The version was strong; I had made it and tried it out against the world, and it had held. It had become so strong in my mind that I had trouble getting back through it to the truth. But when I did, the truth was there: the moon shone and pressed down the wild river, the cliff was against my heart, beating back at it with the pulse of stone, and a pine needle went subtly into my ear as I waited in a tree for the light to come.
I was on the final four-lane now; I had eaten in almost every drive-in along here. I had shopped in about half the stores in the shopping center where I was now turning off, and Martha had shopped in them all. I went up the long residential hill, away from the moan of the great trucks and Amoco rigs. I turned off again, and went curving easily home.
It was about two o’clock. I drove into the yard and knocked on the back door. They were going to save me, here. Martha opened the door. We stood for a while feeling each other closely and then went in. I took off my brogans and stood them in the corner and walked around on the wall-to-wall carpeting. I went out to the car and took the knife and belt and slung them off deep into the suburban woods.
“I could use a drink, sugar,” I said.
“Tell me,” she said, looking at my side. “Tell me. What happened to you? I knew something like this would happen.”
“No you didn’t,” I said. “Not anything like this.”
“Come lie down, baby,” she said. “Let me have a look.”
I went with her to the bedroom, where she put an old ragsheet on the bed, and I lay down on it. She pulled off my shirt and looked, with pure, practical love, and then she stepped to the bathroom for three or four bottles. The whole medicine cabinet looked like a small hospital itself, packed into the wall. She came back shaking bottles.
“Give me that drink, love,” I said. “Then we can get into all this playing doctor.”
“All doctors play doctor,” she said. “And all nurses play nurse. And all ex-nurses play nurse, especially when they love somebody.”
She brought me the bottle of Wild Turkey, and I turned it up and drank. Then she started soaking through the bandage with some household mystery from the bathroom. It came off me shred by shred, and the inside was bloody indeed. The stitches were slimy with blood and some other bodily matter; whatever I had at that place.
“You’re all right,” she said. “It’s a good job. The edges are pulling together.”
“Good news,” I said. “Can you fix it up again?”
“I can fix it,” she said. “But what happened to you? These are cut wounds, clean edges, most of them. Did somebody get you with a knife? An awful sharp one?”
“I did,” I said. “It was me.”
“What kind of an accident …?”
“No accident,” I said. “… Look, let me go see Drew’s wife. Then I’m coming back and sleep for a week. Right with you. Right with you.”
She was professional and tender, and tough, what I would have hoped for; what I knew I could have expected; what I had undervalued. She put antibiotic salve all over the place and then several layers of gauze, and then tape, expertly, letting the air come through. When I got up, the wound was not so stiff, and my side bad begun to be a part of me again; though it still hurt, and hurt badly, it was not pulling against me at every move.
“Will you follow me over and drive me back?”
She nodded.
At Drew’s house his horned little boy in a cub scout uniform opened the door. I went in with the car keys in my hand while Pope went to get Mrs. Ballinger. I stood there, surrounded by Drew’s things, the walls full of tape recorders and record cabinets, the sales awards and company citations. The keys in my hand were jangling.
“Mrs. Ballinger,” I said, as she came at me, “Drew has been killed.” It was as though I had said it to stop her, to keep her from getting at me.
It stopped her. One hand came up slowly, almost dreamingly, from her side and went to her mouth, and the other came over it, to hold it down. Behind her fingers her head shook in a small, intense movement of disbelief.
“He was drowned,” I said. “Lewis broke his leg. Bobby and I were just lucky. We could have all been killed.”
She held her mouth. The keys jangled and rang.
“I brought the car back.”
“So useless,” she said, her voice filled with fingers. “So useless.”
“Yes, it was useless,” I said. “We shouldn’t have gone. But we did. We did.”
“Such a goddamned useless way to die.”
“I guess every way is useless,” I said.
“Not this useless.”
“We stayed as long as they needed us up there, looking for the body. They’re still looking. I don’t think they’ll find it, but they’re looking.”
“Useless.”
“Drew was the best man we had,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I’m so goddamned sorry. Is there anything I can do? I mean that. Can I …”
“You can get out of here, Mr. Gentry. You can get out of here and go find that insane friend of yours, Lewis Medlock, and you can shoot him. That’s what you can do.”
“He’s pretty badly hurt, himself. And he’s just as sorry as I am. Please understand that. It’s not his fault. It’s the river’s fault. It’s our fault for going with him.”
“All right,” she said from far off, from the future, from all the years coming up, and from the first night alone in bed. “All right, Ed. Nobody can do anything. Nobody can ever do anything. It’s all so useless. Everything is useless. It always has been.”
I saw she was becoming speechless, but I tried one more thing.
“Can I have Martha come over and stay with you for a couple of days?”
“I don’t want Martha. I want Drew.”
She broke, and I started toward her, but she shook her bead violently and I backed off, turned, put the keys on the coffee table beside the company history, and went out.
As we drove home I wondered if it would have been any better if I’d been able to tell the truth. Would it be easier for her if I could tell her that Drew was lying in a wild stretch of the Cahulawassee with part of his head bashed in either by a bullet or a rock, sunk down with a stone and a bowstring, eddying a little back and forth, side to side with the motion of the water? I did not see how knowing that would help. The only possibility was that it might spark in her the animal mania for revenge, if he truly had been shot, and nothing more could be done about that than had already been done: no electric chair, no rope or gas chamber could avenge him better, or as well.
Back at home I put an easy chair in front of the picture window and got a blanket and a pillow and sat looking out onto the street with the phone beside me all afternoon. I was shaking. Martha sat on the floor and put her head in my lap and held my hand, and then went and got a bottle of whiskey and a couple of glasses.
“Baby,” she said. “Tell me what it is. Is somebody after you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so. But I’m not sure. Somebody may be after me. Also, the law may be after me. I’ve just got to tough it out. If nothing happens for a couple of weeks, I think we’ll be all right.”
“Can’t you tell me?”
“No, I can’t tell you now. Maybe I can’t ever tell you.”
“Who cut you, Ed? Who cut my good man?”
“I did it,” I said. “I fell on one of my arrows, and I had to cut it out with a knife. There was not any other way; I couldn’t get us downriver with an arrow sticking through me. So I cut. I’m glad the knife was sharp, or I’d probably still be hacking.”
“Go to sleep, honey. I’ll let you know if anything happens. I’m right here with you. There’s no more woods and no more river. Go to sleep.”
But I couldn’t. We live on a dead-end street, so that any car that comes down it either belongs to the people who live on the street or has some business with them. I watched the few cars I recognized come in, and turn into the various driveways. About ten o’clock one stopped in front of our house. The lights swung slowly around and enveloped us, and Martha closed my mouth with a warm hand as I sat there blinded. Ours was the last driveway, and the driver was just using it to turn around in. He went away, and finally so did I.