stars, we did. Just to make sure we was going the true direction.
After what seemed a long time, we came to a little tree all grown up by itself in the middle of the marsh. It was big enough to lean against and rest, so we did. While we leaned, we kicked our heels into the tree and shook the mud off our shoes.
“I lied to you,” Terry said.
“About what?”
“About how I’m not a sissy. I tried to say that May Lynn naked did something for me, but it didn’t. I didn’t want to lie to you, but I didn’t want you to think I’m the way I am. As a friend, however, I have to admit it to you.”
“Terry, I don’t care.”
“Really?”
“I know how you’ve been to me, and that’s good. I see how you are with Jinx, and how you’ve been the one most concerned about May Lynn’s Hollywood dream, which ain’t something me and Jinx have been as rich about. I’m proud of you and happy to call you a friend. You and Jinx are my best friends.”
“A colored girl and a queer,” he said. “You sure have chosen some strange company.”
“Only thing strange about it is the people that might think it’s strange.”
“So you don’t think less of me for lying about that, telling you I had an interest in May Lynn?”
“No. I will say, had you not been someone who likes boys, I would find it hard not to like you, you know, in the boy-girl way. You are about the best-looking and nicest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Well, if I were not how I am, I am certain I would have been interested in you as well, in a boy-and-girl way.” He paused, and when he spoke again, he sounded serious as a heart attack. “As for nice, well, don’t think I’m all that nice. I’m not.”
“That’s sweet,” I said. “And you are nice. If it matters any, you ain’t sissy. You might like boys, but you ain’t sissy. You’re tough enough. You’re tough as you have to be. You’re plenty tough.”
“Thanks,” he said, and he looked away from me, out toward the outer dark. “There’s lots of things I might tell you in time.”
I didn’t know what that meant, and considering we had things to do, I didn’t push it. We needed to get moving. Lightning started to pop in the sky, and way in the distance we heard thunder. That got us going again, but it turned out to just be a night of dry lightning and dull rumbling.
Near morning a fog rose up. It was white as cotton and thick as a winter cloud. The flashlight bounced off the fog, and the fog rolled around us, head-high. There was no noise from frogs or crickets, which was kind of odd, and except for our feet stomping in the deep muck, it was quiet and lonely-feeling out there.
On we went, and then there was a lightening in the east, pink as a rose petal where it was low to the ground, bright and golden at the top. We could see it above the fog, and some of the morning light was so bright we could see right through the fog. Then the day’s heat started up, and the fog melted like ice cream. Terry turned off the flashlight and put it away in a tow sack.
It was solid light when a five-foot-long rat snake wriggled through the grass in front of us. We stopped and watched it slither by, then started again. Big white birds flew up from the river, and one flew high over our heads with a fish in its mouth. Terry said, “Maybe that’s some kind of good omen.”
“Unless you’re considering from the fish’s point of view,” I said.
By the time the sun was high and hot, we still hadn’t recognized anything. It was hard to tell just how far we had come, not knowing what time it was when we started out, but we guessed something like four hours, maybe five. Had we been on flat, dry land, we’d have already covered the necessary distance, but the muck slowed us and wore us out, so it was pleasing to reach a stretch of pines and get out of that mess.
The pines was a thin stand. Looking through them, on the far side, I spotted the church where the reverend had been minister. We had come out on higher ground than I expected. It had gone up so gradual, I hadn’t realized we was climbing. We was well above the reverend’s house.
We went to the church. The front door was thrown open; inside, some of the Christians had written on the walls. ADULTEROR was painted in big black letters in two places, and in another spot was a longer sentence that declared something Reverend Joy did with donkeys, which I knew was a lie. We hadn’t seen a donkey once since we’d been there.
“They ain’t much on spelling, are they?” Terry said.
We came out of the church and halted just below it and looked down the trail at the cabin. The front door was still thrown open and there was lantern light inside. Constable Sy’s truck hadn’t moved.
“You think he’s waiting inside?” Terry asked.
“Don’t know. Seems funny he’d stay there. Maybe he’s looking for the money.”
“He won’t find it,” Terry said.
“If it’s still in your sack on the floor, it won’t take a prize bloodhound to sniff it out,” I said.
“I moved it.”
“Out of the house?”
“It’s in the toolshed.”
“Reverend keeps that locked,” I said.
“I know where he hides the key. That’s how I got it moved in there in the first place.”
“And pray tell, where does he hide the key?”
“That’s the drawback,” Terry said. “The money and May Lynn are no longer in the house, but the key is still there, shoved into a crack in the front-door frame, along the side. I saw him stick it there once. When he was gone, I borrowed it and used it to take a peek in the shed. I wanted to see what was in there. Way he locked it up, I thought he might have something in there we needed to know about. What he had was lumber and some nice tools and finally, for me, a good hiding place for the money and the ashes.”
“So we still have to go down there in broad daylight. We might as well strip off and paint ourselves barn-red and run down yelling at the top of our lungs.”
“It does present a challenge,” Terry said. “Where can we find the paint?”
“Ha.”
We went wide and came down near the side of the house, and hid up in the tree line. We stood in the trees and looked around. It was as quiet as a deaf-mute taking a nap down there. The morning light was spreading.
“What’s that on the porch?” Terry said.
I looked at what he was talking about for a long time. I said, “It looks like spilled black paint.”
“Why would there be black paint on the front porch?” he said.
“Someone had black paint up at the church,” I said. “Maybe they brought it down here to write on things.”
“I doubt that,” Terry said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”
I don’t know how long we stood there, listening and watching, but after a while curiosity got the best of us. I pulled the pistol from my overalls and we sneaked down there and slipped up on the porch. About where the doorway started there was the black mess, and now that we was close, I could see it wasn’t paint-it was blood that had dried dark. There was lots of it.
I cocked the revolver, and we eased along to the window and looked in. I could see Uncle Gene lying on the floor on his stomach. His head was still turned around on his shoulder and his face was looking right at me, his eyes as dull as if they had been worked over with sandpaper. Jinx was right. That had been some lick Reverend Joy had given him.
On the table, on his back, stretched out and tied down with rope, was Constable Sy. Blood had dripped off the table, and the floor must have sloped slightly because the blood had ran toward the wall and out the door. I had no idea there was that much blood in a person, even a big man like Constable Sy.
“What in hell happened here?” Terry said.
I suppose the thing for us to have done was to have lit out for the raft, but we didn’t. What we had seen through the window yanked us forward as surely as if we was on a rope.
Over by the door we was careful to try and not step in the blood, but it wasn’t any use. We couldn’t help it. It was everywhere. As we went inside, our shoes, already mud-coated and sticky, stuck to the floor like flies to molasses. The inside smelled bad, really bad, and not just because of the blood. The air was rank, like body odor on
