Me and Jinx went down by the river looking again for a rock heavy enough that we might strike the padlock off the chain. Taking the boat was stealing again, and it made me to think if I wasn’t careful I could be a career criminal. Criminal business was steady work, and sometimes there was money in it, but there was that whole prison thing, too, and that didn’t appeal to me much. But bad times bred bad intentions, and right now surviving was more important than anything.
“You think Terry’s going to be okay?” Jinx asked me. We was prowling around near the shoreline, farther up from where we had looked before, trying to come across a solid enough rock. Most of them was weak and came apart after they had been tested with a few strikes to the ground.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess it depends on if we can get him to a doctor.”
“He sure is pretty,” she said.
I stopped and looked at her. “He is, but how come you’re just now noticing it?”
“I’ve always noticed it,” she said. “I’d have to be blind not to. It’s just that…Well…”
“He’s white,” I said.
“Yeah. That kind of thing don’t work in these parts, and I know he’s my friend and all, but I sometimes think of him in ways I shouldn’t, him being sissy and all.”
“I didn’t know you was attached like that.”
“I didn’t neither until I thought he might die. I guess I figured since we were going out to California there might be a little different outlook there. That he might be interested if I cleaned myself up some and learned how to talk right.”
“You know he’s a sissy, right?”
“It ain’t nothing but dreaming nohow, and I wish I hadn’t told you.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’ve thought the same thing about him.”
“Yeah, but you ain’t colored,” she said.
“It wouldn’t matter,” I said. “He ain’t got the desire for neither of us. If he didn’t have the desire for May Lynn, he damn sure don’t have it for us.”
Jinx went quiet when I said that, and there wasn’t any more talking to her about it or anything else. She trudged along and made some space between us for a while, and we went back to searching for that rock we needed.
Finally we come across one that was heavy and solid, but easy enough for one person to handle if they meant business. Me and Jinx took turns carrying it back to the boat, and when we got there, I took the first crack at it by climbing in the boat and striking the lock. The boat moved when I struck it and the chain rattled, but the only thing I managed to do to the lock was scratch it up some.
“Let me have that goddamn rock,” Jinx said. She climbed in the boat as I climbed out. She picked it up and lifted it high above her head. Her mouth twisted up, and then she brought that rock down with a good lick. The padlock leaped open, as if on command.
“Now,” she said, “let’s go up there and get Terry.”
We left the loose padlock poking through the chain, got the paddles out of the boat, put them on shore, then went back to where Terry lay. We folded his bad arm across his chest. It had already swole up again, and there were red lines moving up to his elbow. I knew what that was. Blood poisoning.
I got his feet and Mama and Jinx got him under the shoulders. We struggled with him across the clearing and went into the woods, only banging his head into a tree a couple of times before we got down to the boat and managed to stretch him out in the bottom of it. Then we loosed the chain from the padlock, got in the boat, and pushed off.
I didn’t feel any real relief until we was out in the center of the river and the water was carrying us along. Jinx was in the back paddling, with Mama having to sit up so close to her they was near like one person. I was in the front, and I found I was hitting the water with the paddle hard, thinking on what I thought I knew now and feeling really angry about it and at the same time sad and confused. I knew there wasn’t no need dwelling on it, not right then, even though it was bothering me something furious. I wanted to tell someone, but didn’t know how. I guess I knew, too, that no matter how certain I felt about what I was thinking, it was just a guess.
Skunk was a bigger worry, and that’s where I put my mind and let it rest. I had come to think that he was in fact playing with us, and on more than one occasion when we was on land the hair on the back of my neck had stood up, and when I had turned there was nothing. I didn’t mention this to the others, because I didn’t know if there was something real to it or it was just me imagining.
My thought was if we could stay in the middle of the river all the way to Gladewater, providing I’d even know when we got there, we might have a chance. But there was another thing. I was bad hungry and my stomach was growling like a dog. It wasn’t until we come to a spot in the river where the shore was cleared of trees, and we could see a house set back a ways from the river with some chickens in the yard, that I finally couldn’t stand it anymore. Those darn chickens running around out there made me lick my lips.
I looked back at Jinx, and she didn’t say nothing, but it was like she knew what I was thinking, cause she just nodded at me. I paddled the boat toward land and she paddled with me. Me and Jinx and Mama tugged the boat on shore about halfway, and then I said, “Me and Jinx are gonna see we can get some food. Mama, you stay with Terry. Something goes wrong up there, or there’s a ruckus, or you even think you see Skunk, or if you don’t hear from us after too long, you push off and paddle like you’re rowing across the Jordan for the Promised Land.”
“Be careful,” she said, and with that me and Jinx started up to the house.
The place was on a rise in the land. The grass was tall in the yard and green, but not from any kind of cultivating; it was naturally that way. Some quail flew up as we come along, and there wasn’t no chickens after all. Me and Jinx was both surprised to see they was just big water birds pecking around for bugs. They took to the air as we got closer to them. Off in the distance I could see an old pen with the slats broken down, a well that had a near-fallen-down board curbing, and an outhouse that had a slat missing on the side.
Me and Jinx talked stuff over as we went, and we come to the decision that the thing to do was just to be straight up about it, and depend on the kindness of strangers, ask them to give us something to eat. Right then I was so hungry I’d have settled for a fistful of raw beans.
Since Jinx was colored, she knew she had to linger back and let me do the talking, in case it turned out to be white folks who lived there. If they was colored, then she could come up and talk. It was best to start out expecting someone white, as they could get real upset about a colored on their stoop.
I stepped up to the door and knocked briskly and stepped back. There was stirring in the house, like a rat crawling out from under newspapers, and soon the door opened. Standing there was an old woman, thin as a broomstick and bent over like a horseshoe. She wore a long faded blue gingham dress and a filthy white bonnet with straps that was tied off under her chin. Some white hair had escaped out from under it in spots, and one greasy strand was stuck to her face; at first glance it looked like a scar. Her face itself was dark as old leather and had about as much charm as a stomped-in mud hole.
“Ma’am,” I said. “Me and this little girl would love to eat almost anything, if you got it to spare. We could gather some wood for you, jobs like that and such. We’re terrible hungry.”
I thought it best not to mention Mama and Terry just yet.
The old woman studied us. “How about dirt?” she said.
“Ma’am?”
“Would you eat dirt?”
I glanced back at Jinx.
Jinx said, “We got to draw the line at dirt.”
“Then you ain’t that terrible hungry,” said the old woman. “You was hungry, you’d eat dirt.”