The constable was almost to his feet when we ran outside. We ran past Constable Sy’s truck in the yard, and started downhill toward the river. We was just following the Reverend Joy, like he knew something we didn’t, but we all knew in the back of our minds where we was going. The raft. When we got to it, we loosened the rope, and pushed off with our poles. The water wasn’t running fast, and we couldn’t see good, but there was enough current to get us moving.
We hadn’t gone far when something hit the raft. It hit and bounced off into the water. Looking back at the bank and up the hill, I saw Sy’s big shape on the rise. He was bending down and coming up fast with small rocks, throwing them at us. One hit my foot hard enough it made me hop.
“You don’t do this to me,” he yelled. “You just don’t do it. I’ll catch you all. Every damn one of you.”
“You couldn’t catch a cold,” I yelled back at him.
The rocks kept coming, and Constable Sy had a good arm. We was way out and still they was coming. Mama crawled into the hut Reverend Joy had built and hid out there, rocks clattering on top of it like hailstones.
Eventually the water was faster and we moved beyond his arm, sailing out of the little horseshoe spot where we had been and onto the main river. By that time, we couldn’t see him anymore, though we could hear him running through the brush and trees and cussing his head off, trying to catch up.
Soon we couldn’t hear him, either. We had a straight shot on the river now, and it was just a dark, wide line of water. There could have been sandbars or rocks or logs in our path and we wouldn’t have seen them until we was right up on them. But we didn’t have a choice. We used the poles to stay as straight as we could and let the water run us, Jinx doing her best with the rudder at the back.
Mama crawled out of the little hut and sat down in front of it. Reverend Joy, who had been standing on the raft like he was a rock target but hadn’t so much as been grazed, looked at Mama and said, “I think I killed a man.”
I was thinking: that makes two. But I didn’t say anything. Jinx did, however.
“Hell, yeah, you killed him,” she said. “You knocked his head all the way around on his neck. You hit him any harder, his brother, Don, would have died, too, and maybe them hogs they got in the yard would have keeled over. I ain’t never seen nobody take a piece of wood like that.”
“I didn’t mean to hit him that hard,” Reverend Joy said, and he sat down on the raft as if his legs had just melted. He still had the pistol in his hand, and the way he held it, loose and unconcerned, made me nervous. Mama scooted over beside him and put her arm around his shoulders.
“I don’t know you didn’t mean to,” Jinx said. “I ain’t never seen nobody get hit that hard that wasn’t on purpose. I think you meant it.”
“Jinx, hush,” Terry said.
“I ain’t got nothing for that Gene,” Jinx said. “I hope he is dead.”
“I think I heard something snap,” Reverend Joy said.
“That was his neck,” Jinx said.
“You did what you had to do,” Mama said.
“Here’s something I hate to bring up,” Terry said. “The money is back at the cabin. And so are May Lynn’s ashes.”
“What money?” Reverend Joy said. “Whose ashes?”
These were the parts of the story Mama had left out when she told him why we was on the river. Now, as we floated on, she filled the Reverend Joy in on it. After she was done, he sat there taken aback, looking up at us with his mouth open. He had in one night lost his church, murdered a man, and discovered he had run off downriver with a bunch of thieves and grave robbers. It was a lot to take in. Right then his mind went somewhere we couldn’t go, and it didn’t try to come back, least not right away. He just turned around and, still clutching the pistol, crawled inside the hut, sticking his head in there and letting his feet hang out on the raft.
“Guess he didn’t take none of that too well,” Jinx said. “I was just trying to give him a compliment on his board slinging. It wasn’t meant in a bad way.” She studied his feet hanging out of the hut. “Even so, looks like he’d just go on and crawl the rest of the way in.”
“I believe he has gone as far as his will allows,” Terry said.
16
We drifted for a long time, me and Terry using the poles to keep the raft in the middle of the river. Jinx was still at the rudder, and she was beginning to get the hang of it. The reverend had done a fine job building the rudder, and it heaved easy and gave the raft better direction and kept us from swirling.
Reverend Joy hadn’t moved from where he lay. Fact was, I thought he might have died, but Mama checked on him. She grabbed him by the feet and pulled him out of the hut. He drawed his knees up and put his hands under his chin, one of them still hanging on to the pistol, which was slightly unnerving. Mama sat by him, put a hand on his arm, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“I feel certain we can navigate a good distance downriver,” Terry said, poling the shallow bottom with his long pole. “Then we need to find a place to tie up, and go back for the money and May Lynn’s ashes. Fact is, I think we could just take the ashes and leave the money. It’s nothing but trouble.”
“I don’t like that,” Jinx said, calling from her place at the rudder. “May Lynn’s dead, but that money is still green as grass. I done ran off from home and been threatened with all kinds of mean things, and had rocks thrown at me, and now you’re saying leave it. I ain’t all that much for going back, but if we go back for May Lynn’s burnt-up ass, I say we get that money.”
“We could take enough to continue our trip and leave the rest,” Terry said. “Maybe if we do that, Constable Sy will be satisfied with the bulk of the money. We could just leave it on the table. He may decide to stop bothering us, especially if we are far away and are not causing him concern.”
“There’s still Cletus and Skunk,” Jinx said. “And maybe Don.”
“There isn’t anyone called Skunk,” Terry said. “He’s nothing more than a story people tell to scare their children.”
“He’s a story that will chop off hands, you can bet on that,” Jinx said. “I come out of this, I’d just as soon not have to ask someone else to pick my nose and wipe my butt.”
“If he’s real, you’ll not only be missing hands,” I said. “You’ll be dead.”
“I take to that even less,” Jinx said.
“I tell you again,” Terry said. “There is no Skunk.”
“There are a lot of folks who believe in Skunk,” Mama said. “I’ve heard about him all my life.”
“Have you seen him, Mrs. Wilson?” Terry asked.
“Well, no. But I know people who say they have.”
“There are people who have told me with considerable conviction that they’ve seen snakes that can grab their tails with their teeth and roll downhill like a hoop, or snakes that can suck a milk cow dry, but with all due respect, ma’am, I don’t believe it.”
“I ain’t no believer in snakes can do that,” Jinx said. “But I believe in Skunk.”
“Here’s the thing,” I said. “Skunk or no Skunk, we got to go back for the money and the ashes. There’s a man been killed over that money and tucked in a shallow grave, and there’s another dead one back there in the reverend’s house. We’ve come this far, I say we need that money and we owe May Lynn a little something for drawing that map we found, and for being our friend.”
“I don’t know that I want you children to do that,” Mama said.
“No offense again, Mrs. Wilson, but you really don’t have a say in this,” Terry said. “You haven’t said boo to Sue Ellen all this time, and now you want to tell her how to do things? I’m glad you’re back from where you went, but these decisions are now ours.”
“He’s right, Mama,” I said, before she could say anything back. “You don’t have a say in this. You came with us, not the other way around.”
“I suppose that’s true,” she said. She sounded the way she did when she had been in bed sucking cure-all. I hated that. I liked her better a little on the feisty side. But that still didn’t change the fact that Terry was right. This wasn’t her decision.