Edge of Dark Water

by Lansdale, Joe R.

  “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.”

  “I believe he has gone as far as his will allows,” Terry said.

  16

  We drifted for a long time, me and Terry using the poles to keep the raft in the middle of the river. Jinx was still at the rudder, and she was beginning to get the hang of it. The reverend had done a fine job building the rudder, and it heaved easy and gave the raft better direction and kept us from swirling.

  Reverend Joy hadn’t moved from where he lay. Fact was, I thought he might have died, but Mama checked on him. She grabbed him by the feet and pulled him out of the hut. He drawed his knees up and put his hands under his chin, one of them still hanging on to the pistol, which was slightly unnerving. Mama sat by him, put a hand on his arm, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “I feel certain we can navigate a good distance downriver,” Terry said, poling the shallow bottom with his long pole. “Then we need to find a place to tie up, and go back for the money and May Lynn’s ashes. Fact is, I think we could just take the ashes and leave the money. It’s nothing but trouble.”

  “I don’t like that,” Jinx said, calling from her place at the rudder. “May Lynn’s dead, but that money is still green as grass. I done ran off from home and been threatened with all kinds of mean things, and had rocks thrown at me, and now you’re saying leave it. I ain’t all that much for going back, but if we go back for May Lynn’s burnt-up ass, I say we get that money.”

  “We could take enough to continue our trip and leave the rest,” Terry said. “Maybe if we do that, Constable Sy will be satisfied with the bulk of the money. We could just leave it on the table. He may decide to stop bothering us, especially if we are far away and are not causing him concern.”

  “There’s still Cletus and Skunk,” Jinx said. “And maybe Don.”

  “There isn’t anyone called Skunk,” Terry said. “He’s nothing more than a story people tell to scare their children.”

  “He’s a story that will chop off hands, you can bet on that,” Jinx said. “I come out of this, I’d just as soon not have to ask someone else to pick my nose and wipe my butt.”

  “If he’s real, you’ll not only be missing hands,” I said. “You’ll be dead.”

  “I take to that even less,” Jinx said.

  “I tell you again,” Terry said. “There is no Skunk.”

  “There are a lot of folks who believe in Skunk,” Mama said. “I’ve heard about him all my life.”

  “Have you seen him, Mrs. Wilson?” Terry asked.

  “Well, no. But I know people who say they have.”

  “There are people who have told me with considerable conviction that they’ve seen snakes that can grab their tails with their teeth and roll downhill like a hoop, or snakes that can suck a milk cow dry, but with all due respect, ma’am, I don’t believe it.”

  “I ain’t no believer in snakes can do that,” Jinx said. “But I believe in Skunk.”

  “Here’s the thing,” I said. “Skunk or no Skunk, we got to go back for the money and the ashes. There’s a man been killed over that money and tucked in a shallow grave, and there’s another dead one back there in the reverend’s house. We’ve come this far, I say we need that money and we owe May Lynn a little something for drawing that map we found, and for being our friend.”

  “I don’t know that I want you children to do that,” Mama said.

  “No offense again, Mrs. Wilson, but you really don’t have a say in this,” Terry said. “You haven’t said boo to Sue Ellen all this time, and now you want to tell her how to do things? I’m glad you’re back from where you went, but these decisions are now ours.”

  “He’s right, Mama,” I said, before she could say anything back. “You don’t have a say in this. You came with us, not the other way around.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” she said. She sounded the way she did when she had been in bed sucking cure-all. I hated that. I liked her better a little on the feisty side. But that still didn’t change the fact that Terry was right. This wasn’t her decision.

  I peeked at Reverend Joy. He appeared to be asleep.

  “All right, then,” I said. “We go back for the money and the ashes. But I’ll tell you this, we ought not all go. Someone needs to stay with the raft, and the other thing is I don’t want to drag all of us through the woods. And the reverend there, we’d have to carry him, or pull him behind us on a rope, so that won’t work. We’re going to do this, we’re going to have to sneak.”

  “You done talked me into it,” Jinx called from the back. “I’ll stay. Anybody else can go that wants to. Me and your mama and the reverend, we’ll hold down the raft and you and Terry go.”

  It wasn’t long before the water got deep and the poles were useless. What we had was the rudder, and me and Terry squatting on either side of the raft, using the boat paddles. The raft went fast, and we didn’t see a good place to stop for a long time. Finally we could barely make out a sandbar that jutted out into the river. We let the force of the water ride the raft up on it.

  Terry took one of the paddles and put the narrow end in the soft, damp sand, pushed it down tight, and tied the docking rope off to it. Reverend Joy was still out of it, Mama sitting by him with her arm draped over his shoulders, him still with the pistol. For all he knew he was someplace on Mars having his hair combed by a nine-eyed octopus.

  “Let me have the pistol,” I said to him.

  I had to say it several times before he looked up at me.

  “You got Constable Sy’s pistol,” I said. “I might need it.”

  Reverend Joy came hurtling back from Mars, but his voice seemed to come from far away. “Haven’t we done enough?”

  “It’s all right, Jack,” Mama said. “Give her the pistol. Just for protection.”

  The reverend was slow to realize he had hold of the pistol, and he was even slower to give it up, but in time he handed it to me. It was a small pistol, and I put it in the deep pocket of my overalls. Reverend Joy dipped his head as if the weight was just too much. “May the good Lord be with you,” he said.

  “It’s a good walk back,” I said. “Lot longer walking than it was riding the river. It’ll be daylight before we get turned around good. We’ll try and bring some food if we can get it. All you got to do is wait. Jinx, we don’t come back by the end of next day, you need to push off and go.”

  “All right,” Jinx said.

  “You could have at least hesitated a little,” Terry said.

  “I know a good plan when I hear it,” Jinx said.

  “We can’t just push off without you,” Mama said.

  “I think we can,” Jinx said. “It don’t take but two of us to handle the raft, Mrs. Wilson.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Mama said. “I meant we can’t go off without them if they’re late.”

  “I know what you meant,” Jinx said. “And I meant what I meant. We
can, and will. Waiting here for One-Eyed Sy to catch up with us won’t do nobody no good.”

  “Me and Terry will be back,” I said to Mama. “So don’t worry. And even if you go on without us, that don’t mean we ain’t coming. We’ll just have to find another way and meet up with you in Gladewater.”

  “Maybe I should go with you,” she said.

  “We need you here,” I said. “And though you’re doing better, you ain’t doing so good you’d have the energy to go the way we’re going. Me and Terry can travel quicker without you.”

  When the reverend built the hut on the raft, we had stashed a few of our things inside of it, in case we had to leave in a hurry. That had turned out to be a smart move. One of those things was a flashlight. There was also twine and rags, matches, tow sacks, a pocketknife, and a few tins of sardines, which we opened right then and ate with our fingers. We took the flashlight and started off.

  We walked along the sandbar on up to the bank, and it was a slog. We had to use damp roots to hang on to and climb up. On the shore there was lots of trees, and it wasn’t as starlit as it was out on the river cause the tree trunks was so close together. The woods was hard to work past, but we kept threading our way until it broke out into a marshy run of land that went on for quite a few miles. Without so many trees it was clear, and there was some light, but it was uncomfortable going. To our left was a line of woods that looked like a wall of shadow. To our right was another line, but it thinned in spots and sloped off toward the water in such a way there wasn’t any good place to stand, let alone walk. We was close enough for a while to hear the river run and smell it, but because of the way the marsh was, we had to go wide away from it and head toward the far line of trees. Our feet sunk deep in the muck. Pulling them out and dropping them back down made a sound like a giant baby struggling to suck on an empty tit, and it wore us slap out.

  We was able to find the right stars to figure on how to go, which wasn’t a real chore anyway, as all we had to do was follow the river back and we’d come to the cabin. But it wasn’t all a straight shot, not with the way the brush and brambles grew up in spots in the marsh. You could easily get off the path and not realize you was far from the river, or you could get turned around and not know it until it was too late. So when we could look at the stars, we did. Just to make sure we was going the true direction.