I put Cantuck in the front passenger seat, stumbled to the pickup, got hold of the dead man Cantuck called Leroy, boosted him on my shoulder, thumped him into the bed of his truck.
The keys were in the pickup. I started it, backed it off the highway, tossed the keys underneath it, staggered to the car they'd left. The keys weren't in it, but it was unlocked. I put it in neutral, went to the rear, gathered my resources, pushed it toward the marsh. It nose-dived into the edge of the water where it was shallow and stuck its tail in the air.
I climbed into Cantuck's car, felt so weak suddenly I had to put my head on the steering wheel, let it rest there for a moment. I said, "Chief, you got to call help for those bastards."
I removed the microphone from the rack and gave it to Cantuck. He mumbled through a call to a LaBorde emergency crew, gave them the location.
I couldn't wait for them to arrive. I was too sick and scared that the bastard who had driven away on the bad tire would come back, or reinforcements would arrive. Cantuck was bad off with that glass in his eye, and Leonard had gone deathly quiet. I looked back at him. His eyes were closed. He was breathing badly.
I cranked the car, flipped on the heater, pulled on the lights, took a deep breath, pulled onto the highway. The rain was still coming down and the sky was black as midnight, but Cantuck's motor was better than Leonard's had been, and so were the tires, and that was some kind of comfort.
I wondered about Draighten and Ray, but I didn't wonder too much. I couldn't. It wasn't my fault. I didn't want any of this to go the way it had, but there wasn't any undoing it. I told myself if it bothers you don't think about it. Think about the road, the yellow line in the headlights. Hold this thing in the lane and don't pass out. You pass out, it's all over. Hold on, and don't pass out.
Cantuck fumbled the microphone into place, leaned back with his hand still over his eye. In the green light from the dash his face was streaked with blood and some of the blood had dried and it looked like a big birthmark.
"The eye's gone black," Cantuck said.
"It's all right," I said, as if it really were.
The rain pummeled so hard the wipers were near useless. My breath was dry and hot and my body jerked with nervous tension.
And so it went, the seconds crawling along, me looking through that windshield at the rain and the stormy darkness, watching and listening to those pathetic wipers working so hard and doing so little.
Rain on the windshield. Rain on the glass.
When I awoke, I felt as if I were still behind the wheel of Cantuck's car, but I was in bed and three weeks had gone by. It was still raining and had pretty much rained the full three weeks. Lakes were swollen, rivers were overflowing, some areas were flooded out, and the news said the dam near Grovetown looked ready to go.
I was lying in bed looking at the window glass, watching rain bead onto it, beginning to realize that's what I was doing and that's why there were no windshield wipers; I was lying in bed, shaking off the last bad vibes of a dream.
It wasn't the first time I'd dreamed I was in Cantuck's car. Ever since that night, especially that first of two nights in the hospital, I'd had a series of dreams and none of them were very comforting. For a time, before all this Grovetown business, I was having a recurring dream about screwing this beautiful Mexican woman I had seen in a magazine. I guess I was dreaming about her then to get Florida out of my head. I had animated her in my mind and made her ravenous for my root. I was such a stud in my dreams she couldn't get enough. I liked the way she screamed and grunted and called me baby in that sweet high Spanish. Even if in the end she was nothing more than a paper memory in my head, a pillow in my arms.
But after the stuff in Grovetown that dream went away and I couldn't call it up any more than I could whistle down a 747 and cause it to light on a high line. If I tried to call it up the Mexican lovely would not stay static. She went to pieces like fog. In her place I had the other dreams.
One was of Florida wandering about. She was a cross between a zombie and a ghost. I was always walking along a highway, a road, or in the woods, and I'd see her up ahead, not looking at me, just crossing in front of me, wearing one of her short dresses with high heels, going into the cover of the trees, and I'd run after her. Only when I got to where she had gone into the woods she wasn't there, and I couldn't find her.
I dreamed too of the marsh that night, and of Draighten screaming and his leg all gone to pieces. I found out a short time later he had died before the emergency crew made it. Bled to death. He deserved what he got, but I couldn't get him out of my mind. Somewhere he had people who loved him and he'd loved them back and he'd had plans and thoughts just like everyone else. Meaner thoughts, but thoughts.
Had Leonard not shot him, I'd have been the one six feet down in the ground and Draighten would be lying in bed, maybe watching a little wrestling on television or pulling his pud. It was something strange to consider.
The part about him being alive and wanting to watch wrestling. Not the part about him pulling his pud. I tried not to think about that; it was too horrible to visualize.
I was thinking about pulling my pud, when the rain picked up and I began to feel cold, even under my blankets. I got out of bed, pulled a robe over my naked self, picked up the .38 revolver from the nightstand where I kept it all the time now, and made for the bathroom.
I brushed my teeth, looked at the wound the shotgun pellet had given my cheek. It wasn't much. It was healing nicely, but it looked as if it would leave a small puckered scar. The doctor had put medicine on it and a Band-Aid, and I'd been doctoring it at home, but I had begun to suspect a stitch had been needed.
Then again, wasn't like it was going to ruin my native good looks. If I'd had any, that crowd at the Grovetown Cafe had rearranged them. I did look better than a week ago, though. Both eyes seemed to be lined up—sort of—and the bruises had changed from the color of eggplant to a sort of raw spinach green.
I picked the gun off the sink, toted it with me around the house while I lit the butane heaters, then fixed myself a little breakfast of cereal and coffee and sat at the kitchen table with my friend the .38 snub-nose revolver and stared out the window at the rain coming down. My yard looked a lot like Bacon's yard, without the refrigerator and the washer. There was a dead squirrel out there, though, and I'd been thinking about moving it. Another week or two, however, I figured it'd be pretty much dissolved. I thought I could hold out.
My days had been like this for two weeks. A little coffee and cereal in the morning, the dead squirrel watch, worrying about how I was going to pay my hospital bills, then a morning movie if I could find one worth watching. All this hinged, of course, on how often I was asked to come in and see the cops. They insisted I drop by for talks.
They held meetings in LaBorde, since it was the county seat, and the law was a Texas Ranger and some detectives from somewhere, and then Charlie, who was kind of a moderator. I even saw Cantuck a few times, going out as I came in, a big swathe of gauze over his eye, always wearing a cheap black suit that offered plenty of room for his balls. He'd smile and say, "Hap," but keep right on walking. I even saw Jackson Brown once. He was dressed in a bright blue suit, a white cowboy hat with a beaded band, and shiny black cowboy boots. We passed right by each other. He was walking with a thin, attractive woman with tall blond hair and an empty look to her eyes. He smiled at me as he passed, said, "Tell the nigger Jackson says hey."
It was tempting to see if I could turn his head completely around on his neck, but I didn't. I just walked on.