Those Across the River

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I DON’T KNOW how long I stayed in that cage. Days. I wasn’t whipped any more; they said they’d wait until I was stronger. But I didn’t get stronger. Although I still accepted water, I stopped eating. My back was in agony. It rained. It dried out. The cold was a constant. Hector visited me more than once, but he didn’t always speak. He was watching me rot. Presiding over my slow dying. It was so slow. Every time I closed my eyes I hoped I wouldn’t open them again.

On the last day I dreamed about my mother. I was just a little boy again and she was sad and beautiful and pregnant with Johnny, and she was trying to clean something off my face. The washcloth hurt. I wanted to squall, but had to hold it in because there was a monster in the next room and if it heard me, it would come and take the baby out of her, and it would be my fault. Despite the fear in the dream, it was so much milder than the reality I woke up to that it didn’t feel at all like a nightmare. I didn’t want to let go of her face, such a hard face to remember but so clear in the dream. It was awful to wake up in a cage, but worse to remember she was still dead.

Then I was confused.

I couldn’t understand why I smelled smoke.

I opened my eyes and saw that there was a fire in the wild brush up against the side of the house, and someone was shouting.

La Boudeuse was catching fire.

Something rushed towards my cage and I shrank from it.

A man. A short, bearded man with a hatchet.

He smelled like kerosene.

With three loud blows, he busted the chain that held my door shut, and swung it open.

“Mr. Nichols, you made bail. Let’s go.”

Whose voice was that?

“If you don’t get out of there now, I’m going to leave you with your new friends.”

Not Southern.

“Move your ass!”

Martin Cranmer.

I moved my ass.

As well as I could, at least; my legs felt like they were made of wet, sodden lumber, and my back was so tight I couldn’t stand up all the way. Another figure moved towards us, fast, and I croaked “Look…” because “look out” was too much to say.

“It’s alright, she’s with us,” he said.

Eudora. My beautiful, ruined Eudora, barefoot, in a nightshift. I smiled.

She had my gun.

Martin hoisted me up over his shoulders the way you’re supposed to carry the wounded, and he ran. That kerosene smell again, and woods, and beeswax. And I understood. He was one. He had always been one.

He ran with me on his shoulders faster than I ever could have run unburdened; he leapt over fallen trees and cut through rotten ferns and he never stumbled, and he made little noise. Dora kept up. He stopped once to cough, horrible hacking coughs, but he shook it off.

“Remind me not to smoke so much,” he said, but then picked me up again and we kept on.

That stuck with me.

That his lungs bothered him seemed important to me, but I didn’t know why.

Daylight broke and a cool dawn turned into a temperate morning. The woods rushed by full of birdsong and falling leaves. We were going by Uphill Rock now, and he put me down and told Dora to be ready with the gun.

After we were past it, he hoisted me again and we made for the river.

“If you were going to ask what that was about, save your breath,” he huffed. “There’s a cave entrance near that rock, and that’s where they sleep when they go on four legs. They always go there after they carouse on the full moon. I would have preferred to wait until the day after the moon, when they go down there and sleep like the dead; it’s the one day you know where they all are. But you wouldn’t have made it that long. The house is their house, and that’s their den. I wouldn’t visit, if I were you. Nothing but hides and bones down there, the kind of shit they love. And not just pigs’ bones, either. The boy stays there sometimes, but I guess he’s at Sunday school today.”

I smiled weakly, thinking about how Lester and I had made camp there when Saul was missing. Right on top of their lair. No wonder I dreamed of women eating pigs’ heads. Maybe I hadn’t dreamed it.

When we got to the river, I didn’t recognize the crossing point, but that made sense. If I were them, I would try to ambush us at the raft.

This was a wider, shallower part of the river. I waded it, supported by Martin on one side and Dora on the other. I thought about how pleasant it would be to die right there, to slip from between them and let myself fall into those cold waters and forget everything.

While we were crossing, I said into Dora’s ear, “Are you still my wife?”

“If you can stand it.”

PAST THE RIVER, Martin was hacking terribly, too tired to carry me any farther. Dora went to pick me up, but I wouldn’t let her.

Martin stepped in front of me, and whispered evilly, between muffled coughs, “They’re coming. Four of them, maybe five. I never thought I’d say this to a man, but get on your wife or I’ll coldcock you.”

Martin helped her get me into the easiest carry, and we went on.

We made the cabin.

Martin bolted all the windows and doors while Dora put me on the bed.

“Do you have any trousers?” I said.

“What for?” Martin said. “We’ve already seen it.”

Dora almost laughed.

He threw her a pair of filthy denims and she helped me get my legs into them. When she saw how much leg stuck out the bottoms, she did laugh. I could barely button them.

“Can you handle that thing?” Martin said to Dora, indicating my .45. She shook her head. I sat up and took it from her.

Just then the front door banged, hard enough to shake the little house. Dora started. I pointed the gun. I looked at the black iron reinforcements and the inch-thick drawbolts. The door wasn’t pine. It was oak.

It banged again, hard.

Martin said, “Look, I know you’re as strong as three fellows, but it would take ten to break that door. You’re seven fellows short. Go home.”

Now the bolted shutters banged, and I saw that the bolt was smaller.

“Don’t worry,” Martin said. “They’re barred.”

The shutters banged again, then gave. The black one had used a log. Now he wrapped his hands around the bars, getting ready to yank for all he was worth, but Martin jumped and cut three fingers off him with his hatchet, hitting the bar so hard it made a spark. The man howled and jerked himself away.

“I’m gonna git you for that, Cramma.”

“I thought you were already gonna ‘git’ me. What, are you gonna ‘git’ me worse? Grow your fucking fingers back and try again.”

It got quiet.

It stayed quiet.

Martin grabbed a rough little stub of a pencil and wrote on the wall near me,

HOW MANY SHOTS IN THAT GUN?

I wrote,

2

He wrote,

DAMN

“Do me a favor,” he said.

I nodded.

“In case they get in, save your last bullet for her. You they can kill. Her they can keep alive. You get me?”

“No.”

“How’d you like to have your hands and feet cut off every day?”

“Jesus Christ, Martin.”

“Don’t ‘Jesus Christ’ me, that’s how he thinks. The school was his idea.”

“What about you?”

“Not me,” he said, grinning impishly in his beard. “They can’t get me alive. They know that.”

Something occurred to me.

“Where are you from, Martin?” I said.

“Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.”

“When?”

“When what?”

“When did you…”

“Let’s just say that wasn’t the first plantation house I’ve burned.”

I grinned at him. Some part of me was treating this all as a fever dream. Nothing could surprise me. Or so I thought.

I heard the fat pop of glass breaking against the side of the shack.

“Oh shit,” he said. “We’re in the stew now.”

“What?” Dora said. “Why?”

“I had a few jars of moonshine outside.”

“Alas,” I said.

Another jar broke.

“Well… maybe they won’t have fire?” offered Dora.

“No,” Martin said. “That was Hector’s Zippo being opened. And lit.”

A cloud of strong cigar smoke drifted in the window.

“It’s been nice knowing you kids,” Martin said.

“Likewise,” I said.

Two more jars broke.

“Jesus,” Dora said. “How much did you have out there?”

“Plenty,” said Martin, opening a jar that was on his table and drinking from it. He offered it around, and we all took communion.

Another cloud of smoke came in the window.

“In case you were wondering,” said Hector’s deep voice outside, “we were unable to save the house.”

I was tempted to shoot through the wall at him.

“My guess is you didn’t try hard enough,” Martin said. “Maybe you should go back and form a bucket brigade. Perhaps the good people of Whitbrow would help.”

“You have burned my house, Mr. Cranmer. Worse, you have burned my library. I hope to inherit yours when you are dead. Will you come outside now, or must I light this fuel?”

“You know what?” Martin said. “You’re a killer, a savage and a poor housekeeper. Maybe my books would be good for your education. Yes, why don’t you take them?”

So saying, Martin poured moonshine of his own on his bookshelf.

Dora looked at him wide-eyed.

“What would you like first? How about The Return of the Native?”

He struck a match, lit the selfsame book, and pitched it through the bars.

“Not a fan of Hardy? How about Walt Whitman?”

He lit and threw that one too, but it was the last one.

The outside of the shack’s wall went up and a wave of heat came from it. Martin helped me to my feet. He unbolted his door and at just that instant the black one with the bad haircut launched himself through.

I shot him in the mouth. It was awful. It hit just under his nose and seemed to blow every tooth out of his head. He wasn’t dead immediately, but he wasn’t feeling combative anymore.

Now Martin lit his bookcase on fire and picked it up and charged out the door with it, pitching the whole flaming lot into the white man and woman, who were bowled over by it. Dora jostled me out the door. Hector rushed at Martin, but Martin flipped him heavily into the wall. The white man’s arm was on fire. He must have gotten shine on him pitching jars of it against the shack.

“Run!” Martin said.

He was on fire, too.

I was lining up to use my last bullet on Hector, who was starting to shudder, but Dora grabbed my arm and yanked me off into the woods with her. I looked back over my shoulder, feeling like Lot’s wife. I looked just in time to see Curly Woman get up, and I realized she had a gun.

I thought she would shoot Martin.

But she was shooting at us.

We weren’t very far away.

Pop pop pop!

Then the gun was empty and something moved fast behind her.

The second to last thing I saw back there was Martin Cranmer partially on fire beating that woman with a flaming board.

The last thing was Hector dropping to all fours and turning into an enormous black wolfish thing.

Dora scooped me up on her shoulders again and ran with me.

I know the three of them killed Martin.

But he hurt them.

All of them.

Enough to slow them down.

And Hector never got his books.