“I’m not your brother.”
“You weren’t my brother, you’d be dead by now.”
“You killed them all, didn’t you?”
He leaned in close to me. “These people got to learn. This is a world of balances. They took a life, destroyed another. They got to learn about the White Road, got to see what’s waiting for them there, got to pass over and become part of it.”
I looked away from him toward the window, and saw that the light was failing. Soon, it would be dark.
“You rescued her,” I said.
He nodded. “I couldn’t save her sister, but I could save her.”
I saw regret, and more: I saw love.
“She was burned bad-even now, I don’t know how she survived-but I guess she stayed under the surface and the underground streams carried her out. I found her stretched over a rock, then I took her home and me and my momma, we took care of her. And when my momma died, she took care of herself for a year until I got released from jail. Now I’m back.”
“Why didn’t you just go to the police, tell them what happened?”
“That ain’t the way these things is done. Anyhow, her sister’s body was gone. It was a dark night. How would she know who these men were? She can’t even talk no more, could barely write their names down to tell me who they were, and even so who would believe it of young, rich white men like that? I ain’t even sure what she thinks no more. The pain drove her crazy.”
But that didn’t answer it. That wasn’t enough to explain what had happened, what he had endured and what he had forced others to endure.
“It was Addy, wasn’t it?”
He didn’t reply.
“You loved her, maybe before Davis Smoot ever appeared. Was he your child, Tereus? Was Atys Jones your child? Was she afraid to tell others because of what you were, because even the blacks looked down on you, because you were an outcast from the swamps? That’s why you went looking for Smoot, why you didn’t tell Atys what landed you in jaiclass="underline" you didn’t tell him you’d killed Smoot because it wasn’t important. You didn’t believe Smoot was his father, and you were right. The dates didn’t match. You killed Smoot for what he did to Addy, then fled back here in time to discover another violation being visited on the woman you loved. But before you could avenge yourself on Larousse and his friends the cops came for you and sent you back to Alabama for trial, and you were lucky just to get twenty years because there were enough witnesses to back up your claim of self-defense. I reckon that once old Davis caught sight of you he went straight for the nearest weapon, and you had an excuse to kill him. Now you’re back, making up for lost time.”
Tereus did not respond. There would be no confirmation from him, and no denial. One of his big hands gripped my shoulder and dragged me to my feet. “That time is now, brother. Rise up, rise up.”
A blade cut the ropes at my feet. I felt the pain begin as the blood began to circulate properly at last.
“Where are we going?”
He looked surprised, and I knew then just how crazy he was, crazy even before they chained him to a post in the blazing sun, crazy enough to keep an injured woman out here for years, protected by an old woman, in order to serve some strange messianic purpose of his own.
“Back to the pit,” he said. “We going back to the pit. It’s time.”
“Time for what?”
He drew me gently toward him.
“Time to show them the White Road.”
Although his small boat had an engine, he untied my hands and made me row. He was afraid: afraid that the noise might draw the men to him before he was ready, afraid that I might turn on him if he did not find some way to occupy me. Once or twice I considered striking out at him, but the revolver he now carried was unwavering in his grip. He would nod and smile at me in warning if I even paused in my strokes, as if we were two old friends on a boating trip together as the day descended softly into night and the dark gathered around us.
I didn’t know where the woman was. I knew only that she had left the house shortly before us.
“You didn’t kill Marianne Larousse,” I said, as we came in sight of a house set back from the bank and a dog barked at our passing, his chain jangling softly in the evening air. A light went on in the porch of the house, and I saw the form of a man emerge and heard him hush the dog. His voice was not angry, and I felt a rush of affection for him. I saw him tousle the dog’s fur, and the silhouette of its dark tail flicked back and forth in response. I was tired. I felt as if I were approaching the very end of things, as if this river was a kind of Styx across which I was being forced to row myself in the absence of the boatman, and as soon as the boat struck the bank I would descend into the underworld and become lost in the honeycomb.
I repeated the comment.
“What does it matter?” he replied.
“It matters to me. It probably mattered to Marianne while she was dying. But you didn’t kill her. You were still in jail.”
“They say the boy killed her, and he ain’t about to contradict them now.”
I stopped rowing, and heard the click of the hammer cocking a moment later.
“Don’t make me shoot you, Mr. Parker.”
I rested the oars and raised my hands.
“She did it, didn’t she? Melia killed Marianne Larousse, and her own nephew, your son, died as a result.”
He regarded me silently for a time before he spoke.
“She knows this river,” he said. “Knows the swamps. She wanders in them. Sometimes, she likes to watch the folks drinkin’ and whorin’. I guess it reminds her of what she lost, of what they took away from her. It was just pure dumb luck that she saw Marianne Larousse running among the trees that night, nothing more. She recognized her face from the society pages of the newspapers-she likes to look at the pictures of the beautiful ladies-and she took her chance.
“Dumb luck,” he intoned again. “That’s all it was.”
But it wasn’t, of course. The history of these two families, the Larousses and the Joneses, the blood spilled and lives destroyed, meant that it could never be anything as pure as luck or coincidence that drew them together. Over more than two centuries they had bound themselves, each to the other, in a pact of mutual destructiveness only partly acknowledged on either side, fueled by a past that allowed one man to own and abuse another and fanned into continuous flame by remembered injuries and violent responses. Their paths through this world were interwoven, crisscrossing at crucial moments in the history of this state and in the lives of their families.
“Did she know that the boy with Marianne was her own nephew?”
“She didn’t see him until the girl was dead. I-”
He stopped.
“Like I said, I don’t know what she thinks, but she can read some. She saw the newspapers, and I think she used to watch the jailhouse some, late at night.”
“You could have saved him,” I said. “By coming forward with her, you could have saved Atys. No court would convict her of murder. She’s insane.”
“No, I couldn’t do that.”
He couldn’t do it because then he would not have been able to continue punishing the rapists and killers of the woman he had loved. Ultimately, he was prepared to sacrifice his own son for revenge.
“You killed the others?”
“We did, the two of us together.”
He had rescued her and kept her safe, then killed for her and the memory of her sister. In a way, he had given up his life for them.
“It was how it had to be,” he said, as if guessing the direction of my thoughts. “And that’s all I got to say.”