“After what we been through together, don’t we?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. You’re right. We’re friends. I ain’t never had a white friend before.”
“And I ain’t never had a gunshot friend, so that makes us even. You can’t go on, maybe I should look and see if I can find help. I’ll be back, though, you can count on it.”
“I believe you.”
I gave him a pat on the back. “Hold on, buddy. I’ll see what I can find.”
40
I went through the woods, making sure to stop and figure out how to find my way back to Gasper. I made a few marks with sticks, by breaking them off and poking them up in the ground, and I scooped out some dirt with my heels, mounding it up. I had me a kind of map, that way. Something I felt I could follow back.
The day was hot, and I was feeling sticky and weak, so I sat down on the ground for a rest. When I looked up, the biggest, ugliest dog I’ve ever seen was peeking out at me from between some trees. He was bigger than a wolf, and his fur was all twisted up and had briars and such in it, and he looked blue. He had a head about the size of a hog’s head, and he looked strong enough to drag me off into the woods and eat me and make me like it.
I said, “Dog, if you’re going to eat me, then get it over with. I’m hungry, thirsty, and tuckered out. I ain’t got no fight left in me.”
When I spoke, the dog stuck out his tongue and dropped his head, and came out of the trees wagging his tail.
“You just look like a bad dog, don’t you.”
He came to me. I was still too tired to stand. I reached out and patted him on the head. When I pulled my hand back, it stunk like a dead skunk.
“Whoa. You are stinky, aren’t you?”
I got up and started walking again. Stinky walked with me. I didn’t know where he had come from or if he belonged to someone, but I won’t lie, I was glad for company.
Coming to a fork in the trail, I turned right, and the dog didn’t go with me. He whined and barked. When I looked back, he was standing right where the trail forked.
“What’s with you, Nasty?” I said.
He barked at me.
I went back and gave his stinky head a pat. He started down the fork to the left, turned and looked at me, and barked.
I got it. He lived the other way. And if he lived with someone, that was the way I ought to go.
“All right,” I said, “Lead the way, Nasty.”
He turned and bolted down the trail, and I went after him.
41
I smelled fish cooking, and then the dog ran up over a rise, and when I came down on the other side, I saw a clearing in the trees, and there was a cabin there with a couple of old pickups sitting out beside it. Smoke was coming out the chimney, and there were people on the porch.
One of the people was a colored man in overalls and lace-up boots. He saw Nasty coming before he saw me, and then when he saw me, the others on the porch looked. As we got closer, I saw that the others were Jane and Tony. I was so excited and happy my heart skipped a beat.
Jane jumped up off the porch and ran out to meet me, threw her arms around me, and kissed me on the cheek.
“We was afraid you got shot, or drowned, or a snake got you.”
“Nearly got shot. Nearly drowned. Saw a snake. Alligator ate Big Bill.”
“Wow,” Jane said. “Where’s Gasper?”
“He got shot and couldn’t walk. I left him to look for help.”
The big colored man, who was even bigger close up, came out to me and said, “You say someone was shot?”
I explained what had happened.
“You should grab something to eat,” he said, “and then we can go.”
“I can’t leave him there while I eat. We got to get him now.”
The colored man, who told me his name was Junior, went to the back of his house and came back with a wheelbarrow.
“We’ll tote him in this,” Junior said.
“Thanks, Mr. Junior.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Hadn’t been for your dog, I wouldn’t have found you.”
“That’s not my dog.”
“No?”
“I just let him stay around. He come up one day, been here ever since.”
I started leading the way and the others followed.
It was a long way back, and when we found Gasper, he was worse. He had a fever and was talking out of his head. I got hold of his feet and Junior got his shoulders, and we lifted him into the wheelbarrow.
The ground was soft, and that made it tough going with the wheelbarrow, but Junior didn’t seem to mind. He acted like he could do that all day.
Nasty trotted along just ahead of us, as if he was an official guide.
It was late afternoon by the time we got back to Junior’s house, and I was starved. While Junior and Jane took Gasper inside, I sat on the porch and picked at a bony fish that tasted about as good as anything I’d ever ate. When I finished up I went inside. Gasper was stretched out on the bed on his stomach, and Junior had cut his pants leg open with a knife. He was heating the knife in a candle flame when I went in. When it was clean by fire, he poured some whiskey from a bottle over it, then poured some on Gasper’s legs. Gasper jumped and said something that didn’t make any sense. He was still out of his head.
Junior took a swig of the whiskey, said, “You two going to have to hold him.”
I got his shoulders and Jane got his left ankle, where just above it, in the calf, was the wound.
“Young’n,” Junior said to Tony, who was standing in the doorway, “you come over here and sit on his good leg.”
Tony did just that.
Junior said, “Now, he’s going to scream, but don’t let him go.”
And Junior went to work with the knife.
Gasper had good lungs. He screamed so loud and so long, when we was finished, my ears hurt.
Junior put the buckshot he dug out of Gasper’s leg into a bowl on a table beside the bed. He poured more whiskey on the leg when he finished, drank a bit for himself, then wrapped the leg.
We rolled Gasper on his back, and within a moment, he was asleep. Junior touched his forehead. “Fever done broke. Figured it would, soon as I got that lead out of him.”
We went out on the porch and let Gasper sleep. Junior gave some scraps to Nasty and had us tell all that had happened to us. Jane told him, and managed not to gussy it up with a lie.
“No one is going to miss Sheriff Big Bill Brady,” Junior said. “Unless maybe he’s got a dog. It’s good his nonsense is over with.”
“Thing is,” Jane said, looking over at the sleeping Gasper, “Gasper has no place to go. I don’t want to leave him, but we’re on a mission. And well, frankly, they ain’t gonna let a colored go where we go.”
“I know that,” Junior said. “I know that every day. That’s why I live up here in these woods, where white folks can’t tell me what to do and when to do it. Ain’t nobody can.”
“Maybe we ought to ask Gasper what he wants to do,” I said. “It ain’t right to make a decision for him.”
“It might not be right,” Junior said, “but with that leg he ain’t going nowhere for a spell, and don’t need to have a choice about it. But what did you mean about a mission, girl?”
She explained to him about Strangler and the gangsters. She told it straight, but it sounded like a lie, it was so wild.
“That’s some situation,” Junior said.
“I know how it sounds,” I said. “But it’s real.”
“I reckon it’s true,” Junior said. “Though I get this feeling that you, girl, you might stretch the blanket a little. You got some storyteller in you, which is sometimes a word for liar.”
“Now and again,” she said, “even a true story needs a little something to spice it up.”
42
“Now,” Junior said, handing me the keys. “That ole pickup ain’t much, but it’ll run. I just don’t know for how long. You can take it and go find your man, and when you get through, you can bring the truck back if it’s still running.”