On the River Styx: And Other Stories

by Peter Matthiessen

  “Mornin,” I said. “I come to take that lemon bitch away from you.”

  “No you ain’t.” He said it like it didn’t need no explanation.

  Buster stared at Floyd, kind of fidgety. “Mistuh Webstuh, we-uns ain’t wid de dawgs no mo’.”

  “Buster, you go on up to the house, tell ’em Mister Webster come, you hear me?”

  Buster shambled off, looking back over his shoulder. Floyd watched him go.

  “Looks kinda sorry without them boots, now don’t he?”

  “What happened?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. One night las’ week I lit into some rotgut, some o’ thet sour mash, and come back here and—well, there was a kind of a ruckus, and now me’n Buster is workin here in the stable.” Floyd was staring at the ground all the time, kind of tired and tight, watching the end of the stick fooling in the dust.

  “I’m sorry to hear it. I sure liked the way you run them dogs.”

  Joe Pentland was coming down the road to the stable. Floyd was watching him all the time he was talking.

  “You see, Mister Webster, a man like me ain’t got no place with dawgs. A man what would do what I done, he’s a sight better off in the woods. Some of these days I aim to go back, ’cause when I’m here, ain’t nothin seems to go right.”

  Pentland said good morning. “I’m going right down to the pens and get them setters for you, Webster.”

  He went ahead, then stopped and looked at Floyd. “You ain’t paid to lean on that wall, but since you’re so busy shooting off your mouth, why not tell Mister Webster why I can’t sell him the pointer? Why don’t you tell him that?”

  Pentland turned to me. “You remember the dog I mean. Sadie. The dog Mister Floyd liked so well. Come home here drunk and beat her to death with that damn stick there.” He spat on the ground and walked off.

  I didn’t feel much like looking at Dewey Floyd right then, so I looked at the ground. All I could see was the stick switching back and forth, back and forth, in the dust in front of his shoes. It made me jumpier’n hell, and I glanced up at him. I saw his face. And I’m tellin you right now, it ain’t that nigger boy beat Pentland to death, I don’t care what they say.

  Floyd was looking after Pentland in that funny way of his, not angry at all, just sort of funny. He went right on talking as if Pentland had never come by, but he didn’t take his eyes off him a minute. “You see, I was mighty close to all them dawgs, and that li’l one were my fav’rit. Sadie were a real stylish dawg. I jes don’t know rightly what it was, how I could come to doin it. But I did it, sure’n hell.”

  Dewey Floyd put his stick up under his arm and took out some paper and tobacco. He was talking so quietly I could hear the soft blowing and shifting of the horses through the wall behind him.

  “Sober,” he said, “I couldn’t take this stick to no dawg that way, no more’n I could a pony nor a nigger. But a man …”

  He paused a minute to fix the tobacco in his cigarette.

  “Now you take a man … Time comes, I reckon I could do that easier’n nothing.” He ran his tongue along the sticking edge of the paper, squinting out at me from under his hat.

  1951

  THE FIFTH DAY

  The morning of the fifth day, Dave Winton eased the dragging hook over the side for the last time, wincing at the thunk of the twin hook tossed heavily into the water on the other side of the boat and the vicious hum of the outgoing line sawing back and forth over the gunwales. Joe put his hook out that way because it was easy, but to Dave the method made an uneasy difference: Joe’s hook, if only because of the haste with which it plunged each morning into the bay, was the one which was certain to seek out the body.

  Dave secured his line around the middle seat and turned to the older man for instructions. Joe Robitelli was already settled comfortably in the stern, just as he had been for four days: he hadn’t even changed his shirt. The oars lay untouched on the floor of the dinghy.

  “Want me to start, Joe?”

  “Start what?”

  “The oars. We have to keep dragging, don’t we?”

  “Picket boat’s gone, ain’t it?” Joe shrugged his shoulders and lay back.

  “You said that the drowned man always shows up on the fifth day.”

  “That’s right. Today or tomorrow, or for sure the day after.” Joe dragged a small canvas bag from beneath his head. “Look,” he said, “Good Old Joe finally got wise to hisself.” He hauled two hand lines and a wet bait package out of the bag and spread them triumphantly on the stern seats. “How about that, Dave? And I got six cans of beer to go with it. A regular fishin party.”

  “You said we were sure to find the guy today.”

  “Take it easy, kid. Relax. Have a Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer.”

  “Okay,” Dave said, “that was fine the first four days, but sooner or later, we’re supposed to find this guy. Maybe we’re on top of him right now.”

  “Look, we ain’t supposed to do nothin but sit here, so we might as well have a good time for ourselves. If the guy comes up, the guy comes up, but while we’re waitin, I robbed some bacon from the galley for bait and got us six beers from the lighthouse boys.”

  Dave watched him rig some bacon rind onto the hooks. Joe, glancing at him, winked and sang mournfully, “We three—are all a-lone—” with pointed emphasis on the “three,” and winked again. Dave bent over the oars to hide the irritation in his expression; they were pressed against the side of the boat by Joe’s ankle. “What’s up, Joe?”

  “What’s up, Dave?” Joe studied the baited hooks, his brows wrinkled in concentration.

  “Look, I’ll do the rowing if you don’t want to.”

  Joe glared back at him. Their faces were uncomfortably close in the drifting boat. “Look, kid, I been tellin you Christ’s sake relax for four days now, and here I got you all fixed up with fish lines and beer, and you’re still bitchin!”

  “What about those people waiting on shore? What do you want to do, keep them waiting all week?”

  “It don’t matter what I want to do, they’re gonna wait anyway. So take it easy.”

  Dave stared at the water eddying silently around the dragging line. He thought about those gloomy people on the pier in their vacation clothes. Right now the hooks were fumbling along the belly of the bay like two clubfect, scraping and turning and raking the seaweed off the rocks in search of the drowned man. This very moment they could be pulling through the rotten clothes like fingernails through soggy paper.

  Joe was leaning back, arms spread and a fish line in each hand, his white cap over his eyes and a cigarette loose in his mouth.

  “I guess I’ll row awhile, just for the hell of it,” Dave said.

  Joe shrugged his shoulders and took his foot away from the oars, then hitched one of the fish lines around a cleat and pushed the cap back with the free hand, unveiling a stare of disbelief.

  “What in hell are you provin, Davey Boy?”

  “Nothing.” Dave licked his lips. “I just don’t feel right about those people ashore, I guess.”

  “I don’t give a good goddamn how you feel about them people ashore. Didn’t the Old Man tell em go home and wait, but no, they gotta camp out here and raise a stink till we find him. They’d be yellin at us to get out here if there was a hurricane goin on, especially the ones like you, with a lot of dough and no sense. All we’re out here for is to make em happy thinkin we’re doing somethin, understand? We ain’t even got a outboard motor.”

  Joe sucked violently on his cigarette.

  “The Old Man hisself wouldn’t act no different than what I’m doing. I been at this game a long time, and you ain’t nothin but a kid, I don’t care how much dough you got, just remember that.”

  There was nothing to offer in defense of a wealthy family. Dave pulled the oars quietly. Joe was still glaring at him as the tension evaporated between their faces.

  Then Joe laughed shortly, pulling his cap back over his eyes. “Look, Dave, all I’m sayin is,
this bay’s six miles across, and all we got is two lousy draggin hooks and a ten-foot dinghy. There ain’t a prayer of findin the guy.”

  “Okay. Maybe I feel like getting a little exercise.”

  Joe flicked his cigarette over the side. It stuck on the flat bay water like a leaf on the mud. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what you wanna do, Davey, get a little exercise.”

  DAVE CUT VICIOUSLY at the bland-faced water, and the oar, skating over the surface, arched a leaf of spray onto Joe’s shirt. A thick brown hand came up slowly, pushed its fingers over the drops, then drifted upwards to the cap, pushing it back over the forehead. Joe’s eyes were bright with suspicion, observing Dave’s reddening face. One hazel eye winked in a sleepily patronizing manner before the thick hand rose again, methodic as a derrick, adjusted the cap over the eyes, and fell back over the stern.

  Any day but today he might have been a stumpy Italian fisherman sleeping in the sun, his short legs sprawled in the bottom of any small boat in the world, but today he was a tough Brooklyn guinea with his cap over his eyes and a smelly shirt on his back, who didn’t give a damn for the water, the sun, the morning, but especially not for the drowned man softening somewhere beneath them, nor the frightened family in their new vacation clothes who waited for the fifth day on the pier.

  Dave spat noisily into the water. It was bad enough rowing around in the sun with two hooks dragging without having to watch a guy like this take it easy three feet away. And worst of all, Joe was right. There was no sense in rowing, no sense at all.

  Dave rowed furiously, then rested the oars again. He watched the water drops fall from the blades. The body was sure to be off in the other direction.

  Amusement deepened on Joe’s face. Dave waited for the brown hand to rise to the cap, then dipped the oars again in the teeth of the smile. But the smile judged him with confidence:

  “How you doin, Dave?”

  “All right. It’s getting kind of hot.”

  “Yeah, it must be. That’s okay, though, long as you’re getting your exercise, ain’t that right, Dave?”

  The smile broadened. Joe pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket and flicked one up. Dave refused it with a nod.

  “The fish ain’t bitin so good.” Joe pulled the cigarette from the pack with his lips. “I guess there was plenty to eat the last few days here in the bay.”

  Joe secured the fish lines to the stern cleats and brought his hands up behind his head, chuckling at the subtlety of the implication.

  “Why not boat them oars and take it easy, Davey Boy. You ain’t provin nothin.”

  “I’m not trying to.”

  “Okay.” He was watching Dave pull the oars in over his lap, and Dave, uneasy, drew a cigarette from his own pocket and lit it before he remembered. He glanced at Joe’s expression.

  First of all you didn’t like the fish lines and beer, and now my cigarettes ain’t good enough for you, it said.

  “I didn’t feel like one a minute ago,” Dave said. Joe didn’t answer. They sat still in the hot boat until he spoke.

  “I guess you got a lot of dough in your family, huh, Dave?”

  “Lay off, Joe. What difference does it make?”

  “No difference. I’m just askin. It ain’t nothing to be ashamed of.” Joe opened a can of beer without looking at it. “Like this guy we’re lookin for, he wasn’t ashamed of it. He bought hisself a little boat to take the family joyridin.”

  “So what?”

  “So he got hisself drowned.” Joe laughed.

  “And you’re not sorry for those people?”

  “Sure I’m sorry. Sorry as hell. Still and all, they shoulda gone home like they was told.”

  “So we’re not going to do a thing.”

  “Sure. We’re gonna float around and look at the scenery until the guy pops up and asks for a beer.”

  Joe was smiling again, but the corners of his smile pointed down instead of up. Dave shifted on the seat. The sun was hot on his back, and his legs were cramped. What in hell was so funny. From where he sat, Joe’s grin looked six inches across. And dumbly, he watched Joe lean forward and lift the oars from the oarlocks and lay them along the gunwales on top of the seats. To resist would be to expose himself again.

  He eased himself onto the floorboards in the bow of the dinghy, his back to Joe.

  “Atta-boy.”

  Joe’s laugh ruffled through his hair, fell back with a triumphant clatter into the stern. Good Old Joe. One more smile and he’d ram an oar down Good Old Joe’s throat. Suppose that family was watching them from shore? Even the drowned man must be waiting for them now. He might be two inches under the dinghy, or rubbing softly against the drifting hull. Perhaps even Joe was nervous about him. Joe said he’d pop up like a rubber ball on the fifth day.

  DAVE STIRRED UNCOMFORTABLY, peering at the water of the bay. Not a sound, not even a gull, just the heat and the dry paint smell of the dinghy and Good Old Joe in the stern, nursing plans for someone else’s wife. Dave laughed at this idea, and the laugh caused a suspicious stir behind him.

  Joe’s voice was loud in the silence of the bay. “You hear how it happened?” The tone was innocent.

  “How what happened?”

  “The rich guy.” Joe pronounced the words slowly. “The rich guy that got hisself drowned.”

  “Oh yeah, the rich guy. The rich guy that got himself drowned.” Dave paused. “Well, the way I heard it, Joe, this rich guy bought himself a little boat to take his family joyriding and got himself drowned.”

  Under the noon sun, Dave’s rage swarmed through him like fruit flies in a heated jar. He crouched in wait for Joe’s reaction, afraid at the same time to turn and face it. Joe’s tone, however, conveyed no hint of the wound.

  “That’s right, Dave. How did it happen?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” he parried. “The guys told me he tried to make it ashore to get help after they capsized.”

  “He tried to make it ashore okay, so he could save his own ass. I guess you thought he was a goddam hero or somethin.”

  “Yeah, I guess I did. I guess I thought he was a goddam hero or something.”

  “Well he ain’t. He run out on his wife and kids.” Joe’s voice was suddenly angry. “It’s bad enough havin these rich guys get salty on us and gettin hung up on sand bars and makin us risk our necks to save theirs, but I never thought they was all yella.”

  The words hung in the silence overhead as if unwilling to drift away over the empty bay.

  “Oh sure.” Dave nodded his head philosophically. “That’s the thing about rich guys, Joe. You wouldn’t believe it, Joe, but all rich guys are yellow. The richer the guy, the wider the yellow streak, every time.”

  Dave turned to face Joe, excited to see his smile waver, fall away entirely.

  “Don’t get smart with me, Davey Boy. I’m wise to you. Just don’t try that sarcastic shit on me, understand?”

  “What’s the trouble, Joe?”

  “Look, Sonny, I’m warnin you, don’t get snotty. You’re lookin for a smack in the mouth’ll last you a long time, understand? So watch yourself.”

  Dave felt his own smile flutter mournfully on his face. It didn’t belong there, not because he was afraid but because the game was over, and now he was suddenly so angry that he spoke with difficulty, in a gasping, distant voice: “C’mon, Joey Boy, relax. Smile. Laugh. You don’t care about the rich guy, you’re just out here to lay around and scratch your balls.”

  Joe didn’t hit him, only flipped his beer can over the side and hauled in the fish lines. And aware for the first time of the picket boat coming up behind, Dave groped aimlessly for the bow line. Joe grinned as they rigged the lowered pulley to the dinghy. “It’s okay to shoot your mouth off with the boat comin, Davey Boy, but I’m gonna take you up behind the boathouse soon as we tie up.”

  He watched Joe’s raucous reception on the boat, his easy way with the other men. On the return, Dave’s anger fizzled away in wide, err
atic circles over the bay, like a stray wasp, until it disappeared entirely. The boat was early, he’d made a fool of himself, and he was going to have his head knocked off for nothing. They hadn’t even found the drowned man. To hell with him.

  He stepped onto the pier and turned to wait for Joe, who stood foremost in a grinning knot of men. Dave sensed that he was expected to act, and turned away. He stopped short at the sight of the corpse.

  The water was sliding from the drowned man’s clothes and escaping through the slats of the pier. Dave listened to its uneven tick on the dead water around the pilings. The terrible apathy of the carcass only made him wonder why they hadn’t wrapped it up in canvas and taken it away before the family arrived. Joe was right: those people should have gone. What could this thing mean to them anymore?

  Looking away, he saw the Old Man coming down the road to the pier, attended by two men with a stretcher, but the breeze, tacking momentarily, shocked him back into the dead man’s presence. He stepped away, shouldering Joe.

  “That’s why they come for us early,” Joe said. “The fifth day, just like I told you.”

  Joe glanced at the bulging mask and turned back to Dave.

  “Five days in the water don’t do much for a guy.” He studied Dave’s expression.

  “He don’t look much like a hero, huh, Dave? Imagine a family hangin around five days to have a look at that.”

  Dave stared at the face again and sat down abruptly on the edge of the pier. “Leave him alone,” he muttered, his voice far away.

  “I ain’t botherin him one little bit.”

  When Joe laughed, Dave opened his eyes. He saw the proffered cigarette in the dark hand, but he could not move. Joe tapped the cigarette against the back of the hand.

  “Here they come,” he said.

  They watched the drowned man’s family approach the foot of the pier, like a knot of sheep unsure of their footing, then glanced at the stretchermen, who were pushing the body onto a rusty square of canvas.

  “Snap it up, you guys, give ’em a break.” Joe’s tone was urgent under his breath. “C’mon, Dave,” he said. He headed down the pier with the picket boat crew.