Mitch shook his head again. “There’s still one car up there. I didn’t see ‘em, though. They’re probably up the river.”
He said nothing about the men from the newspaper. The whole scene up there on the porch, the grotesque cheapness and cruelty of it, made him sick when he thought about it, and he pushed it out of his mind. All she was thinking about was getting her goddamned picture in the paper, he thought, and now she’s going to get a hundred dollars out of it on top of that for some lousy bunch of lies. It’s too bad there ain’t some way she could get the reward money, too, so she could make a good profit while she’s at it. I’m glad, though, that that dude with the notebook stepped up when he did, because I might have killed her if I’d got my hands on her and started. I lost my head, I reckon. The same way I did with Jessie. Or not the same way, either, but I lost my head. I just made things worse again. Every time I try to talk to Jessie I just ball it up worse. I don’t know why the hell I can’t talk to her calm and reasonable, instead of losing my head and starting to shake her or something. I reckon I get too scared thinking about it and then start to go wild. I got to stop that. If it ain’t too late. . . . Tomorrow night, she said. I got to talk to Jessie, but next time I’ll keep my head.
Water started to drip in on them again and he looked up. Them damn sacks are leaking, he thought. I got to straighten ‘em out. He backed out and straightened up, then whirled around in despair as he heard Cass’s voice crying his name.
“Mitch! Mitch, it’s Sewell,” the old man was shouting, turning off the trail and running toward him.
Oh, God, Mitch thought, there ain’t any way I can keep him away from here now. He’s seen me, and the sacks, and he’ll find Sewell, and his yowling and screaming’ll bring every damned cop in the county.
He turned and ran toward Cass, trying to head him off. “What you yelling about?” he demanded.
“It’s Sewell,” Cass said, still stumbling forward through the underbrush, and raising one arm to point outward toward the river. “It’s Sewell. Just come over the radio.”
Mitch stopped, recognizing the identical gesture and the repeated words, the whole thing like the second playing of a phonograph record or a motion-picture reel being rerun. We’re going to go through that whole thing again, he thought with horror. He’s forgot he told me once already and he’s going to do it all over, or else he’s heard it on the radio again on a different station and thinks Sewell drowns all over again every time they say it.
“Stop yelling!” he commanded harshly. I got to shut him up some way, he thought.
Cass came up to him but could not stop, and continued to pace up and down as he had before. If he takes off that silly hat and wrings it out, Mitch thought, I’ll go crazy and jump in the river. I can’t stand no more.
“It’s Sewell,” Cass said wildly. “He’s out there in the river.” And then, suddenly, he stopped, thinking, I done all this before and Mitch was building a dam, but this time he’s got cotton sacks hung up like a tent in that windfall. I done all of this before and Mitch knows about it but he’s so hardhearted he kept right on working on his dam even when he knew my boy was drowned in the river.
He had ceased his pacing and Mitch watched him stare at the cotton sacks and then turn to look at him with that same baffled wonder like an imbecile child lost and forlorn in the rain. “What you got under them sacks, Mitch? What you doing?” he started to say, and then the wildness came into his eyes and he whirled and ran toward the tree, crying out, “Sewell! Sewell!”
He was throwing the sacks back and kneeling blindly in his haste as Mitch leaped after him, very near the border line of panic and shouting now himself.
“Don’t touch him! Goddammit, don’t touch him! Don’t touch his arm. Leave him alone!”
He got his hands on the old man’s shaking body and held him just as Sewell opened his eyes again and looked up at them.
“What’s all this racket?” he asked angrily, not recognizing them at first. Then he saw the weeping Cass held back and restrained just beyond his legs. “What the hell’s he doing here? Is this a party?”
“What’s the matter with his arm, Mitch? What’s happened to his arm?” Cass was asking over and over.
“He’s been snake-bit,” Mitch said roughly. “A rattler bit him.”
“Have you called a doctor? We got to get the wagon and get him out of here. Go get the wagon. Oh, my poor boy!”
“For Christ’s sake, make him shut up,” Sewell said brutally. “He’s making more noise than an old woman. He’ll have the whole county down here.”
Mitch shook him, not wanting to do it, but knowing he had to get the noise stopped some way. “Shut up,” he said savagely. “Shut up! There’s men down here in the bottom looking for him.”
“But he’s been snake-bit,” Cass cried out, struggling. “We got to get him to a doctor.”
Ain’t there no way I can make him understand? Mitch thought with desperation. “We can’t take him to a doctor. It wouldn’t do no good nohow. Do you want Jessie to see him like that? Do you want to turn him over to the law? Ain’t you had enough of that damned circus?”
“Tell him to shut up and mind his own business,” Sewell said coldly.
“You want them money-hungry bastards getting hold of him?” Mitch asked roughly. “You want that woman to go on making a side show out of it, like her husband getting killed was just for her benefit so she could get her picture in the paper?”
“Snake-bit! I tell you he’s been snake-bit,” Cass was still saying wildly, not hearing one word he had said.
Sewell had grown deadly quiet. “What’s that, Mitch? Who did you say?” he asked softly.
“Joy,” Mitch said, his face dark. “I don’t care if she is your wife, she ain’t going to make no circus . . .” Then he stopped, realizing for the first time that Sewell probably didn’t even know she was here. “She’s been here about a month. She’s up there at the house now with them men from the paper, making a circus out of it.”
“We got to get the wagon, Mitch,” Cass cried out again. “Can’t you see—”
“Shut up,” Mitch commanded, feeling sick. It would have been all right, he thought, with just the two of us. We could have stood it. and there wouldn’t have been no fuss to get you started. It would have been all right if he hadn’t come along and started crying. “Shut up! We ain’t going to get no wagon.”
“Mitch, wait a minute,” Sewell said, speaking with great difficulty. “Maybe you better—”
“What?” Mitch asked, puzzled.
Sewell’s eyes were closed and he lay very still. “I’m getting awful sick,” he said faintly. “I’m afraid of it. I-I thought I could pull through, but I don’t know.”
Mitch stared at him. He must be out of his mind, he thought wildly. A doctor ain’t going to do him no good.
“You want me to get the wagon and take you up to the house?” he asked, leaning very close.
”Yes,” Sewell answered faintly. “It may be too late now. I’m afraid I’m going to die. Mitch, I—” He stopped, as if the effort were too great for him. Mitch waited, hardly breathing. “I—I don’t want to die down here in the rain.”