“Yes, Daddy.”
“Wop,” said O’Dell.
With that, Lamar and O’Dell unleashed the rope and got it secured around the stout trunk of a green willow that grew crookedly out of the bank.
Lamar tied some strange super knot that only a bosun's mate or an Eagle Scout would know.
“Okay, O’Dell, you hang on to these bad boys,” and he pulled two handguns from under the water. O’Dell took them eagerly.
“Wish me luck,” said Lamar.
“Wish to hell I hadn't a-skipped all them swimming lessons back at the country club.”
He threw himself into the water like a child at the beach and in several long strokes was gone. It was almost five minutes before they saw him scuttle out at the other end, slither up the bank, and secure the other end of the rope to another limb. He gave the signal.
“Okay, boys,” said Ruta Beth, 'Daddy's calling. O’Dell, can you go first?”
“Go,” said O’Dell.
O’Dell began to pull himself across the river, hand over hand along the rope that ran just under the water's now pinkish surface. With his great strength he went quickly, even though he carried the money sack.
“Now you, Richard.”
“No, Ruta Beth. You go.”
“Suit yourself, but don't mess around, Richard. The law gonna come soon and we can't wait. And if they git you, no matter how much you fear Lamar, you will betray him. We both know that.”
She fixed him with a burning glare. Her small country face, so severe in the gray light, had the aspect of a Botticelli nude's, so reduced was it to planes and angles. It was as if she were putting the evil eye on him, some furious hex thing, so that he could not escape his fate. Then off she went, and being light and farm-strong, pulled herself along without apparent effort, until he lost her in the rush of the water.
Now it was Richard's turn. Tentatively he pulled himself out. The current was so much stronger than he anticipated.
When the river deepened so that he could no longer stand, it scared him. He almost froze on the spot. But then he got his nerve back up and launched himself farther. With each pull on the rope, his anxiety increased. The rope was deeper, his face was farther in the water, it was so cold, the current was so strong. At one point the rope seemed to sink a good two feet beneath the surface and it was all he could do to keep his head above the water, sucking in half a lungful of air now and then. From his vantage point he could see nothing —no land, no sky, only the glinting surface of the water, as if the universe had become nothing but water. The idea of it terrorized him.
Yet he pulled on. Then he opened his mouth too early and caught a swallow that rocketed down him. The cough racked up through him, seizing his body, but still he clung to the rope. Just a little farther, he thought. He managed to get two more pulls on the rope in before surfacing for air. / must be nearly there, he thought.
But he made the mistake of turning to look at the far shore, which he assumed must be but a few feet away; he could barely see it. He wasn't even halfway.
The depression of it hit him like a sledgehammer.
Give it up, he said. Give it up.
But he fought on, blindly. It was a long, groping night walk; the world resolved itself into the roar of the water and the exhaustion in his arms. He ached to surrender. At one point, he did, and ordered his hands to release him. But they would not. He found it in himself to go another few pulls and then another. A good, sweet lungful of air got him over his worst despair. Onward, he pulled.
It was going to take forever. But at the next sighting, he was astounded at how close the shore was. And with a mighty pull, he got himself into the shallow waters. He saw them in the brush a few feet back from the river's edge. His feet touched. He let go of the damned rope. He stood to raise himself and wave.
And then the current had him.
“Richard,” said Lamar, almost conversationally. Richard was so close, he was coming out of the water, then he just seemed to sit down and the water scooted him along.
His face had a silly half-smile, as if he couldn't believe what was happening, as if this were some damned joke.
“Richard,” said Lamar, irritated.
“Git your ass out of—” But he was gone. The water had him, and as Lamar watched, the silly look melted into one of sheer terror and weakness. Richard panicked, began to flap, lost control, and was out of sight in seconds.
“Wi-chud,” said O’Dell.
“That boy's gone,” said Ruta Bern.
“Water took him.”
Lamar just watched. He felt something like disappointment.
Then he was angry. Goddamned stupid Richard, come all this way, and-'Shit,” he said.
“Lamar, it's over. Let it be,” said Ruta Beth.
“Let it be.”
Richard sank. The world turned dark and liquid. There was no light down here. Weakly he kicked and waved against his fate, but there was no mercy at all, anywhere.
He fought for air, but the water beat its way into his lungs.
He gobbled for air, but there was only water. He closed his eyes in the gray light.
He thought of his mother.
Mother, he wanted to cry.
His mother was a beautiful woman. She drove his father away with all her 'friends.” They were a rich, aristocratic crowd from Tulsa, third-generation oil money long removed from the smell and sweat of the fields, and his father preferred the old boy network of kick-ass riggers and up-from penury scalawags like himself, who’d made their fortunes on guts and nerve. All these puffy people, all of his mother's friends with their Eastern pretensions, they finally drove the poor man away, though Richard didn't think there'd ever been a divorce.
Richard's mother told him he could be an artist. She took him to art lessons so early and surrounded him with artistic people. He went to Europe when he was six, nine, eleven, and fourteen. It wasn't her fault he turned out so disappointingly.
She had done everything she could.
Somehow, things were always set against Richard. She would arrange for 'introductions” to various prominent men in the East when they traveled there, but the men were always disappointed in him. He had a gift but not a great one, that was clear, and he was so much less interesting than Mother, he was a wretched conversationalist, he didn't have her buoyant charm, her vividness, her confidence. And she told him that, not in subtle ways, but baldly and to his face.
“Richard, you could do so much better if you weren't so meek. You will not inherit the earth that way, I promise you. You have to learn to project. People don't find your self-doubts attractive at all. Reach out, open up.”
But the more she pushed him, the more he sealed up. It was as if he was blossoming inward, becoming more retarded and pitiful and self-conscious and crippled with terror.
He was afraid of everything!
On the day it happened, he returned home and found her with a friend.
Eventually the friend left, and she came downstairs and mixed herself a drink, still beautiful at sixty-one, and asked him how the newspaperman had liked the exhibition.
“Uh,” said Richard, aching with dread, 'Mother, he didn't show.”
“He what?”
“He didn't show. Mother, I don't know what happened, maybe he got lost.”
“Richard, I have over four thousand dollars invested in that exhibition! What do you mean, he didn't show?”
He stood there, thirty years old, quavering like a child.
He hated her almost as much as he hated himself.
“Call him,” she said.
