I broke loose from him, ran back to the boat, tried to push it free again. The Goat Man followed me, put the shotgun in the boat, grabbed the end of it, and together we pushed it out of the sand and into the river.
I splashed into the water with the Goat Man. He grabbed me suddenly and stuck me in the boat, pushed on out until the current had it good.
I watched as he waded back toward shore and the cabin. He stood on the bank looking at me, like a friend who hated to see his playmate go away. The wind snapped at his old hat and plucked at his clothes as if to remove them.
I picked up the paddle and went to work, trying not to think too much about what was being done to Tom.
Dark clouds kept passing over the moon, but none grabbed it and held it. It peeked out every now and then, like a frightened child looking out from beneath warm blankets. The raindrops became more frequent as the wind grew hard and slightly cool with dampness.
I paddled so hard my back and shoulders began to ache, but the current was with me, pulling me fast. I passed a whole school of water moccasins swimming in the dark. I feared they might try to climb up in the boat, as they liked to do, thinking it was a floating log and wanting a rest.
I paddled quickly through them, spreading the school. One did indeed try to climb up the side, but I brought the boat paddle down on him hard and he went back in the water, alive or dead I couldn’t say.
As I paddled around a bend in the river, where moss hung down from trees like curtains, and as I paddled through the moss, fighting it the way you might a thick swath of spiderwebs, I saw where the wild briars grew, and in that moment I had a strange sinking feeling, like carrying a bucket full of water and suddenly having the bottom drop out of it.
The feeling came not only for fear of what I might find in the briar tunnels, but fear I might find nothing at all. Perhaps I was all wrong and the Goat Man did indeed have Tom. Possibly in Mose’s cabin, hiding her there, waiting until I was out of sight. But if that was true, why had he given my gun back? Then again, he wasn’t bright. He was a creature of the woods, same as a coon or a possum. He didn’t think like regular folks.
All of this went through my head and swirled around and confused itself with my own dread and the thought of actually cutting down on a man with a shotgun. I felt like I was in a dream, like the kind I’d had when I’d had the flu some years before and everything had whirled and Mama’s and Daddy’s voices echoed and there were shadows all around me, trying to grab at me and pull me away into who knows where.
I paddled to the bank, got out, pulled the boat on shore best I could. I couldn’t quite get it out of the water since I was so tuckered out from paddling. I just hoped it would hang there and hold.
I got the shotgun, went up the hill quietly, found the mouth of the tunnel just beyond the tree, where me and Tom and Toby had come out that night.
It was dark inside the briars. The moon had gone behind a cloud and the wind rattled the bone-like stickers and clicked them together. Bits of rain sliced through the briars, mixed with the sweat in my hair, ran down my face, put salt in my mouth, and made me shiver.
July the Fourth, and I was cold.
Or was it the fifth now? I remember thinking that. Is it the fifth, and knowing full well I shouldn’t think that at all. I had to keep my mind sharp.
As I sneaked down the tunnel, through the briars I could see an orange glow leaping, could see a shadow moving before the glow. And I could hear a crackling sound, like dry leaves being wadded up in a big man’s hand.
I trembled, eased forward, came to the end of the tunnel, and froze. I couldn’t make myself turn into the large tunnel; the one that was cave-like and held pieces of paper with pictures of women on them, and cloth. And it came to me in a rush. The cloth I had seen, white with something red on it. It was the trim on the dress Mrs. Canerton had worn the night of the party, and then, I assumed, the night of her murder.
Suddenly, it was as if my feet were nailed to the ground.
I pulled back the hammer on the shotgun, slipped my face around the edge of the briars, and looked.
There was a fire going in the center of the tunnel, in the spot where Tom and I had seen the burn marks that day, and I could see Tom lying on the ground, her clothes off and strewn about, and a man was leaning over her, running his hands over her back and forth, making a sound like an animal eating after a long time without food. His hands flowed over her as if he was playing a piano.
He picked up a Sears and Roebuck catalogue off the ground, tore out a page, tore it again. I could see in the firelight it was a picture of a little girl. He rolled the picture up carefully, very tight, and gently placed it on the ground. I thought of the others, with those pieces of paper stuck into them, and I thought of Doc Tinn and his talk of fetishes.
A huge cane knife was stuck up in the dirt near Tom’s head, and Tom’s face was turned toward me. Her eyes were wide and full of tears and blood-red flickers from the fire. Tied around her mouth was a thick bandanna. Her hands and feet were bound with rope, and they were twisted at horrible angles. It looked as if she would break at the slightest touch.
As I looked the man rose and I saw that his pants were undone and he had hold of himself. He was walking back and forth before the fire, looking down at Tom, yelling, “I don’t want to do this. You make me do this. It’s your fault, you know? You’re getting just right. Just right. Tonight, you were just right.”
The voice was loud, but not like any voice I’d ever heard. There was all the darkness and wetness and muddiness of the bottom of the river in that voice, all the decay of dead fish and snakes and tossed garbage, the sewage from the on-bank outhouses.
I hadn’t been able to get a good look at his face, but I was sure from the way he was built, and from seeing that chain in Mrs. Canerton’s hand, that it was Doc Taylor. I figured she had grabbed at him while they fought, got hold of his chain, and he cut her hand off, not knowing the chain had gone with it.
Slowly he turned, and the way the fire caught his hair, I realized I was wrong. It wasn’t Doc Taylor. It was Mr. Nation’s son, the older one.
Then he turned to where I could see him good, and it wasn’t Nation’s boy at all. I had merely thought it was because that’s the kind of person I expected.
I stepped fully into the tunnel, said, “Cecil.”
The name came out of my mouth, without me really planning to say it. Cecil turned, and when he saw me his face was like it had been earlier, when Tom was being bounced on his knee and the fireworks had exploded behind him. It was neither happy nor sad, but dreamy, like a man waking from something he couldn’t quite figure.
He let go of his privates, let them hang out for me to see, like some kind of display at Groon’s general store.
“Oh, boy,” he said, his voice still husky and animal-like. “It’s just gone all wrong. I didn’t want to have to have Tom. I didn’t. But she’s been ripenin’, boy, right in front of my eyes. Every time I saw her, I said, no, you don’t shit where you eat. But she’s ripenin’, boy. And I thought I’d go to your place, peek in on her if I could, then I seen her there, easy to take, and I knew tonight I had to have her. There wasn’t nothing else for it.”
“Why?”
“Oh, son. There is no why. I tell myself I won’t, but I do. I do.”
He eased toward me.
I lifted the shotgun.
“Now, boy,” he said. “You don’t want to shoot me.”