Edge of Dark Water

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Mama had come out of the hut now, and she and me rolled Terry over and looked at his finger. It was just the tip of it cut off, but he had lost some blood, and that combined with the savage nature of our adventure had worn him out.

  I didn’t feel so spry myself. I put my can down, and Mama and Jinx and me got Terry pulled inside the hut. It was tight in there, and we didn’t go in with him, just sort of pushed him inside, next to the reverend, who I could see was stretched out on his back, not moving.

  I said, “Is he dead?”

  “No,” Mama said. “He’s where the dead go before they let go of their body.”

  Mama crawled inside the hut and got some rags out of one of the bags that was up in there, and went to tying off Terry’s finger. Terry was awake now, but he wasn’t frisky.

  I got the cans and took those and put them inside the hut, back behind the reverend. Mama was still tying up Terry’s hand. She looked at the cans, said, “I suppose that’s May Lynn and the money.”

  “Yep,” I said. “And so far we’ve made sure not to mix them.”

  I crawled out then, and me and Jinx got the raft untied from the bank. Jinx had been smart enough to tie the rafting poles down with twine on the side of the raft, and now we cut them loose and took them and pushed off into the river.

  The rain was still coming, but it was coming less and less now. The river was not near as brisk as it was before. When we got pushed off good, Jinx took to the rudder and I walked from side to side on the raft, poling it as much as I could until the pole didn’t touch bottom. It was hard to see what was coming, but we went along well until light came. I first saw it through the trees, a sweet pink glow, and then a bright-red warm apple swelling up to fill the sky.

  It was a good thing to see, that light, cause things look and seem better in the light, even if that ain’t always the truth. But, like Jinx once said to me, “At least when it ain’t dark you got a better chance of seeing what’s sneaking up on you.”

  The sky may have been lighter, but the river was near dark as sin and stuffed with limbs and leaves. I saw a dead possum float by, and a snake that had somehow died in the storm. The air smelled full of the earth. Eventually the sun was up high enough that the water seemed less coffeelike and more like milk with chocolate in it. Birds started chirping and flying between trees. The day warmed and mostly dried my damp clothes.

  I took my turn at the rudder, and Jinx came to sit up front, waiting for when she might need to use the pole or the paddle to guide the raft. Mama came out of the hut with her bag and pulled it open and took out some dried meat I hadn’t known was in there. She gave us some of it. The meat was damp where the sack had got wet and the moisture had bled through; it was pretty swell nonetheless. We didn’t have any fresh water, though, and right then I would have kicked a bear in the teeth for some.

  Terry finally crawled out of the hut and came over and had some of the dried meat.

  “You all right?” I said.

  “I am tolerable,” he said, holding up his bandaged hand.

  “The reverend moving in there?” I asked.

  “He farted once,” Terry said, “but except for that physical exclamation, he’s as quiet as the grave.”

  “I fear he won’t live,” Mama said.

  “He ain’t had it no worse than the rest of us,” Jinx said.

  I, of course, knew what had happened to the reverend, and knew all that had happened since then had happened on top of how he felt about himself. It was too much for him. It was like one too many bricks had been piled on him and that last one had broken him down. I didn’t mention this, because nobody knew I had overheard his business, and I didn’t think it was time to bring it up.

  The river was still flowing well, and the sun was drying my clothes. I was beginning to feel right positive. I had begun to think things were going to shake out all right, and that we were away from Skunk and would soon be someplace where he couldn’t follow.

  I was starting to think about the money again, and what I could do with it. I thought about May Lynn’s ashes as well, though there was a part of me that was still mad because I felt those damn ashes in that can had tried to drown me, and I think I was jealous of her, even in death.

  Now the river tapered, and I began to hear this rumbling noise. It was so loud I thought maybe it was thunder again, and that we were in for another rain. But when I looked at the sky it was bright and blue as could be, and the only clouds up there were fluffy white, without so much as a shadow of rain.

  “What’s that?” I asked Terry, who was standing next to me.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “It’s the river,” Jinx called from her place at the rudder.

  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 stubbornn
ess 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.

  19

  When 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, wa
s 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.