This Rock (23 page)

After I rowed several miles in the rain, some ducks flew off the river. I reached for the gun, thinking a roast duck might taste pretty good. But just then the boat swung around in the fast current and I lost my chance. I rested for a minute on the oars and floated past thick pine woods. I passed more tobacco fields. Nobody seemed to be out because of the rain. The river was pricked by the steady downpour, and I was soaked to my armpits. The hunger pains in my belly was getting worse. With the woods and brush dripping on either shore, it would be near impossible to start a fire even if I did put in.

Finally I seen a village maybe half a mile off from the river. At least there was a cluster of houses beyond the river brush and fields, and a church steeple stuck up into the gray sky. Just seeing the church made me feel better. I rowed in close as I could and run the boat up into the mud and tied it to a root. I was so stiff I couldn't hardly stand up when I got out of the boat, and knowed I must look like a wet dog, unshaved and soaked. But at least there was still money in my pocket that could buy something to eat, if there was a store. I tried to wipe the mud off my boots as I walked closer to the first building.

The biggest building in the village had gas pumps in front and a sign that said
HEARTSEASE GROCERY
. I remembered the village of Heartsease from the map. It was between Rocky Mount and Tarboro.

The men inside looked like the men gathered in any country store. They eyed me as I bought cheese and crackers, sardines, and three
candy bars. They looked exactly like U. G. and Hicks and Lon and Charlie setting there by the stove.

“Reckon you're a ways from home?” the man behind the counter said.

“A little ways,” I said, knowing I looked wet and miserable.

“When the state of North Carolina goes bust, maybe we won't have to pay taxes,” one of the men by the stove said.

“They'll make us pay more taxes,” another man said, “to get the government out of the hole.”

The heat of the stove felt good, but I knowed I'd better get away before they started asking questions. I crumpled the top of the bag in my fist and slipped out the door. Rain hit my face as I headed to the river. On the boat I eat the sardines and cheese and crackers and tried to decide what to do. I spread the mackinaw coat over my head in a kind of tent and eat the candy bars.

The river was getting higher. It had rose two or three inches since I'd pushed the boat up in the mud. There was no choice but to go on downstream, to Tarboro, or the county east of there. Maybe I could camp in the pine barrens down near Greenville until the rain stopped and the river went down. Surely that was in another county. Maybe if I put my tent deep in the woods I could wait out the wet spell and start looking for muskrat sign again. Maybe things would look different when the rain stopped.

By the time I'd eat the candy bars the rain had slacked, and as I pushed off into the river a wind sprung out of the north. The clouds was churning high above, at different heights, moving at different speeds. As I rowed, the wind begun to chop up the water, splashing me with spray off the oars. In the wind my wet clothes felt full of holes. I had to stop and try to start a fire soon. If I didn't I might take pneumony. But the thought of looking for something dry enough to burn on the muddy banks made me keep rowing. My hands was getting numb on the oars.

By the time I reached Tarboro that afternoon I had a bad chill. I was trembly and almost too weak to guide the boat to shore. The wind had swung hard and straight out of the north and I couldn't stop myself from shaking. I watched two black men in a lumberyard on the shore shifting around a pile of planks.

Then the bow struck something hard underwater, either a rock or a log. The boat almost turned over, and it took in the top of a wave. I dug the oars in deep, trying to balance the boat. But the current was too fast, and it spun me around again. The town with its bridge and lumberyard and the backs of stores whirled by me. The river had got higher and faster. I was already even with the town and passing it.

My left hand was so numb the oar slipped out of it, and as I lunged to catch the shaft I almost fell out of the boat. Water sloshed from end to end over my feet and through my traps, pushing the suitcase around. I wondered if there was shoals ahead that made the river faster. I grabbed the other oar with both hands and tried to paddle closer to shore. But the blade was too heavy and too narrow to get any grip on the water. I drug the oar behind like a tiller to at least make the boat point ahead and not rock so bad.

Already the town had gone whirling by, and I was no closer to the bank than before. Waves leapt up like paws trying to turn the boat over. The boat tilted so bad it felt like I was looking down at the lashing water one second and up at it the next. I thought of Mama standing by the kitchen counter, quietly kneading bread. She didn't even know what had happened to me. Lord, I prayed, it looks like I won't get out of this river alive.

I thought, I could be home setting by the fire. And I heard myself laughing at myself. The wind burned my face like ether and the little boat rocked on the whitecaps as waves twisted it around from one side to the other. I shoved the oar in deeper and deeper. There was six inches of water in the boat, but I couldn't bail and paddle at the same time. The boat rode low in the water. I was going downstream fast as a stampede.

Lord, I prayed, I don't want to die in this filthy river. If it's your will for me to die, I know that I will. But if you spare me I'll go back to Green River and help Mama on the place.

The boat spun around in the raging tide and I stabbed at the waves with the oar. I thrust the oar down like it was a pole to find bottom. The boat tilted and plunged and I seen the water was coming up to get me. I leaned back and then bent low to keep from falling out.

I drove the oar into the ugly water one more time and finally found the bottom. I pushed hard as I could to pole to shore. The boat
swung this way and it swung that way, but finally I wrestled it into the shallows and run the prow into the mud and weeds. I figured I must be a mile below the town. I was so wore out I was shaking, and it seemed an astonishment I was still alive at all.

I clawed my way up the bank to see where I was. I was in the yard of a tobacco barn. Two men come out the door and looked at me like somebody that had rose from a grave. I tried to speak, but my teeth chattered so bad it was hard to explain my situation.

“Do you think I could leave my boat here while I go back to the station?” I finally said.

“Don't hear nobody saying no,” one of the men said.

“Will you keep an eye on my things?” I said.

“Somebody might tote them away even with my eye on them,” the other man said.

“I'll trust you all,” I said and tried to grin. I got the suitcase and the shotgun out of the boat. Everything was covered with mud.

“You look like you fell in the river,” one of the men said.

“I come close,” I said, “mighty close.”

I carried the shotgun and suitcase to the road and looked toward the town. Couldn't see where the train station was at first, but as I got closer I seen the tracks and just followed them. And then I could hear the pant of an engine beyond the tobacco sheds. As I walked along, my boots squished they was so full of water. People turned to look at me. I knowed I looked wet and dirty, and when I passed a store window I didn't even recognize myself at first. My hat was ruined by the rain and my face was black with a beard and campfire smoke. My clothes was wrinkled and muddy. I looked worser than a tramp, but there was nothing I could do about it. I walked right into the station carrying the suitcase and the broke-down shotgun.

T
HE SKY WAS
completely clear by the time the train pulled out of Tarboro near dark. My hands shook from the chill and the moving of the train. From the window I could watch the tobacco fields and pine woods and the river in the distance go by, gold in the late sun. But however gold the river might appear at a distance, I could
still smell the mud and filthy water on the suitcase and my boots. The stink of the river and its silt seemed to have soaked into my skin and under my nails. I would never forget the rancid grease smell of the river. The Tar River smelled like the muck around the slop chute of a hogpen.

As I set on the train my bones begun to warm up. I could still smell the brown river water and greasy silt somewhere in the back of my head. The train slowed and stopped in Heartsease and I looked out to see the country store where I had bought my dinner, but it was too dark to tell one building from another. I blowed my nose again and again. Mama or Fay would be milking out at the log barn, or throwing corn to the chickens. It was still light that far to the west.

I hadn't hardly noticed the man and woman on the seat in front of me, until their voices rose so loud that other people in the car begun to look toward them. The man was a skinny little feller with a week's growth of beard. The woman was heavy and had her hair pulled tight in a ball on top of her head. Her lips didn't look like they had smiled in years.

“I just want to know where it is!” the woman hollered. She looked hard at the man beside her.

“I told you,” the man said. He looked around like he wished nobody was listening.

She turned away and stared out the window. We was on the stretch between Rocky Mount and Raleigh, and the train was picking up speed.

“It's the onliest dollar I had,” the woman yelled.

“I told you,” the man said. He took out a cigarette and lit it with trembling fingers.

“You told me shit!” the woman said.

“Couldn't help it,” the man said.

The train passed a siding where a locomotive and several flatcars loaded with pulpwood waited on a spur. A water tank shot by.

“You couldn't help it,” the woman mocked and made a face. He looked away from her and around the car. “Bought yourself a drink,” the woman said. “That's what you done. You can't shit me.”

“I told you already,” the man said, not looking at her.

Suddenly the woman screamed and begun beating the side of the man's head with her fists. He tried to dodge and his cigarette was knocked to the floor. “Ain't nothing to eat!” the woman shouted. She grabbed a purse from her lap and swung it at the man's face.

The man fended her off with his elbow, then turned and shoved her back with the heel of his palm in her face. The woman's head slammed against the window. “You pissant!” she hollered.

I seen the conductor coming down the aisle. Everybody in the whole car was watching to see what he would do. I knowed that anybody misbehaving on a train could be throwed off. The conductor could stop the train and put them off beside the track if he wanted to. Conductors could do whatever they felt like.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my damp folded bills. I took a one and put the rest back in my pocket. As the conductor got closer I leaned forward and tapped the man on the shoulder. “Is this your money?” I said.

The man wheeled around, startled. “What?” he said.

“I found this behind your seat,” I said. “Is it yours?”

The woman grabbed the bill out of my hand before the man could answer.

“What is this?” the conductor said. He prodded the man on the shoulder with the ticket puncher. “What's going on here?” The conductor's belly was so big his coat wouldn't button over his belt buckle.

“Ain't nothing,” the man said.

“What was you all hollering about?” the conductor said.

“We was just talking,” the man said. He rubbed the back of his neck with a scarred hand.

“They lost a dollar and I found it,” I said.

The conductor glared at me, at my beard, my dirty clothes. “Don't allow no trash to fight on this train,” he said.

“We was looking for something,” the woman said. She stared down at her lap.

“Did you find it?” the conductor said.

“Yeah,” the man said, “we found it.”

The conductor looked at the man and then at the woman, and then he looked at me. The man stared straight ahead and the woman looked at her purse. The conductor stepped forward and ground out the smoking cigarette on the floor. “Any more trouble and you all are off,” he said.

Muir

T
HAT WINTER AFTER
I got back from the Tar River I laid low and worked on the place, like I'd promised the Lord I would. I split rails and built a new fence for Mama around the orchard. Mama frowned and encouraged me by turns, and Moody ribbed me, but I never did tell them I'd nearly drownded on the Tar River. I figured nobody needed to know that. I worked on the road above the spring, and I trapped a little. I couldn't think of any other way to make money. Since I had left my traps on the Tar River, I had to buy new ones from U. G. on credit.

But it was a bad winter and I caught almost nothing in my traps. In February I had to take my pelts to U. G. He was playing checkers by the stove in the back of his store when I brought him the measly pile of furs I had. I still owed him for the traps and a box of shotgun shells I'd got the winter before that. I was ashamed to ask him for more credit.

“What say, Muir?” U. G. said. He glanced up from the checkerboard. He was playing with old Hicks Summey, who claimed he was the champion checkers player in the valley. Hicks liked to take a drink, and he liked to set at the store and play checkers.

“Not much, U. G.,” I said and laid my little bundle of furs on the counter.

“Mink didn't run to your traps?” U. G. said.

“It was a poor season,” I said.

“Fur ain't worth nothing anyway,” U. G. said. “There's too much fur from Canada coming on the market.”

I owed U. G. about twenty dollars, and I hadn't saved but five from the molasses money.

U. G. jumped his checkers over several squares on the board and picked up some pieces. “Let's take a look at them skins,” he said. U. G. walked behind the counter and inspected each pelt I'd brought and run his fingers through the fur. “Can't give you but eighty-five cents,” he said.