was. And : she did, and the body was in a place where they didn't think : would be found, wouldn't cause them a problem, they left it. And they left Florida with it. That's logical. If the body wasn't in a good place, they took it off somewhere in the bottoms where it wouldn't be discovered, and probably took Florida with it.'
'If it's the first thing,' Leonard said, 'we can find Soothe, and maybe Florida. If it's the second thing, then we . . . well, we don't have plans. We're taking it a step at a time.'
'I don't know,' Tim said.
'We do it this way,' I said. 'Me and Leonard, we'll figure a way to make it look like we put it together. We won't involve you. I promise you that. You don't help, we got to talk to Canuck.'
'Why didn't you do that anyway?' Tim asked.
'Because you and your mother befriended Florida,' I said. Because we don't want to tie you to stuff we don't have to.'
'And Florida was our friend,' Leonard said. 'Something happens to a friend and you can do something about it, you ought to.'
'But the weather,' Tim said. 'That's right out there by the dam, and that baby is startin' to pop.'
'It floods,' I said, 'that grave may be worse off than it is now.
both of them are out there, the sooner we get to them, better the forensic evidence. And the sooner we get some kind of knowledge of what happened to Florida, even if it's bad, the better.'
'Dirt's soft out there,' Tim said, 'but with all this water, it could be a mess.'
'We'll chance it,' Leonard said.
Tim went in the back room and put on boots, pulled on his heavy coat hanging by the stove, then we went out to the big garage and Tim loaded some shovels in his pickup along with a big tarp in case we found Soothe, or Soothe and Florida, then he drove us through the water and up the hill to my truck. Leonard and I followed Tim. We went out the highway where Bacon lived. I hoped the place we were going wasn't beyond that great hill, 'cause if it was we might not make it, and tomorrow Tim might forget he knew anything. I felt the whole situation was fragile, needed to be pushed now.
We came to the road that led out to his mother's, and though it was covered with water, we took it. The water was not deep over the road, but I was nervous as the proverbial long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. I kept thinking about that pickup I'd seen wash over the bridge.
We went down the road a ways, then took a worse road, but it went uphill some and the water disappeared. It was really a high hill for East Texas, and when we got to the top, Tim stopped and we pulled up alongside him. Down below us we could see the road was blocked by water over a narrow wooden bridge. The sky was growing dark again. The rain was coming down harder, and it was so cold the heater in the pickup sounded as if it were crying.
Leonard rolled down his window, and Tim his. Yelling across from truck to truck was difficult, the rain was coming down so hard it drowned out our voices.
'I'm afraid to drive across,' Tim said.
'Me too,' I said. 'How far is it?'
'On the other side of the bridge, up the hill and down. To the right. It's the paupers' graveyard.'
'I thought that's where he was in the first place?' Leonard said.
'And still is,' Tim said. 'I didn't want to do this, but now I've thought on it, I think we ought to. Get it over with. We can leave the trucks here. I don't think traffic is going to be a problem today.'
When we all had a shovel and I had the rolled-up tarp under my arm and Tim had a flashlight, we started down the hill. We hadn't gone a few steps before Leonard began to limp as if his leg were made of wood. He was using the shovel to help him along. I said, 'Hold up. You that bad off, brother?'
'I'm a little stiff is all,' Leonard said, shivering in the cold rain.
'It's not that far,' Tim said.
'Going across that bridge on that leg, I don't know,' I said. Leonard's leg was so swollen it looked like ground meat pumped into a sausage casing. ' >
'Guess all the wear and tear, the weather, it's not doing me any good,' Leonard said. 'But I don't like being a weak sister.'
'Go to the truck,' I said. 'Me and Tim will take care of it.'
'I can make it,' Leonard said.
'It's not really that far,' Tim said.
'Go on to the truck,' I told Leonard. 'As a favor to me.'
Leonard nodded. 'I guess I ought to. I don't like digging anyway. Watch that water.' He limped away, tossed the shovel into the bed of Tim's truck, then got in my truck on the passenger side. Through the blurry haze of the rain on the windshield, I saw him lift a hand and wave.
Tim and I went down the hill and into the water, hanging on to the bridge railing as we went. The force of the water was terrific, and I felt tremendous panic. I lost the tarp from under my arm and the water whisked it away.
We inched our way across the bridge, and on the other side the water was barely across the road. We walked along more quickly now, and up a hill, and when we came down on the other side I could see the graveyard off to the right, about halfway down the hill, the stones and markers sloping toward the Big Thicket. Definitely a pauper's graveyard.
There was a barbed wire fence around it and an open gate, and we went through there and Tim took the lead. He led me over to where Soothe's grave was, tapped it with his shovel. The grave was covered in colored glass and
