'Earl, you do what I say.'
Earl did. Charlie took over the steering, and Earl sat still as Sally ran a needle and thread through his ear and scalp, and it hurt like hell, but not nearly as bad as when she doused the stuff in some kind of disinfectant that made it burn like pure hell.
'Goddamn,' he said.
'You can get through it, cowboy, big man like yourself.'
'Oh, Christ, that hurts.'
The others laughed.
'Some damn hero. Earl, maybe you ought to give that medal back.'
They plowed up the Yaxahatchee, once again passing the flooded prison farm, which was now to the left. The fourth tower had fallen, and more of the levee was gone. It was all reverting to savage swamp.
Everything would be buried under the water, and in months the silt would build up and all traces of a fight would be gone, unless Navy divers decided to make a million-dollar salvage project out of it, which seemed unlikely.
'Don't hardly seem like nothing was there now,' said Elmer.
'Nope. It's all gone to hell. We wiped ' off the face of the earth.'
This was Charlie.
'Hey, I see the kid,' shouted Bill.
And, yes, there he was, Audie paddling furiously in a yellow Navy raft.
When the sound of the engines reached him, he turned and saw Bill waving wildly from the prow of the craft, and waved back. He steered out to the stream, and Earl guided the launch toward him.
'Hey, you fellows.'
'Look at him, out for a Sunday boat ride.'
Again, Earl came close and went to idle, and Audie transferred. He left combat knife slashes in the raft before he made his move, ensuring that it would deflate and sink in time.
'Where's the old fellow?' Audie asked.
'Didn't make it through the night,' Elmer said.
'Oh, Christ,' said Audie. 'Sally, I'm sorry.'
'Thank you, Audie. I will be fine.'
Upstream they went, for another half an hour, until they were lost in trackless piney woods and silence, as if no other humans existed on earth. Earl retook the wheel and navigated to the pickup site, and checked his watch. He saw they had some time.
'We'll just lay up here,' he said. 'I think we're home free.' 'Home free,' said Charlie. 'Goddamn, how I like them words.'
It all danced before Section Boss: how he and he alone had tracked the Northern communist night riders who came South with fire and brimstone.
How he slew them in the river. How justice was served. How he became a hero in the white South, the king of N'Awleens and all them pretty gals, how he was elected to the state legislature and then the governor's mansion and then who knew what.
How he killed a damn girl who humiliated the great white South!
And all he had to do was squeeze a trigger and hold it down for a few seconds, as he had done so many a time.
He felt the trigger yield to his steady pressure and… And then he heard a crash as something or some fleet of things blasted from the piney woods upon him.
The dogs. The dogs came out of the brush like rifle shots, all snarl and teeth and blood hunger. Somewhere in the swamp, they had picked up the scent of the man who beat them all those months, and hunted him hard.
They hit him with a frenzy, and he screamed as the fangs drove into him, though in his pain he could not hear it and neither could anyone else, over the arrival of another sound, the roaring of engines, loud and low and close.
The call came at half past noon. Sam picked it up quickly.
'Hello?'
'Mr. Sam?'
'Earl! Jesus Christ, man, what happened?'
'It's done. It's finished. We hit ' hard and got out pretty clean.
Ain't no more Thebes prison farm. It's destroyed twice, by fire and flood. Destroyed three times, really, the first by gunmen.'
'You're all right?'
'Have some stitches in me.'
'The others?'
'One man died of a heart attack. Three others were hit but should recover. We're all beat to hell. And I'm sorry to report that Mr. Davis Trugood didn't make it. I found him dead in the upstairs bedroom of the old house when I went looking for the warden. He found the warden first, but what happened between them or why, I have no idea.'
'Earl, I have found out much about him you should know.'
'Later. I'm too tired to remember. You can move your family back to Blue Eye. It's all over. It's finished.'
'Earl, you… I don't know what to say.'
'Don't say a thing. We all agreed. After today, the words Thebes penal are never going to be said. I'm going to rest a spell, then go back on duty. No more gun fighting That's all over, unless the gunfight comes to me, and I don't think it will. At least I hope it never does.'
'Earl?'
'Mr. Sam, you keep this under your hat. I'll see you in a few days. I have to set my adventuring right by Junie, and I'd prefer to do that face-to-face than on a phone.'
'Of course.'
Sam hung up and looked about himself, to a little messy Little Rock office-bedroom. He meant to call his wife first.
But he couldn't.
Some things never change.
He called Connie. bill Jennings and Jack O'Brian didn't leave the helicopter at the farm; instead, they were flown on to Pensacola, under the advice of Sally, who urged that Jack needed to get plasma into him as quickly as possible.
The word came that night from Bill that Jack would be all right, the doctors in Pensacola said, and would be three weeks in the hospital.
Jack's wife, Sarah, was headed down. Earl knew how much was left in the fund from Davis Trugood and knew that there'd be enough. He told Bill to tell Jack and wondered if Jack had a last message. Bill said that Jack sent his best to all the boys and hoped to see them again, maybe sometime in the 1970s or '80s. The boys got a laugh out of that, especially since they knew they'd see him at next year's NRA convention and could josh him merrily.
Meanwhile, Charlie and Elmer, with their lesser wounds, saw no need to rush. Charlie had a rat's amazing ability to recover. He would be bruised for a month, but his cracked ribs would heal, and the two flesh wounds sealed themselves up and didn't infect. Elmer had a whopper headache, so bad that for the first time in years he let his correspondence languish. He just sat on the porch, drinking whiskey and swallowing aspirins. But he wasn't grumpy a bit. He actually seemed to enjoy it all.
At night, much drinking was done, though not by Earl, and much retelling around the campfire. It seemed Charlie had killed hundreds and he would have re-created each of them if he weren't hooted down by the others.
But the cowboys were happy, to a man. Audie said he hadn't been so happy since V-E day, and he'd spent that in the hospital with a chunk of his hip shot away. This time, he got to celebrate it up right! They almost seemed in the end as if they couldn't quite let go of it. But already they missed Bill and Jack, though they knew the two weren't coming back.
