'Them Navy boys know what they're doing,' says Mr. Kaye.
'Yes, sir, they surely do,' says Earl. Then, to all of them, 'Okay fellows, time to load up. Y'all got your guns and your ammo and your maps and your compasses. I will see you in the river in a couple of hours and we will git this job done up right and finished.'
Charlie Hatchison held up his teacup.
'A toast,' he cried. 'I celebrate us. We are the last of the cowboys, and this is the last goddamn gunfight at the OK Corral. Drink with me, boys!'
'Hear, hear,' came the cheer, and the teacups came up and were drained.
Then Sally saw them.
She had never seen anything like them before.
There were three of them, low to the earth, bulbous craft of dark blue, squatty behind windshields that glittered in the sun, under three beating, whirling blades that suspended them from the sky. She thought somehow of insects; they looked like engorged blue-tail flies, buzzing malevolently, adroit in the air, graceful, somehow, in their insect clumsiness.
'Helicopters,' said Elmer Kaye. 'Damnation, ain't that a sight!'
It was a sight. Holding a tight formation, the three Navy whirlybirds vectored in on the party in the meadow, and Sally was stunned to realize that unlike airplanes, these flying machines could go straight down and straight up. Beating up a devilish roar, their spinning rotors whipping up a screen of dust and dirt so strong you couldn't look into it, so powerful you had to lean double to go against it.
Napkins from the tea party flew this way and that, and a teacup or two was knocked atumble.
She heard Jack O'Brian scream over the noise to Earl, 'Earl, you must know somebody big in Washington.'
'Pulled a kid out of a Wildcat on Guadalcanal. He ended up the chief of naval aviation, that's all. This is just a little training mission for these boys. They goin' to drop us and tomorrow they goin' to pick us up.
Only thing is, we got to be there.' 'We will, 'said Jack.
The men clambered aboard, three, two and two, and Sally watched as Earl helped her grand pap up the little step into the craft and got him seated. His face was boyish with astonishment and enthusiasm.
He waved at Sally as Earl conferred with the pilots, and then the thumbs-up was given.
Sally smiled, waved, and stripped off her dress. Earl's jaw dropped.
What the hell?
He was rooted in stupefaction.
Her dress came off with a crackling of buttons popping, and in seconds it lay at her feet. She wore jeans, a tight khaki shirt with a bandanna, and pulled out a crushed piece of material which she unfolded quickly into a much battered cowboy hat. She picked up some kind of canvas kit and ran toward the helicopter.
Earl intercepted her in the hatchway.
'What the hell do you think you're doing?'
'I would not be the kind of gal who sits home, sir,' she said. 'What happens if one of these old fellows catches a damn bullet? Does he bleed out there? I have bandages, disinfectant and every other damn thing.
I've patched plenty a bullet hole. Now stand out of my way, sir, or you and I will go at it, and as I said, I pack a punch.'
'For Christ's sakes, you?'
But with a twitch of her strong pale arm, Sally wrenched free and squirted by him.
Her grand pap twinkled.
The roars accelerated and, suddenly lighter than gravity, the three helicopters rose vertically a hundred feet, then dipped their noses, oriented themselves to the northwest, and hurtled away, trailing a wall of noise as they went.
And then, as if they had not been there, they were gone. an hour they were at their destination, for such are the miracles of the H-5 Sikorski. The navigators calculated well, charting a course over northwestern Florida, across the toe of Alabama, evading, of course, the city of Mobile, choosing an arc above the unpeopled zones of that state, and of Mississippi's southeast corner. Beneath, pine forest and swamp fly by, and the choppers head into the setting sun until by map and navigational reading they have arrived: there it is, a band of sluggish water, the Yaxahatchee, lost in silent quagmire two miles, above the prison farm at Thebes and three above the town.
Each chopper works its further magic swiftly, for this is exactly what such craft are for, and this is exactly what they have trained on. Each bird approaches the river, and there pauses, as its blades beat rills into the water, as it hovers but five feet off the surface. An object sails from each hatch and lands with a splash that soon reveals itself to be more than a splash. In the commotion there's a sense of gassy pressure, and from each sense of commotion, again almost magically, there unfolds a yellow naval raft as it inflates. A chain ladder is lowered and, quickly, each cowboy clambers down, and then a few packages are dropped to the waiting men. The choppers alter their pitch, and with a yowl climb to three hundred feet and head back to where they came.
In the falling twilight, the three rafts begin their slow journey down the Yaxahatchee. As they pass the prison levee, one raft, with Audie and Jack, scuttles ashore. The two men pull it up, take a compass reading, identify land forms from the photo map, give the thumbs-up and head inland. They're headed for the guard towers at the Ape House.
A half mile down, past the prison launching facility where Earl was 'murdered,' the second raft pulls up. This one holds Bill and Charlie and Elmer, two of whom will infiltrate the Big House, the Store and the Whipping House from the north and one of which, cackling madly the whole time, will head north to the sheriff's station in the woods. That baby is his and his alone. Sally is with them. She'll stay close to Bill and Elmer, who will more or less be at the center of the action, and all of them will ultimately rally upon them.
Earl touches her hand.
'You do not have to do this.'
'Yes, I do. Grandpap, you have yourself a nice time and be careful.' 'I will, darling,' says the old man.
Earl says, 'Listen here, you men. You cannot be thinking about Sally in the fight. If you do, you will get killed. You do your job. Sally, you stay behind them, goddammit, and do not run into fire. If you lose contact, you break back to the river, which is due west of any place you'll be. Tomorrow morning, you look for us one way or the other. I will find you.'
'There's no time, Mr. Earl,' said Sally. 'I will be fine.' She pulled off and fell in with the others, and Earl watched her go with something caught in his throat, or possibly his heart. 'Let's go, Mr. Ed,' he said. 'Yep.' the final raft pulls up close to town. Earl helps old Ed disembark and guides him up the town mainline toward the public house in the dark. The old boy is surprisingly spry tonight, almost gay. They pass through the dark, deserted town, almost a ghost burg.
A last few words pass between them.
'You okay, sir?'
'I am, Mr. Earl. Hale, hearty, fit as a fiddle. Feel as if I could lick my weight in wildcats today.'
'You ain't forgot nothing?'
'No, sir. Wait till eleven. Then take up a position at the town bar.
Them black fellows won't like it but that's what it's got to be. Soon enough some bad-boy deputies and maybe even a sheriff come along.
They'll take their time, but sooner or later, they move agin' me. Tough boys, like to beat heads.'
'That's them.'
'Got a surprise for them.'
'Yes, you do. I feel bad about your granddaughter.'
'You try telling that one what to do. I never could.'
'Well, I ain't had much luck either.' He left the old man, sitting quietly a few hundred yards from the bar, quite content and lively.
Earl headed inland, toward the Whipping House. earl didn't see it. Nobody saw it. But that night, there was other action in Thebes. At about the time his men were wiggling into position, the mournful barge of coffins, floating ever so lazily against the current of the Yaxahatchee, stirred slightly. No coffin itself moved, for the coffins were empty, as Bigboy and his detail had ascertained.
But from the barge, or from a hollowed out space under the deck, a noise rose. It was the noise of wood on
