Once they went through a forest of cucumber trees and came up on a high ridge. Grady and Brucie, who were running ahead all the way, stopped in their tracks; a whistle had blown and far down and far away a long freight train was passing. It seemed like a little festival procession, moving with the slowness of ignorance or a dream, from distance to distance, the tiny pink and gray cars like secret boxes. Grady was counting the cars to himself, as if he could certainly see each one clearly, and Brucie watched his lips, hushed and cautious, the way he would watch a bird drinking. Tears suddenly came to Grady's eyes, but it could only be because a tiny man walked along the top of the train, walking and moving on top of the moving train.
They went down again and soon the smell of the river spread over the woods, cool and secret. Every step they took among the great walls of vines and among the passion-flowers started up a little life, a little flight.
"We're walking along in the changing-time," said Doc. "Any day now the change will come. It's going to turn from hot to cold, and we can kill the hog that's ripe and have fresh meat to eat. Come one of these nights and we can wander down here and tree a nice possum. Old Jack Frost will be pinching things up. Old Mr. Winter will be standing in the door. Hickory tree there will be yellow. Sweet-gum red, hickory yellow, dogwood red, sycamore yellow." He went along rapping the tree trunks with his knuckle. "Magnolia and live-oak never die. Remember that. Persimmons will all get fit to eat, and the nuts will be dropping like rain all through the woods here. And run, little quail, run, for we'll be after you too."
They went on and suddenly the woods opened upon light, and they had reached the river. Everyone stopped, but Doc talked on ahead as though nothing had happened. "Only today," he said, "today, in October sun, it's all gold—sky and tree and water. Everything just before it changes looks to be made of gold."
William Wallace looked down, as though he thought of Hazel with the shining eyes, sitting at home and looking straight before her, like a piece of pure gold, too precious to touch.
Below them the river was glimmering, narrow, soft, and skin-colored, and slowed nearly to stillness. The shining willow trees hung round them. The net that was being drawn out, so old and so long-used, it too looked golden, strung and tied with golden threads.
Standing still on the bank, all of a sudden William Wallace, on whose word they were waiting, spoke up in a voice of surprise. "What is the name of this river?"
They looked at him as if he were crazy not to know the name of the river he had fished in all his life. But a deep frown was on his forehead, as if he were compelled to wonder what people had come to call this river, or to think there was a mystery in the name of a river they all knew so well, the same as if it were some great far torrent of waves that dashed through the mountains somewhere, and almost as if it were a river in some dream, for they could not give him the name of that.
"Everybody knows Pearl River is named the Pearl River," said Doc.
A bird note suddenly bold was like a stone thrown into the water to sound it.
"It's deep here," said Virgil, and jogged William Wallace. "Remember?"
William Wallace stood looking down at the river as if it were still a mystery to him. There under his feet, which hung over the bank, it was transparent and yellow like an old bottle lying in the sun, filling with light.
Doc clattered all his paraphernalia.
Then all of a sudden all the Malones scattered jumping and tumbling down the bank. They gave their loud shout. Little Brucie started after them, and looked back.
"Do you think she jumped?" Virgil asked William Wallace.
II
Since the net was so wide, when it was all stretched it reached from bank to bank of the Pearl River, and the weights would hold it all the way to the bottom. Jug-like sounds filled the air, splashes lifted in the sun, and the party began to move upstream. The Malones with great groans swam and pulled near the shore, the Doyles swam and pushed from behind with Virgil to tell them how to do it best; Grady and Brucie with his thread and pin trotted along the sandbars hauling buckets and lines. Sam and Robbie Bell, naked and bright, guided the old oarless rowboat that always drifted at the shore, and in it, sitting up tall with his hat on, was Doc—he went along without ever touching water and without ever taking his eyes off the net. William Wallace himself did everything but most of the time he was out of sight, swimming about under water or diving, and he had nothing to say any more.
The dogs chased up and down, in and out of the water, and in and out of the woods.
"Don't let her get too heavy, boys," Doc intoned regularly, every few minutes, "and she won't let nothing through."
"She won't let nothing through, she won't let nothing through," chanted Sam and Robbie Bell, one at his front and one at his back.
The sandbars were pink or violet drifts ahead. Where the light fell on the river, in a wandering from shore to shore, it was leaf-shaped spangles that trembled softly, while the dark of the river was calm. The willow trees leaned overhead under muscadine vines, and their trailing leaves hung like waterfalls in the morning air. The thing that seemed like silence must have been the endless cry of all the crickets and locusts in the world, rising and falling.
Every time William Wallace took hold of a big eel that slipped the net, the Malones all yelled, "Rassle with him, son!"
"Don't let her get too heavy, boys," said Doc.
"This is hard on catfish," William Wallace said once.
There were big and little fishes, dark and bright, that they caught, good ones and bad ones, the same old fish.
"This is more shoes than I ever saw got together in any store," said Virgil when they emptied the net to the bottom. "Get going!" he shouted in the next breath.
The little Rippens who had stayed ahead in the woods stayed ahead on the river. Brucie, leading them all, made small jumps and hops as he went, sometimes on one foot, sometimes on the other.
The winding river looked old sometimes, when it ran wrinkled and deep under high banks where the roots of trees hung down, and sometimes it seemed to be only a young creek, shining with the colors of wildflowers. Sometimes sandbars in the shapes of fishes lay nose to nose across, without the track of even a bird.
"Here comes some alligators," said Virgil. "Let's let them by."
They drew out on the shady side of the water, and three big alligators and four middle-sized ones went by, taking their own time.
"Look at their great big old teeth!" called a shrill voice. It was Grady making his only outcry, and the alligators were not showing their teeth at all.
"The better to eat folks with," said Doc from his boat, looking at him severely.
"Doc, you are bound to declare all you know," said Virgil. "Get going!"
When they started off again the first thing they caught in the net was the baby alligator.
"That's just what we wanted!" cried the Malones.
They set the little alligator down on a sandbar and he squatted perfectly still; they could hardly tell when it was he started to move. They watched with set faces his incredible mechanics, while the dogs after one bark stood off in inquisitive humility, until he winked.
"He's ours!" shouted all the Malones. "We're taking him home with us!"
"He ain't nothing but a little-old baby," said William Wallace.
The Malones only scoffed, as if he might be only a baby but he looked like the oldest and worst lizard.
"What are you going to do with him?" asked Virgil.
"Keep him."
"I'd be more careful what I took out of this net," said Doc.
"Tie him up and throw him in the bucket," the Malones were saying to each other, while Doc was saying, "Don't come running to me and ask me what to do when he gets big."
They kept catching more and more fish, as if there was no end in sight.
"Look, a string of lady's beads," said Virgil. "Here, Sam and Robbie Bell."
Sam wore them around his head, with a knot over his forehead and loo
ps around his ears, and Robbie Bell walked behind and stared at them.
In a shadowy place something white flew up. It was a heron, and it went away over the dark treetops. William Wallace followed it with his eyes and Brucie clapped his hands, but Virgil gave a sigh, as if he knew that when you go looking for what is lost, everything is a sign
An eel slid out of the net.
"Rassle with him, son!" yelled the Malones. They swam like fiends.
"The Malones are in it for the fish," said Virgil.
It was about noon that there was a little rustle on the bank.
"Who is that yonder?" asked Virgil, and he pointed to a little undersized man with short legs and a little straw hat with a band around it, who was following along on the other side of the river.
"Never saw him and don't know his brother," said Doc.
Nobody had ever seen him before.
"Who invited you?" cried Virgil hotly. "Hi...!" and he made signs for the little undersized man to look at him, but he would not.
"Looks like a crazy man, from here," said the Malones.
"Just don't pay any attention to him and maybe he'll go away," advised Doc.
But Virgil had already swum across and was up on the other bank. He and the stranger could be seen exchanging a word apiece and then Virgil put out his hand the way he would pat a child and patted the stranger to the ground. The little man got up again just as quickly, lifted his shoulders, turned around, and walked away with his hat tilted over his eyes.
When Virgil came back he said, "Little-old man claimed he was harmless as a baby. I told him to just try horning in on this river and anything in it."
"What did he look like up close?" asked Doc.
"I wasn't studying how he looked," said Virgil. "But I don't like anybody to come looking at me that I am not familiar with." And he shouted, "Get going!"
"Things are moving in too great a rush," said Doc.
Brucie darted ahead and ran looking into all the bushes, lifting up their branches and looking underneath.
"Not One of the Doyles has spoke a word," said Virgil.
"That's because they're not talkers," said Doc.
All day William Wallace kept diving to the bottom. Once he dived down and down into the dark water, where it was so still that nothing stirred, not even a fish, and so dark that it was no longer the muddy world of the upper river but the dark clear world of deepness, and he must have believed this was the deepest place in the whole Pearl River, and if she was not here she would not be anywhere. He was gone such a long time that the others stared hard at the surface of the water, through which the bubbles came from below. So far down and all alone, had he found Hazel? Had he suspected down there, like some secret, the real, the true trouble that Hazel had fallen into, about which words in a letter could not speak ... how (who knew?) she had been filled to the brim with that elation that they all remembered, like their own secret, the elation that comes of great hopes and changes, sometimes simply of the harvest time, that comes with a little course of its own like a tune to run in the head, and there was nothing she could do about it—they knew—and so it had turned into this? It could be nothing but the old trouble that William Wallace was finding out, reaching and turning in the gloom of such depths.
"Look down yonder," said Grady softly to Brucie.
He pointed to the surface, where their reflections lay colorless and still side by side. He touched his brother gently as though to impress him.
"That's you and me," he said.
Brucie swayed precariously over the edge, and Grady caught him by the seat of his overalls. Brucie looked, but showed no recognition. Instead, he backed away, and seemed all at once unconcerned and spiritless, and pressed the nickel William Wallace had given him into his palm, rubbing it into his skin. Grady's inflamed eyes rested on the brown water. Without warning he saw something ... perhaps the image in the river seemed to be his father, the drowned man—with arms open, eyes open, mouth open.... Grady stared and blinked, again something wrinkled up his face.
And when William Wallace came up it was in an agony from submersion, which seemed an agony of the blood and of the very heart, so woeful he looked. He was staring and glaring around in astonishment, as if a long time had gone by, away from the pale world where the brown light of the sun and the river and the little party watching him trembled before his eyes.
"What did you bring up?" somebody called—was it Virgil?
One of his hands was holding fast to a little green ribbon of plant, root and all. He was surprised, and let it go.
It was afternoon. The trees spread softly, the clouds hung wet and tinted. A buzzard turned a few slow wheels in the sky, and drifted upwards. The dogs promenaded the banks.
"It's time we ate fish," said Virgil.
On a wide sandbar on which seashells lay they dragged up the haul and built a fire.
Then for a long time among clouds of odors and smoke, all half-naked except Doc, they cooked and ate catfish. They ate until the Malones groaned and all the Doyles stretched out on their faces, though for long after, Sam and Robbie Bell sat up to their own little table on a cypress stump and ate on and on. Then they all were silent and still, and one by one fell asleep.
"There ain't a thing better than fish," muttered William Wallace. He lay stretched on his back in the glimmer and shade of trampled sand. His sunburned forehead and cheeks seemed to glow with fire. His eyelids fell. The shadow of a willow branch dipped and moved over him. "There is nothing in the world as good as ... fish. The fish of Pearl River." Then slowly he smiled. He was asleep.
But it seemed almost at once that he was leaping up, and one by one up sat the others in their ring and looked at him, for it was impossible to stop and sleep by the river.
"You're feeling as good as you felt last night," said Virgil, setting his head on one side.
"The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy," said Doc.
But William Wallace answered none of them anything, for he was leaping all over the place and all, over them and the feast and the bones of the feast, trampling the sand, up and down, and doing a dance so crazy that he would die next. He took a big catfish and hooked it to his belt buckle and went up and down so that they all hollered, and the tears of laughter streaming down his cheeks made him put his hand up, and the two days' growth of beard began to jump out, bright red.
But all of a sudden there was an even louder cry, something almost like a cheer, from everybody at once, and all pointed fingers moved from William Wallace to the river. In the center of three light-gold rings across the water was lifted first an old hoary head ("It has whiskers!" a voice cried) and then in an undulation loop after loop and hump after hump of a long dark body, until there were a dozen rings of ripples, one behind the other, stretching all across the river, like a necklace.
"The King of the Snakes!" cried all the Malones at once, in high tenor voices and leaning together.
"The King of the Snakes," intoned old Doc in his profound bass.
"He looked you in the eye."
William Wallace stared back at the King of the Snakes with all his might.
It was Brucie that darted forward, dangling his little thread with the pin tied to it, going toward the water.
"That's the King of the Snakes!" cried Grady, who always looked after him.
Then the snake went down.
The little boy stopped with one leg in the air, spun around on the other, and sank to the ground.
"Git up," Grady whispered. "It was just the King of the Snakes. He went off whistling. Git up. It wasn't a thing but the King of the Snakes."
Brucie's green eyes opened, his tongue darted out, and he sprang up; his feet were heavy, his head light, and he rose like a bubble coming to the surface.
Then thunder like a stone loosened and rolled down the bank.
They all stood unwilling on the sandbar, holding to the net. In the eastern sky were the familiar castles
and the round towers to which they were used, gray, pink, and blue, growing darker and filling with thunder. Lightning flickered in the sun along their thick walls. But in the west the sun shone with such a violence that in an illumination like a long-prolonged glare of lightning the heavens looked black and white; all color left the world, the goldenness of everything was like a memory, and only heat, a kind of glamor and oppression, lay on their heads. The thick heavy trees on the other side of the river were brushed with mile-long streaks of silver, and a wind touched each man on the forehead. At the same time there was a long roll of thunder that began behind them, came up and down mountains and valleys of air, passed over their heads, and left them listening still. With a small, near noise a mockingbird followed it, the little white bars of its body flashing over the willow trees.
"We are here for a storm now," Virgil said. "We will have to stay till it's over."
They retreated a little, and hard drops fell in the leathery leaves at their shoulders and about their heads.
"Magnolia's the loudest tree there is in a storm," said Doc.
Then the light changed the water, until all about them the woods in the rising wind seemed to grow taller and blow inward together and suddenly turn dark. The rain struck heavily. A huge tail seemed to lash through the air and the river broke in a wound of silver. In silence the party crouched and stooped beside the trunk of the great tree, which in the push of the storm rose full of a fragrance and unyielding weight. Where they all stared, past their tree, was another tree, and beyond that another and another, all the way down the bank of the river, all towering and darkened in the storm.
"The outside world is full of endurance," said Doc. "Full of endurance."
Robbie Bell and Sam squatted down low and embraced each other from the start.