“We got nothing to hold him for, Arthel,” the sheriff said. “Nothing. These boys’ve been through a lot. They want to get back home.”
“Don’t let him go, I’m telling you. Listen, my sister called up last night, and she was just a-crying. Benson ain’t come home yet. She knows he’s dead. She just knows it. He ain’t never been gone this long before. And these fellers was the only ones up in there, when he was.”
“Now, you don’t know that, Arthel,” the sheriff said. “What you mean is, they was the only city fellows.”
I shook my head as though I couldn’t believe such stupidity, which was the case, sure enough.
“Y’all can go any time you want to,” the sheriff said. “Just leave me your addresses.”
I did and said, “OK. Let us know if you find anything.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll be the fust.”
I slept again, as in a place beyond all sleep, around on the other side of death, and came back, floating, when I thought I heard the ringing of the owl on the other birds, in Martha’s wind-toy at home. It was early, and we were free. I dressed and went to Bobby’s room and woke him. The woman who owned the place was up, and we paid her with the last of our money and drove to the filling station to get Lewis’ car. The sheriff was sitting there talking to the owner. We got out.
“Morning,” he said. “Y’all getting an early start, eh?”
“Thought we would,” I said. “What can we do for you?”
“Not a thing,” he said. “Just wanted to make sure you had your keys, and everything you need.”
“We can make it fine,” I said. “There is one thing, Sheriff, though. We owe some fellows up in Oree for bringing these cars down to us. Would you tell them that we’ll send them the money, just as quick as we get back to the city? They’ll believe you before they will us, because you live up here; they know who you are.”
“Be glad to,” he said. “What’re their names?”
“Griner. They run a garage up there.”
“I’ll get word to ‘em. Don’t worry about it. And you say they’re the last people you saw, before you got down here?”
“The last and only. There was also another man with them. I don’t know who he was.”
“Maybe we ought to know who he was. I might even go up there and talk to all of ‘em myself. And you kin be sure I’ll tell ‘em about the money.”
“OK. We’re going along now.”
“Take it easy going home,” he said. “And, buddy, let me tell you one thing. Don’t ever do anything like this again. Don’t come back up here.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” I said. I grinned, and slowly, so did he. “Is this your way of telling me to get out of town and not show my face in these-here parts again?”
“You might say that,” he said.
“Aw, now, Sheriff, you know we ain’t no hired guns,” I said, like Texas. “We’re all bow-and-arrow men.”
“You listen to me, now, boy.”
“You ought to be in the movies, Sheriff. Or go live in Montana. You could probably find worse bad men than me in either one.”
“I might do that,” he said. “Not much action here, I can tell you. A few people stealing chickens, and a little moonshining. Not much action.”
“Not till we came.”
“Yeah; we don’t want no more of that. Dragging that river’s tough.”
“Neither do we; you won’t see us again.”
“OK. So long. Have a good trip.”
“So long. And I hope Deputy Queen finds his brotber-in-law.”
“Aw, he’ll come in drunk. He’s a mean bastard anyway. Old Queen’s sister’d be better off without him. So would everybody else.”
I started to get in Drew’s car.
“‘Fore you go, buddy, let me ask you something and tell you something.”
“Ask me.”
“How come you-all ended up with four life jackets?”
“We had an extra one. In fact we had two. You’re liable to find another one downriver. They float, you know. Now what was it you wanted to tell me?”
“You done good.”
“Somebody had to do something,” I said. “I didn’t want to die, either.”
“You ‘us hurt bad, but if it wudn’t for you you’d all be in the river with your other man.”
“Thanks, Sheriff—I’ll take that with me.”
“You damned fucking ape,” he said. “Who on earth was your father, boy?”
“Tarzan,” I said.
Bobby settled into Lewis’ wagon, and I got a map from the rack at the station and buckled down in the other car.
“Let’s go get the canoe,” I hollered over.
“Jesus, no,” he said. “Leave it. I never want to see it or touch it or smell it again. Leave the goddamned thing.”
“No,” I said. “We’re going to get it. Follow me. It’ll just take a minute.”
Some kids were playing in the canoe, and I thought this was a good sign, indicating that Deputy Queen wasn’t around. Also, they might have washed out Lewis’ vomit, or some of it, anyway. I got the kids out and took a long look at the hull. It was really battered and beat-up, not only along the bottom but on the sides clear up to the gunwales in some places; I felt the rock shocks all over again, just looking at them. There were a couple of holes—small holes—close together in the middle, but it could have stood some more, though maybe not a whole lot.
Before we began to struggle with the boat, I chanced to look up across the river, and there were some men moving among the trees. There was a little cemetery there, so well bidden among the trees and bushes that I would not have seen it at all except for the human forms moving there.
I asked one of the children what was happening. “Is it a funeral?”
“Naw,” one muddy little girl said. “They’re gonna move them people ‘fore they finish the dam. They’re diggin’ ‘em.”
I had known that it was no funeral; there was too much movement. But I wasn’t quite prepared for this. I looked closer, and there were some green coffins stacked together, and a couple of the men were disappearing below the ground and coming back up together, heaving at something.
“Like TVA, I guess,” I said to Bobby.
“I guess,” he said. “Come on, for God’s sake. Let’s leave this place.”
We wrestled the canoe through the kudzu and strapped it to the roof of the wagon.
“Go ahead, Bobby,” I said. “You know where Lewis lives. Tell Mrs. Medlock what happened, and remember to tell it like it was. She’ll take care of you. And call Martha when you get in and tell her I’ll be right along.”
“I’ll remember what to say,” he said. “How could I forget?”
I went back down to the spillway and stood next to the water for the last time. I stooped and drank from the river.
Going back was easy and pleasant, though I was driving a dead man’s car, and everything in it reminded me of him: the good shape the engine was in, the neatness of it, the little decal of the company he worked for on the windshield. The thing to do was to get outside the car into the landscape, and to watch my own world develop from it as I went toward the city. After four hours I passed slowly from the Country of Nine-Fingered People and Prepare to Meet Thy God into the Drive-ins and Motels and Homes of the Whopper, but all I could see was the river. It came at me between rocks—and here the car would involuntarily speed up—it came at me in slow loops and green stillnesses, with trees and cliffs and lifesaving bridges.
And I could not leave off worrying about the details of the story we had told, and what the ramifications of any one of them might be. I was sure about Lewis, as sure of him as I was of myself, but who could be that sure of either, of any man? But I was not sure of Bobby. He drank an awful lot, and a person will say, a lot of times, exactly the most perverse and self-incriminating thing he can think of when he is drunk enough, and when he is like Bobby. But what would keep his mouth shut about the truth was himself kneeling over the log with a shotgun at his head, howling and bawling and kicking his feet like a little boy. He wouldn’t want anybody to know that, no matter what; no matter how drunk he was. No, he would stay with my version of things.