“I hope I’m giving you a bit of a challenge,” said Grandpa, looking down at the big man. “It’s been kind of a trying day, and I could be off my feed some.”
“You old fuck,” said the big man. He came to his feet, stumbled back a step, said, “Fatty.”
Fatty immediately tossed him the revolver.
“You skunk,” Grandpa said, and pulled the derringer out of his pocket and pulled the trigger. The derringer popped, and the big man’s left shoulder jerked back, but only slightly. The big man lifted the revolver and fired. The shot hit Grandpa so hard it knocked him on his butt. The ferry swayed. Water tumbled up over the sides of it and rolled onto Grandpa, who was sitting up, a hand clutched to his bleeding middle.
“Grandpa,” Lula screamed, then ran over and helped hold him up.
The big man, leaking blood from his shoulder, leveled the pistol at him.
I said, “You done done it to him. He’s got good. Leave him be.”
“I’m gonna pop you, too,” he said, glaring at me. “And then I’m thinking me and the boys are going to court your sister for a while, though we’re going to go straight to the marriage bed without benefit of flowers and preacher.”
That’s when Grandpa shot him again with the derringer. The shot sounded like someone snapping their fingers. The bullet hit the big man in the thigh and made him drop to one knee. “Goddamn it,” said the big man. “You bit me again with that thing.”
Fatty and the colored man lunged forward at Grandpa, but at that moment Grandpa went limp, done for, held up only by Lula. Then there was a popping noise as the ferry rope began to fray. If that weren’t enough, there came a howling sound, like a wolf with its paw in a trap. It was the wind lifting the river into a water devil, blowing down the big middle of the Sabine, causing the water to swirl and heave, tearing trees apart on both banks. Then it smacked the ferry. The rope finished coming apart, and we all went flying.
Last thing I remember seeing before I hit the water was my mule flying overhead like it had sprouted wings and had decided to go on ahead without us.
2
Swirling down under the water, I thought I was done for. All manner of things were bumping into me, and I was starting to black out, then the river brought me up. I gasped for air so hard I felt as if my lungs would blow out of my chest. I went down a time or two more, and finally I found myself, through no work of my own, lying on the bank of the river. Or halfway lying on it. My legs were still in the water, but the rest of me was kind of tucked back in a hollow in the bank.
I saw the water tornado then, a little thing, but fierce as a wildcat, spin by me in a dark twist of wind and river and wagon parts. It lifted my legs some, like it might yank me after it, but I was able to grab some roots sticking out from the bank and cling to them. My body was floated up and sucked at, but I held onto those thick roots, and then the water devil passed and I was dropped. I scrambled to peek around the edge of my den, saw that twister tearing across the river, veering, making landfall, spitting pieces of trees in all directions. It made with a last howl, as if injured, and died out quick as it had come, collapsed into the woods with a rattle of leaves and limbs and a swirl of mud and water.
I touched my head. It was bleeding some, but considering what had just happened, it was nothing at all. I worked my way out of the den and crawled onto the shoreline. I had to crawl. I couldn’t stand up. I felt weak as a newborn kitten. I sat down on the bank and looked out at the river. It was still raining, but not hard.
Wagon parts and ferry parts were washing by, and with them I saw the body of the ferryman. He was facedown in the churning water, his right arm bent behind his back in a way you can’t make it go when it fits correctly in the shoulder socket. His hand was twisted up, too, and his fingers were wiggling, as if he were lifting them off his back in a friendly little wave; it wasn’t him moving them, though, it was the water. The river churned him on and under and out of view. I tried to get up, but had to sit down again. The sky seemed to be on the bottom, the land on top.
That’s when I felt hands on my shoulders, looked up to see a man and a young woman beside me. It was the man had his hands on me. He was a thin fellow with a big hat that near swallowed his head. He couldn’t have looked any sillier if he’d been wearing a bucket on his noggin. He said, “You all right there, boy?”
“I been better,” I said.
“I hear that,” he said. “I seen it all happen. Me and Matilda.”
“That’s right,” the woman said. “We seen it.”
Like him, she was soaked. She was bareheaded and dark-haired and had a long face with a chin that carried extra room on it. If she had been an ounce thinner and her clothes more worn, I could have seen her backbone and maybe the countryside beyond it.
“It just blowed that whole damn thing away,” said the man.
“Did anyone make it?” I said.
“I don’t know who died,” said the man. “But there were three men and a girl and some horses got to the other side. A fat fellow and a big man rode on one horse, and a nigger and a girl on another. I don’t think she was happy to go with them.”
“Did you see an old man’s body anywhere?”
“Nope,” said the man. “We didn’t. There’s a big sorrel horse in a tree over there, though.” He pointed. I looked in that direction and could see one horse leg hanging out of a shattered elm on the bank of the river.
“That’s why they’re riding double,” I said. It wasn’t exactly a revelation, but that’s what came out of my mouth.
“Reckon that’s right,” he said.
“You see any mules?” I asked.
“When they were on the ferry,” he said, “and then a little bit in the river. One was flying through the air and the other two was in the water. I ain’t seen them since. They was there, then they wasn’t. I figure they’re down there with the catfish, or maybe the way that wind was blowing you’ll find one up your ass later.”
The woman snickered like a horse, and the man liked that she did. He laughed a little. I wasn’t up for a lot of humor myself.
“Did you know any of them people got to the other side?” Matilda asked.
“I knew my sister, Lula, and my grandpa. He was shot. He was dead before the water devil hit. Those men took my sister. I got to get her back.”
“By the time you swim the river, get to the other side, go after them on foot, they’ll be farther ahead of you than you can catch up. That water is still rough, too. I don’t think a gator could swim it right now. You’ll be better off to see some law on this matter. Can you get to your feet?”
I found that with his help I could, but once there I was wobbly.
“We ought to be taking you somewhere,” said the man. “Me and the wife come down to try out the new ferry, go over to the other side for a picnic, just for the hell of it, you know. We was watching from the hill. Planned to catch a ride across when that ferry fella got through hauling you folks over, and then we seen that twister.”
“I ain’t never seen a twister before,” said Matilda. “On land or water.”
“I’ve seen three or four,” said the man, “but never a little one like that, and running right down the river. That was something, all right. I heard some niggers talking once about a thing like that, a twister in the river, but I thought it was just nigger talk.”
“It just didn’t seem real,” Matilda said.
“It was pretty real,” I said.
The man patted my shoulder.
There wasn’t any use trying to go into Hinge Gate for the law, because the pox was running through the town and there were armed guards at both ends of it. I thought for a moment, said, “If I could get you to take me into Sylvester, I’d appreciate it. I know it isn’t the nearest town, but it’s not quarantined like Hinge Gate. I’d give you money, but I haven’t got any.”
“That ain’t no problem,” said the man, showing me a big row of horse teeth. “Sylvester ain’t but a few miles. It ain’t
a problem at all. Hell, boy, we come from Sylvester. What’s your name?”
“Jack,” I said.
“Mine’s Tom,” he said.
Their wagon was parked up on the hill. It had a cover over it, like a covered wagon of old. I could see it from where I sat, looking over my shoulder. They helped me up, one at either side of me, and guided me to the wagon. When we got there, they lowered down the back end and had me sit on it. They broke out some sandwiches and some warm tea in a big fruit jar, insisted I ought to eat and drink. It’s the way we Southerners do things. A tragedy happens, first thing you need to do is eat and have some tea or coffee.
It did help, though. When I had some of my strength back, if not all my piss and vinegar, I asked them to get me into Sylvester so I could speak to the sheriff. I wanted to look for Grandpa, too, but knew that bullet had done him in before the storm. I was sick about his body washed away somewhere, but with Lula kidnapped time was wasting, so I had to make the choice, and I made it for the living.
They rode me to town, dropped me off at the sheriff’s office. It was clear as we came in that there had been some doings, because the town was like someone had turned a box of cats upside down and let them loose. People were moving about quickly, and there was activity at the bank. Across the street from it, I saw the law office of that fellow Cowton Little that Grandpa had told me about; his name and business were stenciled across the window glass clearly in white paint. But I couldn’t get my mind on that, outside of touching my overalls pocket to feel the damp deed inside of it. There was just too much to draw my attention, like the wagon pulled up in front of the bank, and there was a pair of boots sticking out of the back end of it, and whoever belonged to those boots, the rest of him was covered up with a stained tarpaulin. The street was splotched over and wet in spots. There were dark pools of what looked to be blood turning black on the boardwalk in front of the bank. Down from that a few paces was a dead horse. Right by the door to the bank was a plank that had been leaned against the wall. There was a dead fellow propped on the plank, and a man in the street had a Kodak camera set up, one of them kind with an accordion eye on it. He was taking the man’s picture. Even from a distance, I could see that dead fellow was all shot up. Part of his head was missing, though curiously he still had on a kind of shallow-brimmed hat; it was lifted up a little on one side, and that was the side where his head was gone, along with an ear. His clothes were ripped up and stiff with dried blood. Nails were driven on either side of his head, and a rope was fastened to the nails and passed under his chin; that’s what was holding him up. They had folded one of his arms across his chest and had put a pistol in his hand to make him look ready for action. What he looked was dead.
“Damn, now,” Tom said. “There has been some messy activity here of a sorts.”
I was curious, of course, but my mind was more overwhelmed with my own worries. I thanked Tom and Matilda and started into the sheriff’s office as they rattled away in their wagon. The door was wide open. There was a fellow not much older than me standing behind a desk, emptying things out of a drawer, tossing them on the desktop. There was a jail cell at the back, and there was a thick blond man in it. He was sitting on a bunk and had a rag tied around his head; it was leaked through with blood. He had one leg in splints and his face was black and blue all over, as if he were a spotted hound.
I said to the man emptying the drawer, “I’m looking for the sheriff.”
“Don’t shut the door,” he said. “I don’t want nobody to think I’ve barricaded it.”
I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, and I didn’t ask him to explain. Instead, I came up to the desk and asked about the sheriff again.
“You’ll find him under a tarp in the back of that wagon parked across the street.”
“Who are you?”
“Deputy,” said the man. “Or was. I’m clearing out, taking what’s mine, and some of what’s the sheriff’s. He won’t care. He ain’t got no kin and wasn’t well liked.”
I looked at what he was placing on the desk. It was little knickknacks and pieces of junk, except for a couple of badges and a ring of keys. I said, “Since you’re the deputy, I’m here to report a crime. And I’m going to need you to throw together a posse pretty quick.”
He lifted his head and looked at me. “You are, are you? Well, I’m quitting, and in about five or ten minutes there’s going to be folks coming through that door with a rope, looking for these here keys, and that fellow there”—he nodded at the blond—“is going to end up at the end of that rope with his tongue hanging out, his pants full of shit.”
“You don’t know that,” said the man in the jail.
“About the shit in your pants, the tongue hanging out, or the part about the rope?” the deputy said.
“Either part of it,” said the man.
“I had a cousin hung himself over a girl split with him and married a carpenter,” the deputy said. “The rope killed him and the rest come naturally.”
“You’re supposed to protect me,” said the man.
The deputy poked a badge on the desk with a finger, said to the blond, “Fellow wearing a badge is. But that ain’t me anymore. I figure I don’t want to get shot by the likes of you, or get shot protecting you. No, sir. I am plumb out of the deputy business. I’m thinking of learning barbering.”
“But what about me?” said the blond, sounding like a child who had missed his turn. “You can’t just leave me here and let them get me.”
“Your situation might have been different had you not decided to rob the bank and kill the sheriff,” the former deputy said, closing the desk drawer. “You think on that?”
“I wasn’t the one shot the sheriff,” said the man in the jail.
“Well, I’ll let you and the townfolks sort that out,” the former deputy said.
“Why me?” he said. “Them others got off all right. They rode right off. But I got nabbed.”
The former deputy reached a hat off a peg on the wall behind him, scraped most of the stuff on the desktop into it, and left the keys and badge there. He placed the hat on the table and looked at the blond.
“Your horse was slow and took a bullet, and that’s the end of that story. But you ain’t the only one with bad luck. There’s at least one more of you didn’t make it, and his mortal body, what’s left of it, is out there on a board, and you’ll see him shortly on the other side. When you do, tell him Deke said hey and thanks for being a lousy shot, or I’d be out there in that wagon next to Sheriff Gaston.”
“I ain’t never had a stroke of luck in all my days,” said the man. “And this just caps it off. I was born with bad luck. Some people have it, and I’m one of them.”
“Well,” said the man who had identified himself as Deke, “one thing is for sure, this ain’t your day.”
“I got to have some law,” I said. “My grandfather was murdered by a man with a scarred throat, and my sister was kidnapped by him and two other men, one colored, and one a fat fellow.”
“That would be Cut Throat Bill, Nigger Pete, and Fatty Worth. Them’s the ones, along with the man on the board out there, and this desperado, that robbed the bank, killed the sheriff, and took a shot at me. One that come close enough it caused me to know I had to change professions.”
About that time the doorway filled with a passel of men. One of them, who looked angrier than the rest, was wearing a small-brimmed black hat and was all dressed up like he was about to go to church. He said, “Ain’t no use in trying to stop us, Deke. We got our mind set.”
“I have removed myself from law enforcement,” said Deke. He poked the keys on the desk. “One of them go to the cell. You can sort it out.”
Deke picked up the hat full of little items and headed for the door, and the men standing in it let him pass. They looked at me, but no one said a thing to me. The man who looked as if he were ready for church came and swiped the key off the desk and walked over to the cell. It happened quick after that. The blond
man started yelling, got up and stood on top of the bunk, like if he was higher up they couldn’t get him; he managed that with the splint on his leg and without having any real trouble about it. He was so scared he might have been able to walk up the wall wearing it. He prayed loudly to Jesus to save him. Jesus didn’t show, and considering what that fellow had been a part of I couldn’t blame him. They had that cell open and grabbed him quicker than you could say, “The barn’s on fire and my baby’s in it.”
“Oh, God,” the man yelled as they hauled him out. “Have mercy on Bobby O’Dell’s soul. My mama never raised me this way, and I regret the day I went wrong.”
“I bet you do,” said one of the men.
They dragged him out in the street, him bouncing along on that splinted leg, grimacing. I followed, managed to worm my way through the crowd until I was up front. I yelled at the struggling man. “Where’s that Cut Throat fellow going? One you was with.”
The man didn’t pay me any attention, as his mind was preoccupied with the fact he was about to be hung up like laundry to dry. They half tugged, half carried him toward an electric light pole at the edge of the street. There were little metal bars sticking out from the pole, making a kind of ladder. Using them to climb, a little man with a coiled rope over his shoulder scuttled up that pole like a squirrel. He flicked the rope over one of the metal bars at the top of the pole and dropped it down. It was snatched up by a fellow on the ground, and a loop was made quick and fastened around Bobby O’Dell’s neck.
“It’s too long,” someone in the crowd yelled up, and the little man, clinging to the top of the post like a dry leaf on an oak, readjusted it till everyone was happy except the man whose neck the loop was around. The man in church clothes come up with a strip of leather to tie Bobby O’Dell’s hands behind his back, and when Bobby complained it hurt, someone yelled out, “That’s all right. It ain’t gonna bother you for long.”
I had gotten pushed back in the crowd, and now I fought my way forward again, worked at it until I was at the front, right beside the condemned man. Fear had turned him near gray as ash, and his eyes were big and dark and weaving from side to side like a drunk trying to figure his direction home. His face was slack, but his words came out clear. “I guess I ain’t got no way out of this. I want everyone to know this ain’t my mother’s fault.”