Hugh took the manacles out of the trusty’s hands, snapped one iron band around his wrist and the other on Son’s, turned the key on each lock, and handed it back to the trusty.
“Come on, Son, let’s get that mule out of there so we can get some rest today,” he said.
They and the trusty went to the tool house for a block and tackle, then they followed Alcide Landry on his dun horse down the river bank to where the mule was stuck up to its flanks in the soft mud by the water’s edge. The rain clicked flatly on Landry’s gum coat, and when he twisted in the saddle to see that they stayed in step behind him, Son saw the white, drawn emptiness in his face and the resentful narrowed eyes which meant that his older brother had probably forced him to go after the mule.
An oak tree dripping with Spanish moss hung out over the mudbank where the mule was caught, and while the trusty climbed along the limb with the block and tackle knotted around his waist, Son and Hugh waded into the shallows and mud and began working a double cinch under the mule’s stomach. The water became so clouded that they couldn’t see their hands under the surface, and each time they tried to tighten the cinch the mule drew in all its breath until its sides were as hard as a barrel.
“I’ll teach you about that trick, you piece of glue,” Hugh said, and drew back his huge fist and slammed it into the mule’s rib cage.
The mule’s breath went out with a wheeze, and they slipped the cinch tight and attached the iron rings to the block and tackle that hung from the oak limb. Alcide Landry watched them silently from atop his horse, back under the driest branches of the spreading oak. Son thought his face looked even whiter than it had earlier.
They pulled the mule free from the mud and whipped it across the scrotum with willow switches until it finally labored with its hooves and knees out of the shallows onto the sand. The rain was cold and driving hard now, and islands of dead trees floated past them in the center of the river. The trusty climbed out on the oak limb and tried to unknot the rope on the block and tackle, but the rain had swollen the hemp. He tore a fingernail and held his hand under his armpit.
“I can’t untie the sonofabitch with the weight hanging on it,” he said, his small body like a wooden clothespin on the limb. “Swing it back up behind me somewheres.”
“I reckon things is tough everywhere these days,” Hugh said.
“You better check on what’s in your dinner bowl the next time you eat,” the trusty said.
“Why don’t you just stay up there and they’ll bring their slop jars to you?”
“Let’s get on with it and get out of here,” Son said.
“Vite. Too much time,” Landry said.
“He wants to get back to his whiskey pretty bad, don’t he?” Hugh said softly. He took the heavy block and tackle and swung it as hard as he could toward the back of the tree. It knocked into the trunk and swung back over the water again.
“Too much time,” Landry said, and rode his horse out from under the tree to the edge of the river. Water dripped off the brim of his hat, but his face was as white and dry as paper. Son could see the small cracks in his lips, and he remembered what his own face had looked like in a mirror after he had been drinking for two days in New Orleans.
Hugh swung the block again at the tree, his thick arms high over his head, and it looped up into the branches, disappearing for a moment in a shower of raindrops, then swung back into its trajectory and caught Alcide Landry with its full weight squarely in the face.
His boots hadn’t been in the stirrups, and the blow knocked him backward off the rump of the horse into the water. His nose was roaring blood and there was a piece of tooth stuck on his lip. He sat in the shallows with his legs spread apart and his arms propped behind him while his stovepipe hat floated away from him. Son stared at him and felt his heart sink with a fear that he had never known before at the penal camp. He looked at Hugh, whose face was as blank as his own must have been, except for the black marble eye that had a frightful light in it.
“We’re in a shitpot full of it now,” Hugh said. “Let’s finish it.”
He ran through the shallows in his bare feet and came down into Landry’s chest with his knees, then began swinging into his face with both fists.
“What are you doing?” the trusty shouted from the oak limb. “Do you know what his brother will do to us for this? I ain’t a part of it. I ain’t here.”
“Get a stone, a stick, anything,” Hugh said. “I can’t hold him under.”
Landry’s head came up from the water, the blood and wet sand streaming from his face. His eyes were crossed and there was a deep gash like an indented star in the middle of his forehead.
“Damn it, Son, get something,” Hugh said, then poised his fist in midair and got off Landry’s chest and stumbled up onto the sand. He looked furiously for a weapon, picked up a rotted cypress knot and threw it aside; then he kicked at Landry’s head once with his bare foot and fell backward in the sand. Landry got to his hands and knees, a clot of blood dripping off his tongue, his gum coat tangled around his body, and began crawling back to where his horse stood under the oak.
“Get the manacles. They’re on his pommel,” Hugh said.
The horse flipped his head at the collapsed reins when Son got close to him, and he was barely able to pull the looped chain from the pommel before the horse spooked back into the trees. Son ran back to the water’s edge, where Hugh was trying to roll Landry over on his back.
“We can lock him and the trusty around the tree,” Son said. “They won’t come looking for them till this afternoon.”
“Then do it. I can’t keep holding him by myself. Grab his arm.”
“He’s slippery as bear grease.”
“Then sit on him.”
The three of them slipped and rolled in the wet sand, the manacles swinging in the air, then one of Landry’s hands went inside his coat.
“Oh shit, Hugh. He’s got a pistol in there.”
“Hold his arm. Don’t let him get it out.” Hugh wrapped the chain once around the guard’s throat and pulled it tight. Landry’s head snapped backward as though he had been dropped from a gallows. His eyes bulged, his tongue came out, and his free hand pushed desperately at Hugh’s face.
“Pull on the other end,” Hugh said.
“Hugh—”
“Do it, you hear me.”
“Just get the gun from him. We can’t—”
“Son, he’s cocked it. Lean into that chain.
Son saw the barrel’s stiff outline pointed at his stomach. He kicked at Landry and turned his head away, his teeth clenched and his eyes closed, just as the ball tore through the coat in an explosion of dirty smoke and flattened into his rib cage.
He knew that it was still raining because he could see the water dimpling in the river, but there was no sound. The horizon tilted, and he saw the willows and oaks and cypresses green against the sky, and a riderless horse was bolting in a shower of sand down the river bank. He wiped his mouth quietly, swallowed, and tried to concentrate his vision on the horse that was now far down the river, the empty stirrups flying back against its flanks.
He felt Hugh tearing away the striped jumper from his side. Over Hugh’s shoulder he could see the guard sitting upright in the sand, his face dead and staring like a gargoyle’s.
“You ain’t gut shot, are you?” Hugh said.
“I don’t know.”
“Spit in my hand.”
“What?”
“Do what I say. Spit.”
Son leaned over into Hugh’s palm.