Edge of Dark Water

by Joe R. Lansdale

  “It’s all right.”

  “No,” Mama said. “No, it’s not. Tomorrow we are going to load up and go on down the river.”

  “It’s too late for that, Helen,” he said. “What’s done is done.”

  “Maybe not,” she said.

  I could see the reverend’s arm move now and again, and then there would be a little plop in the water. I came to know he had a little pile of rocks with him, picked up on the way down, I figured, and he was chunking them into the water. He finished off the last of them and quit chunking. They both sat looking out at the dark river.

  “You never told me why you were going down the river in the first place,” he said.

  Mama thought for a long time before she spoke. “I’m on the run from my husband, and the children are trying to get out to Hollywood.”

  “California?”

  “Yes,” she said, and then she told him the whole dang thing, except about the money and May Lynn being with us. She left that part out. I’m not sure why, but she did, and I was glad. But she told him near everything else. Even told him about Brian and her pregnancy, and how me and Don didn’t get along, and how he hit her and me. She said some bad things about Gene, and so on. It surprised me she told him about the pregnancy part, marrying Don on the downslide, because she hadn’t told me any of that until recent, and here she was sharing it with some fellow she had only known for a little while.

  When she finished, she said, “And now you know what kind of woman I am.”

  “Before you start feeling bad about your existence, you should know something about mine,” he said. “I am a murderer.”

  I was so startled I stood up, and then sat back down.

  “Surely not,” Mama said.

  “Not by my own hand,” he said. “But a murderer just the same. When I was a teenager I stole a man’s rifle. It wasn’t much of a rifle, but it was a theft. I was seen in the area where the rifle was stolen, and was questioned. I blamed it on a colored boy I knew. We had grown up fishing the river together, playing together. We had a big tree where we played, a great oak that overhung the river. We would go there to jump from limbs into the water and swim.”

  It was exactly the same thing me and Jinx and Terry and May Lynn used to do. It was odd to think he had been a kid, just like us, doing the same thing we did for fun.

  “One time,” he continued, “the water was running swift from a big rain, and I jumped in and it was too strong for me. Jaren, that was his name, leaped in there after me, grabbed me, and fought that current. We both near drowned, but he stayed with it long after I had tuckered out. He pulled me out of the river. This very river. The Sabine. Saved my life. I told him then and there that I owed him my life, and that I would stand by him forever. And then this thing with the rifle came up.

  “I had seen the old man prop it against his porch when I was walking by on my way to the fishing hole, where I was going to meet Jaren. Well, I can’t explain it other than the devil was talking directly at me, but it came to me that I could just walk up on that empty porch, take hold of that rifle before he knew it was missing, and run off. And that’s what I did. I took it home and hid it in our barn.

  “Thing was, though, the old man noticed it missing immediately, and next thing I know the sheriff was at my door. The old man had seen me coming up the road, and he told the sheriff, and the sheriff asked me if I had stolen the rifle. I told him no. I told him I wouldn’t steal, but I had seen Jaren going up that road ahead of me, and said he was known to be a thief, which wasn’t true. But I told him that because the hot breath of the law was on my neck. They went and got Jaren, and even though they couldn’t find the rifle, their blood was up. If it had been me they had, even if they had the rifle I stole, I’d have gone to court and maybe to jail. But Jaren, being colored, well, it was like a coon hunt.

  “They got him and took him out in the woods, and they castrated him and chained him to a stump and poured pitch all over him and set him on fire. I heard them bragging about it down by the general store. They was bragging on how long he screamed and how loud, and how it all smelled. They was proud of themselves.

  “I went out to where they said they had burned him. I could smell that cooked meat before I could see him. All that was left of him was a dark shape with bones sticking out of it. Animals had been at him. I was going to bury him, and had even brought a shovel with me, but I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t stand it. I went over and lay down in the woods and just passed out asleep. Then I heard a noise and woke up. I looked out from the trees and saw a wagon pulled by a couple of mules. There was a man and a woman in the wagon, and I knew who they were right off. I had eaten dinner at their table more than once. It was Jaren’s parents. And all the time they were there, his mother was moaning and crying and yelling to the sky. The man got out of the wagon with a blanket and laid it on the ground, and he got that body free and stretched it out on the blanket, and rolled the sides of the blanket over what was left of Jaren, and carried and put him in the back of the wagon. When Jaren’s father finished, he and his clothes were covered in char from Jaren’s body.

  “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 th
at 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.

  15

  Well, 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.”