and pulled myself forward, toward the other end, which was unblocked by nature’s dandruff.
When I got there, I cautiously stuck my head out and looked down. The water had eaten out a pretty fair drop on this side, ten feet maybe before you hit the creek and deeper water than the other side. Three or four feet perhaps.
I pulled back inside the culvert and listened to my breathing. It seemed stereophonic in there. I slowed and softened it by breathing deeply through my nose and letting it out easy through my mouth.
Back down the far end of the culvert I could hear Snake stumbling slowly along, the splashing of the creek water echoing up through the culvert like a megaphone. I hoped that the leaves and needles that had bunched there would fool him.
Closer he came, the dumber I felt. All I had done was climb into the mouth of a cannon with the fuse about to be lit. I felt about in the bed of the culvert for some weapon, but there was just cold water and mud. I checked my pockets and came up with the wadcutters and the pocket knife Arnold had given me. I dropped the wadcutters and opened the knife and held it. I noticed that the blood from my leg was coloring the water, running a dark stream over the lip of the opening and down into the creek. I hoped it had grown dark enough that if Snake looked he wouldn’t realize what he was seeing.
Snake stumped and splashed along until he reached the culvert and stopped.
I held my breath. I looked down past my legs, down the twelve foot length of the culvert. Through a rent in the debris, I could see Snake’s legs. He hesitated only a moment, then I heard him scrambling up the side of the bank and onto the road.
I listened for footsteps above me, but heard nothing. Was the road too thick to hear? Had I fooled him? Or was Snake standing up there thinking things over?
Then I knew what he was doing. He was leaning over the edge of the road, toward the open end of the culvert. I could smell him and I could see his shadow darkening the opening, blocking out the last red drips of the sun.
I scooted up close to the mouth of the culvert and cocked the knife back and held my breath. Snake hung his head over and down, looked inside. I could see the little dark caverns where his eyes lived, but not the eyes themselves. It was strange, being looked at that way and not seeing the eyes that were looking. He dropped the hand with the. 22 in it into view and I pushed off with my good leg and went straight at him and jabbed the knife toward one of those dark spots where an eye lived.
Snake snapped his head to the side, and my blade went into this cheek, hit bone and ripped free of his flesh. He bellowed and the sound of it bounced about my close quarters and the. 22 went off and put a shot into the bank around the culvert. He tried to get his hands back and?ands bac under him to pull himself up, but I got my injured arm around his neck and tugged him, pulled him off the road and halfway over the lip of the culvert. I tried to hold him that way while I plunged the knife into the side of his neck, but he fell the rest of the way off the road and over the edge. The momentum of his fall, and me still holding him, jerked me out of the culvert and sent me banging into the bank beneath the culvert, tumbling into the water below, on top of him. As we fell, I saw the. 22 pistol come free of him, heard it hit somewhere on the far bank, then we were underwater.
I came up as he did, pivoted on my good leg and got my bad arm around his neck from behind, tried to choke him with it. He got his chin down and I couldn’t do what I wanted to do. It was like trying to squeeze the bone out of the leg of a rhinoceros.
I brought the knife around and jabbed him in the side. He made a sound like a man straining to shit, swung his right elbow back and caught me in the side and made my legs buckle. But I hung on. I knew if I let go of him, he was going to be mad.
I put my foot in the back of one of his knees and pushed, keeping my grip on his throat with my arm. His leg bent and he went down again, face first under the shallow water. I went under with him a little, then he arched his back and lifted me into the air, raised his head slowly. I was losing my grip on his throat. He had his fingers buried into the ball that had once been my wrist and he was squeezing so hard it was giving me hemorrhoids. I brought the knife around, over my forearm, yanked my forearm away, and jerked back with the knife.
He twisted sideways and sent me backwards. I hit on my back in the water, got my good leg under me and rolled to my right, started climbing onto the bank, but it was too steep and too muddy for me to make it all the way. I turned on my back and held the knife cocked and ready.
Snake had wobbled to his feet. He stood in the middle of the creek with a hand over his throat. Wet darkness seeped between his fingers. The final redness of the dying sun bled over his already bloody head, the deep wound I had made in his cheek. He staggered toward me, almost reached me, then went to his knees in the water. He was making a sound like a pig with slop in its nostrils. He heaved and spat blood and crawled through the water and got up on the bank beside me, and lay on his belly. I turned my head to look at him, and he turned to look at me. He went to an elbow and pushed over on his back and slid down the bank until his feet were in the water. He lay there and held his throat and made a rasping noise, worked his mouth like a guppy.
Some part of me, a stupid part, felt sorry for the poor sonofabitch.
I shivered with the wet cold. I closed my eyes for a moment, or maybe it was a week. When I opened them, someone was easing down the creek bank above me. That someone was using a shotgun to support himself. That someone laid the shotgun down and bent over me, said, “Bubba.”
Arnold’s face seemed to be melting in front of me.
“I thought you weren’t up to it,” I said.
“I got bored,” Arnold said. “Besides, I couldn’t just leave it to you, little brother.”
“I think he’s still alive,” I said.
Arnol?='left'›d took the pocket knife from my hand and closed it carefully, leaned forward and pushed it into my pocket. He got the shotgun, rose up using it as a crutch, waded into the water and stood straddling Snake’s legs. He looked down at Snake’s face, watched his mouth open and close and bubble blood.
Arnold tossed the shotgun on the bank beside me, wobbled as he unzipped his pants and set himself free. He took a short breath and waited. Eventually, he began to pee in Snake’s face.
Snake turned his face only slightly. He didn’t have the strength to do any more than that.
Arnold said to me. “Used to be, I could put out a fire.” Then to Snake: “Piss on you, anyway, Stinky. This is for Bubba.”
Snake had quit moving. His hand was no longer pressed to his throat. It lay there loosely, blood streaming between the fingers, urine filling his dead eyes and his open mouth.
Arnold shook the dew off his lily and packed up and zipped up. He made slow cautious steps out of the water and onto the bank. His pants around his hip were dark with blood. He took a deep breath. He said, “Now, let’s see if I can haul your big ass out of here, Bubba-son.”
