benediction as the circumstances warranted.
'That girl is some kind of angel,' said Elmer.
'She is pure goodness,' said Jack, from his stretcher. 'Her grand ad would be proud for her,' said Bill. 'Should we wake him?' 'Let him sleep some more,' said Elmer.
And the convicts labored hard and well in their own benefit, some of them proving master carpenters as well, and indeed their rafts were even more soundly engineered and constructed than the first generation.
The plan was simple; it was hardly even a plan. No, they would not drift into Pascagoula, all two hundred of them, and hope that nobody would notice. Instead there were three or four Negro towns in the great swamp, and segments of them would make landfall at each of these, and there gather wits and disperse overland. They'd have at least a couple of days' head start, and if they didn't bunch up and stayed cool and kept moving, they'd have disappeared so totally Mississippi would not have the energy to look hard for them if it ever quite caught on that they were not dead and not drowned by a flood.
So they had it at last: freedom. It was worth working the long night for, and so they did, and not soon but soon enough, they were gone and on their way, without a farewell, leaving the three awake white men, the girl and her sleeping grand pap Sally and the old men watched them go.
'Well, that's the last goddamn act. We done what we come to do.'
'We done it good,' crazy Charlie said. 'I ain't had a ball like this one in years, if ever.'
'I hope it turns out for the best, ' there's no going back.'
'I'd bet we done the right thing.'
'I hope you're right,' said Elmer, 'but my theory of the human heart may be darker than yours.'
'Mr. Elmer, you should believe in the good,' said Sally. 'If you believe in it, maybe it will happen.'
'But Sally, most people ain't like you. You're special. Most are like us, crabby old men who don't care much about nothing except what's in it for us.'
'Wasn't nothing in it for you as I can see,' said Sally. 'You did it because it was right, and I did it because it was right, and who can ask for more?'
'I did it because it felt so damn good,' said Charlie.
'Charlie, underneath it all I don't believe that's the true you.'
'No, honey,' said Elmer, 'underneath it all that is the true Charlie.'
Of course all the time they were talking, the modest, humble, silent Bill was working. He had carpentry skills, too, and he threw together a raft as fine as any of them in an hour's worth of labor, a platform on a frame nailed neatly to four strategically placed coffins. He worked hard and steadily.
'Y'all can sit there yapping, but if you do, you ain't riding on my raft,' he finally said, and the two other gunfighters wearily arose to join him.
'Problem is,' he said, 'we got to go upstream. Them other fellows, they all headed downstream.'
'Bill,' said Charlie, 'whyn't you build us a Johnson outboard? That'd get the trick done right fine.' 'No oil,' said Bill. 'If I built it, we couldn't run it, ' we got no oil to cut the kerosene with.' 'Good point,' said Charlie.
'Can we pole?'
'Have to pole,' said Bill. 'No other choice.' 'What's'?' asked Charlie.
'Don't you know a goddamn thing?' Bill said.
'We stay close to shore and sort of push ourselves upstream.'
'I got it.'
'It ain't all that hard to get.'
'I'll go into the woods and look for saplings we can cut into them poles.'
'Charlie, that's the first smart thing you've said all week,' said Jack from his stretcher.
Charlie went off, Jack rested, Bill worked on the raft, Elmer helped, Sally helped she couldn't be ordered to rest the town burned to ash and chars, the sky began to lighten and the old man dozed contentedly.
In time, Charlie returned, and with his knife set to hewing the instruments of their deliverance. He did a good job and was finished just as the dawn was breaking.
'Want to go?'
'It's not seven yet. I figure two hours to get upstream. We '
A boom cracked the air, far off. That meant that Audie had blown the levee.
'Best wake your grand pap sweetie.'
'Yes, it's time.'
She walked up the incline to the old man dozing comfortably in the rocking chair in the middle of the empty street in the town of burned out buildings and returned in a bit.
'What'd he say? Want to snooze some more?' 'Grandpap didn't say a thing,' she said. 'He's dead.' 'Oh, Lord, 'said Elmer.
'At least he died happy,' said Charlie. 'Hope I die that happy, though it'll happen in bed likely, after a crotchety decline and lots of hell thrown at and received back from damn women nurses and wives.'
'Are you all right, Sally?' Bill Jennings asked.
'Yes, I'm fine. Give me a moment please, is all.'
She walked off and faced the river, the dawn, the far shore, the rest of her life.
'Well, whatever, she don't have to spend the rest of her life caring for an old man. She can find a young one now.'
'Doubt there's one good enough for her,' said Jack. 'These kids these days, if you catch my drift.'
'I do.' 'All right,' she said, returning, 'I am all fine now.'
'Let's wrap Mr. Ed carefully.'
'He sure deserves that.'
'He surely does.'
And they set about to prepare a funeral shroud and then place the old man in one of the Trugood waterproof coffins.
EARL pulled the coiled whip off him as if it were an infected snake whose very skin contained poison. He hated the gnarly feel of the thing, and threw it as far as he could off into the fields, with a shudder of revulsion. Then, quickly, he went to look for his revolvers and found one, the Heavy Duty Smith. The Colt Trooper was evidently gone forever, for he did not have a night to hunt for it. It would rust away to nothingness in the coming years. He picked up the pouch with the last few firebombs.
Then at last he touched his face. There wasn't much blood, except at his ear. His sorest spot remained the top of his left hand, where the whip tail had cracked deep. That one was almost useless, and the ear, with a deep and bad tear, was equally a mess, though for some odd reason it didn't hurt as much. The openings on his face had coagulated and ceased to bleed. Stitches would close them up, but stitches were still a day or so away.
Settled, he turned and headed down the road. Not once did he look at the ax-burred body of the big man, as if it didn't exist, and as if therefore his barbarity, and the hunger and glee with which he'd planted that last blade deep in the face of the man, didn't exist either. He pressed along, wondering how much time he had before Audie blew the levee, and how much after. How quickly would the lowlands go under?
Would the water have the force of a moving wall, a pure destructiveness, or would it seep slowly forth, rising in increments until it soaked the world? He didn't know. He really didn't care all that much either. If he made it out, wouldn't that be a treat and a half? And if he didn't, that was the way the cards sometimes came to lay on the table.
He found the turnoff, took the new road, which led back into piney woods that gradually yielded to more jungly growth. The fires still burned on the horizon in one sector of the sky, but not nearly so brightly. He didn't care. He didn't look at his watch either, because he didn't care what time it was. He didn't pay attention to the possibility of ambush by yet still-unaccounted-for guards, because he didn't care much about that either.
At last he came to still another smaller road behind a gate and realized that the Screaming House lay behind it; but this road, followed another few hundred yards, led to the Drowning House, where the prison launch was moored and the concrete blocks and chains were stored. He saw now what he'd have to do if he had the time.
The gate was locked. He shot it off, not caring about noise. He walked boldly up the road, and any man hiding in the bushes or the building with a rifle could have shot him. He didn't care. He came then to the building. It was the newest structure on the property, giving ample evidence of sound U. S. Army Engineer Corps design and construction. He heard the generator going out back, which explained the electric lights blazing in a region yet to be
