hitting his knocked-out self every which way with that stick, hitting him faster than a woodpecker can peck. I ran over and grabbed her and hugged her and the stick to me. She started sputtering and struggling like a greased pig.

“You’ll kill him,” I said.

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” she said.

I jerked her back and fell on the ground. She struggled on top of me.

Terry went over and looked at Cletus.

“He’s good and out,” he said.

“I hope he’s dead,” Jinx said, still struggling. “Called me nigger, and messed up my toilet, and hit me in the head, and stuck my face in the water. Damned old cracker. I don’t want to never be called nigger no more by nobody. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of it. I can’t stand this goddamn place. I can’t stand no goddamn place.”

“Jinx,” I said. “Now quit it. You ain’t gonna hit him anymore.”

“What if he wakes up?”

“You can hit him then,” I said.

“All right then, let me go.”

I let her go, and she jumped right up and ran over there to whack him again with the stick. Terry caught her arm, said, “That’s enough, Jinx. He’s nothing more than an old fool.”

“That’s as much our money as it is his,” Jinx said, trying to jerk her hand free of Terry. “It don’t matter who stole it first. Besides, he didn’t even know where it was. We was the ones figured it out and dug it up.”

Finally, I came up behind her and helped him hold her, and after a while, Jinx got herself together, and started breathing shallow again. Terry let her go, but not before he took the stick from her.

“Let’s gather up the money before he wakes up and Jinx becomes a murderer,” Terry said.

We got the money stuffed back in the bag, and right before we left out, Jinx kicked Cletus in the head as hard as she could. We had to pull her off of him and drag her along the riverbank, her cussing a blue streak, flailing her arms and legs like a centipede on a hot rock.

T
he Sabine River is long, but it ain’t that wide in the places I know. It’s not like I hear the Mississippi is, which can be more than a mile or so across. The Sabine is a brown run of water that twists its way along dirty banks, underneath lean-over trees and all their shadows. It’s deep in spots, not real deep in most, but there’s a right smart amount of water to carry boats and to sink them. There’s plenty of water to drown in. It’s a dark old river and it’s the Kingdom of the Snake; home to the water moccasin in particular, a thick, nub-tailed serpent with a bad attitude. I thought about that as we came ashore on the other side and dragged the leaky boat out of the water and under a weeping willow.

Our plans had changed. There wouldn’t be a lot of time to do much more than take off. I wasn’t firm on what had become of the idea to burn up May Lynn’s body, but I was sure Terry had that still tucked away in the back of his mind. We had all cared about May Lynn, but Terry, who had always seemed less close to her than me, had really taken all this to heart; he seemed the most bothered by her death, the unfairness of it all. It wasn’t that I had moved on, but I couldn’t figure how there was any way to rectify what happened. Wasn’t any way for me to know who done it or how to get them nabbed if I did. Jinx, she had cared for May Lynn, too, but she was someone who looked at things pretty straight on, or so it seemed to me. I figured her view was, dead is dead, and that’s sad, and she felt bad about it, but she wasn’t going to worry about if May Lynn got burned up and hauled anywhere if she could avoid it. That business was Terry’s plan.

We decided to let Terry hang on to the bag full of loot, go home and put together a few possibles, meet back quick at this spot, and head out. As I watched my friends go their own ways in the dark, I was having second thoughts, some of them due to thinking about days and nights on the river. Bad as my life was, it was the life I knew. And though Mama had lied to me and disappointed me all my life, and my daddy wasn’t my daddy at all, I still thought maybe I ought to reconsider. Maybe we could give Cletus the money and let bygones be bygones. Going off to Gladewater to find my real daddy, then out to Hollywood, was a good thing to think about, but I wasn’t so sure it was a good thing to do, even if there was stolen money in the deal—though secretly I was thinking I might get a share of it for a nice dress and shoes and my hair done up like I’d never had it, and maybe I’d buy one of those hats women wore that looked like it ought to have come with a quiver of arrows and a couple of Robin Hood’s Merry Men.

Anyway, there I stood on the riverbank, thinking these thoughts, considering what Terry had told me about himself not being a sissy, feeling confused. Just about everything I thought I knew about my world had changed. And then it hit me. All of a sudden I couldn’t walk or stand no more. I started to cry.

There was a log nearby, and I went over and sat on it and kept crying. It wasn’t a long cry, but it was a good one. Pretty soon I was cried out, and not exactly sure what it was I was crying about. I sniffed like a little kid, sat there till I was sure I was done with it, got up, and started walking quickly toward home, feeling stupid for wasting valuable time sitting on a log.

As I neared our house, I saw there wasn’t no lights on, but out by the side of the house was three pickups. Don’s truck, Uncle Gene’s, and, damn it, Cletus’s. I was considering my next move when someone stepped out of the dark between the trees and touched my shoulder and stuck a hand over my mouth.

“It’s me, Sue Ellen,” a voice said, and of course, I recognized right off it was Mama. “Be quiet now.”

She took her hand from over my mouth and grabbed my shoulders.

“What are you doing out here?” I said.

“I knew this was your way to come, so I waited on you.”

“But why?”

“Cletus has come for you, and Constable Sy is coming, too. I heard Cletus telling Don and Gene about how you stole some money. That isn’t true, is it?”

“There’s more story to it than that,” I said. I thought, So much for Don’s “sight.” He got all his information secondhand.

“Come on,” Mama said. “Let’s walk back a ways and find a place to talk.”

Fact that my mama was out of the house was amazing enough, but before we walked off to that place to talk, she stepped back in the shadows and picked up a tow sack and half-dragged it after her. I took it away from her and carried it myself, cause she was as weak as a newborn pup and it was a heavy sack. Surprised as I was, I didn’t ask her about why she had it or what was in it.

We walked back to the log I had sat down on to cry. When we got there, Mama was so tuckered out and breathing so hard that I felt bad for her, but it seemed like a good idea to put some space between us and the house. When we were sitting on the log, I put the tow sack between my legs, said, “What are they saying about me?”

“I heard Gene drive up. I looked out the window. Then I saw Cletus follow up in his truck. Cletus must have gone to Gene first, cause they are closer friends, and then they came to the house. Since the window was open, I could hear them talking. Cletus said you and a boy and a colored girl stole some money from him. He said the colored girl hit him in the head to get it. That would be Jinx, I suppose. The boy would be Terry.”

“He doesn’t know them,” I said. “They were never at May Lynn’s when Cletus was.”

“Yes, but that won’t be hard for them to figure out. Don knows who you run with, and he hates Terry.”

“True enough,” I said. “But that’s not entirely right about what happened.”

“Did you steal money?”

“We stole stolen money.”

“Stealing is stealing,” Mama said.

“I know that, and to tell you the truth, I can live with it.”

She didn’t argue with me. She sat there waiting for me to say more, so I told her all about it, including how there was a body under the money, and who it was. I told her how Jinx had been chased and hit, and how she fought back, and how we helped her. I told her we planned to dig May Lynn up, unless something changed in the next few hours.

Mama sat silent for a long time after I finished telling my story. “A body?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m so weak,” she said, and for a moment I thought she was going to slide off the log.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” I said. “I said some things to you I shouldn’t have, and now I’m a thief and pretty soon a grave robber.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m not weak from what you’ve done. I’m weak from living the way I have. Lying in bed so much hasn’t done me any good, either. I should never have left Brian, and I should never have settled.”

“You were protecting him,” I said.

She shook her head again. “I didn’t think I was good enough for him. I wasn’t never good for anything, to hear my mama tell it, and when I met Brian, for a moment I thought I might be worth something. Then when I got pregnant, I felt bad, and dirty. I didn’t want to make Brian dirty. But mostly I believed I got pregnant because the Lord was telling me who I was, and that I was being punished, and that my lot in life was always to be an unhappy one.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Not how I meant it, dear. I come to the conclusion just this morning that if he’s a loving God, he wouldn’t do that kind of thing, and he isn’t punishing me at all. I’m punishing myself. I listened to those men talking, and I heard Don say he didn’t care what happened to you. He said that after Cletus said if they got the money back, he’d give Don and Gene some of it. Offered them fifty dollars apiece, but Don argued him up to seventy-five apiece. He said they couldn’t help him find you, he’d hire that colored man that lives in the woods.”

“Skunk?”

“Yeah. Skunk.”

“There ain’t no Skunk.”

“I have heard different,” Mama said.

Mama also believed in signs and angels and ghosts, so I didn’t take her thoughts on Skunk seriously.

“Seventy-five apiece, huh?” I said.

“That’s what Cletus finally offered,” she said.

“Considering it’s a thousand dollars missing, that’s not that good a deal,” I said. “But at least I know how much I’m worth, along with Jinx and Terry. Did Cletus mention it was stolen and there was a dead body under it in a once-nice suit?”

“He didn’t.”

“Well, I guess selling me out for a hundred and fifty dollars between the two of them is better than Don and Gene doing it for nothing,” I said. “That’s the stepdaughter rates, I figure. I wonder what they’ll trade their own kin out for.”

“That’s a lot of money in these times,” she said.

I stared at her.

“I didn’t mean he should do it. Just saying.”

“You ought to get back before they miss you,” I said. “I got to warn Terry and Jinx.”

“I’m not going back. I’m going with you,” Mama said.

“You are?”

“Why I brought the bag,” she said. “It’s got some things for both of us in it. I even put your good dress and shoes in there.”

“Thank goodness for that,” I said. “I hope you brought the dresser from my room. The one with the mirror.”

“You might need that dress along the way,” she said. “You never know who you might meet.”

“Traveling with us, that makes you a thief, too.”

“Then we will all be thieves together,” she said. “You see, Sue Ellen, today, as the cure-all wore off, I had a dream of a big black horse, and it was following me along this riverbank. It was a big horse, and just kept getting closer. And then I saw this white horse up ahead, in the brush, and somehow I knew if I could get to that white horse, and swing on its back, that it would ride me away from the black one.”

“Maybe it’s a nice black horse,” I said.

“I don’t think so, hon. I don’t think so.”

“Did you get to it?”

“I woke up. So no. What now?”

It sounds pretty bad, but I left Mama sitting on that log and went to warn Terry first cause he was the closest. Mama just didn’t have the strength for a lot of scouting around. I left her there thinking about horses.

It took me a while to get out of the river bottoms and into the crooked-built town. I went along, watching carefully, and as I was walking to Terry’s place, trying to figure how I could get to him without being discovered by his stepfamily or his mama, down the road he come, walking in the moonlight, moving in such a way it looked as if he had one foot in a ditch and the other on something slick. He had two shovels slung over his shoulder. He saw me and raised his hand.

When we met up, I spilled out all that Mama had told me. I didn’t mention she planned to go with us. I thought I’d save that tidbit.

“Damn,” Terry said. “I assumed I’d already have May Lynn dug up by the time you and Jinx showed. I knew pretty soon Cletus would put two and two together as far as Jinx and myself went, so I started making trips. That’s how I hurt my ankle. Stepped in a hole.”

We started walking together in the direction of the graveyard where May Lynn was buried.

“Trips?” I said.

“I’ve already been to the graveyard, and I carried a tarp out there to put the body on. I’ve made three trips, taking supplies we’ll need. I have a wheelbarrow there as well. I’ve been busy. But I haven’t dug up the body yet. Why I brought the shovels.”

“Jinx is probably there by now,” I said.

“Works out right,” Terry said. “By the time they come to tell my mama and the stepdummies what’s what, we’ll have May Lynn dug up, and they’ll have no idea where we are. I got a surprise in store, too.”

It took us about a half hour to get to the place where May Lynn was buried. When we got there, Jinx was sitting on the ground by the grave with her little bag of goods. When she saw us coming she sprang to her feet.

“It done took you long enough,” she said.

“I was here before you,” Terry said.

“I figured that, all this stuff being here,” Jinx said. “But still, I been waiting and thinking Cletus would be after me like a pig on a mushroom since he knows Sue Ellen and she knows us.”

“Good figuring,” I said. “That is, in fact, in motion.”

I filled Jinx in quick-like. She said, “Mama, she knows I’m going. I couldn’t just leave her. I told her.”

“How’d she take it?” I asked.

“She took it good,” Jinx said. “She took it so good I almost stayed. She told me I might ought to go even if I hadn’t stole nothing; that there’s not a thing here for me, and that maybe there’s something out there. She said a colored girl might have a chance out in California or up north, but here there wasn’t nothing but raw fingers and tired bones. I’ll write her when everything blows over—Daddy, too, where he’s working up north. I almost figure I’m doing it for them, giving myself a chance. Besides, me having hit that white man with a stick upside the head isn’t going to set well around here.”

“I reckon that’s right,” I said.

“Take a shovel,” Terry said, handing me one of them.

I took it, and me and Terry started digging.

After a while I traded out the shovel with Jinx, and as I was sitting on the ground beside the grave, it really hit me. We was digging up May Lynn’s dead body.