"You're smiling," Leonard said. "You got something, right?"
"Turn around."
He had to drive a ways before we could find a wide enough place to get the car turned, and when we got back to the curve and the pole, I had him pull over. We got out, and I took a look. My smile got bigger.
"When we used to come down here this pole had a metal sign on it," I said. "Probably rusted off the bolts and's under all these leaves and pine needles, a few years of dirt. Sign said something about this piece of land belonging to some oil company or another. I don't remember exactly. But by the time we started going here, there were bullet holes in the sign and it was no longer valid. The oil company had long since lost its lease on the place, and it had reverted back to the county, or the State of Texas, or whoever owns it. But the little road for trucks and equipment was still here, worn down and grown up some, but still usable."
"It's not here now," Leonard said.
I looked where I remembered the little road being. The trees were scanty there, relatively young. In spots there were patches of dirt mixed with old hauled-in gravel, and neither trees or weeds had found support there. If you studied hard enough, you could see where the little narrow road had wound itself down into the woods toward the water.
"I think this was the road Softboy and his boys took after robbing the bank," I said. "They made all these pretty good plans, but the dumb suckers saw water and assumed they put their boat next to the Sabine."
"But it was the broad part of the creek that flows under the Iron Bridge?"
"Yep."
We pushed limbs aside, stepped through the browning winter grass, and followed the faint curves of the old road. When we came to water, we were at a spot as wide and deep as the Sabine at its best. It was easy to see how someone who didn't know the river could mistake this for it.
"If they had a car down here and ran it off in the water," Leonard said, "reckon Softboy would have done it right here, don't you think?"
"Yeah, but it might not be there now. Over the years, with floods and swellings, even something the size and weight of a car could move, if only an inch or a foot at a time."
"Thank you, Mr. Wizard."
We went walking along the bank. The undergrowth turned thick and grew out to the water. There was little room for footing. Sometimes we hung on to limbs and roots and dangled out over the creek, pulled ourselves along the steep bank like that until we found ground again. It was tough work, and even cold as it was we worked up a lather.
The creek eventually turned narrow, just wide enough and deep enough for a boat to go on. I recalled it widened again at the bridge, then, not far beyond that, narrowed enough to jump across, and went like that a long ways.
We got past all the undergrowth and came to the second widening of the creek. There was plenty of bank to stand on now. The water was dark and spotted with stumps and lily pads. Great trees leaned out from the shoreline and spread branches over the water thick as macramé, dripped vines and moss. Past all that, where the water was less dark and less riddled with stumps, was the Iron Bridge.
Half a bridge, really—what was built before the money played out. It sagged, and was covered with vines and moss. The metal, where it was visible, had gone red-brown with rust.
"Why would they build here?" Leonard said. "Back a ways they could have thrown a bridge across in an afternoon."
"They were going to widen all this, entire Sabine and its tributaries, I think. Make one gigantic river out of it. They had, as the Baptist preachers say, grandiose plans. Thought they'd be getting so much oil they'd be using river barges. Tools and machinery coming from the northern end of the river, oil in barrels heading South. But it played out before they got started good. There're abandoned wells all through these woods.
"You know," Leonard said, "I'm a wee bit excited. If there's a car down there, just might be a boat with money in it. Finding the car would be a way of checking. We got an hour before dark. What do you think?"
"Now's as good a time as any," I said.
We went back to the car and opened the trunk. The tanks were well packed in foam rubber so they wouldn't bang together and blow us to hell. And they could. They were highly explosive.
Leonard got in the backseat first and took off his clothes. He had this tube of grease for bonding the dry suit to the flesh, and he rubbed the grease all over his body and pulled on the suit. He got out of the car and put on the tanks and mask.
Then it was my turn.
I hated the grease part.
We put our clothes in the trunk, got a fifty foot coil of thin rope out of there, and went down to the water carrying our flippers.
Leonard fastened the rope to his belt and went in first, and I fed the rope out to him, keeping just enough slack in it.
After a few minutes, he came out of the water and shook. He took the regulator out of his mouth and pulled his mask up. His face looked gray.
"No car?" I asked.
"Fuck the car," he said. "Goddamn." He sat down on the shore and took in some deep breaths and shook. His teeth chattered.
"Chilly, huh?"
"Whoever called these bastards dry suits had to be kidding. I got water all inside, and it's cold, buddy boy, I will assure you. My balls are the size of grapes."
"Before you went in, or after?"
"Funny. Look, it's deeper there than you think."
"I remember it as deep," I said. "Used to fish and swim here."
"There's a mild suck hole too."
"That I don't remember."
"It isn't bad, but it could trick you. It's about where I came up. Damn, I'm freezing."
"I won't be down long."
"Not telling me nothing I don't know. You think it's cold up here, this is the tropics compared to that water. And it's dark. So dark, you'll come up and it'll seem like the goddamn world's bright enough to be on fire."
"If you had listened in your science classes, Leonard, instead of beating your meat under your desk, you would know that it takes more energy to warm a square inch of cold water than it does a square inch of cold air. And absence of light makes it dark."
"Just listen, smartass. You're gonna feel numb at first, little confused. Think you're getting too disoriented, don't wait till you're so messed up you don't know what you're doing, come up, or yank on the rope and I'll help you up. I'm not jacking with you, Hap. Water like that will screw you around. Play some serious tricks on you."
"Gotcha."
I put the rope through my belt and tied it loosely in case it got tangled. Leonard took hold of the other end but kept his seat.
I pulled the mask down, put the regulator in my mouth, pulled on my flippers, and eased under the water.
It didn't hit me for a second, but when it did I felt a wave of blackness and paralysis all over. The cold went right through the suit like some kind of freeze ray. It was a feeling like you have when you get something cold on the wrong tooth, only it was my entire body.
It was all I could do to make myself breathe the oxygen.
The wave of blackness passed, though, and I could feel something like cold bug feet creeping through my dry suit; it was water seeping in, of course.
I got organized best I could and swam down deeper. I could feel Leonard letting out the rope.
I couldn't have gone far before I touched bottom, but it seemed to take forever. My head, heart and lungs felt pregnant with ice. I couldn't see anything. It was muddy from all the rain and overflow from melting ice. I crawled along the bottom like a crab.