A short time before, I was mostly sure there was no Skunk; now there was no way I could doubt him. No way I couldn’t fear him. He was out there, and his stinky self was looking for us.
We each took one of the tow sacks that Terry had brought from the raft and gathered up the rest of our goods, including a few tins of food and a bit of bread. Then Terry scratched around for the key he said was hidden in the door frame. He found it right off. Outside the house, standing on the end of the porch, I put my sack aside and leaned over and vomited. When I did, and Terry smelled it, it was just one stink too much. He leaned over and tossed up his insides, too.
When we was finished doing that, we scratched our feet in the dirt to get the blood off our shoes, then went out to the well and pulled up the bucket. There was a dipper hanging there on a stout cord, and we dipped water from the bucket and took turns drinking.
As we did, I looked over and seen the front door of Reverend Joy’s car was slightly open. I nudged Terry, and he saw what I was talking about right away. Hefting the flashlight, he started over there. I pulled the pistol and followed.
At the car, Terry looked through the windshield, then back at me. He shook his head, opened the front door so we could see inside clearly. The reverend’s blanket and pillow was in there. They was pushed around, not neat like he usually left them. There was blood smears from fingers all over the dash and all over the pillow and the back of the car seat. I noticed then that there was blood on the inside and outside door handle. That same smell from the house came rolling out of there like a speeding truck. It hit us hard enough we had to back up. I thought for a moment I was going to throw up again.
“He slept in the car,” Terry said. “Skunk. He killed Constable Sy, chopped him and Gene up, came out here, and spent the night in the car. That’s some guts.”
“That’s some crazy,” I said.
Terry looked down at his hand, lifted it, and showed it to me. Where he had taken hold of the car door he had gotten blood on himself. We went back to the well. I poured water over his hand and rinsed it away.
“Let’s get the money and ashes and leave,” I said.
“Gladly,” Terry said.
“You think this Skunk fellow has given up on us?” I said.
Terry shrugged. “How can we know? I doubt it. I think he likes what he does. I didn’t even consider there really could be a Skunk, but now I’m scared to death there is. I owe Jinx an apology.”
“If he was following us, after taking a sleep, he might be going along the river now,” I said. “Mama and Jinx are on that sandbar waiting on us. If he gets there first-”
I let that hang.
Terry hustled over to the work shed and unlocked it. It was tight in there with lumber from the reverend’s projects. There was a birdhouse in the corner, almost finished. Terry moved toward the back, bent down by the wall, and pulled at one of the boards. It creaked and the nails slipped out. There was a surprising lot of room between that board and the outside boards. Inside was two good-sized lard buckets.
Terry pulled them out by their wire handles and set them on top of the lumber. He found a screwdriver, used that to pry open the lids. Inside the cans was something wrapped in old hand towels. He took out first one, then the other, unwrapped them. There was a fruit jar wrapped up in each hand towel. One held the ashes, the other had the money.
“I wanted you to see how I arranged the money and what’s left of May Lynn,” he said. “I preferred you to know what was what.”
“Now I know,” I said. “Close them up, and let’s get.”
We gathered up our tow sacks. I put one can-I don’t even know which one-in my bag, and Terry put the other in his. I shoved the pistol in my overalls and we got out of there.
17
We figured since Skunk must have a bit of squirrel blood in him from living in the woods, he would take the shorter, surer route of moving close to the river. The way things grew along the river from the reverend’s house to the raft was thick, and we thought for us the better choice would be to do as we had done before. Go wide. Maybe that way we could stay away from Skunk.
Skunk. It was so hard to get the idea of him being real wrapped around my mind. Finding out he was real was like finding out the Billy Goats Gruff was real and didn’t like you personally.
In the daytime it wasn’t so scary traveling through the marshes, and at first we was making good time. We saw lots of snakes as we went, even a spreading adder, which isn’t all that common. They ain’t poisonous, but they can give a person quite a start, rising up like they do with their head fanning out like they’re a cobra.
We also saw what the snakes was looking for-mice and rats. There was one spot we come to where they ran through the marsh grass thick as fleas on a mangy dog’s hide. There was lots of crows cawing, and we could see where wild hogs had torn up the land. The heat from the day made the marsh heat up and smell bad, but compared to what we had smelled in the cabin, it was like French perfume. That thunder we heard the night before we could hear again, and there were new flashes of lightning in the daylight sky.
“That rain seems determined to come,” I said. “But it keeps taking a rest.”
“I can’t say that I blame it,” Terry said. “A rest would be nice.”
He was right about that. After trudging through the mud the night before and after seeing what we had seen, we got so tired that when we came to a run of shady cottonwoods, we stopped under them without even discussing it. We tossed our bags aside and sat down and leaned against the trunk of one of the trees and closed our eyes to rest. And though they say there’s no rest for the wicked and the good don’t need any, exhaustion caught up with us like a train and run us over.
I dreamed of Hollywood again, and it was the same dream as before, with us on the raft with May Lynn’s ashes, but this time, as we sailed, no one waved as we went past. All the pretty people looked fine, but they stunk bad enough to gag a maggot. It was a stink that brought me awake.
When I opened my eyes, it was almost dark. I thought I had been asleep only a few minutes, but we had slept most of the day away. I sniffed the stinking air and glanced at Terry beside me. He was awake. I started to say something, but he reached out and touched me gently, said, “Shh.” He pointed. I looked.
Way down in the direction of the river, running through the dying light, was a man shape. The shape was dark and wore a derby hat; something bright was pinned to it. The shape’s hair was long and kinky and it stuck out from under the hat on the sides and rolled down the man’s neck like a large wad of copper wire. Something flopped along the side of his head as he ran. His face in the twilight looked like polished mahogany washed in blood. He had a walking stick with him, and as his feet lifted I saw they was way long and wide. I thought for a moment that whoever this was wasn’t human. Course, the smell told me who it was. It was Skunk. But maybe Skunk wasn’t human.
We watched until Skunk was way beyond us and was swallowed up by where the ground sloped toward the Sabine. After a while, I said, “Some master tracker. Here we was, and he didn’t see us asleep under a tree.”
“We were in a fortunate spot,” Terry said. “We were hard to see here in the shadows. I speculate that after he abandoned the car, he found someplace to sleep more comfortably out here in the open. It’s more his natural way of doing things. Had we not taken to the higher ground, birds would be pecking our remains right now. What I presume he’s doing is following what Constable Sy told him when he was tortured. That we had taken to the river. He isn’t actually following a sign because he believes we’re downriver on the raft, so he doesn’t need to look for any indication we’re on land.”