Off the shoulder of the road, in the field, the earth looked loose and he was afraid if he got off into it, he could get stuck. Wouldn’t
The road curved a little to the left, until eventually it paralleled what, from the darker texture of the night, had to be the rise of Ferguson’s ridge. He’d taken a deer on the ridge, though several miles away. That same day, some sharecropper woman had given Sam a tongue-lashing for shooting so close to her children. Served him right, though to hear him tell it, Sam’d never made a mistake in his life.
When he was about a hundred yards in, that is, so far in he couldn’t see the U.S. 71 for the thickness of the corn, he halted the car and tried to think. He wanted to be able to put the light on Jimmy and Bub. That meant he had to turn the car. He got out, looked around, kicked at the shoulder and the dirt off the shoulder to tell if it would support the weight of the Ford. It appeared that it would. He climbed back in and painstakingly ground the wheel toward the left, cranking the car in a tight turn until the front wheels were just about off; then he spun the wheel in the opposite direction, backing slowly. This put him on the left side of the road, pointed outward. He turned off the engine, then leaned out the window and tried his spotlight. It threw a harsh circle of white light down the road that collected in a vivid oval a hundred feet out. With one hand he pivoted it, tracked it up and down like an antiaircraft searchlight, then turned it off.
He looked at the radium dial of his Bulova. Nine-fifty. Ten minutes to go.
He’d been nervous in the war, or at least on the night before an amphibious operation.
But just some little goddamn nervous thing was flicking at him. He felt cursed. He’d made a big mistake today. He hadn’t meant to but he’d sure as hell wanted to and so he did it and now what? So he’d clean it up tomorrow. He’d clean up the mess he’d made, he’d be a man. These things could be handled and to hell with everything else. He knew he’d do it. He just didn’t know what it was to do.
It was all running together on him, the whole goddamned, messed-up day.
He got out of the car when he could feel his limbs begin to tingle with lack of circulation. He stood, breathing in the country air. It was so incredibly quiet. But no, it wasn’t: just as a man in war learns the darkness isn’t really darkness, but a texture of different shades that can be learned and read, so quiet wasn’t really quiet. He heard the snapping of the cornstalks as they rustled in the hiss of the breeze. He heard crickets off on some spring by the ridge, and bullfrogs too, low and mournful. He thought he heard a man cough far away. No, couldn’t be. Nobody out here. Some goddamn frog thing or something, or maybe some freak of nature carrying a real cough miles and miles. It happened all the time.
Up above stars, not like the Pacific, but still towers and piles of stars, almost a smoke of stars. Constellations that he had showed his son, trying to remember the stories that went with them and feeling he wasn’t doing a very good job. There were no city lights out here to bleach them out; the closest town was Boles, a good five miles back, and in Boles they closed up for the night around nine.
“What’s that one, Daddy?” someone asked.
No, no one asked. It was his son’s voice, but it was only in his mind; he remembered the question from a hunting trip last fall.
“That’s the North Star, Bob Lee. Always find your way home with that one. Secret to night navigation.”
“What’s night ’gation?”
Damn kid had so many questions!
He checked his watch. It was ten o’clock. Nothing.
Bub drove. He couldn’t hardly see nothing. Just corn on both sides of the road, and now and then a rhyming set of Burma Shave signs or on a barn a
Jimmy looked out of the car, peering intently.
“There it is,” he said. “Right up there, on the left, you see it?”
“Yes sir,” said Bub. He saw a gap in the corn and what looked to be a road leading back. Far off was a ridge.
“You ain’t forgot what you’re going to say?” he asked. It was very important that Jimmy tell him again. It stopped him from getting so scared.
“No sir, I give you my word,” said Jimmy. “This one was my deal the whole way. It was all my fault. Old Bub had nothing to do with it. We’ll git you back to your mama in no time. You might even get to go home tonight.”
“Do you think? do you think? I miss my mama.”
An image of his mama came before Bub. She was an immense woman, usually harried, sometimes quite mean, but he loved her just the same. He remembered a time when he and some other boys had set fire to a cat after dousing it with kerosene and it had run just a little bit, screaming horribly, before it collapsed into a smoking heap, and he had felt so bad, and his mama had pulled him into her arms and rocked and rocked him and in her abiding warmth and under the ministrations of her calm heart, he had fallen asleep. That was his favorite memory.
“You just do what Mr. Earl tells you,” said Jimmy. “It’s going to be all right.”
Bub turned onto the dirt road. He paused, feeling the car slip a little into the soil.
“Go on,” said Jimmy. “Just a bit farther. I’m afraid old Earl missed it, goddammit.”
They edged ahead until they were swallowed by corn, the corn seemed to lean in from each side, like it was attacking them, and Bub had a brief spasm of fear.
“Jimmy?” he asked plaintively, feeling his voice rise just a bit.
“There, there,” said Jimmy.
The headlights prowled ahead on the dirt road, and in time they came to the state police cruiser resting on the side of the road.
“Here we are,” said Jimmy.
Earl watched as the car came slowly into view, swung around the curve, then pulled off to the side of the road fifty or so feet away. Whoever was driving switched off the engine. A little gray dust still floated in the air. The car, cooling, ticked and creaked a bit but neither of the two men inside moved.
For maybe thirty long seconds it was quiet. Then Earl switched on his spotlight, throwing a circle of illumination in the front seat of the automobile. He recognized Jimmy Pye, raising a hand to block out the harsh glare. Jimmy was blazing in the beam, his natural colors turned flame-white, his thick locks of hair golden.
